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SPECIAL EDITION
Nurturingthe Positive
Powers of India
CII-India@75-Yi Conclave
01 February 2013
Pune
Young Indians in association with India@75 and CII organized a Conclave on “Nurturing the Positive Powers of
India” on 01 February 2013 at Hotel Le Meridien, Pune.
Opening the proceedings for the day, Ms Ritu Nathani, Chair, Yi (Pune Chapter) welcomed the delegates to the
conclave and invited the dignitaries on the dais to light the lamp to mark the start.
Nurturingthe Positive
Powers of India
Ms Anupama Arya, National Chairperson, Young
Indians & Managing Director, Hatch Center welcomed
the delegates and began by mentioning how nice it
was to be back in Pune, the city of dynamism and
entrepreneurship. She mentioned that it was the need
to develop ideas and thoughts that will facilitate
transforming India to actively shaping the world order
through economic strength, technology vitality band
moral strength by the year 2022, when India will be
celebrating its 75th year of independence and took
reference to the previous regional summits that were
organized by Young Indians in the past months,
including the one in the Southern Region at Chennai
and the one in the Eastern Region at Kolkata. “While
the previous summits have focused on bringing
together the youth as one generation on common
values, this conclave actually brings out those values
in detail” she said and concluded by thanking Mr Rajan
Navani, Chairman, CII-India@75-Yi Conclave and
Chairman, CII National Committee on India@75 and
Ms Ritu Nathani for their leadership in making this an
event that Yi was certainly proud to have worked for.
Inaugural session on “Nurturing the Positive Powers of India”
Mr Rajan R Navani, addressed the gathering and
welcomed the guests on the dais. He also welcomed
Members of Young Indian from across the country,
Media, students from the net institutions that YI
worked with. He began on a positive note and
addressed the audience with 3 key words “positive,
power and nurture”. “India needs to accelerate the
pace of positive thinking” said Mr Navani. He added
that India need to evolve 500 million workforce with
skilled people and better livelihood. He said that
unlike China, India had a strong society and weak
states and that we will have to work collectively to
develop effective governance and explore power of
technology & finance which led to greater
transparency & increase the pace of recruitment.
He said that philanthropy was imbibed in Indian
culture, and with a support of democratic power and
by nurturing the youth, “we can make a large change”.
Mr Rajan also spoke at length on the need for the
youth of India to engage with thought leaders like the
ones that had accepted to speak at the conclave in the
sessions that followed and take their guidance as
India gets into last 9 years of its journey to celebrate
the 75 year of independence.
Mr S Gopalakrishan, President (Designate), CII addressed the members next and started by informing the
members that he was at the World Economic Forum in Davos recently and that there were high expectations from
India at such global forums. “India should be a strong positive force on the world stage and to be so, we should have
courage and confidence” he said and also believed that India reflected all the complexities of the world, and could
be the role model on how development could occur. He further added that models and institutions that prevailed in
the 20th century were not relevant in the 21st century and that our institutions were inadequate to handle the effect
of climatic changes, floods, cyber security, and global crisis (financial crisis of Greek impacted us) and needed to
be strengthened and we need to look at new forms of governance.
“Wealth creation has increased disparity and
unemployment. The model used to create wealth may
not be the model going forward,” he said, adding that the
demographics of our nation was designed with the young
and that we needed to work upon how to leverage the
youth for the change needed.
“India lacks social equity and there is a strong need to
create synergy & accountability at the grass roots; make
people to perform better by changing the models. A lot of
people have unprecedented power in their hands, and
this power needs to be leveraged in a positive way.
Entrepreneurship is important in order to convert the
youth from job seeker to job creator and renew the
culture of philanthropy, thus contributing to the nation &
connecting the urban to rural and playing the role of
facilitator & aggregator” he said and requested all the
members present to join the “Count me in” campaign
started by CII for an opportunity to plug in and contribute.
While giving the keynote address on 'Nurturing the power
of Governance', Mr Prakash Jawadekar, Member of
Parliament said that having maximum number of young
people in India would be an advantage only if the youth
were positively nurtured. “The employability of youth
needs to be increased and nourished, and that is why
India@ 75, requires good governance” he said and added
that good governance must always be corruption free and
empower people to work for the progress of the nation. He
figured out that illiterate intelligence in India has many
times more impact than of literate intelligence, but also
chalked out the need of good governance for developing
today's youth and increasing literate intelligence.
