United Nation’s Public Service Award

The Chief Minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandy won United Nation’s Public Service Award for his Mass Contact Programme on 22 May 2013. In the Mass Contact Programme, he engaged with masses of Kerala to address the grievances. He was conferred with the first prize from the Asia Pacific region along with other awardees that are selected on yearly basis from five different zones of the world.

United Nation’s Public Service Award

Since the year 2003, United Nations has been awarding people as part of the programme for Public Service Day that is celebrated on 23 June. The United Nation’s Public Service Award was instituted through the UN resolution and are announced after the three-tier security as well as meticulous examination. The candidates who are shortlisted are kept under examination by the seven-member sub-committee of Committee of Experts in Public Administration of the United Nations. The UN Public Service Day ceremonies are scheduled to be organised from 24 June 2013 to 27 June 2013 in Bahrain. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will confer the awards on the awardees on 27 June 2013.

The Mass Contact Programme of Oommen Chandy

The Mass Contact Programme was appraised worldwide as the democratic experiment. The CM of Kerala, Oommen Chandy met a lot of people without intermediaries. He got up to 5.5 lakh petitions, out of which he resolved approximately 3 lakh petitions and also distributed financial aid of 22.68 crore Rupees as part of this programme. The criteria of evaluation included mechanism for increasing the ability of people to receive information on time, monitor the decision making as well as transparency. Other parameters included documentation and accountability, procedural as well as fiscal requirement as well as evidence of the conformity of government.

Lata Mangeshkar Samman Alankaran 2013

Singer Hariharan was conferred with the Lata Mangeshkar Samman Alankaran in Indore on 20 May 2013. The Lata Mangeshkar Samman Alankaran is conferred by the Madhya Pradesh government on playback singer, Hariharan. The award distribution was a part of three-day cultural event held in Indore.

About Lata Mangeshkar Samman Alankaran

• Madhya Pradesh government instituted the award in 1984.

• The first recipient of this award was music composer Naushad.

• The Lata Mangeshkar Samman Alankaran consists of 2 lakh Rupees as well as citation.

• It is instituted by Madhya Pradesh government.

• The award is conferred upon to the music composer and singer alternately. In 2012, the award was given away to Rajesh Roshan.

• This was the 28th Annual Lata Mangeshkar Award.

• Hariharan is the Padma Shri recipient as well. He sung various songs in different languages including Hindi, Telugu, Bhojpuri, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Marathi.

Champions of Change

The US government on 6 May 2013 honoured 15 Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women as champions of change in recognition of their important contribution to the community. This includes two Indian-Americans; Aparna Bhattacharyaa from Atlanta and Pramila Jayapal from Wahington State. Aparna Bhattacharyya is the Executive Director of Raksha, in Atlanta. She is a passionate advocate for immigrant survivors of family and sexual violence and plays a key role in providing them access to safety, justice and healing.

Aparna at present is a board member for the Georgia Coalition against Domestic Violence, VIDA Legal Assistance and the National Immigrant Women’s Advocacy Project. Pramila Jayapal founded the non-profit organization OneAmerica in the aftermath of 9/11. One America is the largest immigrant advocacy organisation in Washington State. Pramila at present is the Distinguished Taconic Fellow at Center for Community Change and a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Washington Law School. The Champions of Change programme honours groups of Americans, individuals, businesses and organisations, who are doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities. Other awardees of the Champions of Change are; Minh Dang from California; Catherine Eusebio from California; Atsuko Toko Fish from Boston, Lusiana Tuga Hansen from Alaska, Myrla Baldonado from Chicago, Arline Loh from Delaware, Mia Mingus from California, Natalie Nakase from Los Angeles, Mary Frances Oneha from Hawaii, Nancy Tom from Chicago, Karen Suyemoto from Boston, Van Ton-Quinlivan from California and Shireen Zaman from Washington, DC.

Asom Ratna Award

The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee presented the Asom Ratna Award for the year 2012 to Indira Goswami (posthumously) and the Srimanta Shankardeva Award for the year 2008 to Sharmila Tagore on 13 May 2013 at a function at Guwahati, Assam. Sharmila Tagore has contributed richly to India’s cultural life as a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and Chairperson of the Indian Film Censor Board.

