The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh lighting the lamp to inaugurate the National Awards Presentation function to Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises, in New Delhi on August 28, 2009.

Minister for Communications and Information Technology Thiru A. Raja has congratulated the industry in joining hands with Government in crossing the 500 million connection mark well before the timeline set by the Government.

Delivering the Keynote Address at the Curtain Raiser Ceremony of ‘India Telecom 2009’ here today, Thiru A. Raja said, “About three years back we envisioned to achieve 500 million connections by the end of 2010. The conducive Government policies and the zeal of industry in this sector have helped to put the name of Indian telecom sector on the world map as we have crossed the milestone of 500 million connections in the month of September 2009 and achieved an over all teledensity of 44%”. He said that with the current pace of growth in mobile sector, the nation is well poised to achieve 500 million wireless connections in December 2009 which will coincide with this event India Telecom 2009. The Ceremony was organized by FICCI in association with Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology.

Thiru A. Raja further said, “The consistent efforts both by the Government and the industry have helped in reducing the high imbalance of rural urban divide ratio from 1:10 to 1:5 in a short span of 3 years and the rural teledensity jumped from 4.5% to 19%. To further give impetus to telecom infrastructure in rural areas, USO Funds are being leveraged extensively. 6500 mobile towers out of 7500 towers of phase-I with subsidy support from USOF have already started radiating. USOF is also coming with various schemes including laying of dark fibre in a big way for creating adequate backhaul infrastructure in rural area. I am happy that the private sector has started participating in rural sector in a much bigger way and they now account for 80% of the rural telecom market. I am sure that the continued participation by the private sector will help us in achieving the Government target of 40% rural teledensity well before the set timeline of 2014”. Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology, Shri Sachin Pilot, also spoke on the occasion.

India successfully test fired the nuclear-capable, surface-to-surface Prithvi-II missile from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur inBalasore district, Orissa, on October 12. “It was tested by the Army. It was a user trial and was a text-book launch,” ITR director S.P. Dash said. The missiles have a striking range of about 350 km, he said. Prithvi is India’s first indigenouslybuilt ballistic missile. It is one of five missiles being developed under India’s Integrated Missile Development Program. Two versions of the missiles have already been deployed with the Army and Air Force.

Born in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, in 1952, Ramakrishnan is a senior research fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, Britain, while Steitz is Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics at Yale University in the US and Yonath is at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Ramakrishnan conducts his research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, an India-born scientist, senior fellow at the Trinity College in Cambridge since 2008, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on October 7, 2009 along with two others, for showing the world exactly how information contained in the DNA is translated into life — a process that has benefited the fight against infectious diseases.

Ramakrishnan, who is now a U.S. citizen, was named for the $1.42-million award along with American Thomas A. Steitz and Israeli Ada E. Yonath for their “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome”, which is found in cells with nuclei and translates the DNA code into life.

    “An understanding of the ribosome’s innermost workings is important for a scientific understanding of life. This knowledge can be put to a practical and immediate use; many of today’s antibiotics cure various diseases by blocking the function of bacterial ribosomes,” the Nobel committee said. “This year’s three laureates have all generated 3D models that show how different antibiotics bind to the ribosome. These models are now used by scientists in order to develop new antibiotics, directly assisting the saving of lives and decreasing humanity’s suffering.”