‘Development Dialogue- 2016’, an event which provides a platform for non-governmental organisations working in diverse fields with the objective of finding solutions to local problems to exchange ideas, kicked off here on Saturday with an interactive presentation on the experiments in the Hubballi sandbox.
The session focussing on the social entrepreneurship experiments in the Hubballi sandbox subsequently paved way for other sessions, in which resource persons from across India and abroad took part and shared their ideas.
Deshpande Foundation, Hubballi, has organised the annual event, this time with the theme ‘Execute locally, Innovate globally’.
Participating in the keynote session ‘Reaching for the stars: when dreaming fuels innovation’, chief executive officer and co-founder of Prodea Systems and private space explorer Anousheh Ansari said that her firm was now working on extending the facility of interactive digital access on television screens to more States.
“Partnering with Tata Trust, we have offered the facility in three districts of Rajasthan. And, we want to partner with more to extend the facility to a few more States,” she said.
Tata Trust and Prodea Systems together with the Rajasthan government are implementing ‘Project DRUV’ in Rajasthan through which residents are brought online to enable them have access to important information and services in the areas of health, finance, agriculture, farming, education and entrepreneurship.
Recalling her 11-day space journey and the subsequent developments, Ms. Ansari said that with the technology improving and innovative ideas coming in, the cost of space journey would come down in the coming years.
Replying to queries, she defended her decision to spend millions for a chance to go to space and said that life was all about experience.
In the same breath, Ms. Ansari clarified that while she had a costly hobby, she also worked for the common cause and the reason she was visiting India since 2005 was for taking the technology solutions to the people especially rural areas to make their lives better.
In the session moderated by Lakshmi Parturi of INK Talks, Ms. Anoushe said that getting a good mentor was not the only way to fulfil one’s dreams as everybody had different ideas.
She said with ‘young energy’ bent on transforming India, more positive developments were bound to happened in the coming years.
Infosys founder N.R. Narayana Murthy, Deshpande Foundation founder Gururaj Deshpande and experts from different fields were present.
