Dharitri (pdf: page1, page2, page3) covers the main story on “Center Does not Need Orissa” where it exposes how Orissa is being sidelined with respect to the national institutes being proposed in 11th five year plan. Odisha.com reports on Government of India’s betrayal towards Orissa and its people while establishing new IIT across India. (Based on Dr. Digambara Patra’s sentences.)
The Times of India national edition [1] reported on 29th of August 2006 that the day before, in Patna, Union minister of state for Human resource development Mr. Fatmi had said: “The proposal for one IIT for Bihar and two for Orissa and one Western Indian state besides one IIIT to Bihar will be included in 11th Five Year Plan.”
This news was very positively received by the people of Orissa, as having an IIT has been a long standing demand of the people of Orissa. Its importance has dramatically increased in the current context as many industries of various kinds (Steel, Aluminium, ports, Power, Refineries, IT etc.) have recently come to Orissa or are in the process of coming to Orissa; Orissa is among the bottom 3 with respect to per capita MHRD funding of higher education institutions [8,9] and has no IITs, IIMs,IISc, IISERs, central universities, or any institutions of national importance; and Orissa desperately needs an IIT type engineering college granting post graduate degrees so that its 40+ engineering colleges [10] can improve their faculty quality by sending these faculty to pursue part-time M.Tech and Ph.D degrees at a nearby IIT. Moreover, Orissa is one of the most backward states of the country with respect to various indices.
Pioneer reports that referring to Vedanta University’s land requirement union minister of state for HRD Mr. Fatmi said:
He commented that at a time when the Orissa Government is unable to provide only 500 acres of land for establishment of a new Indian Institute of Technology in the State, it is going ahead with a proposal for setting up of a university on 8,000 acres of land.
When exactly did the central government asked Orissa for 500 acres and Orissa said No? In contrast the news items regarding the CM writing to PM about IITs suggest that the state voluntered land for the IIT extension campus and I am sure they would volunteer land for a greenfield IIT.
But more importantly, one should note that Mr. Fatmi did not say that he was misquoted in the Times of India. That means, indeed on Aug 28 2006, Orissa was one of the locations for a greenfield IIT as well as for a branch campus of IIT Kharagpur. Mr. Fatmi being a union minister, his pronouncement on this issue, makes it a formal announcement. Backing away from a formal announcement is cheating and discriminatory.
While some people in Orissa are questioning the need of 8000 acres by Vedanta, a more enlightened Andhra Pradesh is actually spending its own money to create a similar city. In comparison, Orissa is getting $1 billion from Anil Agarwal foundation which they will use to establish the Vedanta University and the surrounding city. (Note that the land that is being acquitred for this purpose is not for free; Vedanta University is paying for it, not the Orissa state government.)
CNN-IBN collaborated on a piece at ibnlive.com which talks about multiple protests in AP by various political parties regarding the location of IIT in Andhra and in that context also talks about shifting of IIT from Orissa to AP, and the CM of Orissa writing a letter to the PM about it.
Various news papers report that the CM has written to the PM on the IIT shifting issue. Following is some excerpts from the New Indian Express article.
BHUBANESWAR: Taking strong exception to the reported move of the Centre to shift the establishment of an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) from Orissa to Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday shot off a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh demanding that a greenfield IIT should be sanctioned for the State.The Centre had announced establishment of three greenfield IITs in the country during the Eleventh Five Year Plan. Orissa was included in this proposal, which was also announced by Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development MM Fatmi on August 28 last year at Patna.Describing the move by the Centre to establish the IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan as ‘shocking’, the Chief Minister has sought the intervention of the Prime Minister in setting up such an institute in Orissa. …
Update2: I am told by people from Bhubaneswar that New indian Express and Dharitri also published this news. (I have not yet found those news items in the Internet editions.)
Update1: Sambada also has a news item on this.
This is explosive news. Yet again Orissa has been sidelined by the HRD ministry. Like the NIS case, all Orissans should protest this (non-violently and without disruptive methods such as Rasta Roko etc.) by writing letters to the PM, Sonia Gandhi, Planning Commission, various newspapers etc. and contacting the MPs, MLAs and political leaders of all parties of Orissa and urging them to bring this up in the Orissa assembly, in Indian Parliament, with the Planning Commission, with Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and with the PM. Orissa should not tolerate such repeated slights by the MHRD.
