@PMOIndia @narendramodi's & @Infosys_nmurthy #SmallStuff, #BigVision

If Infosys were India, we'd be in good hands. Not even the company. Just the campus in Bangalore. It houses 20,000 employees, who have an average workday of nine hours 15 minutes. It has five food courts but no litter. It has efficient workspaces where the only sound you hear is that of minds at work. And oh yes, its facilities team manages a wide swathe of activities-from ensuring the plants are kept moisture-controlled to keeping disturbance from renovations down to a minimum. The campus has 34 per cent women, the average age of the company is 29, and staff are encouraged to cycle between buildings.

In no small measure it is because of N.R. Narayana Murthy, one of the five founders and its CEO for 21 years. At 69, having quit Infosys after a controversial stint with it last year, he believes a new civic awakening is the only way India can move forward. And indeed, if he could do it at Infosys, why can't Narendra Modi do it for India? As he sits in his tree-trimmed office of Catamaran Ventures, a private investment firm run by son Rohan Murty, Narayana Murthy seems at ease with his new role of Ideator-at-Large.

But it pains him that people don't recognise the importance of the seemingly small stuff. That the rule of law applies to all equally and doesn't diminish the higher you go or the later it is in the day.

Management guru Peter Drucker once told Narayana Murthy that culture eats strategy for lunch. Never more so than in India, where institutions tend to leave change behind when heads change.

Making values sustainable isn't easy, and any attempt to do so is immediately tagged as fascist, part of a creeping totalitarian regime, whose eventual goal is the stifling of marginal people.

India is not used to social revolutions. The last one that ousted the British had to be sustained over almost a century, beginning with the First War of Independence in 1857 to the eventual departure of the British in 1947. The anti-corruption movement of 2011 turned into the unlimited political ambition of a band of well-meaning but clueless brothers and the anti-rape agitation of 2012 was limited to a weekend convenience. The new consciousness that Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to rouse from the Red Fort may well go the same way, despite its honourable intentions of gender equity, public service and personal hygiene. Every ideology needs action, and action does not take weekends off and rule-of-law breaks.

As Dipankar Gupta points out in his remarkable book, Revolution from Above: India's Future and the Citizen Elite, planning can be of two types: one that maximises the given and doesn't question the ground rules; and the other that changes the rules of the game. He believes only a citizen elite can do the latter. Indeed, only if the old durbaris of Delhi are restrained can a new citizen elite emerge, that is not limited by the zip code of one's birthplace or the email address of one's school. It is defined by the work ethic. A democracy that delivers, says Gupta, does not need heroes or Mahatmas. It does not need sympathy. It needs an aware citizenship that has empathy. Democracy, according to Gupta, begins with a commitment to shape a world that does not conform to 'what is' but to what 'should be'. It needs its elite to make people realise that aspirations for the future are grander than the needs of the present.

National Sports Day (#NationalSportsDay)

 India celebrates its National Sports Day every year on the 29th August. The day is celebrated to honor the legendary hockey player, Major Dhyan Chand Singh. 29th August happens to be the birth anniversary of Dhyan Chand, who made India proud by his extraordinary sporting skills. He was the greatest hockey player India has ever seen.

Dhyan Chand had joined the army at the early age and learnt the game of hockey from his coach Pankaj Gupta and soon became an expert in ball dribbling and goal scoring. He quickly became the Indian Hockey Team captain due to his excellent playing techniques and was given the nickname 'Chand' which means 'Moon'. During his sports career Dhyan Chand had won three Olympic medals and till date remains the only hockey player who has received the Padma Bhushan award. He had won the Olympic Gold medal six times in a row for India in hockey. His lifetime awards and achievements in sports are considered as the highest point in the history of Indian sports.

The National Sports Day is dedicated to the brilliant hockey player Dhyan Chand. This day is celebrated by organizing friendly matches between different Indian hockey teams at the Dhyan Chand National stadium in New Delhi which was constructed in the respect and honor of Major Dhyan Chand. 

On this day, sports persons commemorate this day in a sportive way. The President of India Bestows prestigious awards such as the Arjuna and Dronacharya Award, Dhyan Chand Award, etc to the sports persons who have contributed to the growth of sports all through their sports career and also after retirement. A lot of schools throughout the country celebrate this day as their Annual Sports Day and young people are also encouraged and made aware of the possibilities in sports and what all advancement the country has obtained in sports.

#IceBucket #Challenge

I accepted #BarackObama's ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, to spread the awareness for ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). I further nominate my favourite leader  #NarendraModi, #DavidCameron, #VladimirPutin, #RahulGandhi, #hillaryclinton, #Billclinton, #ArvindKejriwal, #gulpanag, #sarahpalin, #arunjaitley, #michelleobama, #RajnathSingh, #ShashiTharoor, #OmarAbdullah, #SyedAkbaruddin, #VladimirPutin, #RohanGupta, #SamPitroda, #ArjunModhwadia, #SanjayJha, #SwetaSingh, #barkhadutt, #MilindDeora, #NehaPant, #KiranBedi, #ChetanBhagat, #PartheshPatel, #RahulKanwal, #DeeptiSachdeva, #AnjanaOmKashyap. gotta do it within 24hrs -time starts now.

Today is #WorldPhotographyDay

World Photo Day is about celebrating the ability we have to communicate though this powerful visual medium. 

Today, we can share memories across the globe in seconds. Photography is an invention that has revolutionised the way we see the world. We can visit places without leaving our home. We can share adventures with friends in another city and we can watch grandchildren grow up thousands of kilometers away. 

