Latest news with #Desai
NDTV
3 hours ago
- Science
- NDTV
"Historic Moment": ISRO's Nilesh Desai Ahead Of NISAR Satellite Launch Today
Chennai: As the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite is set to launch on Wednesday aboard India's GSLV-F16 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Nilesh M Desai, ISRO's Director of Space Applications Centre, termed the mission "a classic example of collaborative effort between two great democratic countries." "This is a historic moment for both ISRO as well as NASA because it is a joint collaborative project and considered to be one of the costliest missions ever... It is a classic example of collaborative effort between two great democratic countries - India and the United States of America and as well as a collaboration between NASA and ISRO," Mr Desai told ANI. He said that it is a unique type of radar system because it has a lot of applications, especially related to land deformation studies, ecosystem structures, disaster management, as well as environment monitoring, and oceanography. "Studies will also be carried out using the data available from these two synthetic aperture radars, especially in interferometric mode, and there is a lot of excitement among all the scientists of the whole world because it is a science mission," he said. According to the ISRO, the liftoff will take place at 5.40 pm today. NISAR satellite will scan the entire globe every 12 days, providing high-resolution, day-and-night, all-weather imagery across a 242 km swath. NISAR aims to support climate change research, disaster response, and Earth science studies, ISRO said. NISAR features NASA's L-band and ISRO's S-band radar, enabling it to track surface changes with centimetre-level precision. The satellite will systematically map Earth's surface, monitoring dynamic processes like glacier retreat, vegetation changes, and earthquakes. NISAR will deliver high-resolution data crucial for monitoring natural disasters, environmental degradation, and infrastructure stress. The unique dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar of NISAR employs an advanced, novel SweepSAR technique, which provides high resolution and large swath imagery. NISAR will image the global land and ice-covered surfaces, including islands, sea-ice, and selected oceans every 12 days. NISAR mission's primary objectives are to study land & ice deformation, land ecosystems, and oceanic regions in areas of common interest to the US and Indian science communities. The Spacecraft is built around ISRO's I-3K Structure. It carries two major Payloads, viz., L & S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The S-band Radar system, data handling & high-speed downlink system, the spacecraft, and the launch system are developed by ISRO. The L-band Radar system, high speed downlink system, the Solid-State Recorder, the GPS receiver, and the 9m Boom hoisting the 12m reflector are delivered by NASA. Further, ISRO takes care of the satellite commanding and operations, and NASA will provide the orbit manoeuvre plan and RADAR operations plan. NISAR mission will be aided with ground station support of both ISRO and NASA for downloading of the acquired images, which, after the necessary processing, will be disseminated to the user community, the ISRO said (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
The Hindu
5 hours ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Watch: Eminent Indian-born economist, Meghnad Desai, dies at 85
Eminent Indian-born economist and author Lord Meghnad Desai passed away on Tuesday (July 29, 2025), at the age of 85. Desai is a 'multifaceted personality', holder of India's third-highest civilian honour, and a member of the United Kingdom's House of Lords. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian honour, in 2008. Meghnad Jagdishchandra Desai popularly known as Lord Desai was born in Vadodara in 1940. He completed his Bachelor's and master's degree in economics from the University of Mumbai before securing a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed his PhD in economics in 1963. Desai authored and edited more than 20 books and have published over 200 articles for academic journals. Production and Voiceover: Yuvasree S
Straits Times
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Booker Prize nominees include novels by Kiran Desai, Katie Kitamura and Susan Choi
