(Ack: Thanks to Mr. Rakesh Kumar for the pointer.)
Lets hope most of them accept these offers. The list is at http://niser.ac.in/notices/2009/Faculty-selected-Apr-09.pdf. Below are images of that list.
1 comment April 9th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
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April 7th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
As per comment 3 of an earlier post of ours, The National Law University Act, 2008 (Orissa Act 4 Of 2008) was published in the Orissa Gazette (Extraordinary) Vide No.2215, dated 4th December, 2008. So the official establishment year of this university will be 2008.
Following are excerpts from a report in tathya.in about the appointment of the first vice chancellor of this university.
Professor Faizan Mustafa is the first Vice Chancellor of the National Law University of Orissa (NLUO).
Justice Dr. Balbir Singh Chouhan, Chief Justice of Orissa High court and the Chancellor of NLUO has appointed him in the top post here on 6 April.
Professor Mustafa is at present the Director KIIT Law School, Bhubaneswar.
He is a gold medalist in LL.M. from Aligarh Muslim University. who had completed his Ph.D. in Intellectual Property Law.
Professor Mustafa also has a Diploma in International and Comparative Human Rights from International Institute of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France.
Before joining KLS as Director, he was Dean of Faculty of Law, AMU and Registrar of AMU for a period of two years. …
… Finally the NLUO is taking concrete shape with Prof.Mustafa at the helm and initiative of the Higher Education department to place funds for the institution.
The State Government has already provided Rs.5 crore to the Corpus Fund.
Naveen Patnaik, the Chief Minister laid foundation of the institution on 5 January at Brajabiharipur near Naraj in Cuttack district.
The State Government has allocated 30 acres of land free of cost.
Similar National Law Schools opened earlier in the other states are listed here. So far there were 12 of them in Bangalore (1986), Hyderabad (1998), Bhopal (1998), Kolkata (1999), Jodhpur (1999), Gandhinagar (2003), Raipur (2003), Kochi (2005), Lucknow (2005), Patiala (2006), Patna (2007), and Delhi (2008). Admission to all of them except the last one is through the common law admission test (CLAT).
13 comments April 7th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following is an excerpt from a recent (March 22, 2009) report from Economic Times.
… The proposal for setting up AIIMS-like institutions was first made in 2003 by the then BJP-led NDA government. It was, however, cleared by the CCEA on March 16, 2006, 10 months after the UPA government came to power.
It was decided that each site would be taken as a separate and independent project instead of clubbing all six together. The construction of housing and the hospital complex was also separated from that of hospital and medical college.
Speaking to TOI , Joint Secretary in the Health Ministry B K Prasad said the layout and master plans of the hospital sites at Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Jodhpur and Rishikesh had already been approved. The approval of the master plans for Patna and Raipur is expected on March 25. Meanwhile, the Rajasthan State Road Development Corporation construction has started construction work on the residential complex (housing and hostel) in Jodhpur. The work relating to construction of the residential complex at Rishikesh, Patna, Bhubaneswar and Raipur has been entrusted to two different agencies.
Prasad said, "Hostel construction in the other sites will start latest by June and should be completed by December 2009. Hospital construction should start by October and will take 24 months to complete. Each hospital will have 960 beds with 29 super-speciality departments."
Following is an excerpt from a report in jaibihar.com.
Taking a serious note of the inordinate delay in completion of Jai Prakash Narayan All India Institute of Medical Science (JPNAIIMS) here, the Patna High Court on Tuesday asked the union government to float fresh tender on the revised estimate and commence the actual construction of the proposed medical college and hospital complex in 90 days.
While hearing a PIL urging the court’s intervention for completion of JPNAIIMS project within a time frame, a division bench, comprising Justice Shiva Kirti Singh and Justice Sheem Ali Khan, directed the Union Government to file an action taken report (ATR) on the next date of hearing.
Complaining about the dilly-dallying attitude of the centre, M P Gupta, counsel for the petitioner, Council for Protection of Public Rights and Welfare, referred to earlier records which revealed that on May 15, 2006 the estimated expenditure was Rs 332 crore, which was hiked to Rs 533.15 crore on February 25, 2009, but till date the actual construction work had not commenced.
April 6th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following is an excerpt from a PTI report in indopia.in.
