Thank you for joining us on this special panel discussion where we're talking about Indian to Indian How can policymakers corporate India civil society see eye-to-eye on transforming India and find solutions to transform India? We've got a panel of distinguished experts here on this panel Mr. Jyotir Aditya, India Unionist of State for Power with independent charge and one of the most articulate voices of this government. Neelam Chibbar, co-founder of industry, a social enterprise that connects rural producers to urban markets. Mr. N.K. Singh, Member of Parliament of Rajasabha, has held several senior civil service positions in the government of India. Mr. Singh, thank you so much for joining us. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder Chairman and Group CEO of Bharti Group, one of the largest teleconglomerates in India. Mr. Mittal, thank you so much for joining us indeed. Policymakers corporate India and civil society, all of us have the same goal, all of us want to see India achieve inclusive growth, see equitable distribution of opportunities, creation of value, upliftment of society. Yet we see so much of conflict and confusion and chaos and not collaboration. How can this topic underlyingly assumes that these three pillars of society are not seeing eye to eye? Mr. Singh, I'll start with you. What can government do to engage with civil society and corporate India better, create a framework where decision making is more participative? Well, I don't agree with your thesis to start with Harsha, because I think not necessary conflict, but in many ways, dissonance has to be the precursor to collaboration. And I think in many ways, there has been a huge collaborative effort on in India, especially with regard to the social sector and social schemes for the last two and a half, three decades in India. Whether you look at the parliamentary process, whether you look at the ministerial process, there is a process of consultation that goes on with regard to any legislation that is brought to parliament, both prior to bringing it to parliament with civil society, with stakeholders, whether it may be industry, whether it may be NGOs across the board, look at a number of acts. My previous ministry, for example, commerce and industry, whether it was FDI and multi-brand retail or single-brand retail that we talked about. The discussion paper goes up on the website. And I think technology has a huge role to play with that, whether it's mobile, the internet, across all spectrums. I think there's been a huge amount of collaboration that's been going on with civil society, with industry, and you're absolutely right that these three pillars are extremely important. And I describe them as the triangle of sustainability to be able to ensure that there's economic growth. But I think a lot of that discourse and a lot of that discussion and collaboration is already on. And I would say that it's on much more in India than anywhere else. And part of being a democracy is to use Amartya Sen's famous phrase, the argumentative Indian. We love discussion. We love discourse. We love being able to voice our views. And it's through that that you actually get the essence of what must be legislated to ensure common good. Sure. Mr. Sindhya believes that this process is on. This process is definitely on. But the rise of civil society groups and the protests on the street reveals a frustration with the system. My question to you, government, governance needs reforms. Reforms means change. Politicians are often the ones who are plotting that change. How do you bring about change in the way government processes are run? Well, I think that the broad drift of Mr. Sindhya's argument I share that the process of governance itself is rather collaborative already. It's collaborative at the states, it's collaborative at the center in which multiple stakeholders in the decision making process do collaborate in conversing with each other. This goes far beyond mere legislations. If we look today, for instance, the role of the voluntary sector, the 10th five year plan and the 11th five year plan, underscored a very important role of the voluntary sector in the formulation of the 12th five year plan itself. The planning commission's consultative process had a special role for consultations with the voluntary sector before finalizing the targets and finalizing the strategy. So to some extent, of course, this is a churning process. Some of the things which have come out in public domain do require perhaps reordering of things. One of the things that we must keep in mind is that civil society has an exceedingly important role to play in terms of not only spreading awareness, carrying out information, but we need to be also mindful of defining the boundaries and limits of what is really responsible for whom. After all, there is in the constitution itself fundamental demarcation of responsibilities between the judiciary, between the executive and the executive and of course the parliament. So I think that when everybody, all the three wings need to respect this. All engagement of civil society has to be within the framework of this broad distribution. And I agree with Mr. Sundia that there is this triangle which you say is very important. But I would say that given the new Right to Information Act, there is now a triangle. Please add media into it. I don't only mean the Bloomberg TV, but I think the media is playing an exceedingly important role in bringing these issues into the domain of public debate. Mr. Mittal, corporate India is at loggerheads with government in different aspects as far as policy making is concerned. Today the government is the biggest litigant. Every sector, every industry is fighting with the government in courts on some policy or the other. My question to you and you have in the past expressed your own concerns over the regulatory environment and so on. My question to you is what do you expect from government? How can you first see eye to eye with government before you actually see eye to eye with civil society? Well again, I would say the way you are projecting that we are at war with the government is not correct. The fact is we have to debate and most of the times these debates are very healthy. And I think government is really like a referee. Most of the time when you see the debates are not with the government. They are within your own paternity. One section of the industry trying to push the government in a particular direction. The other one trying to put them in a different direction. And I think that's where the role of the government becomes very important to be a good referee. And finally come to a very, I would say, qualified and considered judgment on the matter and take a decision. So fierce debates, violent disagreements, yes, but only until the point of decision making. Once the government takes a decision, I think all of us need to align ourselves behind the government. And that will not only include the corporate India and I would say civil society, opposition parties, everybody then needs to come together to align with the final decision of the government. Do we get dealt bad hands sometimes? Absolutely yes. But I have built a company in this country from scratch. Obviously there have been good hands that have been dealt as well. One has to play with the hand that is dealt. And finally what comes out of it, you have to make the most out of it for yourself, for your companies. And that's where I would say the corporate India also should start to fully align behind the final decision rather than continue to crib and cry for more. Ilam Chibber, you are in that unique spot where you are engaging both with the government, you are engaging with corporate India in co-creating value. Why is that model working? I completely agree with what Mr. Sindhya, what Mr. Singh and Mr. Mittal have said. At the end of the day, governments don't run economies. Citizens do. And like he said, the government plays a role in getting all the multiple stakeholders doing things in the right direction together. And we're all here, we accept that capitalism is the way forward. I think everybody accepts. So I think everybody generally is talking about an inclusive form of capitalism. And what we've learned in our journey over the years is that capitalism is the way forward. And we have to look at blended capital models. And everybody just needs to see successful models. Achieving it. Like Mr. Mittal has his private foundation, which is doing great work. He's got a company that's doing great work. The government is working hard at enabling policies that help Mr. Mittal. The same with us. We have a social business. So we have an impact investors. So investors who are looking not just at our financial returns, but at our social returns, outside our environmental returns. So we're talking about triple bottom line companies. And so we have investment from Future Group, India's largest retail chain. We have a foundation which works with the government of India to create the production infrastructure. We work very closely with the Office of Ministry of Textiles. We work with the National Skill Development Corporation, skill training. So just blending that certain things private capital does best. And it needs its returns on that. It needs to maximize shareholder value. But at the same time you need other forms of capital, which are also synchronized. So we can go to multilateral agencies. We can go to private donors. So it's possible. So the example that you're citing, it's possible. I'm going to also introduce Mallika Dutt, CEO and president of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization. Mallika, thank you so much for joining in. But I want to ask you, what are your concerns? Are human rights concerns even part of the decision making process as far as government is concerned? Do we engage with corporates at all? I think that the issue of human rights has to be a critical part of any inclusive growth strategy. And I think that we don't pay enough attention to it at all. So for example, if one looks at the corporate space and the way in which even philanthropy and corporate social responsibility operates, there are entire structures that advance human rights, whether it's law enforcement, the police, the judiciary. I mean there's a whole kind of infrastructure on rule of law that never ever falls within the purview of resources that come from anything outside