The Annual International Business Summit held at IIM Ahmedabad - Confluence Day 2
Confluence 2014: The annual international business summit held at IIM Ahmedabad began on the 27th and will continue till the 30th of November. This year the theme of Confluence is 'Blueprint for Indian Renaissance'. The aim is to pioneer a radical amalgamation of successful past practices and emerging innovative ideas in the diverse fields of Management with the Indian context kept in mind.
After a very successful first day, graced by eminent speakers, the second day kicked off with a speaker session by Mr. Dilip Chenoy, the MD of National Skill Development Corporation. The session was followed by a policy panel discussion with Dr Jayprakash Narayan, the eminent founder of the Lok Satta Party, Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global education, Prem Das Rai, India's first IIT-IIM Member of Parliament, Mr Parth Shah, Founder of the Center for Civil Society, Ms. Kajori Sen, host and anchor at NDTV and Mr Raghav Garg, Co Host and Youth Activist. The session and a panel discussion took the audience through various topics ranging from disconnect between education and industry in India, skill development, democracy and the outlook of Indian society towards political change.
Dilip Chenoy, an expert on skill development and the challenges faced by the industry today spoke about the importance of the evolution of skill development as an industry in itself. He stressed the importance and necessity of development of skills for the progress of the country, and talked about how we could proceed in this direction. He elaborated on the challenges faced which included lack of capacity, disconnect between education and industry and the lack of availability of credit for people who would like to develop a skill set. He reminded us of the importance of Small and Medium Enterprises to our country and advised us to look at skill development as an entrepreneurial opportunity.
The panel discussion revolved around youth participation in various aspects such as policy making, politics, and societal issues. The extremely captivating discussion was on the two sides of this issue, i.e. if the youth participated then what could we do to leverage it and if not then why was it the case. There were many interesting issues brought up by the eminent panelists. Parth Shah started with the affirmative saying "Today's youth are far more aware than ever before." Jay Prakash Narayan brought out the fundamental question on "Why should we have movements? If we do then there is a tremendous failure" . He proceeded further by saying that to progress we need to "shift from apathy to engagement" and "move from protest to contribution."
Mohandas Pai talked about how democracy works in the country with respect to youth participation, and that democracy " works at the grass root level" . He also talked about the "death of ideology of the country" and that the youth had become very consumer oriented. Prem Das Rai, in relation to what Mr. Pai pointed out, question the definition of apathy. He said that the "Coalition was here to stay" and that today's PM could have 272 seats "only because of the youth" . He pointed out that the "youth engagement was brilliant" and that we needed to fulfill the aspirations of the youth. With an intense and very interesting discussion amongst the eminent speakers, it was an enriching and enthralling experience.
Besides the speakers, Confluence also carries out other events in fields such as Strategy, Operations, Finance, Marketing, Policy and Entrepreneurship. The events started yesterday and will be carried out on the three days of Confluence with Saturday witnessing the launch of 'Czars of Online Bazaar' and IIM A's flagship B-Plan competition 'Master Plan'. The former required teams to pitch a unique e-commerce business idea with the entire business model in place while the latter is one of the largest business plan competitions in India having esteemed judges and panelists of repute from the sphere of entrepreneurship and venture funding.
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