MANILA, July 30. The Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh, and the social worker, Shantha Sinha, are among seven persons to be honoured this year with the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Asia's version of the Nobel Prize. Mr. Lyngdoh will receive the government service award for "his convincing validation of free and fair elections as the foundation and best hope of secular democracy in India.'' Shantha Sinha was honoured for her work to help children in Andhra Pradesh. She will receive the community leadership award for "guiding the people of Andhra Pradesh to end the scourge of child labour and send all of their children to school.''

Courtesy: The Hindu, July 31, 2003

Ahmedabad: This bungalow in the city's Anuradha Society is crowded with well-wishers, family members and journalists.

And Rajendra Keshavlal Shah, 90, winner of the 37th Bharatiya Jnanpith award for 2001, attends everyone with great energy, answering congratulatory phone calls in between.

"That was Morari Bapu's call fron London," he tells his daughter, Vibhutiben, while replacing the telephone. Shah, the third Gujarati to have won the award after Umashankaer Joshi (1967) and Pannalal Patel (1985), was in the reckoning for some time now.

"I am a businessman and I love to write. I am really not bothered about awards when I write. But I am glad that they have selected me," he says with genuine warmth.

A day after the Thursday announcement, Shah's latest collection "Ha hun sakshi chu' (Yes, I am a witness) was sent for printing.

The Jnanpith jury profiled Rajendra Shah as a pioneer of the new trend in Gujarati poetry in the post-Independence period.

"His poems reveal his commitment to society at large, but it is the commitment of an artist," a Bharatiya Jnanpith statement said.

"He is a seeker of beauty and sings of it." The award carries a cash prize of Rs 5 lakh, a citation and a bronze replica of Vagdevi, the Goddess of Learning.

Shah's first poem was published in 1933, in The Wilsonian, his college magazine. Eighteen years later, Shah published his first collection of poems, Dhvani creating a literary stir. Since then, he has published 21 collections of poems.

Rajendra Shah lost his father at the age of two. His mother brought him up. They moved from his native Kheda district, where he did his matriculation, to Mumbai. He studied at Wilson College and then to M S University, Vadodara.

Shah has worked as a teacher, grocer and businessman and runs a printing press.

And leads a disciplined day. "People these days don't lead a life in tandem with nature's rhythm," he says, telling you he observes a day's 'maun vrat' (silence) during the first week of every month. "It has great power," he explains.

He describes the freedom struggle as "an important phase of my life." Shah had fractured his leg while unfurling the tricolour from a tower during the Raj. "He is prominent as a lyrical poet. His excellence lies in his songs on love, nature, god, death, modern civilisation, myths, politics, and the simple beauty of rural life," the Bharatiya Jnanpith statement said.

"His intensity of emotion and innovation in form and expression set him apart as a poet of great significance. The mystical tone of his poetry stems from the tradition of great mediaval massters like Narsinh Mehta, Kabir and Akho," the statement said.

Shah has also translated master like Jayadeva (Geet Govinda), Vidyapati, Jibanananda Das and Budhadev Bose into Gujarati.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, July 19, 2003

India has bagged four medals, including one gold, in the nine-day 14th International Biology Olympiad, which concluded in Minsk on Wednesday.

Ankur Mahindroo, from Punjab, won the gold while Uttar Pradesh's Praveg Goyal and Rajasthan's Kovid Trivedi got silver medals.

Srivats Madhavan from Tamil Nadu added a bronze to the tally, a press release issued in Delhi said.

The Olympiad, an annual event, saw the participation of students from 41 countries, including Russia, China, Thailand, Singapore and South Korea.

China won four medals, including three gold, while Russia and Thailand bagged three gold medals each.

Courtesy: www.rediff.com, July 17, 2003

Manish Bapna, a senior economist with the World Bank, has been named executive director of Bank Information Centre (BIC), a non-profit organisation headquartered in Washington.

BIC supports NGOs on projects of World Bank and other multilateral funding groups.

"Now, more than ever, BIC's role is critical, given the increasingly prominent role of civil society in promoting social justice and ecological sustainability around the world," said Bapna, who had a six-year tenure with the World Bank.

"I look forward to helping local communities and vulnerable groups amplify their voices at powerful national and global institutions such as the World Bank," he said.

Jonathan Fox, BIC chair and professor at University of California, Santa Cruz, said that Bapna's experience would help BIC achieve greater transparency, accountability and public participation in development decisions of the World Bank and other institutions.

A MBA from Harvard University and an a graduate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bapna has consulted several NGOs, including Seva Mandir (India) and Women's World Banking.

He also helped establish the Swaraj Foundation and served as a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, July 17, 2003

The apex court has held that a daily wager can not claim pay parity with a regular employee even if he was carrying out the same kind of job assigned to the latter. The court said: "A sale of pay is attached to a definite post and in case of a daily wager, he holds no posts."