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox The 13 titles nominated for the prestigious British literary award also include books by David Szalay, Maria Reva and Claire Adam. LONDON – In 2006, Indian author Kiran Desai shot to fame when she won the Booker Prize with The Inheritance Of Loss, a novel about a teenage romance in India and illegal migration in New York City. But she struggled to write a follow-up. Now, almost two decades later, Desai has been nominated for the Booker again – for The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny, the novel that she was grappling with during that time. On July 29, the Booker Prize judges announced the 13 novels nominated for the 2025 edition of the prestigious British literary award, with Desai's novel arguably the highest profile. Other nominees include American novelist Katie Kitamura's Audition, about an actress who becomes embroiled with a man who claims to be her son; American author Susan Choi's Flashlight, a Korean-American family saga; and Hungarian-English writer David Szalay's Flesh, which tells the tale of a man who inveigles his way to a life of privilege. In Desai's novel, which is scheduled for a Sept 23 release, two immigrants to the United States return to their native India and meet on an overnight train. The 667-page book has yet to receive any major reviews, but the Booker Prize's judges – who in 2025 include Irish novelist Roddy Doyle and American actress Sarah Jessica Parker – described it in a news release as a 'vast and immersive' work that 'enfolds a magical realist fable within a social novel within a love story'. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore MHA to support HSA's crackdown on Kpod abusers and help in treatment of offenders: Shanmugam Business S'pore's economic resilience will face headwinds in second half of 2025 from tariffs, trade conflicts: MAS Business S'pore's Q2 total employment rises, but infocomm and professional services sectors see more job cuts Singapore Fewer than 1 in 5 people noticed suspicious items during MHA's social experiments Asia Powerful 8.8-magnitude quake in Russia's far east causes tsunami; Japan, Hawaii order evacuations Singapore Migrant workers who gave kickbacks to renew work passes were conservancy workers at AMK Town Council Asia Japan, Vietnam, EU contest terms of US tariff deals behind the scenes Singapore Escape, discover, connect: Where new memories are made Founded in 1969, the Booker Prize is one of the literary world's most coveted awards, given each year to a novel written in English and published in Britain or Ireland. The winner in 2024 was Orbital, English novelist Samantha Harvey's meditative novel about astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The judging panel in 2025 is now tasked with re-reading all 13 nominees and then creating a six-book shortlist that is scheduled to be announced on Sept 23. The winning title will then be unveiled at a ceremony in London on Nov 10, and its author will receive a prize of £50,000 (S$86,000). The full list of nominees: – Claire Adam's Love Forms, about a Trinidadian woman trying to find the child she gave up as a young girl. Julie Myerson, in a review for The Guardian, described the novel as 'quietly devastating'. – Tash Aw's The South, in which a Malaysian man recalls a steamy teenage vacation. Heller McAlpin, reviewing the book for The New York Times, called it 'a gorgeous coming-of-age story'. – Natasha Brown's Universality, a satire that begins with a journalist reporting on a brutal attack at a hippie commune. – Jonathan Buckley's One Boat, about a woman grieving her father's death. The novel is the first Booker-nominated title published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, a British imprint known for publishing Nobel Prize laureates and fiction in translation. – Susan Choi's Flashlight, which touches on historical events including North Korean re-education camps. – Kiran Desai's The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny. – Katie Kitamura's Audition, which Joumana Khatib, in the Times, said was the author's 'most thrilling examination yet of the deceit inherent in human connection'. – Benjamin Markovits' The Rest Of Our Lives, in which a New York law professor goes on a road trip after leaving his wife when their daughter starts college. – Andrew Miller's The Land In Winter, about two couples living through one of Britain's coldest recorded periods, in the 1960s. British critics have praised the title for its sensitive portrayal of flawed protagonists. – Maria Reva's Endling, set in Ukraine on the brink of Russia's 2022 invasion, with characters including several mail-order brides and a hunter of rare snails. Reviewing the novel for the Times, Ania Szremski called it 'a startling and ambitious whirlwind'. – David Szalay's Flesh, a rags-to-riches story of a Hungarian man with a criminal record who ends up in London high society. Dwight Garner in the Times said that he admired Szalay's book 'from front to back without ever quite liking it'. – Benjamin Wood's Seascraper, about a fisherman whose life is disrupted by a Hollywood director. Wood is 'one of the finest British novelists you've never heard of', wrote Johanna Thomas-Corr in a review of the novel for The Times of London. – Ledia Xhoga's Misinterpretation, about an interpreter whose marriage has turned sour. Lucy Popescu, in The Observer, called the novel 'a nuanced exploration of communication failures, blurred boundaries and the emotional cost of unchecked altruism'. NYTIMES
