In the clutter of awards and recognitions, the honour that stands out prominently is the one meted out by your alma mater. It was no different for Bombay Stock Exchange CEO Ashish Chauhan. He received IIM Calcutta’s highest honour, the distinguished alumnus award at a function in November.
While accepting the award, Chauhan spoke of what took him to the institute in the first place. He spoke of having studied nuances of Indian philosophy as a child. And later, studying Western philosophy and economics in part during his engineering days at IIT Bombay. A young Chauhan was impressed with the ideas of capitalism and Marxism that he encountered while studying economics. Calcutta at the time was home ground for leftist ideology. Chauhan decided to move there to find out for himself. Ironically, today he heads an organisation some would view not as an equaliser of wealth, but a symbol of greed. Indeed life works in strange ways.