AWARDS APRIL 2014

AWARDS APRIL 2014

• NR Narayana Murthy, the founder and executive Chairman of Infosys was honored with the 2014 Canada India Foundation Chanchalani Global Indian Award in Toronto, Canada on 26th April 2014. This award is for his remarkable vision and leadership in the IT sector. The award that carries a trophy and a cash prize of 50000 US dollars was presented to Murthy by Joe Oliver, the Canadian Finance Minister at the Canada India Foundation annual award function. With this award, Murthy has joined the club of global Indians, who have remained an inspiration to people across the world. The Canada India Foundation Chanchalani Global Indian Award is conferred by the Canada India Foundation and is given to recognize an individual who demonstrates global leadership, vision and professional excellence. This award is one of the most prestigious awards among Indians around the world. 

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• Indian environmental activist Ramesh Agrawal on 27th April won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize that honors heroic grass root environmentalists around the world for their achievements. The Goldman Prize is the largest award for grass root environmental activism given annually by Goldman Environmental Foundation based in San Francisco. Agrawal, who ran a small internet cafe in Raigarh city in India's Chhattisgarh state, has been awarded for his contribution to control the unchecked industrial development throughout India. Agrawal succeeded in shutting down a proposed coal mine by Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. (JSPL), one of the largest in Chhattisgarh. The social worker will be given an individual cash prize of $175,000. The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 by late San Francisco civic leaders and philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman. The prize is awarded to environmental heroes from each of the world's six inhabited continental regions.

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• Veteran vocalist Mathangi Sathyamoorthy has won this year's M S. Subbulakshmi award, instituted by the M.S. Subbulakshmi Foundation and the Varkala-based Sreekrishna Natya Sangeetha Academy. The award, instituted since 2005 in memory of the renowned vocalist M S Subbalakshmi, carries a purse of Rs 10,001 and a statuette. Ms. Mathangi is selected for this award for her overall contribution to carnatic music. 

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• Randstad Awards 2014 was announced on 19th April, to encourage best practices for talent attraction and to identify the best Employer Brand in the country based on perceived attractiveness of a company. Randstad have awarded the software company Microsoft as the most attractive employer in India followed by Sony India as the second one. The award was won by Microsoft for the fourth consecutive year. 

• Special recognition awards were given to Larsen & Toubro as the most attractive employer in the infrastructure industry, State Bank of India in the banking sector, Taj Group in the hospitality and Tata Power in the energy sector.

• The Randstad Award was instituted globally by Randstad. Randstad is a leading HR services provider. 

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The 61st National Film Awards for 2013 were announced in New Delhi on 16 April 2014. Ship of Theseus directed by Anand Gandhi was selected as the Best feature film. Best popular film award went to Bhaag Milkha Bhaag that was produced and directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra in 2013. Farhan Akhtar played the role of Milkha Singh in the film.
The list of winners who won the National Film Awards 2013 is as follows

1. Best Actor – Raj Kumar for Shahid in hindi and Suraj Venjaramoodu for Perariyathavar in Malyalam

1. Best Actress – Geetanjali Thapa for Liar’s Dance in Hindi

1. Best Direction – Hansal Mehta for film Shahid

1. Best Supporting Actor – Saurabh Shukla for Jolly LLB

1. Best Supporting Actress – Amruta Subhash for Astu in Marathi and Aida El-Kashef for Ship of Theseus

1. Best Film on Social Issues – Gulabi Gang directed by Nishtha

1. Best Children’s Film – Kaphal (Hindi)

1. Best Child Artist – Somnath Avghade for Fandy in Marathi and Sadhana for Thanga Meengal in Tamil

1. Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film of a Director – Fandry in Marathi directed by Nagraj Manjule

1. Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration – Thalaimuraigal (Tamil) directed by Balu Mahindra

1. Best Writing on Cinema or Book of the Cinema – Cinema Ga Cinema in Telugu authored by Nandagopal.

• About the Award-

• The National Film Awards are most prominent awards given away to the film fraternity.

• These awards were established in 1954. Annually,

• The national panel is appointed by Government of India to select the winners in different categories.

• For the year 2013, best writing on Cinema or Book of the Cinema – Cinema Ga Cinema in Telugu authored by Nandagopal.

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• The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music were announced on 15 April by Columbia University in New York. India-born poet Vijay Seshadri has won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category for his collection of poems “3 Sections”. Seshadri, who was born in Bangalore in 1954 came to America at the age of five and grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He was a Columbia University alumnus. He would receive $10,000 reward for this prize. 

• Seshadri is the fifth person of Indian origin to bag the prestigious Pulitzer award. The first writer who won the award was Gobind Behari Lal in 1937. Lal, a science editor, was awarded the Pulitzer in the Reporting category for his coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University when he was working for Universal Service.

• Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri got Pulitzer for fiction in 2000 for her collection of stories “Interpreters of Maladies”.

• Journalist-writer of Indian origin Geeta Anand was the third person to get the award. Anand was the investigative reporter and feature writer for the Wall Street Journal and won the award in 2003.

