The National Seminar on “Sustainable Development Goals: Building Future India” was inaugurated by Prof. Appa Rao Podile, the Vice- Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad of Hyderabad. In his inaugural address, he emphasized the need for implementation of SDGs and its relevance in the Indian context. He also highlighted the gaps and challenges in policy formulation and implementation. He suggested the need of “changing mindsets” for the successful implementation of SDGs, as policy intervention alone cannot be fruitful without public co-operation.
Prof. K. Raja Mohan Rao, Seminar Co-ordinator, and Head of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, welcomed the gathering. He stressed the need for an interface between the policies for Environmental Sustainability and Economic Prosperity in order to achieve social sustainability and justice. He also stressed the need for deliberations between academicians, policy makers and other stakeholders.
Dr. Vamsha Tilak, former Head, Department of Public Health SLNS Degree College who was the Guest of Honour, delivered an insightful talk on issues related the health sector. He also advocated the achievement of Sustainable Development through enduring success. Prof. P Venkata Rao, the Dean of School of Social Sciences mentioned the paradox of sustainable development in relation to the era of globalisation and liberalisation, while highlighting social issues and the need for social justice to achieve the SDGs.
The keynote address was delivered by Prof. Gilvan Muller de Oliveira, UNESCO Chair, Language Policies for Multilingualism. He advocated the inclusion of Language and Multilingualism as an 18th goal in order to have access to knowledge and education in indigenous languages. He concluded that sustainable development cannot be achieved without overcoming language barriers and hence, proposed the inclusion of an 18th goal related to language issues.
60 research papers were shortlisted for presentation among 225 papers received. The selected papers were checked for plagiarism and selected only after the papers cleared a similarity index of less than 15 percent.