Partnerships are the only way to ensure quality in achieving sustainable development goals (SDG), feels Chetan Kapoor, CEO of Tech Mahindra Foudnation.

Stressing that partnerships are one of the goals of the SDG-17 goals set by the United Nations, he said that was the only way to ensure quality.

Speaking at the Lions Club Roar to Restore SDG Awards presented by CNBC, Kapoor explained how Tech Mahindra Foudnation’s efforts in education has been expanded to include employability. “Education and employability are two ends of a spectrum. Now that we are working in this space, we have found that a lot of challenges we are facing in the country are perhaps due to some of the deficits in the education space.”

So they started working in the area of teacher capacity development and created a programme called Shikshantar. “We are currently working with 1,500 primary schools of MCD in Delhi, where the MCD has given use the onerous task of ensuring that all the close-to-20,000 teachers are trained through a team which is with Tech Mahindra.”

In employability, the Foundation came up with a programme called SMART – Skills for Market Training, wherein youths are trained in employable skills to be tapped by the industry.

Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla who gave away the SDG awards said that India is also working towards SDG goals and has achieved many of them. He highlighted how the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ensured food and medical relief to over 80 crore people during the Covid-19 pandemic. He praised Lions Club's efforts in health, education and other SDG areas.

Sumanta Datta, Managing Director of Oxford University Press, said they were working on how to empower teachers to fire up young minds and for this there was a significant need to work with the teacher community.

“We do a lot of the curriculum work with the government, we include the SDG goals in our text books. But the real challenge is teachers. How do we empower teachers to not teach facts about the environment but to actually fire up young minds, to think differently from us, because they have to find solutions which that we did not find,” he said.

Rachna Panda, Country Head, Communications and Public Affair and Sustainability, Bayer South Asia, said that countries, communities and corporates have to come together to achieve SDGs.

In her company, sustainability is driven from the top as the global CEO is also Global Chief Sustainability Officer, she said. And they have ensured that there are stringent targets for all of their SDG projects.

Devansh Pathak, Specialist – Strategy & Community Engagement, WEF India, pointed out that India is at the centre of the world’s problems because of its population and scale, and this also presents a great opportunity.

He noted that climate change brings about opportunities for businesses wherein early adopters will see success. But there is also the regulation aspect. “Governments over time will get stricter. Climate action will become more stringent. And you have to anticipate those regulations. You have to be faster than the government or you will lose the game.”

He noted that to be ESG (environmental, social and governance) compliant, businesses have to be proactive. “You have to be innovative, adoptive and competitive. All the incentive successes of capitalism require you to invest in these technologies and partnerships. If you don’t do that, things will become really difficult.”

Dr Swati Mahajan, Health Systems Lead, South Asia, PATH, said they are working with the government of India on vaccine collaboration and digital health. She noted that they are mandated to ensure equity in all the programmes that they develop.

In partnering with the government on the health and wellness centres, PATH has taken quality, affordable and accessible healthcare closer to people’s homes such that the time to care is less than 30 minutes, she said. They are also generating health literacy, ensuring access to specialists and telemedicine through digital interventions.

Also read: India soon to achieve SDG goals for reduction in newborn deaths: Top WHO official

Vijay Kumar Raju, past International Director, Lions Club International, said that they have spent $1.3 billion globally on well-being, with $115 million in India alone.

“I am so very proud to say mention one thing. This is the organisation which I would say that 100 percent of the donations goes back to the charity. And every Lion takes pride in that.”

Raju noted that in the decades of their work in eyecare, what they realised is that the challenge or the capital in this country lies in diabetes. “And the Lions now started working aggressively on the areas of diabetes.”

(Edited by : Pradeep John)

First Published:Jun 9, 2023 8:56 PM IST