The Banyan Academy of Leadership and Mental Health organised a webinar, which will also feature Principal Economist at LEAD, Dr. Shailender Swaminathan. A collaboration with LEAD at Krea University, the webinar examined the future directions of health policy and research in India, with a focus on mental health in the current context.
Category: General Topics
Supporting Women-led Rural Microenterprises through COVID and Beyond
LEAD hosted the third chapter of a webinar series on supporting women-led rural microenterprises amid COVID-19 and beyond. A collaboration with the World Bank and the Ministry of Rural Development, it featured senior policymakers and experts with a discussion on short-term and long-term policy interventions and strategies to enable graduation of women-led enterprises. The panellists and speakers highlighted the need for entrepreneurship development programs that focus on strengthening capabilities, providing handholding support to women entrepreneurs, strengthening access to institutional finance by building credit histories, and improving market linkages for women-led enterprises.
Vice-chancellor Sunder Ramaswamy shares the learning narrative
Emphasising on Krea’s mission statement ‘to help humanity prepare for an unpredictable world’, Dr Sunder Ramaswamy discussed how classes weren’t just about dispensing information, but rather about aiding students to learn, to think like a mathematician, a scientist, a philosopher.
Shobha Das on world post COVID-19
Dr Shobha Das, Dean at IFMR GSB shared her perspectives on the world post COVID-19 and its domino effect on organizations. The panel of experts discussed ‘COVID19 Impact on Innovation and Innovation Trajectories’ in an e-conclave hosted by IIM Sirmaur. The discourse featured thoughts on COVID-19’s impact on Innovation processes, role of technology, healthcare products, and challenges for leaders and organizations in revamping innovation trajectories.
IFMR GSB at Krea University welcomes incoming MBA cohort
IFMR GSB at Krea University welcomed the new cohort of MBA students with Prarambh – a week long virtual orientation program. The orientation programme for the 2020-2022 MBA batch was a 5-day event, hosted from July 1 until July 5, packed with engaging sessions from leadership, faculty, staff, students and alumni. This is a historic year for IFMR GSB, marking a journey of 20 years steered by some of the best minds from academia and industry, creating immense value for students and society.
Prarambh 2020 witnessed the Krea community extending a warm welcome to the incoming cohort. The incoming class comprises 182 students from across the country who have been through a holistic admission process which evaluates applicants with tailor made rounds catering to diverse aspirants.
Leading industry leaders actively participated and engaged in Prarambh 2020.
Industry stalwart Mr CK Ranganathan – Chairman and Managing Director of CavinKare, addressed the 180+ students on the inaugural day. Tracing his humble beginnings in Cuddalore to building a major business, Mr Ranganathan encouraged students to walk the path of personal transformation and use education as a starting point.
On day 3, Tech leader and co-founder of Fractal Analytics, Mr Srikanth Velamkanni spoke to the students. He carried them through important life lessons that students can take from their business school, including staying humble and constantly keep pushing to learn more broadly.
Speaking to the students on the concluding day Mr Rajiv Lochan, Executive Director at Sundaram Finance Limited, shared 5 key lessons with students. Addressing the uncertainty of our times, he highlighted why this is the best period to remain a student and learn as much from the world as possible, so they are prepared to reap the benefits of learnings in two years.
Renowned academia including Prof N Ravichandran, Former director, IIM-Indore and Prof V Anantha Nageswaran, Part-time member, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India & Former Dean, IFMR GSB, actively interacted with students.
In her welcome address, Dr Shobha Das – Dean of IFMR GSB commended the students for their decision to invest in education amid the global crisis and put forth her vision for the new cohort, “We hope to develop well rounded human beings as well as managers. There are four attributes we hope IFMR GSB graduates will come out with, they are elements of being reflective, ethical, effective and professional.”
Dr Sunder Ramaswamy, Vice Chancellor, Krea University added, “As the world has shown, with crisis comes opportunities. Hopefully it prepares you to handle these opportunities, no matter what you want to do when you graduate with an MBA degree, whether you want to join the corporate sector, be an analyst, join the banking sector, the nonprofit sector or want to be an entrepreneur. What I really hope that you’re here for is building yourself up as a professional and as an individual and human being, because I think that is really what the world currently needs.”
Krea hosts dialogue sans borders- conversations with the world
Krea University hosted a series of compelling conversations between eminent subject experts from world-renowned universities and research organizations across the globe, and the academic minds at Krea — on the post-crisis future of our nations, health, families, societies, environment and the interconnected world we live in. These curated diverse global narratives redefine the world of tomorrow. With more than 20 eminent speakers from 7 nations across the globe, dialogue sans borders was a four session global event.