Origins of World Photo Day 

World Photo Day originates from the invention of the Daguerreotype, a photographic processes developed by Joseph Nicèphore Nièpce and Louis Daguerre in 1837. On January 9, 1839, The French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype process. A few months later, on August 19, 1839, the French government purchased the patent and announced the invention as a gift "Free to the World". 

It should be noted that the Daguerreotype was not the first permanent photographic image. In 1826, Nicèphore Nièpce captured the earliest known permanent photograph known as 'View from the Window at Le Gras' using a process called Heliography. 

August 19th, 1839 was chosen as the date behind World Photo Day based on the following historical merits: 

The Daguerreotype was the first practical photographic process. 

The purchase and release of the patent by the French government.

Katharine Hayhoe

An environmental evangelist

There’s something fascinating about a smart person who defies stereotype. That’s what makes my friend Katharine Hayhoe a Texas Tech climatologist and an evangelical Christian so interesting.

It’s hard to be a good steward of the planet if you don’t accept the hard science behind what’s harming it, and it can be just as hard to take action to protect our world if you don’t love it as the rare gift it is. For many people, that implies a creator. Katharine and her husband, evangelical pastor Andrew Farley, have authored the defining book for the planet-loving believer,A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions. I got to know Katharine as we worked on Showtime’s climate documentary Years of Living Dangerously. But we are all getting to know and benefit from her work.

Arunachalam Muruganantham

The entrepreneur who is an unlikely health crusader

In a small south Indian town, a man’s empathy for his wife has sparked a revolution. In 1998, Arunachalam Muruganantham asked his wife why she hoarded dirty rags and was told she needed them during menstruation. Buying sanitary napkins would cost too much. His response: designing a simple machine to produce sanitary pads. He even wore some himself, using a tiny pump to test absorption. And instead of selling his idea to the highest bidder, he supplies his low-cost machines to rural communities. Now millions of poor Indian women can avoid painful urinary-tract infections and create their own pad-manufacturing businesses. The invention has also sparked interest around the world.

It’s a truism for a reason: Empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.

Hosain Rahman

The stylist of wearable tech

The race to make wearable tech the biggest thing since the smartphone is on. Apple, Google and Samsung are all working on making our gadgets far more personal by packing in sensors that measure everything from heart rate to hydration. Yet with his company’s line of UP wristband computers, Hosain Rahman is out ahead of them all.

Since Rahman co-founded Jawbone in 1999, he’s managed to stay one step ahead of the prevailing vogue. He turned the Bluetooth headset into an objet d’art exhibited in venues from San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art to the Pompidou Center in Paris. He perfected the small, portable wireless speaker before there were millions of them out there. And with the fitness- and sleep-tracking UP band, he’s turned Jawbone into one of the biggest companies in wearables. It doesn’t hurt that the slinky bands look cool; they’ve been spotted on the wrists of celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Demi Moore.

Imam Omar Kobine Layama, Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga and The Rev. Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou

Faith leaders on the front line

As violence ravages Central African Republic, three men are working tirelessly for peace to hold their country together. Imam Omar Kobine Layama, president of the Central African Islamic Community; Dieudonné Nzapalainga, the Archbishop of Bangui; and Nicolas Guérékoyame-Gbangou, president of the Evangelical Alliance of the Central African Republic, are religious leaders who actually do what their faith tells them to do. Sharing a meal with these three showed me again what can happen when faith leaders walk their talk. Their witness has come with significant personal costs. For example, Imam Layama and his family have lived with the Archbishop since December when it became too dangerous in Bangui to stay in the imam’s house. Because of their efforts the world is taking notice of the conflict. The imam eloquently stated an important truth: “Politics try to divide the religious in our country, but religion shouldn’t be a cause of hate, war or strife.”

Major General Herbert Raymond McMaster

The architect of the future U.S. Army

Major General Herbert Raymond McMaster might be the 21st century Army’s pre-eminent warrior-thinker. Recently tapped for his third star, H.R. is also the rarest of soldiers one who has repeatedly bucked the system and survived to join its senior ranks.

He initially gained renown as a cavalry commander, earning a Silver Star in 1991’s Gulf War after his nine tanks wiped out more than 80 Iraqi tanks and other vehicles. His reputation grew after his 1997 book, Dereliction of Duty, boldly blasted the Joint Chiefs for their poor leadership during Vietnam.

Despite impressive command and unconventional exploits in the second Iraq war, the outspoken McMaster was passed over twice for selection for his first star. I watched senior Army generals argue over ways to end his career. But he dodged those bullets and will soon take over command of the Army’s “futures” center. After years as an outspoken critic, McMaster soon will be in the right place to help build the right Army for the nation.

Edward Snowden

The renegade in exile

Edward Snowden’s story is one of choices. He is said to be a computer genius, but he has chosen to do what is right rather than what will enrich him, and he has chosen to do what is right rather than what is lawful. Showing a sense of great responsibility, he has exposed a global system of surveillance whose sheer dimensions are unfathomable.

This system threatens the very foundation of individual freedom throughout the world. And it threatens the basis upon which our democracies are built. Cynically, it does so by undermining and exploiting the very tools of communication and sharing that are meant to enable, engage and enrich us.

Snowden has given us a window of opportunity in which to make an informed, self-determined choice about this system. Our responsibility is to make sure it will not be the last choice we make. We must not waste time—for his sake, for ours and for the sake of our children. Our future is at stake.

