VARANASI: A two-day conference on ‘ Ved Vijnana Vimarsh (VVV-2024)’ concluded at IIT (BHU) Varanasi on Sunday. On the concluding day, two plenary talks were delivered. Prof.
V.R. Desai , Director, IIT Dharwad, delivered the first plenary talk on “Plants (Vraksha), stars (Nakshatra) for ensuring climate resilience through voluntary afforestation”.
He discussed water management and said that water is life. He mentioned that for ensuring sustainable water resources management, integrated watershed management (IWM) and resource conservation are essential. He also discussed the various components of IWM, which include mainly soil conservation, water conservation, and vegetation conservation.
He emphasised the role of vegetation/forests in ensuring IWM and in maintaining ecological balance. A continuous decrease in vegetation cover (due to deforestation etc.) results in the loss of animal habitat over the past several decades.
The second plenary talk was delivered by Anoop Kumar , who discussed Bhartiya Jurisprudence , detailed concepts of Dharma, and emphasised the difference between dharma and other similar concepts like beauty and ethics. He also pointed out the views of dharma to see things in totality, encompassing many gradients of life in an integrated way. A session on Science, Engineering and Technology was addressed by Prof.
Sonu Ram Shankar from Lalit Narayan Mithila University, Darbhanga, Dr. Lakshmanan Kailasam, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT (BHU) Varanasi, and Dr. Madhusudan Mishra, Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya, Varanasi.
The session was chaired by Prof. R. K.
Mishra of IIT (BHU). The second session on Law, Political, Economic and Strategic Sciences, chaired by Prof. Vijay Shankar Shukla, Visiting Professor, Bharat Adhyayan Kendra, BHU, was addressed by Prof.
T. P. Singh from the Department of Political Science, BHU, R.
K. Singh from the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, and Abhijit Dixit, Regional Director, Regional Centre, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Varanasi. The concluding day also witnessed a panel discussion , which was moderated by Pavan Kumar Aluri of IIT (BHU).
The panellists included Prof. Venkappayya R. Desai, Director, IIT Dharwad, Abhijit Dixit, Regional Director, Regional Centre, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Varanasi, Prof.
Brajakishore Swain, Visiting Professor, Bharata Adhyayan Kendra, BHU, and Prof. Rajesh Kumar, Dean of Students’ Affairs, IIT (BHU). In this event, a discussion was held about whether there is friction between religion and critical thinking.
It was established that the Indian Knowledge system observes truth in a scientific way and the approach is integrated, not fragmented. Hence, this question does not arise in the psyche of the Indian way of thinking. The valedictory ceremony started with the felicitation of all dignitaries on the dais, followed by the prize distribution to the poster presenters.
A brief report of the conference was presented by the convener, Prof. Rajesh Kumar..
