Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships and Akademi Awards for 2012

The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee conferred the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships (Akademi Ratna) on violinist N Rajam, Grammy award-winning percussionist T H Vikku Vinayakram and veteran playwright Ratan Thiyam for the year 2012, on 28 May 2013. The awards were given away at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. Apart from these three personalities, other 34 artists were given away the Akademi awards (Akademi Puraskar). These artists were from different spheres such as theatre, music, dance and traditional arts. For the overall contribution to the performing arts, Nandini Ramani and Arun Mahadev Kakade were also given away the awards.

About the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowships (Akademi Ratna)

• Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship and Awards are given by the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India’s National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama.

• It is the highest national recognition given to practicing artists.

• The Akademi Award, also known as Akademi Puraskar has been conferred on people since 1952 and the Akademi Fellow honour also called Akademi Ratna has been conferred since 1954.

• Akademi Fellowship carries a prize amount of three lakh rupees and the Akademi Awards carry a prize amount of one lakh rupees, besides Tamrapatra and Angavastram.

• The Fellowships are restricted to forty living recipients at any given time. New Fellows are elected upon the demise of an existing Fellow.

• Karaikudi Sambasiva Aiyer, Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar, Allauddin Khan, Hafiz Ali Khan, and Prithviraj Kapoor were the first awardees of Sangeet Natak Akademi fellowships.

About the Sangeet Natak Akademi

• Sangeet Natak Akademi was established by the Government of India in 1953 and is India’s National Academy of Music, Dance and Drama.

• It is responsible for promotion and preservation of the performing arts of the country.

• One of the important activities of the Akademi is to honour artists of outstanding individual achievement in the fields of music, dance and drama.

UIDAI won 21st Century Achievement Award 2013

The jury of International Data Group (IDG) Computerworld Honours Program, Computerworld Honors Laureate selected UIDAI for 21st Century Achievement Award 2013 under the category Economic Development for the pivotal role played by UIDAI in leveraging technology to change people lives, streamline delivery of welfare services and provide opportunity to people to participate more fully in society. The Computerworld Honors Program awards were presented at the Gala Evening and Awards Ceremony at the Andrew W.Mellon Auditorioum in Washington in the second week of June 2013. The Computerworld Honors Program, recognizes and honours visionary application of Information Technology promoting positive social, economic and social change. There were 24 nominees under this category from different parts of the World. The initiative of Government of India was widely appreciated by the participants at the function.

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Kevin Barry, the Irish author won 100000 Euro International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his debut novel, City of Bohane. The book has described, the Ireland of 2053 a place where one would not want to be alive. This is not a future of shiny technology but one in which history turns in circles and quirks an eyebrow at the idea of ‘progress. To win the award, Kevin Barry managed to beat 153 titles nominated from 160 libraries of 44 countries. City of Bohane was nominated by Cork, Dublin and Limerick City Libraries. Barry is the third Irish author to win this award.

About the Award

The prize is open for novels in any language that has been published in or translated into English and is organised by Dublin City Libraries on behalf of Dublin City Council. The award is sponsored by IMPAC, an international management productivity company. Previous winners of the award include to Colm Toibin in 2006 for The Master, Gerbrand Bakker in 2010 for The Twin, Colum McCann in 2011 for Let the Great World Spin, Jon McGregor in 2012for Even the Dogs.

66th Cannes Film Festival

Blue is the Warmest Colour (La Vie D’Adèle Chapitres 1 et 2) which is directed by French-Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche won the top honour - the Palme d’Or - at the 66th Cannes Film Festival. The awards were decided after reviewing 20 films in competition by a nine-member jury led by US filmmaker Steven Spielberg, joined by Australian actress Nicole Kidman and Oscar-winning director Ang Lee among others. The film is a three-hour love story based on a graphic novel by Julie Maroh starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. It is basically a story about a teenage girl who falls in love with a slightly older woman. Overall, the movie is about sexual awakening, heartbreak, and self-discovery. With this the runner-up award, the Grand Prix, went to Inside Llewyn Davis which is directed by the Coen brothers. It is important here to note that the Coen brothers had won the Palme d’Or in 1991. Also, the Jury Prize went to Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda for Like Father, Like Son.

Some other Important Awards

• Mexico’s Amat Escalante won the best director prize for his film Heli.

• Hollywood veteran actor Bruce Dern took the best actor prize for his performance in Nebraska.

