Bharat Rakshak

Theo_Fidel wrote: Not saying Military can't have its own schools but...

This a situation many other organizations face. I personally spend 6 years unschooled because my Dad was posted in the wilds of India. There was no reserved college or school for me. In class Eleven I moved from CBSE to State syllabus after 6 months cos my Dad got transferred to Chennai. Anyone in TN knows the challenge of going from CBSE to state syllabus.

I actually went to a school that is 50% reserved for military. Let me tell you the vast majority were not deserving. Maybe it is different now or in other places. Most of them were from 'connected families' who fudged the paperwork to get hem admitted. Not only that the few military students in there had absolutely no intention of joining the military. No aptitude for it. To be honest the daily (including Sunday) 5 AM wake up call and forced 5 km march through the wilds of Nilgiris would discourage the most avid military recruit. I have a cousin who went through helicopter training and the 10 year job requirement because his dad was military and he got a reserved seat. The military must have spent at least 1 Crore on training him and acquiring 6000 helicopter man-hours. Yet the moment the job requirement was over, he put in for discharge and now fly's a 2 seater rural helicopter for farmers and hospitals in the wilds of Nebraska. What can I say...

This whole reservation thinking is twisted and must stop.

somnath wrote:

chaanakya wrote:Well if you don't know then I can't help. Its there for all be it BITS or XLRI etc unless they are classified as Minority. In that case they would have quote for that minority

Boss, I have batchmates from school, uni, insti who have studied in these places..Unless rules have changed in the last 10-12 years...

anjan wrote:The purpose of Army based organizations was simple: Army wards due to the nature of the jobs of their parents cannot compete at the same level as kids who spend decades in the same places with access to better educational facility. Your logic is fallacious

I am not making a value judgement on the relative merits of Army kids - I had lots of them as batchmates, the normal curve applies equally to them as to any other group...The limited point is that if a school only takes in students from a limited pool of students (and the Army pool by definition is small), it will never graduate to being considered a centre of excellence, thats all...the fame of IIXs is not because of their "quota" students, but their general cat ones (to be sure I am not comparing Army kids to "quota" students, just giving an example)...

Lastly, transfers are a way of life not just in the Army, but in all central govt services...Its worst in the paramils...Most families make adjustments for that...In my family, we stayed back in Calcutta to finish my school sessions when my dad was transferred to Del - it was a year before we went...That is why you have a concept of "retaining quarters" - so for some postings (with less infra), the person can retain his existing acco...In Delhi's Lodhi Road hostel, where we stayed for a few years, we had tons of neighbours who were posted in all sorts of places - Kashmir to Manipur to Jamnagar, while the families and kids stayed in Del, primarily for education...

ASPuar wrote:Furthermore, BSF and other CPOs have a bunch of discretionary quota seats in some of the top colleges apparently (in return for bond of service), including (for MBBS) Lady Hardinge, Delhi, JIPMER Puduchery, etc.

somnath wrote: Boss, I have batchmates from school, uni, insti who have studied in these places..Unless rules have changed in the last 10-12 years...
.

Singha wrote: are 100% of seats in the NITs given via AIEEE now and the state quotas abolished (ofcourse reservation is there).

somnath wrote: I am not making a value judgement on the relative merits of Army kids - I had lots of them as batchmates, the normal curve applies equally to them as to any other group...The limited point is that if a school only takes in students from a limited pool of students (and the Army pool by definition is small), it will never graduate to being considered a centre of excellence, thats all...the fame of IIXs is not because of their "quota" students, but their general cat ones (to be sure I am not comparing Army kids to "quota" students, just giving an example)...

Lastly, transfers are a way of life not just in the Army, but in all central govt services...Its worst in the paramils...Most families make adjustments for that...In my family, we stayed back in Calcutta to finish my school sessions when my dad was transferred to Del - it was a year before we went...That is why you have a concept of "retaining quarters" - so for some postings (with less infra), the person can retain his existing acco...In Delhi's Lodhi Road hostel, where we stayed for a few years, we had tons of neighbours who were posted in all sorts of places - Kashmir to Manipur to Jamnagar, while the families and kids stayed in Del, primarily for education...

