Awards & Honours
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1st April to 15th April AWARDS & HONOURS A 12-year-old Muslim girl, studying in Class 6 of a school in Mumbai, secured the first place in a Bhagwad Gita competition organised by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). Mariyam Asif Siddiqui, a student of Cosmopolitan High School, won the contest from among 4,500 students who appeared for the competition. Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) bagged the prestigious Golden Peacock National Quality Award for the year 2015. Golden Peacock Awards were founded by the Institute of Directors, India in 1991 and are globally regarded as a benchmark of corporate excellence. The National Quality Award Scheme was instituted to encourage total quality improvements in both manufacturing and service organizations in India. Professor Susanta Lahiri, Chemical Sciences Division, Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, received the Hevesy Medal Award for his outstanding contributions to heavy ion induced radioisotope production, tracer packet technique, converter targets, and green chemistry. The other person to also win the award this year is Professor Kattesh V. Katti of the Centre for Radiological Research, University of Missouri, Columia. This premier international award named after George de HEVESY, the 1943- Chemistry Nobel Laureate, for his work on the use of isotopes as tracers in the study of chemical processes, is given to “an individual in recognition of excellence through outstanding, sustained career achievements in the fields of pure as well as applied nuclear and radiochemistry, in particular applications to nuclear analytical chemistry." Prof. Lahiri, also a professor at Homi Bhabha National Institute, published nearly 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Physical Review. He is a co-creator of super heavy element 117. A 15-year-old Indian-origin schoolboy in the UK was awarded the Institute of Physics Prize for conducting an experiment that verified an effect of Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity. Pratap Singh, a student at The Perse School, Cambridge, won the 500 pounds Institute of Physics (IOP) prize at the Big Bang Fair held at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. Subadhra Devi Rai, a senior lecturer at the School of Health Sciences (Nursing) at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP), has been named winner of the 2015 International Achievement Award by the International Council of Nurses' Florence Nightingale International Foundation. 51 year old Rai became the first Singaporean to get the biennial prize since its introduction in 1999. Paris- based Syrian-Lebanese Arab poet Adonis was chosen for this year’s Kumaran Asan World Prize for poetry, instituted by the Kumaran Asan Memorial Association to honour poets of international stature and introduce them to Indian readers. Adonis, author of more than twenty volumes of poetry in Arabic and widely translated into almost all languages is a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize for many years. Born Ali Ahmad Said Esber in Western Syria in 1930, he was imprisoned for a while because of his secular and nationalistic positions. Since 1985, he is settled in Paris. President of India presented National Geoscience Awards (NGA)-2013. Dr. Indra Bir Singh, a professor of Lucknow University, was conferred with the highest honour National Geoscience Award for Excellence for his outstanding contributions in the field of sedimentary technologies. Along with him, 22 other geoscientists were being given the awards in ten disciplines including Mining Technology, Basic Geosciences, Geo-Information System, etc. The annual awards are presented to honour individuals and team of scientists for their outstanding contributions in the field of fundamental or applied Geosciences, Mining and Allied areas. Uttar Pradesh government conferred its Sahitya Shiromani Samman and a cash prize of 21 lakh Rupees upon noted Hindi poet Gopal Das Neeraj. Presenting the award to Padma Bhashan Neeraj, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said, in view of his lifelong service to Hindi literature, he will also be given Rashtra Ratn- Sitara-e Hind award. BUSINESS & CORPORATE Bharti AXA General Insurance (GI) Company Ltd. launched 'Smart Traveller' that offers global coverage for students, individuals, families and frequent travellers. Germany's BMG music rights company announced that it had signed a music digital distribution deal with China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA.N), as the world's largest e-commerce firm firms up its bid to become a digital media empire. The deal, one of the first in China made by a major music publisher rather than a label, will bring more than 2.5 million copyrights to Alibaba. Alibaba has set its eyes on becoming an online-media powerhouse, with music, film and television. The $210-billion firm has touted the potential for selling digital products as well as physical products in China, despite the country's track record of users not paying for media content. A demand of over Rs 570 crore was raised against Cadbury India, the confectionery giant, for allegedly evading excise duty by fraudulently taking exemption for one of its 'ghost' production units in Himachal Pradesh. