Winners of the Asian Voice Bengal's Pride Awards in 2018
Contribution To Public Service
Neil Basu, Asst Commissioner, Met Police
Neil Basu’s role as counter-terrorism chief is viewed by many as the toughest job in UK policing. Basu is a former Met commander overseeing organised crime and gangs. He has specialised in counter-terrorism policing for the past three years. He took up his role as senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism in October 2016, in which he was responsible for delivering the police response to pursuing terrorists and the Prevent strategy. He has worked as a detective in all ranks to detective superintendent in several areas including anti-corruption and homicide for the anti-gangs unit Trident. He has also held the posts of area commander for south-east London and head of armed policing within the Met. Basu is the first officer of Asian heritage to take up this role.
Achievement In Health & Social Care
Dr Prathap C Reddy
Dr. Prathap C Reddy, the visionary Founder-Chairman of Apollo Hospitals is widely acknowledged as the architect of modern Indian healthcare. He is best described as a compassionate humanitarian, who dedicated his life to bringing world-class healthcare within the economic and geographic reach of millions. Over the years, Dr. Reddy has carried the torch of healthcare to distant corners of India. Always the visionary, he harnessed technology and insurance to take healthcare to the masses. In the firm belief that preventive healthcare is the key to good health, Dr. Prathap C Reddy passionately propagated it with the concept of Annual Health Checks and over 15 million health checks have been performed by the group. In service to the nation, Dr. Reddy has also been the Chairman of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Health Council and advisor to its committees on Healthcare, Health Insurance, Public Health and Pharma.
Media Person Of The Year
Prannoy Roy, NDTV
Prannoy Roy is a TV / digital journalist in India and author. He has been the lead anchor for election analysis and budget specials on India’s national television network Doordarshan and for BBC World News Question Time India. In 1988, Roy, along with his journalist wife Radhika, launched a television production house called New Delhi Television. Roy started his career with televised coverage of India’s general elections. On Doordarshan, he hosted news programs “The News Tonight” and “The World This Week” (which were nominated as one of India’s 5 best television programs since independence). He also started India’s first 24-hour English news channel NDTV 24×7. He has been an Economic Advisor in the Indian government’s Ministry of Finance and an Associate Professor at the Delhi School of Economics, where he developed a macroeconometric forecasting model for the Indian economy. He has also been a consultant to the India division of international accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen is a highly respected economist of our time who is renowned for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory and for his interest in the problems of society’s poorest members. Amartya Sen’s awards include Bharat Ratna (India); Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur (France); the National Humanities Medal (USA); Ordem do Merito Cientifico (Brazil); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); the Aztec Eagle (Mexico); the Edinburgh Medal (UK); the George Marshall Award (USA); the Eisenhower Medal (USA); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Since 1972 has taught and worked in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sen was born in a Bengali Kayastha family in Santiniketan in West Bengal, India, on the campus on Rabindranath Tagore’s Viswa-Bharati University. Rabindranath Tagore gave Amartya Sen his name (Bengali – “immortal”).
Bengal's Pride Award
Enam Ali MBE FIH
Enam Ali was born in Sylhet Division, East Pakistan(now Bangladesh). In 1974, he went to the United Kingdom to study law but decided to pursue a degree in hospitality and management. In 1980, he earned an international fellowship from the Institute of Hospitality, and in 1990, he earned a fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. In 1998, Ali launched Spice Business Magazine, a quarterly trade publication featuring articles in English and Bengali with information on the restaurant sector as well as community news. In 2005, Ali founded The British Curry Awards to recognize excellence in the UK curry industry. In 2012, the restaurant he founded, Le Raj, was selected as one of the official food suppliers of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. In 2013, Ali became Chief Strategy Advisor to the hospitality sector led charity Terraque Ltd. Ali became a director and president of the British-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce, which was created in 1991. He has also launched a 24-hour TV channel, ION.
Young Entrepreneur Of The Year
Prabir Chattopadhyay
Prabir Chattopadhyay grew up seeing his mother cook various Bengali dishes for the family and for the 15th-century Kalighat Kali Temple, Kolkata, India, where he was a shy and docile boy in the head priest clan. Prabir’s journey to becoming a chef has been very interesting.
