P.T.USHA

Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha (PT Usha), is well and truly Kerala's greatest contribution to sports.One of the greatest of Indian women athletes of all time, Usha has carved a niche for herself in her field. She was the first Indian woman and only the fifth Indian to reach the final of an Olympic event, by winning the 400m hurdles semifinal. With her proud visage and humble demeanour, Usha remains one of the greatest athletes India has ever produced.

Usha missed the bronze by 1/100th of a second in 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. She created a new Asian Games record in all the events participated during that year. Popularly known as 'The Payyoli Express,' Usha was, remarkably, neither the product of any academy or of any sports school. Perhaps the most striking quality of Usha has been her fortitude.Through times of despair and even when she conquered new heights,Usha remained shy and smiling, unwilling to display to her inner feelings.

PT Usha was born, as the daughter of Paithal and Lakshmi, at Payyoli, a small village in Kozhikode, on June 27, 1964. Her initial education was at Thrikottur school, Payyoli. It was her teacher, Balakrishnan, who first unearthed the sporting talent dormant in Usha. She then joined the sports division in Kannur. Her association with O.M. Nambiar, an athletics coach, helped her to scale new heights in athletics. Her craving for success only became more intense as the years rolled by. However, it would only be fair to say that Nambiar's stubborn -and selfish- refusal to let Usha seize the numerous training opportunities abroad cost her dear.

Usha, through sheer hard work and fierce determination, epitomised the Indian Quest for the elusive Olympic track and field medal, and came within a whisker of winning it, at the1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Her career-graph saw a meteoric rise after this and in the second phase of her career, after the split from Nambiar, she was trained by coach JS Bhatia.Today, she is the inspiration for hundreds of aspiring Kerala athletes aspiring to compete at the highest level and succeed.

Usha, with her husband Sreenivasan and her son Ujjal currently resides at Payyoli. She runs The Usha School of Athletics at Quilandi, which aims to bring forth new talents in the field of Athletics. She is determined to produce an Olympic medal winner, which she and India lost in Los Angeles, by one-hundredth of a second. That would be the perfect epilogue to the life of one of the greatest Indian athletes of all time.

Achievements
• National Record at the State athletic meet at Kottayam, 1977.
• She captured the limelight as a junior athlete in National Inter State meet at Kollam, 1978.
• Selected to the National Squad for the 18th Pakistan National Games in Karachi, 1980. • Selected to represent India in the Moscow Olympics, 1980.
• First Indian woman to reach the final of an Olympic event.
• Youngest Indian sprinter to compete in the Olympics. She was just past 16 then.
• Participated in the 1982 Delhi Asiad and won the first medal of the Games.
• In the 1983 Asian Track and Field Meet (re-christened as the Asian championship) at Kuwait, Usha tried out the 400m for the first time.She emerged successful as the one- lapper at an international arena for the first time.
• Her effort of 55.54 seconds in LosAngeles was a record since this was the first time the 400m hurdles was conducted in the womens section.
• Usha gathered 5 gold medals and one bronze, in 1985, at the Jakarta Asian Athletic meet.
• Won four golds in 1986, Seoul Asian games, claiming for herself the title of Asia's sprint queen.
• Following her marriage in 1991, she quit the scene for a while, but came back in1993 ,after 3 years of hibernation.
• Participated in the Olympic games from 1980, except the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
• She last participated in the Olympics in Atlanta , 1996.

Prizes and Recognitions
• Recipient of Arjuna Award ,1984.
• Adjudged as the greatest women athlete, in 1985 Jakarta Asian Athletic Meet.
• Padma Sree in 1984.
• Best Athlete of the year Award from India Government in 1984,/85,/86,/87, and 89.
• In 1986 Seoul Asian Games, won the Adidas Golden Shoe Award for the best athlete by the Asian Amateur Athletics Association, Seoul Asian Games, 1986.
• 33 medals including 13 golds in Asian Games and Asian Championships.
• Won a total of 102 medals at National and International meets during her career.
• Won 1 gold and 2 silver at the 1999 Saf Games held at Kathmandu.
• Thirty International Awards, for her excellence in Athletics.
• In recognition of her achievements, a road at Payyoli,her home town, is named after her.
• The Kerala Government has set up the "PT Usha Sports Council" at Central Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram.
• Kerala Sports Journalists Award for the year 1999.

Usha School of Athletics - web site

Read much more about fascinating Kerala - her natural assets, achievements, famous sons, pressing issues and problems......

Dr.K.J.Yesudas

When it comes to Malayalam film songs,it is no exaggeration to state that there is Yesudas - and then there are all the others! He took singing to a different level and set standards impossible for his successors to come even close.

