Speaker: Dr. Ashok Khosla, Chairman, Development Alternatives and former President, International Union for the Conservation of Nature

Introduction: Shri Vijay Bhushan, Executive Director, Narain Dharamarth Aushdhalaya Trust and Member, Himachal Pradesh State Wildlife Board and former Secretary, Govt. of India

Special Guests: Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan and Shri B.K. Chaturvedi, Member Planning Commission

The Narain Dutt Award for the Conservation of Nature will be conferred to Development Alternatives

Illustrated lecture by Sushant Sharma, Marketing Manager, Nike India

Talk on a climb to Kilimanjaro, the highest stand alone peak in the world, presenting photographs of rare and endemic animals of Serengetti including the black casqued hornbill, the ground hornbill, colobus monkeys etc.

Poets and speakers: Shri Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee; Shri Prabal Kumar Basu; Shri Shantanu Gangopadhyay; Shri Himadri Datta; Dr. Rumki Basu; and Ms Mandira Ghosh

Chair: Ms Sheila Sengupta

By Sanchita Banerjee from Delhi, disciple of the late Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Sujata Mohapatra and Ranjana Gauhar

Author of the novel: Aruna Chakravarti
Dramatised readings by Minoti Chatterjee and Averee Chaurey
Music Jayati Ghosh

Jorasanko - a novel based on the lives of the Tagore women during the period 1859 to 1902 - a unique phase in the history of Bengal. The Tagore mansion of Jorasanko was at the hub of the Bengal Renaissance with the family at the forefront of the movement and its women playing a pivotal role

Purva Mimansa
Speaker: Prof. S.R. Bhatt, eminent philosopher and international scholar who is considered an authority on Ancient Indian Culture, Buddhism, Jainism and Vedanta

Chair: Dr. Kavita A. Sharma

Purva Mimansa is an inquiry in human conduct, particularly righteous conduct leading to moksa. The word Mimansa denotes the reasoning process followed if one would understand the meaning of a word or a sentence in the Vedas. The epithet Purva Mimamsa indicates that the primary aim of the Mimamsa philosophy is to explain the true meaning of the Purva or the earlier portion of the Vedas. Jaimini is regarded as the compiler of the Mimamsa Sutras. The two main objectives of the Mimamsa school was to establish the authority of the Vedas as the incontrovertible source of all knowledge and to explain their true meaning

Delhi's Dying Trees
Speakers: A.K. Shukla, IFS, Chief Conservator of Forest and Chief, Wildlife Warden, Forest Department; Padmavati Dwedi, Director, Compassionate Living; and Pradip Krishen

(48 min; 2013; dvd; English subtitles)
Director & Cinematographer: Maulee Senapati
Scripted & Produced by Sanjoy Hazarika who will introduce the film

Screening will be followed by a discussion

A unique experiment rides the waves of the Brahmaputra river in Assam, where a major innovative health campaign reaches some of the most marginalized and poorest communities in India living on hundreds of islands, inaccessible and isolated, unknown and unheard. There are no roads here but today, over a dozen boat clinics, conceived and developed by the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, manned by doctors, nurses, lab technicians and pharmacists as well as crew, organizers and community workers reaches more than six lakh people, pulling them out of a deadly cycle of maternal and infant mortality