PERSONS MARCH 2016

PERSONS MARCH 2016

• Nandita Bakshi: Indian-American Nandita Bakshi has been appointed the President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of the West, a unit of French banking giant BNP Paribas.
  
  Ms Bakshi, will replace Michael Shepherd as Bank of the West's next President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and is expected to join the bank as a CEO-in-training on April 1 and will take the helm officially on June 1. She earned a bachelor's degree in History at the University of Calcutta and a masters in International Relations and Affairs at Jadavpur University.
  
  A New England News 'Woman of the Year' award recipient in 2002, Ms Bakhshi also serves on the board of the Consumer Bankers Association.
  
• Susheela: Renowned playback singer P. Susheela Mohan, who has won several awards and earned accolades in a career spanning five decades, has added two more to her awards cabinet.
  
  She has now been recognised by both the Guinness World Records and Asia Book of Records for recording the most number of songs in Indian languages.
  
  While Guinness World Records has credited her for singing 17,695 songs (solo, duet and chorus-backed songs) in 12 Indian languages, the Asia Book of Records has recognised her for singing close to 17,330 songs.
  
• Faustin Archange Touadera: In Central African Republic, newly elected President Faustin Archange Touadera took the oath of office on 29th March, ushering in the first elected leader since Muslim rebels overthrew the government more than three years ago.
  
  The inauguration came as former coloniser France said its troops plan to leave the country by the end of the year. Touadera, a former math Professor and Prime Minister won the February 14 runoff with nearly 63 percent of the vote. Touadera's presidency puts an end to a two-year transitional government that came into force in early 2014.
  
• Thi Kim Ngan: Vietnam named a woman for the first time to the influential role of chairperson in its National Assembly on 31st March - the country's fourth most powerful position. Veteran lawmaker and senior Communist Party official Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan was elected with 95.5 per cent of votes after a poll in the country's 500-strong legislative body
  
  Her appointment means she is the highest ranking female party official. The majority of Communist Party officials are men, but women are reasonably well represented in the ranks, with around 25 per cent of National Assembly delegates being female.
  
  Vietnam is in the midst of a leadership handover after the country's top communist leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, was reelected as party secretary general in January in a victory for the party's old guard.
  
• Rajiv Gauba: he is an IAS officer of Jharkhand cadre (1982 batch), and he has taken charge as Secretary, Ministry of Urban Development. Prior to this, he was Chief Secretary, Jharkhand for 15 months. Apart from Ministries of Home, Defence, Finance, Environment and Forests and Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Gauba has also served in the International Monetary Fund representing the country for four years on the Board of IMF.
  
• Permod Kohli: Retired Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court Justice Permod Kohli has been appointed as the Chairman of Central Administrative Tribunal. It was approved by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet. Justice Kohli will be in the post for a period of five years with effect from the date of assumption of charge of the post or till attaining the age of 68 years, whichever is earlier.
  
   
• Andy Grove: Andy Grove, the Silicon Valley elder statesman who made Intel into the world's top chipmaker and helped usher in the personal computer age, died on 21st March
  
  Grove was Intel’s first hire after it was founded in 1968 and became the practical-minded member of a triumvirate that eventually led “Intel Inside” processors to be used in more than 80 per cent of the world’s personal computers.
  
  With his motto “only the paranoid survive,” which became the title of his best-selling management book, Grove championed an innovative environment within Intel that became a blueprint for successful California start-ups.
  
  Grove, who was named man of the year by Time magazine in 1997, encouraged disagreement and insisted employees be vigilant of disruptions in industry and technology that could be major dangers - or opportunities - for Intel.
  
  In doing so, he could be mercurial and demanding with employees who he thought were not doing enough and in 1981 required the staff to work two extra hours a day with no extra pay.
  
• Ananda Gajapati Raju: Former minister Pusapati Ananda Gajapathi Raju passed away in a corporate hospital in Visakhapatnam on 26th March, following a brief illeness.
  
  Besides serving as the Health and Education Minister in the State Cabinet of Andhra Pradesh, Ananda Gajapathi Raju was elected twice as Lok Sabha member from Vizianagaram.
  
  He is also the hereditary trustee of Sri Varaha Lakshmi Nrusimha Swamy Devasthanam of Simhachalam as well as the chairman of MANSAS Trust, one of the top educational institutions in the region. The learned scholar with two PhDs (one in economics from Andhra University and another in education from the US), is known for his patronage for education institutions, research and also cricket.
  
• Mother Teresa: Pope Francis on 15th March approved sainthood for Mother Teresa, the missionary nun who became a global symbol of compassion for her care of the sick and destitute. The pontiff set September 4 as the date for her canonisation, elevating her to an official icon for the Catholic faith.
  
  The move comes 19 years after the death of the Albanian nun who dedicated most of her adult life to working with the poor of Kolkata.
  
