Sanskriti Awards 2011 held in Delhi

Sanskriti Awards 2011 were recently held in the capital where former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam honoured young talents between the age group of 25 and 35 years in the fields of Literature, Journalism, Art, Performing Arts and Social Achievement.
The awards which celebrated its 32nd year on November 18, saw five young talents being awarded `50,000 and a citation.
The chosen ones While young Kashmiri poetess and writer Shahida Shabnum was awarded the prize for Literature, investigative and political journalist Rana Ayyub took home the award for Journalism. Visual artist Abhishek Hazra was given the prize in the field of Art, sarangi player Murad Ali was awarded for his contribution in the field of Music, and the Social Achievement award went to Vinayak Lohani.
Sarangi player Murad Ali spoke about the “dying” musical instrument – the sarang. He said that even though people consider it to be loosing its essence, he’ll keep it alive. Social Achievement awardee Vinayak Lohani stressed that more initiatives need to be taken to educate the poor, the orphans and the girl child. Rana Ayyub called for objectivity in the field of journalism, “at a time when its reputation is at stake.”
Time matters Punctual as ever, Dr Kalam reached the venue bang at 6.15pm. Also present at the event were Ashok Vajpeyee, chairman, Awards Committee, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, trustee, Sanskriti Pratishthan, and OP Jain. Dr Kalam was all praise of the awardees, who had “broken the limits of their imagination.” Singhvi too praised the young guns, calling their achievement a “contribution to the GDP... as economists are now trying to quantify the cost of culture as soft superpower.”