Agenda 2026
Two days of conversations across livelihoods, climate, AI, governance, and inclusion. Featuring keynote sessions, panels, performances, and networking at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.
Roads expanded commerce. Electricity expanded productivity. Digital public infrastructure expanded participation. AI expands intelligence itself, and the question is whether it gets built as a private advantage or as public infrastructure. Building the model is a fraction of the work. Trust, language, local intermediaries, workflows and financing make up the rest. The plenary holds three arguments open: that distribution is now harder than generation, that closing the information gap does not close the power gap, and whether the village or the district is the right unit for AI-led change.
Most Indians live, work and build enterprises in districts and smaller towns, while cities continue to draw investment and talent. India's jobs question is therefore also a question of geography. The session asks whether districts can become the country's engines of enterprise and employment, drawing on experience from the District Entrepreneurship Mission. It looks at what separates a lasting local ecosystem from a set of separate programmes, and at what it would take to establish this across more districts.
AI systems built for India have to work across many languages, varied contexts and different levels of comfort with technology. Building a model is one part. Getting people to use it, trust it and benefit from it is another. The session covers what that requires, from language and voice to the shared infrastructure that lets tools work together. Organisations working in skilling, maternal and child health, and school education, supported through the Pragati AI for Impact programme, describe how they got from an idea to something people use.
Rural households want higher incomes, mobility and dignified work, not only security against risk. Programme design still tends to treat agriculture, enterprise, wage employment and skilling as separate tracks, when a household combines them and moves between them as circumstances change. The session works from that portfolio view rather than backing one pathway. It asks where higher and more predictable incomes will come from, what skilling actually leads to mobility, and which institutions and partnerships would let rural people choose between options rather than take what is available.
Teacher readiness will be central to ensuring that AI becomes a meaningful part of education in India. Drawing on AI Samarth’s experience of building AI literacy across 11 states, reaching 2.6 million students, teachers and parents, this session explores how the role of teachers evolves as AI increasingly becomes part of teaching and learning, what it takes to build this capability through existing education systems, and how we can prepare students not just for an AI enabled economy, but to use AI thoughtfully, responsibly and with agency.
Clear vision can transform livelihoods and quality of life but it is often overlooked in programmes designed to improve both. This session will bring together community ophthalmology practitioners who identify as development professionals to demystify vision access and show how organisations can integrate simple, scalable solutions into existing health and livelihood programmes. We expect to take away practical ideas, new questions, and a clearer understanding of how attendee organisation can help millions see, live and work better
With AI evolving how mission-driven teams work, building resilience, efficiency and effectiveness matters for delivering sustainable impact. Akshaya Patra and Joining the Dots Foundation share how they approach human and AI collaboration. A masterclass from Atlassian then covers using AI across shared goals, workflows and context. Atlassian's State of Nonprofit Teams 2026 report found 53% of nonprofit knowledge workers now use AI weekly, with outcomes varying by how it is implemented. Teams balancing human-centred values with a technology-informed view, rather than favouring one, more often have clear priorities, capacity to coordinate and less duplicated work.
Despite heavy investment in India's vocational education and training ecosystem, only 4.9% of youth aged 15–29 have received formal vocational or technical training (Economic Survey 2024–25). Rather than focusing on what young people lack, this session turns the lens on what the system offers them and how to align aspiration with access. Drawing on Pratham's decades of work with youth across India, and bringing together industry experts and civil society, the session explores: where are the gaps in India's skilling ecosystem, which models are working, and what will it take to build a system that is accessible, responsive to labour-market demand, and supportive of post-training pathways?
India has made remarkable progress in expanding access to public services - first through physical systems, and then through digital platforms at population scale. Public Service Delivery 3.0 asks what it will take to move from digital access to assured fulfilment: public services that are accessible across language, ability, geography and levels of digital literacy; assisted where needed; connected across institutions; and dependable from request to resolution. This session asks - as India looks towards Viksit Bharat 2047, how can inclusive and dependable public service delivery become a national aspiration? And what must Sarkaar, Samaaj, and Bazaar do differently to ensure that no citizen is excluded between entitlement and outcome
A rural household now receives learning material, government services and livelihood support as a WhatsApp message or a voice prompt in its own language, rather than through a visit or a form. The session looks a decade ahead rather than back at current work. Three arguments from organisations working at the grassroots run through it: whether technology can hold as a bridge to the last family at scale, what it takes for a community to talk back rather than only be talked at, and whether designing for the hardest case first expands reach.
Self-help groups, producer groups and other collectives are increasingly encouraged to become producer companies and farmer producer organisations. Formalisation opens access to finance, markets and government support. It does not by itself give women’s enterprises—whether individual or collective— real ownership of the institution. Through enterprise experiences from SEWA Bharat’s Women’s Enterprise Support System (WESS) and ITC’s Ultra Poor Women Graduation Programme, this session explores what enables women to move from livelihood and collective mobilisation towards resilient enterprises, while strengthening their ownership, voice and decision-making.
