Tatas partner youth symposium to fight global challenges
The Financial Express — May 23, 2005

The Tata group has joined the International Students' Committee (ISC) symposium's circle of benefactors, becoming its first official Asian partner. In the past few years the group has been co-operating regularly with the non-profit organisation which comprises a team of 25 students.

ISC has seen the participation of top-rung Tata officials like Ratan N Tata (chairman, Tata Sons Limited), R Gopalakrishnan (executive director, TSL), S Ramadorai (managing director & chief executive officer, Tata Consultancy Services) and Farrokh Kavarana (director, TSL) in the past few years. They have been a part of the ISC symposia as either speakers or guests. This year the 35th ISC symposium was attended by 600 leaders from the world of business, politics and science and was held at the St Gallen University, Switzerland, from May 19-21.

Over these three days, 200 students selected through a competitive process from the world over interacted with these distinguished people. The ISC follows a process of selecting students on the basis of their submissions either in the form of an essay or by creating a video or multimedia on a general topic given to them. Students were asked to submit their pieces on the topic 'Liberty, Trust and Responsibility' this year. The 200 best contributions are selected by an independent jury of professors, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and journalists of international standing.

Prizes worth 15,000 euros are given by the ISC every year to the best contributions. Selected students are invited to attend the symposium free of charge and a large part of their travel expenses are borne by the ISC. At the symposium they are given the opportunity to voice their ideas and opinions on an international platform comprising world leaders and other fellow students from various parts of the world.

The objective of the symposia is to encourage constructive discussions on current and future challenges facing the world amongst people hailing from different nations, generations and cultures. The ISC symposium foundation is currently under the chairmanship of Dr Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank. Corporates like Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), UBS financial services, Swisscom and Xerox partnered with the non-profit organisation in organising the seminar this year.

Several hundred members are part of the circle of benefactors that provide both material and financial support for ISC's activities. They also offer professional advice to the organisation. In the last five years, contributions of Indian students have been very successful and a great number of Indian students had the chance to attend the event. At the 28th as well as at the 29th symposium a total of three Indian students submitted one of the best three contributions each.

At this year's symposium 25 Indian students from various universities made it to the top 200 contributions. However, none of them made it to the final cut. It is interesting to know that ISC was born in 1969 when five students from five nations came together to create a neutral platform for resolving social problems through dialogue. Since then the committee has organised 35 symposia and has been recognised by both business world and the public.

It has seen the participation of top world leaders like Giuliano Amato, Jean Chretian, George Fernandes, Voijslav Kostunica, Johannes Rau, Amartya Sen (nobel laureate and economist), Ratan Tata (CMD, Tata Group of companies), James D Wolfensohn (President, World Bank), P Chidamabaram (finance minister) and Romano Prodi amongst hundreds others.