by Editor | Mar 24, 2023 | Business, Lifestyle, News
Shri Birla was awarded the Padma Bhushan for his contribution to trade and industry.
Jaipur 24 March 2023 – On receiving the award, Shri Kumar Mangalam Birla said, “The spirit of nation-building and trusteeship has guided my family across generations. And so, to receive this national honour is indeed humbling. I thank the Honourable President of India, Smt Droupadi Murmu and the Honourable Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, for this prestigious honour which I accept on behalf of 140,000 colleagues from 36 countries. This award is a recognition of the longitudinal impact of the Aditya Birla Group— in enriching lives and in demonstrating through actions that business is a force for good”.
He is the third person in the family to receive this honour, before this Shri Birla’s mother Mrs. Rajshree Birla has also been honoured with the Padma Bhushan, as well as Mr. D. Birla has been honoured with Padma Vibhushan.
About Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla
- Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla, born on June 14th 1967, is an Indian billionaire industrialist, philanthropist and the Chairman of the venerable Indian Multinational Conglomerate, Aditya Birla Group.
- A fifth generation member of the Birla Family from Rajasthan, Mr Birla was born in Kolkata and grew up in a joint family in Mumbai with his parents Mr Aditya Vikram Birla and Mrs Rajashree Birla and younger sister Ms Vasavadatta Birla.
- In the 28+ years that he has been at the helm of the Group, he has accelerated growth, built meritocracy, and enhanced stakeholder value. In the process he has raised the Group’s turnover by 30 times, from US$ 2 billion to US$ 60 billion (as on 31st March, 2022).
- Mr Birla has led 40 acquisitions in India and globally, among the highest by any Indian multinational. Major acquisitions under leadership of Mr Birla include:
- 1999: Madura Garments acquired by Indian Rayon and Industries. Through this acquisition, the Group became the owner of premium brands such as Van Heusen, Allen Solly, Peter England and Louis Philippe.
- 2004: UltraTech CemCo, the demerged cement operation of Larsen & Toubro. A USD 7.1 billion building solutions powerhouse, UltraTech is the largest manufacturer of grey cement and ready mix concrete (RMC) in India. It is also one of the leading players in the white cement segment in India.
- 2007: Novelis, the world’s leading producer of aluminium rolled products and the largest recycler of aluminium, acquired by Mr Birla’s flagship metals company, Hindalco.
- 2012: Future Group’s Pantaloons acquired by Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited (ABNL). With this acquisition, ABNL entered into multiple brands, store formats and a complete range across categories spanning casual wear, ethnic wear, formal wear, party wear and sportswear for men, women and kids.
- 2020: Aleris, a US based, global aluminium flat rolled producer, acquired by Novelis. This acquisition made Hindalco one of the world’s largest aluminium companies, with a global footprint spanning 49 state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and Asia.
- Mr Birla studied at London Business School and was awarded Master of Business Administration from University of London in 1992. He is now an Honorary Fellow of the London Business School. Mr Birla constituted a £15mn scholarship programme at the London Business School in memory of his grandfather, Mr B.K. Birla, marking the largest ever endowed scholarship gift to a European Business School. He is also a Chartered Accountant from Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).
- Mr Birla is the first Indian Industrialist to be conferred an Honorary degree by the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI).
- Mr Birla is the Chancellor of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, with campuses in Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad, and Dubai, BITSoM (School of Management) and recently launched BITS Law School. He has also served as the Chairman of the Board at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM A) and IIT Delhi.
- Mr Birla was the architect of the first-ever governance code for Corporate India as he chaired the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Committee on Corporate Governance.
- Outside the Group, Mr Birla has held several key positions on various regulatory and professional Boards. He was a Director on the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India.
- Over the years, Mr Birla has been conferred several prestigious awards. He was the first Indian Industrialist to receive the TiE Global Entrepreneurship Award for Business Transformation in 2021. He has also been awarded the Economic Times “Business Leader Award for Corporate Excellence” in 2003 and 2013. In addition, he has received several awards and honours from leading institutions like EY, Forbes, CNBC, CNN-News18 and World Economic Forum (WEF).
- Mr Birla’s mother, Mrs Rajashree Birla has also been conferred with the Padma Bhushan, as well as Mr Birla’s great grandfather, Mr G. D. Birla with the Padma Vibhushan.
About the Aditya Birla Group
- The Aditya Birla Group is a global conglomerate in the league of Fortune 500.
- The Group’s legacy dates to over a century and it was the first Indian business group to venture abroad.
- The Group’s annual turnover (in FY22) was around USD 60 billion.
- The Group is present in 36 countries across six continents with over 50% of its revenues coming from overseas operations.
