Events from 2010 to 2012

Presentation by Shashi DHARMADHIKARI, President 2012:

 

• • Key achievements and events during 2012,

 

• • Managing Council 2012,

 

• • Working Committee 2012,

 

• • Outlook of Financial status of IPA as of 30th November 2012 and year-end outlook

 

• Attendance patterns during the monthly meetings 2012.

 

 

Isabelle DREUILHE is presently President of COWINR (Collaboration – Win –Win – Results). She is graduated in International Business from the Georgia Southwestern, USA and from the “Institut Supérieur de Gestion (ISG)” of Paris. Over the last 28 years she has held various positions in the field of Aerospace, IT, Lighting, Transportation and Logistics and Consulting.

Pradip KOPARDEKAR is presently associated with the Kirloskar Oil Engines Limited, India, and heads their Internal Audit and Enterprise Risk Management. A Master Degree in Commerce from Pune University and a Business Management Diploma from Symbiosis Institute of Management Pune – he has worked over the past three decades in diverse Indian and multi-national organizations holding various functions.

Air Commodore S. K. Ghotia joined National Defense Academy in 1978. He was commissioned in the Indian Air Force as Fighter Pilot in 1981 and has flown over 3000 hours on various aircrafts. During his career, Cmdr. Ghotia has held varied staff and command appointments. He has also served as a Senior Operations Staff in Western Command and been a Station Commander of a Forward Air Base. He was awarded Vishist Seva Medal (Presidential Award) on 26th January 2008. Cmdr. Ghotia is presently serving as Air Attaché at Embassy of India, Paris. Mr. Denis Schirmann is presently Marketing and Sales General Manager for India in Dassault Aviation.

H. E. Mr. Rakesh Sood joined the Indian Foreign Service in July 1976. He has served as India’s Ambassador to Nepal and Afghanistan and also Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He has also served as Deputy Chief of Mission in the Embassy of India in Washington. Among his other assignments abroad, H.E. Mr. Sood has been First Secretary and Counsellor in India’s High Commission in Islamabad and First Secretary in the Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations Offices in Geneva, apart from serving in India’s diplomatic missions in Brussels and Dakar. H. E. Mr. Sood was Joint Secretary heading the Disarmament and International Security Affairs Division in the Ministry of External Affairs. He speaks French, English, Hindi and Punjabi. He arrived in Paris on August 25, 2011.

Dr. Suryanarayanan worked as a Nuclear Physicist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay. and then at the CNRS Bellevue Laboratories, France. After obtaining D.Sc., he worked in the IBM New York and later in BHEL India where he created a Material Research Laboratory. From 1995 onwards, he has been working at the University of Paris. He has made seminal contributions in the field including the discovery of a material whose resistance diminished by a factor of one million when a magnetic field was switched on. He is also associated with French Industry and the Chitra Tirunal Institute in Trivandrum in developing the diamond-like carbon coating for human artificial heart valve applications.

Coumar ANANDA is presently associated with the Europe Banking practice of Tata Consulting Services (TCS). He had his education at Lycée Français de Pondichéry, Paris Renée Descartes University, ESSEC and Harvard Business School. He is a contributor in France at Agefi Finance on banking trends in emerging markets.

Dr. Mira Kamdar is currently a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute and of Asia Society in New York. She had her education at Reed College, the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught at The New School, SUNY Stony Brook and Sciences Po. In 2010-2011, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar affiliated with the Centre des Études sur l’Inde et l’Asie du Sud in Paris. Her first book won the Washington Book Award and her latest book on Planet India has been published in several languages. She writes regularly in the New York Times and The Caravan magazine and is columnist (“Mot de l’Inde” column) for Courrier International. She presents commentary on CNN, BBC, France 24 and Radio France A series of corruption scandals provoked mass protests in India last year and calls for legislative reform. Beyond corruption, India begins a new year facing a worrying scenario: stubbornly high inflation, slowing growth, a mounting fiscal deficit, a falling rupee.

Agenda:

 

• • Key Achievements and events 2011

 

• • Financial status of IPA as of 30th November 2011 and year-end outlook

 

• • Attendance patterns during the monthly meetings 2011

 

• • Managing Council 2012

 

• • Working Committee 2012

 

• • Direction and Objectives for 2012

 

• • Proposed dates in 2012 for the monthly meetings

 

• Potential speakers for the monthly meetings 2012.

