6,000km-long river found 13,000ft below the Amazon

London:Scientists led by an Indian-origin researcher have discovered a huge underground river which they believe is flowing some 13,000 feet beneath the mighty Amazon River in Brazil.

The researchers at Brazil’s National Observatory believe the subterranean river is about 6,000km long, about the same length as the Amazon on the surface.

The finding came from studying temperature variations at 241 inactive oil wells drilled in the 1970s by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras.

The researchers have named the river ‘Hamza’, after team supervisor Dr Valiya Hamza, an Indian-origin scientists who has been studying the region for over four decades.

According to Dr Hamza, the “thermal information” provided by Petrobras allowed his team of researchers to identify the movement of water 13,100ft under the Amazon River. He said that the flow of the underground river which follows a similar contour to the Amazon has been estimated at 3,000 cubic meters per second.

It is believed that the river originates from the region of Acre and reaches the sea at Foz do Amazonas, flowing through the basins of rivers Solimoes, Amazona and island Marajo.

“It is likely that this river is responsible for the low level of salinity in the waters around the mouth of the Amazon,” the National Observatory said.

However, the researchers said the studies examining the underground river were still in their preliminary stage but they would confirm the subterranean flow by the end of 2014. PTI

THE UNDERWORLD: Researchers have named the river Hamza after the Indian-origin team supervisor Valiya Hamza

Green wonder: This erasable paper can be used 260 times

Taipei: “i2R e-Paper” is paper but not paper as we know it — not yet, anyway, say its Taiwan developers.

The product uses a thermal printer, the same kind as that used in fax machines. When the message is no longer needed, the paper can be erased with the flip of a switch — ready to be used up to 260 times. Researchers at the Industrial Technology Research Institute, where the paper was developed, say it is the ideal replacement for the paper signs and posters that are now produced by the millions around the world.

“I think the greatest breakthrough was that traditional display devices usually require electricity to write, but our technology made it closer to how we would use normal paper,” said John Chen, Vice President of the Institute and general director of the Display Technology Center. “First, it does not require patterned electrodes — it is very light, soft and rewritable. This is a true e-paper.”

What makes “i2R e-paper” stand out is its coating is a plastic film covered with cholestric liquid crystal, a type of liquid crystal structured similarly to cholesterol molecules. REUTERS

Thin band of anti-matter enveloping Earth found It Confirms Magnetic Field Can Trap Anti-Protons: Experts

London: Planetary scientists claim to have for the first time spotted a thin band of anti-matter particles, called anti-protons, enveloping the Earth. The find, published in the ‘Astrophysical Journal Letters’, confirms theoretical work that predicted the Earth’s magnetic field could trap antimatter, according to a team led by the University of Bari.

The astronomers say that a small number of anti-protons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped “normal” matter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite launched in 2006 to study the nature of high-energy particles from the Sun and from beyond our Solar System — so-called cosmic rays, the ‘BBC’ reported.

These cosmic ray particles can slam into molecules that make up the Earth’s atmosphere, creating showers of particles. Many of the cosmic ray particles or these “daughter” particles they create are caught in Van Allen belts, doughnut-shaped regions where Earth’s magnetic field traps them.

The new analysis shows that when Pamela passes through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, it sees thousands of times more anti-protons than are expected to come from normal particle decays, or from elsewhere in the cosmos. The astronomers say this is evidence that bands of anti-protons, analogous to Van Allen belts, hold anti-protons in place — at least until they encounter the normal matter of atmosphere, when they “annihiliate” in a flash of light.

The band is “the most abundant source of anti-protons near the Earth”, said Alessandro Bruno, team member.
“Trapped anti-protons can be lost in the interactions with atmospheric constituents, especially at low altitudes where the annihilation becomes the main loss mechanism. Above altitudes of several hundred kilometres, the loss rate is significantly lower,” he added. PTI

MISSION ADMISSION

Hat-trick of delays: Most FYJC colleges to start only by mid-Aug

Shreya Bhandary & Yogita Rao | TNN

It’s the second week of August, but first-year junior college (FYJC) lectures across almost all city colleges have yet to begin, with more than 5,000 students still waiting to be assigned a seat. Principals are worried that with another list scheduled to be announced on August 12, before offline admissions begin on August 16, lectures will be delayed even further. The fact that professors have to cover a revised syllabus means that pressure on students and faculty members will intensify.
A few colleges such as St Xavier’s and HR Colleges in south Mumbai have already started lectures, but they are the exceptions. In fact, most principals say that with the delays in the online admission process, they don’t even know how many seats are vacant or the total number of students who have secured their seats.

