While Ribeiro regaled the audience with anecdotes from his experiences in the police force, an ordinary man stole the show from right under his nose: Dr S G Bapat, professor in commerce at SNDT College in Pune, winner of this year's John Dalvi award for promoting leadership qualities through training youths and other professionals. Something which, Ribeiro admits, he could not achieve in his long years of experience in the police force.

Dr Bapat has been an academic all his life, so his views on education comes as a mild surprise when hesays that the present curricula spawns bright kids who cannot market themselves. ``The emphasis is on exams. But a gold medalist lacking in self-confidence is no match for a chap of average intelligence who is adept at public speaking,'' he says. He felt that an illiterate populace is an ineffective electorate. ``Illiterates have no voice in a democracy, because they don't understand the language of the system,'' he claims.