Govt to derecognize 44 deemed varsities

An Uncertain Future Stares At 2 Lakh Students

Akshaya Mukul | TNN

New Delhi: The HRD ministry has decided to derecognize as many as 44 “deemed universities’’, spelling uncertainty for nearly two lakh students who are enrolled with them. The ministry’s decision amounts to an acknowledgement of irregularities in conferring the deemed status on these institutions under the first UPA government in which Arjun Singh was the HRD minister.

The 44 deemed universities, including one promoted by I&B minister of state S Jagathrakshakan, three government-sponsored ones and some in the NCR are spread across the country. These universities were found deficient on many grounds ranging from lack of infrastructure to lack of evidence of expertise in disciplines they claim to specialise in.

The big step, as reported first by TOI, was taken after clearance from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. It is also an indictment of the manner in which the deemed status was doled out during Arjun Singh’s tenure. Although the list includes many that were given the status during Murli Manohar Joshi’s time, the list of those red-pencilled indicates how during Arjun Singh’s tenure the deemed status was virtually up for grabs. The HRD ministry, however, emphasised that the students would be taken care of.

MAHARASHTRA’S BAD EGGS

D Y Patil Medical College, Kolhapur
Started by D Y Patil, a former minister and governor of Tripura. It offers MBBS, occupational therapy and physiotherapy courses. Granted deemed status in 2005

Krishna Institute of Med Sciences, Satara
Started by sugar baron Jaywantrao Bhonsale, brother of ex-finance minister Yeshwantrao Mohite. It has four colleges offering courses in dentistry, nursing, physiotherapy, biotechnology

Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Pune
Established in 1921, it’s one of the oldest institutes in the state. It has four streams—arts, fine arts, moral and social sciences, and ayurveda—and a board of distance education Times View: Derecognizing deemed universities that are found to be unfit for that status is fine, but the matter must not be allowed to rest here. Responsibility must be fixed for how these obtained recognition in the first place. Once the individuals responsible are identified, stringent punishment must be imposed on them. A clear message has to be sent—those who treat the futures of lakhs of students in such a callous manner will not be allowed to go scot-free or escape with token punishment. Investigations must also be launched to ascertain whether the granting of recognition was a simple case of incompetence or—as most people would suspect—money changed hands. If it is the latter, nothing less than criminal proceedings must follow.

Worried by spate of suicides, govt seeks to cut pressure, to allow kids to drop one ‘tough’ subject in Boards

- SANTOSH ANDHALE

In the backdrop of the spate of suicides by students aross the state and the growing concern among parents about coping with the pressure of studies, the Maharashtra Government is working out a new ‘best of five’ scheme of examination for the SSC. The scheme, being worked by the School Education Department in association with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, aims to relieve the pressure on students considerably by allowing them to choose five best subjects among the six which they can study and for which they can appear for the examination.

At present, students of the state board have to compulsorily appear for all six subjects, namely three languages – English, Marathi and Hindi – besides Mathematics, Social Sciences and Science.

The state has witnessed suicides by 13 students in the past 8 days and parents of the victims have attributed it to the pressure of studies as one of the compelling reasons for their suicides. The new concept is expected to be implemented in this year’s SSC board examination to be held in March 2010 and authorities said the decision will be taken shortly. The ‘best of five’ system is already in place in the CBSE and ICSE examinations and the idea to introduce this in the state was to reduce the pressure of exams from students at the same time bring parity between the state and other systems. Under the new ‘best of five’ concept, students will have a choice to drop any subject which they fear or about whom they are not confident of scoring in the examination. While, the languages – Marathi and English will be compulsory, students can choose three subjects out of four, namely Mathematics, Social Sciences, Science and Hindi.

The only difference between the best of five subjects pattern in CBSE exams and the state will be that, here in the state, students will have to compulsory appear for two languages, while in CBSE and ICSE only English is compulsory.

Students usually fear Mathematics or Science and the state board authorities said majority students fare badly in these two subjects.

“If a student were to drop Mathematics or Science, he would not qualify for admission in the science stream, but he can certainly seek admission in the Arts and Commerce stream,” a state education department official said.

