Coach, activist & scientist are 3 Delhi Padma Shri awardees
Samad Hoque
New Delhi, January 27
Three Delhi residents —Harbinder Singh, Kiran Nadar and Dr Shailesh Nayak — have been conferred Padma Shri this year.
Harbinder Singh
Harbinder Singh, born on July 8, 1943, is a veteran hockey coach and player. He guided the women’s team to win the bronze medal in the Asian Games in 1986.
He also represented India in three Olympics. In the Tokyo Olympics in 1964, he won the gold medal and scored the highest field goals, five out of the nine goals he scored.
In the 1968 Mexico Olympics, he was part of the Indian team as it went on to win bronze and once again scored the highest field goals – six out of 11, including a hat-trick against Mexico. He was also a part of the 1972 Munich Olympics team that won the bronze medal.
He was a member of the Indian men’s hockey team that won the gold medal in the 1966 Asian Games and was the team captain in 1970 when it won the silver medal. He represented India thrice in the Asian Games, twice as a player and once as coach and won medals in all the three.
He represented India in international hockey tournaments in Lyon, France in 1963, and Hamburg, West Germany in 1966. India won both these tournaments. He was conferred the Arjuna Award in 1967.
Kiran Nadar
Kiran Nadar is the Chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and a trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation. She is an avid art collector, an acclaimed international bridge player and a philanthropist. She is known for promoting art in public spaces and has a collection of 12,000 modern and contemporary artworks.
The 72-year-old was conferred with the Padma Shri in the field of art. She has also won a bronze medal while representing India in the 2018 Asian Games in the bridge mixed event.
Nadar was acknowledged as a ‘Hero of philanthropy’ by the Forbes Asia Magazine in 2010 for launching India’s first philanthropic private museum.
The philanthropist is also member of the Rasaja Foundation, an educational, scientific and cultural institution, formed in 1984. It was founded by the late Jaya Appasamy, a renowned artist, art historian and art critic.
She has also been involved in a joint initiative with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. The foundation promotes the education of Dalit and Muslim girls in some of the most backward districts in UP.
Dr Shailesh Nayak
A renowned oceanographer, Dr Shailesh Nayak, was conferred the Padma Shri for his contributions in the field of science and engineering. He was born on August 21, 1953, at Bilimora in Navsari district of Gujarat. He developed the first automated Tsunami Warning System.
He is currently the Director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies and a distinguished scientist in the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
He was also the Chair of the Earth System Science Organisation (ESSO) and the Secretary to the Government of India for the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) from August 2008 to 2015. He was appointed as the Director of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad, an autonomous institution under the ESSO, in 2006. He had then set up a state-of-the-art Early Warning System for Tsunami and Storm Surges in the Indian Ocean.
Nayak has also served as interim Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation from December 2014 to January 2015 and the Chairman of the Earth Commission of India.
He also headed the Shailesh Nayak Committee to examine the issues of coastal states and union territories with respect to Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) Notification, 2011.
