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NEW DELHI: India has renewed the formal request to Sri Lanka for the extradition of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader V. Prabakaran in case he is captured alive from the narrow strip of land where is widely believed to be hiding, according to reliable sources.

India has been renewing the request for extradition of Prabakaran, a proclaimed offender in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, at every available opportunity and this was done during a recent visit of Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to Sri Lanka.

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Stories of extreme hardship, braving impossible odds and innumerable sacrifices, abound in the lives of nearly 90 per cent of the students in the country. But among them, some perform exceptionally well. Their academic laurels are so brilliant, that at times their CV looks intimidating. Some like our Prime minister,who has achieved a lot in his life..

Manmohan Singh (born 26 September 1932) is the 14th and current Prime Minister of the Republicof India. He is the first Indian Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power after completing a full five-year term. He is also the first Sikh to hold the post.

Manmohan Singh, best known as ' father of Indian Reforms',  has emerged as the Congress party's frontrunner.

After his Masters in Economics from Amritsar's HinduCollegeunder  PunjabUniversityhe won  scholarships to Cambridgeand Oxford, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the critical role of exports and free trade in India's economy. Manmohan Singh won the prestigious Adam Smith prize in 1956 from CambridgeUniversity.

The following year, he returned to Indiaas a university lecturer and for the next nine years remained at PunjabUniversitybefore being posted for international duty with UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). He then joined the Delhi School of Economics as a professor. Two years later, his academic career was cut short and he joined the government to serve in various capacities.

Singh held several positions throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. He served as Economic advisor to the finance ministry in the late 70s, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Chairman of University Grants Commission in 1980s and early 1990's and as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Indiafrom 1982 to 1985 etc

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's Resume is the best resume one can ever see in his / her life. The Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh is probably the most qualified politician and leader in the world.

Throughout his carrer  he has achieved a lot in his personal and professional carrier. He has set some great milestones in the field of finance and ecomomics. He is a tough leader and the best example of "Simple living and high thinking".

A Commons Factor:

The growing visibility of Indians in the UK polls reflects their heft at several levels

Chloe Morrison can’t wait to exercise her franchise in the forthcoming British general elections. A resident of Ealing and Southall borough in London, she is chafed by the controversial plans to strip the local hospital, the only one for miles, of accident and emergency services (A&E). But Chloe and hundreds of her fellow residents are pinning their hopes on a man who is staunchly campaigning to save the crucial A&E services from the axe—their local Conservative candidate Gurcharan Singh.

The 61-year-old devout Sikh is one of the longest serving local councillors in London and just one of the many Indian faces who are set to alter the British political landscape next month. Gurcharan had arrived in Britain four decades ago,  with just three sterling pounds in his pocket and a degree in Mathematics. “I had thought myself to be lucky when I got a job as a trainee guard at the Southall train station. At that time I had never thought I would aspire to be the MP of the same area,” says Gurcharan, who comes from a modest farming family in Uttar Pradesh

As the three main national parties—Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats—engage in the battle of the hustings on May 6, the key to tipping the political scale on any side may well lie in the hands of Indians like Gurcharan. Together, the three parties have fielded 40 candidates of  Indian descent. Add to this number those who are contesting as Independents or for smaller political parties unlikely to win, and you have an unprecedented number of over 50 candidates who belong to a community that constitutes just 1.8 per cent of the British population.

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MAJULI

Majuli or Majoli is a fluvial island in the Brahmaputra river, in the Indian state of Assam. Majuli is the largest riverine island in the world and the largest freshwater island in South Asia.

Majuli had a total area of 1,250 square kilometers (482.6 sq mi), but now having lost significantly to erosion it has an area of only 650 square kilometers (251.0 sq mi).The island is formed by the Brahmaputra river in the south and the Kherkutia Xuti, joined by the Subansiri river in the north.

AHMEDABAD: Exciting plasma balls with flashes of electricity visible, an interactive presentation explaining how hydro power is generated or a screen that you can slide and the film playing on the screen changes. All this an much more for the children seeking to know about how, what, why, who and when about electricity is now put up at the latest exhibit at the Science City in Ahmedabad. 

India's premier electricity museum, CLP Electrodrome, was inaugurated on Thursday at the Science City by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. 

"This museum is the first of its kind in India, exclusive dedicated to several exciting aspects of electricity. Being an interesting mix of education and entertainment, this museum will hold a strong appeal for kids and adults from a variety of different backgrounds and interests," said Saxena:principal secretary of energy and petrochemicals.

 A joint initiative of the state department of science and technology, Gujarat Science City and CLP the largest foreign investor in the Indian power sector CLP Electrodrome is the state-of-the-art and highly interactive museum of electricity. 

The museum has all that one needs to know about electricity. The discoveries and inventions that have evolved around electricity, the time line of a bulb, working models of Tesla Coil and Wimsherst Machine.