Born in Fort Kochi as the son of Augustine Joseph-himself a well known Malayalam classical musician and stage actor- Kattassery Joseph Yesudas has weaved magic, with his inimitable voice, over generations. He joined the Music Academy in Thrippunithura and won a gold medal for music at a local competition in Fort Kochi at age seven! He was trained by Chembai Vaidyanatha Bhagavatar,one of the senior most performers of the time in Classical Music.This training, abruptly cut short by the guru's demise in 1974, was really the rock on which this illustrious career was built. He did not wish to tie himself down to Carnatic music and combined Hindustani and Carnatic music styles in all their enchanting varieties.

His first song as playback singer was for the Malayalam filom 'Kalpadukal'. From there, this 'voice from the heavens' proceeded to conquer everything before it, with hit songs after hit songs stirring the very soul of Keralites. The 60's and 70's were the golden period for Malayalam film songs, when people in Kerala were priveleged enough to experience the magic of Yesudas, composers Vayalar and P.Bhaskaran and music maestros Baburaj, Devarajan, Dakshinamoorthy and Salil Chowdhury at their peak. The combination of the accomplished actor Prem Nazir and Yesudas took the Malayalam cinema industry of the seventies by storm and has passed into the legends.

In the 80's, Yesudas paired with Raveendran, M.G.Radhakrishnan, Jerry Amaldev and Johnson to keep producing memorable songs. Simultaneously, he delivered effortless hits in Tamil too, with music directors like Ilayaraja, A.R.Rahman and Gangai Amaran. He has won the Tamil Nadu state award for the best playback singer eight times! Add to these his lilting Hindi numbers and numerous devotional songs and bhajans in various languages,one can begin to know what the name K.J.Yesudas means to the average Malayali!

His soul stirring voice lends itself effortlessly to all genres - be it classical, devotional or popular songs.Yesudas has recorded more than 40,000 songs in almost all Indian languages, Russian, Arabic, Latin and English. National award winner for the best playback singer an awesome seven times, he is also the recepient of the Padmashree(1973) and Padmabhushan (2002).

He has sung in almost all Indian language films except Assamese and Kashmiri, and
performed in almost all the major cities of the world. In his music concerts at Middle East he performs Arabic songs in Carnatic style. He also dons the role of cultural ambassador of India through his numerable performances abroad, promoting Indian Music. He is the only one singer who has the title 'Asthana Gayakan' (Official singer) of Kerala State.

In 1965, he was invited by the Soviet Union government to perform at music concerts in various cities in the U.S.S.R and sang a Russian song over Radio Kazakhstan! In 1970 he was nominated to head the Sangeetha Nataka Academy of Kerala, the youngest person ever to occupy the office. In 1971, Yesudas with his musical troupe travelled around Kerala to raise funds for the Indian Prime Minister's National Defence Fund during the Indo-Pakistani War. He also became Senate member in the International Parliament for Safety and Peace, an organization incorporated in the USA. On November 14, 1999, Yesudas was presented an honorary award by UNESCO for "Outstanding Achievements in Music and Peace" at the "Music for Peace" event in Paris, a concert held to mark the dawn of the new millennium and whose attendees included artistes such as Lionel Richie, Ray Charles, Montserrat Caballé and Zubin Mehta.

Even today, his voice-especially his songs of the golden era- bonds Keralites, spread the world over, to their home land, awakening in their hearts a yearning for home which is not easy to describe.

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Titles, Honours and Major Awards

* Padma Bhushan by President of India in 2002.
* Padma Shri by President of India in 1973.
* Doctrate by Annamalai University , Tamil Nadu in 1989.
* D.Litt by Kerala University , Kerala in 2003.
* Asthana Gayakan ( Official Singer ) by Government of Kerala
* Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1992.
* Asthana Vidwan ( Official Teacher ) by Udupi, Sringeri and Raghavendra mutts.
* Sangeetha Sagaram ( Music Ocean ) in 1989.
* Sangeetha Chakravarthy ( Music Emperor ) in 1988 by Pallavi Narasimachary
* Sangeetha Raja ( Music King ) by Chembai in 1974.
* Sangeetha Ratna ( Music Jewel ) by Lt. Governor of Pondicherry M.M. Lakhera
* Swathi Ratnam( Swathi Jewel )
* Sapthagiri Sangeetha Vidwanmani in 2002.
* Bhakti Sangita Geetha Sironmani in 2002.
* Gaana Gandharva.
* Geetanjali Award. by The ex-president of India Neelam Sanjiva Reddy
* Sur Shringar Samsad Award. in 1976.
* Kalaimamani Award by Government of Tamil Nadu.
* Star of India Award by Lt. Governor of Pondicherry M.M. Lakhera
* National Citizens Award in 1994
* Mar Gregorius awrd Governor RL Bhatia in 2006
* The `Annual Latha Mangeshkar Award by Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1992.
* Dr Pinnamaneni and Seethadevi Foundation Award in 2000.
* Senate member in the International Parliament for Safety and Peace, an organization incorporated in the U.S.A.
* An Honorary award for "Outstanding Achievements in Music and Peace” by UNESCO in 1999
* National Film Awards Seven times for the best Playback singer by Government of India
* State Film awards Twenty three times for the best Playback singer by Government of Kerala
* State Film awards Eight times for the best Playback singer by Government of Tamil Nadu
* State Film awards Five Times for the best Playback singer by Government of Karnataka
* State Film awards Five times for the best Playback singer by Government of Andra Pradesh
* State Film awards One time for the best Playback singer by Government of West Bengal