José Mujica

The revolutionary who legalized pot

Uruguay’s José “Pepe” Mujica has been called the world’s poorest President for his modest lifestyle. He doesn’t ride around in limousines, nor does he live in an opulent official residence. But that doesn’t make him any less of a leader than his counterparts elsewhere. Last year, he signed a new law making Uruguay the first country in the world to legalize the production and sale of marijuana. It was an important step, a bid to tackle criminal trafficking and regulate the supply of the drug while at the same time set up a new mechanism to help fill government coffers. It is still early days for the new policy. But on President Mujica’s watch, Uruguay has embarked on a bold and fascinating experiment that will be closely watched by supporters of legalization in other countries—including myself.

Kathryn Sullivan

The world's weatherwoman

There may be no better way to appreciate the earth than to leave it, to look back on the beauty and fragility of our planet from the vantage point of space. Only a tiny fraction of humanity gets that opportunity, so when someone does — and also happens to be one of the smartest people around when it comes to earth sciences it’s good to have her on our side, especially in challenging times. That’s what makes us all lucky that Kathryn Sullivan was just confirmed as administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Kathy is not just an ivory-tower scientist. She was part of NASA’s first class of female astronauts, selected in 1978, and went on to fly three shuttle missions. She is the first American woman to walk in space and served aboard the mission that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. That role in helping humanity look outward has not prevented her from looking homeward. The planet is suffering increasingly severe upheavals, at least partly a result of climate change droughts, floods, typhoons, tornadoes. I believe my good friend Kathy is the right person for the right job at the right time.

David Sinclair

The geneticist who is making age reversal real

For David Sinclair, the pursuit of youth had a humble start  in yeast. A professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, he identified genes that allow yeast to get by on fewer calories and extend their life span by about 30%. Nice for yeast not for hungry humans.

Last year, Sinclair upped his game and pinned down a chemical known as NAD that actually reverses the aging process in cells. NAD levels tend to drop by as much as 50% as we get older; if we could restore what’s lost, aging cells might behave as if they were younger. Immortality is out of reach, but living more years with a body that’s robust enough to make the most of them is a real possibility.

Obadah al-Kaddri

A truth teller on the Syrian airwaves

Moderates are under attack in Syria. They’ve been targets of both the Syrian government and hard-line Islamist fighters.

The Syrian voices calling for democracy and human rights have been edged out on the ground but not on the airwaves, as Obadah al-Kaddri has shown. His radio station, al-Watan, is part of a parallel press free of censorship. His journalists inside Syria risk death to tell their stories. In doing so, they’ve helped reshape a media space that was long limited to the ruling Baath Party line.

There are now more than 200 media startups in Syria a flowering of self-expression, but also of competing narratives, with each camp framing the news within its version of reality.

In al-Kaddri’s Syria, the fiercest battles are being fought over the truth.

#IndependenceDay: 10,000 to attend @PMOIndia @narendramodi 's #speech at #RedFort

India's 68th Independence Day Friday will be notable in many ways, most of all the massive public participation that is being planned, no doubt at the instance of the nearly three-month-old government.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will unfurl the national flag from the Red Fort, will be speaking to the nation from the historic podium for the first time after his party's spectacular electoral victory in May.

In keeping with the significance of the occasion and Modi's own record of turning national days into mega festivals, the NDA government has ensured participation of "aam aadmi", or common people, in the celebrations and sought to give the national capital a festive look.

This itself will be a departure from previous Independence Day observances where public participation at Red Fort, because of security fears, was largely limited to hundreds of school children, government officials and selected invitees.

Modi's speech, expected to be extempore, much like many of his speeches, will be watched in India and outside for a vision statement and major policy announcements.

Modi has acquired a reputation, especially during his long election campaign, as a forceful speaker and an engaging orator and he is expected to make the best of his first opportunity to address the nation from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort from where India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had unfurled free India's flag.

During his days as Gujarat chief minister, Modi had turned Independence day into a mega festival, holding the event at different venues in the state.

The Delhi government has taken steps to make the 68th Independence Day "memorable". It has decorated the city with 4,000 flags and 60,000 balloons. Many prominent roundabouts have been decked with flowers and with the tricolour made of flowers.

With Modi emphasising cleanliness in his speeches, special drives have been carried out in Delhi to remove garbage and litter from roadsides and the streets have been swept clean.

The Modi government has also sought to give its first independence day a distinctive "aam aadmi" touch by ensuring presence of common man in greater numbers at the Red Fort. Officials said enclosures have been made for seating 10,000 people on the expansive lawns below.

"We had received request from people to attend the ceremony and made request for enclosures for their seating," Delhi BJP chief Satish Upadhyay told IANS.

Former Delhi deputy mayor Meera Aggarwal said there was enthusiasm among BJP workers also.

"This is the first time Narendra Modi will be making Independence Day speech from the Red Fort. People are very enthusiastic as are BJP workers," Agarwal told IANS.

Sources said that arrangements have been made by BJP's local leaders to ferry people in buses to the Red Fort with the public bus service itself announcing fare concessions.

Parts of Chandni Chowk, the usually crowded shopping bazaar in the old city facing the Red Fort, has been declared a pedestrian zone for part the day with various events planned on roads free of choking vehicular traffic.

Prominent buildings in the city will be lit up with some public buildings having tricolour lighting and laser projections.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has planned week-long celebrations that includes quiz for commuters, conducted tours for children and senior citizens and hoisting the tricolour at stations and residential places.

Tree plantation activities are being carried out in different parts of the metropolis. Many restaurants are offering special I-Day fare and discounts to lure customers.

Some government departments, including the Railways, came out with advertisements Thursday pledging better services to citizens.

