The 11th edition of Manthan Samvaad saw some of the finest minds share ideas at Shilpakala Vedika on Monday. The line up this year included Justice (retd) S. Muralidhar, Supriya Shirnate, Dhanya Rajendran, and Arghya Sengupta, among others.
There were seven speakers in seven sessions during the day-long event organised by this Hyderabad-based organisation.
The earlier editions of Manthan Samvaad saw the likes of Shashi Tharoor, Ram Madhav, Asaduddin Owaisi, T.M. Krishna, Kanhaiya Kumar and Yashwant Sinha, share their ideas with audience. A tweak in the programme this year was that Hindi poet and satirist Saral Sampat gave a recital on October 2.
Q&A with Mamidipudi Vikram, who, along with the late Ajay Gandhi, started Manthan in 2005 to bring intelligent conversations to Hyderabad.
What’s been the idea behind Manthan Samvaad?
We started in 2005 when we thought of Manthan as a platform to bring the best minds in the country to debate with the audience in Hyderabad. I think we have succeeded as we have hosted 450 speakers in our monthly events, and about 65 speakers at the annual Samvaad. This year, we had more than 1,800 registrations days before the the event. Conversations like this is the keystone for democracy.
How do you manage the resources?
Initially, we used to host speakers who were on a visit to the city. Now, we work out the logistics, bring the speakers and host them. All Manthan events are free as we wanted them to be from the beginning. We have a dedicated band of subscribers. A few sponsors and nowadays people voluntarily give money to help us with our talks.
How does Manthan see itself in the age of short attention span?
We allocate 2.5 hours to our speakers. They are given the time because we think they have a lot to say and audience need to listen to it. And to their credit, the audience has been fantastic and treated all our speakers with respect and interacted with them intelligently.
How do you plan the events?
We have a small team and interact on a daily basis trying to find speakers and organise events. We don’t limit speakers to the city and search for someone who can contribute to public conversation in an intelligent way. It is an ongoing effort. Last year, we had an in-person event. And this year, we have been ambitious and moved the event to Shilpakala Vedika, which is one of the larger auditoriums in the city.