- Anchored by an extraordinary force of over 140,000 employees belonging to 100 nationalities, the Group is built on a strong foundation of stakeholder value creation.
- The Group has 130 state-of-the-art manufacturing units globally.
Globally, the Group is:
- World’s leading producer of aluminium rolled products
- World’s largest recycler of aluminium
- The largest single location copper smelter
- No. 2 in viscose staple fibre
- No. 2 producer of carbon black (based on installed production capacity)
- Third largest producer of insulators
- 5th largest producer of acrylic fibre
- 3rd largest cement manufacturer globally (excluding China)
- The largest Indian MNC with manufacturing operations in the US
In India, the Group is:
- No. 1 in cement
- No. 1 in fashion retail
- No. 1 caustic soda
- Largest manufacturer of linen fabric
- No. 1 in viscose filament yarn
- A leading player in Life Insurance and Asset Management
by Editor | Mar 5, 2023 | Health, Kids, News
The adenovirus menace in West Bengal seems to be assuming alarming proportions as deaths of four more children, admitted in a Kolkata hospital with its symptoms, were reported in the last six hours, taking the death toll of children to 40 in nine days.
Kolkata, March 5,2023: The adenovirus menace in West Bengal seems to be assuming alarming proportions as deaths of four more children, admitted in a Kolkata hospital with its symptoms, were reported in the last six hours, taking the death toll of children to 40 in nine days.
By Sunday morning, the deaths of two children – Atifa Khatun (18 months) and Aarman Gazi (4 years) – were reported from the B.C. Roy Children’s Hospital. However, by 4 p.m., four more child deaths had been reported from the same hospital, taking the number of deaths to six in the day.
Hospital sources confirmed these four deaths of children admitted to the hospital in the period between 10.30 a.m. and 4 p.m. but their identities are yet to be disclosed. All the children reported to have died in the last 13 hours were under treatment with typical adenovirus symptoms like fever, cough and breathing problems and treatment failed to result in any sign of recovery.
Already, the state Health Department has issued an advisory for doctors, especially paediatricians, to take special care of children being admitted with flu-like symptoms, especially children aged two years or below since they are most vulnerable to being affected by Adenovirus.
The common symptoms of adenovirus are flu-like including cold, fever, breathing problems, sore throat, pneumonia, and acute bronchitis.
The virus can spread through skin contact, by air through coughing and sneezing, and through an infected person’s stools. So far, there are no approved medicines or any specific treatment-line to treat the virus.
by Editor | Feb 6, 2023 | Lifestyle, News, Opinion, Opinions
Asad Mirza
Composite Nationalism as espoused by Hussain Ahmad Madani in early 20th century, holds validity even today also, besides becoming more relevant and giving a new interpretation to nationalism.
Husain Ahmad Madani was a traditional Islamic scholar and a political activist, as well as an advocate of both a unified global Islamic polity and an Indian nation- state democracy, in which Muslims and non-Muslims were to consider one another as equal members of the same nation; and each of these aspects is demonstrated in his seminal work Muttaḥida Qaumiyyat Aur Islām (Composite Nationalism and Islam) published in 1938.
It provides an analysis of the Islamic intellectual tradition from someone considered to be a conservative and which can be seen to accommodate a secular governmental order for a Muslim minority.
Barbara D. Metcalf in introduction to the book had said, ‘The assumption that a scholar like him was motivated by some “hermetic” Islam is thus misplaced,’ and he was ‘one of the most important Muslim figures in the history of twentieth-century South Asia’.
Madani, as a traditional Islamic scholar, clothes his vision in terms of an Islamic consciousness; in other words, it is not merely Muslim consciousness – i.e. the thoughts of someone who happens to be Muslim – but it is set forth as being scripturally coherent and faithful. He argued that Indian Muslims and non-Muslims possess a ‘united nationalism’ (Muttaḥida Qaumiyyat).
Madani’s discussion of Qaumiyyat or nationalism can be seen as keeping with the age in which he lived, described as one in which ‘nationalism [was] without doubt the most influential of the world’s political creeds during much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’.
Within the context of the many debates surrounding notions of nation, nationalism, nation-state, citizenship, culture, multiculturalism, etc., Madani’s work provides an argument how Muslim minorities can be fully integrated and socially cohesive, without being considered disloyal to their faith or their compatriots.
Madani’s Theory of United Nationalism
Written in the final days of the British Raj, Madani’s theory of united nationalism was ostensibly composed in response to misgivings that poet Allama Iqbal expressed about united nationalism, in which he saw – to use Madani’s characterisation – united nationalism as ‘unethical’ and ‘un-Islamic’ for ‘Indian Muslims’.