Government officials, who have been invited to the event, have been strictly told to be present to avoid the embarrassment of empty seats that have noticed in the past. With the event starting at 7 a.m., many officials have played truant and preferred to sit at home and watch it on TV.

Over 7,000 security personnel, including 2,000 paramilitary personnel, have been deployed in and around the Red Fort.

Police officials have talked of "extraordinary security" this time because of the huge public participation with closed-circuit cameras fixed all along the 15 km route from New Delhi to the old city with deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles to monitor "unusual movements".

'#China's Nightmare, #America's Dream: #India as the next #GlobalPower' is a book : William H Avery

India should have sent its troops back to Sri Lanka to kill or capture Prabhakaran and the LTTE leadership after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, says a new book by a former US diplomat.

Rajiv Gandhi's killing was an attack on India's status as a regional power. Forcibly bringing Prabhakaran to India to face trial would have sent a clear message to the region, and the world, that India would defend its political leaders from attack, defend its political system from intimidation and defend its primacy in South Asia against any challengers, the author says.

A frightened India became content with being a passive regional power rather than active global power, says the book "China's Nightmare, America's Dream: India as the next global power" by William H. Avery, former American diplomat.

Avery was on posting in India and served in the US Department of State during the Administrations of President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. India's window of opportunity to influence Sri Lanka will never be as wide open as it was in 1991 after Rajiv's killing", the author says adding that India's craven inaction in Sri Lanka after the assassination cost it valuable years in its quest to become a global power.

The events of 1991 that included the shame of having required to sell its gold and killing by a terrorist organisation of its former prime minister were a low point in the history of modern India. Seven years after its annus horribilis, India, however, was able to make its first crucial step towards true power- the move that stunned the world- and earned India virtually universal approbation. But history has proven India's 1998 nuclear test to have been a wise choice, says Avery.

The Pokhran test changed India overnight into a 'front-line' post in the US Foreign Service. It also made India a much more interesting assignment for an American diplomat, the author says. He says by any measure the 1998 American sanctions on India were a failure.

Withdrawn in stages and completely by 2001, the sanctions achieved little other than to make the US feel that it was taking action against India's nuclear test. By the time the decade ended the US had become resigned to a nuclear India.

The world is no longer responding to India with indifference. India has the world's attention and respect. Now India must reach out and claim global power status. Doing so will require a transformation of India's economy far greater than that which followed the reforms of 1991, and, a foreign policy far more assertive than that of the past decade, Avery says.

The author says that to become a true global power the Indian economy will have to make a transition from outsourcing to innovation-intensive industries. Its multinationals will have to become truly global companies, with more business outside India than within.

Finally, India must develop and implement a more assertive foreign policy one that backs talk of great power status with military might and willingness to use it. "China has no such timidity in its foreign affairs. In addition to the port in Sri Lanka, it is also helping expand the Pakistani port of Gwadar and Chittgong port in Bangladesh.

China has also requested Burma to allow its warships to dock at Burmese ports, which, if approved would give China naval access to Indian Ocean', the author says. The author notes that all the rich countries in the world have had their time in demographic 'sweet spot'. Europe was there in the eighteenth century. The United States in the nineteenth. Japan in the early twentieth. China in the 1980s. Now, it is India's turn, he says.

The book says that with their economies trailing off, the United States, Europe and Japan have only one choice if they are to increase or even maintain their standards of living- they must export to where the growth is today. "Number one on their list of markets will be India. The big prize in the next 50 years will be Indian customer, not the Indian supplier", he says.

China will also be a big market but not the first, the book says. Avery, however, cautions that India today is falling into the colonial trap. Imperial England's economic policy was simple: Import raw material from the colonies and export manufactured goods from England.

The difference today is India's 'raw material' is services, not goods. The export of these services- outsourcing- represents the single greatest limitation on India's growth. Two centuries ago, the United Kingdom used Indian cotton as raw material to run its textile mills and strengthen its industrial base. Today, the US uses Indian IT services to run its software products and strengthen technology base, he says.

The effect, the author says, is the same: a colonial style enrichment of other nations, at India's expense. Avery says that there was every indication that bilateral relations would continue to strengthen rapidly with Barack Obama replacing George W. Bush. After all, Manmohan Singh and Bush had been, for all their success, an unlikely pair: the soft spoken economic professor and the brash cowboy.

"It was tempting to wonder as Obama began his presidency, the author says: "If the cowboy and the professor could produce the nuclear deal, what even greater things can the two professors achieve?"

"The professors have been in charge and it shows. The first three years of the Obama-Singh era have resembled a long-term academic seminar on growing strength of the Indo- American relationship. Somewhere along the way, however, the world stopped listening. For all the words that Singh and Obama put forth about each other and the bilateral relationship, it turns out that they were missing one important thing: action", the book says.

The strength of the Indo-American relationship depends not on which party is the White House, but instead on the quality of leadership in both, White House and Delhi. The Indo-American relationship under Singh and Obama is drifting.

Happily, it is not yet too late, but there is no time to spare!, the book says.

Vikram Sarabhai The Scientist

Vikram AMBALAL Sarabhai was born at Ahmedabad in an affluent family of progressive industrialists. He had his early education in a private school, `Retreat' run by his parents on Montessori lines. This atmosphere injected into the young boy the seeds of scientific curiosity, ingenuity and creativity.

