On the occasion of the World Happiness Day a webinar was conducted by AICTE in collaboration with NHRDN ( National Human Resource Development Network) and YOL an ed-app that arrests and reverses brain drain.
The agenda of the webinar was
1) Happiness and
2) Identification of gives and gets between the ‘industry’ and ‘academia’ to promote innovation.
PM Modi Ji had recently expressed his serious concern about the excessive usage of the mobile phone screens accounting upto 6 hours, daily by the students that leads to ‘consumption’ of mind that adversely impacts ‘creation’.
The webinar was chaired by Prof . Anil Sahasrabudhe, who has earlier been chairman of AICTE and is the current chairman of NETF, NAAC and NBA. Speaking on the occasion, He said, “This colonization of minds by the apps must be rescued and retrieved to spur innovation . Trillion-dollar valuations of the popular social media companies hold our mind-share captive that accounts for 50% their valuation. Phones are an unavoidable accessory of life and mind. “
He further said, ” Last year through adequate research and guidance we enabled introduction of an app titled YOL on the same phone screen that arrests and reverses the brain-drain. YOL reverses that as it engages with the left brain and right brain of the student and shows how it is being navigated and shared across a student’s own life aspects. It calibrates the mind. It has been color coded and intuitively enables navigation while balancing IQ, EQ, right brain, left brain, mindshare, mind map, happiness index and improves the spatial and temporal aspects of cognition.”
On the occasion, through Recorded message, Prof T G Sitharam, Chairman AICTE said , “ This random and ambiguous screen time of over 6 hours is the major cause of stress, loss of attention spans, misbalancing of emotions, promotion of deceit at a very subtle level and its adverse impact on the endocrinal system. We are gearing the education system for ‘creation’, reversing the ‘consumption’ of the mind. YOL was introduced in our APH and our administration with the educational institutes helps us meet the emphasis laid in the new education policy on Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning. Our enzymic activity is all based on the ‘retention’ and depth of ‘feeling’ followed by ‘expressing’. That ‘retention’ and ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ is being replaced by emotiCONS without depth. So the mind, the body and the environment is under threat. We are continuing to address this issue through Indian knowledge system and examining how to further reinforce deepen and improve adoption of YOL.”
There was a roundtable organized between the academia and industry comprising of leaders from both.
Industry was represented by SV Nathan, the CHRO of Deloitte India and president of NHRDN, delivered a keynote address on the subject of “what can education and industry give and take from each other?”.
The others that supported this coming together of the education with industry were Dhananjay Singh, Director General, NHRDN, Dewang Neralla, CEO NTT DATA, Prem Singh, CHRO, JK group. Deewakar Gupta, AWS, jointly they noted that. “This bridging of the gap of social and emotional learning will provide us better and reinforced students. We shall work with AICTE to create a tandem that supports AICTE with latest technologies, mentorships, internships, assignments for R&D. Under the guidance of the past and current chairman it is amazing to see that the transition of guard at AICTE has not only been seamless, rather like a concert it is managing the steering the cadence of reforms with immense speed and certitude.” A panel discussion amongst the above on the subject of ‘gives’ and ‘gets’ from education was moderated by Dr. Mamta Rani Agarwal.
The webinar addressed the issue of what the Education wants and can deliver for the corporate world and vice versa.
Academia was represented from North, East, West and South by eminent vice chancellors Prof R Velraj- Anna University, Prof Padmakali Banerjee – SPSU, Prof. Niranjan Patel – Sardar Patel University, Prof. Nupur Das-Secretary North Bengal University. A panel discussion comprising of the above was moderated by Prof Rajendra Kakde. Each of the VCs lauded this new initiative by AICTE of introducing the app and confirmed that they would embrace it.
Dr. Mamta Rani Agarwal said, “Let industry and academia join hands and share a symbiotic relationship by communication, connect, collaboration and creation.”
Yogi, the founder of the app said that “UN’s ranking of india on the 136th position out of 145 countries is a joke considering that these entire global rankings are based only on 3000 responses collected from each country. Bhutan has refused to participate in the survey and we have written to the honorable Prime Minister pointing to this flaw. The next set of rankings will be announced today and we are curious”.
Mr. Yogi has earlier been a leader at Microsoft and has been awarded at the British Parliament for his work on happiness and his work has been recognized by UN in addition to AICTE that has granted approval to his app; YOL for introduction across all higher ed institutions.
Prof. Phoebe Koundouri, Ambassador UN SDGs and member evaluation committee for Nobel Prize was the guest of honour and sent her message lauding the initiative and congratulating the participants committed to take on record the work in the space of happiness in India.
Luis Gallardo, the President of the World Happiness foundation extended his warm wishes to all.
