Talk to be delivered by CEO of Pratham Education Foundation Ms Rukmini Banerji on 28 Oct 

The 51^st Foundation Day of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) will be celebrated on 28 October 2024, with speeches, awards and more.  

The YouTube joining link is: https://youtube.com/live/qUsHiLT4usQ?feature=share 

The highlight of the event will be the Foundation Day Lecture on, ‘Opportunities & Challenges for Education in Today’s India’ by Ms Rukmini Banerji, Chief Executive Officer, Pratham Education Foundation, apart from addresses by Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Chairperson, Board of Governors, IIMB and Dr. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIMB. 

Ms Rukmini Banerji was trained as an economist at St. Stephen’s College (Delhi) and the Delhi School of Economics. She was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and completed her PhD at the University of Chicago.  

Ms Banerji has worked extensively for Pratham’s education programs in rural and urban areas. Along with her teams, she has played a major role in designing and supporting large-scale partnerships with state governments in India, for improving children’s learning outcomes. She led Pratham’s research and assessment efforts including the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) exercise from 2005 to 2014. Since 2015, she has been the CEO of Pratham. 

In 2008, she received the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Shiksha Puraskar conferred by the Government of Bihar, India. She was the first recipient of this award. In 2021, she was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Development. Ms Rukmini Banerji writes frequently on education in both Hindi and English dailies in India. She enjoys writing books and stories for children.  

The Foundation Day celebrations will also see Long Service Awards being presented to faculty and non-teaching IIMB staff. The IIMB community of faculty, former faculty, students, staff and alumni will be part of the event. 

IIM Bangalore hosted the inauguration and orientation of the 21^st batch of the Post Graduate Programme in Public Policy and Management (PGPPM) on 27 September 2024. The inaugural address was delivered by Dr. Hasmukh Adhia, IAS (Retd.), Former Finance Secretary, Government of India, who is also a gold medalist from PGPPM Cohort 1.

The PGPPM programme, offered in collaboration with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), equips professionals with contemporary skills and knowledge in public policy and management. This year, the programme welcomed close to 20 candidates posted with the Department of Revenue, Income Tax Department; Ministry of Defence; Ministry of Corporate Affairs; Ministry of Railways among others.

The Executive Education Programmes (EEP) Office at IIM Bangalore hosted the valedictory of the 4^th batch of the programme, ‘ESG – Management, Reporting and Communication’, on 20 September 2024.

Programme Directors Dr. Deepti Ganapathy, Chairperson and faculty, Centre for Management Communication, IIMB, and Prerna Wadikar, delivered the concluding remarks for the three-day Open programme, which included participants who are top leaders representing diverse industries.

The Centre for Capital Markets and Risk Management—a Centre of Excellence at IIM Bangalore, recently hosted an academic accounting conference on ‘Collaborative Horizons: Industry Meets Academia’, in partnership with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), on 25 September 2024 at IIM Bangalore. The conference brought forward stimulating discussions around the theme of Technology, Innovation and the Future of Accounting.

Publication: Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy: Perspectives from Asia (pp. 1-22), Springer Nature Singapore  

Synopsis: 

Ageism and ableism, two critical concepts in aging, disability studies, and gerontological research, have significant parallels in their social identity and construction. Depending on the approach, context, and application, they appear to be interdependent, interrelated, or disparate conceptually and tangibly. The literature connecting and discussing ageism and disability is fragmented and includes a range of terminologies, concepts, learnings, and applications, and raises challenges in understanding and contextualization. Socially created identities include gender, ethnicity, caste, class, and age. These identities are socially created, reinforced, and sustained through societal normative norms, relations, and practice. These identities exist on a biological basis or a substratum on which the social identity rests. Though a disabled person’s identity is socially acquired, the bodily impairment is considered to reflect the biological identity.  

Similarly, the biological base for an older person is universally thought to be reflected by his tangible age identity, which utilizes the number of years lived. The recognition of ageism is currently reviving research interests on ableism. Though it may seem plausible to consider impairment the biological foundation for a disability that results in experiencing ableism and that old age becomes the biological foundation for aging leading to the experience of ageism – the idea of a social identity built upon a biological substratum has its inherent flaws. This chapter delves into how identities of ableism and ageism exist or operate as interconnected, intertwined, entwined, or disparate entities.  

Through a critical discourse analysis of sociological and gerontological literature on ageism and disability (ableism, in particular) and through discussing intersecting themes of ableism and ageism, this synthesis explores whether the natural tendency to judge people based on age and functionality leads to ageism and ableism being widely stereotyped and whether ageism is, in fact, part ableism. Realizing that one of the main challenges lies in the intersection between age categorizations on the one hand and functional or cognitive abilities on the other, these intersections are deservedly discussed in deeper detail while debating, identifying, and acknowledging the multi-level and intersectional relationship between ableism and ageism.  

Synopsis 

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools are becoming quite popular for a variety of operations. One such tool, ChatGPT, is rapidly permeating into people’s daily lives and is considered to have significant potential to reshape our society. While private organizations are spending huge amounts of money on ChatGPT, its usage in the public domain is still driven by its open access and simple functionality.  