From this school he proceeded to Cambridge for his college education and took the tripods degree from St. John's college in 1940. When World War II began, he returned home and joined as a research scholar under Sir C. V. Raman at the IISc, Bangalore. He started his work on cosmic rays and built the necessary equipment with which he took measurements at Bangalore, Poona and the Himalayas. He returned to Cambridge in 1945. In 1947 he was awarded the Ph.D degree

Setting-up of PRL

The Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) was established in November 1947 in a few rooms in M.G. Science Institute of the Ahmedabad Education Society, which was founded by his parents. Subsequently, it got support from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Atomic Energy.

The Scientific activities covered two lines one under Sarabhai dealing with the time variations of comic rays and the other under the veteran meteorologist K. R. Ramanathan covering the areas of ionosphere and upper atmospheric physics.

Sarabhai established a permanent recording station at Ahmedabad, and subsequently two more, at Kodaikanal (1951) and Trivandrum (1955)

Effect of solar activity on cosmic rays

By collecting and analysing his own observations as well as those of other scientists, Sarabhai's team concluded that meteorological effects could not entirely affect the observed daily variations of cosmic rays; further, the residual variations were wide and global and these were related to variations in solar activity.

In the observed cosmic ray anisotropies were to be regarded as modulation effect to the solar wind, then Sarabhai could visualize a new field of research opening up in solar and interplanetary Physics.

The first opportunity came in 1957-58 during the International Geo-physical year (IGY). The Indian program for the IGY had been one of the most significant ventures of Sarabhai. It exposed him to the new vistas of space science with the launching in 1957 of Sputnik-I. Subsequently, the Indian National Committee for Space Research was created, of which Sarabhai became Chairman.

A great achievement

With active support from Homi Bhabha (1906-1966) Sarabhai set up the first Rocket Launching station (TERLS) in the country at Thumba near Thiruvananthapuram on the Arabian Coast, as Thumba is very close to the Equator.

The first rocket with sodium vapour payload was launched on November 21, 1963. It involved tremendous work such as recruitment of personnel, setting up of roads and buildings, communication links, and launch pads. After the inaugural flight, range facilities were expanded.

To implement the space programme, Sarabhai took the following steps during 1961-1966. Expanding PRL and making it the Headquarters for Space activities. Setting up the Space Science and Technology Center at Thumba for creating fabrication, testing and other auxiliary facilities. Establishing an Experimental Satellite Communication Earth Station at Ahmedabad.

In 1965, the UN General Assembly gave recognition to TERLS as an international facility. With the sudden death of Homi Bhabha in an air crash, Sarabhai was appointed Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission in May 1966.

Like Bhabha, Sarabhai wanted the practical application of science to reach the common man. Thus he saw a golden opportunity to harness space science to the development of the country in the fields of communication, meteorology, remote sensing and education.

Sarabhai saw the traditional approach of planning in areas like power systems, or telecommunications based on projection of growth from past experience leads to a dead end.

So he decided on following a hazardous route for developing countries to acquire competence in advance technology for the solution of their particular problems based on technical and economic evaluation of their real resources.

Sarabhai launched during July 1975 -July 1976 the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), which was the result of negotiation between Sarabhai and NASA of U.S.A.

Sarabhai next initiated boldly the space project and now a reality, with the undertaking of fabrication and launching of an Indian Satellite.

Thus Aryabhata I was put in orbit in 1975 from a Russian Cosmodrome. This development furthers the indigenous capability for satellite launching from low-orbiting to synchronous levels.

Sarabhai received many awards: Bhatnagar Medal (1962), Padma Bhushan (1966), he was President of the Physics section of the Indian Science Congress (1962), President of the General Conference of the I.A.E.A., Verina (1970), Vice-President, Fourth U.N. Conference on `Peaceful uses of Atomic Energy' (1971).

Sarabhai passed away in his sleep on December 31,1971. He was truly a rare combination of an innovator, industrialist and visionary. (Source: Biographical Memoirs, I.N.S.A., New Delhi).

@HillaryClinton Criticizes @BarackObama on #Syria Policy

"‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle"

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew a foreign policy line between herself and President Obama in an interview this week, saying the President should have assisted Syrian rebels early in the bloody three-year conflict there, and issuing a dig at his Administration’s minimalist doctrine. 

The Obama Administration’s wariness about assisting rebels out of fear that aid would fall into the hands of extremists was misguided and ineffectual, Clinton said in an interview with the Atlantic, and allowed for the rise of Islamic extremists who are now threatening to take over wide swaths of Iraq.

“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said

President Obama resisted calls to arm moderate Syrian rebels, and did not initially send nonlethal aid to opposition forces. Clinton said that vetting, training and equipping the moderate Free Syrian Army, who in the early days of the revolution were at the core of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, would have provided better insight into the war in Syria and would have helped bolster a “credible political opposition.”

Clinton also criticized Obama’s foreign policy mantra on careful American foreign involvement, using a less foul-mouthed version of a doctrinal phrase that began emerging from the White House earlier this year. “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Clinton said.

Even while she created an ideological distance between Obama and herself, Clinton had admiring words for the President, calling him “incredibly intelligent” and “thoughtful.”

#IndiaTodayWomanSummit2014 @mkoirala : Beating cancer and living to tell the tale #womenpower

Manisha Koirala comes out brave and speaks about battling cancer and life after that. She arrives at the India Today Woman Summit 2014 wearing a beautiful crisp silk saree and glowing as always. Telling us that, earlier she was only existing but now after cancer and recovering that, she is living life and feeling the grass.

Manisha goes on to tell that the good part about being a celebrity in India is that if I asked for help, I would get it. My family and friends' support helped me to recover and deal with the fears. 

