Delegates from across the country and abroad will gather here next week for a three-day conference that will try to find common ground between scientific principles, practices and traditions of Jain philosophy.
Scientists, spiritualists and philosophers will attend the meet on 'Science and Jain Philosophy', being organised by Bhagwan Mahavira International Research Centre of Jain Vishva Bharati Institute, Rajasthan, at IIT-Bombay from January 8, a statement by the institute said here today.
It is being organised in collaboration with IIT-Bombay and University of Mumbai.
Former Supreme Court Judge and a member of International Court of Justice, Dalveer Bhandari, would inaugurate the conference while Union Minister Harsh Vardhan is a special invitee at the event, it said.
"It is a unique event where scientists, spiritualists and philosophers will meet on a common platform to identify gaps in viewpoints and search for common goals among these apparently diverse looking disciplines," the statement said.
"The challenge is to seek truth by convergence of a spectrum of methods and diverse disciplines," it added.
K P Mishra, a former scientist of BARC and Director of the conference said, scientists and philosophers from the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands, South Korea and Sri Lanka besides those from India have been invited to deliver lectures and take part in panel discussions.
"A special Young Researcher's session has been organised to provide an opportunity to young minds for articulating their views, thoughts and opinions. More than 500 delegates have registered for the conference," he said.
Union Minister of AYUSH, Health and Family Planning Shripad Naik would also attend the meet while Kiran Kumar, Chairman of ISRO, will deliver the keynote address, the statement added.
(Reopens CES20)
The release quoted former director of TISS, Guwahati, Prof Virginius Xaxa as saying, "how we take tribal lives and livelihoods and then do patchwork by offering them benefits like reservations. He said that governance is skewed against them because once their lands are taken away they have nowhere to go and nothing to start their lives with."
Maitreyi Bordia Das, World Bank's 'Global Lead for Social Inclusion', said that Himachal has done extremely well in social indicators largely due to land reforms which ensure equitable ownership of land among all classes.
Professor Rajeev Malhotra, executive director of Jindal School of Public Policy, Delhi has prepared a Policy Effectiveness Index for measuring Governance in which Sikkim has been at the top for the last two decades. Going by the index, Jharkhand has moved up consistently since moving away from Bihar.
Ajit Jha of India Today group presented the findings of a district level analysis done by India today.
According to the district level data analysis done for Jharkhand, education and health appeared to be the most important parameters for a state's development.
Alakh Sharma, director, IHD New Delhi said that building good governance institutions is the most important task so that development programmes survive changes in government.
Sanjay Kumar, Principle Secretary, Government of Jharkhand, shared how the government machinery has always failed to keep up with changes in policies, the release said.
Harivansh, Member Rajya Sabha, invoked the importance of ethics and morality in governance - "which has been declining over time", the release said.
