Difficult Dialogues a non-partisan forum for discussing critical issues in South Asia curated in collaboration with South Asia Centre, London School of Economics (LSE) and Television Trust for Environment is all to host the first ever edition of LSE India Summit 2016 at the International Centre Goa from today. The event which will extend over three days will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and will include four panel discussions with focus areas being Global Finance, Infrastructure, Civil Society and India and West Asia. There will also be two specially curated talks, one by the Serbian political thinker Srdja Popovic on People Power: How Non-Violent Strategies are Shaking & Shaping the World, and the other by award-winning novelist Amitav Ghosh on ‘From Bombay to Canton: Traveling the Opium Route to 19th Century China’’. An exhibition of rare documents from the archives of the Reserve Bank of India, will be on display during this period.
“Difficult Dialogues aims at working with individuals, organizations, think-tanks, media, government and parastatal institutions to debate South Asia amidst its constituent countries and with the world at large. The vision is to encourage multi-faceted dialogue and debate to position South Asia as a dynamic global region influencing wider changes and powers,” says Surina Narula, founding director, Difficult Dialogues.
Civil society leaders like Siddharth Varadarajan, Sudhir Kakkar, Yeswant Sinha, Pavan Verma, Sam Pitroda, Luxmi Chaudhry, Govind Nihalani, Bobby Bedi, Nandita Das, Sanjoy Hazarika, Hansal Mehta, Arti Kirloskar and many more will unite to explore and debate on the issues of social exclusion, child marriage, agriculture-youth-migration, and the vision for the next generation.
In the lead-up to its first year’s programme, the festival is also mobilising youth into engaging with critical issues, through Daring Debates which aims at making universities and students a part of the overall discourse. Winning teams from across India will travel to Goa to battle for the laurels at the finale to be judged by Sudhir Kakkar, Pooja Bedi, Shazia Ilmi and ANS Nadkarni. The closing ceremony will include a curtain-raiser on Difficult Dialogues 2017 by Dr Sridhar Venkatpuram who will speak on Medical Ethics and a music concert by Joanne Fernandes and band.