State Education Minister, Balasaheb Thorat said, “The spate of suicides in the state has exposed the
fear students harbour about the board examinations and the subjects. We want to make the examinations as student-friendly as possible. We intend to take a decision on the ‘best of five’ scheme shortly. However, before we introduce the new system for the coming examination, we intend to hold meetings of parents all over the state to bring in consensus on the issue.”

State education Board chief, Vijaysheela Sardesai, confirmed that the state education department has asked the board to work out the ‘best of five’ subjects scheme for the coming March SSC examination.

Students will, however, compulsorily have to appear for two languages

Ten tech products for 2010

We took out our crystal ball to see which gadgets make the cut

Nimish Dubey

In terms of tech wizardry, 2009 was a rather busy year. Products such as iPod Nano (with video recording), Sony PSP Go, Microsoft Windows 7, Nokia N97 and Amazon Kindle grabbed the headlines at different times of the year. Some succeeded, some didn’t. But they definitely kept the tech-savvy segment of the society busy.

If the tech grapevine is any indication, 2010 is going to be even better, with stacks of gadgets and software that will claim to change your life. So, without further ado, here are ten products that we think are going to be a techie’s delight.

Google phone
The Nexus One is among the early birds of 2010. On board is the increasingly popular mobile operating system, Android, and stacks of hardware goodies, such as a large touchscreen, a powerful camera, and plenty of storage space to go around.

Apple ‘tablet’
Has there ever been a product more talked about without any official confirmation of its existence? Not for a while, there hasn’t. The so-called tablet from Apple has amused and irritated techies in equal measure, but all indications are that the device — which is supposed to be halfway between the iPod touch and a Macbook, running a version of the iPhone OS — will finally see the light of the sun in 2010.

Xbox (with Project Natal)
The Xbox 360 might slowly be coming to the forefront of the third0generation console war with Wii’s sales beginning to tail off. But, it is the next edition of Microsoft’s gaming console that is expected to take it surging ahead of its rivals. The next Xbox will come with motion-sensing gaming without the need of a controller (the much-hyped Project Natal), support for real HD and a significant processor boost.

Samsung CL80
A digital camera with a 3.7- inch AMOLED, capacitive (like the iPhone) touchscreen? With haptic feedback letting you know when you hit a button or an icon? WiFi? The option to upload pictures directly to social networking sites without a computer? Samsung CL80 promises to serve all that on top of a 14-megapixel lens.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 7
There is a legend about Microsoft — the company inevitably gets it right on the second try. So, there’s every reason to believe the next version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, Windows Mobile (or Windows Phone, as the company prefers to call it) will be the real McCoy. We are expecting to finally bid goodbye to the stylus, welcome multi-touch support and see an interface that matches iPhone in looks and Symbian Series 60 in functionality.

Asus Eee Keyboard
Basically, this is a tablet in reverse — instead of being all screen, it is all keyboard. It has its own operating system, storage space, RAM... In short, it is a computer in a keyboard. All you need to do is plug it into a display (there is an HDMI port, we hear) for a full computing experience. And if you want to do something in a hurry, there is a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen display.

Apple iPhone 4
No, we are not sure that’s what it will be called, but what we are sure of is that the next version of the iPhone will represent the most significant upgrade to what fanboys call the Godphone. It is reasonable to assume that the device’s camera will have reached 5-megapixel territory and stacks of functionalities added.

Google Chrome OS
With its extremely fast functionality and its near-total dependency on the cloud with applications running off the web rather than a hard drive, Chrome could well be what computer OS will become.

Halo: Reach
Halo: Reach promises jawdropping graphics, a great story line and non-stop action. It would be unfair to ask more of a game.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
Will Android administer a kiss of life to stuttering Sony Ericsson, just like it did to Motorola? Well, it might, if the Xperia X10 is any indication of what Sony E will do with it. A 4-inch touchscreen display, a 8.1-megapixel camera, and stacks of applications from the Android Market... We just hope they get the pricing right.

