Why retired IAS SK Panda is given Louis Pasteur Award — the "Nobel Prize" in sericulture, silk industry

SK Panda

LAST month, former union textile secretary and 1980 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre retired IAS Sanjay Kumar Panda received a unique recognition — Louis Pasteur Award for the year 2016, an award considered as the Nobel Prize in sericulture and silk industry. Panda was given the award during the 24th International Congress on Sericulture and Silk Industry held last month in Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok. Panda, who did his post-graduation in chemistry before getting into IAS, actually took sericulture on a mission mode so much so that it was for his study on mulberry sericulture that he was awarded PhD in economics by Odisha’s Utkal University. In fact, Louis Pasteur was a…

Sanjay Kumar Panda: Meet the secretary who talked about “zero defect” in a book two decades ago

OVER two decades ago, present textile secretary and 1980 batch Manipur-Tripura cadre IAS Dr Sanjay Kumar Panda published an Oriya book on handloom where he talked about “zero defect”, a phrase that has now caught the imagination of everyone after prime minister Narendra Modi made the “zero defect, zero effect” a national slogan so as to pursue quality in manufacturing. First, let’s see how Panda argued about production of handloom without any defect (zero defect)…

One plus one is equal to what? Better ask textiles secretary and 1980 batch IAS SK Panda

Panda (right) presenting a copy of the book to Vice-President Ansari

UNION textiles secretary and former chief secretary of Tripura Sanjay Kumar Panda is convinced that one plus one is not two but eleven, provided a positive mind-set works in tandem with team-spirit and right technology. As chief secretary of the North-eastern state of Tripura, Panda teamed up with a select bureaucrats, bankers and academics to produce a book titled, “Making One plus One Eleven- Some Innovative Experiences with Tripura”, highlighting some of the unique achievements…