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Soon, you may get to experience “In-Flight Entertainment” like services plus internet on your very own Indian Railways. As a part of their new drive to offer infotainment solutions to passengers, the Indian Railways is looking at various ways in which it could provide passengers with the ability to check their e-mail, twitter, Facebook or may be do business while on the move.  The Indian Railways has already been taking steps in that direction by opening up the Indian Railways Data API and introducing other services as VSAT connectivity.

For the initial launch, the Railways is planning to restrict the services to flagship trains like Shatabdi Express which generally have shorter daytime journey and the passengers are mostly businessmen or office executives. The organisation which is currently researching and working on the technology has the following plans so as to how the entire system would be like:

Since the initial target is Chair car based trains like the Shatabdi Express where passengers can only sit, the computer units could be placed behind the seats much like the in-flight entertainment systems we have in an aircraft. The computer unit which will be probably a touch-screen will be used by passengers to open up and browse the various websites. The screen also doubles up as a movie station.

In addition to twitting or accessing Facebook or Orkut accounts, Passengers could also look at the possibility of placing orders for lunch or dinner over the computer at a restaurant located at the destination. This is something proposed by the railways, but as my experience tells me, you are already provided with ample snacks and food inside the Shatabdi express so why would any passenger think of taking reservations at restaurants.

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Indian-born business administration scholar Dr Nitin Nohria is set to become the tenth Dean of Harvard Business School (HBS). Dr Nohria who is currently the Richard P Chapman Professor of Business Administration at HBS, has also held senior administrative positions at the School, including senior associate dean for faculty development and chair of HBS' organisational behaviour unit.

Dr Nohria graduated in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai and went on to receive his Ph.D. in management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

Nohria is the first Indian, and indeed the first non-white, to become the dean of the 102-year old institution that typically ranks among the top three business-schools in the world. 

Nohria, who will take up his new role on July 1, succeeds Jay Light, who in December announced his plans to retire at the end of the 2009-10 academic year after five years as dean. 

His doctoral thesis was on behavioural and policy sciences. Dr Nohria has co-written and co-edited 16 books. He is the author of more than 50 articles and dozens of teaching cases and notes. Dr Nohria's research on core competencies required for business leaders has received wide acclaim. His books have explored a wide range of topics on how leaders from different backgrounds rose in American business to business practices that are successful in differentiating organisations. 

His most recent book, Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (2010, co-edited with Rakesh Khurana), reflects a colloquium he organised as part of the HBS centennial in 2008 to stimulate serious scholarly research on leadership.

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Fifty years after their formation as different states of the Indian Union, Gujarat and Maharashtra have much to be proud of. Both states are among India's developed and industrialised states. Both states have above-average human development indicators and a record of good performance across many sectors.

In the world of business and commerce, both states have distinguished themselves. On the occasion of their golden jubilee, the point has been made that at the time of their creation, there was a view that Bombay, now Mumbai, should be made a Union Territory.

It is possible to imagine that Gujarat could have had its capital in Baroda and Maharashtra in Pune, and Bombay (Mumbai) could have remained a more cosmopolitan city. Today it is difficult to turn the clock back and there is not much popular support for the idea either in Maharashtra or Gujarat.

However, as India's major metropolitan centres grow, there may be a case for re-examining the question whether some large metros should be declared Union Territories open to all Indians for purposes of education and employment.

It is easy to see a tension between the growth of regionalism and regional politics on the one hand, and the rapid expansion of increasingly cosmopolitan metropolitan centres like the National Capital Region of Delhi, the greater Mumbai, greater Hyderabad and greater Bengaluru urban agglomeration on the other.

If Mumbai is only for Maharashtrians and Hyderabad only for the people of Telangana , the process of national integration that urbanisation brings with it can be seriously threatened.

In a democracy, everyone must respect sentiments like regionalism and linguistic affinities of the people. However, an open society must also respect the right of every citizen to live and work wherever she pleases in the country.

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India has a long and venerable history in the field of higher education. In ancient times, the country was known to have been home to the oldest formal universities in the world.

The world's first University was established in Takshila or Taxila or Takshashila (now in Pakistan) in 700BC. This centre of learning was situated about 50 km west of Rawalpindi in Pakistan. It was an important Vedic/Hindu and Buddhist center of learning. It was not a well organized university like Nalanda.

There is some disagreement about whether Takshashila can be considered a university. While some consider Taxila to be an early university or centre of higher education, others do not consider it a university in the modern sense.

More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied here. The campus accommodated students who came from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Arabia and China and offered over sixty different courses in various field such as science, mathematics, medicine, politics, warfare , astrology, astronomy, music, religion, and philosophy.

Generally, a student entered Takshashila at the age of sixteen. Students would come to Takshila and take up education in their chosen subject with their teacher directly.
They were supposed to pay for their expenses. However, if a student was unable to pay then he could work for his teacher. The Vedas and the Eighteen Arts, which included skills such as archery, hunting, and elephant lore, were taught, in addition to its law school, medical school, and school of military science.

Takshila was specialized in the study of medicine.