Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) organized a National Conference and Annual Session 2015 from 6th -7th April 2015 at New Delhi. Mrs. Maneela Tuteja (Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department), Ms. Priyanka Mahani (Assistant Professor, ECS Department) along with 48 students from Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering and Department of Electronic & Computer Engineering of Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurgaon have attended the event. The theme of the conference was “Building India: A Shared Responsibility”.

The National Conference was inaugurated by Mr. Arun Jaitley, Hon’ble Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Information & Broadcasting, Government of India.

Some of the other notable speakers at the event were:

1. Mr .Nitin Jairam Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, Shipping

2. Mr. Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Railways

3. Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi

4. Dr. Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog

5. Prof. Shoji Shiba, Chief Adviser, Champions for Societal Manufacturing

Mr. Jaitley gave the CII Foundation Woman Exemplar Awards to Ms. Pravasini Bangari for her contributions in making health care and nutrition services accessible to the most vulnerable persons in her community in her village in Balangir District, Odisha, and Ms. P Thayammal for her contributions in the field of education in her village in Thoothukudi district, Tamil Nadu.

He said that in order to address the most important challenge of restoring India’s credibility, the Government decided to open up the economy even further and raised the FDI limit across several sectors. To facilitate ease of doing business, the Government is focusing on tax reforms. Speaking on the issue of corruption, the Minister said that it was imperative to distinguish between a corrupt act and an honest mistake in order to support fair and fearless decision making.

Mr. Ajay S. Shriram, President, CII said that industry appreciates the steps taken by the Government to open up the economy and facilitate economic growth, and said CII has decided to redouble its efforts to build India in partnership with the Government.

For acceleration of Building India following are the initiatives where both Private and Government involvements are required:

1. Make in India for taking the share of manufacturing to 25 percent of GDP and creating millions of new jobs to cater to the large number of youth entering the workforce;

2. 100 Smart Cities for urban redevelopment and creation of world-class new urban agglom- eratins to absorb rising city population;

3. Swachh Bharat for a new approach to preventive public health, including by changing toilet habits, improving waste management and curbing pollution;

4. Jan Dhan Yojana a massive financial inclusion program that within a few months extended bank accounts to 120 million households, thereby paving the way for a new subsidy delivery model as well as opportunities for savings and investment;

5. Clean Energy, a campaign that aims at 175 gigawatts of renewable energy power capacity by 2020;

6. Clean Ganga for spreading intelligent water management and upgrading cities alongside the major rivers of India;

7. Digital India, a campaign that converges universal access to digital resources with placing public services online for better governance and transparency

8. Skill India Mission, an initiative to raise the skill penetration of the country from the current 2 percent.

It was a very educational and important event for the participants as they learned about many new initiatives and developments taking place in different sectors of India.