The Bengal Chamber’s Wellness & Communities committee recently organised a symposium titled Wellness Connect-Living Life 360 degree, featuring experts for panel discussions on a wide range of topics that pivot around one common axis — holistic living in every sense of the term. The program started off on a heartwarming note as students of Indian Institue of Cerebral Palsy performed a play, which was followed by a heart-to-heart between the students, Dr Ratna Sinha, chairperson, wellness & communities committee, and Saswati Mahanti of IICP. Dr Sitangshu Khatua, dean, Xavier Business School, moderated the conversation.
Speaking on inclusiveness and opportunities and envisioning her potential contribution to and role in the corporate world and what kind of support and accommodations she thinks could be essential for her to thrive professionally, Shreya Singh of IICP made a very valid point. “I believe if I receive the right training and the right opportunities, I shall be able to fulfill my responsibilities in the corporate sector. All we need is a supportive society that gives us acceptance.”
Punam Bind talked about the significance of being mentored by professionals who have faced similar challenges in life. “When such people enter our lives, they instantly become our inspiration. And it’s not just about the struggle to get my rights, it’s also a great deal about what I give back to society,” she said.
Baishali Dalmiya, co-chairperson, The Delhi Council, BCC&I & director, M. L. Dalmiya & Co. Ltd., who was the guest of honour for the event, said, “Health is basically a state of being, while on the other hand, wellness is the state of activity, living a lifestyle that helps to attain health. Physical wellness is a part and spiritual wellness, intellectual wellness, and occupational wellness are also very important. I have created a small creche at my residence for the girls who come to my house to work so that they can bring their children along.”
Former cricketer and currently a golf instructor, and corrective exercise coach, Ranadeep Moitra, who graced the occasion as the special guest, said, “The belief in the importance of diet, nutrition, health and exercise is pervasive more today than I think it was at any other point of time in our civilisation. Yet, at no point in time have chronic diseases been so much of a part of our life as today, at no point of time in our civilisation have we suffered from so many degenerative diseases as we are now at this present moment. Only about 0.3% of Indians actually go to a gym. So obviously gym is not synonymous with health, at least not in India. Yet I know from my personal life experience of training other people that fitness is the only power of preventive health. Preventive health is fitness, fitness is preventive health.”
The day slowly rolled into a very informative session on the impact of AI on the future of work, moderated by Emanuel David, board of directors member, Aster DM Healthcare.
Dr Siddhartha Mitra, professor of Economics at Jadavpur University, provided a seamless primer. “Take a narrower definition of artificial intelligence. A calculator does not exhibit artificial intelligence, but a drone does. And the next layer is machine learning. A machine learns in the same way like a baby does. Then there is supervised learning. Data are labelled and presented in front of a computer. And the computer learns to assign labels to objects just as we learn object language. Then there could be unsupervised learning, where the computer like a child is left to its own devices and asked to arrange the data in a meaningful manner. And lastly, we have reinforcement learning, where the computer is rewarded for how well it completes a task”.
Bursting the myth that AI is limited only to the tech sector, Sanjay Guhathakurta, industry leader for chemicals and petroleum and industrial products, IBM India, said, “AI has been around for many years since the 60s. But right now it is entering almost every sphere of business. Right now AI is very much ready to take up B2C kind of transactions, not the B2B. For instance, when you are interacting with a call centre, you interact with bots. When you’re not happy with the order that came to your house you interact with a bot and not a human being. And the manner in which the bot interacts with you... the changes in the subject, or the tone... all of it is completely designed by the robotics mechanism. The banking and the manufacturing sectors that have back office functions are right now the primary target.”
“If someone is unwell at home and you are helpless, you call the ambulance. It has to come, pick up the patient, and take them to the hospital. The hospital has to be ready to take the patient to the emergency. A bed needs to be available. The doctor needs to be prepared. This series of tasks may be made seamless with the use of AI. At the same time, in the medical decision-making process, a lot of other factors are involved. For example, the patient’s social background, their religion, the economics, etc. Everything has to be taken into consideration. AI has not yet been programmed in such a manner,” said Dr Rabin Chakraborty, head of cardiology services, Medica Institute of Cardiac Sciences, speaking on the effects of AI on the medical fraternity.
Is AI going to take away our jobs? Adika Ratna Sekhar, chairman, Balmer Lawrie & Co. Ltd., broke it down for all. “If some jobs are going extinct, new jobs are being created. And basically, with an ageing workforce, we might find it difficult to reskill and upskill. But then with the new workforce, you need to reskill and upskill your employees. It is not machines that are going to replace humans, but it is going to be like working together with machines. Each has their own potential and they will need each other for mutual benefits. Harness the productivity and complement each other to enhance the productivity”.
Speaking on the disadvantages of AI, Dr Santanu Gupta, a professor at XLRI Jamshedpur, said, “The way humans are being monitored under surveillance with the use of AI, is a cause of concern. Another drawback of AI is it does not have situational intelligence”.
Adding to that, Sanjay said, “We live in insecure times, where data security and breach of privacy is hanging on everyone’s mind. AI is the future. Almost all governments are tightening their screws around data privacy and security. Driverless car is a reality. Imagine it driving on the road and it sees in front of it an elderly woman and a small child. The driverless car driven by a robotic engine at the back end might have to decide which person to hit if the brakes fail. We might be going into that kind of an area where certain decision-making will be done by robots. These are wild thoughts but we are going in that direction.”
“In tourism, hospitality and recreation AI will get a boost because here you need humans interacting with humans and the difference between humans and robots is that humans have general intelligence whereas robots have specialised intelligence,” said Mitra.
Oishiki Mukherjee, a second-year MBA student at Xavier Business School, said, “AI is updating its own perception according to my convenience and behavioural pattern. A sense of personalisation comes with adaptivity. As a student, I would say AI is facilitating me and telling me how to go about a particular topic; it tutors me and gives me feedback”.
Among many other notable sessions featured a panel discussion on women at the workplace. Moderated by business consultant Rahul Bose, the session threw up some pertinent questions.
Dr Sutapa Pal, consultant doctor, Tata Metaliks; Bratati Bhattacharya, an educationist; Arijit Majumdar, head of HR & administration, Tide Water Oil Co. (India) Ltd.; Susmita Halder, psychology professor, St. Xavier’s University, Kolkata; and Rajkumari Basu took part in the discussion and shared their struggles, second chances and considerable feats in their respective careers. Calling on the HRs for better workplace policies, Arijit said, “We hear organisations bringing in work from home policies, flexible hours and of course leave policy is there, but one has to take manager’s approval to avail the leave. I think it’s high time we sensitised the managers.”
Speaking to The Telegraph, Dr Ratna said, ”We are in a world where we should encourage inclusivity and not just diversity by numbers. The topics we have chosen for today are the need of the hour.”
Pictures: Koushik Saha