Theme: The bird turns golden again

It was great

Outreach Auditorium
IIT Kanpur
Kanpur, 208016
India

WAJAHAT HABIBULLAH

A former civil servant of the Indian Administrative Service, has spent much of his career in Jammu & Kashmir most of it in the Kashmir valley, to the cadre of which he stood seconded in 1968. He has also served on the staff of India’s Prime Ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, as minister in the Embassy of India, Washington DC as secretary in the ministries of Textiles and Panchayati Raj, and the department of Consumer Affairs, and Administrator of the union territory of Lakshadweep. After retiring from service Habibullah served as India’s first Chief Information Commissioner, heading the final court of appeal under India’s Right to Information Act, 2005. A former Randolph Jennings Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC, Habibullah has been awarded the Rajiv Gandhi Award for Excellence in Secularism. He is today Chairperson of the National Commission for Minorities, and of the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar .

Prem Das Rai

Prem Das Rai is an Indian politician from the Sikkim Democratic Front Party. In the 2009 election, he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Sikkim constituency of Sikkim, India. He has the distinction of being the first Member of Parliament with the dual and prestigious IIT and IIM degrees. He is also a former Eisenhower Fellow (2002) from India. Mr. Rai joined the SDF in its formative years. He served as the party’s General Secretary and has worked at all its various structural levels. He has helped with SDF’s manifesto and vision, and continues to work for the party and for the prosperity of the Sikkimese people. Most recently, he served as the Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Government of Sikkim.

Narayanan Krishnan

Narayanan Krishnan is an Indian chef turned social worker. He quit his career as a leading chef and began supplying meals to the homeless in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, beginning in 2002. Krishnan founded his nonprofit Akshaya Trust in 2003, which helps to feed the homeless and mentally-disabled in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. He serves breakfast, lunch and dinner to 400 indigent and elderly people in Madurai. He also provides haircuts and shaves to give extra dignity to those he serves. He was selected as one of the Top 10 in "CNN heroes 2010" list.

Shovana Narayan

Shovana Narayan is not only India’s one of the most celebrated artiste of Kathak ‘par excellence’ but she is undoubtedly the undisputed reigning ‘Kathak Queen’ today! Every fibre of her body lives and breathes dance.Shovana, one of the foremost and most celebrated disciples of the maestro, Pt. Birju Maharaj at Delhi. She performs in India and around the world, and has been awarded the Padma Shri. Ms. Narayan studied at Miranda House in Delhi, India (graduating with a Masters degree in Physics) and is also a career officer of the Indian Audits & Accounts Service. Shovana is a visionary, who has amalgamated the best of both the worlds, the past and the present and who is leaving behind a legacy of believing and living a personal commitment. She is individualistic, contemporary and ever dynamic, which make her performances mesmerizing.

Manoj Kothari

Manoj is an innovation thinker, coach and strategist with vast experience in creating, managing and executing global innovation programmes for wide ranging industry verticals. Manoj currently heads the Research and Innovation Strategy division at Onio Design Pvt. Ltd., a leading design-led innovation consulting company which he co-founded. Frequently quoted in the press for his views on Indian design & innovation, he has been a speaker and facilitator in World Design Congress 2007, (San Francisco) and World Design Forum 2003 (Seoul) and several other events including Pune Design Festival (as a founding member).He is a mechanical engineering graduate of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Bombay 1992 batch, and PG from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad in Industrial Design.

Susant Pattnaik

Susant Pattnaik, a young Indian Inventor/Social Entrepreneur/ Tech Entrepreneur who has invented a device by which a completely blind, deaf and dumb disabled person can do all types of work as a normal human being can do and that via breathing. He is now the Co- Founder and Director of Scientific Innovation Foundation (SIF). Being a highly motivated inventor his areas of interest include scientific innovations, research and entrepreneurship as well. Also one of his inventions Susant's Breathing Sensor Apparatus has been appreciated by former President of India H.E. Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam via NIF at IIM Ahmadabad in 2009 for the best innovation among 1000 other inventors. He is the first Youngest Inventor selected and published at a young age of 17 years by MIT Technology Review in TR-35 category, Boston, USA, 2010 for the invention Susant’s Breathing Sensor Apparatus.

Shashank Shukla

From being a trainee fighter pilot, to a corporate consultant, to a social entrepreneur, to being a teacher and Teach for India fellow,Shashank believes in filling his life’s canvas with as many colourful dots as possible. He has a firm faith in his destiny and the fact that these dots are all converging in the not so distant future towards making him a catalyst for change, he aspires to be. While in US, Shashank had the urge to give back to his roots and he started his own social venture in 2006 in the education sector in the form of Gurukul Degree college, aimed at providing low cost quality education in rural India. Shashank intends to dedicate his life towards improving the education scenario in India and in order to get some hands on training he joined Teach For India in 2010 and is currently teaching street children in a residential school in Delhi. Shashank is deeply interested in policy and state of education in India and has worked with a member of the National Advisory Council and many thought leaders in analyzing policy issues like reforms required in Right to Education Act, Food Security Bill etc.