Human Conversation with Gopalan Balagopal copertina

Human Conversation with Gopalan Balagopal

Human Conversation with Gopalan Balagopal

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 Get To Know Our Guest:Gopalan BalagopalGopalan Balagopal, former officer of the Indian Administrative Service, brings over four decades of experience spanning district administration, child protection, and community-led climate resilience.His work took a global turn when UNICEF drew on his services to help develop the State Party Report after India ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. He continued with UNICEF in Bangladesh, rose to serve as Global Adviser for Child Protection at its New York headquarters, and concluded his career as UNICEF Representative to the DPR Korea (North Korea) at the end of 2009.Retirement was only a new chapter. For a decade, he supported several countries in Africa, along with the Economic Commission for Africa, in strengthening their civil registration systems. Following the floods and landslides of 2018 in Kerala, India, he turned his attention closer to home. Working with the Hume Centre for Ecology and Wildlife Biology, an NGO working in the Western Ghat mountain areas of Kerala, and with the help of local government and young people, he supported the documentation of every damage site across the district. That effort laid the foundation for vulnerability maps and a district-level weather forecasting and disaster warning system, a model now being replicated in nearly all districts of Kerala and in other parts of India.Since 2022, he has helped coordinate the Climate Smart Coffee Project, an initiative of the Government of Kerala to provide better income to small coffee farmers in Wayanad while mitigating the impact of climate change with the support of science and knowledge. He holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (Class of 1988-89) and was the first Mid-Career Student in KSG to win the Marcel Carbello Award for development of teaching material. HIGHLIGHTS & TAKEAWAYS:DR. KG: Share a little bit about the various roles you've held so far because you're still continuing to do tremendously exciting work and how do you squeeze in so much in the same twenty-four hours everyone else has? But walk us through a little bit around all the different reports you've had, what you're currently doing, and what's the driving force behind all that you do?BALA: I started my sort of professional work career by joining a public undertaking owned by this government of India, which was the first industrial unit manufacturing chemical fertilizers to improve productivity of food crops and so on in Kerala. In the northern West Bengal districts of Jalpaiguri and Jajiling. I was the head of the local administration in those places.BALA: I had an opportunity to go to Government of India to work in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, at which time I had an option I had an opportunity to come to the United States and take a year of study as a mid career student at the Kennedy School of Government of at Harvard and then i returned back had an invitation to join the united nations children's fund UNICEF where I worked briefly in India and then in Bangladesh. I had an opportunity to understand the culture, the language, the people in these places. and then I went on to head the work on protection of children as a senior advisor with UNICEF at its headquarters.BALA: I opted to go to North Korea, the DPR Korea to head UNICEF's work. And I was lucky to be there for a period of time which is longer than usual, three and a half years, and that I think helped me. To develop a certain, what shall I say, trust and confidence with the people who worked with me, and we could introduce certain innovative interventions which had not been possible in the past.DR. KG: Was there a red thread, a driving force, a compass that served as the driving force for all the decisions you took, all the career pivots that you've undertaken?BALA: It was to strive to be as ethical and as much focused on integrity as possible in this journey. I believe also that there were certain values or learnings which I think are quite significant that came to me.BALA: I think one of the critical qualities which I had found in people in various situations who did better in tougher surroundings where lots of negotiations and persuading people to take a particular path of development, it is the quality of emotional intelligence and empathy particularly.BALA: Unless you are really able to stand in the shoes of someone else and see the world as they perceive, you cannot make a change there. I think the single most important attribute I would see in anyone who I would select to a leadership position is the ability to listen. And to listen. And very often to also back that up with a summarization of what you think you heard and get validation from the person who listens to you before you come up with you know your answer or something like that, you know. So that these things have been very important. And it is not only in the work sphere. It is equally ...
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