Odisha HRD

CSIR Post Graduate Research Program in Engineering – 10 seats at IMMT Bhubaneswar

April 26th, 2010

National Institute of Open Schooling

Its webs site is http://www.nios.ac.in/. Following is information from that page.

The National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) formerly known as National Open School (NOS) was established in November,1989 as an autonomous organisation in pursuance of National Policy on Education 1986 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development(MHRD), Government of India. NIOS is providing a number of Vocational, Life Enrichment and community oriented courses besides General and Academic Courses at Secondary and Senior Secondary level. It also offers Elementary level Courses for 14+ age group through its Open Basic Education Programmes (OBE).Government of India through a gazette notification vested NIOS with the authority to examine and certify learners registered with it upto pre degree level courses.

Academic programs it offers are given in the page http://www.nios.ac.in/AcadPC.htm. They are:

Open Basic Education: Open Basic Education (OBE) Programme providing a elementary education at three levels, for school drop-outs and neo-literates, out of              school learners through Accredited Agencies.

– Secondary Course equivalent to Class X
 

– Senior Secondary Course equivalent to class XII

– Vocational Education

NIOS has established an International Centre for Training in Open Schooling (ICTOS)

Training Packages for ODL functionaries

 NIOS HQ is in NOIDA. It has regional centers in Delhi, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Pune, Chandigarh, Kolkata (with a subcenter in Bhubaneswar), Patna, Kochi, Jaipur, Bhopal, Allahabad (with a sub-center in Dehradun).

It has study centers across the country and across Orissa. The list is available at http://www.nos.org/nosresults/nos/searchai.html.

Odisha should push for having a regional center.

April 25th, 2010

Ali Yavar Jung National Institute For The Hearing Handicapped (AYJNIHH) has a Training Center for Teachers of the Deaf near Bhubaneswar

The page http://www.ayjnihh.nic.in/aw/centers.html lists the 5 centers of this institute with HQ in Mumbai. Besides Bhubaneswar, the other centers are at New Delhi, Kolkata, Secunderabad, Bhopal. The whereabouts of the Bhubaneswar center is:

At – Ogalapada, Post – Janla                    
Dist. Khurda, Orissa  – 752 054
Telephone: 0674 – 2460641
Telefax : -0674-2460641
E-mail : tctdbbsr@yahoo.com

It offers the following two diploma programs in Bhubaneswar. More details are available at the page http://www.ayjnihh.nic.in/aw/manpower1.html.

1 comment April 25th, 2010

Why scoff at a cancer hospital built near Raipur by Vedanta, the aluminum corporate, or the proposed Vedanta University in coastal Orissa?

The Outlook article http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265171 by B. G. Verghese counters well the Arundhati Roy type viewpoints. Following are some excerpts.

… Why scoff at a cancer hospital built near Raipur by Vedanta, the aluminum corporate, or the proposed Vedanta University in coastal Orissa? Are these by definition all wicked enterprises? Arundhati extols the joys of sleeping in her private open-air jungle suite in a “thousand-star hotel”. And then she meets the doctor, obviously a dedicated soul, who serves this tribal area. The health conditions in Dandakaranya he describes make her “blood run cold”. It’s a terrible tale of chronic anaemia, TB, kwashiorkor (extreme malnutrition), malaria, severe eye and ear infections…. “There are no clinics, no doctors, no medicines” in this beautiful place for these beautiful people. (The word “beautiful” appears like a recurring decimal). So where do we begin? By burning down the Vedanta hospital?

Are these corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions merely to be seen as bribes to fulfil Arundhati’s prophecy that tribal people will be moved to make way for steel plants, aluminum refineries, mines and dams. Yes, there will be land acquisition and displacement—that is the story of civilisation; but there will also be resettlement, compensation and training for new vocations. Admittedly, this has not always been done wisely or well. But times are changing. New legal frameworks, better norms, closer monitoring, improved R&R and livelihood packages have continuously been put in place.  

… The country needs to lift itself out of poverty and create 12 million additional jobs every year to cope with the population bulge. This requires wherewithal—financial, human, natural resources, managerial, marketing and technological. The vast bulk of the country’s mineral resources and headwaters of major rivers are located in Fifth Schedule areas, where tribal people live. Are these not to be exploited? The corporate world, both public and private, has been dubbed predator—the Maoists have repeatedly attacked the National Mineral Development Corporation in Chhattisgarh. However, the tribals themselves are incapable of working the minerals, apart from scratching the surface. Yet they have a vital stake in the land, forests and environment and must be made stakeholders and partners and trained for ever higher levels of participation. Unfortunately, every effort has been made to stall any kind of development.

