TEDxXIMB 2017 was organised at the Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier University Bhubaneswar on Sunday.
The TED is a nonprofit organisation devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks by leading thinkers and doers of the day. Independently run TEDx events help share powerful ideas and thoughts in communities around the world.
This fourth edition of TEDxXIMB had speakers from diverse walks of life such as Anwesh Kumar Sahoo, Mr Gay World India 2016 and prominent lGBT rights activist, Anand Ranganathan, researcher at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Delhi Raul Villamarin Rodriguez, Criminal Intelligence Officer at Interpol and counter-terrorism specialist, JagiMangat Panda of of Ortel Communications,, Qaushiq Mukherjee AKA Q, filmmaker and rapper, SarathDavala, sociologist, and SuvankarMishra ,CEO of eKutir Global.
The theme was ‘Scripting the Change’.
Anwesh Kumar Sahoo’s talk, titled ‘Tapping Into your Alice’ was intensely personal. He observed, “One individual willing to make a difference can change the world.”
Ranganathan’s topic was ‘To Kill a Mocking bug: Darwin to the rescue.’ He threw light on his research on the subject of directed evolution and pathogenesis with a special emphasis on combating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and malaria.
Rodriguez followed with the topic ‘Deception in Management Education.’ He spoke about how deception is an inescapable part of the modern, transaction-driven society. He averred, “Business people want to have it both ways: they want to lie to a customer and then act as if they haven’t done it.”
Jagi Mangat Panda’s topic was ‘Breaking the glass ceiling: Women entrepreneurs in India.’ She spoke of the deeply-ingrained gender stereotypes in the society that are extremely difficult to overcome.
Mukhejee spoke on ‘Digital Disruption in Underground Cinema.’ He gave the audience a sense of how technological disruptions like the advent of the worldwide web, digital photography and, more recently, digital distribution have brought about far-reaching changes in the ways in which films are conceptualised, made and distributed. Davala spoke on the theme ‘Universal Basic Income’. He said, “We bring in huge bureaucracies because of the conditionalities: this leads to corruption.”
Suvankar Mishra, whose topic was ‘Human digital platform to aid sustainable development of smallholder communities’, said that with ninety per cent of cultivators worldwide being small landholders, it is essential that they be empowered by new technological and organisational solutions.
The event concluded with a Paika martial dance.