Why TED matters

Ramananda Sengupta

Artists and adventurers.

Bankers, bloggers and brain specialists.

Charitable outfits, dot.com fanatics, doctors, dancers.

Editors, entrepreneurs, eccentrics. Farmers (including a vineyard owner from Shandong, China) and fish specialists, mythologists, technologists and troubleshooters.

Inventors, photographers, politicians, religious leaders, filmmakers, storytellers, musicians….

People from some 42 nations. Some as young as 15. Others as old as Sin.

All gathered under one roof  at a sprawling,  ultra-modern IT company campus in a sleepy southern town.
 
Welcome to TED India, probably one of the most excitingly eclectic and intellectually explosive gathering ever seen on Indian soil.

In Images: The talks so far

(For those who came in late, TED (initially an acronym for Technology, Entertainment and Design), is a not for profit organization started dedicated to Ideas Worth Spreading. The annual TED conferences in Long Beach, California, and Oxford, England, consistently brought some of the world’s brightest thinkers and doers, challenging them to give the talk of their lives –in no more than 18 minutes. TED Talks soon attained cult status and were sold out within days, sometimes hours, of being announced.)

Whoever decided on the Infosys campus in Mysore, Karnataka, as the venue for the first TED conference in Asia knew what they doing.

Spread over 337 acres, it is described as the largest corporate education centre of the world, capable of hosting 14,000 students at a time. It is also probably one of the most beautiful, with fairytale lush green lawns, streets you could eat off, and fitted with almost modern facility for both work and leisure. These include a huge bowling alley and an even larger gym, a pool set among palm trees, and even a hair salon.

Given the heightened terrorist alert across the country -- and the fact that people like the Minister of State for External Affairs and author Shashi Tharoor and His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa, billed as the successor to the Dalai Lama, are among the list of speakers -- security is tight, with a large number of gun toting policemen patrolling the campus. 

Five Questions

Before the conference, TED named a 103 TED Fellows, people who have shown ‘unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage and moral  imagination.’

As a precursor to the TED talks, there were three sessions (two on Wednesday and one on Thursday) of TED University, where 28 speakers were invited to give brief presentations on topics as diverse as `10 Indian artists worth looking out for,`  and Japanese addresses (where professional musician and circus clown Derek Sivers  wittily explained how Americans and the Japanese perceive Streets and Blocks radically differently.)  

K Satyanarayan, co founder of Wildlife SOS, spoke about the Last Dancing Bear, or how a cruel centuries old practice was finally uprooted from India., while Dr Tony Driscoll of Duke University spoke on `Technology and Tragedy.`

Tara Kola, all of 15, spoke on ``how to climb a Banyan Tree`` and what it taught her about life, while Nilofer Merchant explained ``Why flat collaborative will own the future.``

But the real TED talks began on Thursday at 11 in the huge geodesic dome that houses three large theaters with Hans Rosling, a professor of global health at Sweden`s Karolinska Institute. Using an incredibly fascinating software called Gapminder, he traced the history of the developing world from 1858 onwards, and predicted that India would achieve parity in terms of health and wealth with the US in 2048.

Or, to be more exact, on July 27 of that year, a day when he would turn 100.

He was followed by Devdutt Pattanaik, Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group, who looked at modern life and business through the unusual prism of mythology.

Mallika Sarabhai came next, to beautifully argue that art was a powerful tool for change.

Then came the showstopper of the first session in the form of Usha Uthup, who had the audience on its feet in five minutes. Her powerful voice belted out classics which ranged from Hindi, Punjabi and even Israeli and Arabic songs, and when she finally broke down, overwhelmed by the response, there were many wet cheeks in the audience as well.

The post lunch session, titled `Not business as usual` had Tony Hseih, the young CEO of Zappos.com, explaining the spectacular growth of the company, and urging people to ``chase the vision, not the money.``

Cricket commentator and consultant Harsha Bhogle spoke on the changes in the cricketing world and how the T20 had radically transformed India`s image while iconic scientist RA Mashelkar spoke on `Gandhian Engineering` a system which brings more value to more people using  fewer resources.

The third session had MIT undergrad Pranav Mistry elaborating on how he developed Sixth Sense, while Dr Pawan Sinha, also from the MIT, spoke on how our brain interprets what out eyes see, and how that can be used to give blind children the gift of sight. He was followed by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev who kept the audience spellbound with his mesmeric insights into the human state. The day ended with Anil Srinivasan and Sikkil Gurucharan effortlessly and soulfully blending  classical piano with Carnatic voice.  

TED India updates

As the audience drifted out of the auditorium animatedly discussing which of the speakers had been the most impressive, a tall American loudly proclaimed: ``I`ve attended 10 TED Talks. And this was by far the very best.``

Regardless of whether he was right, the fact remains that no other event brings together such a diverse mix of ideas. And an idea, as we all know, can change the world.

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