Delhi Lieutenant Governor T.S. Sandhu on Saturday, 27 June addressed incoming students at IIM Rohtak's Inauguration and Orientation Programme 2026, urging them to cultivate self-belief as the foundation of effective leadership. Quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sandhu framed the message around conviction, clarity, and the ability to inspire trust — not authority.

The Leadership Lesson

Sandhu opened with a quote attributed to the Prime Minister: 'To be a leader, you have to believe in yourself first; leadership is about clarity, of thought and communication, not about imposing authority.' He said this insight sits at the core of management education — that leadership is not a function of rank but of conviction, adaptability, and the capacity to earn trust. The remark set the tone for what he described as a fundamentally different kind of managerial challenge facing the next generation.

India's Growth Story and Its Demands on Managers

Sandhu pointed to the scale and complexity of India's current development arc as context for why the stakes for management graduates are unusually high. 'We are simultaneously building infrastructure at scale, expanding digital systems, strengthening manufacturing, deepening financial inclusion, and responding to the aspirations of one of the world's youngest populations,' he said. He stressed that in this environment, a managerial decision is rarely a purely commercial one — it can ripple outward into employment, social mobility, urbanisation, and public outcomes.

This comes at a moment when the line between public and private domains is increasingly difficult to draw. Technology, healthcare, logistics, education, governance, and business now intersect constantly, Sandhu noted, making sector-specific thinking insufficient. Institutions, he argued, need individuals capable of reasoning across domains rather than within silos.

Judgement Over Technical Solutions

A recurring theme in Sandhu's address was the primacy of judgement over technical expertise alone. He said management today demands the ability to balance competing priorities, navigate uncertainty, and make decisions where efficiency and sustainability may pull in opposite directions. 'Judgement cannot be taught directly; it develops through exposure to complexity, engagement with diverse perspectives, and repeated encounters with situations where no obvious answer exists,' he said.

A Message to Incoming Students

Addressing the new batch directly, Sandhu encouraged them to treat the next two years not merely as professional preparation but as an opportunity to expand how they think. 'Use this period not only to prepare for a profession, but to expand the way you think,' he said, adding that intellectual discipline and comfort with ambiguity would prove more durable than any single technical skill. He urged students to develop the capacity to make decisions without reducing every problem to its most immediate outcome.

The orientation marks the formal beginning of the academic year at IIM Rohtak, one of the newer Indian Institutes of Management established under the government's push to expand premier management education beyond the original six IIMs.