Mr Jawadekar further explained the term good
governance by pointing out some examples such as
significant grain storage in Madhya Pradesh, the
renovation of a park in a garbage dump yard in
Coimbatore, E-Governance initiatives in Karnataka that
have benefited the common man at all levels, the
development of infrastructure at a fast pace in
Vishakhapatnam, free and accountable bureaucracy in Gujarat etc and said that one could change the system by
being part of it. He said that he was fascinated to be in the conclave precisely because it was focused on the future
and getting results for the country's growth and in the process also find solutions to the problems at hand. He said
that his party will always work for the engagement of youth and take them into confidence for important
discussions.
Ms Supriya Sule, Member of Parliament (Baramati
Lok Sabha Constituency) while addressing on
governance, said that good governance was not
about politics and government running the country,
but it is about services and facilities offered by
government for common people. She further
complemented the 'Zero Garbage Katraj' project by
Mr Pradeep Bhargava, Chairman, CII Western region
and 'Pune Bus Day' project by Sakal Group for their
successful governance. On the international level, Ms
Sule, mentioned 'FDI' and '123 Nuclear Agreement' as
good examples of governance. She carried on to
mention that the youngestes today did not want
anything free, but they demanded that everything
must be done in the rightful with good governance that
completes the value chain. “The job of the
Governments is to provide the youth with such an
environment so that they can flourish and contribute to
their business, professions and thereby the country in
the best way possible” she said and acknowledged CII
and Yi for choosing a theme that was very youth
oriented and for engaging with them through this
event. She was positive on the future of India with
seeing the contribution of the youth in the past decade
and was hopeful that the best of India was yet to come.
She said that as a people representative in the
parliament, she was committed to making
contributions in all means possible for the youth to
prosper.
Mr Pradeep Bhargava, Chairman,
CII Western Region gave the
closing remarks of this conclave for
the inaugural session and
requested the young people to
make maximum use of listening
and interacting with the speakers of
the conclave. He also thanked all
thye sponsors for their support to
this conclave and mentioned that
CII and Yi will always be keen to
engage with people to realize the
vision of India@75 and make it
happen.
Plenary II: Nurturing the Power of Finance & Technology
The session after the first break was one of the most anticipated ones on ““Nurturing the power of Finance&
Technology” with Mr K V Kamath, Past President, Confederation of Indian Industry & Chairman, ICICI Bank Ltd &
Infosys Ltd and was moderated by Mr Rajan R Navani. Mr Kamath initiated his talk though an impromptu
interaction with Mr Rajan and answered his questions. He mentioned that there was a need to change the mindset
of people and to “re-think the future” mentioning that with an example of the expectation from the parents on their
children to take up a white collar job.
“In most cases, parents discourage children from taking courses in fashion design, acting etc and direct them to do
what they want or what is respected in the society” he said that called correction in this regard. He emphasized on
the advent &access to technology from the mid- 1990s and the achievements in the banking sector, through the
ICICI Bank. He also focused on the challenge to overcome ignorance, and need to “wire oneself”. Earlier, during
the interaction with Mr Rajan, he recalled the formation of “Young Indians” in his boardroom and how happy he was
to see the organization grow in the past 10 years.
Later, he made a presentation on technology and finance and the various steps taken by him and his bank in
bringing in together to benefit large sections of the people. He specified the Technology adoption in banking,
disruptive power of technology, rapid urbanization, resurgent rural India, impact of banking and technology for
masses as the main elements in the transition stage of India. He also spoke about the innovation and emerging
technology in banks like smart Cards, POS machines, Mobile phones low cost branch and low cost ATM's.
“The challenge is in banking 700 million people in 600,000 villages in close to 600 districts” he said. He also spoke
about “Financial Service For all” in terms of Subsidy transfer, payment ecosystem and Credit. Lastly he stated
“Technology adoption by Indian consumers is proceeding at dramatic pace and connectivity will have a significant
impact on increasing access to Markets, information and knowledge. He concluded his address by mentioning
“India itself has transformed and will transformed even more in the years ahead”. Mr Raja Kochar, Chairman, CII
Pune Zonal Council also interacted and shared his thoughts.
Plenary III: Nurturing the power of Participation Action
The plenary on “Nurturing the power of Participation
Action” was handled by Mr Arun Maira, Member of
the Planning Commission, Government of India &
Member Trustee, India@ 75 Foundation and
Member, Apex Council on India @ 75. “The children of
the world should have equal chance to prove
themselves” said Mr Arun Maira and continued by
explaining the four chapters. First chapter was
depicted as “Buffalo wallowing and children waiting”
which clearly states that by putting together leaders &
experts together and expect results out of them,
whereas what really happens is one person pulling
down the other. This chapter was called as
Positioning. The second chapter was depicted as
“Peacocks strutting and birds scrambling” which
signified the class of population owning a huge
amount of wealth who grabbed all the available
opportunities and the birds depicting the class of poor
population who are deprived of education & wealth.
