IIM Shillong recently hosted its 5th edition of SusCon, the annual International Conference on Sustainability. Founded on the theme 'Making the Planet more Liveable: Inspiration, Innovation, and Inclusion,' the conference was a tribute to former President of India, late APJ Abdul Kalam.
For the conference, the committee received over 100 papers from leading institutions from the country and abroad covering various crucial topics including climate change, microfinance, green marketing, development finance, clean technology, developmental economics, and CSR. Based on the evaluations and recommendations of the respective Chairperson(s) of the 15 Technical Sessions, three papers were selected for the awards.
The first prize was given to Saswatee Mukherjee from the department of Economics, Presidency University Kolkata for the paper ‘ Competition and Information Sharing among MFI Lenders ’. The second prize was awarded to the research paper ‘ Enhancing Economic Sustainability through Microcredit - An Analysis over Different Activity ’ by Biswajit Prasad Chhatoi from the School of Management Studies, Ravenshaw University, Odisha. Aruna from NIT Calicut's School of Management Studies won the third prize for the paper ‘ Performance evaluation in Indian Microfinance Context - A Market Performance Model ’.
The conference hosted a series of five plenary sessions which saw ideas from dignitaries such as Bimal Arora, Chairperson, Centre for Responsible Business UK and India; Biren Bhuta, Chief of CSR Tata Steel; Sarit K Das, Director IIT Ropar; Ashish Gupta, Joint Secretary Ministry of Home Affairs; and Mark Laitflang Stone, CEO Avenues Academy Shillong among others. The plenary sessions saw a discussion on themes ranging from leadership, organisation, finance, technology, globalisation and mindspace, and their integration with sustainability.
The three-day conference was flagged off with a welcome address by Amitabha De, Director of IIM-Shillong.
The chief guest of the event, LW Khongwir, Executive Director, Indian Oil Corporation highlighted the sustainable practices followed by the organisation during his address. Pannalal Das, GM of State Bank of India was the Guest of Honor.