MHRD plans 19 new institutes

The Human Resource Development ministry is in plans to set up 19 academic institutions across India. Out of the list of the 19 institutes, seven of them are to be established in Andhra Pradesh.

The list of institutes planned to be set up includes IIMs, IITs, Central Universities, NITs, IISER and IIITs.

As per the official announcement, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha will see the establishment of Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), while Jammu, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh will have Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Andhra Pradesh will also get one National Institute of Technology (NIT), one Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) and one Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT). Additionally, newly formed Telangana could also see the establishment of a tribal university in the state.

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Government publisher removes chapter on anti-dam activist 

Government-funded National Book Trust (NBT) has dropped a chapter on Narmada Bachao Andolan activist Medha Patkar from a children’s book after an NGO objected saying she was a political person after she joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and therefore should not be included.

Ahmedabad-based National Council for Civil Liberties founder VK Saxena had filed a written compalint to the Ministry of Human Resources (MHRD), which in turn referred it to NBT, who dropped the chapter.

Written by Thangamani, the children’s book, Children Who Made It Big, traces the childhood of 12 famous personalities, including sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan, chess player Vishwanathan Anand and author Ruskin Bond and is part of the school curriculum in many states.

Reacting to the news, Medha Patkar said VK Saxena was a supporter of the Sardar Sarovar dam and opposed the Narmada Bachao Andolan, the movement that opposed the construction of the dam.

NBT director MA Sikandar defended the action, saying,“The NGO has been writing to us about it. After we received the letter from the ministry, we re-examined the issue and under changed circumstance we decided to drop the chapter”.

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/09/government-publisher-removes-chapter-on-anti-dam-activist/#sthash.YXAwse0L.dpuf

Sep 19 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

`Data Scientist' is Among the Sexiest Jobs of the Century

Jayadevan PK & Neha Alawadhi

New Delhi:





Term used for those who have ability to make sense of large & complex set of information

The title has been around for less than a decade, but already `data scientist' is considered to be among the sexiest jobs of the 21st century. In India it is no different.Data scientists--the term was coined in 2008 by DJ Patil and Jeff Hammerbacher--are a rare species being chased by startups and big technology companies alike for their ability to make sense of large and complex set of information.
As a result, their salaries have shot through the roof and poaching is rampant. Take the case of S Anand, the chief data scientist at Hyderabad-based data visualisation and analytics company Gramener, for instance. He was recently wooed by an ecommerce major with an offer that was hard to refuse.
Luckily for his cofounder Naveen Gaddu, he was too passionate about their 50-people startup to leave. “At least one-two of my people get pinged on Linkedin every day on an average. Thankfully, they choose to stay,“ said Gaddu, the chief operating officer at Gramener.
The sudden prominence for data scientists highlight how startups and established players now need to comb huge volumes of data for information that is key to the success of an idea or business.
Salaries for chief data scientists with over 10 years of experience in mathematics and statistics are regularly touching the `. 1 crore mark.
Mobile commerce player Paytm is hiring a team of eight data scientists in Canada, paying on an average $250,000 (. `1.5 crore) each. “The team will look at the large amount of data we have from different angles. For instance fraud detection, upselling and such,“ said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of One97 Communication which owns Paytm.
“If a person paid ` . 60-70 lakh is of . 1.2 crore, then no one in the fered ` marketplace will touch him for a while,“ said Gattu, chief operating officer at Gramener. At least four senior industry professionals said Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon and Walmart were among the companies waving fat pay pack ets at top data scientists.
For ecommerce companies, data scientists who can help them make better sense of their customers needs have become a top priority. “Data is a large asset that is often not used to its full potential in most organisations. There is a huge amount of technology investments that we can make in this area,“ said Amod Malviya, the chief technology officer of Flipkart.
The online retailer generates terabytes of data every day and is now building a data science lab that can help them sell better.“The big technology trend is to make systems intelligent and data is the raw material,“ said Malviya, who declined to share specific salaries being offered by Flipkart.
A chief data scientist, with about 10-15 years of experience using mathematical and statistical tools, earns about ` . 50 lakh on average annually.

Sep 19 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)

ITC to Enter Homes, in the Name of God

Writankar Mukherjee

Kolkata:





The ingredients are all there in this sacred space: a big consumer market that no large company has managed to dominate, the ongoing festive season, daily rituals to please the gods, and social media savvy youngsters as potential customers.ITC, the FMCG, tobacco, packaging, paper and hotels conglomerate, is set to plunge into the .
`6,000-7,000 crore home worship or pooja market with incense products — an extension of its agarbatti business. In a soft launch, it has brought out packaged sambrani or dhuno, dhoops and combo packs of agarbatti stands, diyas and candles, along with its line of Mangaldeep agarbattis.
As it did during Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra, ITC will also launch limited edition packs of Mangaldeep agarbattis with pictures of gods and goddesses, which it says are sacred enough to find a place in pooja rooms in millions of homes across the country. It is also evaluating other associated product categories such as kumkum and haldi.
“Since ITC has already been operating in the agarbatti space for the last 10 years with a ready supply chain, including supplies to temples, specialty pooja stores and grocery stores, the extension of the agarbatti brand Mangaldeep into other pooja products is a big potential area,“ said VM Rajasekharan, ITC chief executive (agarbatti business).
The use of The use of aromatic substances is an ancient tradition in India. Fragrances play a key role in Hindu religious rituals, where offerings include flowers, sweets and diyas (lamps).These substances have evolved over the years into their present-day avatars such as agarbatti or incense sticks and dhoops.

