Narayan Murthy, YV Reddy address Great Lakes Chennais annual management festival

It was attended by Mr. Narayana Murthy, Chairman of Infosys; Mr. Thomas Anderson, Associate Dean, IIT, Chicago; Mr. Y.V Reddy, RBI Governor; Mr. Shailesh Rao, Google India Head among many others.

On December 14, Dr. Bala Balachandran, along with the Chief Guest and the other guests, formally inaugurated the festival by lighting the holy lamps. The inauguration function was followed by key-note speeches by Dr. Thomas Anderson, Mr Y.V.Reddy and Mr. Shailesh Rao.

Mr Y.V.Reddy gave students some insights on the Indian and global economy. He also spoke about future trends in economy and mentioned that after taking into consideration of various factors, the GDP in the current year was expected to be around 8.5%, while inflation will be maintained below 5%. The external sector continued to be stable and strong. The fiscal situation is likely to be on track. The financial market, by and large, particularly money market will remain reasonably stable. He also added that as a result of fundamentals which have been laid over the years, the country is more stable. Despite a number of challenges, political ups and downs and other negative factors, India continue to manage economy well, he pointed out.

After Mr Reddys speech, Mr. Shailesh Rao (Google India Head) addressed the students of Great Lakes. Mr. Rao said that the current youth demographic provided a unique opportunity for India today. There is no other country with the scale of opportunities for growth and such a unique youth demographic, he said. How todays youth will get trained and educated could determine the next 50 years of progress for the country.
Thomas Anderson, Associate Dean, Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, also addressed the students. He said that the education model had to encourage students to take more initiative. A concern is that the current instructional model of education puts the student in a passive position as a receiver of knowledge, he said.

Earlier, Dr. Bala said that the idea behind such a festival is to provide a common platform for eminent scholars from various walks of life to interact and exchange ideas and for the students to keep themselves abreast with the experts views on current trends.

On 15th December Narayana Murthy, chief mentor, Infosys Technologies inaugurated a new Centre for Excellence for Infrastructure created by MARG Constructions at Great Lakes. Great Lakes informs that MARG Constructions Limited has committed Rs. 3 crore to the centre.

While addressing students, Mr. Murthy said that though there were signs of tremendous positivity, for us to make it an inclusive growth story, to bring the benefits of globalisation to the worst off sections, we have to get into low-tech manufacturing and services to create job opportunities for the illiterate and semi-literate In order to make sure that they can enjoy the fruits of liberalisation and globalisation, we have to focus on infrastructure.

The need of the day and the first stage to a better infrastructure, he said, was to bring about a change in the mindset. Unless we are open-minded and learn from other countries and cultures which have performed better than us, unless we are willing to engage in discussions with those who have created infrastructure better than we have done, unless we are willing to admit our mistakes and open our minds to learn, I am not very sure that we will make the kind of progress that we want.

LAttitude 13 05 also hosted a gamut of events and games. These included Thats the Way: The Corporate Battle; Pentathlon: The B-Plan Contest; Tourada: The Finance Game; Nabataean: A Unique Strategy Game; Pankration: The Marketing Mania; Funambulism: Soft Skills Galore; Athlos: The Moth of All Contests. The winners of these games were awarded handsome prizes to the tune of Rs30, 000 each. The events were followed up by a quiz.