Indira Goswamy was a legendary story teller and prolific novelist who courageously advocated social change in a very volatile period in Assam’s history. She would be particularly remembered for her role as a mediator in talks between armed militants in Assam and the Government of India. In all her works, ‘Mamoni’ as she was known, had focused on women, the disadvantaged and the oppressed in society. By creating a consciousness about these problems, she was able to sow the seeds of change. The Srimanta Sankardeva award would propagate the teachings of Swami Srimanta Shankardeva, an Assamese saint, scholar and social reformer who lived in the 15th and 16th Centuries. His Neo-Vaishnava movement repudiated caste barriers and sought to create an egalitarian civil society based on the shared values of fraternity, equity, humanism and democracy.

Jnanpith Award 2011

The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee conferred the 47th Jnanpith Award for the year 2011 on Pratibha Ray on 22 May 2013 at Balyogi Auditorium in New Delhi. The award includes cash prize of 11 lakh Rupees, a citation as well as bronze replica of Goddess Saraswati.

About Dr. Pratibha Ray

• Pratibha Ray was born in Alabol, a village in Jagatsingpur district of Odisha.

• She is the first Oriya woman and fourth Oriya writer to get the coveted award. Prior to her, Sitakant Mahapatra (1993), Sachidananda Rout Roy (1986) and Gopinath Mohanty (1973) were the other Oriya writers to be conferred with this award.

• Her first novel was Barsa Basanta Baishakha in 1974, for which she was recognised as a writer for the first time.

• The most acclaimed work of Pratibha Ray was Yajnaseni, for which she received Bharatiya Jnanpith Trust’s Moorti Devi Award in 1991. She was the first woman to be conferred with this prestigious Moorti Devi Award in 1991.

• Apart from this, she also won various awards such as Orissa Sahitya Akademi Award, Moortidevi Award by Bharatiya Jnanpith and Saptarshi Award.

• Pratibha Ray has 20 novels, 24 short stories, 10 travelogues, two poetry collections and a number of essays to her credit.

• Her literary works have been translated into not just English, but various other foreign languages and various Indian languages as well.

• Pratibha Ray is one of the most widely read Oriya novelists and short story writers.

• She is also renowned for her role of woman’s voice.

• Her works revolve around various themes such as racial consciousness, mythology, lifestyle, fiction, rural culture and many more. Her novels have various subject matters as well as interests.

About the Jnanpith Award

• The Jnanpith Award is one of the highest literary honours of India. Other honour includes Sahitya Akademi Fellowship.

• This award was instituted first in 1961 and is presented by Bharatiya Jnanpith, the trust founded by Sahu Jain family, the publishers of The Times of India newspaper.

• Any Indian citizen who presents his/her work in any official Indian language can be eligible for this award.

• G. Sankara Kurup was the first one to receive this award in 1965.

• Post 2011, the cash prize of this award has been increased from 7 lakh Rupees to 11 lakh Rupees.

Whitley Award 2013

A young Indian biologist, Dr. Aparajita Datta was honoured with the Whitley award, also known as Green Oscar, in London on 2 May 2013. Aparajita Datta, the Indian wildlife biologist was conferred with the award by Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth, at the Royal Geographical Society in London for her efforts in order to save the endangered hornbills in Eastern Himalayas. Aparajita Datta is the head of the program for conservation of the hornbills in dense tropical forests of Arunachal Pradesh, at Nature Conservation Foundation. The tropical forests of Arunachal Pradesh are an abode to five hornbill species. Hornbills are the brightly coloured and curved-beak birds which are catalyst of seed dispersal; these birds remain endangered for the beats as well as feathers by a tribal group, known as Lisu. Aparajita Datta set up the community-based conservation program along with tribal hunters in order to protect hornbills. The focus of the program was to bring down the poaching activities. Schools were started by her and the team in order to build the river embankments for checking soil erosion. The team of Aparajita Datta also focused on marketing the handicrafts of Lisu as well as development of the nature tourism, which would in turn facilitate Lisu with better financial gains than poaching. The Whitley awards are given every year in order to honour exceptional individuals for the efforts in conservation of nature in the developing countries. Aparajit Datta won the award along with eighth other conservationists who belonged to different countries. They shared the prize money worth 295000 pounds.