How to Fight the Misinformation Virus

If you are on WhatsApp, Facebook, etc. – actually, even if you get your news from the mainstream media, you have come across false information or ‘fake news’. Maybe even been a victim. It grew into a monster in Covid times, and now it’s a pandemic on its own; call it the ‘infodemic’. Research shows a vicious cycle: the more informed a society, the more prone it is to misinformation! Academics, policymakers, and people at large tried to understand it to form an action plan.

Chair

Professor Hemant Kakkar

Ways to generate real effects on environmental & social outcomes

 A unique and controversial regulation in India requires (i) 2% of profits to be spent on CSR activities and (ii) the establishment of board-level CSR committees. While CSR is traditionally understood as voluntarism, governments around the world are now intervening in that arena by mandating disclosure of CSR activities. The Indian approach goes beyond that, building on the premise that disclosure alone is not sufficient to achieve the desired real effects on corporate behaviour. This session discussed whether such a mandate can make corporations more socially responsible and enhance understanding on whether a spending or governance mandate can generate real effects on environmental/social outcomes.

Chair

Professor Hariom Manchiraju

How to Diagnose the Future of Healthcare in India

What can make healthcare more accessible for India and the world’s population? The answer may be a P-word: Not just ‘public’, or ‘private’, but ‘partnership’. India does have a mixed system, but its effectiveness is often hampered by the mistrust between its public and private constituents. The private sector is concerned that it is impossible to have a level playing field, because the governments play all key roles. Despite the private providers accounting for 75-80% of care provided, their contribution in improving overall health of the community is unclear. In recent years, promising examples of public-private partnerships have emerged. This panel of policymakers, private practitioners, and representatives of the startup and investor ecosystem, brainstormed on approaches that can serve the dual objectives of creating a healthy society as well as a prosperous and socially responsible private sector.

Chair

Professor Sarang Deo

How Academia & Business Can Make Hay

Business analytics has transformed the process that firms use to analyse consumer data and make decisions to improve profitability. Academia and businesses can collaborate to achieve synergies which can enhance the impact of this transformation. The session examined the opportunities, challenges, and potential successes for an industry-academia consortium by bringing together industry leaders from various domains such as retailing, grocery, education, etc., for a discussion.

Co-chairs

Professor Madhu Vishwanathan and Professor Pranav Jindal

Why Access to Formal Finance Matters

In the last decade, India has witnessed phenomenal growth in the financial services space. Digital public infrastructure has transformed the lives of billions of individuals and helped promote financial and social inclusion. While great progress seems to have been made with respect to access to savings, access to low-cost credit still remains a concern. The session on financial inclusion aimed to bring together bankers, policymakers, and technocrats as actors in the ecosystem to share insights on the major challenges in financial inclusion and identify priorities for financial inclusion.

Chair

Professor Prasanna Tantri

Charting India’s Research Map for 2047

India has 1,000+ universities, 50,000+ colleges and other educational institutions. There are over a million educators and about 40 million students in these institutions. These people have the potential to produce innovative ideas and path-breaking inventions that help advance India’s ambitions. What is holding us back from being a research superpower? What should be done to become one?      

Chair

Professor Madan Pillutla

A Pioneer’s Ideas & Vision for a Research-Driven India by 2047

In an age when Indian engineers were lucky to get out of a shop floor, a few young people planted the seeds of India’s software industry. In Bengaluru, the first bits of instruments arrived on bullock carts. Kris Gopalakrishnan was part of this story, which today adds over $245 billion to India’s GDP every year. Having planted the seeds, Kris continues to plough back the resources into research, donating large sums to educational institutions. And he urges others, too, to water the ever-growing bodhi tree of research in India. What, then, is his vision for a research-driven New India by 2047? Industry honcho Rakesh Bharti Mittal, a strong supporter of education and research himself, engaged with Kris in this fireside chat about this question and more.