We will be assembling documents and pointers with respect to this injustice towards Orissa and collecting all relevant information in a blog specifically made for this.
OPEPA, Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority has a very extensive website http://www.opepa.in that has won the National e-governance award for best government website. The website is a treasure trove of information. It lists all the schools in Orissa and for some schools it has pictures. The "Track your Child" link in the right side of the home page allows one to see what blocks are in a districts, what GP/wards are in a block and what villages are in a GP/ward. I was able to figure out that my village school (which my grandmother used to take me when I was 3, before I moved to Bhubaneswar) has the following attributes: District – Jajpur, Block – Korai, GP/Ward – Taharpur and Village – Tentulikhunta. In general, the nomination of OPEPA for the award summarizes why OPEPA deserved this award. I hope the information in this site will enable various NROs to track down schools in their native places and find a way to contribute to the development of those schools. Some of the people who deserve kudos for this initiative are Mr. Madhusudan Padhi, the Director of OPEPA, and the people at OCAC and OPEPA. OCAC is the implementation department of the IT department of Govt. of Orissa and is currently headed by Mr. Vishal Dev. OCAC lists the e-sishu project as one of the already implemented e-governance projects.
Sambada reports that T. N. Sheshan will be meeting the CM in regards to the proposed Ravishankar University. The meeting could be about the land issue. The proposed Ravishankar University is supposed to cater 15,000 students and be of international standard. The land identified for this university is in Naraj and there is a speculation that the same land is also the top choice of DAE for NISER. Lets hope that a way out is found so that both DAE/NISER and Shri Shri Ravishankar are happy.
Education in general and higher education in particular seems to be one of the focus items, and rightly so, for the 11th five year plan. The approach paper to the 11th plan says: “Only about 8% of the relevant age group (of Indians) go to university whereas in many developing countries, the figure is between 20 and 25%. There is a clear need to undertake major expansion. … New colleges and universities must be set up, to provide easier access to students in educationally backward districts.†Similar sentiment was recently expressed by the planning commission deputy Chairman Mr. Ahluwalia when he agreed with Shekhar Gupta that higher education is a problem and went on to say, “What has happened is we suddenly realized that if the economy is now growing at 8 per cent, and could grow at 9 per cent, the skills the economy needs will become a constraint.†The Finance minister in his recent convocation address at Symbiosis International University also echoed similar sentiments.
I was taking leave from Dr. Swadhin Pattanaik, Director, Institute
of Mathematics and Applications (IMA) after finishing checking my
e-mail, when we met a lady. She came to get comfort from Swadhin
Babu who persuaded her daughter to join IISER, Kolkata this year,
rather than going after usual craze of joining IIT.
For close to 60 years to help schedule castes and schedule tribes who are severely underrepresented among Indians with higher education degrees, India has had reservations for them in various institutions across the country, usually in places far away from where the target population lives. So far, like Mullah Nasruddin, outside of northeast, India has not strategically established central institutions in places where the target population actually lives.
I was in India during December 12th-Jan 13th. Hence the long hiatus. Part of this time I was not able to access this site. I will slowly start positing on various things that happened since my last posting.
There has been very good progress in the NISER front. A web page for it has been created.
… Keeping all these things in mind, if our state government could make a KBK University (from the Biju KBK grant or a separate grant of 100 crores for 3 yrs), it would be easier to convert it to a central university later on, which happened earlier to Institute of Life Sciences, Institute of Physics, Allahabad University and some other North Eastern State Universities. …
All great cities have a university with the same name. In India there is Delhi University, Bombay University, Kolkata Univesrity, Chennai University, Bangalore University, Pune University, Allahabad University, Lucknow University, University of Hyderabad, etc. Now that Bhubaneswar is growing up as a city it needs a university with the same name as the city. (Note that even in Orissa there is Sambalpur University and Berhempur University named after the towns they are in.)
For this one need not start from scratch. BJB College is perhaps the top college in Orissa now. (Ravenshaw, which is now a university, was better in some areas.) R. D. Womens College is also among the top two womens colleges in the state. CET (College of Engineering and Technology) is now preferred over other state engineering colleges.
