Government of India, along with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is organizing a National Conference on Technical Vocational Education, Training and Skills Development: A Roadmap for Empowerment on 1718 December, 2008 in New Delhi. Indias first portal on Employability Development for youth EmployabilityUniverse.com presents the highlights from the conference.

The lecture will be held at Ravi J Matthai Auditorium, IIMA Campus, Ahmedabad.

The Indian Institute of Management,Ahmedabad and SAGE Publications have come together to institute the IIMA-SAGE ENDOWMENT LECTURES, a series of annual lectures by distinguished personalities from the world of business, economics and noteworthy individuals involved in public issues to give a talk on a topic of current interest.

In this Part 2 of the XAT special, we share the advice from experts at Indore based PT Education.

As shared earlier, last years XAT paper had 120 questions in total, split into three sections: Data Interpretation & Quantitative Ability (DI/ QA), Verbal Ability & Logical Reasoning (VA/ LR) and Analytical Reasoning & Decision Making (AR/ DM). While DI/VA had 44 questions, other two sections had 38 questions each. In addition, there was an essay topic that aspirants had to attempt.

Mr. Lakshmi Narayanan, VC and CEO of Cognizant inaugurated the one day conference. Dr. T.V. Somanathan, Secretary to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu was also present.The conference brought together thought leaders from academia and real entrepreneurial ecosystem providing a platform to exchange andshare the knowledge among the various players like entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, academic researchers, angels, VCs & others.

The conference will be inaugurated by Chief Minister of Karnataka, Sri B S Yediyurappa, and the keynote address on Education for Social Development will be delivered by Dr. H Sudarshan of Karuna Trust & VGKK. Former President of India, Professor APJ Abdul Kalam will give the valedictory address.

The theme of this years seminar was Challenges in the Emerging Markets with specific focus on India, China, other South East Asian countries and the Middle East.
The speakers for Crucible included Mr. Thomas Kuruvilla, the Managing Director Asia Pac of Arthur D Little, Mr. Harish HV, Partner National Management of Grant Thornton, and Mr. Amit Kumar, Country Head (India) of Grail Research (a member of Monitor Group).

Mr S Ramadorai, CEO & Managing Director Tata Consultancy Services at the HR Summit on Leadership Challenges for a secure future organizedby the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai on December 15.
Mr Ramadorai, in his keynote address recommended a strategic plan including the following elements to meet the challenge of ensuring a secured future:

Preventive mechanism: This includes investment in intelligence mechanism to secure Indias shores, airports and land boundaries which are currently highly porous;

These programmes will be offered in conjunction with leading management institutes like Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta (IIM-C), Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM-L) and Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-I). The programmes will cover a wide spectrum of areas like General Management, Quantitative analysis and modeling, and Marketing Management.

NIIT Imperia is offering two programmes with IIM Calcutta: Senior Management Programme and Advanced Program in Quantititative Analysis and Modelling.

The JMET had already been declared to be of 120 questions length and of 3 hours duration a deviation from the previous years when the paper was of 150 questions and 2 hours duration. There were 4 sections each of Verbal Ability, Quantitative Ability, Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation having 30 question each. Considering, that the paper was of 180 minutes that meant that one could allocate 45 minutes per section.

The conference, with the theme Emerging India: Strategic Innovation in a Flat World, was led by Professor C.K. Prahalad, Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor M B Sarkar, Associate Professor & Stauffer Research Fellow, Fox School of Business, Temple University and Professor Charles Dhanaraj, Associate Professor, Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ohio are the Co-Chairs for this conference.