of the government. And those are critical structures to human rights that don't have votes attached to them. So we are functioning with infrastructures around human rights enforcement and those same enforcement structures, not just for human rights, but even around corporate affairs, around regulatory mechanisms, everything, like the judiciary and the police and others, I feel always end up getting short shrift. About 11 years ago I was very involved with working on police reform in India. We talk about these issues and all of the challenges and problems with them, but we never put the kinds of resources and the kind of attention that we need to move those things forward. Similarly, when you look at human rights issues like those that face women, violence against women, or discrimination against various marginalized groups, when you look at philanthropy and when you look at the corporate sector, the CSR world is really focused on issues that sort of align with the profit-making motive. So there's lots of money in education, there's lots of money around health, but the tough issues, the hard issues don't get the kinds of resources that they really need. And I think that we have to get to a place where we are sort of grown up enough about owning a human rights agenda in a much more affirmative and proactive way. Who takes the lead in that? Should it be the role of the corporation or should we lower the government? I think it's got to be a blended approach because I think that even in the corporate world, if you look at the whole business and human rights structures that are emerging out of the United Nations, if you don't incorporate human rights principles and values across the value chain, you're actually not going to accomplish many of the things that we've talked about over here. So it isn't just about sort of human rights being out there, but really understanding that those principles need to permeate and underlie government practice, corporate practice and civil society practice. I'm going to shift this discussion right now on the role of the corporation in society. The role of the corporation today, civil society is often accusing corporate India of being in cahoots with the political class. We've seen a series of scandals and scams that expose this nexus. Somewhere there is a deficit of trust. What can corporate India do to reach out to civil society to say, look, you know, we're all fighting the same battle? You know, there are civil societies and civil societies and there are ones who are overzealous in their approach. My own view is, you know, painting everybody with a broad brush is not correct. There are very good corporations who are doing extremely good work, both within urban and rural pockets. They have built fantastic platforms for employment. They've generated enough fuel in terms of taxes, government tax, income tax, etc. for the government to do their social programs. To my mind, largely, I think the corporations are doing a lot of good, not only economically but also socially. So my own view is that the NGOs need to actually start understanding the difficulties that the corporations face and need to also align themselves with the national interest. For example, the current debate that is going on on the land acquisition policy. That's very clearly when you're going to displace farmers or people with very limited means. They must be compensated extremely well. They must be taken care of for not only their generation but perhaps for the next few generations. But equally, if you make land acquisition policy so tough that you stop industrialization in this nation, that is going to be a setback to the entire country. I think that's where we need to also tell the social activists, the civil society movements that they need to see the larger national goal as well. The other issue that's brought up, civil society feels that this nexus, it's difficult to break that nexus and you feel that you're not going to get a fair deal. The common man is not getting a fair deal. What can government do to break that perception? To say the government is not only for India Inc. It's not run by India Inc. It's for the common man and civil society is interested in taking care of. Well, I think the best proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? And if you look at legislation in this country over the last decade and you look at the number of going back to your earlier question, the number of innovative service delivery models that have come out over the last 10 years. And when we talk about innovation, for the first time, I think in many governments in South Asia, you have a rights-based delivery mechanism that's actually come in place in a particular country across multiple stakeholders, whether it's the RTI, whether it's right to education, whether it's right to employment in a lot of ways through national rule employment guarantee scheme. So there's been a lot of good work that's happened. Now, going back to Sunil's point, I think one swallow does not summer make. You know, there are bad eggs in any society and we are all for exposing those bad eggs, action being taken against those bad eggs. But please don't forget that along with bad eggs, whether you're talking about the business class or the political class, there are a lot of people who are doing a lot of good work as well. Why is it that today India's flag is flying high? It's because of, I believe, in a huge amount of, in a huge percentage because of the entrepreneurial class. That's actually India's IP, intellectual property. You look at the start of Infosys, you look at the start of so many companies that have started from scratch and are now multi-billion dollar companies displacing what used to be multi-billion dollar companies. So let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think there's a lot of good work also that's happening in this country and I think it's important that we recognize that as well. So yes, there is always room for improvement and I don't think in life any of us must feel that we are attaining perfection because I think the slippery slope starts then and we must always strive to better ourselves and sure, there is a lot of dirty linen that needs to come out and be washed. I mean, I have said this many times, I experience this on a daily basis with regard to work in my constituency in rural India where you get fund sanctioned and then you take it down to the grassroot level and the rupee that you've taken down doesn't translate into a rupee of work. So I think the problem in India really is not necessarily funding, financial outlays, any of those things. The real problem in India which we need to tackle is really outcomes. Translation of outlays into outcomes. Execution of projects, execution of schemes, ensuring that people if for example in any REGS you've given a certain amount of corpus for work to be done actually it reaches people's pockets. That is where the action needs to happen. Mr. Singh, you want to come in on this translation of outlays into outcomes, focus on execution. Is the problem with the structure of the government? Is this the problem with the nature of our politics? Well, I think that before I come in on that particular one, I want to make a comment on something that Mr. Mittal said earlier where he felt that the government really has an important, empowering role to play. Sure, I agree with Sunil that government has an important, empowering role to play. But the government's role goes beyond empowering. Government's role must also be a catalyst. It must really foster policies and a regulatory regime which does allow entrepreneurship to flourish. And I agree with Mr. Singh that the entrepreneurial community in this country has done phenomenal work in not only catapulting the India's growth story but in bringing about a decisive change in the life quality of the people in this country. So I think that, and the other point which I want to make, something which you asked Mr. Singh there, is that I think that the Prime Minister is absolutely correct when he said that for a number of years the reform process has been stored in not extending it to factors of production. The reform process which took off in 1991, liberalized industry, liberalized trade, liberalized infrastructure, but I think it stopped short of liberalizing the factors of production. Factors of production being land which Sunil mentioned, it means labor, it means mines, it means spectrum. And I think that the regulatory process really has to be carried much further. We need to also settle some of these debates which are currently going on. For instance, is it the government, should it be the government's obligation entirely only garner revenue without looking at the multiplier effects of what availability of land can do to industry? Or for instance in the case of spectrum, should it only be to really garner revenue overlooking the multiplier effects of what a telecom revolution can bring about in terms of GDP improvement? Or in terms of minerals, should it be priced in a manner which makes for instance the cost of power completely unaffordable? These are questions right now in public domain on which certainly we need to have a final answer to the point which you raised on outlays and outcomes. And certainly I think that the outcomes are more important perhaps than outlays. And I think that the government has made a very good beginning in giving to parliament every year now an outlay outcome budget but regrettably that statement stopped short of not giving the quality of the work. The outcomes are being measured too closely from the viewpoint of reaching financial targets and physical targets not in terms of the sustainability of the activity for which that particular project was started. So better looking at better monitoring of what outcomes are, getting it monitored by a third party not necessarily by government agencies alone, having a peer group in terms of it, evaluating schemes and expenditure programs from the viewpoint of the quality, that in my view is a challenging task. I'm going to take the point about government lauding over resources i.e. land, spectrum, mines, whatever it be. What should, what do your mind should be the objective of the government? Should it be about garnering greater revenue at the point of missing made or should it be about greater common good? Should it be about long-term solutions? Well, I've always maintained it's