The seventh edition of the India Today Conclave got off to a start with India Today Editor-in-Chief Aroon Purie calling for a leadership change in the global arena.

Delivering the welcome address at the event, Purie said what the world needs is a leadership that is "bold, energetic, impatient and willing to shed the burdens of the past".  A leadership that can leave the relics of the past behind and move towards a world challenged by issues that are "political and economic", he said.

Talking of the century gone by, Purie said: "The last century was a grand narrative of extreme passions. Its history was shaped by revolutions, liberations and exterminations. Nations were born, built and subjugated. It was an age of leaders larger than life. Leaders with a capital L. The most messianic of them promised heaven on earth, and gave hell."

But this century "needs a leadership that is not subordinated to ideology but ideas," he said.

Aroon Purie at the Conclave's inaugural evening

In China where changes have never been dramatic, "we can't miss a gradual generational shift in the higher echelons of the country. And, the leadership is getting more sensitive to the public sentiment", he said.

Speaking of India's neighbour Pakistan, Purie said even in a bonsai democracy, "democracy is an ideal worth fighting for, and worth dying for too". India too would soon be deciding her next leadership in her true Indian tradition where "general elections would be a referendum on competing ideas of India".

Speaking of India, he said, "The much celebrated India of a million possibilities requires a leadership whose gaze extends beyond the expediencies of short-term politics."

Reliving his moments from the past six conclaves, Purie said there comes a time for him which he calls the "Conclave Moment".  As the host he took great pride that in the "calendar of ideas, the India Today Conclave has become a much anticipated event".

The previous conclaves have sustained India Today's faith in the "transformative powers of a questioning mind," he added.