Vedanta University has unveiled a new web page since March 1 2007. It has a nice picture of the location of the university. I am told that the architects of the university have come up with a detailed design of the initial buildings. Also, the CAO search is going well and an announcement in this regard may be made in May 2007.
1 comment March 13th, 2007
It seems progress is being made in this regard. A prominent leader in one of the top IT company of India is in charge of identifying a Dean for the IT/Computer Science program. I am told that T. N. Sheshan again visited Orissa last week regarding starting the university in August 2007. They are planning to have programs in medicine, sciences, and IT/Computer science, among other topics. The grapevine strongly suggests that the land overlooking Kathjodi near the origin of Kathajodi will be given to this university rather than NISER and NISER is being shown alternative land between Khurda and Jatni.
1 comment March 13th, 2007
NIT Rourkela has decided to start the following departments/schools/centers.
Admission to all programmes of the department of Biotechnology and Medical Engineering will start in the Academic Year 2007-08 and to the other Departments by Academic Year 2008-09.
This is a great move. I hope they will team up with RSP hospital and/or Rourkela General hospital to start a medical school.
(Thanks to Sandip babu for this news.)
5 comments March 5th, 2007
An IANS story with the above title has been picked by many papers including Times of India, Hindustan Times and New Indian Express. It talks about the green field IIT alloted to Andhra and the upgradation of Andhra University College of Engineering and Osmania University College of Engineering to IIT like institutions (IIESTs). It also talks about how Orissa was unlucky in neither getting a greefield IIT nor a branch campus of IIT Kharagpur. With the wide coverage this article has received I hope people all over India become aware of the divisive, partisan and discriminatory practices of the HRD ministry. I hope the UPA and its cabinet will realize the follies of their HRD minister and urge him to change course and not blatantly discriminate against Orissa.
Following are some links where the article of the above title appeared:
Continue Reading March 5th, 2007
Recently we at Agamee Odisha had two rounds of preparatory meetings (on 26th and 28th Feb) on IIT- movement, of intellectuals, students, professionals, activists and Representatives of mass organisations, net work organisations, NGOs etc. These two meetings were well attended and one of the remarkable features of the meetings was that many important dignitaries attended the meetings and conveyed their solidarity to the movement for IIT in Orissa. In these two meetings the agenda of the first phase of movement has been finalised
which are as below-
Continue Reading 12 comments March 1st, 2007
Today’s New Indian Express reports that director serach for IIIT Bhubaneswar is going on in full swing. The search committee consists of Dr. Sadagopan from IIIT Bangalore, Mr. Subroto Bagchi of Mindtree, Dr. Ramani from HP labs and Mr. Vishal Dev, Director OCAC. The report also says that the project cost will be Rs 45 crores out of which state government has budgeted 10 crores and the remaining is to be raised from private companies.
March 1st, 2007
Dear Honorable Union HRD Minister, Government of India, Mr Singh,
With reference to the news report published in Hindustan Times on 26th Feb 2007,
Reference:
http://digpatra.googlepages.com/20070227_HT_IIT.pdf
…
The argument made by HRD ministry saying “presence of 12 centrally funded educational institutes and announced NISER forbid Orissa to get a new IIT†is also equally baseless. If it would have been the case than Andhra Pradesh has 31 such centrally funded institutions including HRD ministry sponsored central university Hyderabad and beside many DRDO
laboratories, still the HRD ministry has proposed new IIT and is also considering for two new IIEST in the state. Additionally other central institutes like IIPH and NIPER are being established in Andhra Pradesh.
Reference:
http://digpatra.googlepages.com/20070227_state_wise_national_lab_ins.pdf
Continue Reading February 28th, 2007
The following is from the 2007-08 budget speech:
Means-Cum-Merit Scholarships
20. While the SSA has improved the enrolment ratio in schools to 96 per cent, the drop out ratio continues to be high. The critical year appears to be transition from class VIII to class IX. In order to arrest the drop out ratio and encourage students to continue their education beyond class VIII, I propose to introduce a National Means-cum-Merit Scholarship Scheme. Selection will be made through a national test from among students who have passed class VIII. Each student will be given Rs.6,000 per year for study in classes IX, X, XI and XII. I propose that 100,000 scholarships may be awarded every year. In order to fund this programme, I intend to create a corpus fund of Rs.750 crore this year, and add a like amount to the fund every year over the next three years. Accordingly, a sum of Rs.750 crore will be placed with the State Bank of India, and the yield from the fund will be used for awarding the scholarships.