Singha wrote:in my era 50% of seats in NIT were kept for the home state students and 50% allocated to other states weighed by population (hence UP/Bihar had the highest quotas). and overall reservation was there for both these halves. Andhra added 30% of 50% reservation for state girls in 1994 which led to a sudden building boom for Ladies hostel in NiT-warangal...not sure if any other state did.

are 100% of seats in the NITs given via AIEEE now and the state quotas abolished (ofcourse reservation is there).

C N R Rao, chairman of special advisory committee to PM, has said there is not a single institute or university of global standard in the country.

While Rao was seemingly echoing Union minister Jairam Ramesh's argument that IITs were good only because of students not faculty, he said he was not responding or reacting to Ramesh.

Speaking at a programme on nano technology organised by the Karnataka State Higher Education Council on Tuesday, Rao said not a single science institution in the country was in the top 100 and may be at best one or two in the top 500. "We are nowhere in the scheme of things when it comes to being a world class science academic destination. Everything we do from now on should be geared to taking a place in the top 100 and then top 10."

Rao said money was no longer an issue in Indian science. "I did a degree from the US and I was paid a salary of Rs 500 during my time. Now professors get Rs 1 lakh. There cannot be complaints. If the money is put in the right direction, results should be forthcoming."

He was worried that there were no takers for physics, a fundamental necessity for work in nano sciences. "We have colleges offering biotech instead. Here is an irony - people are too specialized such that industry cannot respond with jobs. We are creating niche specialists who cannot be in general employment. Result is we are generating qualified science graduates in one area who cannot find jobs in areas other than that."

Rao said nano technology would be helpful in the areas of medicine, electronics, semi-conductors and biology. The immediate future will see plenty of nano applications helping people drink pure drinking water to administering insulin in easier ways to tackle diabetes.

Higher education minister V S Acharya who keenly listened to Rao's observations said the state was planning a road map for nano technology. "We are working on the overall direction that nano technology should take in the immediate future. We will have a plan ready soon."

SwamyG wrote: Rao said money was no longer an issue in Indian science. "I did a degree from the US and I was paid a salary of Rs 500 during my time. Now professors get Rs 1 lakh. There cannot be complaints. If the money is put in the right direction, results should be forthcoming."

The position of Assistant Professors will be in PB-3 i.e. Rs.15,600-39,100 with minimum pay of Rs.30,000/- provided you have 3 years of post-Phd experience (called the basic) with Grade pay Rs.8000/- plus allowances. After completion of three years service in PB-3 they will be placed in PB-4 i.e. Rs.37400-67000 with Grade pay of Rs.9000/- plus allowances.

The faculty is eligible for the following allowances:
Dearness allowance (DA) as on 1 Aug 2010 is 35% of Basic (B) and grade pay (GP).
House Rent Allowance, HRA, which is 30% of B+GP in metros.
Transport Allowance (TA): 3,200 + 15% of DA
Telephone (including broadband charges): 1,000

Stan_Savljevic wrote:So what exactly is Prof. Rao talking about in terms of a 1 lakh+ salary in the sciences? If he (knowing the reality) is obfuscating facts because of the fact that the Gen Y's demand more than what his gen did, does nt that say more about boor-a-crazy in India?

Daniel Greenberg is widely considered the premier journalist of science policy, having written extensively on the subject over the course of its 60-year evolution in the United States. Science for Sale is his latest offering. It provides an intriguing, if idealistic, review of the issues surrounding the funding of science in the twenty-first century. Greenberg posits that science was once, and should be again, driven by the pure curiosity of scientists and not by motives influenced by the stress of external funding and the negative forces of capitalism. Unfortunately, science past did not really exist in the way he spends so much time describing in the book.

Greenberg's idyllic views — in particular that the academic scientist and the university are best motivated by curiosity alone — are interesting. But they run counter to history, to how organizations operate and, perhaps most importantly, to the understanding that 'the university' itself is an idea, not an ideal or an ideology.

In fine journalistic style, the author makes his case that the modern university, with its quest for resources, has drifted far from its purely scientific origins. He presents substantial and meaningful information and anecdotes about the academic arms race, the drive for comprehensive funding and the complexities and perils of corporate funding of research. He guides us through the negative effects that can result throughout the academic system for a large-scale, high-impact enterprise that is highly competitive at individual and institutional levels.

