IIT fest dominated by services debate

Kshitij 2005, the inter-college meet organised by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at Kharagpur and IBM witnessed a healthy debate on the comparative virtues of the manufacturing sector and the services sector without a clear winner emerging at the end of the day.

Kshitij is popular festival with participation of students from all over India.

Leading corporates deliberated on on life after liberalisation as IIT Kharagpur hosted speakers from companies like Pfizer, Creative Crest, Jindals and CISCO.

The deliberations were on the theme, 'Manufacturing sector v/s services sector - a reality check on their impacts on Indian economy post-liberalisation'.

The speakers covered sectors like technology, entrepreneurship, marketing and innovation while debating on the issue.

The panelists includes Arun Gupta of Pfizer, Kapil Rampal of Creative Crest, Naresh Khanna of Jindal Drilling & Industries and Devrajan of Cisco.

Subir Raha, chairman of ONGC, inaugurated the event.

Rampal, who is CEO of Creative Crest, pointed out that the topic is still far from settled between professionals, economists, politicians, business leaders and the media.

The event has other events including competitions, workshops, lectures and exhibitions.

IBM, Tata, Hindustan Petroleum, Indian Airlines, Wipro, Motorola, Trilogy, SAIL and PCRA are also associated with the event.