Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with nearly 400 young CEOs, professionals and start-up representatives over the week and deliberate over possible solutions for India’s critical development challenges.
“This program is called Champions of Change – Transforming India through government to business partnership, and is an attempt to involve young CEOs and professionals in the government’s efforts to build a new India by 2022,” said a senior government official, adding that the PM would spend close to five hours with representatives from 200 start-ups across the country on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Prime Minister was scheduled to attend an informal dinner with representatives from start-ups on Wednesday along with a dozen Cabinet ministers and is also expected to spend about three-and-a-half hours with representatives from start-ups on Thursday, when different groups of start-ups are slated to make a 10-minute presentation on specific themes with a five-minute window for questions from the PM.
Start-up representatives will also meet 10 secretaries to the Government of India and spend an hour with Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley, before the dinner with the PM on Wednesday.
“For start-ups, we had created six groups such as New India by 2022, Digital India, sustainability, education and skill development and Incredible India 2.0. Similarly, CEOs have been asked to brainstorm on job creation, income enhancement, technology disruption and innovation, ease of doing business as well as governance and policy,” the official said.
The average age of the 180 young CEOs, expected to interact with the PM and other top government officials and ministers on August 21 and 22, is just 40-42 years, the official said.
The Niti Aayog, the government’s think tank that has been working on this initiative, will identify all the action points emerging from these sessions and a detailed consultation will be undertaken with ministries and States where their intervention is required.
“We will bring out policy notes where tweaking of policy is required and work with ministries to notify changes where executive action is necessary,” the official said.