M B Kekare, principal of Patkar Varde College in Goregaon (W) said that lectures will begin only by mid August. “We don’t believe in starting lectures before students have been allotted seats. Once the online admission process is over, our vacant seats will be put up for offline admissions. Our classes won’t begin until all students secure a seat,” said Kekare.

Many colleges are now waiting for a circular from the office of the deputy director of education (school) before they announce the induction programs for their students.

Apart from the delay in the admission process, the coming long weekend from August 13 to 15 has many colleges wondering how they will complete the admission process in time.

A handful of colleges, however, have already started classes with whatever strength that has been allotted to their respective streams. “We arranged the induction session for the new batch last weekend itself and started classes on Monday. We will conduct remedial classes for those students whose names appear in the fifth list,” said Fr Frazer Mascarenhas, principal of St Xavier’s College. H R College at Churchgate, also started their first day of lectures on Monday. “We had very few seats left for the last list and were surprised and happy to see our classes full on the first day itself,” said Deepika Bhatia, vice-principal of H R College.

Over 5K students left out in ‘last’ list

For The First Time Since Admissions Went Online 3 Yrs Ago, Edu Dept To Issue Special Merit List For Those Without Colleges

Cut-Offs For Science & Arts Fall Drastically, But Only A Marginal Dip In Commerce

Yogita Rao and Shreya Bhandary | TNN

Mumbai: More than 5,000 students have still not been allotted seats in junior colleges even after the third and final general merit list was announced on Monday. For the first time since the online admission system was introduced three years ago, the school education department will put up a ‘special’ merit list on August 12 for these students. Last year, despite technical glitches and confusion over the Best-5 policy, a relatively fewer number of students—around 4,400—were not allotted seats online. Parents and students are not amused and said that this time round, there was no excuse for the education department to not account for all the students.

“Every year, the education department says there’s no reason to worry as there are more seats than students. Yet every year, thousands of students are left out of the online system. Why is that?” asked one angry parent.

A total of 48,944 students were allotted seats in the third general list; of these 28,524 students were assigned colleges for the first time while the rest were those who were eligible for the betterment option. It’s worth noting that while cutoffs in the science and arts streams have dropped noticeably in the third list, cut-offs among commerce colleges are still on the higher side—reflecting the popularity of the course.

The third merit list left many students—especially those who had chosen commerce—disappointed as they were unable to get a seat in a top-rung college. The admissions at NM College, for instance, closed at a high 92.50%. At HR College, the cut-off was 90%.

Kirti Narain, principal of Jai Hind College, Churchgate, said: “We have 60-70 seats still vacant in the commerce stream. The cut-off for commerce has gone down by just over one percent, but the science list has dropped from 91.86% to 86.54%.” The college has more than 200 vacant seats in all the streams.

Cut-offs for science at K J Somaiya College in Vidyavihar dropped by 4%. Principal Vijay Joshi said, “There are too many cancellations happening because of the betterment option. Students who have already sought admissions in bifocals are getting repeated allotments in the general list as well, which is why the cut-offs were high in the previous lists. But many students finally secured their seats, the cut-offs dropped drastically.” “The merit list was the last chance for students to exercise the betterment option. Once they secure their seat, we will know exactly how many seats are vacant. We can then accommodate the remaining 5,191 students,” said an official from the office of the deputy director of school education. “We will come out with the special list at 10am on August 12. Students will have to secure their seats by August 13.”

Admission In Numbers

Students who were allotted seats for the first time in the third list: 23,333 n Students with betterment options: 25,611

Students who have not been assigned any seat: 5,191

What next?
A special list will be announced on August 12 at 10am for students who have not been assigned a college. There is no betterment option for this list n Students who have been allotted seats in the special list will have to finalize admissions on August 12 and 13 Offline admissions | Will start on August 16 Students eligible for offline admissions

More than 22,000 students who have failed in either one or two subjects can avail the keep term (ATKT) scheme n Students from international schools affiliated with the Cambridge International Examination (CIE) boardn Students who have not managed to secure their seat in the online process even after the August 12 list Times View

For students, the path to junior college should herald a stimulating and exciting experience. Instead, it has become a harrowing experience for families, as students—after the stress of sitting for a board exam—are made to jump through hoops to secure a seat. Despite no last-minute government policies and no technical glitches, the online admission process was delayed for the third consecutive year. What’s worse is that thousands of students have been left out yet again. Instead of enjoying their first few months of college and participating in campus festivals, they will now have to make up for lost time to cover the upgraded syllabus. In other states, the authorities are looking at ways to ensure that teenagers are not put through unnecessary angst. In Mumbai, though, the education department has yet to get its act together.

