Awards & Honours - Current Affairs for March, 2016

Awards were presented by the Directorate of Film Festivals of India to honour the top films in Indian Cinema. Given below is a list of the winners:

• Best Feature Film - Baahubali: The Beginning
• Indira Gandhi Award for Best Debut Film Of A Director - Neeraj Ghaywan for Masaan
• Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment- Bajrangi Bhaijaan
• Best Children's Film - Duronto
• Best Direction - Sanjay Leela Bhansali for Bajirao Mastani
• Nargis Dutt Award for Best Feature Film on National Integration - Nanak Shah Fakir
• Best Film on Environment / Conservation / Preservation - Valiya Chirakulla Pakshikal
• Best Film on Social Issue - Niranayakam
• Best Actor - Amitabh Bachchan for Piku
• Best Actress - Kangana Ranaut for Tanu Weds Manu Returns
• Best Supporting Actor - Samuthirakani for Visaranai
• Best Supporting Actress - Tanvi Azmi for Bajirao Mastani
• Best Child Artist - Gaurav Menon for Ben
• Best Male Playback Singer - Mahesh Kale for Katyar Kaljat Ghusali
• Best Female Playback Singer - Monali Thakur for Moh Moh Ke Dhaag (Dum Laga Ke Haisha)
• Special Jury Award - Kalki Koechlin for Margarita with a Straw
• Best Animated Film - Fisherwoman, Tuktuk
• Best Hindi Film - Dum Laga Ke Haisha

The royal scion of the Ahluwalia dynasty of Kapurthala, Tikka Shatrujit Singh was on 17th March 2016 honoured with the Knight of the Legion of Honour or Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. He is currently adviser to chairman of LVMH group and also known as the guru of luxury. He is the heir of Maharaja Jagatjit Singh of Kapurthala who was a celebrated Francophile.

The Oxford University professor, Sir Andrew Wiles won the 500,000 pound prize for cracking the 300 year old Fermat’s Last Theorem. His proof was published in 1994. The 62 year old will pick up an award and a cheque for the six million Krone from Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon in Oslo in the month of May

Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on 18th March was conferred with the Skoch Lifetime Achievement Award at the 43rd SKOCH summit held in New Delhi. He was selected for his contributions to inclusive growth and poverty alleviation in the country. IT Minister of Telangana, KT Rama Rao also won the award in the start up category for setting up tech incubator T-Hub.

Mother Teresa will be made a saint on September 4th, 19 years after the Nobel Laureate’s death, an announcement made by Pope Francis said. Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity and spent 45 years serving the poor, sick and orphaned. The elevation of Mother Teresa to sainthood came after the Church recognised the second miracle earlier. Mother Teresa died at 87 in the year 1997 in Kolkata.Canonisation was an important formality.

This campaign has won the award at the travel trade show in Germany. Called New Worlds, the campaign covers three short films directed by reputed Malayalam filmmaker Anwar Rasheed won the silver prize of this year’s Das Golden Stadttor or Golden City Gate at the Internationale Tourismus-Borse Berlin (ITB-Berlin), 2016.Kerala Tourism had earlier won the WNWTO or UN World Tourism Organisation award for contribution to eco tourism.

President Francois Hollande has awarded the Legion d’Honneur to visiting Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Naef. The Legion d’Honneur was founded in 1802 by Napoleon and regarded as the first among modern orders of merit in the world. It is France’s highest civilian honour.

The Best University award at the President’s Visitor Awards Ceremony for 2016 has been awarded to Tezpur University for being the top university. Other recipients of this award include Professor Rakesh Bhatnagar from JNU for Innovation. The Molecular Parasitology Group of JNU won the award in the research category. Award was given during week long Festival of Innovations hosted in partnership between Rahstrapati Bhavan and National Innovation Foundation from March 12-19th.

Veteran Dogri poetess and writer Padma Sachdev has won the Krutitava Smagra Samman for the year 2015 on 6th March 2016. Award was given by Kolkata’s Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad for the contribution to literature and service to Dogri language. Sachdev has 6 collections of Dogri poems and 8 books of Hindi prose including 2 novels.

