‘Samudramanthan’—3-day conference on maritime traditions ends

Bhubaneswar: The three-day ‘Samudramanthan’ program organised by Indian Knowledge System Division of the Ministry of Education in collaboration with Ministry of Culture and SOA to focus on India’s maritime traditions, its present situation and future possibilities, concluded on Thursday.

After the inauguration on Tuesday at SOA University campus in Bhubaneswar, panel discussions and roundtable were held over the next two days at the Odisha State Maritime Museum in Cuttack the outcome of which would be used to prepare a vision document on the country’s maritime future by the year 2047.

The program, sixth edition of the Dhara series on Indian Knowledge System, is part of the government-sponsored ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ and held alongside the historic ‘Bali Yatra’ in Cuttack city which has Odisha’s ancient maritime traditions as its backdrop.

Resource persons who addressed the panel discussions focused on several areas while emphasizing that the future of Indian maritime capabilities would be linked to advances in the domain of Artificial Intelligence (AI) while new skills for learning, unlearning and relearning should be cultivated.

Besides, it was stressed that promotion of increased research on maritime traditions and related eco-systems would help the larger goal of creating awareness about maritime traditions.

The subjects discussed included ‘Maritime History: Locations, Ship Building and Navigation’, ‘Reconnecting with Maritime Traditions through Museums’, ‘Trade and Cultural Exchange’ and ‘Maritime Security and International Law’.

Prof. Kishore K. Basa, Vice-Admiral Raman Puri (Retd), Vice-Admiral Shekhar Sinha (Retd), Dr. Amit Kumar, Dr. Lalitendu Mohapatra, Cmde. Odakkal Johnson (Retd), Cmde. Srikanth K. Kesnur (Retd), Ms. Shreyanka Basu, Prof. Suresh Chandra Mishra, Mr. Swarup Bhattacharya, Cdr. Ninad Patherphekar (Retd), Mr. Rajesh Mohanty, Prof. Patita Paban Mishra, Prof. Pankaj Jha, Cmde. Somen Banerjee, Dr. Sunil Patnaik, Prof. Rajaram Panda, Ms. Radhika Daga, Mr. Sanatan Jena, DIG, Dr. Monica Verma and Mr. Anand Narasimhan were among the resource persons.