Meet Laxman Rao. He sells tea on the roadside in Delhi. He is also an author, having penned 20 novels in Hindi so far. What’s more, Hindi is not even his mother tongue! Laxman originally hailed from Maharashtra and has settled down in Delhi, running a tea stall. His interest in writing manifested in the form of a book in the late 70s when he published his first novel Nayi Duniya Ki Nayi Kahani.

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Proud to be Indian

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Bharat Mata ki Jai

• India is the world’s largest, oldest, continuous civilization.

• India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history।

• India is the world’s largest democracy।

• Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called “the ancient city” when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B।C.E, and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.

• India invented the Number System। Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.

• The World’s first university was established in Takshashila in 700BC। More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

• Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software – a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987।

• Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans। Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization.

• Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century। Christopher Columbus was attracted by India’s wealth.

• The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindhu 6000 years ago। The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit ‘Nou’.

• Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart। Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.

• The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem। He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.

• Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India। Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10**53(10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BCE during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera 10**12(10 to the power of 12).

• IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi।

• The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra।

• According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 CE a beautiful lake called Sudarshana was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya’s time।

• Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India।

• Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipment were used। Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.

• When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization)।

• The four religions born in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, are followed by 25% of the world’s population।

• The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC।

• India is one of the few countries in the World, which gained independence without violence.
  
• India has the second largest pool of Scientists and Engineers in the World।

• India is the largest English speaking nation in the world

• India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indigenously.

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While India is still debating how to make the Indo-US nuclear deal work, an American company, anxious to enter the Indian market, has offered to build commercial nuclear power reactors in the country.

These reactors will rely entirely on India’s thorium resources — except at the start – and thereby remove the objections of critics.

The California-based Dauvergne Brothers Inc (DBI) says its novel type of thorium breeder reactor is fuelled with fissile material like uranium only once when it is started. It runs for its full operational life on Uranium-233 (or U-233) bred in its core from thorium.

Thorium, which India has in plenty, cannot be directly burned in a reactor. It has to be converted into fissile U-233. India’s own thorium utilisation strategy hinges on reprocessing — a contentious issue between India and the US. The DBI claims its design is tailor-made for the Indian situation.

According to the company, its reactor ’starts up using conventional uranium-based nuclear fuels, and incrementally converts to an all-thorium fuel cycle over a period of 10 years, using India’s abundant supply of thorium ores to maintain energy independence’.

It said that computer simulations of the DBI thorium breeder reactor show that a single load of 25 percent uranium oxide fuel and 75 percent thorium oxide will keep the reactor running for a decade.

‘In that time enough U-233 will be bred in the thorium oxide fuel to increase the output power of the DBI reactor core by 50 percent adding only fresh thorium oxide as fuel.’ After that, no uranium ores are needed.

Conventional breeder reactor designs — including the one contemplated by Indian scientists — require chemical reprocessing to retrieve bred fuel from used uranium fuel rods or from irradiated thorium’ blankets’.

The DBI reactor, according to the company, uses a different strategy.

After approximately 10 years of operation, much of the activated thorium fuel would be transferred without any reprocessing into a second-generation DBI reactor core with higher power output than the first.

‘Fresh thorium breeder bundles will be added to perpetuate the cycle.’

This fuel plan relies on a robust, low-neutron absorbing, radiation-resistant, proprietary fuel encapsulation system developed by DBI, the company said.

Unlike the zirconium fuel cladding of most breeder reactors, the DBI fuel capsules are derived from industrially available material, much less expensive than nuclear-grade zirconium alloys.

While the modular core design offers scalability, several other features of the DBI thorium reactor programme could prevent weapons proliferation, the company claims.

For instance, it says the start up fuel could be a proliferation-resistant fuel, such as the denatured plutonium/thorium fuel recently developed by Thorium Power Inc, another US company.

‘International agreements between India and uranium-source nations to use proliferation-resistant fuels in the DBI Reactor Programme, subject to IAEA monitoring, could sever the link between civilian and military nuclear programmes in India, without adversely affecting India’s ability to scale up the DBI Reactor Programme using native thorium in future generations,’ the company said.

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