Building a Planet-friendly Economy

IMPRI Special Lecture on Building a Planet-friendly Economy by Dr R Balasubramanium

Center for Environment, Climate Change and Sustainable Development (CECCSD), IMPRI Impact and Policy Research Institute, New Delhi and India Water Portal invite you to an IMPRI Special Lecture – #WebPolicyTalk on

Building a Planet-friendly Economy

Details of the #WebPolicyTalk:
Date: March 12, 2021; Friday
Time: 11:30 AM IST (GMT+5:30)
Platform: Zoom and Facebook Live

Speaker:

Dr R Balasubramanium, Founder and Chairman, Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement; Founder, Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement

Having embarked on his journey in the development sector by living and working for several decades among remote forest based tribal communities in the southern Indian district of Mysuru, Dr. R Balasubramaniam (Balu) is a widely respected development activist, leadership trainer, thinker and writer. After his MBBS, he earned his MPhil in Hospital Administration & Health Systems Management from BITS, Pilani.  He has a Master’s in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University.  His living habits were greatly influenced by the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and at the age of 19, he founded the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement based on the principles of Ahimsa, Satya, Seva and Tyaga.  He has spent the last 36 years of his life in the service of the rural and tribal poor in the forests of India. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement, a public policy thinktank in India. 

Dr Balu embodies a rare blend of grassroots and macro perspectives and policy through his multi-faceted experience of more than three decades.  He is a Tata Scholar, a Mason Fellow of the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Hauser Center for Civil Society, Harvard University.  He is currently a visiting professor at Cornell University, USA and at IIT-Delhi, India where he teaches courses on Leadership and Human Development.  He is also a visiting faculty at KLE Technological University, Hubli and at the Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad. He was the Head and Visiting professor of the Vivekananda Chair of the University of Mysore twice. 

He has traveled widely within and outside the country promoting the concept of participatory sustainable development, which is contextually relevant and culturally appropriate.  He coaches and mentors senior leaders in the non-profit, corporate, government and educational sectors globally, apart from running leadership workshops for people from these sectors. He is also a member of the Technical Group set up by SEBI for setting up the Social Stock Exchange in India.

He has authored 7 books and writes extensively about Swami Vivekananda and on Development Issues in local Kannada and English newspapers and in his blog at rbalu.com.  His books ‘i, the Citizen’, ‘Voices from the Grassroots’ and ‘Leadership lessons for Daily Living’ have been widely acclaimed around the world.  More about him is at www.drrbalu.com 

Registration and Facebook Live Link for Building a Planet-friendly Economy

About the Talk

The current economic model thrives on consumption and the paradigm of markets reigning supreme.  There is little space for concepts like community, equity, fairness, and justice.  All participants in the economy operate on the principle of “profit maximization” and have little time or patience for exploring options of making it more “compassionate” or “soulful”. 

Though there is talk of the triple bottom line, there is not enough traction to make a significant impact on the way in which the planet and other living creatures on it are addressed. What is required now is not just a new narrative but a new way of operating itself.  This new economic model needs to borrow the DNA of creating surplus-value and sharing it.  The current COVID crisis has only made creating this model both urgent and important. 

Creating such an economic model requires a new kind of leadership to drive and sustain a planet-friendly economy.  This talk is about how to go about creating an economic model that is both practical and sustainable and the leadership that is required to create it across the private, public, and civil society sectors.

YouTube Video:

Facebook Live Video:

Media Coverage:

Building A Planet-Friendly Economy; Youth Ki Awaaz

Event Report:

Building a Planet-Friendly Economy

Podcasts:

Explore The State of the Environment – #PlanetTalks Series