‘Why HSC if you sat for CBSE school exam?’

Shibu Thomas TNN
Mumbai: “You have exercised your option (for school exams) with open eyes,” the Bombay High Court on Monday reminded a CBSE student who had sought orders that would allow her to apply for the online admissions to first year junior college.

“If you wanted to take admission in a good college, why did you take the option of school exams?” asked a division bench of Justice D K Deshmukh and Justice Rajesh Ketkar.

The court was hearing a petition filed by Shruti Mathuria, a student of Rajhans Vidyalay, who scored 93% in her Standard X exams in CBSE. She had approached the court saying her chances of admission to top colleges in Mumbai had been affected due to the controversy over board exams versus school exams. Mathuria’s lawyer Aniket Nikam said the school had issued a letter to students saying both board exams and school exams would be treated on par. He sought time to furnish the document.

But the judges said that if they wanted an adjournment, the girl’s parents would have to pay a Rs 10,000 fine for wasting the time of the court. Arguing his case before the bench, Nikam said: “This is a question of the careers of thousands of CBSE students.” The judges replied: “Don’t think you are a leader for the students,” said the HC.

The state’s advocate said this year that around 1.24 lakh students had applied for admissions online. “Already, 50% of the admissions are finalized, and the first list will be out on Tuesday,” the advocate said. In fact, in August 2010 a circular had been issued laying down the difference between school-based and board exams. Nikam had argued that students were given to understand that both exams would be treated at par: “The papers for the school exams are set by the board, vetted by the board and even the mark-sheet is issued by the board.”

To which, the judges asked: “If you have appeared for CBSE exams, why do you now want to go for the state board?” The next hearing is scheduled on July 13.

School Versus Board Exam T he CBSE had introduced a new system of examination called comprehensive and continuous education (CCE) where 60% of the marks would be awarded by the school and the remaining 40% would be based on internal school exams or board exams depending upon what the student opted for. Students who appeared for school exams instead of the boards cannot participate in the online admission s to state-run colleges. They will get the chance to apply to junior colleges only once the online process is completed.

Life of pi over?

‘Tau’ may set calculations aright

London: The humble “pi” may have had its day. Mathematicians are campaigning for the most important number in the world to be replaced with alternate value “tau”. They are claiming that the number — the constant which references the circumference of a circle to its diameter — is wrong and it should be replaced with tau, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.
The mathematicians have said that while 3.14159265, the number’s value, is not incorrect, it is the wrong figure to be associated with the properties of a circle as a matter of course. Tau has a value twice that of pi of 6.28.
“For all these years, we have been looking at the wrong number when we have been looking at pi. Pi simply isn’t the most natural number that we should associate with a circle. The proper number is 2pi, or tau,” Kevin Houston at the University of Leeds told ‘TheTimes’ newspaper. The number has long been seen as being essential to many mathematical formulae as well as being vital to equations in science and engineering.
It is used when calculating the circumference of a circle by multiplying the diameter by the value of pi, while its area can be deduced by multiplying pi by the square of its radius. However, mathematicians campaigning for its replacement argue that since so many formulae require the use of tau that may be used as the main circle constant instead.
“Mathematicians don’t measure angles in degrees, we measure them in radians, and there are 2pi radians in a circle. That leads to all sorts of unnecessary confusion. If you take a quarter of a circle, it has a quarter of 2pi radians, or half pi. “For the number of radians in three quarters of a circle, you have to think about it. It doesn’t come naturally. How much simpler it’d be if we just used tau instead of pi. The circle would have tau radians, a semicircle would have half tau, a quarter of a circle a quarter tau, and so on. You don’t have to think,” Dr Houston said.
Pi was first given its name in 1706 by mathematician William Jones. Ancient Egyptians and Babylonians are believed to have known approximate value of pi. PTI

VALUE JUDGMENT?

PRIVATE EDU

Govt plans law for self-financed schools in state

Yogita Rao TNN

Mumbai: The government is in the process of formulating a Self-Financed Schools Bill, opening a window for organizations to set up private schools in the state.

