Following is from Dharitri.
Note that OUAT has had a Department of Forestry since 1987. Following are excerpts from a report in the Telegraph about this new college.
… Apart from the usual four-year graduate programme in forestry, the college has announced PG programmes in agro-forestry, forest products, environment management, plant genetic improvement and forest business management for the current academic year 2010-11.
Each course has six seats with four reserved for candidates from Orissa.
Two seats would be offered to students from other states and abroad.
… Addressing mediapersons here today, Prof Rabindra Kumar Patnaik said: “With the launch of these PG programmes, more students will get opportunities to work in sectors such as afforestation drives, reclamation of land after mining, research positions in forestry. The demand for such students is quite good outside India.â€
The College of Forestry, … has become the 16th institute in the country to have PG programmes on the subject.
“It has also faculties for five departments like silviculture and agro-forestry, forest products and utilisation, forest biology and tree improvement, natural resource management and forest policy and law,’’ he said.
“Apart from academics and creating quality human resources in forestry, this newly-opened College of Forestry will address many research issues on forestry, livelihood, natural resource management (NRM), tree improvement and problems of climate change. It will also address many policy issues on forestry and environment,’’ he added.
… PG programme in forestry is not offered anywhere else in the eastern part of India,†he said.
September 20th, 2010
Recall from https://www.orissalinks.com/archives/5524 where we reported the following:
… The NIC will also have innovation centres in universities and innovation clusters to create regional hubs….
“Those clusters will be selected where there is a minimum critical mass of industries of some kind and then we will give them an innovation toolkit. The toolkit will be a set of guidelines on how to innovate. Moreover, we are also selecting 20 universities, besides the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) where we can do seed innovation,” he said.
Prof Sanjay Dhande, IIT Kanpur director, who is a member of the Council, is in the process of identifying the universities which will then be given the innovation toolkit to be able to connect with industry.
We had contacted the Govt. of Odisha as well as the VCs of VSSUT and Sambalpur University about it. (I think some other people and groups may have done something similar too.)
The Government of Odisha has now asked VSSUT Burla to prepare a proposal in response to it. This is a good move. However, I think a joint proposal from VSSUT and Sambalpur University may be stronger and this is important if Prof. Dhande goes strictly by merit (without taking state representation – one from each major state — into account). Following is from Samaja. (The part in red is confusing. The reporter did not understand the difference between "Innovation University" and "universities where GOI will seed innovation".)
September 18th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.
Principal of Food Craft Institute (FCI) Chandrakant Mahapatra said: “If things work out as planned, Balangir will soon have the second government-funded institute of hotel management in the state after Bhubaneswar. The union government is keen to upgrade the Food Craft Institute in Balangir into an institute of hotel management.”
Mahapatra said to facilitate the process, the Centre had demanded transfer of FCI land to the tourism department. It also demanded that FCI be re-registered as an hotel management institute under the Society Registration Act. “We are working on the two criteria. The land transfer process has been expedited. I am going to Cuttack today for registration related work,” he told The Telegraph.
He further said that the institute would be known as State Institute of Hotel Management (SIHM) and the Centre has assured to spend Rs 12 crore on infrastructure.
“The Centre will provide the infrastructure and the state government will have expenses for running the institute. The institute will offer BSc degree course in hospitality and hotel administration (HHA) and students will have to take an all-India entrance test to get admission,” Mahapatra said.
September 15th, 2010
Following are excerpts from a report in Telegraph about this institute and a new course it will offer.
A new course on craft design has been introduced at the State Institute for Development of Arts and Crafts (Sidac). The nine-month certificate course was launched in collaboration with National Institute for Design (NID), Ahmedabad. The objective of the course is to design contemporary products with an ethnic touch.
Dilip Panda, training in-charge of Sidac … Panda added that the new course was introduced after designing institutes like NID and National Institute of Fashion and Technology (Nift) conducted a series of design development programmes.
“Using traditional skills and modern design inputs, the institutes came up with more market and export-oriented products. This is also a good oppurtunity for budding talents to upgrade their skills and prosper as artisans and craftsmen,” said Panda.