NEP 2020 has brought skills and vocational learning firmly into the mainstream of school education. Across states, the shift is already visible—in hands-on learning, new vocational pathways, industry exposure and internships. The conversation now needs to move from whether skills belong in schools to how these approaches can become part of everyday schooling at scale. This session brings together government, educators, philanthropy and students to explore what is already changing and what comes next.
India's cities are home to hundreds of millions of citizens and the bulk of the nation's economic activity — yet urban issues rarely take political centre-stage. This panel brings together elected representatives for a candid conversation on what it will take to change that. These legislators will delve into everything from lived experiences of citizens to the systems of planning, finance and governance that shape it, and finally the question of political ownership itself. Across party lines, they are coming together to talk about a shared vision: what should life in an Indian city look like by 2047?
India’s food systems are at a critical crossroads. Can we build a future where farmers thrive, food is nutritious, natural resources are protected and agriculture is climate-resilient? Join leading voices from science, government, industry and development practice as they explore what it will take to transform promising innovations into solutions at scale. Expect powerful insights, practical experiences and a forward-looking agenda for collective action and for shaping a resilient, sustainable and inclusive Viksit Bharat @2047.
Most accounts of scaling are told backwards, from the point where it worked. This session is about the part that gets left out, the stretch where a promising program slows, or a partnership stalls, or adoption takes years longer than anyone expected. J-PAL South Asia opens with its own scaling journey, including the ones that lost momentum before finding a way forward. They offer their Scale-Up Maturity Framework as a shared way to locate where any programme stands. Speakers from government, implementing organisations and philanthropy then describe what that middle stretch demanded of them, and differ on the magnitude of scale and on how to get there.
India has around 79 million MSMEs, 78 million of them micro and 31 million women-led, with roughly 90% unregistered. Institutional demand is real: procurement through GeM has crossed ₹5 lakh crore, and listed companies now report on sourcing from women-led MSMEs. The constraint sits on the supply side. Drawing on work across food, apparel, solar, e-waste and community kitchens, the session examines what moves a nano enterprise from informal to contract-ready, and which parts of that support travel across sectors.
Gig work supports around 6 million workers in India and is projected to reach 17 to 21 million by 2030. Entry barriers are among the lowest of any paid work, and 35 to 40% of those joining are entering paid work for the first time. Platform work also brings many of them their first contact with banking, insurance and earnings protection. The session examines what sits around this work rather than the work alone: urban infrastructure, road safety, consumer behaviour and the mobility barriers that keep women out of delivery and logistics.
Government projections put India's population aged 60 and above at around 230 million by 2036. Many households will still be building economic security as that shift arrives, making gaps in healthcare and education more consequential. The session looks at where innovation can widen access, including skilling and employment routes for persons with disabilities and models for caregiving. It also takes up a harder question: what separates innovations that reach people at scale from those that stop at the pilot stage.
The session will bring together a high-level, multi-stakeholder panel to examine a critical shift in development practice: moving from youth engagement to youth centrality in governance, decision-making, and organisational design. At a time when countries across the Global South are navigating demographic transitions, workforce transformation, and social change, this session positions young people not merely as beneficiaries, but as co-creators, decision-makers, and strategic partners.
India has spent a decade helping women start businesses. Whether those businesses grow now depends on something few of them have: steady orders from large buyers. This session puts the people who control that outcome in one place, and what each of them would have to change to shift it.
India has made meaningful progress on women's labour force participation. The harder question for many organisations is why, despite intent, investment and visible progress, it remains difficult to hire, retain and advance women at scale. Every year young women complete their education and find the path from classroom to career harder than it should be. The barrier is rarely ability or resilience. It is access, to relevant skills, to industry exposure, and to the opportunities that turn learning into a livelihood. The session treats employability as an identity question as much as a skilling one, and works across sectors on what closing that gap would take.
As industries face persistent talent shortages and rapidly changing workforce needs, employers have an opportunity to move beyond simply competing for job-ready talent to actively shaping the talent pipelines they need. This panel will explore how employers can work with skilling organisations, governments and other ecosystem partners to define the skills needed for emerging roles, create more inclusive pathways into work, rethink entry-level jobs and enable career progression. The conversation will examine what it takes for employers to move from being consumers of talent to architects of talent systems - helping shape the skills, jobs and career pathways of the future.
As India’s climate transition gains momentum, its success depends on everyday choices, institutional trust and the futures people envision. Ek Kutumb’s state-wide study of 6,000+ people across Maharashtra maps citizens through their values and worldviews, lived experiences, agency and trust in institutions. The research identifies distinct groups that cut across conventional demographics, offering a new lens on how people experience and respond to climate transitions. The session will explore how these insights can help policymakers, funders and communicators design more inclusive, effective policies, programmes and messages grounded in what people value.
Millions of women run enterprises in India, and few move from surviving to sustained growth. Work on women's entrepreneurship has concentrated on widening access to finance, markets, skills and schemes, which matters but does not settle the question on its own. The session draws on a listening study with women producers and those who support them across districts, covering how they see growth, what holds them back and what support would count most. It closes on what government, philanthropy and financial institutions would each need to do.