As a result, Madani’s response was to fit with the main aims of his life, which were: removal of British rule from India through a uniting of the various religious groups in India. Towards these goals, one can understand certain points regarding Madani’s theory, which he always contends is in conformity with the principles of Islamic law: namely, Muslim and non-Muslim Indians are one Qaum or nation, and must unite against their common foe; Islam is the final religion of truth, for the whole of mankind, and it provides the strongest bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood that humans can attain; Muslim minorities can accept living under secular political law, but their ‘personal law’ must be safeguarded under such a government.
Madani builds his case – citing the ‘Madinah Pact’ and using the Arabic language, the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s teachings – explaining the notion of nationalism or Qaumiyyat as comprising communities or aqwām.
Ultimately, although Madani does not directly address the complexities of race, his urge for Indian unity between Muslims and non-Muslims can be used for a call of greater togetherness amongst races, cultures or ethnicities (as one chooses to define such ‘groupings’).
Yet Madani’s sense of not losing one’s own identity in such a social enterprise entails retaining the notion of Islam’s finality and acknowledging that greater bonds of brotherhood exist between Muslims.
He wrote, “By united nationalism I mean here ‘nationalism’, the foundation of which was laid down by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in Madinah. That is to say that the residents of India as Indian, as a nation united (having religious and cultural diversity), should become one solid nation and should wage war against the alien power that has usurped the natural rights of the citizens of this great country.
“It is incumbent upon every Indian to fight against such a barbaric regime and break the shackles of this slavery. In this regard, one should not hinder another’s religion; rather, all nations (or communities) residing in India are free to follow their religions and moral values, and act as per their respective religious traditions. While maintaining peace and tranquillity, they should also publicise their ideology.
Indeed, they should all follow their respective culture, promote and protect their own personal law. Neither should a minority interfere in the personal affairs of other minorities or the majority, nor should the majority strive to absorb the minority in itself.”
In summation, it is apparent that Muslims can form a nation with non-Muslims and it is neither an undue interference in religious affairs nor is it against the spirit of common welfare that Islamic law envisages. So a Muslim, while (faithfully) observing his religion, can join hands with non-Muslims and can become a nation as they have lived earlier.
Further, it becomes obvious that Madani’s interpretation of Qaumiyyat or nationalism, was not applicable only during that time, but it is relevant even more, today also.
It would be more prudent if the current dispensation can try to include the interpretation of nationalism as espoused by other thinkers also, including Madani, to their own theory of nationalism. Only this act would be able to provide a more sustainable and growth-oriented approach to tackle many ills confronting out nation, today.
Besides promoting this interpretation of nationalism, not only India will be able to handle many of its current issues but will also be able to influence the global narrative of the concept, and thus be really seen as a ‘Vishwa Guru’.
by Editor | Jan 23, 2023 | Business, Corporate, Lifestyle
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
VLSI Society of India (VSI), the premier body for development of VLSI Design & Semiconductors in India, felicitated Dr. Satya Gupta, CEO, EPIC Foundation with ‘The Lifetime Achievement Award’ at the 36th International Conference on VLSI Design & Embedded Systems on January 12th, 2023, at the awards ceremony held in Hyderabad. The award recognises Dr. Gupta for his immense contribution and exemplary work in the field of VLSI, Semiconductors & Electronics in India & across the Globe over last 4 decades.
The award aims to highlight and recognise exemplary life-time contributions by an individual to Indian & Global VLSI and Semiconductor Industry ecosystem. Having brought about wide-spread positive impact on Semiconductor product design, manufacturing, research, start-ups, talent & skills development, Dr. Gupta, a Techno Visionary, Serial entrepreneur, Researcher, and Philanthropist, continues to provide leadership and be a source of inspiration for millions of young VLSI & Semiconductor engineers in India and around the world.
The selection of Award was done by a high-level jury panel, Chaired by Sanjay Churiwala, General Chair, VLSID-2023 & Corporate Vice President AMD. VLSID-2023 was held at Hyderabad from 8th Jan 2023 to 12th Jan 2023 and was presided by Shri Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Hon’ble Union Minister of State for Electronics & IT and Skill development and entrepreneurship, Govt. of India. During the award ceremony, Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Global Semiconductor Visionary highlighted life-time contributions by Dr. Gupta and the impact to the global semiconductor community at large and Prof. Thomas Lee of Stanford University felicitated Dr. Gupta with VLSI Society of India, Life-time Achievement Award.