This paper draws on the key concepts of ‘Effective Use’ theory: Transparent Interaction, Representational Fidelity, Informed Action, and Learning and Adaptation to examine ChatGPT’s current state of diffusion in the public sector. ‘Effective Use’ theory builds on prior theories of technology acceptance to focus on technology adoption and use. Transparent Interaction examines how easy it is to interact with GenAI tools for the domain of concern, and whether the interfaces are user-friendly and easy to access. Representational Fidelity is concerned with whether the outputs of the system are correct? Are the answers reliable and the insights relatable to the reality of the domain? (Or, is there a problem of “hallucination”?). Informed Action indicates whether the GenAI outputs are being used for informed decision-making and actions, and if users can make better decisions with GenAI. Lastly, Learning and Adaptation points to the availability of training programs to help users learn how to use these systems; and if there is a mechanism for them to raise issues and concerns to better fit the systems for their use?  

The authors attempt to understand these key concepts in the context of GenAI’s use in four public domains: transportation, healthcare, agriculture, and law. They find transparent interaction is better in transportation, agriculture, and law than healthcare; representational fidelity presents a complex picture whereas informed action is positive across domains; and learning and adaptation is an ongoing need. They conclude with various suggestions related to research and policy toward boosting GenAI’s adoption, i.e., public domain models should be trained on languages and text obtained from different cultures and regions; and tools should be developed with transparency, and released as “public goods” – accessible by all. They suggest that governments invest resources and develop new regulatory frameworks considering the specific context and use cases for leveraging the enormous potential of GenAI tools in the public domain. 

Publication: Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy. Springer, Singapore 

Synopsis: 

As the demographic transition trudges along with the aging of the population, as a consequence, realizing healthy and productive aging for older adults can help potentiate the longevity dividend within a longevity society. The longevity transition being witnessed in low- and middle-income countries such as India highlights the need to envisage and create supportive age-inclusive environments to advance the longevity dividend within supportive constructs of a longevity society. While an aging society focuses on challenges brought about on account of age structure changes, the longevity society would augment interventions for healthy and productive aging, address age-based discrimination, extend work lives and garner the advantages of longer lives, and aim to bring about substantial improvements in terms of the lived experiences of older adults and ensure a positive societal framing of age.  

Supporting a healthy life at advanced ages, a healthy life expectancy, reducing health inequalities, and creating public policy discourse on supporting a longevity society are the global need of the hour. While healthy and productive aging is a global aspiration, the practice of age discrimination or ageism can significantly delay attempts to create an age-inclusive longevity society. It is unfortunate that there is quite a high degree of ageism witnessed and experienced even within healthcare settings. Though theoretical explanations, cultural connotations, and empirical evidence indicate significantly high ageism within healthcare settings, the negative consequences of age discrimination on the medical health and psychological health of older adults are largely missed.  

Ageism in healthcare settings is highly prevalent, pervasive, and is known to lead to negative health outcomes and affects routine medical recovery of older adults. Viewing age from a merely medical or healthcare point of view is prone to inherent caveats owing to the intrinsic disciplinary pedagogy, can lead to negative expectations, and can manifest as subtle or overt expressions of ageism. This chapter examines ageism within healthcare settings, the antecedents and consequences therein, and the significance of person-centred care in addressing ageism and discrimination against older adults.  

Advancing age-friendly and age-inclusive initiatives at healthcare settings, sensitizing healthcare workers, promoting healthy aging and aging in place, and combating ageism enhanced accessibility, and quality of healthcare delivery can be assured for older adults promising dignity and support for older adults in an impending longevity society. 

Publication: Handbook of Aging, Health and Public Policy: Perspectives from Asia (pp. 1-25), Springer Nature Singapore 

Synopsis:  

In developing countries such as India, the consequences of aging within underdeveloped social security systems coupled with traditional expectations on filial provision of care mean that families continue to remain primary caregivers for dependent older parents. Concerns abound regarding the increasing costs of healthcare, inadequate access to geriatric care, competing time constraints, and difficulties experienced by filial caregivers that could necessitate caregiver support to alleviate burden and provide respite. These concerns are further exemplified in emigration contexts in India, where the emigration of the adult child alters traditional filial intergenerational care arrangements.  

Housed within strong notions of filial piety and a sociocultural reluctance to accept institutional care, this chapter focuses on Goa’s emigrant households where adult children emigration involves leaving behind older parents. The authors identify, describe, and reflect on the emergence of adaptive intergenerational care arrangements, including the emergence of chaperoned provision of care for older parents through engagement of formal home-based older adult care services.  While this could potentially offer respite to primary caregivers, it could also end up increasing family involvement in care and significantly impact family caregivers’ financial situation, lead to time constraints, and affect employability. In juxtaposing policy and practice, the authors abridge that while notions of filial responsibility are being redefined by processes such as modernization and emigration, the preference for home-based care prevails and is interestingly and increasingly becoming visible through adaptive intergenerational care arrangements that are effectuated through filially orchestrated home-based formal care services – an emerging area with regulatory as well as policy implications for both caregivers and care recipients. 

SummitUp, NSRCEL’s annual entrepreneurship conclave, will be held on 4^th and 5^th October 2024.

SummitUp 2024 will feature the best of the start-up ecosystem, with two days of exceptional insights from esteemed speakers like Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa and former CEO of NITI Aayog; Vipul Parekh, Co-founder of BigBasket; Dr. Chintan Vaishnav, Mission Director of Atal Innovation Mission, and more.

SummitUp is aimed to empower entrepreneurs, provide ecosystem perspectives and drive India’s entrepreneurship wave to the next level.