Oct 2011 Awards

Tehelka and the Week were jointly chosen for the International Press Institute (IPI) – India award for excellence in journalism, 2011for their outstanding journalistic work in 2010. The award was declared by the Indian chapter of the International Press Institute (IPI). The award comprises of a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, a trophy and a citation.Led by Tarun J Tejpal weekly Tehelka was selected for its expose of the rent a riot tactics of the Sree Rama Sene in Karnataka, which admitted taking money to organise attacks on innocent persons and institutions. The Week was selected for its sustained investigative reporting on sham medical and dental colleges which had no doctors, no patients and no facilities and yet were permitted to award medical and dental degrees to thousands of students.

Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata was honoured with the Swiss Ambassador's award for exceptional leadership and his contribution to strengthening bilateral ties between India and Switzerland on 16 October 2011. Switzerland's Ambassador to India Philippe Welti conferred the award to Tata at a ceremony at the Swiss embassy in New Delhi. The first Swiss Ambassador's award, founded in 2010, was conferred on film-maker Yash Chopra for his contribution to strengthening Indo-Swiss people-to-people relations through his movies.

Dr M K Mani, pioneer of nephrology in India and currently chief nephrologist at the Apollo Hospital was on 20 October 2011 declared the winner of the 40th Dhanvantari Award. Mani pioneered innovative techniques and new regimen in management of kidney disorders. He is the recipient of many awards including Padma Bhushan and the Ravindranath Tagore award and has over 125 publications to his credit. The prestigious award, which recognises contribution in medical science, is being awarded annually since 1972.

British novelist Julian Barnes was on 18 October 2011 declared the unanimous winner of the 2011 £50,000 Man Booker prize for his novella, The Sense of an Ending. The novel is about a 60-something man forced to confront buried truths about his past after the unexpected arrival of a letter.

The Hindu's Chhattisgarh correspondent, Aman Sethi on 19 October 2011 was awarded the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) award for the best Indian print media article on humanitarian issues at the India Islamic Cultural Centre. His article on three Chhattisgarh villages ruthlessly torched by police commandos in March 2011 was selected as the best of nearly 80 entries from across the country. About 300 homes and granaries were burnt in the five-day police operation that left three men dead, and three women sexually assaulted. Sethi's coverage initiated the local administration to probe the incident and send aid to the affected villages. The awards are instituted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Press Institute of India (PII) for articles published in an Indian national or regional newspaper or magazine in English or any of the Indian languages.

Actor/director Amol Gupte's son, Partho Gupte who gave an excellent performance as the quick-witted Stanley in his father's Stanley Ka Dabba won the best actor award at the Schlingel International Film Festival that concluded in Chmnitz, Germany on 16 October 2011.Schlingel is the only film festival in the world devoted to films for and about children. It is a much evolved film festival. There were over 130 films in the competition.

Environmentalist, lawyer and former Union Minister, Mohan Dharia was selected as the winner of the 26th Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration in October 2011. Mohan Dharia was selected for the prestigious award for his yeoman's service in promoting and preserving spirit of national integration. The 86-year-old Padma Vibhushan awardee currently runs the Vanrai NGO in Pune. He was elected to Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha and has been Union Minister and Deputy Chairperson of Planning Commission from December 1990 to June 1991. Congress constituted the award in its centenary year to give recognition to outstanding contribution to the cause by an individual or institution. It carries a citation and cash prize of Rs. 5 lakh. Committee chair and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi will present the award on 31 October 2011, the anniversary of Indira Gandhi's death.

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen for their work on women’s rights. The Norwegian Nobel Committee honoured the three women “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Johnson Sirleaf, 72, is a Harvard-trained economist who became Africa’s first democratically elected female President in 2005. She was seen as a reformer and peacemaker in Liberia when she took office. Liberia was ravaged by civil wars for years until 2003. Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, organised a group of Christian and Muslim women to challenge Liberia’s warlords. Tawakul Karman, 32, headed the Women Journalists without Chains, a human rights group for journalists. She had been a leading figure in organising the protests in Yemen that opposed the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and which kicked off in late January.

