Somnath Ghosh appointed as Non-Executive Director at RBL Bank

RBL Bank on Monday appointed Somnath Ghosh as an Additional (Non-Executive Independent) Director of the Bank.

Ghosh is a retired Professor & Founding Dean (Academics) from Indian Institute of Management, Kashipur. Before that, he was also a professor and Chair of the doctoral program at the Management Development Institute in Gurgaon.

He has also been a regular faculty at IIMs in Lucknow, Bangalore and Indore, International Management Institute, New Delhi, as well as the Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad.

As an administrator in academia, Ghosh has chaired graduate programs in management, doctoral programmes, as well as in research and publication, and behavioural application groups. He was also responsible for designing the collegiate and sentient system and managed to attract impeccable faculty to a small town like Kashipur. As Dean of Academics, he mentored the faculty, alongside designing and implementing faculty development initiatives.

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These developments brought in by Ghosh enabled IIM Kashipur to place 1,611 in the rankings by National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) within three years of functioning. In addition, he has also established and chaired the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Development, for which he managed to garner ample research funding.

Before shifting to the field of academia, Ghosh was associated with the Reserve Bank of India from 1980 to 1985, contributing to the computerisation of the clearing house despite facing the wrath of the Opposition at Centre. For this effort, he was granted a Letter of Appreciation. Post his stint with the RBI, he remained in the banking sector by becoming a board member at the Krishna Bhima Samruddhi Local Area Bank, serving two terms.

Ghosh also holds a respectable reputation for his consulting and institutional development experiences. In about 25 assignments, he has consulted organisations such as NTPC, Coal India, Ester Industries, Union Carbide, Kriti Industries, among others. His fields of expertise in consultancy range from compensation management, performance management, organisation design, and implementing changes in work practise.

He has also offered his consultancy services to The World Bank on three occasions; as Lead Consultant to Development Commissioner (Handicrafts), Government of India, to the British Government's Department of International Development (DFID), and to the Public Health Foundation of India. Herein, the issues he dealt with were regarding rest and recuperation (R&R) of project-affected people, as well as issues of public health.

Recently, Ghosh was also occupied with the Johns Hopkins University to advise the restructuring of the Directorate of Medical Health of Government of Uttar Pradesh.

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