got to be a balance. The resources belong to the nation, belongs to the people of the country and there's got to be the right application of those resources. I also think a lot of water has flown under the bridge now. We cannot now go back in time. There's got to be a transparent mechanism by which these resources are delineated from the government hands. That's not happening. No, it is going to happen now. And if you look at the spectrum now, it's set now. It's going to go and be auction. Equally, the Supreme Court has come back with a very clear mandate to the government saying do it in a transparent manner, but auction is not necessarily the only way. It's a fine way to do it, but not the only way. To Mr. Singh's point, therefore, the government will need to balance the needs of the society on one hand. Do you want affordable telecom services or do you want to only fill in the coffers of the government? You need a fine balance. To my mind, we achieved in the last 10, 15 years what nobody in the world has achieved. The most affordable, deepest and widest telecom services in this country, giving a mobile in every hand. To now, perhaps, going to the other extreme of extracting far too much money from the industry. And that is, to my mind, some of the pressures of the activists may have pushed the government into an entirely different area and they may need to balance this going forward. To my mind, have a transparent open auction process for spectrum, but don't set this reserve price too high, because then that becomes an administrative price should the auction not succeed. Sure. You want to comment on this, isn't there? Because even in the issue of coal, which is so critical to the power ministry, you've seen quite a bit of debate and confusion. What should the objective of the government be on this? So when the word balance is used, it's a conundrum. Because on which side of the balance scale are you talking about? And are you telling me that any decision is going to be accepted as the balanced decision? That's the conundrum in India, right? To me, as a public servant, because that's what I prefer describing my vocation as, rather than as a politician, what's extremely important is to identify what are the sectors where, as Sunil said, you need to achieve scale in India. And I'll give you an example, Harsha. I came back from university in 1993 back home to India. And at that point of time, there was not a single mobile phone in India. And we leapfrogged, not analog, none of that stuff. We went straight to GSM, straight to digital. And we've gone from zero to 936 million mobile phones in this country. 20 years, that's the kind of exponential growth that we've had. But today, there is discord, there is debate, there is vociferous dissent about the process of spectrum because it is a national resource. So in many ways, it's kind of like damned if you do and damned if you don't. I firmly believe that the balanced word that Sunil is talking about is very difficult to achieve unless you have a very straight thinking. And what should that thinking be according to me? And I'm no guru, but what seems to me from bottom up, what needs to be done, is until you achieve certain scale, certain penetration, certain public good, there needs to be a certain policy that's followed. Post that, one can look at a switch in that policy. So, for example, when we talk about spectrum, when we're talking about auctioning spectrum now, that once we've achieved certain scale, we talk about coal. When you're actually giving a natural resource to X, Y or Z, that's fine. But at the end of the day, on a comparative tariff-based system, the consumer must get the lowest tariff. If your raw material is being subsidized, then the end consumer must get a subsidized tariff which is comparatively the lowest across the spectrum. I have only two questions to you. One is, sir. No, I share this view that this word at the end of the day, any effort to balance has to be judgment. And you need to exercise a judgment which will stand public scrutiny, that you have balanced really the needs of government exchequer with the multiplier effect that that particular economic activity will have for larger public good. Fair point. I have two questions to you before I get the ladies in Mrs. India. One is, when you're engaging in such decision-making, what are you doing about those companies that are errant, that are breaking the law? I brought the point about building trust. Today a company violates, flouts rules, takes advantage of the system, yet is not penalized. Yes, yet is not pulled up unless the judiciary steps in. That's when civil society is not encouraged to believe that the system is fair. I disagree with you, Harsh. I think that the key fundamental today that we are facing, and I always like taking things back to the base effect. And what is the base effect? The base effect is not big organizations, is not Sunil's organization, is not states, is not central government. The base effect is your family unit. Within your family unit, when your child is errant or any member of your family is errant, and you do not take action and you do not follow that action through, the probability of that person being errant again or other members of the family being errant is much higher and same is in society. So the problem today is that if you have an errant person, organization, institution, whatever you may call it, and at the end of the day action is not taken for a extended period of time, then she will think that why should I not do the same thing? The problem today is that to me justice delayed is justice denied. And today the judicial system to me in this country takes far too long, far too long to clear his name and far too long to take action against me if I have done something wrong. Both ways. So I think, no, I'm not putting the onus anywhere. So please don't put words in my mouth. But I think that at the end of the day when I talk about the word execution, I mean it in its broader sense. I mean it in point of view of projects. I mean it in terms of points of view of action being taken. There has to be, to use corporate terminology, KPAs. Key performance areas, key timelines being set for every action being taken. I'll give you a simple example. When my father was minister of railways and I'm talking about 1985, the first rule that he brought in when he took office was that if there is any file on any bureaucrats stable including his own for more than two days, then a written explanation needs to be given as to why that file was on that person's table for more than two days, including his own. So if you actually have a rule based system in place in this country for every single thing, then you will see decisions being taken. You will see action being taken. And that's I think where we need to concentrate. I completely agree and I completely endorse and I just feel that this discussion, I think citizens need to play a big role in this country. And there we talk about civil society. I strongly believe that civil society really needs to educate itself phenomenally well. And this divide of corporate government, civil society goes once the corporate sector understands civil society better. See civil society steps in to plug the gaps which are left by the government. That's why you have a civil society and governments can't do everything. Otherwise you wouldn't have a civil society. So let's just accept that that's the way things are. But it's a question of each sector understanding the other better. It comes back to that. And it comes back to individual dialogue. I mean if he's talking rule based, he's talking about the family unit, it's true. So even if it's someone from the civil society, they need to understand what are the weaknesses in their way of functioning. Why has capitalism risen? Because it's delivery oriented. So and again we come back to blended capital. Again we come back to blended values. Why doesn't government, which is talking about a rule based system, which is talking about KPAs, which was in the realm of corporate. So it is essentially talking about a certain set of basic values that all three sectors must share for better delivery. We can't just say that the corporate sector has to have more values or the government should get more discipline. Even civil society has to look at the delivery models of the corporate sector and etc. So I mean everyone needs to wear this hat of self-assessment first, before constantly pointing fingers at everybody else. That's where I would come from personally. So I think that really what we're looking at in the 21st century, you're calling it a blended way of approaching things. Others are calling it the fourth sector and that is where there's a convergence across all of these different arenas. Because really none of the three can operate without the other. And if you're really going to come up with lasting solutions for India or any part of the world for that matter, we have to take into account this fourth sector approach of figuring out how these parts work together. So when people from civil society or human rights advocates like myself raise issues around the need for having rule of law or a judicial system that works or a police system that works, I think that it's also important to be able to hear those conversations about not pointing fingers and not sort of jumping up and down and saying you're terrible, but saying really if we don't create systems and structures that work that ensure rights for everybody, then a lot of the issues that we're talking about are really not going to get resolved. I mean in my own organization, we break through, you know, our belbejao campaign on domestic violence has certainly taken this blended approach. We've partnered with Ogilvy to create the campaign. We've partnered with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to disseminate the campaign. We have a number of corporates on word. We work with panchayats at the community level. We work with local organizations and we work with family members because ultimately violence against women happens in the family. So certainly if you really want to have effective outcomes of any sort, you have to work across all of these different areas. But I think that where we sometimes get stuck today is that 21st century challenges require 21st century solutions. Absolutely. Sometimes we carry on coming up with solutions that are 19th century or even 20th