FULL MARKS - Special KIDS, extra-special GURU

Archana Rodrigues is the only academic from Maharashtra to have won a Guruvar award for her commitment to inclusive education

Sharmila Ganesan-Ram | TNN

Kids don’t have to tell a carrot from a radish in order to be able to join this small school tucked away in a leafy residential colony of Dombivli. Unlike those institutions, which grill teething infants and nervous parents alike in the hope of a hundred per cent SSC success rate, St Joseph’s does not subject its toddler applicants to interviews before admissions. “After all, everyone has the right to education,’’ says Archana Rodrigues, the principal, who calls the hype around SSC an “overplayed aura’’ and given a choice, would rather encourage the weak, slow learners—the kind who score 37 per cent with grace marks and then grow up to perhaps shine in unexpected ways.

It’s this instinct that, years ago, made Rodrigues opt for the arts stream despite scoring well in her tenth-standard exams and also induced her to replace her longstanding dream of ‘being a magistrate and changing the world’ with that of ‘being a teacher and changing a classroom’, instead. “It’s child’s play to teach an intelligent student; the true challenge of the educator is to teach the kid who cannot easily follow what you want him to learn,’’ discovered this champion of inclusive education in the course of her career. Last month, for her decade-long efforts in this field, Rodrigues received a surprise call summoning her to Delhi, where she was directed to a premium Club suite at the Taj. After all, she had been chosen from among 15,728 candidates as the Outstanding Teacher for children with special needs, at the Guruvar awards, recently instituted to recognise the critical role of teachers in shaping the community. Rodrigues is the only teacher from Maharashtra to have won the award, for which the nominations came from students, ex-students, parents and colleagues all over India.

The trophy, which was handed over by Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal, stands tall on her office table. For the past few days, in the glow of this trophy, Rodrigues has been attending incessant calls. She’s also been contemplating ways to invest her cash prize of Rs 10 lakh in the revamp of the school, perhaps another new yellow school bus. But the most important reassurance that she finds in the award is that “more and more teachers will be motivated to join the profession which is otherwise associated with bad payscales and poor working conditions’’.

“A teacher has to emit positive energy, harbour love for kids and believe in oneself,’’ says Rodrigues, who, during her post-graduation in counselling, realised the need for counselling kids with special needs. As there were very few professionals working in this field, she decided to enroll for SNDT’s Master’s degree in special education. Here, as part of her research thesis she developed a training module to impart sex education to mentally challenged children, which was selected for presentation at the National Conference at Dehradun.

Sensitising the special kids’ parents (who tend to be in denial mode) and society towards their needs ranks high in her list of priorities. Rodrigues cites the instance of one woman who was extremely unhappy with the treatment meted out to her Down’s syndrome-affected, hyperactive son by his special school—the teacher would lock him up and beat him. So the woman decided to enrol herself in a teachers’ training session and now confidently takes care of her son, who studies in St Joseph’s. “She even donated part of her first paycheck to our school,’’ recalls Rodrigues, who has always championed the cause of “breaking down institutions for special kids and going in for an inclusive set-up where both regular and special kids can mingle and learn from each other’’.

But turning a regular school into one that advocates an inclusive education system in 2006 was not without its share of teething troubles. When her school started enrolling special kids, many of the regular students dropped out. Parents of ‘regular’ kids raised apprehensions, the most popular one (“and the most irrational one’’) being that this inclusion would be detrimental to the progress of their wards. During a PTA meeting when parents raised the usual fears, Rodrigues recalls a parent of a regular child challenging the argument by citing the example of her own ward. “The mother said that the kind of understanding and maturity her child had developed over the past few years in the company of special kids was exemplary,’’ recalls Rodrigues.

Within the school, which banks chiefly on parental references to get more students, Rodrigues has observed a very healthy mutual learning relationship between both the groups. “During picnics the special kids, who are slightly older than regular students of their batch, are very protective of them. Also, they volunteer at various sports events and this interaction boosts their confidence,’’ she says. The special kids are acquainted with the ways of the outside world through weekly visits to public places; they are even taught cooking and elementary finance. Special kids, Rodrigues concludes, are “non-judgmental’’ unlike the regular ones who “expect you to go out of your way.’’

