OPENING CEREMONY – DAY 2 – 16TH October
The ceremony started off with the singing of the college prayer followed by the lighting of
lamp by Mr. Subir Hari Singh, the principal and the members of the board of governors
present. The TiltShift introductory video was a unique way to set the mood for the
conference. The choreography performed by the students of the Daly College refreshed
everyone’s mood.
This edition of TiltShift is taken up with the theme of ‘Human rights’ or ‘The rights
approach’. A video was played to brief the audience on what they would be working on in
the next few days. This summit focuses on the human rights violations of different groups of
society. The video clarified that the 30 Human rights laid down by the UN in the ‘Universal
declaration of human rights’ are universally accepted. It took each one of us in the gathering
back to 700 BCE, to the reign of Cyrus the Great who introduced the concept of human
rights to the world. This concept was violated at extreme levels by some popular diplomats,
much later in such a manner that it was on the brink of extinction. On the other hand, there
were a few strong revolutionaries like Mahatma Gandhi, who fought all their lives, trying to
restore these rights. These incidences led to the formation of the UN.
This video was followed by the principals’ address. He expressed his delight in hosting this
summit. Sir defines education in his own words as a series of experiences from which we
learn and grow. He emphasised on the importance of Internationalism in DC and also spoke
about a few other events like the RS International conference, The G20 Summit, Eye camp,
MUNs, etc. which DC have hosted in the past. He extended his overwhelming gratitude
towards Raffles Institute in Singapore, the initiators, who brought TiltShift to DC in India. He
further thanked all those who were involved in organizing this summit.
This was followed by the speech of Mr. Subir Hari Singh, the keynote speaker of the first day
of the conference. A distinguished IAS officer, alumnus of the Doon School, Dehradun and
St.Stephens in Delhi, he is also a commercial pilot licence holder speak volumes about his
multifaceted personality. Mr Singh spoke on HUMAN RIGHTS AND MIGRATION. He covered
the topics Migration, International Law, Human Rights, the Current Scenario and the Rural
and Urban transhumance.
He started by defining migration and explained the two types of it, i.e Voluntary and
Involuntary. He strengthened his topic with a few examples of Africans migrating to
Australia, Europeans migrating from Central Asia to North-West India, etc. He further
classified migration into 3 categories. They are Labour migration, Refugee migration and
Urbanisation. In India, post partition in 1947, 14 million people moved to the new state, and
4 people from Bangladesh moved into India. He continued to state the immediate causes of
this high scale migration. The causes stated are famine, draught, climate, natural disaster,
other disasters ,etc.
Mr Singh pointed out that the International Law was one threat to Human rights. The
UN stepped in and the various committees monitored the various rights. He briefed the
delegates about the overall scenario of human rights in India. He was precise in saying that
the immediate causes in India are Xenophobia and racism of high order. He enlightened the
gathering about the major ‘fault lines’ in the world- the US-Mexico border, the ongoing war
in Syria and Iraq, Turkey and the northern coast of Australia. He concluded his informative
speech by saying that though the laws existed the effectiveness of such laws in protecting
human rights of the migrants depended basically on the individual countries.
During the question answer session that followed his speech our principal Dr. Sumer Singh
cited the example of Spain where schools are being developed in rural areas to contain the
population there to which Mr. Subir Hari Singh concluded that development of internet will
be able to solve this problem in near future only to some extent but may not be able to
contain it totally.
All the delegates were fortunate enough to listen to such an illuminating and informative
discourse which would help them think and look beyond the visible.