Academics would admit that Greenberg's concerns about conflicts of interest and the challenges of funding are legitimate and that these need to be managed consciously and meaningfully. But his assumptions and arguments about the corruption of academic purpose and of its independence from corporate and government funding are oversimplified. He presents scenarios in which the actors involved, be they academic scientists, university administrators or corporate technologists, do not seem to live up to his ideals in terms of their scientific comportment; his analyses aren't so much incorrect as lacking in detail and historical context.

From its beginnings, US academic science has focused on practical outcomes and has been linked heavily to industry. Take the Silliman family of Connecticut. Benjamin Silliman, a Yale alumnus and son of the revolutionary war hero General Gold Selleck Silliman, switched professions from law to medicine and in 1804 taught the first academic science class in the United States. He was a hybrid chemist, geologist and science-society organizer who, between 1804 and 1857, spent much of his time on practical mineralogy and consulting for industry and the government. Silliman's son, also Benjamin, became a Yale chemist and one of the most influential academic scientists in US history. He wrote a US$526 report for industry on how to distil fractionated oil, which ultimately led to the emergence of the oil industry in Pennsylvania and provided the chemical source for the Standard Oil Company. These path-breaking academics helped shape the structure of America's first school of science (Sheffield Scientific School at Yale) and furthered the US tradition of practical science.

This account and numerous others demonstrate the emergence of US universities through donation, state constitution, church, land-grant or powerful local business and commercial forces. Science for Sale's portrayal of academic science as previously unencumbered by market forces, greed or evil is not the whole story.

The theory Greenberg presents is desirable. In reality, science and its environment represent a much more complicated force. Academic scientists work to advance humanity, sometimes coming up with innovations that have the potential for good and bad outcomes. One of Greenberg's case studies of corporate influence on the development trajectory of the chemotherapy drug Taxol seems like child's play when compared with government influence on the production of new technologies with a high potential for social and economic disruption. Even science at its most pure can be affected by a variety of factors, sometimes with unintended consequences. The point is, all influences are at least equal, all outcomes can cut both ways and all resources carry with them a quid pro quo.

Greenberg outlines the myriad pitfalls and pratfalls faced by academic science, but does not analyse how to address them. US research universities exist inside one of the bastions of capitalism and are organized to compete with each other for students, faculty, resources and recognition in this complex sociocultural system. Unlike much of the rest of the world, they are not managed by a central ministry. This setting has led institutions to take on many of the characteristics that concern Greenberg — size, scope, wealth, reliance on external resources, and so on. It is not a set of corporate or capitalistic forces that are driving US academia on the path of increased complexity and stress. It is the universities, through their creativity, connectivity, influence and power, that are driving other institutions or nation states to action with science-based competition.

There is an urgent need for India to attend to this problem and provide quality
engineering education to a much larger section of its population. The IITs, being
the premier education institutes in the country, need to play a major role in
overcoming this situation. The Committee has deliberated on what the IITs can
do; it recommends here a plan to enable 100,000 youngsters every year to get
admission in Central government-funded institutions providing quality
engineering education. Hopefully, state governments’ and private efforts would
add to this significantly and result in a few hundred thousand quality seats. If this
happens, it would go a long way in enabling India to provide quality and inclusive
engineering education in India for its youngsters.

IITs as Research Institutions
1. Make IITs the Primary Research Institutes, with a focus on high quality
frontier research and technology development within the Indian context.
2. Scale up PhD students from less than 1000 PhD graduates per year today to
10,000 PhD graduates by 2020-25 from about 20 IITs (15 existing IITs plus
5 new to be set up over the next several years in states where there are no
IITs).
3. Scaling PhD scholars’ admissions to include enabling bright UGs being
admitted for PhD at the end of their third year, teachers from other
institutes joining for PhD and significant numbers from industry joining
sponsored/part-time PhD programme. It is strongly recommended that a
fellowship scheme covering all categories of PhD students is in place.
4. The faculty: student ratio is 1:10; while the UG : PG ratio is close to 1:1.
5. Each IIT should aim to acquire technology leadership in at least 3 to 4 areas.
6. Research groups in one or more IITs to take up large projects together to
address major national challenges
7. Set up research parks at each of the IITs similar to the IIT-M Research Park.
8. Enable Ministries to set up R&D labs in IITs to drive Technology
Development relevant to national programmes being piloted by them.
9. Large-scale Executive M.Tech training programmes for industry jointly
conducted with the IITs using video links.

