Madame Christine Lagarde, MD of International Monetary Fund (IMF) left the audience inspired with her talk and subsequent interview at Lady Shri Ram College on 16th March in the college auditorium. With her elegance and charm, she won the hearts of many, especially, with her attempts to parallel the Indian culture with Bollywood and cricket. The entire show was live telecast on NDTV 24×7 and Dr. Prannoy Roy, co-founder of NDTV, played the host for her interview and the question-answer round with the audience.
The event started with Mr. Arun Bharat Ram, Chairman of the college giving a welcome note for Madame where he highlighted Lagarde’s illustrious achievements. Then Ms. Lagarde was invited to give her lecture. She enthralled the audience by touching various facets of the world, from politics to economics to gender discrimination.
She started by stating how most emerging economies where facing a downward trend in recent times, though India was one bright spot amongst these economies like Brazil and Russia. She told everyone present how India will overtake China by next year as the fastest growing economy.
She addressed to the girls in the audience as the future of glowing India. She laid emphasis on the fact that for India to achieve the projected 7.5% growth rate, the role of women needs to be increased. She shared startling facts about the gender discrimination in India where she stressed on the fact that the participation rate in employment among women was only 33% compared to the world average of 50%.
She also talked about the ‘Make In India’ project where she said that India needs to build on its infrastructure. She said that for sustainable growth the inequality gap needs to be minimized. She concluded her lecture by inspiring everyone to work with patience and resilience and signing off with “Chak de India“.
After her talk, Dr. Prannoy Roy spoke to her regarding various fields like inclusive growth, role of women, the risks faced by India, being some of them with a question-answer round.
Paroma Ray, a IIIrd year student of Political Science at LSR,”With the recent trends in communalism and patriarchy on an increase with the new government stepping in, is the projected growth of 7.5% going to be inclusive or restricted to the Hindu male population?”
Madame replied by saying, “There should be no exclusion and no reservation or capture of the output by a particular group of people – be they of one particular gender, one particular race or one particular religion. Inclusiveness for good growth means everybody.”
She answered several other questions from the audience. The show ended with Mr. Arun Bharat Ram gifting her tokens of appreciation from the college with the Artha Shasthra. This was followed by a vote of thanks from the principal, Ms. Suman Sharma. Samaira, a member of the audience said,”The entire show was brilliantly put up and Madame Christine was breath –taking. I just wished we heard less of Dr. Roy’s commentary!”
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