India holds public data in abundance, spread across departments, states and ministries, and much of it still needs work before a system can act on it. Running examples from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi show what changes when a single dataset is taken from existing to usable. A seven-stage data lifecycle developed by EkStep frames those cases as something other states can repeat. The session also takes up what data sovereignty means in practice: command over the country's own data, not restricted access.
Private funding through CSR and philanthropy is growing rapidly, and access stays concentrated among familiar, highly visible organisations. For small and mid-sized NGOs the constraint is often not programme quality. It is whether their institutional foundations hold up to long-term funder confidence. The workshop reframes funding readiness as future-proofing an organisation, building the muscle to attract, retain and scale funding across emerging donor segments. Participants assess themselves against a holistic, funder-vetted diagnostic, identify the readiness gaps that may limit their ability to scale or replicate, and leave with a clear, prioritised roadmap for strengthening their institutional foundation.
Disability runs through every theme the sector cares about, employment, livelihoods, empowerment, social justice, and sits at the centre of almost none of them. Over 26 million Indians live with a disability and more than 82% are economically excluded. Sol's ARC, Mitti Cafe and IDEA have each built something that works, across social enterprise, supported employment and self-employment, and bring all three models into the same room alongside the funders who backed them and the PWD champions who made it happen.
Millions of people start enterprises in India every year, and only a small share grow into steady businesses. The gap sits less in ambition than in the support around a founder: capability, markets, networks, patient capital and policy, available at the point they are needed. The session examines where scale actually breaks and which interventions have improved outcomes. Its question is not how to create more entrepreneurs, but what India must build so that women, rural entrepreneurs and the smallest enterprises can grow.
Solar adoption in India is expanding quickly, and women's participation across the value chain remains limited by technical skills, market access and business networks. Solar needs a last-mile layer of enterprises for outreach, demand creation, installation and after-sales service. That layer is the opening for women-led businesses. Two of them describe how they built reach and community engagement, with the DEWEE approach as the supporting frame. The session then turns to replication across states, and to economic opportunities for a million women.
India has an opportunity in its young people, and a paradox alongside it: the move from classroom to work breaks for many. This session examines where that break happens, why, and what schools and colleges carry in a young person's journey. Young people need to be better prepared and supported; the session will also explore demand-side solutions and the role employers play. The question: what must change in the systems that carry a young person from education into employment?
India has over 365 million young people. Talk about sport still centres on medals and elite performance. The session takes the other case: sport as a way to build the skills that education and employment now ask for, and as a route to greater mobility and confidence for girls and young women. NEP 2020 and the National Sports Policy 2025 both give it room. It moves across education, employment, wellbeing and youth leadership, and works towards embedding sport within public systems.
India has a strong and growing skilling ecosystem, with government, employers, funders and training organisations each playing an important role in supporting workforce development. At the same time, there is an opportunity to strengthen alignment across these efforts so that training, employment and long-term economic mobility are more closely connected. This session brings together key workforce stakeholders to explore a fundamental question: What could we achieve if we moved from building individual programmes to strengthening workforce systems? The conversation will look at how greater collaboration, alignment and shared ownership can help create a more connected, responsive and outcomes-focused workforce ecosystem.
While India has made significant progress in expanding women's participation in the workforce alongside substantial investments in skilling and livelihood opportunities, women's access to quality, secure and sustained employment has remained a continuing challenge. This gap is particularly pronounced for rural young women, for whom the challenge extends beyond acquiring skills. The session aims to stimulate a forward-looking ecosystem discussion on how India can accelerate rural young women’s economic participation through scalable, inclusive, and employment-focused approaches.
India's growth has widened access to formal finance, but access to economic opportunity still varies across communities, income groups and geographies. Households with little to fall back on and irregular incomes hold accounts they do not always use to build savings or manage risk. The session takes access as the starting point and asks what turns it into capability and long-term financial security. Technology is changing how people earn, save and borrow, and the session tests what inclusion now means in that setting.
Indian CSR spends around ₹34,900 crore a year, and that figure is set to double or more through the next decade. At that scale, spending well matters more than spending more. This session will explore, which partners and approaches are producing the strongest outcomes, where should capital be increased, redirected or stopped? This session also works through the gap between the data companies already collect and the evidence a decision can rest on, and where AI can make that evidence fast and comparable enough to act on.
Only 36% of persons with disabilities in India are in the workforce, against nearly 60% of everyone else. Globally, workers with disabilities earn 12% less an hour, and most of that gap holds even after education and experience are accounted for.Inclusion has mostly been tracked through hiring numbers and compliance. This session works from a different premise, that participation is decided by the systems around a job, and moves through them in turn. Recruitment and talent development. Performance management. Digital accessibility and assistive technology. It ends on what would make inclusion standard practice across the economy.
Some of the strongest long-term evidence in development economics sits behind the graduation approach, which moves families out of extreme poverty through a sequenced package of assets, training and steady support. This session takes up what it would take to run that at national scale through the rural livelihoods mission, bringing the policy view together with global evaluation findings, the philanthropic capital that could co-fund it, and the experience of organisations delivering it on the ground. It also marks the release of the Inclusive Livelihoods Research Compendium.
