India

Operation Pawan was the codename assigned to the operation by the Indian Peace Keeping Force to take control of Jaffna from the LTTE , in late 1987... to enforce the disarmament of the LTTE as a part of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. In brutal fighting lasting about three weeks, the IPKF took control of the Jaffna Peninsula from the LTTE, something that the Sri Lankan army had tried and failed to achieve for several years. Supported by Indian Army tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, the IPKF routed the LTTE, at the cost of 214 soldiers. On 4 October 1987, the Sri Lankan Navy captured an LTTE boat off Point Pedro with seventeen Tigers, including some high-profile leaders of the movement, onboard. The Colombo government alleged the boat was involved in smuggling arms across the Palk Strait and on these grounds denied immunity to the captured Tiger rebels. The LTTE denied this, claiming the rebels' movements were in accordance with the truce, being in the process of transferring documents for shifting the Tigers Headquarters from Madras to Jaffna.
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The 1987 Sino-Indian skirmish was the third military conflict between the Chinese army and Indian army that occurred at Sumdorong Chu Valley, with... the previous one taking place almost a quarter of a century earlier. After her return to power in 1980 as Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi ordered a general review of India's security plans. In 1982-83, she approved a plan submitted by the Chief of the Army Staff, General K.V. Krishna Rao, to upgrade the sporadic deployment of forces along the Line of Actual Control with the People's Republic of China. Since the late 1960s, India had developed an elaborate plan to defend the Himalayan frontier with China. This involved the provision of screening defences at the Line of Actual Control and the building of strong defence nodes at key points along the frontier. By the early 1980s, while the forces to man the defences were ready, the nodes were not, and the greatest weakness was in the fact that the servicing road network had not been built. The decision was taken to resume the defence infrastructure construction.
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Operation Blue Star 3–6 June 1984 was an Indian military operation, ordered by Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, to remove Sikh... separatists from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The Sikh separatists, led by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, were accused of amassing weapons in the Sikh temple. The operation was carried out by Indian army troops with tanks and armoured vehicles. Militarily successful, the operation aroused immense controversy, and the government's justification for the timing and style of the attack are highly debated. Operation Blue Star was included in the Top 10 Political Disgraces by India Today magazine. Official reports put the number of deaths among the Indian army at 83 and the number of civilian deaths at 492, though some independent estimates run as high as 1500. In addition, the CBI is considered responsible for seizing historical artifacts and manuscripts in the Sikh Reference Library before burning it down. The military action led to an uproar amongst Sikhs worldwide and the increased tension following the action led to assaults on members of the Sikh community within India.
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Operation Meghdoot was the code-name for the Indian Military operation to capture the Siachen Glacier in the disputed Kashmir region, precipitating... the Siachen Conflict. Launched on 13 April 1984, this military operation was unique as the first assault launched in the world's highest battlefield. The military action resulted in Indian troops gaining control of the entire Siachen Glacier. Today, the Indian Army deployment to forward positions along what is known as the Actual Ground Position Line is also sometimes inaccurately referred to as Operation Meghdoot. Up to 10 Infantry Battalions each of the Indian Army and Pakistani Army are actively deployed in altitudes up to 6,400 metres . The Siachen Glacier became a bone of contention following a vague demarcation of territory as per the Simla Agreement of 1972, which did not exactly specify who had authority over the Siachen Glacier area. As a result of this, both nations claimed the barren strategic heights.
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The African Development Bank Group is a development bank established in 1964 with the intention of promoting economic and social development in... Africa. The Group comprises the African Development Bank , the African Development Fund , and the Nigeria Trust Fund . AfDB provides loans and grants to African governments and private companies investing in the regional member countries in Africa. It is owned and funded by member governments, and has a public-interest mandate to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. Following the end of colonial period in Africa, growing desire for more unity within the continent led to the establishment of two draft charters, one for the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity , and for a regional development bank. A draft accord was submitted to top African officials, then to African Ministers, before being cosigned by twenty-three African governments on August 4, 1963, in the form of an agreement establishing the African Development Bank.
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The Asian Development Bank is a regional development bank established on 22 August 1966 to facilitate economic development of countries in Asia. The... bank admits the members of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and non-regional developed countries. From 31 members at its establishment, ADB now has 67 members - of which 48 are from within Asia and the Pacific and 19 outside. ADB was modeled closely on the World Bank, and has a similar weighted voting system where votes are distributed in proportion with member's capital subscriptions. At present, both the United States and Japan hold 552,210 shares, the largest proportion of shares at 12.756% each. China holds 228,000 shares , India holds 224,010 shares , the 2nd and 3rd largest proportion of shares respectively. The highest policy-making body of the bank is the Board of Governors composed of one representative from each member state. The Board of Governors, in turn, elect among themselves the 12 members of the Board of Directors and their deputy.
