Archive for November, 2010
Following is from an article in tathay.in.
The proposed Xavier University in Odisha seems to be pushed inside the deep fridge.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik eagerly approved the proposed Xavier University in the state in July, 2009.
Thanks to the initiative of Fr.P T Joseph, Director XIMB who brought the issue to the authorities in the Odisha Government about the requirement of Xavier University in the state.
Ananga Udaya Singh Deo, Minister Planning & Coordination, who raised the issue in the State Cabinet in a strong way, impressed the Chief Minister.
With the green signal of the Chief Minister the authorities in XIMB moved ahead with accquiring land nearby the Capital City and a Detailed Plan for the proposed university was prepared.
Every thing is ready.
So every body expected that the much needed Xavier University Bill will come up in the Winter Session of the Odisha Legislative Assembly.
Now on 23 November, Winter Session of the OLA begins.
However there is no sign of the proposed bill on Xavier varsity, revealed an officer in the Department of Law.
Why is it so?
Officials in the Department of Higher Education reveal that though the Xavier University proposal has been approved by the Chief Minister, no separate bill for the proposed varsity will be presented in the Assembly.
An Umbrella Act is being prepared for all the private and professional universities, which is likely to be tabled in the House.
However legal pundits opine that such an Umbrella Act will not stand scrutiny of law.
That is why the Umbrella Act, which was posed to Department of Law during last August, is yet to be vetted by the legal experts.
Legal luminaries feel that “an Umbrella Act for Universities is bad in eyes of law”.
That is why such an Umbrella Act adopted by the Government of Chhatisgarh was set aside by the Apex Court in recent past.
Educationists feel that “If one does not have the right connections in the Corridors of Power in Odisha, it is impossible to move an inch”.
With no Godfather backing the Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB), the Director Fr. Joseph is running from pillar to post to clear the Xavier University Bill.
However no body knows where the file is gathering dust in the State Secretariat.
This is really unfortunate.
November 11th, 2010
Following is from http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66918.
The civil work for Package I – medical college started at all the sites in last week of May, 2010 and is scheduled to be completed in 15 months except Patna where duration is 18 months. For package II – medical college, work started in the middle of September, 2010 and it is scheduled to be completed in 24 months from commencement of work. The civil work at all the six sites is at various stages.
At Rishikesh, the provision of basement for medical college has been deleted due to high water level during excavation. Consequently, structural analysis has been re-done and designs was got revised by the Design DPR consultant. At Bhubaneswar, there was resistance from local people for mobilization of activities of the contractor. As such, the work at Rishikesh and Bhubaneswar site are slightly behind the schedule.
An amount of Rs.622.37 Crore for construction of medical colleges and an amount of Rs.1330.71 Crore for hospital complex in respect of all the six sites were allocated. Mobilization advance of 5% has so far been released.
Out of 13 institutions, 10 institutions involve both civil work and procurement of medical equipment and the remaining 3 involve mainly procurement of equipment. Civil work at 4 medical colleges, viz. Trivandrum Medical College, Bangalore Medical College, Salem Medical College and Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow has been completed. The work at Nizam Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad; Jammu Medical College and OPD and Academic Block of Kolkata Medical College is likely to be completed by December, 2010 and remaining 3 institutions in 2011.
Procurement of medical equipments for all the 13 medical college is expected to be completed by March, 2011.
This information was given by Minister for Health and Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad in written reply to a question raised in Rajya Sabha today.
November 10th, 2010
Following is from http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66896.
The National Development Council has approved the setting up of fourteen Universities aiming at world class standards and dedicated to innovation. These universities are proposed to be located at Bhubaneswar in Orissa, Kochi in Kerala, Amritsar in Punjab, Greater Noida in Uttar Prdesh, Patna in Bihar, Guwahati in Assam, Kolkata in West Bengal, Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, Gandhinagar in Gujarat, Coimbatore in Tamilnadu, Mysore in Karnataka, Pune in Maharashtra, Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Jaipur in Rajasthan respectively.
A concept paper finalized by the government is available on website www.education.nic.in and includes the scope for public private partnership.
The proposed universities for innovation are to be established across two plan periods of XIth and XIIth Plan.
