MIT students get a glimpse of roads that they less travelled

MANIPAL: The Manipal Conclave 2015 was well received by the plethora of students who emerged to witness the event. Hundreds of student from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) had a privilege to listen to various noted personalities.
The session on Saturday commenced with a brief introduction by Ipshita Gupta, General Secretary of the Student Council.The first speaker, Ganesh Nayak, who is an alumnus of MIT, spoke of his bicycle expedition from Srinagar to Manipal and the numerous adversities that he confronted and stoically overcame while undertaking such a rigorous task. His journey of 8000 km, which he fittingly labelled ‘Life Cycle’, was an arbitrary mission that turned out to capture the essence of health and living.
Some of the excerpts from his talk: "I met some phenomenal people. I met David, and he was a mountain watcher." "Cycle hard, breathe easy. The smoker who quit, the cyclist who didn’t." “Nepal prints maps of mountains every year. In 2014, they printed an extra 8000 meter peak.”
Another 8000 meter peak? "The trip was getting over”, Ganesh said with a hint of sadness in his voice. The succeeding speakers were a team of mass media undergraduates called ‘The Rural India Project’ who emphasized on the atrocities of rural dwellings and vowed to continually expose the stories beneath such struggles. The session of the convention was extended with a captivating discussion amongst the leaders of various student projects like Parikshith, Student satellite programme, RoboManipal, Team Manipal Racing, Solar Mobil of MIT and the implementations of frugal innovations in their work so far.
On second day, the conclave began with a student speaker Krishna and Shubham of Electronics and communication and Computer Science on their achievements on traffic management system. The main objective of the firm is to make a smarter way to detect cars in traffic using image recognition, also control traffic signals using the data, so you have clearer, better roads. The challenge of course, is to implement it on Indian road conditions. The firm was born to boost the concept to push Make for India and Make in India.
Krishna said “When we made the final round of the Texas Instruments competitions we were told that the Chief Guest was going to be late Dr A P J Abdul Kalam. We were stunned and we had only 30 seconds to present the idea as he stood in front of us listening intently. Shubham said: “You might think your idea is illogical, but Google it. You’ll find three companies at least that are earning profits from that very idea.”
Another speaker Kanchan Pamnani enraptured students and faculty with her tale of passion. Undeterred by her deteriorating vision, Pamnani achieved her dream of completing law school and becoming an attorney.
“Words like deferentially-abled are just fluff. We don’t mind the word blind. In a physically not accessible India, we need a mentally acceptable India.” Be alert. Be observant. Live within what we have. Less is enough. Less is never more. More is always less as far as common sense goes,” she said.
Two veteran speakers M S Valiathan and Venkatesan. Padma Vibhushan Dr M S Valiathan, a cardio-thoracic surgeon by profession, is an influential figure in the field of medical technology in India. Valiathan said “Our learning was need-based development. We didn’t have a marketing department. We had raw experience.”
He also continued by saying: “This is very important failure. If anyone tells you he made a Class A device without failure I can assure you he isn’t telling the truth.”
The session continued with another speaker Aniket Mishra is an accomplished quizzer and a sought after Quizmaster in the Indian Quizzing Circuit. Aniket talks about having a girlfriend to a crowd of engineering students, yet he still somehow comes off as sounding relatable. The key to a good relationship is to be honest. And I told her no. So she said, if you love sports so much why you don’t go live with sports. I said, “Makes sense.”
The conclave also hosted author Anuja Chauhan with the event name ‘An Evening with Anuja Chauhan’. Anuja gave students an insight of her literary works and how she became a writer from advertiser.