The first batch comprising 20 students started classes last week.
Sunil Kumar Sahoo, who has completed a two-year training in Patachitra, has enrolled for the course. He said: “Traditional art and craft have to evolve to suit the needs and tastes of customers. In this course, we will be trained in creating new designs and product mixing. For example, Patachitra on terracotta or stone will give a brand new touch to traditional products.”
Panda said he was hopeful that the students would be able to develop a designer bent of mind with the help of skilled trainers. “We have five in-house faculty members from renowned designing institutes for teaching the core subjects. The visiting faculties would take care of specialised subjects like product photography and use of computers in design,” added Panda.
For the first year, the course is being run on an experimental basis for which the students are exempt from paying any fees. …
September 15th, 2010
Following is page 3 of the article at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/10sep2010/577.pdf by K. P. Raghuraman, Romesh Chander and Giridhar Madras of Indian Institute of Science. (Thanks to Abi for the pointer.)
I confirmed from one of the authors that the highlighted institute is indeed the one from Bhubaneswar. I was also told that many their publications are the result of mega-collaborations.
The above is a great achievement for Institute of Physics. Especially since they have a small faculty of 19 and have a comparatively smaller overall budget. Kudos to them for their achievements.
September 15th, 2010
Vizag is getting antsy about the delay in the establishment of one of the aiming to be "world class" universities in that city. Deccan Chronicle reports on this issue. Following is an excerpt.
The much-touted “world-class university” in Visakhapatnam has failed to take off though it has been more than two years since the Centre announced the project.
In 2008, the Union HRD ministry had announced plans of 14 “world-class universities” across the country, of which one was allotted to Andhra Pradesh. The state government had also come forward and offered around 800 acre in Visakhapatnam to set up the varsity.
Though the university was later renamed by the Centre as “Innovation University”, officials of the higher education department are clueless about when the actual works will begin.
The state government had identified four sites in Vizag for the purpose and submitted a proposal to UMHRD for clearance. However, there has been no response from the Centre till now.
Sources in the department of higher education said the Centre’s stand about setting up the “Innovation Universities” has changed and that’s the reason for the delay.
… However, the Union minister of state for HRD, Ms D. Purandeswari said the world-class university would be a reality in Vizag in a year. “It is still being discussed how a world-class university should be. So, there is some delay. I cannot give an exact time-frame but in a year a world-class university would definitely be a reality in Visakhapatnam,’’ she said.
Note that Purandeswari is the sitting MP from Vizag.
It should be noted that a draft bill of the Universities for Innovation was circulated and discussed recently. It is expected that a revised version of it may be introduced in the parliament in the winter session. I guess following that starting from August 2011 at least a few of these universities will start operation. The 14 locations that were announced were: Amritsar, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Gandhinagar, Guwahati, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mysore, NOIDA-Delhi, Patna, Pune and Vizag. There will be minor funding for these universities during this five year plan. The major funding will come during the 12th plan that starts from 2012.
September 14th, 2010
Following is an updated version of http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowOriyaColumn.asp?id=21178 with permission from the author Rinkesh Pati.
It’s not been long since the major automobile giant Tata moved out of West Bengal and relocated its new Nano plant to Gujarat after facing stiff opposition from the Trinamool congress party in the Bengal state. Whatever be the stand of the Trinamool party on this matter, the final outcome was that West Bengal lost a great opportunity of aggrandizing its industrial growth that could have brought several benefits to the Singur locality and the state in terms of jobs, per capita income, infrastructure development, etc. The vested interests of few political leaders forced the Tata company to ultimately move out of the state and look for other favored locations. I fear Orissa doesn’t face the same fate with the Vedanta University project.
It is quite obvious that whenever a new industry or any other major construction is going to be set up in a place, there will be issues like displacement, rehabilitation, fertile land acquisition, environmental issues, and concerns of indigenous tribal communities and farmers, followed by opposition to such developments. This is quite natural and it happens everywhere. But these are not issues which cannot be addressed and resolved amicably. The real problem arises when political parties jump into the matter and leave no stone unturned to gain every bit of political mileage out of the issue. They mislead innocent villagers with false stories and try to give them an impression that the development work is going to affect the area’s cultural values and environment.