• Indian-American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee’s acclaimed book on cancer, ‘The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,’ won the 2011 Pulitzer prize in the general non-fiction category.

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The 98th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Drama, Letters and Music was announced by Columbia University in New York. 
2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners in Journalism are- 

1. Public Service - Two Prizes: The Guardian US and The Washington Post (for revealing the massive U.S. government surveillance effort)

1. Investigative Reporting - Chris Hamby of The Centre for Public Integrity, Washington, D.C.

1. National Reporting - David Philipps of The Gazette, Colorado Springs

1. International Reporting - Jason Szep and Andrew R.C. Marshall of Reuters

1. Breaking News Reporting - The Boston Globe Staff

1. Editorial Writing - The Editorial Staff of The Oregonian, Portland 

• 2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners in Books, Drama and Music are-

1. Fiction - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

1. History - The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor (W.W. Norton)

1. Biography - Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

1. Drama - The Flick by Annie Baker

1. Poetry - 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf Press)

1. General Nonfiction - Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin (Bantam Books)

1. Music - Become Ocean by John Luther Adams (Taiga Press/Theodore Front Musical Literature) 

• About Pulitzer Prize-

• The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and musical composition in the United States.

• It was established in 1917 by the American (Hungarian-born) publisher Joseph Pulitzer, and is administered by Columbia University in New York City.

• Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a US$10,000 cash award.

• The winner in the public service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal. 

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• Ratan Tata, the former chairman of the Tata Group which is one of the largest employers in Britain, on 10 April, honoured by Queen Elizabeth with a GBE (Knight Grand Cross), one of the UK's highest civilian awards. The honorary British award is for his services to UK/India relations, inward investment to the UK and philanthropy. Tata, 76, is the only Indian among five foreigners to be awarded as part of the 'Honorary British Awards to Foreign Nationals' for 2014, others including Japanese and Greek nationals for services to economic and cultural ties with the UK. Tata, who now holds the honorary position of Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, had been conferred a KBE (Knight Commander) by the Queen in 2009 - a year after the Indian conglomerate under his chairmanship had acquired the flagging British luxury car brands Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).The Tata Group has since revived the company and also emerged as one of the largest employers in Britain, employing nearly 60,000 people across the country. Besides his business contributions, Ratan Tata is also recognised for his contributions across various fields in the UK including academia. The, Sir Ratan Tata Fellowship, now in its 18th year, works in collaboration with the London School of Economics to offer an eight-month fellowship to scholars in the social sciences with experience of research on South Asia to work at the LSE Asia Research Centre (ARC).

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• British scientist Prof. Stuart Parkin 9 April, won the 2014 Millennium Technology Prize worth €1m (£824,400) for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing. Parkin's major achievement was the application of a phenomenon known as giant magneto resistance (GMR) to create extremely sensitive devices that can detect tiny magnetic fields. This is of great importance in magnetic disk drives where information is stored as "bits" – zeros or ones – represented by regions of the disk magnetised differently. The more sensitive the detector is, the smaller the magnetic regions and fields need to be to store the information. This means more data can be packed on to a hard disk drive. The physicist joins past winners including the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Linux creator Linus Torvalds and pioneer of dye-sensitised solar cells Michael Grätzel. Millennium technology prize was launched in 2004 and presented every two years. The Millennium technology prize is awarded by Technology Academy Finland and is backed by Finnish industry and the Finnish state. 

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• The centre announced on 12th April 2014 that legendary poet and film lyricist Gulzar was selected for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award 2013. The award is conferred by the government for outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema. Sampooran Singh Kalra was his original name. Gulzar was conferred by the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002.He also awarded with Padma Bhushan in 2004. He had won a number of National Film Awards and 20 Filmfare Awards. At the 81st Oscars in 2009; he won the Academy Award for best original song for Jai ho with Rahman.

• The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is the highest award of India in cinema.

• The award was given annually by the Government of India for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. The award was introduced in 1969.

• Award was introduced to commemorate the birth centenary year of Dadasaheb Phalke. The award comprises a Swarna Kamal (Golden Lotus) medallion, a cash prize of one lakh rupees and a shawl.

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• Actress Suchitra Sen, who died recently has been posthumously given a lifetime achievement award at the inaugural edition of Filmfare Awards East held in Kolkata on 30th March. Suchitra Sen, best known for films like 'Devdas', 'Aandhi' 'Saptapadi' and 'Deep Jele Jai', passed away at the age of 82 in January this year. Legendary Bengali actress Madhabi Mukherjee was also given the lifetime achievement award. To recognise the best of cinematic talent in eastern India, from this year onwards Filmfare has started honouring films in Bengali, Odiya and Assamese languages. 

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• HAL received the "Most Efficient Navratna 2013" award at the fifth Dalal Street Investment Journal Award in New Delhi on 2nd April. HAL Chairman, Dr. R.K. Tyagireceived the award from the jury. The awards were presented to the various PSUs in different categories in recognition of their performance and contribution to the Indian economy. HAL has attained the highest ever turnover of Rs. 15,180 crores for the FY 2013-14 surpassing the previous year’s figure of Rs. 14,324 crores.