Vedanta University today announced the launch of a world class multi-speciality teaching and research hospital near Puri-Konark Marine Drive at a cost of Rs 400 crore. "The 500-bed multi-speciality hospital will commence during the first phase of the university. Orders for construction have already been placed," Sanjeev Anand Zutshi, Director of the project, told reporters here.
Stating that construction would begin after the elections, C V Krishnan of the Vedanta group said nearly 4,000 acres had already been acquired for the university project as against the total requirement of about 6,000 acres.
Both Krishnan and Zutshi said that the hospital would commence services in 2011 providing high-quality patient care affordable to the common man by the "not-for-profit"institution, an initiative of Anil Agarwal foundation.
Following are excerpts from a report in tathya.in.
Lauding the initiative, eminent Indian cardiologist, Dr. Kabi Prasad Mishra, said that the hospital will be a regional hub for critical specialties including cardiology and diabetology.
Dr.Mishra said that as a teaching and research centre, it will attract leading researcher and specialists in medical science from around the globe.
The University’s research agenda will prioritize public health solutions that address the most prevalent medical issues in the region.
This multi-specialty hospital will commence during the first phase of the university, said Sanjeev Anand Zutshi, Director of VUP.
Orders for construction have already been places with Larsen & Toubro Limited, added Mr.Zutshi.
The conceptual planning and design of the hospital has been prepared by the leading US based hospital design firm Perkins + Will.
The design was well appreciated by stalwarts of Medical Science like Professor M S Valiathan and Professor N K Ganguly.
Padma Vibhusan Dr. Valiathan presented the key note address in the national seminar “Optimum Medical Education and Ethics in clinical Practice”.
Padma Bhusan Dr.Ganguly dwelt upon issues like immunology, biotechnology and public health.
The VUP has already initiated research program on interventions needed for prevalence of anemia in infants and children of the state led by Dr.Dipika Mohanty.
Telegraph also reports on this.
April 6th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following are excerpts from a recent (March 19, 2009) report in Business Standard.
The Anil Agarwal-promoted Vedanta University will begin operations by mid-2011 in Puri, Orissa. Agarwal plans to make Vedanta University into a world-class, multi-disciplinary varsity with students from across India and around the world.
The university, being built with an investment of Rs 15,000 crore, will come up in three phases. Phase one will be operational by mid-2011 with an investment of Rs 5,000 crore. The first academic session at the university was to begin in 2009 but the project has been delayed by two years due to a land acquisition tussle with the local residents of Puri.
… To begin with, the university will start operations with around 1,000 students in the arts and science streams. The student intake, however, will grow steadily to reach an ultimate goal of 100,000 students. The university board on the other hand is still working on the modalities involving admission and fee structure.
“We have all the necessary approvals in place from various academic authorities in the country. However, certain details regarding the admission process need to be worked on. We plan to produce professionals far superior to what any other institute can produce in the country,” said C V Krishnan, CEO, Vedanta University.
The university has awarded construction contracts of the academic buildings as well as the hospital at the project site to companies like Larsen & Toubro, Shapoorji Pallonji, Ahluwalia, B E Billimoria and Simplex. Architects Ayers Saint Gross of Baltimore, USA, have prepared the master plan of the University.
The campus will have a super specialty hospital, which will answer a long standing need for providing comprehensive and specialised patient care for the people of Orissa and eastern India. Both the University and the hospital are ‘not-for-profit’ institutions.
World-renowned hospital architects are developing the design for the hospital, Perkins and Will from USA. The university will also establish research parks to promote science and technology-based entrepreneurship and support an innovation-driven incubator. E-learning programmes will also be launched in future.
“We will be recruiting young professors with inclination towards research. We have already hired a US-based recruitment agency to appoint faculty for the university,” added Krishnan.
7 comments April 5th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following is excerpted from a report in Telegraph.
Twelve new central universities that India is launching will start by offering only research programmes — MPhil and PhD — unlike existing varsities that are controlled by the Centre.
The new universities will focus exclusively on research, at least initially, though they can later expand and offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses not involving research as well, top government officials have said.
… But the 12 new universities will initially offer only research programmes, human resource development (HRD) ministry sources said.
“We will leave it open to each university to decide what research programmes they want to start with. At least one university wants to start with only MPhil courses. That is fine,” a source said.