Their stories may be partially true, but such concerns can be resolved amicably by peaceful and constructive discussions among the concerned parties. In this fight, everyone forgets the bigger picture, i.e. the greater objective behind the development plan. An institution like Vedanta University will definitely change Orissa’s image in the world. Not only will it help Orissa prosper in the field of education and research, it will also bring plenty of opportunities for the state and its people. A big university spreading across 4000 acres of land will bring unimaginable benefits to the economy of Orissa. It will create plenty of job opportunities, scope for new businesses and infrastructure development, and will help improve the living standards of the people of the adjoining localities. This will also help alleviate problems like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy in the state. If Vedanta University turns up the way it has been planned, Orissa will definitely be able to pride for decades and centuries for housing a university of such magnificent stature.
Despite being announced several years back the university project has witnessed only zero progress as it has always been surrounded by controversies. Initially, it was the stiff opposition by the local political parties and the misled villagers who started displaying vehemence against the project staff. Then there were environmental concerns over the proposed project. The project was first granted the environmental nod as well as the CRZ (Coastal Regulatory Zone) clearance by the MoEF (Union Ministry of Environment and Forest) in April this year. However, the clearance was suspended just one month later. Now the MoEF alleges the OCZMA (Orissa Coastal Zone Management Authority) of not producing sufficient information. I am not overruling the possibility of valid environmental concerns, but I believe these concerns can be addressed if all the political parties and government agencies adopt a balanced developmental approach.
My apprehension is that, the continuous hurdles before the university project in Orissa have opened doors of hopes for other states. Chief Ministers of states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have already started wooing the Anil Agarwal Foundation for shifting the project to their states. Other states will very soon line up in the race and will offer guarantee of facilitating favorable environment for the giant project. The irony is that major political parties like Congress and BJP, which are running their governments in AP and Karnataka respectively, have been strongly protesting the Vedanta project in Orissa since the very beginning. If the circumstances in Orissa do not change, Vedanta may one day shift the university to some other state.
My views are not pro-vedanta, they are rather pro-development. This is the need of the time that all political parties rise above politics and take steps forward to ensure that the gridlock created before the university project gets cleared soon. With Bhubaneswar being a fast developing city and an upcoming industrial and educational hub, a gargantuan project like Vedanta University will definitely accelerate the momentum and will help in the progress of the state.
[Writer Rinkesh Kumar Pati, from Bhubaneswar, currently staying in Arkansas, USA, users can contact him by adding comments here.]
September 13th, 2010
September 12th, 2010
Update: IIT Kharagpur and IIT Hyderabad are keen on having medical schools.
Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.
The prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology would now offer courses in medicine with foreign nationals on permanent faculty positions and students from abroad at the post graduate level.
A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of IIT council presided by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday.
The government decided to seek the approval of the Medical Council of India for the course, Sibal told reporters.
The IIT council meeting decided to carry out appropriate amendment in the Institute of Technologies Act to enable the IITs to offer the medicine programme, he added.
"We are making sure that wherever the instruction leads to a degree relating to any branch of medicine, then of course clearances from MCI under the Act will have to be taken," Sibal said.
He, however, said no MCI approval would be required where IITs engage with inter-disciplinary research for the advancement of learning and dissemination of knowledge not leading to a degree or qualification for the practice of medicine.
… The council also decided to enable IITs to recruit foreign faculties which should not be more than 10 per cent of the total faculty strength.
"In principle, we agreed that IITs are entitled to recruiting foreign faculties", Sibal said adding they will set up a mechanism with the Home Ministry to ensure there is no "hiccup in the process and there is easy exit and entry of people" as faculties.
Some other issues like bringing amendments to the Indian Citizenship Act will also have to be looked into, he said.
… Sibal said the meeting also agreed in principle to admit up to 25 per cent foreign students at the post graduate level on a "supernumerary basis without affecting the present admission norms for Indian students".