I checked on with Bollywood actor Lisa Ray and cricketer Yuvraj and spoke with them to know if I will be fine. My doctor told me not to Google so much because I might not get the right information.

Manisha added that her bonding became better with her mother, father and brother during the treatment.

Manisha further says, "I was numb, in denial when I was first told about cancer. I knew my friends who had cancer, but till the time it doesn't happen to you, you don't know how does it feel."

She also reveals about writing a separate book on cancer.

Cancer changed me at a molecular level, I discovered life after cancer, I wrote a journal every day it is on my bedside.

The good part about being a celebrity is that when you ask for help you get it. So in a time like this

You become like a child, all these things you think you have control over, when you are knocked out on a hospital bed, you realise you have no control over it.

There's more awareness in the US. It's not a stigma if you have it. It's not a death sentence. I've met alot of people who have survived 30-40 years.

Lisa Ray told Manisha Koirala 'don't call it going bald, call it the chemo cut'.

Zakia told Manisha 'don't call it chemotherapy, call it a vitamin shot'

I think it's better to go in the snap of a finger than to live with the fear for a long time.

I would love to work again. I enjoy films, I enjoy acting, it would be great to work again. I have become a big time Modi fan.

Now when I see people walking, I feel like hugging people.

I never knew there were 7 parks around my building.That is the difference between existing and living.

The End of #Iraq

The sudden military victories of a Sunni militant group threaten to touch off a maelstrom in the Middle East

As the brutal fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) rampaged through northern Iraq in mid-June, a spokesman for the group issued a statement taunting its shaken enemies. Ridiculing Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as an “underwear merchant,” he warned that his fighters, who follow a radical strain of Sunni Islam, would take revenge against al-Maliki’s regime, which is dominated by Shi‘ites. But this vengeance would not come through the capture of Baghdad, the spokesman vowed. It would come through the subjugation of Najaf and Karbala, cities that are home to some of the most sacred Shi‘ite shrines. The Sunni fighters of ISIS would cheerfully kill and die, if necessary, to erase their blasphemous existence.

@BarackObama’s Trauma Team

How an unlikely group of high-tech wizards revived Obama's troubled HealthCare.gov website

Last Oct. 17—more than two weeks after the launch of HealthCare.gov—White House press secretary Jay Carney was going through what one senior Obama aide calls “probably the most painful press briefing we’ve ever seen.” Pressed repeatedly on when the site would be fixed, the best he could say was that “they are making improvements every day.”

“They” were, in fact, not making improvements, except by chance, much as you or I might reboot or otherwise play with a laptop to see if some shot in the dark somehow fixes a snafu. Yet barely six weeks later, HealthCare.gov was working well and on its way to working even better.

This is the story of a team of unknown—except in elite technology circles—coders and troubleshooters who dropped what they were doing in various enterprises across the country and came together in mid-October to save the website. In about a tenth of the time that a crew of usual-suspect, Washington contractors had spent over $300 million building a site that didn’t work, this ad hoc team rescued it and, arguably, Obama’s chance at a health-reform legacy.

#World’s top 20 self-made #billionaires

As the saying goes, some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths, but not all are born with all the advantages, however, this does not mean that they never gets a taste of that. While this advantageous "silver spoon" factor has determined the course of many millionaires’ life, there a few super rich whose stories of not-so-sudden success compels us to look into their lives before they were billionaires. So, here’s a list of 20 of the world’s richest men, who were born poor. 

1. Bill Gates

Net worth: $53 Billion Billionaire Story: William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, philanthropist, and popularly known as chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. His family was upper middle class; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served on the board of directors for First Interstate BancSystem and the United Way. Early on in his life, Gates' parents had a law career in mind for him. 

2. Lakshmi Mittal

Net Worth: $28.7 billion Billionaire Story: The CEO and founder of ArcelorMittal, Lakshmi Niwas Mittal was born on June 15, 1950 at Sadulpur, in Churu district of Rajasthan, in a poor family. Laxmi Mittal belongs to Marwari Aggarwal caste and his grandfather worked for the Tarachand Ghanshyam Das firm, one of the leading Marwari industrial firms of pre-independence India. Laxmi Mittal lived with the extended family of 20 members on bare concrete floors, slept on rope beds and cooked on an open fire in the brickyard in a house built by his grandfather. 

3. Larry Ellison

Net Worth: $27 billion Billionaire Story: He was adopted by a middle class family in Chicago nine months after he was born to an unwed Jewish lady. Larry Ellison, co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation was a bright student, showed a good aptitude for math and science. But he left the University of Illinois at the end of his second year, after his mother died. He later studied computer designing. He moved to California, where he did several odd jobs for about eight years. Finally, as a programmer at Ampex, he participated in building the first IBM-compatible mainframe system. In 1977, Ellison and two of his Ampex colleagues, Robert Miner and Ed Oates, founded their own company, Software Development Labs, with just $1400 from his savings. The company was later renamed Oracle Corporation. He is currently listed on the Forbes list of billionaires as the fourth richest person in the world. Ellison is the third richest American, the 65-year old Ellison is known for his extravagant lifestyle, races sailboats and flies planes. 

4.Amancio Ortega Gaona

Net Worth: $25 Billion Billionaire story: Amancio Ortega Gaona is a Spanish fashion entrepreneur. Ranked by Forbes as Spain's richest man and the 10th richest man in the World in 2009. He is the founder, with his then-wife Rosalía Mera, and chairman of the Inditex Group. He currently lives with his second wife in a discreet apartment building in the center of A Coruña. Ortega arrived at A Coruña, Spain, at the age of 14, due to the job of his father, a railway worker. Starting as a gofer in various shirt stores in A Coruña, Galicia, he founded Confecciones Goa, which made bathrobes, but in 1975 he opened the first store in what would grow into the enormously popular chain of fashion stores called Zara. 