There is much virtue in translating Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship in a new and evolving idiom of CSR to which corporates, the state and courts have variously given expression. The new deals being worked out by the POSCOs, Vedantas, Tatas, Mittals and others are greatly in advance of what was on offer even five years ago. These packages and the legal framework around them will keep improving too. India’s diversity defies “one size fits all” solutions; it is in variety and experimentation that best practices will keep emerging.

The corporates may have something to answer for too. Fly-by-night operators are part of the problem but the more responsible entities are becoming part of the solution as huge long-term stakeholders in the enterprises, people and environment they work in. They command the resources, manpower, technology and organisation to deliver. Various partnerships involving community and area development can be forged. This is happening. ‘People’s Tribunals’ keep mouthing yesterday’s tired slogans. They do not see tomorrow; may be they even fear it.

April 25th, 2010

What really happened at Silicon Institute of Technology in Bhubaneswar on Thursday night?

Update: Apparently a student’s version is at http://whackedoutbrain.blogspot.com/2010/04/neglected-by-college-raped-by-media.html.

We have no way of verifying if the poster is a Silicon student or not. His account seems believable and the comments there suggests that other students agree with the poster.

In recent years, especially after KIIT and ITER became deemed universities, Silicon Institute of Technology in Bhubaneswar has been the top choice of students among the private engineering colleges of Odisha. 

On Thursday night 22nd of April a student of Silicon died. This incident resulted in a conflict between Silicon authorities and the media and there are multiple versions of the story.

The media versions of the story can be read in:

• http://dailypioneer.com/251317/College-director-detained-after-students-attack-media.html
• http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100424/jsp/nation/story_12374940.jsp
• http://sify.com/news/three-held-for-attacking-scribes-in-bhubaneswar-news-national-kexuEebgiic.html
• http://www.orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=18014
• http://orissadiary.com/CurrentNews.asp?id=18035
• http://www.tathya.in/news/story.asp?sno=4006
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Staff-members-of-silicon-tech-institute-arrested-/articleshow/5854011.cms

On the other hand the Orissa Private Engineering College Association has put the advertisement given below in various newspapers. I do not know who to believe. I hope some of the students who were present during the event can shed light on what really happened.

16 comments April 24th, 2010

Govt. Dr. AC Homoeopathy Medical College Bhubaneswar to be taken over by the center and upgraded

Following is an excerpt from the PIB http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=60830.

List of the Colleges, Institutions, Research Centres

 proposed to be established

 

ï‚·        The Central Government has approved following 3 new Institutions for establishment:

1.      All India Institute of Ayurveda, New Delhi

2.      North Eastern Institute of Folk Medicine, Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh

3.      North Eastern Institute of Ayurved& Homoeopathy, Shillong, Meghalaya

ï‚·        The Central Government has proposed to take over and upgrade following 9 State Government colleges:

1.      Institute of Post Graduate Teaching & Research in Ayurveda, Jamnagar (Gujarat).

2.      Government Ayurvedic College, Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala).

3.      Govt. R.A. Poddar Ayurvedic College, Worli, Mumbai.

4.      Government Ayurvedic College, Patna (Bihar).

5.      Rajiv Gandhi Govt. PG Ayurveda College, Paprola (Himachal Pradesh).

6.      Government Ayurvedic College, Guwahati (Assam).

7.      Govt. Ayurveda & Unani Tibbiya College, Karol Bagh, New Delhi.

8.      Govt. Dr. AC Homoeopathy Medical College, Bhubaneshwar (Orrisa).

9.      Govt. Nizamia Tibbi College, Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh).

ï‚·        Establishment of 3 Central Research Institutes (Y&N) in Karnataka, Haryana and Manipur is in progress, after taking over free land from the State Governments

2 comments April 23rd, 2010

Center for Contemporary Music at Ravenshaw: From Dharitri

April 23rd, 2010

Unnamed industrial house in Bhubaneswar setting up a finishing school

For the many engineering graduates lacking the skills to get a job, finishing schools promise to hone their skills and improve their chances in finding a job. One of the well-known finishing school in India is the Raman International Institute of Information Technology (RiiiT) in Karnataka. It claims to be the first finishing school of India. So far there is no finishing school of that kind in Bhubaneswar or Odisha. (Some of the existing engineering colleges do offer professional courses that make students more prepared to find a job.) The following ad from Samaja suggests that there will soon be a finishing school in Bhubaneswar. My guess is that this will be a beginning. Soon many others will join the fray; especially since for a finishing school one does not need approval from AICTE or a university and one can charge fees as per the market.

April 23rd, 2010

Comparing Maharashtra and Odisha in terms of engineering seats

The Maharashtra numbers are from http://www.dte.org.in/degree/statistics/regionwisetotal.asp?inst_type=ENGINEERING. For Odisha I calculated the numbers using 2009 AICTE data. (Thanks to Bagdu for inspiring us to make this comparison.)

