Young Indians @ IIM-A !!!

It was 5 mins past 10 in the night, I was stepping into the Mecca of management education in India, Indian Institute of Management , Ahmedabad..The night was pleasant, with breeze blowing around the place, and people busy with their own daily chores. No one bothered to give us a look, except for the security who enquired our reason to be present there. He led us to the reception lobby where we got the keys to our respective dorms .


Hang on, for a moment, if you thought I was narrating a scene out of some novel being written by an IIM alumnus , describing his life out there, then you are wrong. Whatever I mentioned above were my first few glimpses of IIM A from close quarters, when I got an opportunity to take part in the Young Indians World Leaders Summit that was held in the past week in the campus of IIM Ahmedabad.Ok, let me explain what the last statement meant...


The Confederation of Indian Industry(CII) has its wing called Young Indians(YI), which conducts events related to youth in different parts of the country. Since Chennai Business School , is a part of YI, I got the opportunity to take part in this event. I had to go through a preliminary round of selection, which involved submitting an essay on why I should be a part of this Summit .The summit involved selected people from across the country, from various educational institutions, to represent the Young Leaders community , to take stance and discuss world issues currently hampering the state of affairs in various countries. The objective of this event was to help bring all these world issues on to a forum like this and discuss their pros and cons , in order to arrive at possible solutions .Some of these issues that plagued the progress of various countries in the world ranged from Crisis in Iraq to Israel Palestine peace problems, and Oil depletion to violation of human rights .

This objective was implemented using United Nations as the moderator. What it means is that the 4 days of summit over there was a simulation of the proceedings in United Nations , where representatives from different countries of the world , come forward to discuss major issues that are hampering the functioning of the world in peace and sanity. Hence students who were selected from different parts of the country, were made representatives of a particular country , which was a member of the United Nations. These representatives played the roles of Counsuls and Ambassadors of their country in the summit. Each of these representatives /Delegates from these countries were allotted places in one of the departments of UN, namely General Assembly, Security Council and Economic & Social Council.

The summit functioned , trying to replicate the proceedings in United Nations, in a very interesting manner as every representative had to take stances on the issues being discussed pertaining to the foreign policies of their countries. This was quite a learning experience as it made me understand the foreign policies of various countries of the world and realize how politics plays a major role when it comes to taking decisions on a global platform. I was the counsul of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, ..a country which is surrounded by Albania, Greece and Bosnia. This opportunity of representing a relatively lesser known country on a platform like this , helped me understand the role played by such countries on the global issues. It also helped me realize the fact from close proximity that the world is still governed by the super powers and they call the shots when it comes to issues pertaining to the development of the world. The other countries have limited powers , and their roles are restricted to debating and taking a stance when it comes to consensus on these issues. The big 5 or the P 5(5 Permanent members of Security Council) as they call in the United Nations , decide on whether resolutions are to be passed or they don’t deserve a place in the forum .

The summit also served as a melting pot for people from different parts of the country to meet and exchange ideas and points of views on such issues. This gave me a broad outlook an how difficult it is to discuss an issue of this magnitude, let alone resolving it.

I salute the leaders of this world for the efforts taken by them on one hand but I would request the same leaders on the other hand to keep aside individual country’s interests and work together on a global platform like this to help the growth of each other and thereby make this world a better place to live in for the generations to come.

Contributed by: Pradeep, Batch 2, Marcom varsity