Mindmine Summit, one of India's most influential ideas exchange platforms organized by the Mindmine Institute, an independent think tank set up by Hero Enterprise concluded its 11th edition in the national capital today.
Senior Ministers in the Govt., Industry leaders and Opinion makers across various fields came together to exchange ideas and concepts at the iconic two day Summit on this year's theme of Disruption - The New Normal for India, the summit was inaugurated by Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, in the presence of Guest of Honour, Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Railways.
On the side-lines of the summit, Sunil Kant Munjal announced an investment of Rs. 100 crore into the Aavishkaar Bharat Fund floated by Aavishkar, a global pioneer in impact investing and a part of the Aavishkaar-Intellecap Group.
The investment reflects Munjal's commitment to address the key challenges faced by the country today in terms of employment, education and skills, environment, healthcare and financial inclusion.
Inaugurating the Summit Venkaiah Naidu, Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation said, "Addressing public grievances through the social media is one of our top priorities. While Demonetisation is a fight against corruption and ensuring digitalization of financial transactions, GST is a revolutionary transformation implementing single tax system. The drive for digital payment channels and financial inclusion will ensure direct benefit transfers to Indians and will bring them into the formal financial system. 28 crore bank accounts have already been opened under the financial inclusion drive."
Some key observations made by eminent Ministers and distinguished speakers on day one include Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Railways, "We are looking at an investment of $140 billion in infrastructure in the next five years. All meter gauge tracks will be converted to broad gauge. We are working towards a complete digitalization of Indian Railways which will save billions of dollars. The Railways will spend about Rs 10,000 crore for renewal of tracks and adopt latest technology to detect rail fracture to reduce the accident rate to zero level."
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Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Law and Justice and Electronics and IT:
"Digital India is a transformative program. It is a step in the direction of empowering the most backward and in turn lift the quality of life for the poor of the country and achieve a digitally empowered society. India's digital economy is going to be worth one trillion dollar by 2021. Initiatives like 'Digital India', 'Make in India', 'Startup India' and many more are designed to strengthen the IT ecosystem of the country for good governance. We plan to bring the benefits of digitalization to the smaller cities and in the hands of the common man of India through various schemes like Rural BPO Scheme, Digital Gaon, Jan Dhan etc. Aadhaar as a platform is completely safe and secure and respects the privacy element. About 1.13 billion Indians have Aadhaar and the government has saved Rs 49,000 crore in various subsidies."
Digital Gaon is yet another initiative by which the rural India will be educated enough to perform cashless transactions with the aid of advanced technologies. We have launched the Rural BPO scheme which was inaugurated in Patna recently, where we incentivized establishment of 48,300 seats distributed among each State in proportion of State's population, with financial support up to Rs. one lakh per seat. There is a five percent subsidy for establishments which will employ more than 50 percent women."
Prakash Javadekar, Minister of Human Resource Development: "Disruption is evolution. We need to encourage innovation in students, as they are the real the power of India. Through innovation we can win this world."
Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Minister of Culture and Tourism: "Soft power concerns our nation in a big way. We are not being able to reap the benefits of this rich heritage and culture of India and project it to the world. We are committed to uplifting and renovating our museums and are also successfully taking Yoga and Ayurveda to the world. We plan to hold Festivals of India at international venues. We have initiated a project on Culture Mapping of India under the vision of "Srestha Bharat" where we are promoting cross-cultural exchanges within the states of India. India has jumped 12 points and is currently at Rank 40 in the World Competitive Index on Tourism and Culture. We have leveraged the strength of Soft power through Wellness and Medical tourism. We are glad to note that foreign revenue has increased by 15 percent. There is no short of funding in the Tourism sector."
Nirmala Sitharaman, Hon'ble Minister of State (I/C) for Commerce and Industry: "The saturated economies across the world will need services trade from the emerging economies like India. The problem is that we do not have a Global framework for services trade. India is planning to firm up strategy for the next course of action across key issues at the multilateral body on a trade facilitation agreement (TFA) on services at the World Trade Organization (WTO)."
Jayant Sinha, Minister of State for Civil Aviation: "We are working towards UDAN or 'Ude Desh ka har Nagarik', building efficient regional air connectivity, between the metros and the Tier 3 and 4 cities like Shimla, Gorakhpur Kanpur etc. PM, Modi will launch UDAN on 27th April and we will add 33 new airports across the small Indian cities in one year. This will be achieved with a subsidy of only Rs. 205 crores."
He further elaborated on his mission of hawai chappal pehne walo ko hawai jahaj pe bithayenge which is in lines with our PM's vision of "Sab ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikaas." Dr. Mahesh Sharma Minister of State (I/C) for Culture and Tourism, speaking at the event Mr. Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman, Hero Enterprise said, "Big changes are taking place in India recently which are positively impacting the growth and development of our country.
As our eminent ministers have pointed out, the changes are happening so fast around us that these look like Disruption. In course of the 2-day session we had over 50 eminent speakers and 400 delegates and have touched upon an array of unconventional issues like whether we need a new index other than GDP to measure development.
We have discussed on topics like Demography of India and how we need to face up to the challenges of India eventually becoming one of the oldest nations and how this can throw great economic opportunities. We have touched upon leveraging the rich cultural heritage of India and how this should become our strength and not a liability.
Discussions on Defence Preparedness and our Geo Political strategies were also held. In all, the sessions have been deeply insightful and threw open a slew of amazing ideas and unconventional wisdom."
He further added, "In a world of extreme economic despondency, India is doing better than rest of world. However this is not good enough for us. We have started making more than incremental changes since the 1990s. At MindMine we have tried to tracks these over last 10 summits, often keeping a little bit ahead of the curve. Today, there is a growing need to shake up the system, status quo is no longer acceptable.
For India to evolve and meet the aspirations of all Indians, incremental change is not enough. We need radical measures. Fortunatly this has started happening. In the current state of affairs disparity has become extreme. We need to develop a measure of GDP that is people progressive."
The 12th edition of BML Munjal Awards for Excellence in Business through Learning and Development was conferred at the summit. The winners across categories for the 2017 edition of the BML Munjal Awards include Private Sector (Services) - Aditya Birla Financial Services Limited, Public Sector (Services) - State Bank of India, Private Sector (Manufacturing) - Larsen & Toubro, Cooperative/Public Sector (Manufacturing) - AMUL, Sustained Excellence - HDFC Bank, Emerging Stars -Policy Bazaar. The Runners-up across categories include Lemon Tree Hotels, CONCOR, Dabur, Mazagon Dock, Logi Next Solutions and Indian Oil Corporation. The awards are named after the late Hero Group Chairman and Padma Bhushan Awardee Dr. Brijmohan Lal Munjal. The annual BML Munjal Awards recognize organizations that have successfully deployed programs and implemented innovative strategies, processes and systems for learning and development, using people development as a tool to achieve Business Excellence.
Other eminent speakers who addressed the 2-day Summit included Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar, MP Rajya Sabha, Mr. Pavan Varma, MP Rajya Sabha, Mr. Manish Tewari MP, Dr. Arvind Panagariya Vice Chairman at Niti Aayog, Shri Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Former Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, Mr. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India, Mr. T. V. Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education, Shri Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, Mr. V Vaidyanathan, Chairman & Managing Director, Capital First, Mr. Akhil Bansal, Deputy CEO, KPMG India, Mr. Subramanian Rangan, Professor, INSEAD, Dr. Amit Kapoor, President and CEO, India Council of Competitiveness amongst others.