The bill aims to give private organizations permission tostartschoolson a self-financed basis. The bill, which may be tabled during the monsoon session, will lay down norms that such schools will have to follow. These institutions will never get any grants from the government.

The need to formulate such an actstemmedfrom the fact that private organizations seek permission from the state to set up new schools. Though they agree on the criteria of not getting grants from the government, they later apply for the same. The state had been, in the past, dragged to court for denying grants to such schools. As a result, the school education department wants an act to be formulated, which will ensure that such cases do not come up every year.

If the private organizations agreetothe norms,then the state will help provide them recognition and affiliation. School education minister Rajendra Darda said, “The government has done a mapping of the state to find out the areas where there are no schools. We will ensure that every area in the state has at least one school. After the condition is fulfilled, if there are any parties interested in setting up schools in addition to the existing ones, they will have complete access. The actwilllaydown the norms to run such schools.”

Darda said: “The private unaided schools at some point or the other come to the state seeking grants. Last year, one of the associations dragged the department to court for using the word ‘permanent’ unaided for them. We are hoping the new bill will ensure that such schoolsdo notseek grants at a later stage.”

New species

STUNNING DISCOVERIES: More than 1,000 new species have recently been found on the Melanesian island of New Guinea. Among these are (clockwise from top) a large green tree-dwelling frog, a monitor lizard, a rainbowfish and a blue-eyed spotted Cuscus

Primary school to be extended up to Std V

Hemali Chhapia TNN

Mumbai: For a long time, schools stuffed our children with more than they could digest. Suddenly, there is a feeling that chapters from history and maps of the world were introduced a year too early for generations of kids.

The Union human resources development ministry has now decided to take a massive correctional step. Indian schools will extend the primary class to include standard V. And elementary schooling will stretch for an additional year, instead of closing at class VII. This translates to more than just an internal rejig within the two school units—primary and secondary. For one, social studies will now be introduced in class VI. Ditto with science and environmental sciences.

“School subjects have evolved through their own complicated histories. However,educationists the world over believe that learning in the first five years of schooling should be integrated without subject-specific compartmentalization, and teaching children to study concepts at earlier ages in an attempt to prepare them to ‘compete’ in the world is counterproductive,” said a note from the HRD ministry.

Education ministers have been asked to shift from a seven (4+3) to an eight year (5+3) elementary education cycle by the next academic year. “It is important to provide agerelevant curricula and learning systems to our children,” said ministry officials.

LEARNING THEIR LESSONS

• Elementary education cycle will shift from 4+3 to 5+3 from next year

• Social studies will now be introduced at standard VI, as also the subjects of science and environmental sciences

• State governments will add class VIII to their elementary schools, allowing students to avail of free education for one more year

‘Govt is dumbing down edu’
Mumbai:Several states have entry-age school admissions in class I at age 5, rather than age 6. “Children in these states thus face the double burden of ‘heavy’ curriculum on account of early entry into the schooling system, as well as introduction of upper primary subjects at class V itself,” said a note from the Union HRD ministry.

The ministry feels it has an implication on the learning quality; and the faulty architecture often sees a high failure rate, adding to the pile of students who drop out.

Most teachers felt that the government was dumbing down education in the guise of easing pressure. “We introduce social studies at the third standard. And in the current method, the system is running smoothly. Children need to have their bearings in place—they need to know the north from the south and the local history,” said a principal of a private Mumbai school.

For a lot of state government schools, an additional class in the elementary cycle will mean expanding their overall infrastructure. Just as in Maharashtra, state governments have invested heavily on elementary schools (currently till class VII); there are not as many public schools at the secondary level, forcing many children to join private institutes.

“Close to 90% of the madhyamik schools are in the private sector. Bringing class VIII to the elementary system will mean not just adding classrooms, but recruiting teachers and providing mid-day meals,” said V Radha, state acting school education secretary.

10 planets discovered outside solar system

Space Bodies Detected When They Passed In Front Of Their Stars

London: An international team, including scientists from the University of Oxford, has discovered 10 new planets. Amongst them is one orbiting a star perhaps only a few tens of million years old, twin Neptunesized planets, and a rare Saturn-like world, a release by the University of Oxford said on Wednesday.

The planets were detected using the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) space telescope, operated by the French space agency CNES. It discovers planets outside our solar system — exoplanets — when they ‘transit’, that is pass in front of their stars.

