By IANS,
New Delhi : Noted management guru C.K. Prahlad and Khalid Hameed, a member of Britain’s House of Lords, are among the nine NRIs/PIOs to be conferred with the Padma series of civilian awards in the Republic Day honours list.
Prahlad and Hameed have both been honoured with the Padma Bhushan, the country’s third highest civilian award.
Prahlad, a management consultant and author, is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate Strategy at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. He is one of the recipients of Pravasi Bharatiya Sammaan awards, 2009.
Hameed is involved with a number of organisations and charities that help develop harmony between diverse faiths and cultures in Britain. He received the Pride of India award for 2007 for his contributions to medicine and inter-faith activities.
The following are the other awardees:
Bhakta B. Rath (Padma Bhushan) heads the Materials Science Directorate and is an Associate Director of Research of the US Naval Research Laboratory. He is responsible for planning, supervision, and administration of all basic and applied research in physical and natural sciences conducted by a staff of over 720 scientists and engineers and with a budget of over $240 million.
Thomas Kailath (Padma Bhushan) is a well-known electrical engineer, information theorist, entrepreneur and the Hitachi America Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Stanford University. Kailath has authored several books, including “Linear Systems”, which ranks as one of the most referenced books in the field.
Pratapaditya Pal (Padma Shri), the author of around 50 books, has devoted his life to South Asian and Himalayan art. He has done pioneering research on Himalayan art and helped to give this section of art global recognition through exhibitions, lecture sessions. His expertise is India, Nepal and Tibet.
Panchapakesa Jayaraman (Padma Shri) is a noted scholar in Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil. He is the founder and Executive Director of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in the US.
Sunny Varkey (Padma Shri) is a Dubai-based educational entrepreneur. The chairman and founder of international education provider GEMS Education, he has lent his support for a landmark initiative aimed at providing basic education to 100 million children in India.
Cheril Krishna Menon (Padma Shri) is the chairman and managing director of the Doha-based Behzad group of companies. Better known as Behzad Menon, he was one of the 15 winners of the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2006.
Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty (Padma Shri) established the NMC Hospital in Abu Dhabi, the first of its kind in the country, with branches in Dubai and Sharjah following. Today, these hospitals along with others run by the NMC Group in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Al Ain, treat more than one million patients a year.