CSIR-NML Diamond Jubilee Anniversary Celebrations

Abstract

As part of the Diamond Jubilee Anniversary celebrations, we held several events in the past ten months. A special logo was designed for the Diamond Jubilee and is being used in all the communications from NML. A special postal cover was released by the Chief Postmaster General, Jharkhand Circle, Shri K V Sundarrajan on 8th Nov, 2010. We are also pursuing with the postal department for the release of a commemorative stamp this year. A diamond Jubilee Commemorative Memento was crafted and given to all the employees and the important dignitaries who visited NML this year. A diamond jubilee lecture series was initiated and we had several distinguished speakers from the academia, R & D laboratories and industry delivering the diamond jubilee lectures. The speakers thus far were Shri Goutam Mukherjee, Dr. Baldev Raj, Dr. Mano Manoharan, Dr. Amit Chatterjee, Prof. S N Upadhyay, Prof. Brajendra Mishra, Prof. A K Biswas, Prof. K A Padmanabhan, Prof. T R Ramachandran, Dr. Achintya Das and Dr. Sanak Mishra. The lecture series will continue until March 2011. The other lectures scheduled are by Prof. H S Ray, Dr. G Thiagarajan and Prof. S Ranganathan. The Diamond Jubilee Anniversary celebrations were held between 26-28th Nov. This included the foundation day function on 26th, the Diamond Jubilee function on 27th and a special function for the NML family on 28th. The foundation day awards were given away in the foundation day function. In addition to the Nijhawan award for the Best Paper and the Altekar award for the best technology, two additional awards were re-instituted. These were the Prof. Banerjee award for the best internal project and the Prof. Ramachandra Rao awards for best employees. We were fortunate to have Shri Pradeep Nijhawan who gave away the Nijhawan award, Mrs. Anuradha Altekar present the Altekar award, Prof. Shilowbhadra Banerjee hand over the Banerjee award and Mrs. Sudha Rao present the Ramachandra Rao awards. Prof. S P Mehrotra gave away the special Diamond Jubilee awards for the logo and Souvenir cover competition. Many of NML’s past leaders such as Dr. A K Lahiri, Shri Muthukrishnan, Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Dr. K N Gupta, Dr. O N Mohanty, Dr. R N Ghosh, Dr. Raghubir Singh, Dr. R P Goel, Dr. K K Mishra and several others participated both in the foundation day and Diamond Jubilee functions. The Diamond Jubilee function on 27th was a memorable event. It was presided by Shri H M Nerurkar with Dr. J J Irani, Prof. S Ranganathan as guests of honour, the Director General of the CSIR family Prof. Samir K. Brahmachari as the chief host and Prof. Rama Rao as the Chief Guest. A souvenir covering the milestones and events at NML in the last sixty years, its performance over these sixty years, the technology beneficiaries from NML, goodwill messages from a large number of distinguished leaders from the political, academic, industrial and R & D spheres, reminiscences from a large cross section of people associated with NML including her past employees, industrial clients, distinguished visitors and several well wishers was released at the Diamond Jubilee function on 27th Nov. A hindi version ‘Samannoy’ was also released in the evening of 27th Nov. To propagate and advertise the accomplishments of NML to the common people, a film was made on NML and displayed during the Diamond Jubilee function. A laser show was also made depicting the history and journey of NML through these sixty years and displayed on the evening of 27th Nov. The Biometric and Security Surveillance systems, the NML-Museum and the Diamond Jubilee Committee room were inaugurated on this day. A reminiscences function was held on 27th evening where several of those associated with NML nostalgically recollected their association with NML. A special function was also held on the evening of 28th Nov for all the family members of NML fraternity including her retired employees and their families, where also the film and the laser show were screened.