The 12 new universities are to come up in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Orissa, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Bihar.
At least three of the 12 are expected to start offering courses from the 2009 academic session itself, though more may begin.
The strategy to focus only on research initially at the new universities is based on three major considerations, sources said.
One, it will allow the universities to initially “find their feet” without the pressure of a large number of students, officials argue.
April 5th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Recently Educationtimes.com, a part of of Times of India, together with Gfk Mode, has done a ranking of universities across India in various disciplines. There methodology, in their own words, was as follows:
This survey was open to prominent universities across India and invitations were sent to 225 universities.
Among the 225 prominent universities invited, 136 participated. This constitutes around 61% participation.
Some universities refused to participate. Whereas many universities could not provide the required information within our time frame.
The contact persons at the universities were: the registrars, deputy registrars, principal, dean or the administrative heads.
That is it. They sent the surveys. Regardless of whether people participated or not; regardless of the veracity of what was given back; they made a ranking.
The parameters they used may seem reasonable to many, but to me there is a very simple way to rank Universities and Colleges in India. Just use faculty quality as the first parameter and if their is a tie then use the student quality as the second parameter. That’s it!
2 comments April 1st, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
March 30th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard:
Faced with a huge shortage of skilled manpower in the growing space of welding technology, the Indian Institute of Welding (IIW) is planning to train and certify at least 1,000 students per annum across 33 centres in India beginning July this year.
It is planning to set up two training centres each one in Orissa and Kolkata which, along with the existing two at Kochin and Bangalore, and will conduct nationwide examinations for both short term and long term courses. The certificate will be equivalent to the Bachelor of Engineering (BE) affiliated to the International Institute of Welding (InIW), France.
The move assumes significance mainly because of growing investment on infrastructure. The government has allocated a sum of Rs 320,000 crore for infrastructure development during the current fiscal year which, if implemented, will use 7 million tonnes of steel and about 28,000 tonnes of welding materials. By 2020, India’s demand for welding materials is estimated to range between 4- and 4.5 million tonnes on a projected steel consumption of 100 million tonnes from the current use of 2 million tonnes and 55 million tonnes respectively. This will require at least about 1.5 million trained manpower for welding.
“IIW-trained technocrats may find jobs not only in India but also abroad as welding engineers are required everywhere,” said C C Girotra, president of IIW.
The institute has trained so far 145 engineers under the auspices of InIW who are placed in the country’s largest engineering including Larsen & Toubro. A number of them have started their own business in steel welding while other graduates opted their career abroad. …
The course fee varies between Rs 27,000 and Rs 60,000 per student for the period between 4-6 weeks.
March 30th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
The following links are mentioned in http://savageminds.org/2009/03/26/youtube-edu/. (Thanks to Abi for pointing to it.)
1 comment March 29th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Update: The news item in Samaja.
Tathya writes about this. Following are some excerpts.
Central University of Orissa (CUO) will begin classes from June. … While CUO will have its campus in Koraput, to begin with a temporary campus near Bhubaneswar is being looked out to start classes from next Educational Year.
That is why Professor Banerjee has requested the Government of Orissa in Higher Education department to provide a rented accommodation.
Mr.Padhi has agreed to provide all out support for the institution.
Professor Banerjee is interested to make it a different institution and is inclined to start at least 30-35 departments in the newly carved out Centre of Learning.
However to start with the CUO will have 5 subjects and later it will go on including further, said sources.
… Those CUs, which has not identified land for the institution in the designated place, those can start it from the Capital City of the state, said sources.
So Professor Banerjee is busy in organizing things for facilitating classes from next June. Faculty hiring is the foremost in her mind and as she is eager to make it a top class university, the VC wants to rope in best of the talents from the country.
She is also interested to open Medical College in the University, but it will take time.
… Professor Baral of Arizona State University said only five of the 15 new central universities will have a medical college in the first phase (i.e.,during the 11th plan).
So the ability of the VC Professor Banerjee will be tested in whether she is able to get a medical and engineering college to the Central University of Orissa, feel the educationist.
Considering that the CUO is to be located in Koraput, in the most backward area, KBK, of India, Prof. Banerjee must do her best to make the right arguments at the earliest and get a medical and engineering college to this university, argued Professor Baral.
