Less than two months after leaving her charge as the Indian ambassador to the United States, Nirupama Rao will return Stateside on a fellowship. She has accepted a one-year
appointment, beginning in January, as the Meera and Vikram
Gandhi Fellow with the Brown-India Initiative at the Watson
Institute for International Studies.
‘The India Initiative at Brown’s Watson Institute has provided a
needed and valued focus on the study of contemporary India,’ Rao
says in a statement. ‘I am thrilled to contribute to scholarship on
India’s global outlook and its foreign policy priorities and challenges.’
Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Initiative, adds, ‘Having
served as India’s ambassador to the United States and China and
also as the country’s foreign secretary, she has accumulated invalu-
able diplomatic experience, knowledge, and insight. She will add
greatly to our collective life at the India Initiative.’
Rao will be working on an ‘India-China’ book and deliver a lec-
ture in the fall of 2014.
See you soon, Madam Ambassador.
Oscar winner A R Rahman at the
Governors Awards banquet of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences in Los Angeles.
‘First held in 2009, the Governors
Awards started as a low-key,
parlor-style celebration that was
meant to push the honorary Oscars,
and their aging recipients, out of the
annual telecast,’ wrote The New York
Times. ‘But it...
has evolved into a free-for-all
campaign stop for those who want to
be seen as candidates for the current
round of Oscars.’
Rahman wrote, ‘Knowing
what commitment it takes to
do something outside of your
comfort zone, I felt Angelina
(Jolie, who was honored with
the Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award) really
deserved the love she got
from the Academy...’
He added, ‘Met Mychael
Danna (Life of Pi composer)
and his lovely Indian wife
(Aparna) on the way out —
though we have worked
together in Water, this is the
first time we met...’
Kicking off
the red carpet season
‘Experts predicted that polio would be eliminated in every other coun- try before it was eliminated in
India,’ writes Bill Gates. ‘But India surprised
them all: The country has now been polio-
free for more than two years.’
The Microsoft founder’s essay in The Wall
Street Journal — titled ‘What I Learned in
the Fight Against Polio’ — is an eye opener
about India’s hidden
strength.
‘When Melinda and I
started our foundation’s
work in India, we began
to meet people from the
areas we’d been flying
over,’ Gates writes.
‘They had little educa-
tion and poor health,
and lived in slums or
poor rural areas — the
kind of people many
experts had told us were
holding India back. But
our experience suggests
the opposite: What
some call a weakness
can be a source of great
strength…’
‘India responded to
this challenge (polio
eradication) with an
army of more than 2
million vaccinators, who
canvassed every village,
hamlet and slum.
Vaccinators took the
best maps they had and
made them better. They
walked miles every day
and worked late into the night. They found
children in the poorest areas of Uttar
Pradesh and in the remote Kosi River area
of Bihar — an area with no electricity that
is often flooded and unreachable by roads.
stations, accompanying their families on
their way to find work.’
As he watched this unfold he realized, he
had seen ‘India’s obvious talent and energy,
but... missed its hidden strength — the rich,
the powerful and the poor working together
toward a common goal.’
Gates considers India’s accomplishment
in eradicating polio ‘the most impressive
global health success’ he has ever seen and
says, ‘India’s success offers a script for win-
ning some of the world’s most difficult bat-
tles in every area of human welfare. The key
has been the participation of the humblest,
most vulnerable members of the Indian
population.’
Gates’s lesson from India
Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda in a Bihar slum in
March 2011, two months after the last case of polio in India was identified.
On this trip they met a brick kiln worker, an young mother, and asked if her
children had been vaccinated: ‘She proudly produced an immunization card
listing the names of all her children and showing that each had received the
polio vaccine — not just once, but several times. We were amazed,’ says
Gates.
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A fellowship for Madam Ambassador
Freida Pinto enjoys trying new roles and she will soon try her hand at another thing she hasn’t done before:
A comedy.
She will star as the love interest of Guy
Pearce — who plays the role of a detective
who finds dead relatives — in Mis-Fits.
‘Freida has been trying to move out of her
safe zone,’ a source tells Hindustan Times.
‘That’s why she has been experimenting
with directors like Woody Allen (You Will
Meet A Tall Dark Stranger), Tarsem Singh
(Immortals), Julian Schnabel (Miral) and
Terrence Malick (upcoming Knight of
Cups). Also, a few days ago, she surprised
audiences with a complete departure in
look and appeal with her bold appearance
in Bruno Mars’s single Gorilla (India
Abroad, October 25). That’s why she wants
to try her hands at acting in a comedy.’
Nirupama Rao tweeted this photo November 12 saying, ‘Leaving Washington DC for
India in a few hours. Last photo at the Embassy Residence with autumn leaves and
my son.’
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