• Argentine-born Frenchwoman Berenice Bejo was awarded the best actress prize for her role in The Past.

UN Public Service Award

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on 28 June 2013 received the prestigious United Nations Public Service Awardfor his mass contact programme initiative. The award was presented at a function held in Bahrain by United Nations Under Secretary General Wu Hongbo. Chandy bagged the first place in the category Preventing and Combating Corruption in the public. He received the award for the mass contact programme conducted by him in 2011 after becoming the Chief Minister for the second time. A total of 5.5 lakh petitions were received in 2011, of which three lakh were resolved.

Financial assistance of 22.68 crore rupees was given to the people during the programme. The highlight of his mass contact programme was that the problems of the people could be directly communicated to the Chief Minister without any intermediary.

Knighthood for Services in Health Sector

Prof Michael Stratton, the scientist who made identification of the genes causing breast cancer, was awarded prestigious knighthood in the Queen Elizabeth II Birthday Honours. The research conducted by the Prof Michael Stratton on Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute helped considerably in diagnosis as well as treatment of cancer. Apart from Michael Stratton, three more knighthoods were awarded in healthcare sector. These included Professor Andrew Hall for services to public health, Professor Peng Tee Khaw for research in glaucoma as well as Stephen O’Rahilly for research on the causes of human obesity.

About Michael Stratton

• Michael Stratton is the Director of Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire.

• He was the founder of Cancer Genome Project, which was directed towards hunt for the genes which cause different kinds of cancers.

• The breast cancer gene called BRCA2 was identified by him as well as his team in 1994.

About the Knighthood honour

Knight, in general, is the person who is granted the honourary title of knighthood by political leader or a monarch. In early days, Knighthood was conferred on the mounted warriors in Europe.

However, since Early Modern period, this title is considered as absolutely honorific.

French award for Contribution to Protection of Human Rights

Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA), an NGO in Uttarakhand on 6 June 2013 bagged a French award for its contribution to protection of human rights. The Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) is a voluntary organisation based in Nainital. It was honoured with Special Mention of the 2012 Human Rights Prize of the French Republic in appreciation of its work in the field of defence of socio-economic rights and sustainable development of people.

CHEA was involved in strengthening community forestry institution (Van Panchayats) for women’s empowerment and affirmation of economic and social rights of rural communities in the Indian Central Himalayan region. The award basically consists of a medal and a diploma and it was presented to director of Central Himalayan Environment Association (CHEA) by the Ambassador of France Frans Richier at a function in Delhi.

Award for God Particle Discovery

The Asturias Foundation announced on 29 May 2013 that Physicist Peter Higgs and Francois Englert and the European organization for Nuclear Research won the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in recognition of their work establishing the existence of the so-called God particle. Higgs and Englert - along with the late Robert Brout - formulated in 1964 the existence of a subatomic particle that came to be known as the Higgs boson. But it was only in 2012 that the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, was able to confirm the existence of this particle through experiments conducted with the Large Hadron Collider.

This finding, which has been called the greatest discovery in the history of the understanding of Nature, enables a glimpse at what happened immediately after the Big Bang.

Higgs is a native of Newcastle, England, who taught for 16 years at the University of Edinburgh. Englert is an 80-year-old Belgian, is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. Along with a cash prize of 50000 euros (about 64000 US dollars) and a sculpture by Joan Miro, each award recipient gets a diploma and an insignia bearing the Prince of Asturias Foundation’s coat of arms. Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe will give the award at a ceremony in the northern city of Oviedo. The prize is regarded as the Ibero-American world’s equivalent of the Nobels.

Golden Goblet at Shanghai Film Festival

Russian film, The Major won Golden Goblet on 23 June 2013 for best feature film at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival. The film talks about how things go out of control when corrupt police officers try to cover up a hit-and-run case for their colleague. The jury headed by Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper opined that the film revealed a complicated Russian society, as well as great Russian art and storytelling tradition.

Its director, Yuri Bykov won awards for best director and outstanding artistic achievement. The Jury Grand Prix went to Sweden film Reliance directed by William Olsson. The film also won awards for best screenplay and best cinematography. Hong Kong actor Nick Cheung won the Golden Goblet for best actor for the film Unbeatable. Ten-year-old Malaysian child star Crystal Lee became the youngest actress to win the award for best actress in the festival’s history. Some 1665 films produced in 112 countries were screened during the nine-day festival that ran from 15 June to 23 June 2013.

