NHRD Journal - National HRD Network

Newsletters used to be published and mailed
from Ahmedabad. This continued until Keith
D'Souza joined XLRI and Fr Abraham returned
to XLRI as its Director.
In the Initial years TV was self appointed
President of the NHRDN and Fr. E Abraham
was Secretary and Treasurer of the NHRDN.
There were no paid members. In a short time
NHRDN established itself and chapters were
opened wherever there were interested people.
It was registered as a Society and membership
was made open.
The journey from then for the next five years
has been that of hard work and perseverance.
No one knew NHRDN and many did not see
the reason for NHRDN when ISTD was serving
the same purpose. Only those who saw the
distinction between HRD and training
appreciated the need. The First national
Conference is a record of sorts. It had a full day
devoted to CEO presentations. Starting with Dr
Krishnamurthy who inaugurated the program
many CEOs made presentations. They include:
Suresh Krishna, Venu Srinivasan, M V
Subbaiah, Deenadayalu of MRL,
Arunachalam, and KK Nohria of Crompton
Greaves etc. A printed version of the conference
papers was distributed. All sessions started on
time and ended on time. There was a great
cultural program by a troupe of Krishnaswamy
Associates. A special issue of economic times
devoted to HRD was brought out (courtesy IIM
colleague and editor of ET Manu Shroff). This
was the turning point for the popularization of
NHRDN and NHRDN never looked back since
then. In this conference the next conference was
planned to be held in Delhi and the director
personnel of SAIL took a lot of interest and we
promptly requested him to Chair the next
conference to be held two years latter. To
distinguish NHRDN from others and to
communicate that this is not yet another body
for fellowship annually but a serious body that
does its work professionally, we wanted to give
enough time between the first and the second
conference.
While the preparations for the second
conference began almost two years in advance
the preparations for the election for the next
President also began. MRR Nair was requested
to take charge as the next President so that there
was also some synergy between the NHRDN
proceeds and the conference at Delhi.
The Delhi Conference two years alter was also
a great success. The programmme started on
time even when the Chief Guest Dr Abid
Hussein did not arrive in time. He appreciated
our starting the conference without waiting for
him. It was attended by over 600 delegates and
a book was distributed. The Conference set
benchmark in size of the Conference,
performance on time, themes and academic
content, and put now NHRDN fully on stream.
Some initiative in governance practices helped
NHRD to evolve as a vibrant democratic
organization. During the tenure of the authors
as President of NHRD , two provision of built
in the constitution, one that each person would
be a President only for one term and would not
be re-elected. The other provision except was
to avoid election, and search the next President
by a team appointed by the Governing Board.
Elections introduce politics in the process, and
therefore, it was thought important to have
some other modes for searching the President.
Arvind Agarwal, during the tenure as
President, introduced another useful tradition
that the search committee, after identifying the
potential President, would interviewed the
CEO of the company to negotiate release of time
and energy for the candidate to be appointed
as President. The provisions has made NHRD
a really democratic body.
Today NHRDN has over forty chapters, nearly
twenty and odd publications to its credit,
collaborating with CII to develop HRD models
November 2007 NHRD Journal 105