This chapter was called leaders by power & wealth.
The third chapter was “Tigers Growling and wolves
frowning” which represented the power of the gun,
power through muscle and mind (nasalizes) and the
fourth chapter was “fireflies arising” which
represented all those people who were not wealthy or
powerful but they brought about a change in the
society by compassion and passion. He further said
that 20% of the population believed that businesses
actually cared about the society and that there was an
urgent need to change the business and the
governance models, because the common people did
not trust and in order to bring in reforms, he mentioned
that we needed to gain the trust of people. He
emphasized on the need of reforms to improve
performance & implementations, this can be obtained
by collaboration among stakeholders and the root
cause for failure is contention, confusion & intention,
where contention needs to be converted into
collaboration, confusion into coordination and
intentions into implementations. He concluded by
stating his vision for India to be 'Inclusive, Democratic
and Capitalist'. In his ministerial level position, he is
responsible for facilitating the shaping of policies and
programs related to industrialisation and urbanisation
in the country and tourism. He has a combination of
hands-on leadership experience, consulting
experience to leadership teams internationally and
thought-leadership as an author and speaker on the
subjects o f leadersh ip and organisat ion
trasnformation.
Plenary IV:Nurturing the Power of Impactful Philanthropy
The plenary 5 of the conclave had Ms Neera Nundy,
Partner & Co- founder, Dasra moderate the session
with three powerful young people who discussed on
“Nurturing the Power of Impactful Philanthropy”.
Ms Meher Pudumjee, Chairperson, Thermax Ltd
and one of the panelists for the discussion on
impactful philanthropy. She mentioned on how
Themax invested 3% of profit for the upliftment of the
society and in CSR activities and how they started
collecting money form their employees every month.
This process, she said was very helpful that more
than 1000 of her staff were actively volunteering
themselves and that those who volunteer gets a
quarterly report on the investment of their money. She
said that there were lots of models to add value to the
society like the public private partnership adopted
with Pune Municipal Corporation.
She explained how Thermax ran the school for
municipal corporation by giving training to the
teachers to provide impactful knowledge to the
children and that they concentrate on English, mats,
and science which is the most important subject. Her
interest towards society was applauded by the
audience when she said that, she used to take
classes for the little children. Her idea of “AKANSHA”
was being appreciated by society. She gave an
overview idea how the process of creating a educated
society will bring change in the world and showed
some video related to the topic.
Mr Abhijit Pawar, Managing Director of Sakal Media
Group, Printer & Publisher of Sakal Newspaper, and
also Printer & Publisher of English daily from House of
Sakal, Sakal Times was the next panelist in the
discussion and started his speech by sharing the
pathetic condition faced by the people during floods,
draught etc, which was affecting the society and the
nation. He said that the concept of CSR is not 'giving';
it was to bring change in human minds. He spoke
about the plight of people in Pune struggling in traffic
and number of accident used to happen and shared
how he executed a model by meeting with all
politicians, bureaucrats, police and the common man
on the street. This model, he said reduced the traffic
from 30 lakhs to 8 lakhs and zero accident occurred
on that day. He tied up with Rotary clubs and NGO's to
carry out model for upcoming days, and this idea was
supported by TATA Motors and Ashok Leyland. He
concluded by showing some slides and how the
organization gave scholarships to 40000 students.
Ms Rati Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall emphasized on the topic
“Nurturing the Power of Impactful Philanthropy” by mentioning how
her company supports over a 100 mini schools and its approach was
to partner with work organisations. She also added that it was
important that the community contributes and should focus on 3 to 5
years' timeline. She believed that the project undertaken must be
sustainable and should not need handholding and contribution
always. “Organizations & institutes must look for partners whose
values are similar to theirs n work together for volunteering and
helping the needy” she mentioned and that in the past 3 years, the 3
key issues that Forbes Marshall undertook were, education;
healthcare; this included mental healthcare as well as sanitation. Ms
Rati Forbes also mentioned about 'caring friends' where people from
the industry come together and donate or mentor the needy. She
also emphasized that imparting skills and knowledge in a consistent
way was crucial.
Plenary V: Nurturing the Power of Youth as Change Makers
The session on “Nurturing the Power of Youth as Change Makers” after a short break was moderated by Ms Ritu
Nathani.