Raja Bose wrote: Ah! One of the HRI string theorists - didn't know he was Eye Eye Tea JEE topper.

abhishek_sharma wrote:This 1986 topper got the Godel prize and is a TFTA prof at Princeton.

abhishek_sharma wrote:Both Vijay Vazirani and Rajeev Motwani died in last 1-2 years. Huge loss to India and Computer Sc.

At the Indian Science Congress in January 2008, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced that his nation would launch a “second wave” of education. “We will need an army of teachers, especially in the basic sciences and in the field of mathematics,” he said. “The time has come for action.”

At the time, India was rapidly expanding its higher education system. The country has opened more than 100 elite higher education institutions in the past 5 years and is now home to 467 universities (see table). In the headlong rush, student enrollment has risen more than 50% to 13.6 million. Meanwhile, almost a third of faculty positions at elite institutions—both new and long established—are vacant due to an acute shortage of trained teachers. The result is a dilution of standards, says P. V. Indiresan, former director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chennai. “Expansion is politically popular,” he says, “but functionally disastrous.”


Boom and bust. Although more than 100 elite institutions have opened in the past 5 years, competition is fiercer than ever. Last year, only 3% of students, including these at a cram school in Kota, India, passed IIT's entrance exam.
CREDITS (LEFT TO RIGHT): SAURABH DAS/AP PHOTO; (SOURCE) MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT


Indian leaders are aware they're grappling with a crisis in higher education. In a report issued last week, the prime minister's science advisory council decried a number of serious problems, including “declining quality and indifferent performance of institutions” and a system that puts a greater emphasis on entrance exams than on education. The University Grants Commission of India recently rated “68% of the universities and 91% of the colleges” as average or below average. “This hardly speaks well of quality and excellence in universities,” the report states. At a meeting of university vice-chancellors last month, India's education minister, Kapil Sibal, acknowledged the dire situation. “Germination of ideas takes place through the university system, and if the system is not effervescent, energetic, and creative, then India would be relegated to the knowledge of the past,” he said. But the solution remains elusive.

Lack of funding is not the problem. In the past 5 years, the government has invested $11.6 billion in education, a whopping 14-fold increase over the previous 5 years. As impressive as that sounds, that figure—1% of India's GDP—could rise even higher. The government has vowed to make education a cornerstone of development by increasing education spending to 6% of GDP over the next decade. In 2011, spending will rise 19% to $3.3 billion.

All that money can't buy good teaching, apparently. A 2010 government survey of India's top 22 universities reports that 3777 out of 11,085 faculty positions were unfilled. The University of Delhi needs to hire approximately 3000 teachers, says historian Nayanjot Lahiri, a former dean at the university. The prestigious IIT, which has been expanded to eight new sites, reports a similar one-third shortfall. At the new IITs, even retaining freshly recruited faculty members is a challenge partly because of working conditions: Several institutes are still operating out of ramshackle temporary buildings.

A major obstacle to recruitment is the failure to make teaching an attractive career, says Man Mohan Sharma, a chemist at the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. “Teaching is no longer a glamorous or paying profession,” he says. “Scholarly habits are dying.” To ease the teaching shortage, a new National Knowledge Network will combine classrooms over the next 2 years to share the teaching workload with “distance education,” linking 1500 universities through a dedicated fiber-optic Internet link.

India is also hoping that foreign universities will help raise the game of indigenous institutions by offering competition. The Indian Parliament is considering a proposal that would provide the legal framework for overseas institutions to set up shop in India. Parts of the bill have raised concerns about built-in barriers, including a provision that would ask foreign institutions to make a deposit of at least $12 million to regulators before opening a campus in India. That has deterred potential suitors, including the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and the University of California, Berkeley.

In the meantime, India has taken steps to increase the talent pool further up the pipeline. One program getting high marks is Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research, a government initiative spearheaded by the science ministry that in the past 2 years has awarded scholarships to 350,000 outstanding high school science students. The grants are small—about $125 per student—but the intention is to boost morale and keep students interested in science, says T. Ramasami, secretary of the Department of Science and Technology here. “We hope to catch them young and build a cadre of top-quality researchers,” he says.

