It was this time, last year that our world changed forever. The Prime Minister had announced a nationwide lockdown and we were all confined to our homes, grappling with a new reality. But amid such increasing uncertainties, there's one thing you can always rely on to happen like clockwork - TNIE's ThinkEdu Conclave - and we've never let you down.
Over the last eight years, The New Indian Express has brought you a niche, curated and thought-provoking event in Chennai with some of the biggest names in the Indian education space and beyond in the form of the ThinkEdu Conclave. We have brought you over 420 speakers in the past, and this year, with the pandemic refusing to recede like a bad dream, we've taken ThinkEdu virtual. And that is how we are bringing 35 speakers streaming directly to your homes.
What is now India's largest and longest-running educational conclave is bringing to you some of the most vital and stimulating conversations around education, jobs, life after a pandemic, the new National Education Policy and so much more that centres around this year's theme - Lessons for a new world.
So get ready to catch some of your favourite speakers discussing the ever-evolving, post-COVID India. This year, we have Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Minister of Road Transport, Highways and MSME Nitin Gadkari, Infosys Co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Education Secretary Amit Khare, intellectuals like Makarand Paranjape, AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe, CSIR's DG Dr Shekhar C Mande, among various others talking about how the country can be truly Atmanirbhar. We also have authors like Amish, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Anuja Chauhan discussing their books and disseminating lessons for our young.
Get those batteries charged up and be ready for a very interesting week - ThinkEdu kicks off on March 26 at 7 pm. And this year, instead of two days, we have extended the event to five days — till March 30. You can catch the sessions live at newindianexpress.com, edexlive.com, eventxpress.com and our social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
ThinkEdu Conclave 2021 | India's BIGGEST Virtual Edu Conclave
Theme: Lessons for a New World
March 26
7 pm | The New Education Policy: The way ahead
Ramesh Pokhriyal, Union Minister for Education
7.30 pm | Remaking India from the Ground Up
Parameswaran Iyer, Former Water Secretary and Sanitation Specialist
S Y Quraishi, Former Chief Election Commissioner and Writer
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
8.15 pm | Swami Vivekananda: The modernity of tradition
Makarand Paranjape, Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study
S Vaidhyasubramanian, Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed to be University
Chair: Prabhu Chawla
9 pm | Learning from the Epics: Lessons on life, management and science
Dushyanth Sridhar, Indic Scholar, Researcher and Public Speaker
Subhash Kak, Hindutva-based Historical Revisionist
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
March 27
7 pm | The Reform Agenda
Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Advisor, Govt of India and Author
Arun Maira, Management Guru and Former Member, Planning Commission
Chair: Shankkar Aiyar
7.30 pm | Inside the Ventilator Project
Amitabha Bandhopadhyay, Associate Professor, IIT Kanpur
Srikant Sastri, Chairman, i3g Advisory Network
Chair: Daniel Thimmayya
8 pm | One Country, One Language: Does a united India need a language policy?
Amit Khare, Union Education Secretary, Govt of India
Chair: Prabhu Chawla and S Vaidhyasubramanian
9 pm | Mental Health: The other pandemic
Vikram Patel, The Pershing Square Professor of Global Health, Harvard Medical School
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
March 28
7 pm | Mapping the mind
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys and Chairman, Axilor Ventures
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
7.45 pm | Celluloid and sensibility: Telling the stories that matter
Alankrita Shrivastava, Director, Bombay Begums
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
8.30 pm | Education and the Indian Gene
Subramanian Swamy, Rajya Sabha MP, BJP
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
7 pm | The New Millennial
Rajiv Malhotra, Researcher and Public Intellectual & Founder, Infinity Foundation
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
7.45 pm | Small is beautiful: Sparking the entrepreneurship within
Amit Agarwal, Global Sr VP and Country Head, Amazon India
Chair: Shankkar Aiyar
8.15 pm | Paper Tigresses: The reality of Indian women today
Suhasini Maniratnam, Actor, Director and Producer
Mihira Sood, Supreme Court Lawyer
Anuja Chauhan, Author
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
9 pm | Dialogue with the Triad: What the NEP will mean for an Atmanirbhar India
Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE
Dr Shekhar C Mande, DG, CSIR
Chamu Krishna Sastry, Member of MoE Committee on IKS
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai and S Vaidhyasubramanian
March 30
7 pm | The Importance of Myths: The past is the way to the future
Amish Tripathi, Author, Diplomat and Director, Nehru Centre
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Author, Poet and Professor of Writing, University of Houston
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
7.45 pm | The Freedom Debate
Ajit Mohan, VP and Managing Director, Facebook India
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
8.15 pm | Soft Skills for the Future
Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM
Chair: Kaveree Bamzai
9 pm | Education and Entrepreneurship: Roadmap for a new generation
Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and MSME
Chair: Prabhu Chawla
