Chandigarh, October 28, 2012 : Rotary District 3080 organised a Rotary Colloquium on “Living Your Values: Do Values of Life Change with Changing Times?” at Chandigarh Judicial Academy here today.
Hosted by the Rotary Club of Chandigarh nearly 300 Rotarians, Rotaractors, Interactors, and principals of various schools in the city attended this meet that was intended to have focus on the life’s values and the need to inculcate amongst the younger generation.
Addressing the Colloquium Justice Rajive Bhalla of Punjab and Haryana High Court said that values need to be looked at from the personal, societal and global angle and though these may differ from person to person, values must bring the humane aspect of one’s life. However, he lamented at the societal values of female foeticide which continues as a practice since centuries till today and only the mechanism of killing the girl child has changed.
He questioned the value systems of the relentless development of colonies wiping away the greenery and rivulets from our midst and impacting the entire ecosystem.
Brahmchari Suvir Chaitanya of Chinnmaya Mission Patiala, a young B.Tech from Delhi College of Engineering who decided to take the Vedanta route, said that the real transformation of the society, the nation and the world begins with the transformation within us. Responding to a question from a student of Bhavan Vidyalaya he said that the values as conceived after much deliberations by great thinkers, rishis and philosophers, continue to be relevant as these transcend time and space, and relate more to one’s behavior.
KPMG India’s partner and head of risk consulting Deepankar Salwalkar, and has investigated most of large white collar crime cases including Satyam and Commonwealth Games, admitted that under pressure of business performance, business ethics and values are getting compromised, but corporate India should take heart since our ability to better detect, build public opinion and development of counter-balancing forces like social media are eventually bringing guilty to justice.
Neville D. Gandhi, regional compliance officer of Siemens Ltd, Mumbai asserted that it is possible to do business with ethics without any dilemma provided one is determined to follow the ethical way. He presented the case study of world’s largest German company Siemens Ltd, which till 2006 became one of the worst companies to work with losing credibility and being hauled up in US courts for rigging and bribery to obtain contracts, decided to proactively transform the organization and adopted strict discipline based on transparency, honesty, and ethical work practices. Siemens, he said has become today one of the world’s best ethical companies.
Earlier, Past Rotary International President Rajendra K. Saboo said that the objective of the colloquium had been to revive interest amongst the youth, business and professional people, about the simple values of life that can only create a better world, which must begin by self and being a role model for the youngsters.
Dr Bharat Pandya, Rotary’s past district governor from Mumbai underlined the need for personal integrity and doing the right things when no one is looking.
Later CNN-IBN’s senior editor, Jyoti Kamal, conducted an interesting interactive session and moderated the questions from the audience that further talked about the value system whether it is a question of euthensia amongst the medical professionals, or miscarriage of justice or outdated laws, or even the media assault on the sensibilities of the people.
District Governor Manmohan Singh informed that the Rotary Colloquium on values system was organised since October is the Rotary’s focus area for promoting ethical practices in one’s vocation.