IFFCO’s choice of Dr Girish Karnard as the speaker for its 26th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial IFFCO Lecture was lapped up by the audience. Tired of the known cooperative faces they exuded relief and exultation.
Karnard a cine personality is also known for his intellectual prowess. He had been a Rhodes Scholar. His style of narration and his palette of thoughts on the subject cooperative- were fresh and interesting. Dr Karnard was speaking at the 26th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial IFFCO Lecture on Friday at NCUI Auditorium in New Delhi.
This correspondent wondered how he would be through with the exercise as it would not be easy for Karnard to establish connection between cinema and cooperative. But Dr Karnard started with recounting his first lesson in cooperative through the making of a film named manthan. Even the dialogue and screenplay stemmed from cooperation as we struggled to give shape to an idea that had a weak plot and an untranslatable story, he said.
Sensing Mr. Karnad’s predicament this correspondent confided his angst with Dr Dinesh, the Chief Executive of NCUI who was sitting in the audience. Dr Dinesh kept asking him not to worry. And then Karnard set out triumphantly on a course that made people listen to him with rapt attention. A young man from ICA Regional Office Mr Santosh had gone gaga over it and liberally shared his impressions with this correspondent.
On being congratulated for the great choice of speaker for the Nehru Memorial Lecture, IFFCO MD Dr U S Awasthi said “we will have more of out of the box speakers in future. We may have some eminent historian to help us understand cooperative better next year. ” he said.