5. Karl Albrecht

Net Worth: $23.5 billion Billionaire story: Karl and Theo Albrecht were raised in modest circumstances in Essen. Their father was employed as a miner and later as a baker’s assistant. Their mother had a small grocery store in the worker’s quarter of Schonnebeck. Theo completed an apprenticeship in his mother’s store, while Karl worked in a delicatessen shop. Karl also served in the German Army during World War II. After the end of World War II, the brothers took over their mother's business (1946). The first Aldi (Albrecht-Discount) was opened in 1961. 

6. Ingvar Kamprad

Net Worth: $23 Billion Billionaire Story: Ingvar Feodor Kamprad is a Swedish entrepreneur who is the founder of the home furnishing retail chain IKEA. As of 2010, he is the eleventh wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated net worth of around $23 billion in 2010. Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price, and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a cash reward for succeeding in his studies. He used that money to establish what has grown into IKEA. 

7. Roman Abramovich

Net Worth: $18.8 billion Billionaire Story: Started his multi-billion-dollar business during his army service where he sold stolen gasoline to some of the commissioned officers of his unit. Also worked as a street-trader and then as a mechanic at a local factory. But it all got going for him by 1996, at the age of 30, Abramovich had become so rich and politically well-connected that he had become close to President Boris Yeltsin, and had moved into an apartment in the Kremlin at the invitation of the Yeltsin family. In 1999, and now a tycoon, Abramovich was elected governor of Russia's remote, far eastern province of Chukotka, and has since lavished £112 million (€ 132 million) on charity to rebuild the impoverished region. 

8. Mikhail Prokhorov

Net Worth: $9.5 billion Billionaire Story: Mikhail Prokhorov is a self-made Russian billionaire entrepreneur. After graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute, he made his name in the financial sector and went on to become one of Russia's leading industrialists in the precious metals sector. While he was running Norilsk Nickel, the company became the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium. He is currently the chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, and President of Onexim Group. Prokhorov is currently the richest man in Russia and the 40th richest man in the world according to the 2009 Forbes list. 

9. Sheldon Adelson

Net Worth: $9Billion Billionaire Story: Sheldon Gary Adelson is an American businessman. He is a property developer and public company CEO based in Las Vegas, Nevada. Born to Jewish parents, Adelson grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, a rough-and-tumble section of Boston, where his father drove a taxicab. He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was 12. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends. He went to college at City College of New York but did not complete a degree there. 

10. Steven Jobs

Net Worth: $5.5 Billion Billionaire Story: Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs is an American businessman, and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs previously served as CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and is now a member of the Walt Disney Company's Board of Directors. Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Mountain View, Santa Clara County, California who named him Steven Paul. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, who they named Patty. Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family. 

11. Kirk Kerkorian

Net Worth: $5 billion Billionaire Story: Kerkor "Kirk" Kerkorian is the Armenian-American president/CEO of Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping the city of Las Vegas, Nevada and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr. the "father of the megaresort." He worked hard, taking up many odd jobs to help his poor parents. He became an amateur boxer under the tutelage of his older brother Nish, a boxer. At 17, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. When he was 25 he joined the Morton Air Academy where he rose to the rank of a lieutenant and became an army flight instructor. During World War II Kirk flew daredevil missions across the Atlantic for the Royal Air Force. He then started a plane charter service. He took it public in 1965. In 1968 he sold out to the TransAmerica Corporation. Kerkorian got about $85 million worth of stock in the TransAmerica conglomerate.In 1973 he acquired MGM, the famous movie studio, and opened the MGM Grand Hotel, which was the largest hotel in the world at that time. 

12. Mark Zuckerberg

Net Worth: $4 Billion Billionaire Story: Mark Elliot Zuckerberg is an American entrepreneur best known for co-founding the popular social networking site Facebook. Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook with fellow classmatesDustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes while attending Harvard. Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, New York to a Jewish family and raised in Dobbs Ferry, New York. He started programming when he was in middle school. Early on, Zuckerberg enjoyed developing computer programs, especially communication tools and games. Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase a music player named Synapse developed by Zuckerberg and recruit him, but he decided to attend Harvard University instead, where he joined Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. 

13. Howard Schultz

Net Worth: $1.1 billion Billionaire Story: A successful entrepreneur, 56-year old Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO Starbucks in his younger days was determined to win the battle over poverty. Howard Schultz was born in Brooklyn, New York, growing up in the Canarsie Bayview Housing Projects. Schultz was poor growing up, so to escape the thoughts of being poor, he turned to sports such as baseball, football and basketball. He went to Canarsie High School and became the first person to graduate in his family. Schultz's inspiring journey started when he went to Seattle to check out a popular coffee bean store called Starbucks, which was buying many of the Hammarplast Swedish drip coffeemakers he sold. He finally joined the company and was promoted as head of marketing and operations in 1982. But he parted ways as the owners refused to accept his plans of offering coffee in stores or diversifying into restaurants. Schultz went ahead and started his own coffee-bar business, called Il Giornale. Interestingly, a year later Schultz bought Starbucks for $3.8 million. As CEO of Starbucks in 2008, Schultz earned a total compensation of $9,740,471, which included a base salary of $1,190,000. 