Couple of points to note from the above:

• The number of B.Engg seats in Bhubaneswar is not bad in comparison with the much larger cities of Mumbai and Pune.
• The other three metropolitan areas of Odisha mentioned above need to get to the level of at least 5000 seats (if not 10,000 seats) to make them attractive to IT companies.
• The increasing M.Tech seats will help improve the quality of faculty in the engineering colleges.

4 comments April 22nd, 2010

Ravenshaw to have a convention center named “Seven Pillar of Wisdom Center”: Dharitri

April 22nd, 2010

IIT act to be ammended to include medicine; Despite objections by the Health Ministry IIT Kharagpur to start medical school in collaboration with Indian Railways

Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

In a written reply in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, minister of state for HRD D Purandeshwari said the ministry has decided to amend the IIT Act, the law that governs IITs, to include medical science. The health ministry had said that IITs should not be allowed to start conventional courses in medicine.

The amendment, Purandeshwari said, would help IITs to offer programmes bringing together the diverse disciplines of medicine and engineering. Referring to the health ministry’s objection, she said, "However, appreciating the fact that the modern trends in medical education and research in technology and medicine in all the developed and most of the developing countries are seen hand-in-hand, the government proposes to incorporate `medicine’ in the IIT Act."

Purandeswari said the programme would bring the two important disciplines of medicine and engineering together.

… IIT Kharagpur has come up with a concrete proposal in this regard and plans to start a medical college in collaboration with Indian Railways. At a meeting of experts in the health ministry in February this year, it was observed that IITs should start courses on health information technology, biomedical engineering and e-health rather than running a hospital or starting MBBS courses.

There are several lessons that Odisha can draw from this.

• As Purna Mishra suggested in a comment, VSSUT and the VSS Medical College in Burla should combine to form a single university.
• NIT Rourkela and IIT Bhubaneswar should consider adding a medical college as part of the institute; NIT could include the proposed ESI medical college and IIT could include the proposed Railways medical college.

April 22nd, 2010

Some engineering colleges that are in the pipeline

Although last year several engineering colleges in Odisha could not fill their seats, there seems to be several new engineering colleges in the pipeline for this year. The list for the eastern region is here and here. From those lists my guess is that the following are engineering colleges that are being made in Odisha.

• Bhadrak Academy of Technology, Kantabada, Bhubaneswar (by the same people as Bhadrak Institute of Engineering and Technology)
• Bhubaneswar Institute of Industrial Technology
• Capital Engineering College
• Dadhichi College of Engineering
• Hirakud Institute of Engineering & Technology
• Ideal Institute of Engineering (?)
• International Institute of Engineering Technology, Bhubaneswar
• Radhakrishna Institute of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar
• Rayagada Institute of Technology & Management
• Satyananda Institute of Engineering & Technology
• Udaynath College of Science & Technology

There are many other names in the list; but I am not sure if they are in Odisha, West Bengal or Assam. I am pretty sure that the above (except the one marked with a ?) are in Odisha.

1 comment April 21st, 2010

Odisha proposes upgradation of Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (IED) to a national level institute of MSME

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard by Bishnu Das.

The state government, in its proposal, has proposed to convert the existing Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (IED) at Bhubaneswar, a nodal agency of the Orissa government, to a national level institute for MSMEs. The proposed national institute for MSME would be in line with National Institute of Enterprise and Business Development, Noida, National Institute of MSME, at Hyderabad and Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship located at Guwahati. Since the Union government plans to set up three such new centres in the country, the state government intends to cash in on the opportunity. The state government has offered to provide the infrastructure including land belonging to IED for setting up this institute.

1 comment April 20th, 2010

NISWASS Bhubaneswar gets 20 crores from UGC for infrastructure development

Following is from the UGC report http://www.ugc.ac.in/more/commissiondecision/467.pdf (page 8, item 3.1). Thanks to Prof. Pujari for the pointer.

The Commission considered and approved the recommendations of the Expert Committee to the proposal of National Institute of Social Work and Social Sciences (NISWASS), Bhubaneswar (Orissa) for financial assistance for Infrastructural Development and approved one time financial grant of Rs.20.00 crores to the Institute.

The web page of NISWASS is at http://www.niswass.org/. It has the following departments:

• Department of Social Work
• Department of Social Communication
• Department of women’s Empowerment
• Department of social history philosophy and buddhist studies
• Department of human rights education and ambedkar studies
• Department Of Integrated Community Health Care
• Department of disaster preparedness & environment management
• Centre for computer applications and training
• Department of rural management and gandhian studies

Some of the programs it offers are:

• BA and MA in Social Work
• MA in Social Communication
• MA in Rural Management
• Master in Women Studies
• Master in Buddhist Studies

Admission forms are available every year around 15th May.