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The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is an organisation of South Asian nations, founded in December 1985 by Ziaur Rahman and... dedicated to economic, technological, social, and cultural development emphasising collective self-reliance. Its seven founding members are Sri Lanka, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Afghanistan joined the organization in 2005. Meetings of heads of state are usually scheduled annually; meetings of foreign secretaries, twice annually. It is headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal. The 16 stated areas of cooperation are agriculture and rural, biotechnology, culture, energy, environment, economy and trade, finance, funding mechanism, human resource development, poverty alleviation, people to people contact, security aspects, social development, science and technology; communications, tourism . The concept of SAARC was first adopted by Bangladesh during 1977, under the administration of President Ziaur Rahman. In the late 1970s, SAARC nations agreed upon the creation of a trade bloc consisting of South Asian countries. The idea of regional cooperation in South Asia was again mooted in May 1980.
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The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental... organisation of fifty-four independent member states. All but two of these countries were formerly part of the British Empire, out of which it developed. The member states cooperate within a framework of common values and goals as outlined in the Singapore Declaration. These include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism, and world peace. The Commonwealth is not a political union, but an intergovernmental organisation through which countries with diverse social, political, and economic backgrounds are regarded as equal in status. Activities of the Commonwealth are carried out through the permanent Commonwealth Secretariat, headed by the Secretary-General, and biennial meetings between Commonwealth Heads of Government. The symbol of their free association is the Head of the Commonwealth, which is a ceremonial position currently held by Queen Elizabeth II.
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The Indira Gandhi National Open University , known as IGNOU is a national university with its headquarters in New Delhi, Delhi, India. Named after... former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi, the university was established in 1985 with a budget of 2000 crore, when the Parliament of India passed the Indira Gandhi National Open University Act, 1985 . IGNOU, the largest university in the world with 3,500,000 students; was founded to impart education by means of distance and open education, provide higher education opportunities particularly to the disadvantaged segments of society, to encourage, coordinate and set standards for distance and open education in India and strengthen the human resources of India through education. Apart from teaching and research, extension and training form the mainstay of its academic activities. It also acts as a national resource centre, and serves to promote and maintain standards of distance education in India. IGNOU hosts the Secretariats of the SAARC Consortium on Open and Distance Learning and the Global Mega Universities Network initially supported by UNESCO.
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The University of Pune , is a university located in northwestern Pune, India. It was founded in 1949. Spread over a 411 acres campus, the... university is home to 46 academic departments. University of Pune has been given the highest "A" rating by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council for its overall performance. The University of Pune was established under the Poona University Act, passed by the Bombay legislature on February 10, 1948. In the same year, Dr. M.R. Jayakar assumed office as the first vice chancellor of the university. Shri B.G. Kher, Chief Minister and Education Minister of the government of Bombay, helped ensure the university received a large allocation of land for their campus. In early 1950, the university was allocated over 411 acres . The location of the University has historical significance. Some incidents of the Battle of Khadki took place where the present day University of Pune is located. The present day Main Building was built in 1864 and was known as the Governor's House.
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The University of Delhi is a central university in Delhi, India and is funded by Government of India. Established in 1922, it offers courses at the... undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Vice-President of India Mohammad Hamid Ansari is the chancellor. It was ranked 371 in the world in 2010 by the THES - QS world universities ranking. The university has two campuses in the northern and southern part of the city. The north campus is well connected with the yellow line of the Delhi Metro. The station is called Vishwavidyalaya, which means "university" in Hindi and Sanskrit. North campus is about 2.5 km from Delhi Vidhan Sabha and 7.0 km from ISBT. The University of Delhi was established in 1922 as a unitary, teaching and residential university by an Act of the then Central Legislative Assembly. The President of India is the Visitor, the Vice President is the Chancellor and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India is the Pro-Chancellor of the University. When the University took birth, only three colleges existed in Delhi then: St.
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Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been... described as the most known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent his youth touring Europe and India with the dance group of his brother Uday Shankar. He gave up dancing in 1938 to study sitar playing under court musician Allauddin Khan. After finishing his studies in 1944, Shankar worked as a composer, creating the music for the Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, and was music director of All India Radio, New Delhi, from 1949 to 1956. In 1956, he began to tour Europe and America playing Indian classical music and increased its popularity there in the 1960s through teaching, performance, and his association with violinist Yehudi Menuhin and George Harrison of The Beatles. Shankar engaged Western music by writing concerti for sitar and orchestra and toured the world in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1986 to 1992 he served as a nominated member of the upper chamber of the Parliament of India.
