Solutions to Change

AICTE will not issue any directions to deemed universities V.Jayanth and A.Subramani As the legal battle over the role of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in respect of deemed universities rages in the Madras High Court, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development on Wednesday issued a notification empowering the deemed universities. "It is not a pre-requisite for an institution notified as a `Deemed-to-be-University' to obtain the approval of the AICTE to start any programme in technical or management education leading to an award, including degrees in disciplines covered under the AICTE Act 1987. However, institutions notified as `Deemed-to-be-University' are required to ensure the maintenance of the minimum standards prescribed by the AICTE for various courses that come under the jurisdiction of the said Council. It is expected that the institutions notified as `Deemed-to-be-University' maintain their standards of education higher than t...

Shut liquor shops near school: Lucknow HC Courtesy: Times News Network LUCKNOW: The high court here on Thursday ordered forthwith closure of 53 liquor shops situated within 100 metres of educational institutions in the city. The court also sought a report from excise commissioner and the district excise officer within four weeks as to how many other liquor shops were situated within 100 metres of any hospitals, religious places, temples and residential areas. The above order was passed by a Division Bench comprising Justice AK Yog and Justice RP Yadav on twin PILs moved by Ramu Sanyal and Manoj Kumar Diwvedi. The court passed the above order in pursuance of the provisions incorporated under Rule 5 of Excise Act. The rule restricts any liquor shop within a radius of 100 metres from the educational, residential, temple, hospital premises etc, the court observed. The court also directed the government to return the licence fee to such 53 liquor licencees. However, it was made clear that...

Desalination in Chennai - What about the poor and environment Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza In 1961, US president John F Kennedy noted that if humanity could find an inexpensive way to get fresh water from the oceans, that achievement would dwarf any other scientific accomplishment. Desalination technology embodies this hope, and has been increasingly perceived over the past 30 years as a feasible solution to meet growing freshwater demands. Reverse osmosis (RO) technologies in particular are increasingly popular. Daily production capacity in the 17,350 desalination plants operating worldwide has grown to 37 million cubic metres, supplying about 160 million people. However, the desalination technology is adopted primarily in the water-poor and energy-rich nations of the Persian-Arabian Gulf, where it accounts for 40 per cent of the municipal and industrial water used. The Tamil Nadu government has called for the construction of a 100 million litres per day (MLD) seawater desalination pl...

Indian teachers playing truant from schools Andy Mukherjee 2006-04-07 When researchers for a study conducted by the World Bank and Harvard University showed up unannounced at Indian primary schools, they found a quarter of the teachers absent and only half of those present were working. More This World Bank study of teacher absenteeism across Indian Primary schools cited that one in 4 teachers were absent in government run primary schools. India has the 2nd highest average teacher absence rate among the eight countries surveyed, one notch below Uganda. Out of the teachers present only about half were teaching. The researchers found that absenteeism was high among better-paid teachers who are largely government teachers. Private school teachers in rural areas receive as less as 1/8th of the wages enjoyed by government schoolteachers. Although private school teachers were only slightly less likely to be absent than government school teachers, they were 8 percentage points less likely to ...

Do only B-school grads earn a crore? MANU JOSEPHTIMES NEWS NETWORK FRIDAY, APRIL 07, 2006 There are some good things in life that one can still get for less than a crore, like mother’s love, a Malayalam film and dates from Mallika Sherawat. For most other pleasures, a crore is, quite suddenly, not large enough. The crore, fondly called ‘khokha’ by almost everyone except P Chidambaram, is a British corruption of ‘kohit’ in Sanskrit. Today, it will not fetch you a private banking membership. Or a two-bedroom flat in south Mumbai. Nor is it big enough to serve as alimony for the newly melancholic corporate wife or to buy the best Indian art. To fully comprehend the death of the crore, try seeking a home in Mumbai. Thirty-two-year-old Anjali Krishan’s desperate search for a home, not in south Mumbai but in Khar — 20 km from Peddar Road where Lata Mangeshkar lives in fear of losing her voice to a flyover — forced her to chase brokers despite a budget of nearly a crore. ‘‘One CR,’’ as the...