An inspiring event

MUMBAI: President APJ Abdul Kalam lends gravity to any gathering he addresses. It is always a great feeling to have a septuagenarian Kalam talking about his vision for the future, and the ways it can be achieved.

Sometime back, he had challenged the Indian IT industry to think big and have a human face. This time round, Kalam was addressing the IIT alumni gathered from across the globe, talking about how IITs can help in nation building.

President Kalam started off his address in his inimitable way, talking about his conversations with numerous people on what comes to mind when one hears of IIT? He received different answers from different people, right from nothing much to excellence. “This wide spectrum of independent views expressed, is indeed reinforce the niche and unique place that IIT occupies. It also brings out the perception of many on how to make IITs better and make a difference to the nation. The views of my friends are in tune with the mission of Pan IIT. Your mission is to give, give and give to the country. Knowledge and love are the only things that get multiplied by sharing,” he said.

As he has done in the past, president Kalam went on to give a five-point agenda to the IITs and IIITians to pursue:

1. IITs must be able to identify hidden Ramanujans beyond its selection process and nurture them for the world.

2. IITs must work closely with the university system in India and abroad to build a continuous stream of great teachers.

3. The Pan IITians have a unique experience of entrepreneurship. They can use this to enable every IIT and every university to become an employment generator by cashing in their technology into a product and marketing it.

4. Pan IITians can also take on very focused missions with time frame, which can immediately touch the Indian society.

5. Pan IITians can create a consortium to prepare a plan of action for inculcating innovation and creativity among the engineering graduates in the country.

The other highlight of the day was the interaction with the billionaire and philanthropist, George Soros, who belabored the Indian government's decision to impose controls on foreign financing, terming it as a “retrograde step.”

Soros, well known for his vehement opposition to the US president George Bush, praised the overall investment environment in India stating, "any danger to India will be extraneous, and not internal." He also spoke about the need for increasing education and improving the human resource and most importantly the environment. “Global warming is irreversible," he warned.

UN under secretary general Shashi Tharoor also enthralled the audience with his speech on India and nation building. He touched upon the various nuances of Indianess.

“Take language for instance. The Constitution of India recognizes 23 today , but in fact, there are 35 Indian languages which are spoken by more than a million people — and these are languages, with their own scripts, grammatical structures and cultural assumptions, not just dialects (and if were to count dialects within these languages, there are more than 22,000). Each of the native speakers of these languages is in a linguistic minority, for none enjoys majority status in India. Thanks in part to the popularity of Bombay’s Hindi cinema, Hindi is understood, if not always well spoken, by nearly half the population of India, but it is in no sense the language of the majority; indeed, its locutions, gender rules and script are unfamiliar to most Indians in the south or north-east,” he said. He exhorted all to lend their hands in helping build India.

There were also the presentations and discussions by Sri Sri Ravishankar and a video conferencing with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. There were the dose of extravaganza with performances by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Sivamani, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

The other attractions were the stalls by different IITs, displaying their work and also the stall by IIT-Bombay incubated companies. The event was hosted in a large pavilion in the suburb of Bandra Mumbai; the grandeur was there for all to see.

Estimates said over 5000 IITians attended the event from all over the globe, making it a resounding success.

© CyberMedia News