Welcome to the first issue of the IARCS Newsletter for 1998. Slowly but surely, the process of registering IARCS moves on. The next step on the agenda is to finalize the constitution. In this issue, we present a draft of a constitution for IARCS. You are welcome to send in your comments.

In this issue, we carry detailed reports on FSTTCS-97 and the preconference Workshop on Randomized Algorithms, held at Kharagpur in December 1997. We also have photographs from the conference. In addition we have reports from Asian~97 and other events held across the country during the past few months.

We are pleased to announce a new series of electronic lecture notes archived by IARCS. Details are available on the last page of this issue. Please send your contributions and suggestions to the newsletter to:

Madhavan Mukund,
Editor, IARCS Newsletter ,
SPIC Mathematical Institute,
92 G N Chetty Road, Madras 600 017.

E-mail:
iarcs@smi.ernet.in
iarcs@imsc.ernet.in \vfill