Out of the 10 new exoplanets (CoRoT-16b through to 24b and c) seven are hot Jupiters some of which are unusually dense and/or on unusually elongated orbits, and one is in orbit around an unusually young star. The announcement also includes a planet slightly smaller than Saturn, and two Neptunesized planets orbiting the same star.

Suzanne Aigrain of Oxford University’s department of physics, lead UK scientist for CoRoT, said: “CoRoT-18b is special because its star might be quite young. Finding planets around young stars is particularly interesting because planets evolve very fast initially, before settling into a much steadier pattern of evolution”.

She added: “If we want to understand the conditions in which planets form, we need to catch them within the first few hundred million years. “After that, the memory of the initial conditions is essentially lost. In the case of CoRoT-18, different ways of determining the age give different results, but it's possible that the star might be only a few tens of millions of years old.

If this is confirmed, then we could learn a lot about the formation and early evolution of hot gas giant planets by comparing the size of CoRoT-18b to the predictions of theoretical models.” PTI

CELESTIAL TRANSIT

Graft in conflict zone

Red zone schools teach how to mint money

Show Ways Of Fudging Attendance To Swindle Govt Funds

Supriya Sharma TNN

Dantewada (Chhattisgarh): ‘Phoolon se nit hasna seekho, bhawaron se nit gaana ... Learn to smile from the flowers, and sing from the bees).’ The cheerful lines of a popular Hindi rhyme are seen on a bright wall poster inside the bleak confines of a village school in Dantewada. But the lines are wasted. There is not a soul in sight, except a thin wiry man who introduces himself as Roshan Kumar Kharashu, shikshakarmi, grade 2, the teacher in charge of Gufadi primary school. “This is mahua season. The children are skipping school to help their parents pick flowers,” Kharushu says. But a look at the attendance register shows all of them are marked present. Kharashu squirms, and moments later, like a child who has thought up an answer, says, “What can I do if people dont send their children to school? If I stop marking them present, they will close down the school and I will lose my job.”

You want to believe the man. He is just 27, and must have been really desperate for a job inDantewada, leaving behind the safety of his village, in the plains of Durg, close to Raipur. But then facts do not support him. No school was closed down in Dantewada. Even when violence rocked the place, and the civil administration withdrew from many interior places, 264 village schools did not close but shifted, close to the highways. The displacement has led to permanent upheaval in the lives of children, forcing them to travel long distances. But it has only made it easier for the education bureaucracy to make money. Narayanaswamy, an activist with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who has lived in Dantewada for five years, says the uprooting of schools from their original locations has made school wardens less accountable. “There’s a constant flux of children, who drop in and out of school, but the funds remain steady,” he says.

Every child is entitled to Rs 450 to Rs 950 as stipend, apart from books, uniforms, and three meals a day. No wonder there is an incentive to mark those absent as present. Even imaginative rules meant to ease the school crisis have only aided corruption. For instance, officials at the block level were empowered to sanction new schools and appoint teachers if enough children lacked access to an existing one.

In Manjhipara, last October, six men gather 228 children from interior villages that had no schools, or at least they claim they did. All were appointed as teachers, one was made warden, and the group was assigned a building to operate as a residential school. In March, when this correspondent visited the school, not more than 100 kids were present. Warden Man Singh Nayak conceded not more than 140 kids had attended classes that month. “They run away in the middle of the night,” he said. Why don’t they go looking for them? “It’s not safe to go to those villages,” says Roshan Yadav, a teacher. But what changed in just six months? Had they not gone to the same villages in October to bring the kids to school? There was no answer for this, or the more basic question: why were all 228 children still on the rolls?
(The series is concluded)

PLAYING WITH THEIR FATE

Lunar Eclipse

CELESTIAL WONDER: The century’s longest and darkest total lunar eclipse saw the moon immersing deep inside the umbral (darker) shadow of the Earth. The next such eclipse will take place in 2141

Where Schools House Dreams

To bridge the gap between mainstream schools and the poor, NGOs find a way out

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Pooja Vashisht wants to become a teacher. The 12-year-old lives with her parents who are dhobis in a small shanty in Ahmedabad. Reena Nayka, a dwarf, in Gujarat’s Navsari, is today her family’s breadwinner. She’s come a long way from almost starving. Rajnikant Patel, now may be mentally challenged but he’s an award-winning weightlifter. In Surat, a paanwalla’s daughter Tanvi Joshi, who lost her left leg to polio, is pursuing MBBS at Baroda Medical College.

