Leadership summit concludes at ISB
Demonetisation was an adventure that was not necessary and has not been successful in any civilised country, except some of the Latin American nations, said former prime minister Manmohan Singh at the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Mohali last week.
Singh was addressing a packed audience of students and other delegates at ISB’s Leadership Summit (ILS) in Mohali on 22 September. The two-day Leadership Summit was held across both campuses of ISB (Mohali: September 22-23 and Hyderabad: September 23-24), and brought together an erudite community of business leaders, academicians, policy experts and thought leaders to engage, debate and inspire. ILS is a unique initiative since it is a conference organised solely by the students and for the students.
The theme for this year’s summit was ‘Transforming Tomorrow: The Future Unravelled’ and the speakers focussed on the trends that will be instrumental in shaping India in the future.
Besides, there were panel discussions on a range of subjects that included among others the future of banking, healthcare, transportation, and sports.
At ISB Hyderabad, chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, addressed the gathering on ‘Governance Tomorrow.
Terming his government’s efforts to help drought-prone villages as a “water revolution”, Fadnavis said that 11,000 villages have been made “drought-proof” in the state over the last three years.
“These villages now have water for irrigation and drinking purposes as well. What we essentially did was to converge all the existing 14 schemes and for all practical purposes we created a single leadership in every district,” said Fadnavis, and added that about 20 lakh hectares of crops were provided with irrigation.Fadnavis conceded that Maharashtra had consecutively topped for 15 years in farmer suicide cases.
“The Niti Ayog has placed Maharashtra number 1 in agricultural reforms. We will make 22,000 drought-proof. This year, the demand of water tankers has also come down from 6,000 to 700,” said Fadnavis at ISB.
Talking about completing state projects on time, Fadnavis said that he has set up the ‘chief minister’s war room’ wherein all stakeholders involved are brought together to solve issues.
“There is a review every two months, and the projects are tracked. Till decisions are taken I don’t let them leave (the room),” said the chief minister, to a huge applause from the packed crowd at ISB.
He concluded by saying that the Mumbai metro rail, once active, will be able to handle 9 million passengers every day, and that the project will be linked with the sub-urban railways line, which is used by seven million people every day, to have an integrated transport system
The other key speakers at ILS included vice-president Venkaiah Naidu; administrator of Puducherry, Kiran Bedi; former chairman, ISRO, K. Radhakrishnan; minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha and principal economic advisor to the government of India Sanjeev Sanyal.