The Harvard India Conference 2015 kicked off at Harvard Kennedy School of Government on Saturday. The event is one of the biggest conferences organized in the United States about the world’s largest democracy.
The two-day long conference, which is being organized by Harvard students from different graduate schools, will focus on different social, political and economic challenges facing India. More than one hundred panelists will speak on different panels at the conference.
Speaking at one of the sessions at John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum about “Women Empowerment in Emerging India” on Saturday, prominent social activist and retired Indian Police Service officer Kiran Bedi, said women’s empowerment was very much an ‘unfinished business’ in India. While some women served on top government positions, this representation still did not reflect the overall state of women’s rights and empowerment across the country.
“I am not talking about the women present here (in Harvard),”she said, “I am talking about those who are not present here, the millions of women who regularly face security challenges, underrepresentation in the economic sphere.”
The Harvard India Conference attracted a lot of participants who attended various panel discussions. The conference will continue on Sunday at Harvard Business School. The discussion on the event continues on Twitter on the hastag #ICH2015