I like the above provision, especially the number of scholarships and the “means” aspect of it. What exactly the “means” cut-off would be remains to be seen. If this scholarship allows poor motivated students to chose the school of their choice then it will be similar to the voucher system used in Michigan. One worry is that the poor students will use the scholarship money for their family expenses and not for their educational expenses. I would also suggest that the number of scholarships be increased by at least 10% every year and the corresponding amout added to the corpus every year. Besides, private donations to the corpus should be encouraged and as the corpus grows the number of scholarships should grow.
2 comments February 28th, 2007
In the 2007-08 budget there is no line item budget for NISER. Thats probably because NISER is yet to be approved by the cabinet. However, there is a significant increase in the budget of Institute of Physics and in page 5 item 9.04 it is mentioned that “the responsibility of setting up NISER at Bhubaneswar is entrusted to IOP.”
IOP’s budget (item 9.04, page 1) in 2006-07 was 4.96+9 = 13.6 crores. Its budget in 2007-08 is 32.75 + 7 = 39.5 crores. It can be safely assumed that a major chunk of the additional 25.9 crores is towards the NISER expenses. (Note that there are huge increases in the budget of couple of other institutes too. This includes Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad and Institute of Plasma research, Gandhinagar.)
In the 2006-07 budget for IISERs in Pune and Kolkata (item 70) there was a total of 50 crores which was revised to 20 crores. This line item does not have numbers for 2007-08. There is another line item (item 76) on IISER with 125 crores for the 5 IISERs: the established ones in Pune and Kolkata and the 3 proposed IISERs in Bhopal, Trivendrum and Mohali, Punjab.
Thus the budget meant for NISER compares favourably with the IISER budgets.
February 28th, 2007
Ravenshaw University now has UGC approval. It was only in November 2006 that it got approval from the Orissa assembly. Today’s Pioneer reports that it received UGC approval on Febriary 6th. It is now listed in the UGC website of universities in Orissa. Now it awaits the more important status of “Funded by UGC”.
UCE Burla, about which we discussed earlier in December, must be put on a similar path. It must ape BESU (Bengal Engineering and Science University) and CUSAT (Cochin University of Science and Technology) both of which are state universities and have the “Funded by UGC” status. See the UGC West Bengal and Kerala pages here and here respectively. In their attempt to improve UCE Burla, efforts are being made for it to get deemed university status. I think they should just go for a state university status and then go all out to get the “Funded by UGC” status. They should send a delegation to BESU and CUSAT to learn some of the secrets of their success.
2 comments February 26th, 2007
For some time there has been discussion that Orissa government should formulate a policy of going from mineral resources to human resources. I.e., it must cajole the various mineral based industries (steel plants, aluminium plants, coal fields etc.) in Orissa to invest in the human resource development of Orissa. So far except the announced Vedanta University, and 13 crores donated by the Tatas towards the Institute of Mathematics, the others have at most contributed small amounts towards ITI type trade schools. In this regards the GOI public sectors in Orissa have not done much.
Now Orissa must take a quick lesson from Jharkhand. Today’s Telegraph reports that Bokaro steel plant has agreed to establish an engineering college as well as a medical college in Bokaro.
Continue Reading 2 comments February 26th, 2007
Picturesque Naraj-Cuttack area where Kathajodi originates from Mahanadi is on the way to become an educational hub. On the Cuttack Island in Abhinav Bidanasi there is a plan for the second campus of Ravenshaw University. On the Naraj side land has been shortlisted for NISER (National Institute of Science Education and Research) as well as the University by Shri Shri Ravishankar.
1 comment February 24th, 2007
Some notes have been prepared on the IIT shifting issue. (word, pdf)
Please distribute it to appropriate people, especially lawmakers (MPs, MLAs) and journalists.
1 comment February 23rd, 2007
Business standard has an article on Manipal’s plan for Orissa. Thanks to Jitu Mishra for the tip.
February 23rd, 2007
Following is a message from Agami Orissa. Chitta
Dear Friends,
A preparotory meeting has been convened, for the burning issue of IIT in Orissa, on 26th afternoon ( 3pm to 5pm) at Faculty Club, VaniVihar. All members and also other interested persons, not belonging to Agami Odisha but strongly feel Orissa has been cheated in IIT/IIEST issue, may participate in the meeting.
Continue Reading 3 comments February 19th, 2007
The union HRD secretary visited Orissa on Feb 6th 2007 and confirmed that there will be no IIT in Orissa this time around. There are strong reactions to this statement. The CM Naveen Patnaik calls this unfortunate. Brajakishore Sahu writes a hard hitting article on this in Dharitri (page1, page2, page3, page4, page5, page6). Orissatv.com has an article and also has a video clip showing the CM’s reaction.
For up to date detailed coverage on this, please visit http://iitorissa.org.
February 19th, 2007
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