century. We're not sort of getting ahead of the problem. We're not taking a leadership role with some of the challenges. We're still trying to react to them. So if we take say the question of digital penetration in this country and phones, you know, maybe really a huge amount of resources should go into delivery systems becoming digitized, technology becoming an incredibly critical role in how they're delivered because then we deal with the corruption. But isn't that happening? You know, it's happening but it's always like in these sort of fits and starts and bits and finger pointing. I just feel like there's got to be a way in which we kind of get on the other side in a much more solution oriented way and a much more robust partnership kind of way. Just two points I think to Nilamji's and Malikaji's points. I think A, I not only endorse what she's saying but I think the flavor today in our country and I think it's incumbent on all of us to actually change that as well. What is the flavor today? Your government, here's a list of things that are wrong with you. You represent the corporate sector, here are the things that are wrong with you. Your civil society, here are the 15 things that are wrong with you. No one talks about the things that are right with her, right with him or right with him. That attitude has to change in our country because there's a lot of things that she's doing right and so is he and so is he, but no one talks about it. Why? Because, and I don't want to point a finger, because TRPs will go down if you talk about good things. Don't shoot the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger. So, the nation wants to know, correct? But that is an issue today, right? So, when I go to forums as a spectator, the things that I want to come out listening to that forum is, wow, that was a great idea. Hey, listen, I need to implement this. Why don't I look at it from this point of view? But when I go to so many forums as a spectator, all I hear about is, you know, they've done this and they've done that wrong and this needs to be read on and I come back thinking, you know, why did I even attend that forum? Right? So, I think the spirit of positivity is what we need to come out with. Point number one. To Malikaji's point also and I completely agree with what she said in terms of building that consensus and leapfrogging. She's absolutely right. But India is a complex country and why is India a complex country? Because in many ways, we have decentralized government and decentralized democracy right up till the panchayat level. So, it's like Sunil Mittal running 35 different businesses with 35 different CEOs and 35 different people underneath those CEOs who he has very limited control over. So, what's going to happen? You're going to get and it's going to be reflective of a participative democracy. You're going to get differential results. You'll have some states that are doing an amazing job with a scheme that he has implemented through his ministry. And then you'll have some states that are actually not doing a great job at all. But that is a necessary result out of a federal system. Unless, going back to the point that Nilamji said made, you have a rule-based system where then he starts taking punitive action against those states that are not delivering those results. And if he starts doing that, then you'll have civil society along with her rising up in arms saying this is against federalism and I must get my bit no matter how I execute it. So, these are the complexities that we have to deal with in India. I think first of all, I entirely agree with Mr. Sindhya that we need to move the discourse into the positive territory. And you as media will have to take a bigger responsibility and load on yourself to change the discourse. So, you're getting it from all sides now? Absolutely. No, honestly, there is far too much negativity and all the goodness that is happening in our society, economy, government is being missed out. Second point I would like to make from what Malika mentioned was, why is there not a master plan at work? I think India has been a great success because of collection of a lot of small successes. And if you really look at it, we did not build a Singapore type of story or a Korea type of story. Or when you look at digital issue, I say it on the broadband commission of United Nations. And there are master plans at work in different countries. Europe is now stitching together a broadband master plan. We don't have one here in India. But we will get there because we will have those five, six, seven, eight corporations, government companies, building those successes. By the end of the day, to Mr. Sindhya who represents the government here, I would say there is still a need of a common thread here. We need to get some of those vital legislations through. And for which we need the opposition party support as well. Right. So GST needs to go through. We need to have very clear policy on national resources, very clear support on that, foreign investments, land policy. And on these matters, I think those small successes will depend very heavily upon. And I think the government must deliver to us not a big master plan, but some of these enabling provisions so that those small, medium successes can once again put India on the grandstand of the world. Mr. Singh, I want to talk about the role of the civil society groups as well. One of the issues that come up quite every time you evaluate the way civil society is engaged in public discourse is that no one checks what they are doing. You can't have civil society groups running government. You can't have them writing laws. The job of the government, governance is with the government, isn't it? You see, I think that, you know, going back to the discussion which we had a few minutes ago, one must not only enlarge the area of congruity in terms of the different roles with different entities and organizations play and enlarge really the positive work which is being done. But I think that our fiscal federal model is entirely based on the very broad premise of checks and balances, checks and balances between different entities, checks and balances between different organizations. And this, I think, is what lends our fiscal federal model, a degree of dynamism which really few other fiscal federal models in the world have been able to replicate. Now, I think that to going to your question on the civil society, sure, civil society is, the work of civil society is currently being certainly monitored wherever government funds are involved. They are subject to the audit scrutiny of the control and auditor general of India, wherever the voluntary sector has an important role to play in the implementation of our planned projects. They are subjected to the same kind of scrutiny to which public outlets are being subjected to. So I think that it is not fair to say that they are not really being monitored at all. It's a different matter that going back to an earlier discussion is whether the boundaries of demarcation are getting obliterated in a manner which was not considered quite consistent with the constitutional framework. That is a larger issue of, as I said, in the broad demarcation of functions between the executive, the legislature and really, if you ask me, the judiciary, whether these boundaries and those which flow out of it are being respected or the boundaries are being transgressed. On that, the jury is out on whether there is a degree of overreach by any of these entities in performing obligations and functions enshrined in the basic spirit of our constitution. Neelam, is there a case of overreach? Are NGOs trying to exceed themselves by trying to tell government what needs to be done? I think we are in an era where we need a lot of improved thought leadership. I think the tools of thinking we are using are last century. It's exactly like she said, the coming century, I'll talk about my education system and my son's education system. In our education system, we were taught to be competitive. We had to come first in class. We had to beat all the others. We had to leave everybody behind. That's the way we were educated. And I love the fact that he brought the family unit thing up because that makes it easy for everyone to understand. My kids, if I said who came first in your class, they'd laugh at me. They said, Ma, why does it matter? They have been educated in a completely collaborative approach. It's all about teamwork in the future. It's about collaboration. Ask our corporate leaders if they have a team and the people who rise in their company are people who can manage teams better. So the future is about that and whether you're in civil society, whether you're in government or whether you're in corporate. And I'll take this conversation back to the two issues I think which are really going to be very critical for India where China has managed to kind of override and get things through because land acquisition and natural resources. You can only achieve this through dialogue. It's all about dialogue. It's about teamwork. It's about collaboration. It's something which all stakeholders must feel is fair, transparent and appropriate for larger public good. And it can actually be done very simply. It's a very simple solution. Don't think competition. Don't think who wins all the time. Everybody has to win. Those poor tribals, it's their land. So I mean, let's talk about how you can be shareholders in my mining company. We have shares for artisans in our company. They get shares at par. They can buy a share for 100 rupees. But I've just sold my shares to a social investor for 3000 rupees. But artisan can get it for 100 rupees because it's his intellectual property. He is carrying this craft down for centuries. So we need to value that. So similarly, you can solve every problem that this country faces if everybody just sits down and talks and respects the other person. And you know, you'll create far better shareholder value that way. Point taken. Last round of questioning. Malika, I'll start with you. We were talking about solutions to transform India. If these three pillars of society have to come together, who takes the lead? Who takes the lead? I mean, I think to the point that she just made, I don't know that there has to be anybody that takes the lead. I think that the bigger challenge for us as Indians is that there's sort of a maturity process. We've sort of entered the world stage. We're starting to occupy global public space in a way that's very, very different than in the past. But we still carry with us some of the colonial kind of chips on our shoulder. So there's one part of our identity that's very much about leadership and innovation and taking charge. And then there's another part of our identity that's don't tell me what to do.  