K.J.Yesudas's website

More famous sons.......P.T.Usha

Read much more about fascinating Kerala - her natural assets, achievments, famous sons, pressing issues and problems......

E.Sreedharan

How many people in Delhi - or, for that matter, Kerala know a man called Elattuvalappil Sreedharan? He is 70, and logically should have retired a long time ago with enough achievements to boast about to his grandchildren.

But E.Sreedharan is still going strong,and has to his eternal credit the feat of having built the Konkan Railway, which dramatically reduced the Mumbai-Kochi distance by one third. The ‘expert’ opinion had been that the project was not feasible from the physical, economical as well as the environmental perspective. There were PILs filed, processions taken out. Sreedharan defied them all and built India’s first, genuine railway project of any notable size after the British.

He did not stop there. Everybody laughed when plans to build a metro rail in Delhi were announced. The chaos even a small, one-line metro in Kolkata had caused for a decade and a half were common knowledge. But Sreedharan took up the project, which is now progressing ahead of schedule and without making a tenth of the mess the construction of an ordinary flyover creates in Delhi.With the Delhi Metro, Sreedharan has created a system that is a technological marvel as well as an example of successful corporate culture.

This unwavering dedication and focus are qualities that go back to his childhood in Chattanur, Palakkad. The quest for excellence came naturally to Sreedharan. In school, he would vie with T.N. Seshan, the former Chief Election Commissioner of India,to come first in class. He later studied at the Victoria College in Palghat and then graduated as an engineer from the Government Engineering College, Kakinada (now JNTU). After a short tenure as a lecturer in Civil engineering at the Kerala Polytechnic in Kozhikode and a year at the Bombay Port Trust as an apprentice, he joined the Indian Railways in its Service of Engineers. This was through a nation-wide selection procedure and his first assignment was in the Southern Railway as a Probationary Assistant Engineer in December 1954. He first came to the limelight in 1963 as a 31 year old executive engineer of the Southern Railway, restoring the Pamban bridge connecting the Rameshwaram island with mainland Tamil Nadu, which had given way under a lashing tidal wave. The Railways set a target of six months for the bridge to be repaired while Sreedharan's boss, under whose jurisdiction the bridge came, reduced it to three months. Sreedharan was put in-charge of the execution and he restored the bridge in 46 days! The Railway minister's Award was given to him in recognition of this achievement.

In 1970, as the Deputy Chief Engineer, he was put in charge of implementation, planning and design of the Calcutta metro, the first ever metro in India. Cochin Shipyard launched Rani Padmini, the first ship it built, when he was its Chairman and Managing Director (CMD). He retired from Indian Railways in 1990.

Though he retired, the Government was reluctant to let go of his services and Sreedharan was appointed the CMD of Konkan Railway on contract in 1990. Under his stewardship, the company executed its mandate in seven years. The project was unique in many respects. It was the first major project in India to be undertaken on a BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) basis; the organisation structure was different from that of a typical Indian Railway set-up; the project had 93 tunnels along a length of 82 km and involved tunneling through soft soil. The total project covered 760 km and had over 150 bridges. That a public sector project could be completed without significant cost and time overruns was considered an astounding achievement by many.

Sreedharan was not through yet. He was made the managing director of Delhi Metro and by mid-2005, all the scheduled sections were completed by their target date or before and within their respective budgets. Sreedharan was given the sobriquet of 'Metro Man' by the media. In 2005, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the government of France. He had announced that he would retire by the end of 2005, but his tenure has been extended by another three years to oversee the completion of the second phase of Delhi Metro.

Success and virtue- a rare combination in today's world. But they run side by side in Sreedharan's life - like rail tracks.