Swami Veetamohananda, President of the Shri Ram Krishna Mission of France stays at the Gretz Ashram in France. He has been travelling widely to spread Shri Ramakrishna Paramhansa’s and Swami Vivekananda’s message of universal peace and brotherhood in Europe. He speaks French and English fluently and is an active writer too. He conducts meditation sessions and puja’s at the Ashram in Gretz and visits many interfaith meetings. The coming year will be celebrated as the 150th year of Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary and Swami Veetamohananda will speak to us about Swami Vivekananda during his speech. Swami Vivekananda was a great personality in India but was also one of the foremost Indian personalities to influence deeply the west due to his travels abroad and his disciples in the various places he went to.

We are happy to announce that our Diwali Dinner will be held on October 14th 2011 at 20:00. You, your family and friends are cordially invited to come and celebrate this festival and make it a wonderfully cheerful moment for all attendees. The invitation with program details is attached to this mail.

It will be a great pleasure for us to have your company on this auspicious occasion. We would appreciate your positive response with the following information to help us organize the event as smoothly as possible:

As the chief curator of the Guimet Museum of Asian Arts in Paris for the last thirty years, Amina Okada is in charge of the collection of Indian Art and also the commissioner for its artistic exhibitions. She has authored or co-authored numerous articles and books related to Indian art such as “Ajanta”, “Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court”, “Rajasthan: a Land of Splendour and Bravery”, “Taj Mahal”, “A Jewel of Mughal India: The Mausoleum of I’timad Ud-Daulah”, “Imperial Mughal Painters”. Amina Okada has also edited the catalogues of prestigious exhibitions worldwide including “Paintings at the Court of Akbar”, “India of Gustav Moreau”, “Indian Miniatures at San Diego Museum of Arts”.

Mr. Pandit has been nominated as a member of the Core-Group on Automotive Research Program Committee (CAR), a Government of India initiative for automotive industry and is on the Technology Development Board formed by the Department of Science and Technology. He is a member of the board of management of Symbiosis International University, Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan and is a director of the Aga Khan Rural Support Program in India. Mr. Pandit has been honored with the J. Irwin Miller Award of Excellency by Cummins and has also been awarded the prestigious Rotary Excellence Award for his exemplary leadership and outstanding performance in the field of information technology. Mr. Pandit is a gold medalist and Fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Dr. Atish DABHOLKAR After graduating from IIT Kanpur, Dr. Atish DABHOLKAR completed his doctoral research from Princeton University. He has been Professor of Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, a visiting professor at Stanford, and has held research appointments at Harvard and Caltech. Currently, Dr. Dabholkar is ‘Director of Research’ at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris where he holds the ‘Excellence Chair’ of the French National Agency of Research (ANR). He received the ‘LPS National Leadership award’ from the President of India in 2008 and the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Physical Sciences (2006) awarded by the Prime Minister of India.

In 336 BC, a 20-year prince named Alexander inherited the small kingdom of Macedon in northern Greece. In a little over twelve years, he led an army of 40,000 men to conquer the known world. When he died in Babylon at the age of 32, his empire covered some two million square miles, from eastern Europe to western India. The surviving Greco-Roman accounts of India not only provide the earliest cross-referenced dates of Indian Iron Age history, they also offer a unique insight into Indian society up to the time of the Guptas. The speaker is well-known history researcher Mr. A. J. Paterson. He was brought up in France and studied Ancien History and Classical Archaeology at University in Edinburgh and Paris.

Talk by HE Mr R Mathai 19.00 hrs Members’ arrival and social intermixing 19.45 hrs Welcome by Anil Bidani , President, IPA 19.55 hrs Speech by HE Ambassador 20.30 hrs Question and answer session 20.50 hrs Discussion continues along with dinner.

Sriram is pursuing a PhD, to determine the if’s and how’s of the Indian Diaspora’s use of social media, discussion lists, blogs, and social networking tools, impact on integration, assimilation, and multiculturalism in France.

Talk by HE Mr R Mathai 19.00 hrs Members’ arrival and social intermixing 19.45 hrs Welcome by Anil Bidani , President, IPA 19.55 hrs Speech by HE Ambassador 20.30 hrs Question and answer session 20.50 hrs Discussion continues along with dinner.