Indian Healthcare Visionary of the Decade Award

Harvard trained and internationally acclaimed Indian American Cardiac Surgeon and Healthcare Economist Dr Mukesh Hariawala on 28 June 2013 was recently conferred the prestigious Indian Healthcare Visionary of the Decade award at a glittering ceremony of the 4th Annual Business Leadership Conclave at Hotel Leela in Mumbai.

Also felicitated with other prestigious awards were industrialists Ratan Tata , Transformational Leader of the Decade and Mukesh Ambani who is the Millennium Business Leader of the Decade. After the award ceremony, Mukesh convincingly laid out a 100 Billion Dollar Medical Tourism opportunity for India as a byproduct of US President Barack Obama’s new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act which unofficially is also termed Obamacare.

Walter Scott Prize 2013

Tan Twan Eng, the Malaysian author was declared as the winner of Walter Scott Prize for his English fiction novel The Garden of Evening Mists. He got 25000 pounds for the prize. The ceremony was held in Melrose, situated at the Scottish borders. He won the award during Borders Book Festival which was held from 13 June 2013 to 16 June 2013. The prize was given to him by Duke of Buccleuch. The Garden of Evening Mists is first novel by any overseas writer that has won 4-year-old Walter Scott Prize. According to the new rule introduced in 2012, authors from Commonwealth were made eligible for the entry into the competition for this prize.
The Garden of Evening Mists won over the strong shortlist which included Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. There were also other novels by English writers such as Anthony Quinn, Rose Tremain and Pat Barker as well as Australian author Thomas Keneally. Tan Twan Eng on 14 March 2013 was also announced as a winner of the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize. He became the first Malaysian author to win the most prestigious literary prize of Asia for the same novel The Garden of Evening Mists.

About the Walter Scott Prize

• The Walter Scott Prize for the historical fiction was founded in the year 2010.

• It is a British literary award.

• With the prize money of 25000 pounds, Walter Scott Prize is one among the largest literary awards in the UK.

• Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch were the creators of this award.

• The winner of the prize is announced every year in June in Melrose at Borders Book Festival.

Eligibility for a book to enter into competition for Walter Scott Prize

• It is important for a book to be published first in Ireland, UK or Commonwealth in order to be eligible for this prize.

• Because the award is given for historical fiction, therefore a historical fiction is defined as the one where the primary events of the book take place more than 60 years ago.

India Abroad Publisher’s Special Award for Excellence 2012

Legal Activist and the youngest daughter of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Amrit Singh received the India abroad publisher’s special award for excellence 2012. Amrit is senior legal officer for national security and counterterrorism at the Open Society Justice Initiative based at the New York. Amrit Singh was given the award at the event organized by India Abroad on 21 June 2013 for her report Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Torture and Extraordinary Rendition released in February 2013. The report stated that 54 nations comprising Pakistan helped the US in its war against al-Qaida by hosting CIA prisons on their territories and detaining, interrogating and torturing terror suspects. Congressman Bera was honoured as the India Abroad Person of the Year for Political Achievement 2012. He is only the third Indian-American to be elected to the US congress.

World Street Food Congress

Indian street food vendors Ashok Sah and Vijay Chaudhary won the critics award at the World Street Food Congress in Singapore. The Congress was held from 31 May 2013 to 9 June 2013. They had gone there as a part of a team of Indian street food vendors. Alongside the World Street Food Congress, a World Street Food Dialogue was also held. It discussed the responses of the national and provincial governments in India towards promoting street food vending as well as social-economic dynamics of street food vending.

NTR Literary Award

Manoj Das, the Noted Oriya writer on 28 May 2013 was presented the NTR National Literary Award. The NTR National Literary Award was chosen by the jury of NTR Vignana Trust, headed by its chairperson N. Lakshmi Parvati which carries a cash prize of 1 lakh Rupees and citation. The award recognises Das’s contribution to literature, both in Odiya and English. Manoj Das was also conferred with Padma Sri award and had his stories figured in the compilation of best literary works released in the US. The award is instituted in memory of the actor-turned-politician who made a mark for his struggle to protect Telugu pride. He has penned down his first novel at the age of 14. The award is coincidently given to Manoj Das on the same day which is marked by the birth anniversary of former Chief Minister and Telugu Desam

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