Action or Despair: What Does India Need From Her Citizens?

The Annual Vijay Nambisan Lecture 2024

We stand today, at the pinnacle of accomplishments and depths of despair, all at once. We applaud achievements in sports, space science, medical breakthrough, foreign investments and high speed trains. We are highly critical of bad roads, waste mismanagment, pollution, poverty, suppression of freedom, of human rights violations.

We look to precepts from anyone, and anything to give us a semblance of order. Many of us don’t stop to think about our own role in all that we criticise.

Well-known activist Brinda Adige will talk about how each of us (no matter of what age and in whatever capacity, big or small) can contribute towards activating change that will make our city, our country, our world a better place for all. She peppers her talk with snippets from her own wide-ranging and courageous experience as an activist.

The Vijay Nambisan Trust:

The Vijay Nambisan Trust was formed to perpetuate the cause of Humanities in its many spheres. The Vijay Memorial Lecture to be held every year is the first event to be sponsored by the Trust in partnership with the Bangalore International Centre.

About Vijay Nambisan:

One of the best poet-writers of his generation, Vijay Nambisan is known as much for his poetry and prose, as he is for his reclusiveness. He dropped out of IIT Madras in his fourth year of engineering to pursue his love for the written word. He won the first All India British Council Poetry Prize in 1988, worked for a number of years in the literary section of The Hindu and published collections of poetry and prose in his inimitable style. He was married to surgeon and novelist, Kavery Nambisan.