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CIS Participated in T20 Mumbai, Regional Consultation Meeting, October 19, 2015

by Prasad Krishna — last modified Oct 20, 2015 01:54 PM
This is the first time that a T20 event, which is a series of preparatory meetings towards G20 summits, is taking place in India. Sumandro Chattapadhyay represented CIS in this consultation, and was a discussant in the session on Technology, Services, and Skills.

 

"On 19 October 2015, over 50 experts from foreign and Indian think tanks, business leaders from India, and government representatives from the G20 countries will gather at Gateway House in Mumbai to discuss issues of global economic governance and foreign economic policy at India’s first Think20 (T20) meeting. The keynote address for the meeting, “Global Economy and Challenges for Multilateral Policies” will be delivered by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. This is a Think-20 (T20) regional consultation meeting. The G20 is a multilateral forum comprising the world’s 20 major economies, and is recognized as the “premier global economic governance platform”. This year, Turkey is the president of the G20 forum (2015). The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

The T20 Mumbai event will be co-hosted by Gateway House, in collaboration with the leading Turkish think tank – Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). TEPAV is the official Turkish Think Tank responsible for coordinating the activities of the T20 in 2015 with think tanks from all the G20 member countries.

India will join the T20 group for the first time, by hosting the meeting in Mumbai, and Gateway House is honoured to initiate this select event. Observations and recommendations from the dialogue will be officially submitted to the Turkish G20 presidency, and incorporated into the discourse for the G20 Leaders Summit scheduled for 15-16 November, 2015, Antalya, Turkey."

This meeting is significant for India: it reinforces India’s role as a key participant in multilateral economic fora and contributor of solutions for global economic issues...

Participants will include Gateway House members comprising business leaders and individuals from India. The Indian government will be represented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of External Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, and EXIM Bank. Diplomatic representation is expected from G20 countries, SAARC countries and several multilateral financial institutions.

The sessions will commence with a keynote by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, followed by a joint think tank and business session on the impact of geopolitics and business. Starting at noon will be five working sessions for the think tank experts to discuss a range of global economic issues under the G20 mandate such as global trade and investments, inclusive business models, financing sustainable infrastructure and building skills for a technology and services-driven economy."

Press release: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/

Event page: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/

Agenda: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/

Notes from Sumandro's Statement

 

  • The problem of creating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities in today's technology­-mediated global economy is not simply one of skill­-enabling the existing and emerging workforce to take part in the growing service sector.

  • It is crucial to recognise that the contemporary growth of service sector in economies across countries is being fundamentally shaped by access to technology, and access to information and services via technological devices and networks.

  • A key barrier to effective access to technology in the developing world is the rent­-seeking business strategies that permeate global technological industries: from technologies of communication, to those of agriculture, to those of medicine.

  • Apart from removing such barriers, global and national strategies towards skill development for achieving meaningful and sustainable employment must focus on two things: 1) enabling self-­learning through open educational resources, and public infrastructures supporting the same, and 2) a broad­-based national innovation system that incentivises businesses to create and effectively use intellectual properties, as appropriate for the local context.

  • Skill­-enabling of new entrants to the labour market (or existing one) must not be understood in terms of special purpose vocational training, that is narrow education for presently existing job opportunities. Neither can online self­-learning programmes succeed without building public infrastructures for social learning.

  • Various recent commentators, most famously The Economist, have flagged the ineffectiveness, and even negative impacts, of the global intellectual property rights regime. An effective and democratic national innovation system must neither treat innovation in a sector­-specific manner, nor as a general strategy driven by the needs of particular industries in a particular stage of their development of operations and IP ownership.

  • Skilling of the existing and emerging workforce must enable them to take part in the global knowledge economy, and its technological basis, in a holistic way.

  • Openness in policy-­making and collaborative implementation, not only between public and private agencies but also between public agencies, are absolutely essential for the success of any such initiative to develop skills of the national workforce.