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to deepen partnership between Indian companies and the bank in those countries where the bank has operations. Dena Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) of India to provide insurance cover to all Aadhaar-linked savings account holders of the bank in the age group of 18 to 50 years. Godrej Nature's Basket, the food retail arm of the diversified Godrej Group, joined hands with Amazon for selling its products through the e-commerce giant's platform in India. Online search giant Google entered into a strategic partnership with consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to go after the Digital India projects and large enterprise deals. With the Indian partnership, which is an extension of a global deal signed in October, Google wants to push itself into large e-governance projects and improve the sales for its cloud services in India. Hindustan Zinc, a Vedanta Group company, and Vedanta Foundation adopted 3,056 anganwadi centres in five districts of Rajasthan. The adoption will benefit 90,000 underprivileged children in the age group of 3-6 years in Udaipur, Chittorgarh, Bhilwara, Rajsamand and Ajmer districts for five years. In the biggest oil and gas deal in a decade, Royal Dutch Shell announced acquisition of smaller British rival BG Group Plc for about USD 70 billion to create the world’s largest independent producer of LNG. The deal, the first major acquisition since oil prices began to slump last July, would be among the largest oil-and-gas deals of past two decades and the biggest in last 10 years. Online marketplace Snapdeal announced to buy mobile recharge service Freecharge in the biggest-ever deal in the country’s start-up domain, betting that it can sell products and services to millions of users who currently use the Internet company only to recharge their mobile phones. Jasper Infotech, which owns and operates online marketplace Snapdeal.com, picked up a majority stake in digital financial services platform RupeePower.com as part of its plans to create a financial services marketplace. In August last year, Snapdeal had, in partnership with several banks and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs), launched Capital Assist, which is aimed at enabling its sellers by helping them meet their working capital requirements as they scale up their businesses on the marketplace platform. Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment arm, completed the acquisition of Mumbai based venture lender SVB India Finance, an arm of Nasdaq listed SVB Financial Group, for Rs 300 crore. The entity is being rebranded InnoVen Capital India. It will roll out operations in Singapore later this year as part of plans to establish itself as a pan-Asia venture lender. COMMITTEES / SCHEMES / POLICIES Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry constituted Ajay Shankar committee to simplify clearances. The Expert Committee examines the possibility of replacing multiple prior permissions with pre-existing regulatory mechanism and prepares draft legislation for this purpose. To expedite the implementation of river interlinking programme, the Central Government constituted a task force under former UPSC member B N Navalawala to forge a consensus amongst the states on the issue. The Ministry of Water Resources has constituted the task force to look into all the issues related to interlinking of rivers. President Pranab Mukherjee gave his assent to re-promulgate the Land Acquisition Ordinance as per Article 123 of Constitution. The new ordinance includes 9 amendments that were part of Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015. The Union Cabinet approved amendments to the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2013 to protect the interests of consumers and curb the malpractices in the real estate sector. The bill seeks to create a uniform regulatory mechanism across the country and enhance the growth of construction sector. It also ensures to bring transparency and accountability in the real estate sector to access capital and financial markets essential for its long term growth. The Government notified the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act, 2014 and the Constitution (Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014 for bringing in a change in the existing system for appointment of Judges in Supreme Court and High Courts. The Acts provide for a transparent and broad-based process of selection of Judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts by the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC). To boost eco-friendly vehicles sales, the government launched FAME India scheme that envisages to provide Rs 795 crore support till 2020 for the manufacturing and sale of electric and hybrid vehicles. The scheme envisages providing demand incentives to electric and hybrid vehicles -- from two-wheeler to buses -- in range of Rs 1,800 to Rs 66 lakh.