The 36-year-old teacher sounds a bit like Aamir Khan of Taare Zameen Par when she says the need is not to evolve the curriculum but to evolve better teaching methods. When the movie was released, she received a lot of calls from students telling her that it reminded them of her. Rodrigues takes it as a compliment. “In fact, I want to invite Aamir to my school and share his suggestions,’’ she says. That, for now, qualifies as the school’s own special need.

CLASS ACT Rodrigues is planning to invest her cash prize in a new yellow school bus

Obama Touts TV and Video Games as Teachers of Math and Science Skills

By Paul Basken

Washington

Corporate donors encouraged by the Obama administration will spend at least $260-million over the next four years to help improve student achievement in mathematics and science through specially designed television programs and video games.

The plan, announced today by President Obama, will include new television programming fromSesame Street and Discovery Communications, as well as video games developed by Sony and other members of the Entertainment Software Association.

The president also announced plans for the White House to host an annual science fair. The plans are all part of a strategy to bring excitement to the long-running quest to raise the international rankings of American students in science and math.

"We're going to show young people how cool science can be," Mr. Obama told a gathering of corporate leaders and educators at the White House.

Several of those leaders said afterward that the initiatives could be helpful, even if they are not a complete solution for either colleges facing underprepared freshmen or their schools of education under pressure to produce better-trained teachers.

The idea of a White House science fair, in particular, "sends so many important messages," said Sharon P. Robinson, president and chief executive of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

Yet, Ms. Robinson said, educators don't yet have a full understanding of how tools such as video games can be used in education, and how to work most effectively with students who have been using them.

And, she said, those types of tools might not be the best approach for reaching children in the poorer urban and rural parts of the country who are most in need of the help.

Mr. Obama said he hoped the initiatives would be especially useful in attracting women and members of minority groups to the sciences, in part by helping to break traditional views of the value of studying science.

Persuading companies to make better science-oriented games and programming is clearly worthwhile, said Susan L. Traiman, director of public policy at the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of the largest American companies. "It doesn't substitute for public-policy initiatives," she said, "but is an essential piece that's needed to complement public policy, and too often overlooked."

Others were more skeptical. The Obama administration still isn't doing enough to help give American schools the trained workers they need, said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

"It's wonderful to have this coordination of after-school activities, but they all are essentially workarounds," Ms. Walsh said. "And until we address the ability of Ms. Jones in the second-grade classroom being able to teach mathematics at a level that is comparable to what teachers in Singapore and Finland can do, then we're going to have this problem."

‘We make great ideas available to millions of people’

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, an annual four-day residential conclave devoted to “ideas worth spreading”, which concluded in Mysore recently, was held for the first time in India. Chris Anderson, curator of TED, spoke to Sudeshna Chatterjee:

What has taken you so long to reach India?
Apart from one experimental event in Japan 15 years ago, TED has been for most of its history a closed event held annually in California. In 2001, its ownership transferred from its founder into my non-profit foundation (The Sapling Foundation) and we gradually started bringing in a more global roster of speakers. The big shift came in 2006 when we started releasing talks on the Web and discovered that there was a vast global audience excited by this type of content.

But isn’t the Rs 1 lakh entry fee exorbitant in a country like India?
Yes, a lakh is a lot, although it’s one-third the price we charge in California. No one is making a profit at TED. It’s run from a foundation and the fees don’t cover the large costs of putting on an event as ambitious as TED. This conference was subsidised by the foundation because we so badly wanted to come to India. Despite the high price it sold out. We also included 100 fellows, selected from 1,000 applicants, all of whose costs we covered, and a number of discounted educational and non-profit passes. We also streamed four of the sessions on the Web to anyone for free, and will be releasing all the best talks on our website, ted.com, in the coming months.

There will be numerous selforganised events held across India in the coming months under the programme we call TEDx. These will be publicised in due course, and people can find them on http://ted.com/tedx. Typically they will be one-day events held in various cities or universities and targeting a few hundred local knowledge-seekers.

