No SC/STs in six new IITs this year

66 Reserved Seats Will Be Filled In 2009

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi/Mumbai: The six new IITs will not have any SC/ST student this year. The 66 vacancies for them (19 for SCs and 47 for STs) will now be filled next year, over and above the prescribed quota. No decision, however, has been taken on the 68 vacant seats in the Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad and 14 empty slots in IT-BHU (IT school in the Benaras Hindu University).

Meanwhile, preparatory classes in the old IITs will be larger than previous years. The number of students admitted to the year-long preparatory course is based on the vacancy of reserved category seats in each discipline in each IIT. As three of the total four seats reserved for Scheduled Tribe students in the chemical engineering stream at IIT-Delhi fell vacant, three ST students will be admitted to the preparatory course.

Taking that logic forward, the seven old IITs will admit 163 SC students and 216 ST students to the preparatory course, according to information put out by the joint admission board, and those seats will be considered as filled seats. Dhande and M S Ananth, director of IIT-Madras, hence said, all the reserved seats in the old IITs have been occupied. The preparatory course is a feeder class; it trains quota students for a year to equip them to qualify for the IITs. After a year, these students need to take a test and they are admitted to the IIT only if they clear the test.

But the preparatory course will not run in the new institutions which have 66 vacant seats. Recreating the Nehruvian style of institution building, the IITs have also decided to reach out to Indian researchers and engineers abroad to come back and join the new IITs. “In the 1950s, jobs were offered in canteens and offices. We have a goal of hiring 3,000 teachers over the next three years. We have decided to reach out to 50,000 engineers/researchers all over the world. Even if 500 come, it would be fine,’’ Sanjay Dhande, director of IIT, Kanpur, said after a meeting of the IIT heads here on Wednesday.

He also said it was payback time for the seven old IITs by mentoring the six new ones. Dhande said the vacancies of SC/STs of JEE 2008 in the six new IITs would be made available for the admission exercise of 2009 as a one-time measure.

This year, 3.11 lakh students took the JEE for 6,992 seats in 13 IITs. Of these, 414 seats were reserved for ST candidates, but only 159 were shortlisted. Similarly, only 690 were shortlisted for the 832 SC seats. The OBC figures were 1,099 out of 1,134. The IIT directors also said all attempts are being made to ensure the brand equity of the institutes does not get diluted.

Get CAT scores through SMS, email
Ahmedabad: For any Common Admission Test (CAT) applicant, more than the months of preparation, what seemed longer were the few hours that they had to spend in front of a computer, waiting for scores. But the candidates for CAT 2008 to be conducted by IIMs in November will not have to wait at all as their score will be announced by a beep. For the first time, the IIMs will be making the CAT scores available on SMS and e-mail. The option of seeing the score on the website and receiving a formal letter from the institute still exists, but the SMS and email will help the candidates learn of their scores sooner. The institute will close the selling of application forms on Thursday and the test will be conducted on November 16. The CAT results will be declared on January 9, 2009.

Vasundhara Vyas Mehta

Math and English on the STREET

The students of this school may up and move anytime, but the teacher will stay

Pronoti Datta | TNN

Ramesh Joshi hasn’t watched a film in over a year. On the rare occasion he’s free, the 18-year-old Virar resident permits himself to glimpse movie clips on the internet or listen to some bhangra. The rest of the day goes in long journeys on the train, attending Siddharth College, coaching teenagers as part of Akanksha’s social leadership programme and teaching street kids. “I like to be busy all the time,’’ he explains with a gravity that matches his prematurely grey hair. “An empty mind is the devil’s workshop.’’

Joshi’s missionary zeal to educate underprivileged kids led to Ashayein, a year-old project that involves teaching street children at Churchgate and Worli. The initiative is part of Youth Ventures, a programme that mentors 27 social entrepreneurs by giving them fellowships of Rs 10,000 to act on causes dear to them. Does his absence of a social life bother him? “When I serve people, I get a different kind of energy,’’ he says with a self-effacing quality that’s uncommon for someone his age.

It was only natural that Joshi chose to work with street kids. As a supervisor of a construction site at Cuffe Parade, his father helped poor children in the area get into schools. The student decided to take up where his father had left off and began to scout around for kids to teach. He zeroed in on a group of children who live across Fashion Street near Churchgate and a bunch that calls the area behind Worli’s Adarsh Nagar slums home. (The Worli branch is run by Joshi’s friend Tauqeer Sheikh.)

Thrice a week, Joshi, four volunteers and eight to 12 children occupy a quiet corner of the street to study. The pupils are between the ages of six and 14 and while most of them attend school, there are a few who are too poor to afford formal education. “We teach them whatever they feel like learning that day,’’ says Joshi. While the volunteers communicate with the children in Hindi, they teach them both Hindi and English as well as math.

Most of the kids’ parents have been supportive as they want better futures for their offspring. However, Joshi has had to field abuse from parents who consider education an indulgence and would rather their kids lend a hand at home. The social worker’s efforts have paid off. Just over two weeks into Ashayein, Joshi was given a pleasant surprise by one of his students, Sachin, who perfectly recited the English alphabet and showed off handwriting that was remarkably beautiful for an untutored kid. In “two-three weeks I made such a difference’’, Joshi muses. “If I continue like this the children will bloom.’’

However, given the nomadic lives of pavement dwellers, Joshi is afraid that he might one day find that his students have upped and left or been evicted. “I hope I continue with the same kids,’’ he says. “I only pray they let me make a difference in their lives.’’ The children have, in turn, made a profound impact on Joshi. “I’m more confident than before,’’ he points out. Ashayein has been one step forward in a series of efforts at overcoming his inhibitions. He spent six years training in naval exercises with the Sea Cadet Corp at Colaba. Two years ago, he joined Akanksha’s social leadership programme as a trainer educating teenagers about relevant issues such as the environment and child sexual abuse. He might wear his modesty like a badge, but there’s no mistaking Joshi’s supreme self-assurance.

The metamorphosis Joshi is experiencing is an indication that Youth Ventures has been a success, according to its director Vipin T. The aim of the programme is not “the impact the participants have on society but the transformative experience.’’ The 27 changemakers, he hopes, will engender a community of people who will alter the perception of social work, which continues to be regarded as the purview of people in “torn kurtas’’, to something that is “an integral part of life’’.

(This is part of an Independence Day series on youngsters who have chosen to light a candle rather than curse the darkness)

FROM SIR, WITH LOVE: A stone’s throw from Churchgate Station, a pavement turns into a patshala