On medical schools at IIT, the main bone of contention was that IITs would have preferred that the medical schools in IITs do not have to get approval from the Medical Council of India. This would have been similar to them not needing approval from AICTE for their engineering programs. But the health ministry would not agree to that. So now the IITs are ready to accept MCI authority over their medical schools. This solves the problem.
September 10th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.
Facing a massive shortage of well-qualified teachers, the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have mooted a proposal for hiring foreign nationals as permanent faculty members.
With one-third teaching positions lying vacant, the proposal as a solution to meet the unprecedented staff crunch is expected to be deliberated at the next IIT council meeting on Friday, IIT officials said.
The move, if accepted, would enable the premier engineering and technology institutes to appoint foreign teachers on permanent positions, up to 10 per cent of the faculty strength.
I hope this proposal by the IITs is approved and the limit is increased from the proposed 10%.
Most universities in US, Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore etc. are able to hire foreign faculty in permanent positions. The inability of IITs and other Indian institutions to do that hurts them. This will also serve as an experiment to see how attractive the salary offered by the IITs is to foreign faculty that are not of Indian origin. The data and experience gathered from this experiment will be useful for the universities of innovation which are supposed to be unconstrained by the government in terms of salary offered to its faculty. The concept note of these universities already talked about allowing hiring of foreign faculty.
September 9th, 2010
Following is from a report in Indian Express.
As Anil Agarwal-owned Vedanta Resources battles to save its 1 MTPA alumina refinery project at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district from the axe of Ministry of Environment and Forests, the much-vaunted Vedanta University project in Puri is for all practical purposes a closed chapter.
The proposed Rs 150 billion university seemed futuristic and sounded too-good-to-be-true when Agarwal signed the MoU in 2006 with the Orissa government. It was claimed that when completed the world-class multi-disciplinary university over an area of 6,800 acres on Puri-Konark marine drive would be at par with Harvard and Oxford universities. The university, when fully operational, was to have an intake of 100,000 students with cutting-edge research facility in 95 academic disciplines. But local opposition, problems over land acquisition and the MoEF’s spanners seem to have taken the wind out of its sail.
“The project is as good as over,” said a Vedanta official. The company’s officials confirmed that Vedanta has shifted 26 of its 30 staff at the site to other locations and all work has been put on halt.
Though the Anil Agarwal Foundation (a registered not-for-profit entity controlled by members of the Agarwal family) had acquired 4,500 acres of the 6,892 acres allotted to it on paper, it was unable to take physical possession of the land due to local opposition. Even the initial plan to build a 500-bed super-speciality hospital at the site met with hostility, the official added.
The first bottleneck for the project came in March this year when Orissa Lok Pal Justice P K Patra recommended a moratorium on the project till the Foundation complied with legal provisions pointed out by the Ministry of Company Affairs for conversion of its status from private to public company. The Lok Pal said the Foundation was a private company and thus the state government can’t acquire any land for it.
Acting on a petition of trade union leader Dwarika Mohan Mishra, the Lok Pal held that Land Acquisition Act and Section 16 of Shri Jagannath Temple Act, 1954 have been violated by the government. The Lok Pal asked the Chief Minister to appoint a competent authority to investigate and inquire into the land deal and take appropriate action against the erring persons.
The university project faced another big hurdle when the MoEF on May 11 kept the conditional environmental and Coastal Regulatory Zone clearance in abeyance over allegations of irregularities, illegal and unlawful deeds by the Foundation.
With the project facing so many bottlenecks, Vedanta officials said the project may go to Andhra Pradesh or Karnataka. Both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have sent feelers to Agarwal assuring him all support.
September 8th, 2010
Following is from a report from Business Standard (via sify.com).
… After rejection of the Stage-II forest clearance for proposed bauxite mining by Vedanta Aluminium Limited (VAL), the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) appears to have trained its guns on the proposed Vedanta University Project (VUP) in the state.
The MoEF, which had suspended the environmental clearance for the university project in May this year over the issues pertaining to the alleged violations of Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) norms, has sought additional information and clarification from the state government.
In a letter to the state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik datd August 26, the Union minister for environment and forest Jairam Ramesh has stated that the information furnished by the Orissa Coastal Zone Management Authority (OCZMA) is not adequate and more information needs to be submitted.