The Print
6 hours ago
- Business
- The Print
Lord Meghnad Desai belonged to no camp—and, somehow, to every camp at once
For Lord Desai, the pursuit of knowledge was a lifelong passion. Whether delving into Marxian economics, monetary policy, and economic history or celebrating Mughal-e-Azam, his works spanned disciplines with equal rigour, each contribution enduring in its relevance. Elevated as a Labour life peer in 1991, he never allowed party lines to contain his views. Known for his cross-party affiliations in the UK's House of Lords, he regularly crossed swords—and built bridges—across ideological divides. On one occasion, as a classmate recalls, he was animatedly engrossed in conversation—his intellectual charm magnetically appealing—when he noticed an awestruck student lingering nearby. 'Ah,' he muttered good-naturedly, 'private affairs of public figures,' with the nonchalant air of a Peer of the Realm indulging in an innocent dalliance amid academia's halls. Lord Meghnad Desai carried his natural halo with grace and not a hint of pomposity. His untamed yet striking shock of white hair was a familiar sight to those of us who, as students, encountered him in the hallways of the London School of Economics. Though matters of state often kept him away—far more so than other faculty during my years there—when spotted in London, he invariably wore an impish smile and offered a wry remark on contemporary affairs, whether the evolving politics of Europe or the tumult of India. This refusal to be pigeonholed also extended to India. He advised successive governments, from Congress reformers to BJP-led regimes, bringing sharp intellect and empirical ballast to economic policy. Finance ministers and prime ministers alike valued his ability to question prevailing assumptions, often with evidence-laced humour. Also read: PM Modi condoles demise of economist Meghnad Desai, hails his role in deepening India-UK ties A master in every sense Beneath the economist's mantle lay a quieter passion: cinema. Beyond his academic stature, he took visible pride in his silver-screen debut—a cameo in the Sharmila Tagore and Soha Ali Khan film Life Goes On (2009)—a modern retelling of King Lear—alongside old friends Girish Karnad and Om Puri. Karnad and Desai were mates in college, and lore has it they once shared a stage in student dramas before making names in their respective fields. Years after publishing Marx's Revenge (2002)—a bold argument for Marx's relevance in the era of globalisation—he was genuinely astonished when a classmate referenced its dense calculations. 'You actually read it?' he asked in that characteristically self-deprecating tone. He wore his erudition lightly, authoring incisive studies on India's economic reforms while dispensing razor-sharp insights to anyone who sought them. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi noted in his tribute, Lord Desai was a regular commentator on reform, engaging with regulators and heads of state alike. His pithy observations often revealed their wisdom long after the moment had passed. In his later years, spent largely in India, Lord Desai's trenchant op-eds pierced even the high walls of North Block and the Prime Minister's Office. Some mistook his critiques as quiet lobbying for official roles—a notion he laughed off when teased by former students like me. He remained generous with his time, mentoring young scholars, policy wonks, and the occasional disoriented LSE alumnus. He was, in every sense, a master—an honorific he'd playfully redirect to me whenever I addressed him as 'My Lord'. Globalisation and liberalisation were his intellectual playgrounds. He helmed the inaugural Chevening Fellowship on Globalisation, guiding India's brightest minds to the LSE. A visionary institution-builder, he founded LSE's Centre for the Study of Global Governance and its Development Studies programme, and had earlier co-created the Human Development Index with Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq—a pathbreaking metric that looked beyond GDP to define progress. To those who knew him closely, there was also a distinctly Bengali warmth—a side reserved for students and confidants. When my father passed away abruptly mid-term, Lord Desai sat me down upon my return and said, with gentle sagacity, 'The grief will come in waves. Write through it, and you'll finish your course.' It was advice as practical as it was profound. Even in his eighties, he remained a prolific public intellectual. His columns in Indian newspapers sparked debate in Delhi drawing rooms as easily as in Westminster salons. He relished contrarian takes—not for performance, but because curiosity compelled him to probe every orthodoxy. Today, that halo shines brighter still, as he ascends to higher realms, leaving behind admirers, friends, and a legacy that transcends borders. Lord Meghnad Desai belonged to no camp—and, somehow, to every camp at once. His life's work, like his persona, was expansive, restless, and wholly original. Dilip Cherian, India's Image Guru, was a student of Lord Desai at the LSE. Views are personal. (Edited by Ratan Priya)