Ms Revathi Roy, Head – Investor Relations, Brick Eagle shared some of her past stories which reflected a
struggled life. As someone who loved driving cars, she made it her business which she started with much difficulty.
She mentioned on how she took the risk of starting a taxi by advertising in a newspaper calling for women to
become part of a fleet service that will be exclusively run by them. She further went on say that she received a huge
response to the advertisement and how she had to become the driver herself since she could not get enough cars
to employ some of them. She mentioned that she started the service on 8th March, the Women's day with an
investment of around Rs 2000. At the end, she said that her dream was to give more women a better life.
Revathi Roy was invited by Hillary Clinton to participate in the summit conducted by her foundation last year.
Amongst the many awards that she has been given, the recent ones include Lions Gold Award for “Favorite
Women Social Entrepreneur” at a glittering ceremony and an episode of 30 minutes has been made on her by
Anurag Kashyap.
Mr Sarathbabu E, Chief Executive Officer of Food
King Catering Services Pvt. Ltd, Chennai who was
born in a slum in Chennai, then went on to study at
BITS Pilani and thereafter at the Indian Institute of
Management (Ahmedabad). Having won the CNN-
IBN Award and the RITZ Chennai Youth Icon
recognition in 2010 and many more awards, he stands
as a real icon for the success in the face of hardship
and great entrepreneur. He mentioned about the
difficulties that he used to face when he was a child
living in the slums and how he used to have a lamp
next to his book for light also mentioning that his
mother was his role model and it was due to her that
he wanted to get into food business and feed as many
people as he could; also mentioning an alarming
statistic that 30% of Indians go to bed with an empty
stomach.
He also spoke how, in his early stages of his
entrepreneurial career, he stared his business with Rs
2000 by supplying tea and coffee to the staff of an IT
company and he has been able to transform it into a
business that is worth Rs 8 crore today. He has also
been working on having the 10th day of October each
year as the “Hunger Free Day” and feeding the
disadvantaged people in our society.
Mr Krushnaa Patil is an Indian mountaineer and the
second youngest Indian to climb Mount Everest at an
age of 19. She is also the second woman from
Maharashtra to climb Everest. She explained to the
audience as to how her urge for climbing mountains
made her attend some professional courseon this
subject and how it converted into making her passion
an ambition in her life. "I was much more passionate
about dance than sports. But along came the
opportunity to be part of the pre-Everest expedition,
which she calls "the turning point" of her life.
Meanwhile, after trying unsuccessfully to get
sponsorship for their daughter, her parents took out a
loan form Saraswat Cooperative Bank to support her
climb to Mount Everest.
"When I was on the mountains, I was thinking whether
I summit or not, I just didn't have a way to pay back
such a big amount” she said and shared how the bank
fortunately waived the loan off after she climbed the
peak. "I think we give up very easily. But the point is
support will come. I made my own opportunity. The
government gave me a lot of money, but only after I
climbed Everest and had proven myself” she said.
Partners & Sponsors
The last session of the conclave was on “Nurturing the Power of Bollywood and Fashion”. Mr Manish Malhotra,
Costume Designer & Stylist, Manish Malhotra Design Studio was the guest speaker for this session which was
moderated by Ms Rasika Wakalkar, National Co Chair (Education), Young Indians. Ms Rasika has a discussion
with Mr Manish one-on-one various topics like his journey from a fascination towards Bollywood movies to painting
& sketching classes to his first Flimfare for Rangeela. When asked by Ms Rasika bout the publicity of the brand
'Manish Malhotra', he humbly replied that all the celebrities who wear his clothes are the best means of publicity for
his brand. The very successful designer who has designed clothes from Ms Urmila Matondkar to (Late) Mr Michael
Jackson loves embroidery work and is greatly inspired by it. When asked if there is scope for fashion schools in
India, he answered that it hugely depends on the individual. He considers his biggest failure as not obtaining proper
education & lacking the “business” skills. If not a fashion designer, he would be a film director added Mr Manish and
concluded by saying that our nation should not perceive philanthropy as charity but it should be about empowering
people.
Mr Rajan R Navani concluded the conclave by thanking all those who had supported and contributed in making the
conclave the way it turned out to be. The partners / sponsors for the conclave included The Hatch, Le Meridien
Pune, Eaton Group, CNBC TV18, Cybage, Jetline Group of Companies and Grover Vineyards.
Plenary VI: Nurturing the Power of Bollywood and Fashion