And there's this sort of schizophrenia that goes on that I see in a lot of conversations. And you know, I happen to be part of the Indian diaspora, which I also think is an absolutely critical part of this whole puzzle. There's amazing things happening with the Indian diaspora. And I think we really need to pull together the resource talent that we have around the world to move these agendas forward. I think it's time for us to grow up, if you will, and be like, you know what? We can take leadership on all the good stuff and on all the bad stuff. Why can't India emerge as a global human rights champion? Why can't we be confident enough in our own leadership and our own values and the constitution that we've developed and the independence movement that we came out of to take our role at the Security Council at the United Nations and be like, you know what, we're going to be the new champions of human rights. I think that's the kind of head shift that I would love to see happen because I think once that happened, there's no stopping us. Closing comments, Mr. Mithal. Going on to the same point, to my mind, all three pillars, perhaps fourth media included, need to come a bit closer, get into the positive territory, but at the same time not get too close. We have to hold each other accountable. And I think that's the job of each one of the pillars of our society, that we hold each other accountable. And in terms of who will lead this entire game, it has to be led by the political leadership. There is no doubt in my mind. The only people who can lead this charge is political leadership because they know the ground realities. They are much more connected to what's happening across spectrum, whether it's the most affluent part of the world or the most poverty-stricken part of the world. They know the best. And finally, I tell you, there is no bigger canvas than government which can shape the destiny of nations. And to my mind, therefore, it's very clear the political leadership needs to lead it. We need to align our own work with the larger roles of the government, and the society and media need to hold both of us accountable. Mr Singh? Well, I think that going back to something which I said earlier, that the theme must be congruity and balance. That each of these three, and I added, not because Bloomberg is doing this, I added media as the fourth component, each one really striving for a degree of congruity for public purpose, at the same time within the broad framework of a degree of balance. Who should take the lead? Each one of these entities in their own respective sphere must take the lead with the larger public good and with the larger aim of congruity and balance. But I agree with Sunil that since in any democratic framework, the obligation to govern rests with the government. There is an obligation, and governance here, of course, means governance in the larger sense of the term. It doesn't only mean the executive. It certainly means the parliament. It certainly means state governments. State legislatures have an important role to play. So the fabric of governance has to really find the role of being a catalyst for a better India and playing the kind of leadership role with the people of India expect all governance fabrics to play. I think we need to get a quick best practice things out there, models. It's like he said, if someone sees something great has been done successfully through a blended approach, you have three or four models out there quickly. It can be extremely transformational. Password with you, Mr. India. You said your question was who should lead it. That's right. I assume that your end goal is that it should be successful. I assume so too. Now, if that is the case and my hypothesis is correct, then the person who has to lead it has to be the one who's the most passionate about it. Because passion equals, in most cases, success. So whether that passion emanates from civil society, from government or from industry. Having said that, I think the person who leads that, who has the most passion about it, must go into it with a clear thinking that he or she doesn't have the answer to everything. Humility is paramount, right? And with that thought, with that passion, with that feeling, get all the stakeholders on board. And the role that that leader has to play is not one of authoritarian role, but more of a role of being a facilitator. Right? Here are the thoughts that are on the table. Now from these thoughts on the table, how do we move our path forward if that has to be our end goal? Right? So the role has to be one of a facilitator. And I believe that only those models are successful where the leader, in many ways, even though he or she occupies center stage, is sitting in the back rows and allowing the team to do the work and getting that process forward. Because then only do you achieve all the things that we've talked about. Consensus, buying, commitment, transparency, accountability. And I think that the passions, which really the compulsions of that passion, in my view, are the ingredients of what would make the catalyst for a better change. All right. On that note, I'm going to throw this open to the audience. Anyone who has a question, please raise your hand. If you can pass a few mics around. The gentleman there, please. The far extreme right. That's right. Thank you very much. Mine is actually a comment. Can I proceed? Yes. I wanted to take on Minister Cindy's point about highlighting the successes that India has choked. And I'm impressed that, coming from Africa, we've always already been working with Indian institutions, including Earth Health, for instance, around the issue of counterfeit medicines, where we are working with them to promote the use of mobile technology to identify fake medicines, not only in India, but also in Africa, where the exporters of pharmaceuticals from this country to Africa are not able to secure their medicines, preventing the 30% of medicines that are being counterfeited from killing more people. That's a clear example. Wonderful. Sir. Invariably in such debates, we hear about democracy and the constraints of democracy. Sometimes I get a feel that are we using this argument too much to kind of put a wall and defend our poor governance and ineffective leadership? Do you want to do that? Well, I don't think, first of all, I think democracy is probably, in my opinion, my humble opinion, the best form of government. And I think that the more you discuss debate and have discord or consensus, the more healthy schemes, legislation processes are over the long term. Sure. And I really don't buy your argument that we have ineffective governance and ineffective leadership. I'll give you many examples of states where we have enlightened governments and enlightened leadership. So again, I urge you, I beseech you that for all the ill that surrounds us today in this country, there are many people, political leaders, civil society, industry, activists, that are doing a lot of good things. And our country has a very bright future. Our country has tremendous potential on the world stage. Talk about that and have that attitude, even if you may be seeing so much of despair around you.  And that's what we need in this country. Mr. General, right here please. Yeah, right in front. On what Sunil said, I'd just like to underscore, double underscore. I run a company which manufactures power plant equipment and rail equipment. It's Alstom. I can tell you that in my 40 year work history, never before in India has so much been invested on the ground in bricks and mortar, that India I can declare has the capability from the year 2014 to manufacture and deliver everything you need end to end in anything you need in power generation and almost everything in the rail sector. It's happened quietly under the radar screen. It's happened so fast, you guys haven't noticed it, the media. Back to the media. Yes, ma'am. This is Preeti Kumar. Since the session is Indian to Indian, I wanted to make a statement that in a heterogeneous society that we have today and we cherish our diversity, I think there's a crying need to understand what is our national vision. What if when you talk about passion, Mr. Sindhya, how do I become passionate about India? What is our vision? What do we stand for? What do we want to be known for? I don't have answers. Okay, that's a very important question and I'm going to respond to you as a citizen, right? What do I think that my country represents the world? I think we represent the most fabulous presentation of a combination of hard power. So economics, which the gentleman at the back talked about, Sunil represents, along with soft power. And sometimes we forget about our strength of soft power, what you talked about, the issue of diversity. You'd name me one other country in the world that has the diversity of my country. In terms of caste, in terms of religions and we exist as one, we co-habit and live together as one. There is no other society. We have the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and yet I'm proud to say that not a single Indian Muslim has been part of any terrorist network in the world. How many other countries can talk about that? So we have that exposition of soft power and hard power. Thanks to people like him, thanks partially and I would say very slightly to probably government and people like Mr. N.K. Singh who've had long innings in bureaucracy and given a huge lot to their country. Thanks to civil society and activists like Nilamji who have pioneered a new model. You don't have that diversity anywhere in the world and I stand proud whenever I go abroad because I believe that my country has the capability of not being on the center stage as Malikaji said but actually leading the world in terms of the path forward in the next century. But the big question is, that's our capability. Will we be able to rise to it? And that's the challenge that people like you and I face in this country today. I have time for one final question. Yes sir, gentleman here. The nature of decision making around