Page 522 of the document at http://planningcommission.nic.in/plans/planrel/fiveyr/11th/11_v3/11th_vol3.pdf given below shows that only 5 of the new central universities will have medical and engineering colleges in the first phase, I.e., during the 11th plan.
March 25th, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Rohit Kumar, a student at IIT Khargpur died today because of lack of facilities at BC Roy Hospital (should not really be called an hospital). Having spent a night at that hospital after an insect flew inside my ear, I have first hand experience involving BC Roy as well as the lack of proper medical facilities at Kharagpur.
The bigger tragedy is that when the lack of healthcare facilities in BC Roy hospital was pointed out by the students three years ago in the student newspaper, the authorities decided to punish the student paper and shut it down for some time.
I hope this time the authorities will take it seriously and find a long term solution. The current director of IIT Kharagpur has in the past implemented many innovative and bold ideas and here is a bold idea (bold in the context of West Bengal and its unions) that may solve the problem.
IIT needs to close down BC Roy operations and contract its health care operations to a reputed private company such as Apollo. (The company Vedanta is doing something like that.) A student and employee committee can come up with a specification of what medical services should be available on campus and invite bids from reputed health care companies and then pick the best. I don’t think money would be a problem. This is the way to go as health care is not a core competency of IIT Kharagpur and someone very good in that field should be the one taking care of the health care facilities at IIT Kharagpur.
This should be the model used in other universities and institutes that are in places without good health care facilities; or perhaps in all universities and institutes. Note that a lot of the proposed new central universities are being located in small towns without proper health care facilities. This is the time to take this issue into account and plan properly.
3 comments March 23rd, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Mr. Panda has suggested many nice ideas that a school headmaster can easily incorporate. I hope many of them read this article and try to implement at least some of the ideas mentioned in it.
1 comment March 23rd, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
March 23rd, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
Following is from a report in Hindu.
Southern Railway is to start a medical college with private participation by making use of the existing medical facilities available at its hospital in Perambur here.
The Chief Medical Director of Southern Railway on Friday called for expression of interest from resourceful medical institutions in the country for establishing and running the college at the cost of institutions as per the Medical Council of India regulations. The institutions should have at least 10 years’ experience in running a medical college and attached hospital as per the MCI norms. Foreign institutions can also participate in the bid, provided they comply with respective foreign medical regulatory authority norms.
Southern Railway is now running a 500-bed hospital on a 15-acre site in Perambur and the same is to be shifted soon to new premises. The existing hospital premises and the proposed new hospital complex will be available for establishing the medical college.
According to the Medical Director, the Perambur railway hospital has basic specialities in 15 disciplines and super-specialities in three disciplines.
The hospital has been recognised by the National Board of Examinations for recognition in postgraduate training. International institutions such as Royal College of Surgeons had also accredited the hospital for imparting training in PG courses.
ECOR has a central hospital in Mancheswar. It was inaugurated in Nov 27, 2007. Following is an excerpt from the press release.
Sri K. C. Jena, Chairman, Railway Board and Ex-officio Principal Secretary, Govt. of India inaugurated the Central Hospital of East Coast Railway at Mancheswar today. The hospital which started as a Health Unit in 1982 under Mancheswar Workshop was declared to be converted to 100 bedded Central Hospital for ECoR on 09.10.2005. In the first phase, construction has been completed with 60 beds, 4 bedded ICU and OT complex with a sanctioned cost of Rs. 1.88 crores.
The second phase expansion of the Central Hospital with 40 beds with maternity and pediatric wards and 8 Nos. of Special Cabins at a cost of Rs. 1.98 crores will be taken up shortly.
This hospital which has tied up with Kalinga Hospital Ltd., Bhubaneswar, Yoshada Hospital, Secunderabad and Seven Hills Hospital, Visakhapatnam is presently catering to the medical and health care needs of almost 36000 employees of Mancheswar Workshop, East Coast Railway Headquarters, Construction Organisation, Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), Railway Electrification (RE), Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT) and retired railway employees residing at Bhubaneswar and their family members.
We should watch out how this hospital grows and may be in 5 years, ECOR could be pushed to follow the path of Southern railway and have a medical college attached to this hospital.
15 comments March 21st, 2009 Author : Chitta Baral
