Nishka, The Earliest Indian Gold Coin
 

Speaker: Prof. Buddha Rashmi Mani, Former Director General, National Museum and Vice Chancellor, National Institute of Heritage Management. Awarded Padma Shri by the Government of India (2026) for his distinguished services in the field of archaeology.  

Chair:  K. N. Shrivastava, Director, IIC

Numismatists were silent about the identification of Nishka. In a recent study of the so called disc shaped gold beads with the central hole, found in less numbers from Harappan sites and found at Mandi in UP in 2000 with a number of no less than 5000 such pieces, of which 1547 are on display in the National Museum, New Delhi, the speaker has argued that they are the physical evidence of ancient nishkas and we can suggest that nishkas were used as gold coins in the 3rd millennium BCE.

AI-Friendly Newsrooms
Reimagining Journalism in the time of AI 

The Ethics Framework (The “Why”)
•    Transparency: Protocols for “AI-assisted” disclosures
•    Human-in-the-Loop: Editorial oversight to prevent bias and inaccuracies
Streamlining Production (The “How”)
•    Automated Layouts: Multi-platform publishing templates
•    Transcription & Translation: ASR tools and multilingual workflows
•    Visual Storytelling: AI-driven data analysis and visualisation
Audience Engagement & Distribution
•    Hyper-Personalisation: Machine learning for content recommendations
•    Text-to-Speech: Audio formats for long-form journalism
Closing Remarks & Q&A
Summary of key takeaways and audience interaction.
 

Speakers: Sanjay Kapoor, President, EGi; Editor, Hardnews; Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor, The Wire; Sanket Upadhyay, Founder, Double Check; Pradeep Gairola, Chief Digital Business Officer, The Hindu; and Nandagopal Rajan, Chief Executive Officer (Digital), The Indian Express; and others.
 

(Collaboration: Editors Guild of India)
 

The Gift of Presence

Discussants: Dr. Saroj Dubey, senior consultant gastroenterologist, author, TEDx speaker, and motivational guide; Prof. (Dr.) Charru Sharma, Professor of Psychology at the University of Delhi, Fulbright Academic & Professional Excellence Award at University of Pennsylvania, USA; Ritu Bhardwaj, journalist and storyteller and founder of Connected – Woman for Woman and Connected Minds Wellness.

A seminar to promote awareness about mindfulness and well-being; to introduce practical tools to manage stress and anxiety and to foster a space for dialogue, reflection, and shared experience.

The flow of the session will be as follows:
•    The Dance of Being and Doing – Strategies to Bring Joy and Peace Amidst Activity
•    Building the Mindfulness Muscle and Resilience in Daily Life
•    The Power of Sharing – Healing Through Expression

Harvesting Gods: Poems
By Satya Mohanty (Speaking Tiger, 2025)

Discussants: Anisur Rahman, Former Professor, Dept. of English; Radha Chakravarty, Writer, Critic & Translator; Satya Mohanty, Poet, Playwright and Author of the book.

Chair: Ashok Vajpeyi , Poet, Critic and Essayist
 

The Jallianwala Bagh Journals: Political Lives of Memory
By Sarmistha Dutta Gupta (Jadavpur University Press, 2025)

Discussants: Uma Chakravarty, Historian and Film-maker, formerly of Miranda House College for Women, Urvashi Butalia, Writer, Researcher and Publisher; Madan Gopal Singh, Composer, Lyricist, Singer and Critic; Sarmistha Dutta Gupta, Independent Researcher, Writer and Author of the book

Moderator: Sucheta Mahajan, Historian, formerly of the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU
 

Riding with the Silver Wolf 
By  Bindiya Bedi Charan Noronha  (Red River, 2025)

Discussants: Sagari Chabbra, Writer and Film Director; Samar Singh Jodha, Photographer and Artist; Shalini Mullick, Writer; Mandira Ghosh, Poet, Author and Researcher; Bindiya Bedi Charan Noronha, Writer, Social Worker, Educationist, Bibliotherapist & Author of the book

Chair:   Dr. Amarendra Khatua, Former Secretary, MEA & DG, ICCR & Poet
 

Rising Ambition: Carving New Pathways- India’s Energy Transition

By Ajay Shankar (The Energy and Resources Institute, TERI, 2024)

Discussants:  Amitabh Kant, Former sherpa G20 and CEO,Niti Ayog;Dr Sanjaya Baru, Former Media Advisor to PMO,Commentary and Policy Analyst; Ajay Shankar, Distinguished fellow, TERI and Author of the book.

Chair: Shyam Saran, President, IIC

Moderator: Dr Ipshita Mitra, Manager, Communication and Stakeholder Engagement

In Your Eyes a River: Poems 
by Radha Chakravarty (Hawakal Publishers, 2025)
(In collaboration with Poetry Society of India)

Discussants: Prof. Sukrita Paul Kumar, Eminent Poet, Critic, Academic & Guest Editor Indian Literature; Dr. Amarendra Khatua, Former Secretary, MEA & DG, ICCR & Poet; Mandira Ghosh, Poet, Researcher, Educator & Writer; Dr. Rita Malhotra, Former Principal, Kamla Nehru college, Delhi; Prof. Radha Chakravarty, Writer, Critic; Translator & Author of the book

Chair: K. Jayakumar, President, Poetry Society (India) & Former Chief Secretary, Govt. of Kerala
 

Recalibrating Partition

Discussants: Yogesh Snehi, Associate Professor of History, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi. He is the author of Spatializing Popular Sufi Shrines in Punjab: Dreams, Memories, Territoriality; Debjani Sengupta, Professor at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She is the author of The Partition of Bengal: Fragile Borders and New Identities (2016); Anindita Ghoshal, Associate Professor of History at Diamond Harbour Women’s University, Kolkata. She is the author of Refugee, Borders, and Identities: Rights and Habitat in East and Northeast India (2021)

Moderator: Dr Shashank Shekhar Sinha, an independent author, historian and Publishing Director, South Asia, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group

This panel discussion brings together new perspectives from Punjab, Bengal and Northeast India to rethink Partition through themes like borderlands, locality, displacement, rehabilitation, belonging and lived experiences. Focusing on marginalised and other communities, and empathy amidst violence, it interrogates questions of citizenship, caste, gender and ethnicity—showing how 1947 continues to shape contemporary South Asia.

(Collaboration: @Crossroads)

From Death to Immortality: The Great War of the Mahabharata
by Kavita A. Sharma and Indu Ramchandani (BlueOne Ink, 2025)

Discussants:  Prof. Sukrita Paul Kumar, Eminent Poet, Critic & Academic, Guest Editor Indian Literature; 
Dr. Sarvchetan Katoch, Associate Professor of English. Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, DU; Dr. A. K. Merchant, General Secretary of Temple of Understanding India Foundation; Kausalya Srinivasan, Bharatanatyam Dancer; Dr. Kavita A. Sharma, Educationist, former Director IIC, Former Vice Chancellor, South Asia University & Author of the book; Indu Ramchandani, Editor, Transcriber, Compiler and Author of the book