HabituX - The Students Association of Xavier Centre for Urban Management and Governance, Xavier University Bhubaneswar (XUB) conducted its first Business Conclave of the year, Samavesh 2018, at the Xavier City campus, on Friday. The theme of the event was “Complex Cities – Managing Urban Challenges”.
The gathering was graced by the presence of experts from both core industry and the industries ancillary to the urban sector, along with the reputed faculty members of XUB, including Kajri Misra (Dean, Xavier School of Rural Management), Fr. E. A. Augustine, S.J. (Registrar, XUB) and Fr. Paul Fernandes, S.J. (Vice Chancellor & Director, XUB).
The first session began on a high note with Tathagata Chatterjee moderating with panel consisting of five industry experts. Susanta Sharma discussed about the importance of governance quoting “Governance is said to be successful, when the benefit reaches the poorest of the poor”.
Stating the importance of smart governance, he highlighted the need for citizen participation, and employment being the key of development. Topics regarding Smart transportation systems like ATCS (Adaptive Traffic Control System) and ITMS (Interim Traffic Management System) were briefly conferred.
Kiran Kumar from L&T was the next panellist, questioning the audience on the readiness of infrastructure, followed by a briefing on Smart Cities, E-Governance and command-control base. He also focussed on artificial intelligence, video analytics and face recognition; further questioning how secure we are digitally, protection of data and data collection. Next up from the panel was Vikas Chandra, who started his presentation with a video showcasing varied projects taken up and executed by the government, like the Kanha Riverfront Development, Bhopal Public Bike Sharing, Social Equity Centre, Pune Smart Roads, etc. in various cities. He also explained how we have come a long way from “reluctant urbanisers” to making “urban-centric plans”.
Kamlesh Yagnik, engaged the audience with resilient city features and how resilience and ‘smart’ go hand in hand. He focused on the city of Surat, where he is the Chief Resilience Officer, explaining how different factors are used to measure a city Liveability Index and compared different cities to highlight how each city is different, and how the challenges faced by each of them varies. Ashish Khare took the dais quoting “We created cities, scarcity of clean water, violence and crime, Yet, who do people blame?”.
The second session began with bustling energy from the previous session with Mayank Dubey as the moderator. Annie Philip majorly focused on solid waste management; providing varied ways to start catering to this major issue from the very basic level, which is our households. She also shed light on the informal and formal workers and various firms catering to this specific problem and handling it at the grassroot level.
Manthina took a very interactive approach, showcasing opportunities in urbanization with two hundred odd fields being connected to urban. Accentuating the transport facilities, including the roads, and comparing it to the conditions in previous years, he elucidated on how they have improved tremendously due to the Golden Corridor.