Mr Ram Madhav, the National General Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), spoke to students, staff, teachers and parents of GIIS campuses worldwide and shared insights on Growth and Opportunities for Students in Post COVID World, during a webinar Leadership Lecture Series conducted on 14th June.

Attendees joined in hundreds to listen to his insights and students from various campuses showed keen interest by asking him questions regarding the changes coming in the world due to the pandemic.

Read Mr Ram Madhav's speech by clicking here.

Watch the speech of Mr Ram Madhav here:

The welcome speech by Mr Atul Temurnikar introduced Mr Ram Madhav to the audience. He said the BJP leader wears many hats by playing an important role in India’s foreign policy, by organising multi-country dialogues through India Foundation, contributing to national security matters of counter-terrorism and many other matters of national importance.

Read Mr Temurnikar's speech here.

Listen to Mr Atul Temurnikar’s welcome speech here:

In his address to the audience, Mr Madhav first congratulated all the students for being present in Singapore that has tackled COVID pandemic so well. He said, “ I envy you, you're all living in a great country. A country, which is known for its short history, but great successes. In just five decades time, this country, a city-state, has today emerged as one of the strongest economies in the world.”

Students asked several questions from Mr Ram Madhav after his speech. Watch the Q and A between students and Mr Ram Madhav:

About management of the pandemic in India he said that with a massive and dense population of 1.3 billion people, India has also taken strategic and timely steps to control the spread of the virus and succeeded to a large extent. He added India was quick to adapt to measures taken by countries like Singapore and Korea which have done significantly well in managing the pandemic. A few instances are developing the app Arogya Setu that tracks the location of the pandemic infected people. “In just two weeks’ time, this application has been downloaded by 500 million people,” he said.

Further, he applauded various sectors like bureaucracy, police and healthcare in India, which have risen to the occasion and doing a tremendous job to manage the pandemic in their own ways. He said, “ I have seen doctors who have not gone to their houses for weeks and stayed in the hospital serving the patients. Same is the experience with the nursing staff and police. The entire system, the entire institutional establishment of the government has risen to the occasion.”

Mr Madhav explained that the visionary leadership of the present government and ability to take fast and strategic decisions has contributed to a large extent in containing the virus.

After Mr Madhav finished his address, questions started pouring in from students. Some of the most burning questions were - What are the lessons of leadership that we can learn from coronavirus? to which, Mr Madhav pointed out three things – the leader should be able to identify the problems that the common man will face, the leader should have invested time in developing robust healthcare and civic institutions that can withstand the crisis and the leader should be able to inspire and motivate people to be disciplined and follow guidelines.

Audience member Sameeksha Srivastava from GIIS Noida campus asked, how is the new world going to be post-COVID? To this Mr Madhav replied that the world focus will shift from issues like bilateral trade to core issues like the environment, healthcare, technology. The countries based in the Eastern Hemisphere will focus on developing human-centric solutions using technology.

The LLS with Mr Ram Madhav was an educative experience that broadened our view of how various countries are dealing with the pandemic and the new realities the world is going to face.