Abbreviation WIEF Type Business Conference | Formation 1996 | |
Purpose To raise the profile of the economic potential of India Location Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Chairpersons Aman Jain. Ankita Bajaj. Divya Menon. Praveen Chunduru | ||
The Wharton India Economic Forum (WIEF), established in 1996 at The Wharton School, is a student-run business forum in the United States focused on India. WIEF is one of the largest India-based economic and business conferences in the United States. It is attended by over 800 people annually and receives extensive media coverage in India and the wider business by leading publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, The Economic Times and The Times of India.
Contents
- Speakers at the pre 2012 conferences
- 16th WIEF 2012
- 17th WIEF 2013
- Narendra Modi Controversy
- WIEF Chairs
- References
WIEF's describes its mission as to "engage the world's attention on India's enormous potential and the limitless possibilities the country offers".
Speakers at the pre-2012 conferences
Government & Policy
Industry
Finance
Media & Entertainment
Sports
Other
16th WIEF, 2012
The 16th annual Wharton India Economic Forum was held on January 9, 2012 in Mumbai, India. This was the first time the WIEF was held in India.
The speakers included:
17th WIEF, 2013
Keynote Speakers
Milind Deora opted out for an unspecified reason.
Media and Entertainment Panelists
Women's Empowerment Panelists
Private Equity/Venture Capital Panelists
Finance Panelists
Entrepreneurship Panelists
Narendra Modi Controversy
In 2013, the WIEF organizers invited the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi to deliver the keynote address via video-conferencing. Toorjo Ghose, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a small group of colleagues put together a petition after learning about Wharton's invitation to Modi. Kasturi Sen, a Philadelphia-based attorney, created a group on Facebook and initially hosted the petition there. The petition cited the revocation of visa to Modi in 2005 by the US state department. They were joined by Ania Loomba and Suvir Kaul, both Indian-American UPenn professors, who were critical of Modi's handling of the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots, started formal a petition demanding the cancellation of the invitation, failing which they would protest his virtual presence at the event.
The petition was sent to Amy Gutmann, the UPenn president. The university leadership stepped in to diffuse what it saw as a potentially explosive situation. The WIEF organizers had to cancel the invitation, even though they stood by the earlier decision to invite Modi. They stated that they wanted to avoid putting Modi in a "compromising position". At the time of the decision, the petition had been signed by around 135 people, and the number of signatories grew to 250 later. A senior Wharton official distanced Wharton from the decision stating “Make no mistake, the move to not have Modi was a result of UPenn, not Wharton,” pointing to the fact that not a single Wharton faculty member had signed the petition demanding cancellation of Modi's speech.
In Modi's support, the Shiv Sena leader Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu scrapped his visit to Wharton. Another speaker, the Wall Street Journal writer and journalist Sadanand Dhume, also pulled out from the forum in protest. He was replaced by Sudhir Parikh, a New Jersey-based eminent physician, philanthropist, publisher and Padma Shri awardee. However, Parikh too withdrew from the conference as a mark of protest. He stated, "The manner in which the committee has been pressurised to rescind its invitation to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on entirely suspicious grounds, I feel the intellectual integrity of the forum has been compromised." Ron Somers, also a keynote speaker, termed the decision to drop Modi as "unfortunate and disrespectful", but said that he would attend the event in order to make his point about free speech. Another keynote speaker Mohandas Pai also backed out complaining about mistreatment of Indians outside India; he mentioned the "shabby" treatment of Narendra Modi among other incidents such as the Italian marines controversy, Pakistan's reaction to Afzal Guru's hanging and Sri Lanka's treatment of Indian fishermen. The U.S. Congressman Eni Faleomavaega expressed disappointment at the decision, criticizing the protesters as "a segment of professors and students who are reaching beyond the law and coming awfully close to violating the rights of others who have a different view". Several others, including Rajiv Malhotra and the Indian Union Minister Shashi Tharoor also stated that Modi should not have been disinvited.
The Adani group, the platinum sponsors of the event, withdrew their sponsorship. Subsequently, Viacom 18's Colors, the silver sponsors, also pulled out. Hexaware, the bronze sponsor, also withdrew sponsorship, saying that its chairman Atul Nishar (a keynote speaker) would be unable to attend the event due to other business engagements.
Some media outlets reported that Arvind Kejriwal had been invited instead of Modi, but Kejriwal clarified that he had received the invitation several days before the decision to drop Modi was made. Kejriwal also expressed his disapproval of the decision to drop Modi.
After the controversy, the organizers announced that no media organizations other than TV Asia would be allowed to cover the event. This was for the first time in the 17 years history of the event that media was not given free access to cover the forum. A coalition of activists opposed to the decision came together under the banner of Americans for Free Speech, and organized a peaceful protest at the venue.
The cancellation of Modi's speech ignited a debate on free speech on UPenn campus. Assem Shukla, Associate Professor of Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania stated: "Penn’s tradition of free speech was celebrated when extreme anti-Israel speakers, Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and radical Occupy Wall Street protesters held sway on campus. But free speech became an empty homily when it came to the speaker selection of a group of Indian-American business school students" Loomba stated that disinviting a speaker is also freedom of speech. She said "Modi suporters can beam him in, but not in my house".