This information was given by the Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Kapil Sibal, in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.
It was not clear to be what the National Development Council is. Searching in the web I came across the following:
The Planning Commission works under the overall guidance of the National Development Council, India’s prime policy-making body, which guides the nation on the development process.
The planning commission page http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planbody.html has the speeches of the PM and CM of various states in various National Development Council meetings. In the most recent meeting the PM addresses his cabinet colleagues, the CM and ministers from various state delegations, and the planning commission members.
November 10th, 2010
Following is from the PIB release http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66858.
A proposal was received from the Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports to convert Rajiv Gandhi National Institute for Youth Development, an institution deemed to be university, at Sriperumbudur into Rajiv Gandhi Central University/National Institute of Youth and Sports. In order to examine the proposal and to make suitable recommendations, the Government has constituted a Committee …
In the past we have suggested a similar institution in Rourkela, the cradle of Hockey in Odisha and India.
Following is from another PIB release http://www.pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=66771. (Thanks to kalahandia.blogspot.com for the pointer.)
The Union Cabinet today approved the establishment of a National Centre for Molecular Materials (NCMM) at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala as an autonomous institute of the Government of India (GOI) under the Department of Science & Technology (DST) at a total cost of ` 76.7 crore for five years with an outlay of ` 14.55 crore for the Eleventh Plan Period.
The Centre will be located on 40 acres of land provided by the State Government, free of cost.
The Centre will be the first of its kind in the country and will pursue high-end science and develop technology in niche areas like sensors for biomedical devices, materials for solar energy harvesting and space electronics. Through the Centre, the Government attempts to create a national innovation infrastructure that channels knowledge systems to wealth creation in the long run.
The Centre will collaborate with other academic institutions and actively interact with industry and user groups. It will generate human resources in the form of well-qualified researchers, technicians and entrepreneurs who can help develop the use of such materials for technological applications and exploit the market potential in this area.
For long Odisha has been trying for a research center on materials along similar lines, but without much success.
November 9th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from a interview in http://chronicle.com/article/Yales-President-Talks-About/125273/.
Q. By "innovation," what do you mean? Could you give me some examples?
A. The biggest one is this: If India is going to build some truly high-quality institutions, it is going to have competitive compensation on a global scale. One of the things the Chinese have done, … they have essentially decided to break their salary scales to recruit back Chinese expats working in the U.S. and U.K. to be leaders and senior professors at their top institutions. And India has an extraordinary expat academic population. But it is very hard to get those people back in the public universities [here], because they are not attractive-enough jobs. So "innovation universities" offer hope that they’ll be able to provide competitive compensation and merit-based compensation.
Q. Did you talk with Kapil Sibal, India’s minister in charge of higher education, about this?
A. Yes, with the minister and many other people here. … The whole point of innovation universities is that both public and private innovation universities in the legislation [to allow for their creation] will have the possibility of not paying [faculty salaries] according to the standard scale.
Q. Why is that issue here in India important to you at Yale?
A. If the question posed to us is, Help us build world-class institutions, my first piece of advice is you can’t do it and pay people 20 percent of what they earn in the U.S. [He laughs.]
The last point is a very important one. While there are many top world class researchers in India, who are only paid 20% of what they would earn in the US, it is not possible to have a university full of such top (in terms of research) faculty by paying them only 20%; let alone have 14 such universities.
That is why there is a need of deep pocketed private benefactors of such universities.
November 9th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from a report in Indian Express.
“To boost innovation in basic sciences, the government is keen on funding and establishing world class institutes. We have recently established more IITs, IISERs and institutes in pharmaceutical science. On the same lines, the Cabinet has decided to establish IIESTs across the country,” said Prithviraj Chavan, Union Minister for State for Science and Technology.
He was inaugurating a seminar on Nano Technology: Materials and Composites for Frontier Applications, organised by Bharati Vidyapeeth University. Chavan did not commit that CoEP would feature on the list of five colleges to be converted into IIESTs, but said there was a possibility because the college has been trying to get deemed university status.
Odisha should remind the central government regarding its earlier request to upgrade VSSUT, Burla to an IIEST.
November 2nd, 2010
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