| Six years old and the INDIA TODAY Conclave, at the risk of being immodest, I must admit gets better by the year. I am always amazed at the extent of knowledge, thought and understanding which resides in our human mind. And when you have over a dozen of some of the brightest of them in one place, you can imagine what an exhilarating experience it would be. This is what happened in the Conclave where we decided to be global with the theme "Challenges for the Brave New World" by inviting a dozen speakers from overseas besides the Indian luminaries. We were fortunate that two of our lead speakers were personalities who were very much in the news. Iran, which is now in the crosshair of President Bush because of its nuclear ambitions, was represented by former president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, who spoke on the 'dialogue of civilisations' as opposed to the clash of civilisations that many are visualising. He also made the newsworthy declaration that "he would guarantee that Iran would never make nuclear weapons." Not to be left behind, former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, who is preparing to return to Pakistan for the elections this year, proposed that leaders from India and Pakistan on its 60th anniversary of Independence, "should meet to declare their commitments to bring permanent tranquillity, peace, progress and prosperity." Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made news in an interactive session when he emphatically said about the controversial SEZ policies: "SEZ, as an instrument of economic policy, has come to stay." There were futurologists galore. We had contemporary historian Francis Fukuyama, known for his book The End of History, who admitted that he had changed his view and now argues that "the challenge posed by Islamic terrorism is not as serious as the one that was posed by communism." Other futurologists were Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the Future; Chandran Nair, Director, Institute of Tomorrow and Thornton May, Dean of IT Leadership Academy. However, in my view, one of the most memorable quotes came from Andrew T. Weil, guru of "Integrative Healing" who told us that it is more important to live well than to live long and medical science should work towards 'compression of morbidity.' Juan Enriquez, renowned genetist fascinated the audience by speaking about regrowing human limbs in the near future. Fortunately, topicality did not leave us throughout the Conclave, as on the day of India's World Cup match with Sri Lanka, there was a dinner session on "What Makes a World Champion?" by Olympic star Carl Lewis and the legendary all-rounder Sir Richard Hadlee, moderated ably by tennis ace Vijay Amritraj. And their conclusion unanimously was "focus, focus, focus" which our ad-drugged Indian team obviously lacked. It was a moveable feast which we thought we must share with you. Index
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