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K. R. Vijaya is a popular Indian actress who has starred in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu films. She started her career in the 1960s. She has been... acting for more than four decades now in South Indian cinema. K. R. Vijaya has worked with almost all the stalwarts of South Indian cinema and has played a variety of roles. Vijaya was born on 30 November 1948. She spent most of her childhood in the holy city of Palani. Vijaya's father was from Andhra Pradesh []and he wanted her to become an actress since he was himself acting in M. K. Radha's drama troupe at the time. Vijaya played the title character, a heroine, in her debut film Karpagam, directed by K. S. Gopalakrishnan who also directed her 100th film Nadhiyil Muthu. Karpagam was released in 1963. Vijaya has starred in almost 400 films in all the South Indian languages, including 100 films each in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu, half-a-dozen in Kannada, and one in Hindi titled Oonche Log. Her co-stars in the Hindi movie were Raaj Kumar and Feroz Khan. She received many offers in Hindi, but did not accept them as she was busy in the South.
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Hooman Majd, born 1957 in Tehran, is currently an Iranian-American journalist and author based in New York City, from where he makes frequent trips... to Iran. His maternal grandfather was the Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Kazem Assar , who had been born in village Iraq "to an Iraqi mother and a Persian father". The Ayatollah, along with other contemporary ulema, overcame traditional opposition to serve as a professor of philosophy at the University of Tehran. His own father, whose origins were in village Iran, became representative of a "middle class" that was "pro-democratic and pro-modernization". Raised in a family involved in the diplomatic service, Majd was raised from infancy abroad. He attended boarding schools in England. He stayed in Iran after the 1979 revolution and finished his college education in the United States of America. Majd worked in the entertainment industry, including Island Records and Polygram Records. He then worked as a journalist, contributing to GQ, The New York Times, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Salon, the New York Observer, and Interview, where he is also a contributing editor.
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Kumaresan Duraisamy , better known by his stage name Napoleon , is a Tamil film actor, politician and the founder and chairman of the Jeevan... Technologies. As of 27 May 2009, He is a Minister of State in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Cabinet. During his early ages, he acted in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam language films. Kumaresan Duraiswamy, better known as Napolean, was born on 2 December 1963—the fifth of six children. Hailing from a middle class family, Napoleon was well acquainted with hardship and hard work from a very young age. His father, an agriculturist, worked hard on his farm while his mother busied herself with bringing up 6 children. A graduate of St. Joseph's College, Trichy - one of the premier educational institutions in South India - he is also an accomplished sportsman and an athlete. With a vision to globalize, he has played a major role in setting up the global offices of Jeevan Technologies in the USA and New Zealand.
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Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except... for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south. The capital is Dhaka, which is the hub of all cultural, political and religious affairs. Together with the Indian state of West Bengal, it makes up the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal. The name Bangladesh means "Country of Bengal" in the official Bengali language. The borders of present-day Bangladesh were established with the partition of Bengal and India in 1947, when the region became East Pakistan, part of the newly formed nation of Pakistan. However, it was separated from the western wing by 1,600 km of Indian territory.
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Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas... and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India. With an area of 147,181 square kilometres and a population of approximately 30 million, Nepal is the world's 93rd largest country by land mass and the 41st most populous country. Kathmandu is the nation's capital and the country's largest metropolis. Nepal has a rich geography. The mountainous north has eight of the world's ten tallest mountains, including the highest point on Earth, Mount Everest, called Sagarmatha in Nepali. It contains more than 240 peaks over 20,000 ft above sea level. The fertile and humid south is heavily urbanized. By some measures, Hinduism is practised by a larger majority of people in Nepal than in any other nation. Buddhism, though a minority faith in the country, is linked historically with Nepal. Many Nepali do not distinguish between Hinduism and Buddhism and follow both religious traditions.
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Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the... south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China. Bhutan is separated from the nearby country of Nepal to the west by the Indian state of Sikkim, and from Bangladesh to the south by the Indian states of Assam and West Bengal. Bhutan existed as a patchwork of minor warring fiefdoms until the early 17th century, when the area was unified by Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, who fled religious persecution in Tibet and cultivated a separate Bhutanese identity. In the early 20th century, Bhutan came into contact with the British Empire, after which Bhutan continued strong bilateral relations with India upon its independence. In 2006, Business Week magazine rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth-happiest in the world, based on a global survey. Bhutan’s landscape ranges from subtropical plains in the south to the sub-alpine Himalayan heights in the north, with some peaks exceeding 7,000 metres .
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China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous state in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East... Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres . It is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area. The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities , and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions , Hong Kong and Macau. Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims the island of Taiwan, which is controlled by the government of the Republic of China, as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War.
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