By IANS,
New Delhi : The Sweden-India Nobel Memorial Week was inaugurated in the capital Saturday, coinciding with the announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner.
The Nobel Memorial Week, inaugurated by the Swedish ambassador to India Lars-Olof Lindgren, will promote awareness about the awards, the culture of the host country – Sweden, and boost bilateral ties between India and Sweden that nurture a shared history of global peace initiatives.
Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, won this year’s Nobel Prize for peace. The Nobel Prize winners from India include Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, economist Amartya Sen, medical scientist Hargobind Khorana, missionary Mother Teresa, physicists C.V. Raman and Subramanian Chandrasekhar.
The week began with a Nobel quiz at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi.
The team from IIT-Mumbai won the sweepstakes between eight crack teams in the finals. The winners will be taken to Sweden to see the country’s landmarks, including the Nobel Museum.
The ambassador also inaugurated a weeklong Swedish food festival at the Taj Mansingh as part of the Nobel jamboree.
Ties between India and Sweden date back to the 1950s when former Swedish head of state Olof Palme, a long-time friend of India, visited the country as a leader of the Swedish student movement.
“This week is a tribute to Alfred Nobel, who stood for everything that was important to our country. He was an innovator, inventor and a businessman who brought his inventions to the real world; and put up a marketable base for his inventions as viable commercial products. He also set up 90 companies in 20 nations and laid the guidelines for the globalisation of the Swedish industry,” the ambassador told IANS.
The Swedish people hold the record for the highest number of per capita patents.
Lindgren said he hoped to see more Nobel Prize winners from India.
The ambassador said there were 12 Swedish companies currently operating in India. They include Volvo, Sandvik, Ericsson, Tetrapak, ABB, Astra Zeneca and SAAB.
Swedish companies, which have been investing in India since 1950s, doubled their investment and interest in India over the last four years using services to tap the Indian domestic market and making it a manufacturing base for global brands from Sweden.
The spread over the week includes the celebration of the Swedish Management Day, the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Lecture with Hans Wigznell, the Sweden India Memorial Round Table, Sweden India Memorial Dinner and the Nobel Party.