On Friday, November 30, 2018, Feroze Varun Gandhi, Member of Parliament, delivered a lecture at IIM Ahmedabad, at an event organised by the Public Policy Students Club of the Institute. The lecture was attended by around 100 people including students from the PGPM, Food and Agribusiness Management (FABM) and Armed Forces Programmes besides staff and some faculty members.
At the session in IIMA, he also released his new book 'A Rural Manifesto: Realising India's Future Through her Villages'.
The talk was a peek into Mr Gandhi's 2.5 years of research that goes behind the book, fondly referred to as 'the unreadably dense volume' by the author.
He gave succinct examples from his experiences, both urban and rural, to highlight the inequalities prevalent in the Indian society currently.
He discussed how 'privilege perpetuates privilege' and how technology has the potential to act as an equaliser, if used well.
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He spoke in detail about possible political reforms that would help strengthen India's democratic governance, such as parliamentary addressal of public petitions, need for addressing electoral corruption and strengthening the parliamentary discussion process on passing laws.
Among other things, he also talked about grassroot innovations in the rural economy.
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"The talk was highly insightful and displayed various facets of the problem in the agriculture sector in India. Encompassing a mix of academic as well as practical knowledge, Mr Gandhi focused on the growing inequality in the country leading to an increase in inequity in the society as well," said second year PGP student and coordinator of the Public Policy Club, Aditya Govil.
"The premises that a change in the country's systems and institutions is related to the way politics is run in this country was well brought out through a series of examples in modern day India. Mr. Gandhi stressed upon the fact that the future of the country is in the hands of young, bright minds and narrated incidents from all across India that suggested this," Govil added.
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