Making it possible for each one of them to stand on their feet and live their dream are hundreds of NGOs across the country who set up, fund and help educate the ignored and the marginalized, bringing hope and changing lives.

It’s clichéd to say that it took India more than 60 years to make education a basic right. Despite that, formal education is structured such that it remains inaccessible to staggeringly large sections. The poor, the disabled, those living in remote areas, even the city poor, have little, if any, access to education.

Yet, to educate India is its favourite cause, a national priority. There was barely a whimper when the government introduced a 2% education cess a few years ago; the idea of education captures every citizen’s imagination. Not leaving it to governments, thousands of NGOs, religious organizations and of late, companies, have made every effort to make access to education, and providing it, a reality.

Take 1956-born Kanu Tailor, who lost both legs to polio when he was 11 months old. “At school, my classmates would laugh at me,” Tailor says. “But that only firmed my resolve to pursue my goal of empowering the disabled.” In college, he met other disabled who narrated their tales of suffering, from callousness of the able-bodied to the state government’s apathy.

Tailor set up the Disable Welfare Trust of India in 1991 to provide free education and training for disabled from poor families. Samaritans donated generously. In 1997, he set up a school in 10 rooms allotted by Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC). The school had 118 poor disabled children the first month itself. By 2005, there were 400, but Tailor dreamt of a barrier-free school. In 2006, SMC allotted him land. His higher secondary school, built at a whopping cost of Rs 15 crore has 415 children.

Enabled by the school, polio-affected students chase their dreams. If daughter of diamond-polisher Shilpa Ambalia is studying homeopathy with one leg disabled, Deepak Vyas says he dared to dream of becoming a dentist only because of “Kanu sir”.

“There are 50 million disabled persons in India and only 1% of disabled children complete schooling,” says Tailor, who also helps students find jobs. Further, the trust has industrial training, a computer centre, employment guidance and a marriage bureau. In addition, it says it puts between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,500 in fixed deposits for all students every year.

It’s going this extra mile to help beyond schooling that makes a crucial difference. Mumbai-based Parivartan, founded in 1997 by Shakil Ahmed, focuses on kids below age six. The idea is to ensure that underprivileged children in the sprawling slum of Antop Hill, home to migrants mostly from UP and Bihar, get admission in government schools. Community workers monitor the progress and ensure that parents don’t withdraw the kids from school. But before the balwadis for the below-6 were set up, Parivartan’s victory came when it ensured that the high-crime area got its own municipality school.

Interestingly, once a school is set up, it helps the marginalized in myriad ways. Reena Nayka of village Dhorikui in Gujarat’s Dangs district was considered a burden by her family. Born a dwarf, the family believed she had no future. But eight years ago, Nayak sought work at Mamta Mandir, a facility for hearing and speech-impaired and mentally challenged children, in the hope of getting two meals a day. At Mamta Mandir, she did more than get two meals.

She studied up to Class XII and now teaches children to make toys. She is also her family’s breadwinner. Over the last 40 years, Manav Kalyan Trust which runs Mamta Mandir has transformed the lives of many physically and mentally challenged children abandoned by families. Founded in 1971 by Mahesh Kothari, a disciple of Vinoba Bhave, it’s home to 572 children and young adults and provides education upto class X. It also trains the handicapped. “They train in printing, weaving, learn woodwork and even diamond polishing. They earn while learning,” says Nilesh Shah, a trustee. In his bid to help, a leading Mumbai-based diamond merchant set up a special polishing cell where 40 disabled work.

Help comes also from the classroom. Started as part of course curriculum, a voluntary education programme at IIM-Ahmedabad took a shape of its own. Today, students run Prayaas, where they teach and pay tuition fees for 30 slum kids. Most of the funds, says IIM-A student Abhishek Ranjan come from alumni. Many sponsor a child or more for a year.

Reports by Mohammed Wajihuddin in Mumbai, Dayananda Yumlembam in Ahmedabad, Himansshu Bhatt in Navsari, Melvyn Thomas in Surat

WHERE THERE’S A WILL: Students make diyas at the Disable Welfare Trust (above), a Prayaas session in Ahmedabad (left)

At school, my classmates would laugh at me. But that only firmed my resolve to pursue my goal of empowering the disabled
Kanu Tailor |
DISABLE WELFARE
TRUST, SURAT