Lalu to deliver lecture at Singapore's INSEAD Business School

New Delhi, May 10 (UNI) Donning the hat of a 'management guru', Railway Minister Lalu Prasad will have a day out in Singapore on Monday.

Mr Prasad, whose rustic management skills have transformed the railways and greatly impressed the dons and students of top-grade business schools, like Harvard, Wharton, IIM-A and HEC, Paris, will be in Singapore to divulge his success mantra at the reputed INSEAD business school.

The high-profile minister, who leaves for Singapore tomorrow, will have an interface with around 350 MBA students at the Institut d' Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) Asia campus and give them an insight into 'Lalunomics'.

During his visit to INSEAD that ranks among the world's top ten business schools, he is slated to deliver a lecture on the ''Transformation of Indian Railways'', which had been teetering on the brink of bankruptcy some six years ago.

A senior ministry official told UNI that the icing on the cake for Mr Prasad would be a visit to Malaysia on May 15 where IRCON had recently bagged a Rs 4000 crore high-speed corridor project in the face of tough international competition.

Under the deal signed with Malaysian KTMB Railway, IRCON will construct a high-speed corridor on the Seremban-Gemas sector, which would facilitate trains cruising at a speed of 250 km per hour. The deal is to be formally signed on May 16 in the presence of Mr Prasad.

A day earlier, he will inaugurate the regional office of IRCON International Ltd at Plaza Central in Kuala Lumpur.

Giving details of the railway minister's visit to Singapore, the official said it was in response to an invitation from INSEAD's Global Dean Frank Brown and Asia Campus head Narayan Pant. Mr Brown and Mr Pant had also visited India last year as head of an INSEAD delegation for an interaction with Mr Prasad.

Indian Railways has a five-year contract with INSEAD, under which the Singapore business school was providing training to its senior officers on customer strategies with macro-plan perspectives.

For Mr Prasad, this will be his first lecture abroad during which he is to dwell at length on the spectacular turnaround of Indian Railways and how he gave financial muscle to the government's biggest department without retrenching a single employee or effecting any hike in passenger fares for the last four years.

Impressed by his earthy management skills which have left the high-profile management gurus scratching their brains, Mr Prasad has been invited by the World Bank, Japan and South Korea to narrate his experiences as India's Railway Minister.

The invitation from the World Bank has been pending since long.

In fact, Mr Prasad was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Bank's headquarters in Washington last year, but it could not materialise because of the Parliament session.

The minister has also been invited by the HEC School of Management, Paris. He is also to address American and Bangladeshi bureaucrats in Washington and Dhaka respectively, the modalities of which are being worked out.

UNI/SKS MSJ HT1600