Three scientists , American Bruce Beutler , French scientist Jules Hoffmann and Canadian-born Ralph Steinman (recently died), won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Medicine for discoveries about the immune system that opened new avenues for the treatment and prevention of infectious illnesses and cancer. Mr. Beutler and Mr. Hoffmann were cited for their discoveries in the 1990s of receptor proteins that can recognise bacteria and other microorganisms as they enter the body, and activate the first line of defence in the immune system, known as innate immunity. Mr. Steinman, 70, was honoured for the discovery two decades earlier of dendritic cells, which help regulate adaptive immunity, the next stage of the immune system’s response, when the invading microorganisms are purged from the body. Mr. Beutler is professor of genetics and immunology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Mr. Hoffmann headed a research laboratory in Strasbourg, France, between 1974 and 2009 and Mr. Steinman has been affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York since 1970, and heads its Center for Immunology and Immune Diseases.

Researchers Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the United States and US-Australian Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize for their research on supernovae. Nobel committee said, "They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate,” adding that their discovery had changed mankind's understanding of the universe. The award went to observations of ancient stars that flare in their death throes into becoming supernovae. Perlmutter, born in 1959, won half of the 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.48 million, 1.08 million euros) Nobel Prize, while Schmidt and Riess, born in 1969, were to share the other half, the Nobel jury said.

Daniel Shechtman of Israel won the 2011 Nobel Chemistry Prize for discovering and revealing the secrets of quasi crystals, which has revolutionised the notion of solid matter. Quasicrystals, described by the Nobel jury as 'a remarkable mosaic of atoms', are patterns that are highly ordered and symmetrical but which do not repeat themselves. Quasicrystals have been found in the lab and some have been discovered to occur naturally in minerals. Shechtman, born in 1941, is currently a professor at Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II. The academy said it awarded the 80-year-old poet “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” Mr. Transtromer’s most famous works include the 1966 “Windows and Stones,” in which he depicts themes from his many travels and “Baltics” from 1974. His works have been translated into more than 50 languages and influenced poets around the globe, particularly in North America.

US researchers Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims won the 2011 Nobel Economics Prize for their work on macroeconomics and government economic policymaking. The jury said, This year's laureates "have developed methods for answering ... questions regarding the causal relationship between economic policy and different macro-economic variables, such as GDP, inflation, employment and investments”.

This 2011 Right Lively Hood Awards have been given to Huang Ming (China) for his outstanding success in the development and mass-deployment of cutting-edge technologies for harnessing solar energy. Jacqueline Moudeina (Chad) "for her tireless efforts at great personal risk to win justice for the victims of the former dictatorship in Chad and to increase awareness and observance of human rights in Africa” . GRAIN (International) “for their worldwide work to protect the livelihoods and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in developing countries by foreign financial interests”. Ina May Gaskin (USA) “for her whole-life’s work teaching and advocating safe, woman-centered childbirth methods that best promote the physical and mental health of mother and child“. The Right Livelihood Award s was established in 1980 to honour and support those "offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today". It has become widely known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' .Presented annually in Stockholm at a ceremony in the Swedish Parliament.

The Dalai Lama will receive the Mahatma Gandhi peace prize, the legendary Indian leader's granddaughter Ela Gandhi announced at Johannesburg on 2 October, Gandhi Jayanti and asked the South African government to grant a visa to the Tibetan spiritual leader to visit the country. The Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Peace and Reconciliation will be conferred on the 76-year-old Dalai Lama at the annual Satyagraha Awards to be held at the Durban City.

Veteran actor-director Dev Anand will be honoured with the national Kishore Kumar Samman for the year 2010-11 by the Madhya Pradesh government. Similarly, noted music director, Rajesh Roshan will be bestowed with the national Lata Mangeshkar award.