The Hindu
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Kiran Desai back in the longlist for ‘The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'
Booker Prize-winning author Kiran Desai on Tuesday (July 29, 2025) returned to the coveted literary award longlist with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, a novel described by the judges as a 'vast and immersive' tale about a pair of young Indians in America. The 53-year-old Delhi-born author, who won the Booker Prize 19 years ago in 2006 with The Inheritance of Loss, joins 12 writers from around the world for the so-called 'Booker Dozen' of 13 books that will be whittled down to six shortlisted titles by September. Desai's latest novel stands out as the longest on the longlist, weighing in at 667 pages and published by Hamish Hamilton. The shortest is Universality by Natasha Brown at 156 pages. 'She has spent almost 20 years writing The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. Should she win this year, she would become the fifth double winner in the prize's 56-year history,' Booker Prize Foundation said in a statement. 'Desai has a family history with the prize: her mother Anita Desai was shortlisted for the Booker three times,' it noted. According to the Booker Prize website, the novel follows the lives of Sonia and Sunny, two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. The 2025 prize longlist was chosen from 153 submissions, celebrating the best works of long-form fiction by writers of any nationality writing in English and published in the UK and/or Ireland between October 2024 and 30 September 2025. 'The 13 longlisted novels bring the reader to Hungary, Albania, the north of England, Malaysia, Ukraine, Korea, London, New York, Trinidad and Greece, India and the West Country,' said Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize 2025 Chair of Judges. 'There are short novels and some very long ones. There are novels that experiment with form and others that do so less obviously. Some of them examine the past and others poke at our shaky present. They are all alive with great characters and narrative surprises. All, somehow, examine identity, individual or national, and all, I think, are gripping and excellent,' he said. Other works in the race to be shortlisted include Trinidadian author Claire Adam's Love Forms, Malaysian Tash Aw's The South, Canadian-Ukrainian Maria Reva's Ending, Hungarian-British David Szalay's Flesh and Albanian-American Ledia Xhoga's Misinterpretation. Four British authors in the running are: Natasha Brown with Universality, Jonathan Buckley with One Boat, Andrew Miller with The Land in Winter and Benjamin Wood with Seascraper. And, the three American authors completing the longlist include Susan Choi with Flashlight, Katie Kitamura with Audition and Ben Markovits with The Rest of Our Lives. 'The stories are set all over the world, and as we looked through the books we began to notice that their authors, all of them writing in English, had come from many different places too… It's the highest number of different nationalities we've seen on a Booker Prize longlist for a decade – yet British writers are strongly represented too,' said Gaby Wood, Chief Executive of the Booker Prize Foundation. 'Oh wow! Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize 19 years after The Inheritance of Loss won. What a staggering return! (Out in September!)' Manasi Subramaniam, editor-in-chief and vice-president at Penguin Random House India, which overlooks the Hamish Hamilton imprint, wrote on social media. Oh wow! Kiran Desai's The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize 19 years after The Inheritance of Loss won. What a staggering return! (Out in September!) — Manasi Subramaniam (@sorcerical) July 29, 2025 For the first time, the shortlist of six books will be announced at a public event, to be held at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall in London on September 23. The winning book for 2025 will be announced on November 10 at a ceremony at Old Billingsgate in London, with the winner receiving GBP 50,000 (approx ₹58 lakh). The six shortlisted authors will each receive GBP 2,500 (approx Rs 2.90 lakh) and a specially bound edition of their book.