  There was no immediate word from the Vatican on the location of the canonisation ceremony, which is expected to take place in Rome with a thanksgiving ceremony held at a later date in Kolkata where Teresa is buried.
  
  Teresa, who was 87 when she died in 1997, was revered by Catholics and many others around the world.
  
  Teresa took the first step to sainthood in 2003 when she was beatified by Pope John Paul II following the recognition of a claim she had posthumously inspired the 1998 healing of a critically-ill Bengali tribal woman.
  
  Last year she was credited by Vatican experts with inspiring the 2008 recovery of a Brazilian man suffering from multiple brain tumours, thus meeting the Church’s standard requirement for sainthood of having been involved in two certifiable miracles.
  
• Ritu Beri: Noted fashion designer Ritu Beri has been appointed advisor to the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) for the promotion of khadi across the world.
  
  Announcing her appointment, KVIC Chairman Vinay Kumar Saxena said, Beri would advise on introduction of state of the art multi-fashion designs and styles in khadi readymade garments and on promotion of Khadi in India and abroad.
  
• Lloyd S. Shapley: He is a researcher of strategic decision-making called "game theory" who had won the 2012 Nobel Prize in economics, passed away on 13th March. The American mathematician had come up with formulas to match supply and demand in markets.
  
• Anita Brookner:The Booker prize-winning British author and renowned art historian Anita Brookner has died, according to a notice in the Times. Brookner, who won the Booker in 1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac, was a bestselling author who wrote 25 books. She died on 10th March.
  
• Shehnai: Eminent Shehnai exponent Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan, one of the best-known players of the shehnai after the legendary Bismillah Khan, passed away in Kolkata on 16th March, following a prolonged illness. Doordarshan's Signature Tune which is embedded in our minds was composed by Ustad Ali Ahmed Hussain Khan and Pandit Ravi Shankar in 1974.
  
• Enda Kenny: Enda Kenny has tendered his resignation as Irish Prime Minister but will continue as acting Prime Minister until a successor is appointed.
  
   
• Ray Tomlinson: E-mail inventor, Ray Tomlinson, passed away in Washington on 6th March. Tomlinson invented direct electronic messages between users on different machines on a certain network in 1971. Before then, users could only write messages to others using the same computer.
  
• MV Rao: Noted agriculture scientist and one of the key persons in India’s Green Revolution, MV Rao, passed away on 8th March in Hyderabad.
  
  In the company of Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, MS Swaminathan, C Subramanian and many others who ushered in the Green Revolution during the early 1960s, Mangina Venkateswara Rao did his bit in testing and identifying the best varieties of wheat from Mexico that were grown in the country and changed the agriculture scenario forever.
  
  Born on June 21, 1928 at Perupalem, in West Godavari District in Andhra Pradesh, Rao joined the joined the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in 1956 as an assistant wheat breeder, after his master’s degree from the Purdue University.
  
  He became the coordinator of the All India Wheat Improvement Project in 1971. Rao was asked by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to head the Technology Mission on Oilseeds (one of the four tech missions) in 1986. Post-retirement, he became an agriculture expert with the World Bank in 1990.
  
  A former vice-president of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2000–2003), Rao also chaired the Committee of the New National Seed Policy. He served as member of the board of directors of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), member of the Wheat Advisory Committee of the Food and Agricultural Organisation etc.
  
• Martin Crowe: Former New Zealand captain Martin Crowe has died of cancer on 3rd March in Auckland. The ex-Black Caps batsman had been suffering from lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, for a second time. Auckland-born Crowe is widely regarded as one of New Zealand's best ever batsman, having scored 17 centuries and 5,444 runs in 77 tests at an average of 45.36.
  
  Crowe captained the Kiwis in 16 Test matches and his highest score was 299 against Sri Lanka in Wellington in 1991. He was named one of Wisden's Cricketers of the Year in 1985 and was player of the tournament in the 1992 World Cup after scoring 456 runs in nine matches.
  
• Ashok Ghosh:Left Front patriarch and Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh died at a private hospital in Kolkata on 3rd March. The 93-year old veteran Leftist had been admitted with severe lung infection.
  
  Ghosh's death drew the curtains on a political journey spanning decades. Born in 1923, Ghosh took a plunge in the freedom struggle when he was just 16, and worked in close association with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He was behind bars at Dum Dum Central Jail for six months while taking part in the August movement in 1942. Ghosh was made the Forward Bloc convenor in 1948 and remained so till he became Bloc state secretary in 1951.
  
• PA Sangma: Former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma passed away in New Delhi on 4th March. Sangma was sitting member of Lok Sabha from Tura Constituency in Meghalaya.
  
  Mr Sangma served as the Chief Minister and leader of opposition of Meghalaya. He served in the Union government as Cabinet Minister for Information and Broadcasting. He also served as Minister of State of Home Affairs, Labour, Commerce and Coal. He also contested the presidential election in 2012.