Well known actor Manoj Kumar who essayed important roles in patriotic films like Purab Aur Pashcim, Kranti and Upkar will receive the Dadasaheb Phalke award. He will be the 47th recipient of this award which comprises a cash price of INR 10 lakhs. Kumar was born in Abbottabad as Harikrishna Giri Goswami and debuted in 1960 with the movie Kaanch KI Gudia. He was named “Bharat Kumar” because of his large number of patriotic movies.

Well known poet Dr. Bhagwati Lal Vyas was chosen for the 2015 Bihari Puraskar on March 2nd 2016. He was chosen for his Rajasthani poem antholohy “Katha Sun Aawe Hai Sabad”. He is also a previous recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and his work forces on social disparity and loss of human values through positivity. His well known works include Shatabdi Niruttar and Suraj Leelti Ghatiyan.

The Turing award institutionalised in 1960s is considered the Oscar of computer science and technology. Diffie and Hellman won the award for their famous Diffie-Helman public-key exchange protocol. Award carries cash prize of USD 1 million and is considered the Nobel prize for the computer science world.

Veteran singer Stevie Wonder was honoured with Global Green Hero award at the 13th Annual Global Green US ceremony and was presented on stage with the award. The 65 year old musical icon also performed a nine-song set of his greatest hits also pointed out that climate change and its environmental impact are issues that he has always been invested in. Wonder also donated his harmonica to Global Green to auction off.

Columnist and author Jerry Pinto on March 1st, 2016 was chosen for the 2016 Windhan Campbell Prize for his novel Em and the Big Hoom published in 2012 which tells the story of a narrators attempts to come to terms with his parent’s bipolar disorder and mood malfunctions as well as suicidal tendencies. 8 other writers have been chosen for the award in the following categories

Fiction

• Tessa Hadley
• CE Morgan
• Jerry Pinto

• Hilton Als
• Stanley Crouch
• Helen Garner

• Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
• Hannah Moscovitch
• Abbie Spallen

The Grete Lundbeck European brain research prize (also called the Brain Prize) is an international scientific award. Through a phenomenon called long term potentiation, scientists have described the mechanism behind human ability to navigate, learn and remember their surroundings. Connections between hippocampus brain cells can be strengthened through repeated simulation resulting from long term potentiation.

3 British scientists, Tim Bliss, Graham Collingridge and Richard Morris, on 1 March 2016 won the Greta Lundbeck European Research prize award for their seminal work on understanding what happens in the brain when humans make and lose memories. The Brain Prize (as it is also called) has been won entirely by a UK team for the first time. Researchers studied neurons in the hippocampus, the brain's learning portal that enables humans to store information, and recollect it. For their seminal work in memory specifically in the field of long term potentiation, they won the award.

Senior playwright and director Ratan Thiyam has been named for the Lifetime Achievement Award during the 11th edition of the Mahindra Excellence Theatre Awards. He won the award for creating a new language in theatre and enriching the art form in various roles as writer, director, designer, composer and choreographer. Currently, he is chairman of NSD. Previous winners of the award include Girish Karnad, Zohra Sehgal and Badal Sarkar.

Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi has won 3 international awards for 2015 given by Airports Council International in the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey, where IGAI has scored 4.96 on a scale of 1 to 5. IGIA has won in the following categories:

• Retained World’s number one airport for consecutive second year in 25 to 40 Million Passengers Per Annum (MPPA) category.
• Best airport by size & region Asia Pacific (25-40 MPPA).
• Second best airport by region (Asia Pacific).

Pandit Vyas is an Indian Hindustani vocalist who is a modern exponent of the Paluskar style of north Indian classical singing. From Gwalior Gharana and the lineage of Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar, he is considered a golden standard in the gharana gayaki with his riyaz. The musician is a doctorate in Hindustani Classical Vocal Music from the Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal, Mumbai. AIR also awarded him top grade status while he won the
Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 2007.

The 88th Academy Awards called the Oscar Awards was conferred on 29th February 2016 held at Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, LA. Spotlight won the best picture and director Alejandro González Iñárritu won best director for The Revenant. For the first time, the best actor award was won by Leonardo Di Caprio for the Revenant. Brie Larson won the best actress award for Room while Alicia Vikander for the Danish Girl. Maximum number of awards were won by Mad Max: Fury Road.