Digitalisation has become the defining condition of contemporary life. It mediates how citizens participate in democracy, how individuals understand themselves and relate to others, and how economies generate and distribute value. Rarely has human history witnessed transformations that touch so many domains of life simultaneously and at such speed.

The dominant narrative around digitalisation is twofold: empowerment and the need for recalibration. Empowerment implies greater access to information, new avenues for political voice, expanded economic opportunity, and unprecedented connectivity between people and institutions. Yet alongside this narrative runs a quieter, more demanding one, the reality that established democratic institutions, labour markets, human relationships, and psychological well-being are all being unsettled in ways not yet fully understood, and must be recalibrated to keep pace. What makes this moment distinctive is that empowerment and the need for recalibration are rarely separable processes; they move together, often through the very same technology, reaching the very same people, at the very same time. The same platforms that promise voice can deepen surveillance; the same tools that promise connection can produce isolation; the same markets that promise inclusion can quietly erect new barriers in place of old ones.

This tension is not incidental; it is the central problem this conclave sets out to examine: Under what conditions does digitalisation empower individuals, institutions, and societies, and under what conditions does it demand a fundamental recalibration of governance, behaviour, and economic life, so that it does not merely reproduce or intensify the very inequalities and vulnerabilities it claims to resolve?

Answering this requires tracing the same strain across governance, human behaviour, and economic life, which is precisely what the conclave’s three pillars are organised to do.

Prof. Sugata Marjit is one of India’s most distinguished economists and academic leaders, known globally for his contributions to international economics, development economics, and public policy. He completed his undergraduate studies at Presidency College and topped Calcutta University before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester under the supervision of Ronald Jones. He has served as the first Distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade and held key leadership positions including Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University, Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC), and Chairman of the West Bengal State Council of Higher Education.

Prof. Marjit has taught and delivered lectures at nearly 50 prestigious universities and institutions worldwide, including Columbia University, Cornell University, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Tokyo, and Queen Mary University of London.

Prof. Marjit is also a professional North Indian Classical Vocalist and has performed in major concerts all around the globe, including at the famous Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroha at Varanasi, the oldest Hindustani Classical Music Festival in India at the India International Centre on the occasion of India’s 50th year of India’s independence invited by the Rajyyasabha upper house of Parliament, at the Nehru Centre London, National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai, on invitation from the Indian High Commissioner in New York and hundreds of concerts worldwide.

Prof. Manas Kumar Mandal’s research contribution to the field of psychological science spanned over 35 years with primary focus on affect processing in the brain, in general, and in schizophrenia, in particular. His doctoral work on affect (emotion) processing in schizophrenia has been an original work that paved the way for the formulation many research hypotheses later. Dr. Mandal continued his endeavour in later part of his research in uncovering the role of cerebral hemispheres in emotion processing. The input about cerebral lateralization was drawn from his earlier work in which he proposed that the right hemisphere activity that regulates emotion processing may be intact in schizophrenia. While at the Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur, Dr. Mandal pursued the domain of behavioural neuroscience in normal human behavior, in which he explored the difficulties faced by the left and mixed (clumsy) handers in the society. His researches let us know what percentage of the left handers are found in India, what makes a left hander switch handedness pattern, why the left handers are more prone to accidents than the right handers, etc. As the Director of Defense Institute of Psychological Research (DRDO), Dr. Mandal engaged himself in a large number of activities towards the human performance development of the community of armed / paramilitary forces (National Security Guards, CRPF, etc.). Noteworthy, amongst these include (a) getting the best cadet for the armed / paramilitary forces through scientifically developed selection system, (b) analyzing critical behavior like mob hysteria or terrorism, (c) imparting mass counseling for man-made and natural disasters, (d) reducing the incidence of self- defeating behaviours in soldiers like suicide and fratricide, etc.

Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Schnapp is the Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences at Universität Hamburg, a position he assumed in May 2025 for a five- year term. He has been a professor of political science, specialising in research methods, at the university since 2008. He earned his doctorate from Freie Universität Berlin, researching the political influence of ministerial bureaucracies in Western democracies. His academic interests include political decision-making, public administration, research methodology and social innovation. He also founded the university’s applied social research initiative, now known as the Research Office for Social Innovation (ROSI).

Dr. Selim Raihan is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and serves as the Executive Director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). He earned his PhD from the University of Manchester, UK, and sits on the Board of Directors for the Global Development Network (GDN). Additionally, Dr. Raihan is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Manchester and an alumnus of Harvard University’s program on “Cutting Edge of Development Thinking.” With extensive expertise in empirical research, Dr. Raihan’s work spans international trade, economic growth, poverty alleviation, labour markets, macroeconomic policy, political economy, and climate change. He has made significant contributions to applied economics, notably in assessing the impacts of trade and economic policies using country-specific and global Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, as well as micro and macro-econometric modeling techniques.