On connections on principal bundles

A new construction of a universal connection was given in Biswas, Hurtubise and Stasheff (2012). The main aim here is to explain this construction. A theorem of Atiyah and Weil says that a holomorphic vector bundle E over a compact Riemann surface admits a holomorphic connection if and only if the degree of every direct summand of E is zero. In Azad and Biswas (2002), this criterion was generalized to principal bundles on compact Riemann surfaces. This criterion for principal bundles is also explained