Courtesy: The Economic Times, July 16, 2003

US President George W Bush has nominated Indian American Karan K Bhatia as the new Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Aviation and International Affairs.

Washington-born Bhatia, 34, currently serves as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security, a politically appointed Senior Executive Service position.

Bhatia is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center where he co-teaches a course on international civil litigation to J.D. and L.L.M. candidates.

"I'm very honoured by the president's announcement and I very much look forward to serving him and Secretary (Norm) Mineta in this new capacity," Bhatia said. "I am very excited by the challenges -- it's a position with a portfolio that is very challenging and very important," he added.

Bhatia would not comment on policy positions or the content of his work preferring to wait till the appointment process is over. He will have to go through a Senate confirmation but is expected to get through it without difficulty.

His appointment comes some five months after former under secretary for health Bobby Jindal, the other Indian American appointed by the Bush administration, left to join the race for governor of Louisiana.

"He has great potential and could become the first Indian American cabinet member," said Joy Cherian, former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

"One person who has inspired me is my father Samir Bhatia, who immigrated to the United States in 1966," Karan Bhatia said.

His father worked as an economist at the World Bank and retired in mid-1990s. "He has been an enormous influence and inspiration to me. As much as I have accomplished, nothing can compare with what he accomplished coming to a new country and building a career. I guess there are so many inspirational stories coming out of he Indian community that has come here, and I am honoured to be part of that community."

Bhatia was previously Chief Counsel for Export Administration, again a politically appointed Senior Executive Service position in the Commerce Department's Office of General Counsel.

Earlier in his career, he worked as an equity partner for Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, where he served as a member of the firm's Regulatory and Corporate Practice Groups, and was administrative Partner for the firm's International Aviation, Defense & Aerospace sub-group.

Bhatia has occasionally testified on the Hill, the last time just this June 5 for reauthorization of the Defense Reproduction Act before the House Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Bhatia earned his A.B. from Princeton University and his M.Sc. at the London School of Economics. He received his J.D. from Columbia Law School.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, July 11, 2003

Washington: Sometime in the mid 1980s Raghuram Rajan was among a batch of management rainees who were at the receiving end of roasting from an Indian CEO for abandoning engineering.

As a graduate of IIT Delhi, Rajan had earned a management degree at IIM, Ahmedabad. Following the admonition however, Rajan could not help noticing that while the management trainees were ushered into a special elevator, the engineers and workers were herded into a separate lift.

Rajan's fellow IIT-ians have done pretty well for themselves since that time, but the engineer-turned-management maven hasn't done badly himself. On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced it was appointing Rajan, currently a professor at the University of Chicago business school, as its Chief Economist. He is the first Indian to make such a grade and an astonishing pick considering he is only 40 and has such an eclectic background.

Most of Rajan's work has been in the theory and practice of finance and banking. Earlier this year, he co-authored a book titled "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists". He has won prizes for the most distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance for three successive years and three successive National Science Foundation grants.

Economics, Rajan said in an interview with this paper, was always at the top of his mind ever since he read John Maynard Keynes at engineering school.

Rajan also continues to do some work in India (he's on the board of the new International School of Business in Hyderabad), including with the RBI. In fact, one of the first calls he got following the new appointment was from SEBI Chairman GN Bajpai, asking whether he would continue to stay on the SEBI committee. He will. Rajan takes over his new job in September after the annual Bank-Fund meeting.

Courtesy: The Times of India, July 04, 2003

In a little over a month, the Madras Hotel - a landmark in Connaught Place - will be no more. The hotel has been asked to shut shop and is moving elsewhere.

Founded in 1935, and frequented by people like A.B. Vajpayee, T.N. Seshan, and Ramanathan Krishnan, the hotel has been a legend to those who were in Delhi in the 1950s. Now the land and building department has caught up with the hotel for operating on a residential lease.

K.S. Rao, a Mangalorean, came to Delhi in 1935 with a pregnant wife and eight annas in his pocket. He set up the hotel and named it Madras Hotel, after the north Indian habit of calling anyone from the south a 'Madrasi'. It soon became popular, and not just with the city's 'Madrasis'.

Now the hotel is run by his son S.P. Rao, born the same year the hotel was set up. Rao Jr is planning to relocate to south Delhi. The first floors of all buildings in Connaught Place are for residential purposes only. Those who run businesses there have commercial leases. Madras Hotel did not convert its lease - it has so far been paying Rs 281 as rent. Now the current owners (two major property owners) have been slapped a penalty of Rs 5.5 crore for the past 70 years. So the hotel has to either pay the penalty or move. Rao Jr - who charges Rs 300 for a single room and Rs 500 for a double - has decided to move.

And Madras hotel, once host to the Prithvi Theatre's troupe when it performed at nearby Regal theatre, and which has now been losing customers to neighbour McDonald's, will cease to exist from August 4 - at least the way Delhiites know it.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, July 01, 2003