In the inaugural session on ‘Future of Public Health, panelists from University of Oxford, The George Institute for Global Health and Krea University imparted learnings and shared perspectives on research, trends and policies while also shedding light on critical interventions needed for public health in a world with and beyond COVID-19.
The session on ‘Future of Social Behaviour’ witnessed academic practitioners from Australia Council for the Arts , Nottingham Trent University, University of Witwatersrand, Krea University and IWWAGE unfolded the changing face of social behaviour, our attitudes towards each other and societies, mental health and new coping mechanisms and the gender-based challenges that lie ahead.
In the upcoming session on ‘Future of Sustainability’, panelists from University College Cork, Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago (EPIC), M.S. Chadha Center for Global India, Princeton University and Krea University, brought together the emerging narrative of environment sustainability in a world that’s evolving with COVID-19.
The final and concluding session on ‘Future of Global Relations’, witnessed panelists from University of Sussex, Victoria University of Wellington and Krea University share insights into the transforming narrative of global relations, the international policies in times of crisis, and its long-term impact on global migration, trade and societies.
The sessions were moderated by Mukund Padmanabhan, the former editor of The Hindu and Visiting Professor of Practice at Krea University.
You can watch the recordings here.
IWWAGE is partnering with DAY-NRLM through SWAYAM
With over 60 million women mobilised to be part of one of India’s largest livelihoods programme, the Deendayal Antayodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), holds great promise for advancing women’s socio-economic empowerment by organising them into self-help groups (SHGs) and institutions of the rural poor. These platforms are facilitating financial opportunities and livelihood support services for women. NRLM believes that gender sensitisation and social action should be mainstreamed in its framework, systems, institutions and processes. To this end, it devised a Gender Operational Strategy in financial year 2019-20 committing actions that recognise women’s heterogeneity and the unique socio-economic barriers faced by them.
Through SWAYAM (Strengthening Women’s institutions for Agency and Empowerment), IWWAGE is partnering with DAY-NRLM to provide technical assistance to support this strategy and institutionalise gender across all levels of the Mission. More specifically, the partnership aims to:
- Strengthen capacity of staff at all levels in the NRLM through trainings to work on gender issues;
- Redesign the existing gender training curriculum used by State Rural Livelihood Missions;
- Design and test innovative solutions for delivering the trainings;
- Design, implement and evaluate the impact of pilot Gender Resource Centres in four states as models to promote gender equality and help women claim their entitlements; and
- Build performance indicators, generate rigorous evidence and develop knowledge management mechanisms to inform programme design.
IWWAGE is partnering with SRLMs in four states including Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Odisha, and several implementing partners to test pilots and scale these institutional models for SHG federations to serve as gender resource centres. Read more on IWWAGE work with NRLM here.
Women’s Work Force Participation in Maharashtra
Women’s labourforce participation rates (LFPR) reveals some interesting trends for Maharashtra. As per the figures from the labourforce surveys, the LFPR is significantly higher than the all-India figures, largely driven by higher than average rural employment. The state also shares a decline in self-employment and casual employment and a shift towards regular wage work for both rural and urban women. In Maharashtrathe urban areas witnessed a consistent rise in regular wage work of women since 2004-05. More than 60 per cent of women are employed as regular workers – 70 per cent of which is concentrated in the services sector such as education, health and retail. In rural areas, the share of casual workers is considerably higher at around 42 per cent, followed by 52 per cent in self-employment. The incidence of unpaid family workers among self-employed women exceed 80 per cent. While the urban areas show considerable diversity of women workers across occupations and sectors, women in the rural areas remain concentrated as manual workers in agriculture or within construction work.
Initiative for What Works to Advance Women and Girls in the Economy (IWWAGE), has developed a series of factsheet that highlight the important aspects of women’s employment across the states in India. It uses secondary data provided by the National Sample Surveys’ Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), 2017-18, and the employment-unemployment surveys (EUS) as well as data from other sources to support state specific analysis. The Maharashtra factsheet is part of this series, and can be accessed here.
COVID-19 and the Future of Seafood Markets in Chennai
The seafood industry is a lifeline for coastal communities in India and women play a significant role in post-harvest operations. While it’s still early to gauge the impact of COVID-19 on the industry, Research Fellow Rahul Muralidharan notes that rapid insights from the ground are important to shape policy actions and programs. He shares his insights in this piece based on interactions with small-scale fisherfolk, co-operatives and union leaders in Chennai.
Tackling Gender-based Violence Through the Lens of Space
LEAD concluded their three-part webinar series on rising gender-based violence amid COVID-19 . The final part explored the role of space – public, private and digital, in gender-based violence, especially in the current context. Highlighting gaps in current research, the young and dynamic panel answered questions from the participants and presented a way forward towards building safe and inclusive spaces for all.