dialogue and getting all stakeholders, is there a risk of getting the lowest common denominator? And if I were to go back to the base unit that Mr. Sindhya articulated and that time the mom decides that the younger kid is going to get the hand-me-down of the older kid because it's in the optimum interest of the family. It might not be fair from the younger kid's lens. Now that's leadership and that's the lens of saying it's good for the family. It might not be equally fair but eventually the family will benefit. And sometimes when I look at decision making in our country, it appears that we don't have leaders who can take such decisions, which is good for the country, may be slightly difficult for a few sections of the society to handle. And how do we really think about this? Well, I think that my first response is that you cannot get the highest common denominator by eliminating the lowest common denominator, because they have both to be part of the same matrix. And I think that as far as leadership is concerned, I would say that this country must be proud of the leadership in its post-independence period in having kept a cohesive social order, given India rapid economic growth, catapulted the India's growth story in a manner where the world has begun to set up and I see that in the next 20 years there is no way that India will not succeed to being an important catalyst, not only for improving the life quality of people, but being an important contributor to global prosperity. All right. On that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining us on this panel discussion. Thank you all for joining us. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks.


Thanks. Thanks, Ross. And yes, hello, everyone. I am delighted to welcome my friend and long-time APAC consultant and trainer, Kelly Fauner, to be with us over the course of this year, virtually and in spirit, I would say. Kelly has an extensive background in both assistive technology and an alternative communication implementation. It comes from the classroom and goes back to the classroom regularly to help teachers. So I know you're going to get a great deal of information and practical ideas from her. When I asked Kelly to do this, I'd heard so much from her and others about environmental communication teaching. And yet, this is a treat for me. I too have never actually participated in one of these. So I am thrilled to be able to do that with you. Kelly, I don't know what else to say. I know you've been doing this for a long time. I guess I will also say that Kelly has been to Alberta a couple of times with the assistive technology initiative. And so she knows from whence we come. And we're hoping that perhaps we'll actually get her back again in person before too long. But I'm not going to talk anymore. I'm just thrilled that Kelly is here. And with that, my dear, I pass it over to you. All right. Well, thanks for having me, Kathy and Ross and everybody. And actually, yes, we've done ECP in Canada in both Manitoba and in Ontario. And in fact, the videos that I'm going to be showing you today come from Canada. So I vetted those specifically for you. So I'm, yes, I'm, in fact, I'm going to be in 20 classes tomorrow. So pile driving my way through a couple buildings tomorrow to get some of my teams started. I do work in classrooms throughout the school year. I get started with people in the beginning of the school year and follow the path of students either with augmentative communication or electronically electronic literacy tools and getting things implemented. And that's usually my focuses on implementation of strategies and implementation of tools throughout the year. To get started on what we're talking about in this process through this environmental communication, teaching for kids with complex communication needs. It's really looking at some of the big issues that happen when when we have students in classrooms and a variety of classrooms that have complex communication needs, whether they're using tablets or devices with apps that they've had that have had that are going unused unless they're being told to say certain things, whether things have been purchased for them, or you've gotten somebody this school year that already had something, whether you feel it's appropriate or not appropriate, or sometimes people say that kids just play with their technology. They don't really communicate with their technology. One of the things that the environmental communication teaching process brings to the classroom is strategies that are coordinated that are open-ended enough that any tool can fit into them. You can be anywhere in the process from a school that's been around for five years and we've been able to integrate students with very significant challenges as well as students that really need to just have some strategies that they're working on becoming more competent communicators, whether you're following along with the competencies of Janice Light and Kathy Binger or where you're working on operational competencies and strategic competencies and linguistic competencies. You know what we're looking at is that we organize people's efforts through this process of environmental communication teaching. One of the things that really helps me as we get started and I am going to pull over this participant window just so I can see the raise your hands piece a little bit. And just so I can just do an auditory scan poll is if we've got any administrators in the crowd, you can raise your hand. And I know that sometimes people play multiple roles. Anybody that fulfills the role of an assistive technology specialist through here, people who are consumers yourself that you use AAC or maybe an ad to that you have a family member who is a user of augmentative and alternative communication, the OTs in the crowd, occupational therapist. Don't be afraid to put up your hand guys. That's right. Hey, hey, everybody does augmentative communication. That is definitely the thing that I've learned in being involved in augmentative communication since I was a paraprofessional. That's how I got started. Other duties as assigned, you know, physical therapist, how to implement the things that they sell. I don't see any on the group, Kelly, even if they're not putting up their hands. All right, very good. I know you know the names. And then of course, we probably have where we're going to head our two largest groups, the speech language pathologist amongst us. There they go. Bing, bing, bing. Here's in the group. If you want to type into the teacher assistant is one of the things that's coming up in the chat box. What I started out with, as I mentioned, I started out as a teaching assistant. I worked for three different teachers and classrooms of students with complex communication needs. And it was always very interesting to me in that role that, you know, kids would get assessed for augmentative systems and they would come back or the AC box would arise and everybody would take it out and then they would hand it over to be and say, make it work. We also have speech language assistants in the group. Oh, yes, they will definitely get. This is the strategy that we're going to be going into of this environmental communication teaching. Thank you everybody for doing your your physical activity of this hour. The strategies of environmental communication teaching are just to create purposes for communication. It isn't just that you've got the device out of the box or last night you downloaded some app that you saw and like, you know, what's on TV because I know it's going to be coming. We have the new television program that's hitting here in the United States. I don't know if it's on your channels yet. The program with mini driver. It starts here just after the plug Wednesday night on ABC the 21st. So be prepared. Be prepared because everybody's going to be wanting what that boy has. Something else that goes along with it. But what we do know when we know this from research and we know this from experience is that just getting the app isn't what gets somebody to talk are doing. It's the activities that they are doing that encourages communication. It is where they are that encourages communication and it is the partners that are around them that encourages communication and communication. So it is throughout this environmental communication process that we work through manipulate environment activity and partner strategies to communication. So when you have students that aren't in whatever modality it is that they are using. So whether their modality is sign language, whether their modality is to talk through an app on an iPad, whether their modality is to in a pod book, whether their modality is to device whatever that may be. That is taught just when I use the word talk it isn't just about a natural voice mechanism to speak. Too often I'll go into classrooms and I'll say things like well what did he say during class and somebody will come up and whisper to me like it's something terrible and say you know he doesn't speak Kelly. And I'll be like yeah about it as these modalities are their voice and by that we're going to be working on this idea of activity based objectives is activity. What are some of the objectives that you have that they can communicate about? Things are not new to what you've been doing or what you've learned but ECT brings them together and it gives us a focus together rather than competing focuses that we often have. It looks at what are some of the other environmental arrangements that you've probably used having too few of items you know having things out of reach or you know using peers as a purpose for communication not just talking with adults. We use prompting hierarchies strategically you know when you say what you say not saying too much you know we often have way too much adult talk and not enough student talk so all of these are going to be components that we talk about through this set we get them started in this session and then we keep ramping them up based upon what you're working with in this student. So that you know environmental communication teaching isn't something that I made up it's something that was developed on a grant from Dr. George Carlin who is an educational psychologist at the time that he was developing it he was at Purdue University surrounded by augmentative communication specialists like Lyle Lloyd, Irene McEwen actually has been seeing a