BHOPAL: The city of lakes, Bhopal is set to host from Monday, the two-day Think20 meet (T20) — which is considered the ‘think tank’ or ‘idea bank’ for the larger G20 summit. The prestigious G20 event, which comes close on the heels of the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) and the MP Global Investors Summit held recently in Indore, will be G20’s first event in Madhya Pradesh.
Addressing the pre-event on the eve of the two-day-G20 T20 meeting, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, India’s chief coordinator for India’s G20 presidency in 2023 and Prof Sachindra Chaturvedi, the DG of Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), said the two-day brainstorming by international and Indian resource persons will lead to the release of ‘The Bhopal Declaration’ at the conclusion of the meeting on Tuesday evening.
Emanating from the two days’ discussions, the Bhopal Declaration will serve as an important basis for the subject matter of the actual G20 Summit slated later in the year in New Delhi. T20 – the official engagement group of the G20 nations — will bring together leading think tanks and research centers worldwide. “Earlier T20 meetings were dominated by economists, but this time, the meet will also see the participation of prominent philosophers, including Prof Doris Schroeder, who is the Director of the Centre for Professional Ethics at UClan,” Prof Chaturvedi said.
The meeting with the guiding theme, ‘Global Governance with Life Values and Wellbeing: Fostering Cooperation in Framework, Finance and Technology’ will comprise five plenary and ten parallel sessions.
The plenary sessions over the two days will cover Life, Values and Development Transformation, Financing Resilient Infrastructure and Sustainable Transition towards Life, Towards Inclusive G20, Role of Triangular Cooperation in Localization of Sustainable Development Goals and New Complementarities in Trade and Value Chains.
Among the ten parallel sessions, one of the sessions will be dedicated to Investing in ‘Children: Investment in Future’, while there will also be sessions on Ethics in Technology and Going Beyond GDP: Wellbeing Measurement. The meeting will be attended by 300 participants, including 94 international participants (mostly from the G20 nations), 115 participants from outside MP and around 100 participants from Madhya Pradesh.
Besides the G20 nations, international participants will represent three South Asian nations, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, 21 African nations and four guest countries. Representatives of UNICEF and UNDP will also participate.
‘T20 meet to host prominent philosophers’
T20 – the official engagement group of the G20 nations — will bring together leading think tanks and research centers worldwide. “Earlier T20 meetings were dominated by economists, but this time, the meet will also see the participation of prominent philosophers, including Prof Doris Schroeder, who is the Director of the Centre for Professional Ethics at UClan,” Prof Chaturvedi said.