On March 7th and 8th 2015, graduate students of Harvard came together to organize India conference at Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School.

India Conference at Harvard is one of the biggest India focused student-led conference held in USA. This year’s conference brought together over 100 speakers and 600 students from across the world. This year’s impressive speaker lineup included the likes of Kiran Bedi (Rtd. IPS officer and Social Activist), Prithviraj Chavan (ex-Chief minister of Maharashtra), Rahul Bose (Actor, Director and Social activist), Sajjan Jindal (Chairman, MD, JSW Steel), Sumant Sinha (Founder Chairman and CEO, Renew Power), Akhil Gupta (Former Chairman, Blackstone India), Dipali Goenka (MD, Welspun Global Brands) and many dignitaries across the fields of politics, business, social and creative arts.

This year’s conference theme was ‘India’s Path to Global Leadership’.  This article reviews the Education and Women Empowerment panels.

The Equity in Education panel featured R. Govinda (Vice Chancellor-NUEPA), K.M. Sheshagiri, Lant Pritchett (Professor-Harvard University), Bala Venkaatachalam and Manisha Verma.  Govinda talked about access to schools but questioned its quality, neglected line administration, and lack of engagement with curriculum and textbooks related to math and science.  We have a structure which functions below the threshold level and needs major reform incorporating holistic transformation of the schools, said Govinda. In addition, “students of different backgrounds should be able to sit together to learn to be able to learn to live together.” Pritchett strongly believes that the teachers in the government schools are overpaid, the Right to Education act should be abolished, and achievable performance standards should be clearly defined.

The Keynote Address on Women’s Empowerment in Emerging India featured Kiran Bedi, Rahul Bose, Renana Jhabvala and Martha Chen. “Growing up, I did not see conflict. I saw a culture of submission. Today women are educated but not free, a criminal system which works against them, where the rights of accused conflicts with the rights of the victims, women are treated as merchandize, there is lack of angel funds for women and lack of women political power. Reclaim public space. Women are the largest migrant population in the country. Women rights are human rights. Women thrive, country thrives,” said Bedi.

Collect a coalition to move for forward, mark your ‘man’, keep your eye on the issue-do not get emotional, said Bose.  

Everyone agreed with the need for women to have greater financial security and independence and for the government to partner with women to develop better public policies.

The lead sponsor of the conference was Tata. The co-chairs of the conference were Abhishek Sharma, Preeti  Shrimal, Cherian Kurien, Sheta Mittal, Chandni Sachdeva, Rajat Sethi, Kanika Arora, Kartikey Mahajan and Shruthi Lakshmi.

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