Ted conferences have become synonymous with ideas, more
specifically mind boggling and profound ideas. I have been fascinated by many
talks I have seen so far, a window to a world with brilliant ideas, people
chasing their passions and finding joy while doing so.
While the conferences that I had seen earlier, were mind
boggling because of the sheer brilliance and sophistication of the idea and
research, there is a difference in the one that happened in Mumbai –TedxGateway.
The ideas are mindbogglingly simple yet impact-ful! The concept is highly
relevant to Indian context. While any place in the world would be looking to
have great ideas, in India, there are a lot of basic problems and a lot of them
just need simple, economical solutions and some attention. There are so many
unattended problems, thanks to our ineffective governance, that anybody willing
to spend some time and energy can easily make a serious impact.
Most of the
talks are about the distilled concept that ted stands for; ideas and not
necessarily the sophistication. A world eager to jump on to highlighting problems in
any area and complain about it, TedxGateway talks are about solutions and
impact. In my opinion, this came out most alarmingly in the talk by ArunachalamMuruganantham. He wouldn't be someone you would ever expect to appear in a
conference like this. His background is the antithesis of ted speakers who are
usually highly educated and worldwide experts in their area. He is a school
dropout with little command over English yet he is a man whose eyes were open. The
field he chose to make an impact was also very unorthodox considering his background.
He chanced upon the way rural women handled their periods after his marriage
and found it so shocking that he couldn't digest it and went about doing
something about it. Without the support of sophisticated machines, education or domain
experts, he went on to create a cottage industry that is producing low cost sanitary
napkins for rural area. The idea is so simple to implement that it has the potential
of penetration to the remotest areas with modest facilities, so something that can easily and definitely should go viral. That is the
essence of these conferences, stripped of all the trappings of high profile
conferences, it is about ideas, solutions, about keep an open mind focused on
implementing solutions and as a result graduating from leading a normal life to
a meaningful life as Mr Muruganantham puts it!
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