Sep 19 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Education key in proposed goals for post-MDG period

Manash Gohain

New Delhi





UNGA Plans 16 Targets For 2015-30

Acknowledging that quality education is key to sustainable development, a new set of goals for the postMillennium Development Goals (MDG) period has been proposed at the 69th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday .Started in 2000, the MDG period expires in 2015. While many success stories have been scripted, majority of the goals fell short of expectation under the MDG. Previous United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Education for All Global Monitoring Report cited how almost 1 billion people are still likely to be extremely poor in 2015 and 57.8 million children are still out of primary school.
Therefore, the need to provide quality education to the greatest number of people is woven through all the new goals that will be effective from 2015 to 2030. United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon said: “Education is a fundamental right and the basis for progress in every country. Parents need information about health and nutrition if they are to give their children the start in life they deserve.Prosperous countries depend on skilled and educated work ers. The challenges of conquering poverty, combating climate change and achieving truly sustainable development in the coming decades compel us to work together.
With partnership, leadership and wise investments in education, we can transform individual lives, national economies and our world.” Education will be central to the success of the international targets that will replace the MDG. That’s the key point of a new booklet released during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Produced by UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report, the booklet states that new global development targets after 2015 should be based on a holistic approach to sustainable development.
It has set 16 goals starting with poverty reduction, which indicates that education is critical to escape chronic poverty. It stated that one year of education is associated with a 10% increase in wages. Other goals include nutrition improvement with the help of education. If all women had a secondary education, they would know the nutrients that children need, the hygiene rules they should follow and they would have a stronger voice in the home to ensure proper care. Improved nutrition would save more than 12 million children from being stunted — a sign of early childhood malnutrition.
“The evidence is unequivocal: education saves lives and transforms lives, it is the bedrock of sustainability,” says UNESCO director general Irina Bokova, “This is why we must work together across all development areas to make it a universal right.”

Sep 19 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Plagiarism charge on IIIT teacher, HRD probe ordered

Akshaya Mukul

New Delhi:





Indian Institute of Information Technology teacher Vijaishree Tewari, daughter of Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tewari, is caught in a plagiarism row with the HRD ministry setting up a oneman fact-finding panel to probe the allegations against her.Former IIT, Kharagpur director KL Chopra has been asked to submit the report within a month.
It is alleged that Tewari coauthored an article `Public Distribution System in India: The Problems and Dimensions' which was uploaded on Social Science Research Network (SSRN) website. The article is alleged to have been plagiarized from a report -Public Distribution System of Essential Commodities as a Social Safety Net: A Study of the District of Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh -submitted by Bhaskar Majumdar to the Planning Commission. The plan panel had financed the study . The article, authored by Tewari and others, lifts verbatim big chunks from Majumdar's paper, especially while profiling Allahabad and the sample size.
The article, co-authored by Tewari, was actually a project report by four of her students.Tewari and her colleague Madhvendra Mishra supervised these students for MBA degree from IIIT, Allahabad.Later, the report appeared as an article in SSRN.
Tewari outrightly denies the allegations. She says, “I have been told about the factfinding inquiry . I have done nothing wrong. The project report was done by students.“ Tewari says the complaint is “motivated“. She says the article carried the name of her four students as well as Mishra.
However, Tewari does not explain why she referred the SSRN article in appraisal information form of faculty members. In fact, the article is even mentioned as achievement in IIIT's annual report for 2010-11.
Chopra will go to Allahabad soon to conduct the inquiry . Tewari says HRD ministry is not to be blamed as it is trying to find out the truth.

Don’t Poke Your Nose into Everything: SC tells MHRD 

The Supreme Court has come down hard on the Ministry of Human Resource Development for its “intrusive attitude” and “unwarranted interference” in the functioning of the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The bench led by Chief Justice of India R M Lodha was hearing a petition filed by Symbiosis International University (SIU) against the UGC’s decision to block its proposal for setting up an off-campus centre in Hyderabad. The UGC had decided at its meeting on July 22 that the proposal could not be recommended in view of the HRD Ministry’s policy on deemed universities and their expansion. It had also considered reports by the UGC expert committee, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Bar Council of India (BCI).

However, when asked by the bench, the UGC counsel disclosed that the final decision was taken after also taking note of the HRD Secretary’s comments. The court then asked why the HRD Ministry was involved in the decision-making process, since the UGC was expected to apply its mind independently.
“We can see there is unnecessary interference by the ministry. It is totally unwarranted. You (HRD) cannot thrust your decision on the UGC. UGC is an autonomous body and it needs to be left to work as such. What is the point of having a separate statutory body if the ministry has to control everything at every level?” said the bench also comprising Justices Kurian Joseph and Rohinton F Nariman.

“Don’t poke your nose into everything. It is not required at all. UGC has to work independently and intrusion on your part is not right,” said the bench.
Appearing for the government, Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar said the UGC panel must have a member from the ministry. The court retorted: “You can be a member and also be an active member but you cannot thrust your decision.” The bench maintained that the expert committee had, in fact, given its opinion in favour of the SIU’s off-campus plan on fulfillment of certain conditions, but it appeared that the UGC went by the HRD Ministry’s views.

When Kumar said the UGC was merely a recommendatory body and the final decision rests with the government, the bench said the ministry could decide once the UGC sends its recommendations, but it could not scuttle the statutory process. The bench then quashed the UGC’s July 22 resolution, and asked it to assess the SIU’s request afresh “with an open mind” and take a decision in three weeks.

Meanwhile, SIU’s lawyer Ram Jethmalani sought permission to let the university go ahead with admissions, but the court turned down the request, saying the UGC and the government must first take a decision.

- See more at: http://digitallearning.eletsonline.com/2014/09/dont-poke-your-nose-into-everything-sc-tells-mhrd/#sthash.Att9mRKp.dpuf