The 10th Yi National Summit

“India- The Future is Now!” 14- 15 March 2014: New Delhi 2013 has been a year of endless uncertainty and almost no answers. All the year, we saw the economy tumble and not sure it its turning around. We have seen inflation roar once again after briefly coming into Reserve Bank’s “comfort zone”. Beyond the economy, the society is asking even harder questions. There has been a constant battle between the youth of India and the political class on corruption scandals and their intolerance to various societal issues, especially the safety of women. Where is all this leading into – a restless section of youth, new paradigms of political emergences, inflations seems not controllable with prices going up and therefore a rising bar between the haves and have not’s, issue with no or less jobs and fewer entrepreneurs coming into the system and many more. While 2013 saw all these problems, will 2014 be the year that will provide the answers?. One hopes so. From an international perspective – China will build the world’s tallest skyscraper in July 2014; the World Economic Forum with world leaders in it will meet to find solutions to problems; the new Fed Chairman takes over in the US, Elections will take place in India and in some other economies like Brazil, Indonesia, Afghanistan and South Africa; that the top currencies to watch out for in the world would be the Japanese Yen, Brazilian Real, Euro, Korean Won and the Chinese Yuan. What more; we will have Scotland’s referendum on independence from the UK, Japan’s decision on nuclear energy, US pullout from Afghanistan and the legalization of Marijuana in Uruguay. The year 2013 saw the 5th anniversary of the global financial crisis (GFC) and the collapse of the Lehman Brothers. The GFC was the result of high debt levels, global imbalances, excessive financialisation of economies and an entitlement society based around borrowing driven consumption and unfunded social entitlement programmes in developing countries. Despite talk of recoveries and reforms, little has actually changed. But India is also looking at making its own transformation in 2014 with several of the important (pending) bills coming up for discussions at the Parliament. While these are important, there are larger issues that impacts the common man – Will Good Governance make a comeback? Can India hope for a Jobs upturn? Will inflation be brought down to acceptable standards? Will the standards of education, healthcare and environment improve? Will our laws change to punish the guilty? Will the economy revive? Will India awake? Will we get the people and the will to implement, enforce and monitor the laws of the country? The Economic revival of India; hopefully, unlikely or impossible is a tough question. As it stands, the climb out of India’s longest ever economic slowdown post 1991 period seems to be slow; particularly on a very eventful 2014 that is expected. There have been positive signs coming out from various quarters, but they have shaky foundations – and it is from here that the future has to be built, it is now! The 10th Young Indians National Summit on “India –The Future is Now” is an attempt by Yi to provide a platform for the young people to engage and emerge in listening and discussing with people that have set high standards of global excellence in India, people that frame policies that will help the country, people from sports, arts and media who use these mediums to help us dream big and aspire for more, entrepreneurs and CEO’s who tirelessly work and deliver the goods for India against all odds and people who stand for moral and ethical leadership in a country that will look at them for inspiration.