lot of challenges and communication challenges and that those two things together patient issues were students were often done too and they never got to speak up for themselves in early 90s and you'll see the listing of the states there and again it's also been done in Canada in several place locations in Ontario and we've got several school boards in Manitoba that like Red River Beautiful Plains some other places in in the Winnipeg area that have done these strategies and have trainers in that area. The goals are always about increasing the communication of augmentative it's about something that you can have as a part of your bag of tricks to take with you for beyond this year so you can always say oh this is somebody that we need to be using EPP strategies with and so that you have this to be able to use and move forward with you. We look at it as a five-step something that you just make up to do but if you look at the schedule of your day it's the essence of what I consider an activity arrival at school is an activity. If you take apart a 90-minute literacy block or if you you know in the different kinds of activities that you do during reading what you might do during math class if you have recess if you have lunch if you have you know walking down the hallway between classes these are the things that we consider you know quote unquote an activity but anytime that there might be communication and you know where does that start what are the steps that keep it going and where do you end that would be activity. I'm not talking about making up games like blowing the bubbles or getting out a farm kit and playing you know with a farm kit like a language activity because our days at school are very need to be making up something spend their vocabulary that's in their communication system as a part of their regular day and thinking that they're going to learn it somewhere on the side and some pretend activity and by some osmosis or some osmotic property they're going to learn how to use it in the day they need to learn it where they're going to speak it and those are the kinds of activities that I'm talking about the regular day the regular school day and we are all a part of that and we need to be all a part of that together so that's how we prepare for communication is to think about the regular day so I just one of the things I'll have you be thinking about here is you know if you have a schedule or something to be jotting down right now is what's the schedule of your day or what's the schedule of that student's day from arrival at school to departure at school if you're here as a family member which have one or two hands went up what's you know what's the day like with your child when you know because we've had we've done ECP with family members we've done this in early intervention settings so we've done it when you've gone to the mall we've done it and when they've gone to grandparents houses so we've done ECP in lots of different kinds of community settings and vocational settings and lots of different age groups some of the things that will get started is mostly going to be talking about these first two steps what we'll talk about in the second session behind it all but until you practice it yourself it doesn't become a reality so how Ross and Kathy have set this up with the three different sessions is that you know I'm going to be getting you started here in September but we're also going to be giving you the opportunity to work along and to get feedback so we're going to be looking you know giving you kind of a calendar that you can follow along with and say you know do this by the end of this month do this by the second week of October you know steps in the gathering information you can be email I'll give you feedback you know if you're interested we can do this through a we typically do this through a video press getting video through and give you feedback this way and you'll see some examples of it in fact right here I'm going to pop into some videos of it the videos over a webinar because a lot of it's got to do with to giving us permission to only end up getting permission from one child that's in a video so you're only going to see a camera on one kid even though there might be multiple students in the video in this video with Emma getting to the beginning she's actually part of it is that she's just learning how to play the game are a part of the cct learning as well what are the things that we learn as what they give her credit for what are we going to do what are we going to play yeah we're going to play go fish okay Emma do you have any pairs okay which do you have a pair of where's your pair okay take them off one two down good job okay now do you have any more pairs I just hope that you notice that she was already ready to say something she was already you know she knows this game because she had played this game at home last member with her continued to talk her through the process which probably they didn't really need to do if you can get my little annotator here she was already something in the back of our mind her to do you know first of all the staff person wants her to go back and know the number before they want her to say the person Emma wanted to say the person's name first and you know what that's okay say what she wants to say but you know everybody's in the learning box and we have to you know think about that as as well to go along with that so that's just a little bit of them getting started and then a little bit this is about two months next video is about two months later okay three months later do you have any pairs do you have any pairs yeah some things are hard to learn but it's for staff what you do with your pairs nervous to be on video too so and I after talking to this teacher she also said she goes oh my goodness I was so nervous and I wanted her to just keep moving ahead because I knew she knew what she was doing and I needed to calm down a little bit and move forward with the video activity specific overlay I was in pro local to go and not always being on activity specific vocabulary so that was a very encouraging thing that happened as a part of their process work together as a team we know that in the past as we've done some data collection on the students and how and student progressions work together and moving students forward with their communication and we've looked at you know that the core team of the classroom teacher instructs that are a part of the team so I just want to take a little break here and see if there's been any questions that have come up that I need to answer I have seen none yeah and Kelly just to let you know I think people are if they are commenting or commenting to the the host which is fine so I I've seen them online either but I just have to say I've been smiling and cheering on the sidelines so keep going marvelous okay very good so as we dive into this all I want to walk you through kind of how you get started in in all of this and so it is to think about your classroom day look at the think about the tasks that are happening don't think about anything you know doing anything like super duper special because you know it's going to be on video because one of the things that I certainly have found out through the years and chop it up to a Kellyism or whatever it is but it's not a performance right it's a communication modality and too often our kids get set up into that AAC is some trick to be done and then put away so you know we do morning circle and I say the things and then it gets put away until I do reading group and then it gets brought you know my overlay or whatever my you know my app gets turned on and I say a couple things and it gets put away but that's not what we're looking for we want kids to know that this is their voice and this is their voice throughout the day and so sometimes we target the in-between times the in-between your formal lessons when kids are chatting with each other what are the things that they're chatting about and so we have kids that have saying when you have to borrow something from somebody we had a student that his activities focused on as he changed classes because he was a middle school student that changed you know every class period he was at in a different teacher it was about going in you know if he needed a degree to teacher he needed a degree to turn in homework what was he supposed to say if he took that up to the teacher or another person in the room that you were supposed to give your homework to you know as he had asked question notification teaching activity was it was on transition communication so transitions between leaving a room people in the hallway had to do and asking for help kinds of things so it's you know look where the communication struggles are because those can provide your best opportunities for this kind of learning um we look at it or between students and adults or you know at any so but at school it happens during arrival time departing it happens between these breaks and transitions it can help them to learn that way you know if I can't find something if I can't do something if I need help or if I want to connect with somebody working on this social interaction can be very valuable for you with the student sometimes our communication at school activities where more than one student is doing something together and this works out it might be you know just passing out papers from desk to desk um within these are you know if you have students that are doing jobs or if you have students that are a part of clubs if you have students that you know within home room have different things that they have doing um if they are a lot of times during mass group are doing during reading groups you can find these little routines that are a part of is that it is scriptable there's a clear beginning there's a clear ending and you can get a handle on the vocabulary it doesn't necessarily always have to be in the same order snack time is a big routine you know that kind of a thing it's very context specific vocabulary we also have some students and usually these are students that also have this um and students that need physical kinds of support the hygiene and physical care and dressing or students that need help getting around um or permissions to do different things behavior regulation activities because they need to regulate the behavior of others to do something for them this is not about students who have to