Another successful edition of the colloquium was held on the1st of April 2009 in the Army Institute of Management, Kolkata. The guest speaker for the evening was Mr. David Johnson, a resident of Romsey,United Kingdom. Mr. Johnson has been the mayor of Romsey twice, a councillor and has also served as a liberal candidate for the parliament. He has been a headmaster and an educationist for the past 3 decades. He has also served inthe British army for 2 years whilst doing his National Service.The young 71 year old travelling & adventure sports enthusiast has just completed a 21days trekking expedition covering the Annapurna circuit in Nepal.
The topic for the colloquium was the management of public systems in UK. Mr. Johnson began his session by illustrating a pictorial representation of the map of the UK and also showing the structure of the public body from the central government forming the highest level to the local body at the parish level. Mr. Johnson went on to describe his 2 attempts at running for the parliament with ample doses of humour thus immediately setting the tone for a wonderfully informative yet intimate session. He gave a brief description of the excellent public health care policy followed by the UK. A public health system that provides complete healthcare for every citizen of the UK irrespective of his income, profession or class. The massive health care system is of course funded by the various taxes collected from individuals as well as business organisations. He explained various tools used by the government like Pay As You EARN (PAYE),Value Added Tax (VAT) and National Insurance (NI). He mentioned the occasional disconnect that exists between managers (sticklers for procedure) and on field operatives (like doctors).
Mr. Johnson also spoke passionately about his career as an educationist. He believes that the need of the hour is to concentrate on improving the primary education standard which is the founding base of any student; you can’t hope for a sturdy building unless the foundation is solid.One can only wish that some of our power hungry politicians were listening. The session was filled with anecdotes about his experiences with students and troublesome parents. He spoke about his efforts at modernizing the school system as a headmaster in the1980’s, and important managerial skills that he picked up without any formal training.
Mr. Johnson is presently also serving as the Church Warden at Romsey Abbey. He shared his experiences with the church committee, asking the students to come up with a solution to handle a particular situation involving resistance to change. After a brief interactive session the evening came to an end. Mr. David Johnson’s enthusiasm was truly infectious and had the students engaged, while his talk was truly informative & inspirational.
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