Can you talk about some of the interesting ideas that came up at the Mysore conference?
Pranav Mistry is developing SixthSense, which is a wearable prototype that augments the physical world around us with digital information. Shaffi Mather’s corruption-busting business idea, where he proposes to set up anti-bribe BPOs across India and which will take a fee from the client is both brilliant and courageous. Shashi Tharoor’s views on soft power have been articulated before, but perhaps never in so compelling a way. The philosophy behind TED is ideas have a unique ability to shape the future. By making great ideas available to millions of people on ted.com, we’re helping to accelerate this process. There was the special moment when attendees responded to Sunitha Krishnan’s searing talk on her fight against sex trafficking by committing more than $100,000 in donations on the spot, and by promising jobs for the young women she is rehabilitating.

Invest In The Future

Our children hold the key to our collective good

Shantha Sinha & Karin Hulshof

A child growing up in India today can aspire to be an astronaut sending rockets into space, a cricket batting legend, a government minister, a Bollywood film star or a teacher set to inspire a new generation of children. As the world celebrates the 20^th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) today, India has a lot to be proud of in the strides being made for its children. Home to onefifth of the world’s children, India ratified the CRC in 1992, embracing standards in health care, education and legal, civil and social services.

What difference has the convention made to India? Fewer children under five die as the national mortality rate fell from 117 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 72 in 2007. More children have access to improved drinking water, rising from 62 per cent in 1992-93 to 88 per cent in 2005-06. More girls go to primary school as attendance rates for girls aged between 6 and10 increased from 61 to 81 per cent over the same period. When 12-year-old Rekha Kalindi, from a remote village in the Purulia district of West Bengal, stood up against child marriage she was relying on knowledge gained while attending the National Child Labour Project school run by the government’s labour department to rehabilitate working children and help mainstream them in the education system.

The passage of the Education Bill in Parliament this year, and the prohibition of Child Labour and Child Marriage Acts are prime examples of how the Indian government is championing the rights of the children. Progress has been made towards identifying and legally addressing child protection violations and targeting essential services to marginalised groups and disabled children. The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights was established by the government in March 2007 and now five state commissions have been added. This year’s roll-out of the Integrated Child Protection Scheme, a programme focusing on transforming legislative commitments into action for child protection, is truly a cause for celebration.

True, many challenges remain. One million newborns die each year during the first month of their lives, another million die between 29 days and five years. These statistics call for ensuring that every child has access to the basic right to survival. Society must save the large number of lives snuffed out within the first few days of life. UNICEF, along with other aid agencies, is closely working with the government to encourage women to have institutional deliveries and ensure both mother and baby receive critical post-natal care for at least 72 hours.

Eliminating malnourishment should be our top priority as it directly contributes to child mortality, school drop-out rates, gender equality and poverty reduction. Almost 55 million children under five in India are underweight for their age. Children who are chronically undernourished before their second birthday are likely to have diminished cognitive and physical development for the rest of their lives. As adults, they are less productive and earn less than their healthy peers and the cycle of undernutrition and poverty repeats itself, generation after generation.

During the South Asian conference on sanitation last year Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that sanitation should be a birthright. Eighty-eight per cent of all diarrhoeacaused deaths in children under five are related to poor water quality, hygiene and sanitation. More than half of India’s population, or 665 million people, practise open defecation. Though India has been able to double the total number of people using improved toilets, from 19 to 38 per cent between 1990 and 2006, further acceleration is needed.

The CRC provides clear parameters on how schools can be childfriendly and now we must make concerted efforts to ensure that every child attends and stays in school. The Right to Education Act is a powerful way forward, placing the obligation on the state that all children receive at least eight years of schooling. But today millions of India’s children are not attending school. Child labour also remains a major area of concern, especially among teenagers in the 14 -18 age bracket who do not have access to education and continue to work in hazardous occupations.

Widespread and entrenched exploitation, gender discrimination and caste bias in India cannot be wished away overnight. The recent global fuel, food and economic crises will certainly affect the country’s social progress, possibly slowing or even stalling recent gains in child survival and education.

We are all aware that rights can be declared and policies formulated, but unless the life of the child in the family and community is improved, all our efforts are meaningless. As common citizens we must pledge not to accept work from children, not tolerate child marriage and ensure all children, especially girls, go to school. India’s children are its future. The rights spelled out in the convention must become a reality for each and every child in this nation.

Sinha is chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, and Hulshof is representative, UNICEF India.

Looking ahead with hope