Ramesh has stated in the letter that OCZMA has not furnished the requisite information despite the reminder of the ministry last month.
The MoEF can place the VUP project before the Expert Appraisal Committee only after the receipt of the said information.
Ramesh has also stated that he has received allegations of violations of CRZ norms at the VUP site from MPs, MLAs and even a member of the technical committee of the OCZMA.
It may be noted that the MoEF had granted the environmental nod as well as CRZ clearance for the VUP in April this year.
The VUP to be developed by the Anil Agarwal Foundation has been envisioned to be a multi-disciplinary university of international standards on the Puri-Konark marine drive at an investment of Rs 5000 crore.
The university which will have an intake of 100,000 students will be spread over 6892 acres with a total construction area of 273.68 lakh sq metres.
The university will have provision for quality higher education and cutting-edge research facility in 95 academic disciplines.
Within the planned construction area of the university project, 1500 acres will be devoted to academic block, 1200 acres will be set aside for R&D centre and research work while 1092 acres will be earmarked for green belt and open spaces.
Besides, a township will be built over 2100 acres for the faculty and other staff of the university.
A sports complex spread over 100 acres and an exhibition centre on 100 acres of land are also set to come up as a part of the project.
September 7th, 2010
Following are excerpts from a report in University World News.
… "These universities will focus a lot on research and development and industry-academia collaboration. Besides the conventional streams of knowledge, research and development in emerging areas like global warming, food security, agriculture and community health will get prime focus," Sibal said after the consultation on 28 August with vice-chancellors, academics and business and industry organisations.
Universities themselves will decide their area of focus. However, Sibal said, they "should essentially identify areas having a direct bearing on the community."
Apart from the 14 public universities to be set up under the bill, private players could set up more institutions within the prescribed framework.
The new universities will be allowed to admit half their students from abroad, teach foreign curricula and hire teachers and even vice-chancellors who are foreign nationals, according to a draft law circulated by the government.
"Every university of innovation shall provide an ambience of learning that has an international flavour," states the Universities for Innovation Bill 2010, though "not less than half" the students should be Indian nationals".
The universities will not come under the purview of the University Grants Commission, which regulates most universities in India. The UGC caps the enrolment of foreign nationals at 15%.
Instead they will be set up with private help and be self-regulated, with half their board members being independent experts of academic eminence. They will also be free to set up more than one campus, including outside India.
Some of the universities will be set up in collaboration with leading American and British universities. Yale University, for instance, is already in talks with the education ministry and wants to develop leadership programmes for the new universities.
Innovation universities will be allowed to teach both Indian and foreign curricula simultaneously, and issue degrees that need not comply with established Indian norms.
The bill allows each innovation university to frame its own policy to attract faculty members from India and abroad and hire them directly, offering wages and perks that it deems fit. Currently, the government clears all faculty appointments and decides the salary structure of teachers in government and government-aided institutions.
There was overwhelming support for more flexibility in appointing faculty members. "The heart of this bill is innovation. We want to give the required freedom for innovation and not stifle promoters with regulations like appointing vice-chancellors through collegiums," said Sibal, referring to the current system of selection university heads.
Lifting an existing 20% cap on appointing professors by invitation was also discussed. In the meeting "stakeholders asked to do away with the rule", Sibal said. A senior academic argued: "Why limit it to 20%? Let the innovation universities decide."
A key suggestion during the consultation was that since the universities will be innovative in nature, the bill should clearly define the outcomes it plans to achieve. Administrative structure, too, figured prominently in the discussion.
Sibal said most of the suggestions that came up in the consultation were likely to be incorporated in the final draft of the bill, which will probably be introduced into parliament during the winter session.
Most of the points above have been covered in earlier articles. The only new point here is that these universities will be free to have multiple campuses. This is significant. For the one in Bhubaneswar, the government should allocate land in multiple locations inside Odisha (some far from Bhubaneswar), perhaps from the beginning itself.
September 6th, 2010
The following were obtained from various sources. I don’t vouch for their 100% correctness. Please use them at your own risk.
September 2nd, 2010
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