Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2017: Narendra Modi to inaugurate event, Barack Obama will speak on Day 2

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Day 1 and former US president Barack Obama on Day 2, the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) 2017 is a star-studded affair. The line-up of other speakers on both days of the summit is stellar, completing a constellation of the world’s movers and shakers who will deliberate on a range of topics in New Delhi on 30 November and 1 December. [caption id=“attachment_2995028” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of former US president Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. AP[/caption] Titled ‘The Irreversible Rise of India,’ the summit will be inaugurated by Modi. His speech will be followed by a special address by Dr Abdullah Abdullah, Honorary Chief Executive, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Amar Sinha, former secretary (ER), Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, will engage Dr Abdullah Abdullah on a variety of geopolitical issues concerning the region of which both India and Afghanistan are an integral part. The next interesting session will be a conversation between Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Jahangir Aziz, chief economist, emerging market at JP Morgan. In the next session, Alex Hardiman, director, News Products, Facebook will have a conversation with Shereen Bhan, CNBC-TV18 managing editor. The other speakers will be chef, filmmaker and author Vikas Khanna and chef and restaurateur Gaggan Anand, who will engage in a conversation with chef and restaurateur Ritu Dalmia. In the post-lunch session on ‘How to beat cancer’ Dr Ash K Tewari, system chairman and professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Dr Madhav Dhodapkar, Arthus and Isabel Bunker professor, Cancer Immunology Program, Yale University will engage in a conversation with Dr Soumya Swaminathan, deputy director, World Health Organisation. That will be followed by a panel on successful entrepreneurship with Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Mad Street Den founder Ashwini Asokan and Paperboat-Hector Beverages co-founder, Neeraj Kakkar. Besides Modi, the other star attraction on Thursday’s concluding session will be Bollywood actor Salman Khan. The star attraction on Day 2 will be the inaugural session featuring Barack Obama. It will be followed by a special session where Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Limited, will speak with Hindustan Times editor-in-chief R Sukumar. The consecutive sessions will feature Union Minister of Law and Justice Ravi Shankar Prasad, Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, actor-writer-director activist Rose McGowan, Malala Fund CEO Farah Mohamed and CEO of CanDo Rola Hallam as guest panellists. The concluding session will be with supermodel and actor and social activist Naomi Campbell, who will be in conversation with supermodel and actor Milind Soman.