14. Ed Liddy

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: Ed Liddy, former chief executive officer of American International Group (AIG) had to face lot of hardships before he rose to great heights. Ed Liddy's father died when he was just 12 years old. According to a BusinessWeek report, he had a poverty-stricken childhood. Liddy graduated from Catholic University of America in 1968 and received a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University in 1972. He worked with Ford Motor before joining G D Searle & Co in 1981. The 63-year old Liddy earned about $130 million during his eight-year tenure at Allstate. In the wake of the financial crisis, Ed Liddy came to rescue the ailing AIG, worked for a salary of $1. But the act turned disastrous when the company handed out employee bonuses totaling $165 million after it had accepted $170 billion in government bailout funds. This forced him to quit AIG. 

15. Ursula Burns

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: Ursula M. Burns became the first black lady to become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company in July 2009. The 51-year-old Burns started her career as an engineering intern in 1980. Burns led several business teams including the office color and fax business and office network printing business. In April 2007, Burns was named president of Xerox, expanding her leadership to include the company's IT organization, corporate strategy, human resources, corporate marketing and global accounts. Burns ranked 10th in the Fortune list of 50 Most Powerful Women in America. Her salary package for 2008 stood at $887,500, but total compensation stood at a whopping $6,003,126. In an interview with the New York Times, she described growing up poor with "lots of Jewish immigrants, fewer Hispanics and African-Americans, but the great equalizer was poverty." Burns' mother used to run a home day care center. 

16. Lloyd Blankfein

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: The 55-year old Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs is today one of the richest executives in the world. Blankfein started his career as a corporate tax lawyer for the law firm Donovan, Leisure, Newton Irvine. Blankfein was born in to a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York City and raised in Brooklyn's Linden Houses, part of the New York City Housing Authority. His father was a clerk with the Postal Service in Manhattan. In 1981, he joined Goldman's commodities trading arm, J Aron, as a precious metals salesman in their London office. Blankfein hit the headlines recently when he apologized for Goldman's role in the financial crisis, saying that the bank "participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret." Lloyd's total compensation in the last fiscal stood at $25.84 million. 

17. Frank Stronach

Net Worth: $661 million Billionaire Story: Frank Stronach is an Austrian-Canadian businessman. He is the founder of Magna International, an international automotive parts company based in Aurora, Ontario, Canada, and Magna Entertainment Corp., which specializes in horse-racing entertainment. Born as Franz Strohsack in the small town of Kleinsemmering, Styria, Austria to working-class parents, Stronach's childhood was marked by the Great Depression and the Second World War. At the age of 14, he left school to apprentice as a tool and die maker. In 1954, he arrived in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and later moved to the province of Ontario. He currently resides in Oberwaltersdorf, Austria and Aurora, Ontario. Magna International is today a global automotive empire with 326 manufacturing plants, engineering centers and sales offices across North America, South America, Asia and Europe that employ about 82,000 people. 

18. Ken Langone

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: Sir Kenneth Langone is a venture capitalist, investment banker and financial backer of The Home Depot, and a former director of the New York Stock Exchange. He was elected as director of Yum! and is a member of the Audit Committee. Langone holds an M.B.A. from and is also a trustee of New York University. His father was a plumber and his mother worked in a cafeteria. His parents had to mortgage their house to send Langone to Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. An ambitious and optimistic Langone worked as a ditch digger and a butcher's assistant to make money while studying. As an investment banker and entrepreneur, his business record highlights the values of persistence and sound business principles. His total compensation as director of Home Depot in 2008 stood at $1,136,219. 

19. Ken Lewis

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: The high profile chairman of Bank of America, Ken Lewis worked his way throughGeorgia State University as an accountant and an airline ticket-agent, graduating with a finance degree in 1969. He worked as a credit analyst at North Carolina National Bank. The bank was eventually taken over by Bank of America. He became Bank of America's chief operating officer in 1999 and chairman in 2005. In April, the Bank of America shareholders voted to separate the positions of Chairman of the Board and CEO, effectively removing CEO 61-year old Lewis from his position as Chairman of the Board of BofA, though he remained both the bank's president and its CEO due to the shareholders' resentment over the takeover of Merrill Lynch for $50 billion. The Securities and Exchange Commission and New York's Attorney General are investigating whether Lewis misled Bank of America shareholders before the Merrill Lynch acquisition. Merrill has paid out billions in bonuses to its staff that were allegedly not fully disclosed. His annual compensation in 2008 fiscal year stood at $1,500,000. 

20. Angelo R Mozilo

Net Worth: N/A Billionaire Story: Angelo R. Mozilo was the chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Countrywide Financial until July 1, 2008. Mozilo was born in New York City, the son of a Bronx butcher. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University in 1960. In 1969, he and his former mentor David S. Loeb, who had already started a mortgage lending company, founded Countrywide Credit Industries in New York. They later moved the headquarters to Calabasas, California in Los Angeles County. Mozilo and Loeb also cofounded IndyMac Bank, which was founded as Countrywide Mortgage Investment, before being spun off as an independent bank in 1997. IndyMac collapsed and was seized by federal regulators on July 11, 2008. Condé Nast Portfolio ranked Mozilo second on their list of "Worst American CEOs of All Time and CNN named Mozilo as one of the "Ten Most Wanted: Culprits" of the 2008 financial collapse in the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission in June filed civil-fraud charges for "deliberately misleading investors about the significant credit risks being taken in efforts to build and maintain the company's market share." Mozilo's compensation during the housing bubble from 2001-06 is under scrutiny. During that period, his total compensation (including salary, bonuses, options and restricted stock) was $470 million.