India's most interesting railway stations

The Indian Railways is known to the world as the largest railway network in the world. The grand Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus which happens to be the busiest station in India has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. There are over 7000 railway stations in India and the Indian railway carries over 2.8 million people every day! Some railway stations really make your travel beautiful with their grandeur and scenic locations.

The Indian railway aims to maintain and upgrade railway stations with the latest technology every year. However, a few railway stations are so beautiful that they make your journey better even before it starts! The Dudhsagar railway stations lies just to the left of the glorious Dudhsagar falls and the Cuttack railway station has recently been renovated in the shape of the 14th century Barabati fort that lies in the Kalinga region. Have you seen these picturesque Indian railway stations?

Ghum: India's highest railway station, and world's 14th highest, Ghum is a rather small railway station. Close to Darjeeling, it lies on one of the most beautiful railway tracks in the world.

Chhatrapari Shivaji Terminus: A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus is architecturally one of the most remarkable railway stations in the world.

Vashi: The Vashi railway station boasts of a built-in commercial complex. Vashi railway station was built into and under the International Infotech Park, to ISO 9002 quality standards.

Dudhsagar: The Dudhsagar railway station lies just to the left of the majestic Dudh sagarfalls. This railway stations is a treat for the with a grey track running through the greenery.

Char Bagh: The Char Bagh railway station in Lucknow is among the most beautifully built stations in India. The ‘char bagh’ refers to the four gardens which existed here earlier. The railway station actually looks like a palace with the towers and clusters of circular Awadhi domes.

Cuttack: The Cuttack railway station is truly one of a kind. It was recently renovated in the shape of the historic Barabati fort, a 14th century fort built during the rule of the Eastern Ganga dynasty in the Kalinga region.

Kanpur Central: This is one of the four Central Railway Stations in India. The present station was built in 1928, though the imposing building was completed in 1930. The building's construction is inspired by Lucknow's magnificent Lucknow Charbagh railway station building which was built by the British in 1914 but could not be constructed similar to Charbagh because it would be enormously expensive.

Vijayawada: The Vijayawada railway station was constructed in 1888 when the Southern Maharatta Railway's main eastward route was connected with other lines going through Vijayawada. Vijayawada Junction has been given A-1 status in 2008 as the revenues crossed 100 crore ($17 mn in 2013 terms) in that financial year.

Howrah: Howrah railway station is the oldest station and largest railway complex in India. It is one of the four intercity railway stations serving the city of Kolkata, the others being Sealdah Station, Shalimar Station and Kolkata railway station.

Thiruvananthapuram Central: Trivandrum Central is the main railway station in the city of Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum) in the Indian state of Kerala. The building of the railway station is one of the landmarks of Thiruvananthapuram. This station is also noted for a whole range of amenities available within the premises. The station has book-shops, restaurants, accommodation, Internet browsing centers and even an essential commodities shopping mall.

Dwarka: It may look like one of the temples in the holy city of Dwarka, but it is really a railway station!

Kanyakumari: The southernmost station in India, it marks the end of the Indian railways. The railway route from Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari is currently considered to be the longest railway route.

Barog: Named after an engineer Barog who was unable to complete building the Barog tunnel, this tunnel was constructed under Chief Engineer H.S. Harrington's supervison guided by a local sage from July 1900 to September 1903 at a cost 8.40 Lakh rupees (Rupees 840,000). This tunnel is the longest of the 103 operational tunnels on the route of the Shimla-Kalka Railway, which is 1143.61m long. Barog station is located immediately after the tunnel. Barog tunnel is the straightest tunnel in the world.

Velankanni: The pristine white structure designed loosely on the style of a Cathedral characterising the Velankanni Railway Station is only a couple of years old. The complex bordered by twin-towers on its northern and southern point and mediated by a central dome has been conceived as a pivotal aspect of the 10-km Velankanni rail line project at Rs.48 crore.

Source: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/from-the-highest-railway-station-ghum-to-the-southernmost-kanyakumari-14-of-indias-most-beautiful-railway-stations/498091-79.html

Nobel Peace Prize 2014 for Indian activist Kailash Satyarthi and Pakistani teen Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai  and   Kailash Satyarthi

Indian children's right activist Kailash Satyarthi  and Pakistani teenager Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 for advocating girls' right to education,  won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize on 10.10.2014.

Satyarthi, 60, and Malala Yousafzai were picked for their struggle against the oppression of children and young people, and for the right of all children to education, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

The award was made at a time when hostilities have broken out between India and Pakistan along the border of the disputed, mainly Muslim region of Kashmir - the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade.

"The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism," said Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

The prize, worth about $1.1 million, will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the award in his 1895 will.

Kailash Satyarthi :

Kailash Satyarthi, is  an Indian child rights activist born in Vidisha, about 50km from Bhopal. He studied engineering at the Govt Engineering College, Vidisha and gave up his career as an electrical engineer over three decades ago to start Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Childhood Movement. Today, the non-profit organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan he founded is leading the movement to eliminate child trafficking and child labour in India. The organisation has been working towards rescuing trafficked children for over 30 years. It receives information from a large network of volunteers. 

"It's an honor to all those children still suffering in slavery, bonded labor and trafficking," Satyarthi told TV news channel CNN-IBN after learning he won the prize.

In a recent editorial, Satyarthi said that data from non-government organizations indicated that child laborers could number 60 million in India or 6 percent of the total population.

"Children are employed not just because of parental poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, failure of development and education programs, but quite essentially due to the fact that employers benefit immensely from child labor as children come across as the cheapest option, sometimes working even for free," he wrote.

Children are employed illegally and companies use the financial gain to bribe officials, creating a vicious cycle, he argued.

In an interview to The Times of India about four months ago, Kailash Satyarthi had said, "My philosophy is that I am a friend of the children. I don't think anyone should see them as pitiable subjects or charity. That is old people's rhetoric. People often relate childish behaviour to stupidity or foolishness. This mindset needs to change. I want to level the playing field where I can learn from the children. Something I can learn from children is transparency. They are innocent, straightforward, and have no biases. I relate children to simplicity and I think that my friendship with children has a much deeper meaning than others." 

Satyarthi, 60, admires Mahatma Gandhi and has likewise headed various forms of peaceful protests "focusing on the grave exploitation of children for financial gain," the Nobel committee said. 

Malala Yousafzai : 

Yousafzai was attacked in 2012 on a school bus in the Swat Valley in northwest Pakistan by masked gunmen as a punishment for a blog that she started writing for the BBC's Urdu service as an 11-year-old to campaign against the Taliban's efforts to deny women an education.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, Yousafzai moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya.

Yousafzai last year addressed the U.N. Youth Assembly in an event Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called "Malala Day". 

This year she traveled to Nigeria to demand the release of 200 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

"To the girls of Nigeria and across Africa, and all over the world, I want to say: don't let anyone tell you that you are weaker than or less than anything," she said in a speech.

"You are not less than a boy," Yousafzai said. "You are not less than a child from a richer or more powerful country. You are the future of your country. You are going to build it strong. It is you who can lead the charge."

Yousafzai, aged 17, becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner by far.

The previous youngest winner was Australian-born British scientist Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 when he shared the Physics Prize with his father in 1915

Source: Yahoo News,Times of India