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Awards and accolades

* Railway Minister's Award (1963)
* Padma Shri by the Government of India (2001)
* Man of the Year by The Times of India (2002)
* Shri Om Prakash Bhasin Award for professional excellence in engineering (2002)
* CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) Juror's Award for leadership in infrastructure development (2002-03)
* One of Asia's Heroes by TIME (2003)
* AIMA (All India Management Association) award for Public Service Excellence (2003)
* Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris causa) from IIT Delhi.
* Bharat Shiromani award from the Shiromani Institute, Chandigarh (2005)
* Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the government of France (2005)

"I don’t budge just to please somebody else" -interview with Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, 18 November 2003

TIME Magazine: Asian Heroes - Elattuvalapil Sreedharan

Konkan Rail in E Sreedharan's words

More famous sons.... Dr.K.J.Yesudas

Read much more about fascinating Kerala - her natural assets, achievments, famous sons, pressing issues and problems......

Dr.Kasturirangan

Born on October 24, 1940 in Ernakulam district, Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan was one of the pioneers who were instrumental in boosting India’s space programme to dizzy heights.

Presently Honourable Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha), Dr.Rangan was earlier the Director of ISRO Satellite Centre. Here, he supervised the activities related to the development of new generation spacecraft INSAT-2 and IRS-1A &1B, as well as scientific satellites. He was the Project Director of India’s first two experimental earth observation satellites, BHASKARA-1 & II, and was responsible for overall direction of the first operational Indian Remote Sensing Satellite, IRS-1A. Under his leadership as Chairman, ISRO witnessed several major milestones including the successful launching and operation of Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the first successful flight testing of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). Dr. Rangan has also overseen the design, development and launching of the world’s best civilian satellites. These efforts have placed India as a pre-eminent member among the handful of nations having major space programmes.

Dr.Kasturirangan graduated in Science with Honours, and obtained his Master of Science degree in Physics, from Bombay University. He received his Doctorate Degree in Experimental High Energy Astronomy in 1971, working at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

As an Astrophysicist, Dr.Kasturirangan's interest included research in high energy X-ray and gamma ray astronomy as well as optical astronomy. He has made extensive and significant contributions to studies of Cosmic x-ray sources, celestial gamma-ray and effect of cosmic x-rays in the lower atmosphere.

Dr. Kasturirangan is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy and National Academy of Sciences of India. He is also a member of the International Astronomical Union and the International Academy of Astronautics. Dr. Rangan has been conferred Padma Shri, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan besides several other prestigious awards. He has published more than 200 papers on astronomy, space science and space applications. For good measure, he has also served as Secretary to the Govt. of India in the Department of Space before laying down his office on August 27, 2003.

Dr.Kasturirangan has chaired some of the most prestigious international committees, such as the International Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), Panel for Space Research in Developing countries of COSPAR/ICSU, and the committee meeting at senior official level of UN-ESCAP, that led to the adoption of the "Delhi Declaration" by the Ministers of the region (1999-2000). He is also the Chairman of the Governing Board of the UN Centre for Space Science & Technology Education (UN-CSSTE), of the Board of Governors of IIT Chennai, of the Governing Council of the Raman Research Institute and Research Council of the National Aerospace Laboratory. He has won several awards including Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Engineering, Shri Hari Om Ashram Dr.Vikram Sarabhai Prerit Award in Aerospace, M.P.Birla Memorial Award in Astronomy, Shri M.M.Chugani Memorial Award in Applied Science, H.K.Firodia Award in Science Technology, Rathindra Puraskar by Visvabharati, Santiniketan, Dr.M.N.Saha Birth Centenary Medal for outstanding contributions in the field of Space.

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Space Technology Can Help Ailing Agri Sector: Kasturirangan

26 January 2007

Calling for a national policy to use remote sensing to help agriculture sector, former ISRO Chairman K Kasturirangan said space technology can be used to improve land productivity. There is an alarming situation in agriculture production. But space technologies can be used to improve land productivity, he said while inaugurating a national symposium on Application of Space Technologies for Agricultural Development here.

Later talking to reporters, he said a national policy is needed to use remote sensing for agriculture and disaster management.

"ISRO has very well developed prototypes and the capabilities have been demonstrated but it is now for the concerned ministries to integrate them and put them to use," Kasturirangan, who is also Director of the Institute of Advanced Studies, said.

"This is not the job of ISRO but concerned ministries which can pick up threads of these prototypes and put them to use," he opined.

There are several dimensions for the use of space technologies and we are looking at facilitators of agriculture like land, water, seeds etc, he said.

Currently, ISRO in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture has made a facility to predict harvest of 14 crops using space technology.

Centres have been established in state and district levels with the facility, Forecasting Agriculture Production through Space Agro Meteorology and Land (FASAL).

More crops are now being considered to be brought under FASAL, Kasturirangan added.



Dr.Kasturirangan's biodata at ISRO

India's Space Enterprise : A Case Study in Strategic Thinking and Planning -Dr. Kasturirangan's 2006 Narayanan Oration at the Australia South Asia Research Centre (ASARC)

More famous sons......E.Sreedharan

Read much more about fascinating Kerala - her natural assets, achievments, famous sons, pressing issues and problems......