Speeches

“Affirmative Action and Diversity Measures in the Private Sector”, moderated by Nagaraja Prakasam

Conference Objective:

to address caste based discrimination in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. The conference is solution focused and forward looking, with four key aims:

1. To understand on-going strategic initiatives, efforts and best practices emerging from Bangladesh, India and Nepal to address caste based discrimination, with a specific focus on Dalit women.
2. To assess the current initiatives on addressing the intersections of gender and caste in terms of meeting the needs and rights of Dalit women.
3. To examine best practices with respect to inclusion matters and the private sector.
4. To understand the emerging public policy climate on caste based discrimination, with specific focus on intersecting caste and gender discrimination.

The conference sessions will highlight equity and inclusion strategies and achievements in a number of key areas covering policies and legal frameworks, affirmative action and diversity measures, addressing multiple discrimination against Dalit women, equal economic opportunities and employment, promoting inclusion via education, media and ICT, and localising the SDGs agenda to leave no one behind. Sessions will be in the form of dialogues between expert panellists facilitated by experienced moderators, leading to the formulation of a working regional agenda for social inclusion.

Round Table on sustainable cities in New Delhi. Great to know Telangana has a green channel for startups who want to bid for Govt. projects.

“Why create a single enterprise worth thousand crores….why not a thousand enterprises worth a single crore ?”…..the defining philosophy of our theory of change for positively transforming the craft sector by creating equitable value across stakeholders.
The key component of the narrative at ‘The Craft Catapult’ Delhi Roundtable Meet yesterday led by Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship‘s Startup Oasis where the dialogue panned ground realities, situations, and concerns over the product- market fit, need for appropriate and timely design intervention, effectively countering competition, particularly from the factory made, artisan and stakeholder incomes, long gestation periods and resultant irregular cash flows, craftspeople motivation and orientations, use of technology to maximize process efficiency, ‘one of a kind’ vs ‘volume’ production
There was plenty of cross-learning and education geared towards evolving an ecosystem for creating, incubating, nurturing and accelerating, ethical, eco-friendly, value-oriented businesses by startups working in the craft environment.