Some of the features and achievements of NISWASS are:

• It is affiliated to the University of Utkal, Sambalpur and Berhampur in the State of Odisha. The Vice Chancellors of all these Universities happen to be in the Board of Governors of NISWASS.
• It has also been recognized by each of them as an Advanced Research Centre.
  The Institute has already been recognized by the University Grants Commission under Sections 2 (f) and 12 (B) of the UGC Act, 1956. Utkal University and the Government of Odisha separately have recommended the application of NISWASS filed with the University Grants Commission for conferring on NISWASS of a Deemed University.
• As an Institution catering to teaching and training in professional social work courses, NISWASS has been recognized and taken as a member of the Association of Schools of Social Work in India (ASSWI), New Delhi.
• NISWASS has been recognized as a Nodal Centre for the purpose of evaluation and inspections, Family Counseling Centres, etc. by the Central Social Welfare Advisory Board, Govt. of India, New Delhi.
• NISWASS publishes its research reports in the form of books, monographs and handbooks. It also publishes a journal, The Fourth World (bi-annually in English). Its Journal has been registered under the Press and Registration Act and has also obtained the ISSN number.
• Also, its development workers are active in more that ten thousand villages in Orissa and are engaged in carrying out various development works in addition to implementing education, health, skill improvement training, etc. focusing on women, children, disabled and other rural people and urban slums.
• NISWASS has been accepted by CAPART for training of trainers from various NGOs to conduct training of the Social Animators.
• NISWASS has been able to establish two prestigious Chairs for advanced research and training viz. 
  Dr. Ambedkar Chair on Social Work and Shri K.R. Narayanan (Late President of Indian) Chair on Social Communication.
• NISWASS had entered into international collaboration arrangements with the University of Missouri, Columbia (USA), the South Asian Institute (SAI, University of Heidleberg (Germany) and the Free University of Berlin (Germany) in matters of research, publications, faculty visits, and students’ exchange programmes. “Memoranda of Understanding (MOU)” have already been signed with the concerned University authorities. But relationship is active in the case of the Free University of Berlin.

There seems to be a lot of jobs available at NISWASS. See http://www.niswass.org/career_with_niswass.php.

NISWASS is located in Chandrasekharpur, Bhubaneswar.

The only things that I could not find in their web pages are the names of the faculty and researchers working there. The only name I could find was the name of Dr. R. K. Nayak, mentioned as the Founder of NISWASS. 

April 19th, 2010

IIT Bhubaneswar makes some key hires

Update: IIT Bhubaneswar web site is now updated and lists most of the new faculty that have joined.

A key hire that IIT Bhubaneswar recently made is of Prof. S C De Sarkar.

Prof. De Sarkar was the deputy Director at IIT Kharagpur and my teacher (in the Compiler course) when I was doing my B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering. He was the best teacher I encountered during my B.Tech degree. He has had many star Ph.D students including some who have won the Bhatnagar award.

He has joined IIT Bhubaneswar as the Dean of Faculty. In the words of IIT Bhubaneswar director Prof. Chakraborty: "He is now a great strength of IIT Bhubaneswar."

Some of the other highlights releted to recent hires (obtained from the IIT Bhubaneswar web page) are:

• Dr. C.N. Bhende, Asst. Prof. of Electrical Sciences received the best thesis award at Doctoral level from INAE.
• Dr. Sumanta Haldar Assistant Prof. of school of Infrastructure has been adjudged as the best Ph.D. thesis in India in the field of Geotechnical Engineering by the Indian Geotechnical Society.

April 18th, 2010

Vedanta University Project gets environment and CRZ clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests: IANS

Update: Indian express mentions that the clearance from the center comes with several conditions. Following is an excerpt.

In its letter to the Foundation dated April 16, the Ministry cleared the project while setting about 50 conditions. As per the condition, the Foundation has to get necessary permission and no-objection certificate from the Ministry as the project is situated less than 200 metres of Balukhanda reserve forest and wildlife sanctuary. Besides, the Foundation cannot draw ground water, restrict local fishermen from fishing and construct in CRZ area. The MoEF letter also makes it clear that the clearance order can be challenged before the National Environment Appellate Authority within a period of 30 days.

Following is from this IANS report at Indiatalkies:

… ‘The union ministry of environment and forests (MOEF) has granted the environment and CRZ clearances to the Vedanta University project,’ Sasanka Patnaik told IANS. 

‘We received the letter from the ministry today (Saturday),’ he said.

 The Anil Agarwal foundation is promoted by NRI billionaire and chairman of Britain’s Vedanta Resources Anil Agarwal.

 It has proposed to set up a multi-disciplinary Vedanta University over 6,000 acres of land near the Konark-Puri marine drive, some 60 km from here.

 This not-for-profit university, being built on a global scale, has been envisaged as one-of-its-kind institution for quality higher education and cutting-edge research facility in 95 academic disciplines for 100,000 students.

In March 2009 it had received conditional clearance from the state.

3 comments April 17th, 2010