Ramasami and others have faith that India's education system can regain lost luster—and uncover hidden talents like Mylswamy Annadurai. An engineer from Coimbatore in southern India, Annadurai admits he had never left the small town before completing his postgraduate engineering education. He went on to become project director for the country's first moon mission, Chandrayaan-1. Annadurai credits his university experience for “daring to dream big while not worrying about failure.”

India desperately needs more homegrown stars, says Singh's science adviser, chemist C. N. R. Rao of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, who hopes his council's report last week will spur the government to prepare a road map for higher education. “There is so much hidden talent in India” that will blossom when it finds fertile ground, Rao says.

GET AN IDEA: Those who join IITs should not assume that success is assured in life.

http://www.thehindu.com/education/issue ... 104434.ece

What compounds this issue is the lack of clarity among the candidates as to what next after clearing JEE. Most end up taking up courses at the IITs without a regard for their interests, without the slightest knowledge of what they are going to study for the next four years. In essence, most candidates end up selecting their undergraduate majors based on what the previous year rank holder did or which IIT is closer to their hometown.

Lower ranked students are faced with even more confusing situations such as going for a popular branch at the NITs or BITS, skipping the IITs, and exercising the option of dropping a year. Add to all this the fact that parents are concerned about ragging and the stress levels at IITs.

IIT-Kharagpur last year in Mechanical Engineering. But he is now working with a multinational bank. Why would banks recruit engineers from IIT?

Most MNC banks have started to set base in India and they prefer IITians as they have a strong base in engineering mathematics which helps them cope with the rigours of quantitative finance better than other graduates.

{mmm... that should be because they pay well.. but what a waste!!!!of talent}


I have heard that IITs are full of nerds and geeks. Will I be able to challenge myself in sports at IIT? Will there be enough opportunities?

{totally directionless!!}

vera_k wrote:I happened to be in a small store, when a poor couple walked in with their daughter to shop for a school uniform. The daughter needed an uniform because the one she had was bought 4 years ago, and now was too short for her. But she's now in the 10th grade, and this uniform costs Rs. 450. And since she will go to 11th where they don't have a uniform, this is money they will spend only for the one year.

I must admit this overturned my notions of why school uniforms are used in Indian schools. It would help such cases if uniforms were funded by the government through the RTE Act or education tax, or better yet abolished in government and government-aided schools altogether. More money can then go to textbooks or other education needs.

Rajasthan Cosmo Club Foundation (RCCF) on Sunday launched the distribution of 23,501 sets of school uniforms under its flagship “Cloth Bank” scheme.

The initiative will provide brand new custom-fit uniforms to underprivileged children in 305 schools in and around Chennai.

Launching the distribution of uniforms worth an estimated Rs. 70 lakh, Assembly Speaker D. Jayakumar stressed the importance of engaging in social service. “Only if one engages in community service does one's life become meaningful,” he said.

He urged the RCCF to continue with its range of yeomen initiatives such as the Book Bank, Food Bank and Cloth Bank. He noted that two of these initiatives addressed the basic needs of mankind – food and clothing.

Recalling his association with the RCCF during his tenure as Electricity Minister in the previous regime led by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, Mr. Jayakumar said he had participated in the distribution of relief materials to the people ravaged by the tsunami in 2004, and also when a Food Bank was launched.

The Speaker also launched a DVD on the RCCF journey. N. Balaganga, MP, was also present.

T. R. Achha, RCCF president, said putting together the sets of uniform under the “Sri Badalchand Sugan Kavur Chordia Uniform Scheme” involved 36,000 man hours and 54,200 metres of mill cloth. Sunil Chopra, RCCF managing trustee, said the Cloth Bank which started as a recycling project for worn clothes had now evolved into an ISO 9000 certified mechanism that also took up distribution of new garments.

Jagdish Sarda, New School Uniform scheme chairman, said the new uniforms would benefit students, mostly in corporation schools in and around Chennai. The uniforms were available in about eight patterns and 153 colours.

Champalal Sarda, chairman, Sri Maheswari Hospital and Research Centre Trust, and R. Prasanchand Chordia, managing trustee, S. Badalchand Chordia Trust, also participated.

nithish wrote:School uniform distribution scheme launched

Boom and bust. Although more than 100 elite institutions have opened in the past 5 years, competition is fiercer than ever. Last year, only 3% of students, including these at a cram school in Kota, India, passed IIT's entrance exam