‘For India GDP must mean Green, Digital and Pervasive’: Vijay Mahajan

Pune, December 5, 2020: “We must stop material intensive activities like mining, quarrying and forest logging and should only promote Green growth. We should also combine matter and energy with information and go digital and stop depending on government for resources for setting up enterprises and rely on own capital, and bank loans,” said Vijay Mahajan, CEO and Director, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary studies while speaking at the second day of the 8th National Conference on Social Innovation (NCSI) organized online by the Pune International Centre (PIC) in association with the National Innovation Foundation & Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai today.

Dr Vijay Kelkar, Vice-President, PIC, Abhay Vaidya, Asso. Director, PIC, Prakash Apte, Chairman, Kotak Mahindra Bank and Dr Vipin Kumar, Director, National Innovation Foundation were present at the conference.

The two-day conference recognized 18 social innovators from urban, rural, and tribal categories out of 100 entries from various fields including education, health and environment. Twelve innovators from the Urban and Rural category gave a presentation on Saturday over their innovations in different streams.

“We have to stop thinking in terms of jobs and opt for entrepreneurial self-employment. We need to have 10 lakh new micro-enterprises per year with average 10 workers, which can create employment to the extent of 1 crore every year,” Mahajan added.

Prakash Apte said, “Article 1 of the constitution says that India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States. Rural areas can be referred to as Bharat as it comprises 70 percent of the population, while the rest 30 percent of the population lives in urban areas. To be able to progress, we’ll have to enable Bharat to connect with India by providing all basic facilities including education and employment opportunities to everyone in rural and urban areas. We have to make our social responsibility.”

The innovators will be given an opportunity to join the PIC’s mentorship program, which will help them scale up their enterprises through networking, understand challenges and assist them with financial support to help them sustain.

“Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey and one need lots of opportunities to get involved and succeed. Mentorship will help budding entrepreneurs work with strategy and build a required network,” said Sanjay Kanvinde, PIC Member.