At the age of 18, he started his career as a marine engineer and then moved to UK to complete his master’s degree. Prabir moved through the ranks at companies such as Pizza Express, Costa Coffee, Co-op Foods and Arcadia. However food is where his heart really belongs. With no formal training, he decided to venture into the food industry by launching Little Kolkata, bringing the authentic taste of Calcutta cuisine to London. Prabir’s cooking style and his recipes have been extremely well received with raving reviews from renowned food bloggers and critics. He has now been invited to be a part of a larger food festival.
SME Of The Year
Sree Ganesh Paper Mill
Shree Ganesh Board Mill (shortly SGBM) is a company based in West Bengal and manufactures sun dried paper boards. All their products are eco-friendly. SGBM is the brain child of Ratnanka Banerjee in partnership with his sister Mohua Banerjee who helped him to a great extent in shaping his dreams. Both had the spark of entrepreneurship in them and wanted to do something for society in return for what they got from it. While Ratnanka was busy with planning the hardware element of the manufacturing unit, Mohua helped in the proposal, planning, loan arrangement with the bank etc. It was not an easy task for her with her full time job and family. Mohua is an Indian classical dancer and has delivered several performances in India and UK. She also acted as MC in many Bengali cultural shows across UK.
IVF Clinic Of The Year
Nova IVI Fertility Clinic
Nova IVI Fertility (NIF) is among the largest service providers in the fertility space. NIF aims to bring advanced Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to India in partnership with IVI of Spain. Nova IVI Fertility was launched with the commitment to offer standardised and ethical infertility treatment, as well as addressing the urgent need for an organized institutional provider for fertility treatment. In addition to providing core procedures such as IUI, IVF and Andrology services, NIF offers several state-of-the-art technologies such as Vitrification for preserving embryos and eggs, Embryoscope and ERA to find out the timing of the uterus’ capacity to accept embryos. NIF also offers another sought after advanced technique known as IMSI (intracytoplasmic morphologically-selected sperm injection).
In a short span of six years from inception, NIF has achieved over 20,000 pregnancies. NIF currently operates 19 fertility centres in India (Ahmedabad (2), Bengaluru (2), Chennai, Coimbatore, Hisar, Hyderabad, Indore, Jalandhar, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai (2), New Delhi (2), Pune, Surat, and Vijayawada).
Contribution To Art & Culture
Sahana Bajpaie
Sahana Bajpaie was brought up and trained in Rabindrasangeet and Bengali Folk Songs in Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan, in West Bengal, India. She spent ten years in Dhaka, Bangladesh teaching English at Brac University where her singing career started and is extremely popular in Bangladesh. She has several chart topping Bengali music albums published from India and Bangladesh. She has done playback singing in many films from India and Bangladesh.
She now resides in London, teaches Bengali Language and Literature at SOAS, University of London of which she is an alumna, travels the world singing Bengali songs and collaborating with musicians from different countries. She has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, the Royal Festival Hall, Cambridge University, SOAS University of London, Dartington Hall- Devon, The London School of Economics, Richmix London with the London Grand Union Orchestra, Manchester, Birmingham, the Grassi Museum Leipzig, Germany, Sosnowiec Music School, Poland and the River Festival, Padova, Italy to name a few.
Educational Institution Of The Year
NSHM Knowledge Campus
NSHM Knowledge Campus is one of eastern India’s leading educational institutions and a pioneer of professional degree courses aligned to industry needs. With state-of-the-art campuses in Kolkata and Durgapur spread across 6,000,000 square feet of built-up area, NSHM offers 26 undergraduate and 19 postgraduate courses in various disciplines.
Renowned for its cutting-edge knowledge imparting techniques using lateral thinking, lifestyle education, cross-domain and international exposure, the institute is the prime choice for hundreds of recruiters.
The recent placements of students have been with premier industry brands like SAP, TCS, Amazon, Cognizant, Godrej, IBM, Taj, Oberoi and Infosys. At present it has 20,000 alumni working all across the globe.