“Recognizing the techno-visionaries, transformation champions & difference makers will encourage even more people to make the best of this exhilarating period of innovation in Semiconductors and VLSI Design,” says Vishwani Agarwal, Professor Emeritus, Auburn University and a guiding force behind the International Conference on VLSI Design and the VLSI Society of India, since their inception in the late 1980s. “It is a matter of pride for all of us to recognise Dr. Satya Gupta for his tremendous contributions to India’s digital Electronics ecosystem, especially the Mission for making India a true Semiconductor product nation. His contributions have stretched across Technology, Products, Start-ups, Academia, Government, Research, and Industry domains. He is an inspiration for the Global Electronics & Semiconductors Industry,” he adds.
Speaking on the recognition, Dr. Satya Gupta, CEO, EPIC Foundation said, “I feel deeply honoured to receive the VSI Lifetime Achievement Award. This is a recognition of the great contribution of thousands of my fellow VLSIians & Semiconductor professionals across India & around the world. This unstoppable journey started at least 3 decades ago with a single mission of ‘Making India World-Class Electronics & Semiconductor Product Nation’. My collective dream is to make India a true Semiconductor Product Nation by having 1,000+ Fabless semiconductor product companies across the length and breadth of India with at least 1 Fabless product company in each district of India and to start B.Tech. program for Electronics & VLSI Design in 100+ colleges across India for producing world class talent,” he added.
by Editor | Jan 8, 2023 | Lifestyle, News, Travel
New Delhi, Jan 8,2022: Sixty-six-year old Delhi-based entrepreneur, Gagan Khosla embarked on a mission to cycle his way across the Golden Quadrilateral, covering 6000+ km, to raise funds for Bal Raksha Bharat’s (also known as Save the Children, India) education programmes.
His journey began on November 20, 2022, in Delhi, and ended on December 28, 2022, in Manesar, Gurgaon, after a 37-day bicycle journey that covered the states of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan.
Amid the coronavirus lockdown, while browsing through news channels, Khosla discerned the threat that the pandemic posed, especially to the learning opportunities for financially disadvantaged children.
In response, he decided to test his limits, which he had done previously when he rode a bicycle 4,300 kilometers from Leh to Kanyakumari to celebrate his 60th birthday and raise funds for his former institution, Scindia School, Gwalior, in 2016. His journey was so inspirational that it was turned into a film titled ‘Hai Junoon’.
Produced by the EPIC Channel, the 45-minute film tracks Khosla’s adventures from the vast mountains of Leh to the fast-track highways of mainland India? Bal Raksha Bharat, commonly known as Save the Children India, is a non-profit organisation working to improve the lives of marginalized children in India since 2008.
“It was during the COVID-19 pandemic that I was sitting at home watching the news of people departing from cities for their towns and villages, and that was when I started feeling concerned about what is going to happen to these people, especially children. How many children are going to be pushed toward illiteracy? How is this migration going to affect their future? Who is going to look after the kids who lost their parents? My head was full of these questions, and that was when I decided to do my part for society and our children. I was well aware that I would not be enough to change the fate of all the affected children; however, I also knew that every drop in the ocean counts. Finally, I decided to connect with Save the Children and shared my idea with them,” says Gagan Khosla.
“When Mr. Khosla reached out to us with his idea, we were delighted to see the determination he had to do something for children, and for the nation. Pre-pandemic poverty, gender disparity, overpopulation, and distance from school were a few of the many reasons for dropout rates in India, and the pandemic further added to that. As many as 247 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in India were impacted by extended school closures.
“School closures threatened to rob children off a childhood of learning. However, the Central Government brought out various interventions, guidelines and innovative models to reduce the impact of pandemic on education. All relevant stakeholders, including NGOs, Corporates and individuals have come together to support the government in this endeavor, and we stand together to ensure learning continues for all children,” says Sudarshan Suchi, CEO, Save the Children.
India has made significant strides in literacy since independence (National Statistical Commission Survey calculates literacy to be 77.7 per cent in 2017-18). The United Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2019-20 for School Education in India records the total children enrolled in schools from primary to higher secondary at 25.57 crores as compared to 25.38 crore enrolment in 2020-21, registering an increase of 19.36 lakh children. However, 1.45 per cent of children at the primary level and 12.61 per cent at the secondary level drop out and financial burden is one of the major causes for that. On top of that, the pandemic worsened the scenario further.
For Khosla, every journey brings new experiences allowing him to meet and interact with new people. En route to Chennai, while having breakfast, he met Dr. Thameem Ansari, a renowned pediatric surgeon. He congratulated Khosla for this incredible initiative of pedaling across the Golden Quadrilateral for this noble cause. He invited Khosla to his hospital in Chennai and was greeted by 700-800 staff members.
Khosla proved that age is just a number if you have the will and motivation to do something and for him that motivation was to do something for children deprived of basic early education.
