2016

by Kadayam Subramanian
My dear friend and hero, Dr B.D. Sharma, who passed away recently, was an eminent civil servant of the IAS cadre in Madhya Pradesh (MP). The State produced many an eminent and progressive civil servant and police officer.
I came to know about Dr B.D. Sharma only after I joined the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in 1979 and took up my job as the Director of the newly created Civil Rights Cell (CRC), an innovation by the then Janata Party Government in New (…)

COMMUNICATION
Dr B.D. Sharma, who passed away on December 6 at Gwalior, will be remembered for his many-sided talents, scholarship and activism, but his most lasting contribution will be for his efforts for ensuring justice to tribals in India.
Dr Sharma, an IAS officer, worked in very senior positions in the Home Ministry and then as the Vice-Chancellor of the North-East Hill University. His work as the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and Tribes was distinguished by activist-like (…)

The Time magazine featured Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of the State of Gujarat, as the cover story in a March 2012 issue titled ‘Modi Means Business’. Only four Indians had appeared on the magazine’s cover—Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri and Vinoba Bhave. Time lauded Modi as a “firm, no-nonsense leader who will set the nation on a course of development that might finally put it on par with China”.
This was the common perception of Modi in the West. It was a (…)

On January 21, 2016 eminent danseuse Mrinalini Sarabhai passed away in Ahmedabad at the age of 97 due to age-related ailments.
Condoling her death President Pranab Mukherjee, in a message to her daughter Mallika, wrote:
“Smt Mrinalini Sarabhai left an indelible mark on Indian classical dance as an eminent danseuse, choreographer and teacher. Educated at Shantiniketan and a disciple of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore, Smt Mrinalini Sarabhai was trained in Bharatnatyam, Kathakali and (…)

It was August 26, 1969. We were at the Palam airport. Distinguished Communist leader and celebrated poet, Maqdoom Mohiuddin, had passed away in a Delhi hospital the previous evening and his body was to be flown to Hyderabad, his work-place. A little earlier it was kept at the CPI’s parliamentary party office at Windsor Place where eminent CPM leaders joined CPI stalwarts, notably S.A. Denge and C. Rajeswara Rao, in offering their last respects to the departed comrade.
At Palam airport (…)