get people to do stuff for them and so i'm going to show you a video here of Devren who is a high school student to go get money because his money for various reasons is kept to go gather his money reasons he also taken an adult with him it's because of behavioral issues he's not allowed to go to the cafeteria right now by himself so he's got to get his money he's got to take an adult with him to go to the cafeteria and that all gets done back at his um special ed here in the video later something was going to blow up so we'll see Devren going to the canteen okay and Devren uses a pod he had taken to the pod book this video i think is from several levels of it now talk more and more with his voice that it's okay to mix modality i can use my talking voice i can use my it's okay to put these things together seen this before because you showed his some of his videos at atia but um one of the things that for me is the beautiful moment there and i put in in the uh text is not only was his voice heard but he was seen and responded to as a as a a a human being right before they passed him over so that's a beautiful beautiful story kelly thank you oh yeah and you saw it from the pro because you saw it from jennifer donate who was is this speech language pathologist so she you know she's got the whole story and everything behind it yeah great story and a canadian story love it yeah yeah well these are all canadian stories yeah and in the united the kinds of things that they do now and what are the things that you want them to be able to communicate how we look at with what are the kinds of messages that they have we happens to me in the middle of my presentation from home stop it's maintained by the steps of the activity he's got to find somebody he's got to ask me to go down to the cafeteria with him talk to any buds that he runs into in the hall the canteen worker answer any questions that they ask back you you know it's term you know wherever it is that he's going to eat his his lunch and then that begins another activity you know kind of a lunchtime social activity kind of run into each other it's about not the fact that they've gotten something done you know that they've said so many items or that they said you know three out of four that kind of thing but it's communicating with the people that they're communicating with or about what it is that they're communicating with you know if you have something like oh they have to answer four out of five questions I don't want you to be so targeted that way you know if you have a cooking lesson you know that they're a part of cooking or they're a part of reading you know I don't want you to be so I don't want you to have something that you're stressed out with that you get started with more more it's got to be something that's more than one selection like I don't want you to choose something with that they're just saying more times a week because you need to have something that you get a that you they've got to do that activity so you know it's something that happens that one in the process but you know step two is going to be building that communication they already have you know maybe you're working on maybe you've got a core vocabulary with them and you want them to be using that more um so do you have a student that you want to build multimodal vocabulary with kinds of communication and so what you need to do is rather than trying to avoid the situations in which school inappropriate behavior happens you need to get into those activities and give them ways to say the things that they are now doing things instead of saying things and those are the activities that we script out to look at this communicative model I've already talked about the social context so look at if you want to do something that's dyadic if you want to target something that is a behavior regulation if you want to target something that's instructional or if you want to target a joint action routine all communication it could be something that's behavioral regulation communication it can be something that is a joint action dcp process and so that you can strategically pick your activity by the social context that you want to work on chin functions and so again working together routine it isn't just request request request request where are the social opportunities where are the you know asking somebody for information where are the things where you can direct attention and know that functions from the beginning where we'll we'll choose with one communication message and then build on it you want to have a rich activity to show life is we don't just say oh i'm just going to talk today communicative functions coming and going from students what we look at is how do we support with scaffolding so that they can learn these different communicative functions we don't just pull one communicative function out at a time we scaffold the communicative functions so that they can be supported throughout the school day and learn them is the behavior what are you going for what's their communicative modality that they're going to be using you know are you going to be using uh or do you already have in place some kind of a core board that you add fringe to it are you using um use are you using sign language are you using vocalizations and when that's you know when a vocalization isn't understood what's their backup system you know what is your system that you're going to be using well you know we'll talk more about this at the next training but think about the things that are in the environment that support communication and these are all things that you've probably learned about in other trainings you know having materials that are around providing choices having schedules you know a schedule so that they know what's coming next having picture based prompt cues if they're using their natural voice but the picture based prompts will help them know what it is that they have to say so these are all things that what we talked about you know bore goals and one of the other handouts is an exam or what happens when they don't say something that they could say because you don't want to just jump in and do it for them you don't want to just jump in and over model because too many of our students have been you know over prompted and so we do a lot of modeling we do a lot of the environment for them to have the opportunity to say something if they so choose to say something so ask open questions you know don't just be directive and tell them to say this and say that and say this because when you do that you when you just point to things on their device or on their app and when you just tell when you are say or pointing to things to tell them in a way that tells them what to say not in a modeling way but when you point to things and say say this or point to this and do this they're all they're doing is following directions when that time comes around again if you don't give them that direction they don't do it so they become very prompt dependent upon you so in a better way of doing it is to let that opportunity set up the environment for model what you might say or ask an open question you know point out what somebody just said to them you know or what you might say to them back so you'll see some examples of that in the script something through some kind of a partial prompt you could say something like this or this and leave it up to them what they might want to say sometimes prompting is too verbal for students and the EPP examples and I know we're quickly running out of time as we always do this idea of scripting is not that you have to follow everything in lockstep it's more of a cheat not everybody has experience with AAC it's a good place to start with many people but also understand that you don't have to stick to the student has something else to say follow what it is that they have to source of what we'll look at for data collection so this is an example of the format you'll see you know what you might do in step one if they still don't say it what you could do next if they still don't say it what you could do next if they still don't say it what you could do next and then you can model for them what's possible if they choose not to say it then they choose not to say it you can't ever make anybody say anything so I mean that's kind of the way it goes you've got some examples like the Go Fish script back together again on the December 15th we're talking about communication by looking at the environment the activity and your partner strategies but for right now let's focus on environment and choosing activities with us part of that but we're going to ask for nobody Kathy do you want to jump in here I sure do thanks so yeah exactly so this is a really great opportunity to take something that we're learning together from Kelly and a webinar based introduction into practice so I am hoping that there are more than a few of you who are really excited about jumping into this that being said if you are if you want to identify a student and start to look at the environment and the activity so start to do some of the work that Kelly's discussed with us today if you could please send me an email and I'll have you send it to my gov email I'll try and actually no I'm gonna I'm gonna lie if you could send me an email to khowry at you alberta.ca I'm saying I'm in then I will make sure and I put the email in the chat window and I will also send the email out afterwards and maybe we could put up a whiteboard or something Ross where I can actually put that up and that if you send me that then I will make sure that Kelly and I will help facilitate this as well and I are following along and walking you through the next steps as I said I think this is a great opportunity to actually implement what you're learning and I hope that I will get lots of emails from you all and I really appreciate Kelly's generosity in the time that she's committing to us to make this take this from from information into practice so yeah any questions that people have at this point that would be oh emails are coming in good it's fabulous any questions that anybody has for Kelly most of all or for myself or for both of us thank you Kelly that was a great introduction in a really um tight time frame so I appreciate that tremendously well the handouts we posted yeah we will actually Toby um the handouts you should have gotten them all the way to the end of this video so thank you so much for