Details of this scolarship is in this document. Following are some excerpts.
Title of Scheme: “Maulana Azad National Scholarship Schemeâ€
Objective of the Scheme: To recognize, promote and assist meritorious Girl
students belonging to national Minorities who can not continue their
education without financial support.
Purpose of Scholarship: Sholarship will be admissible for expenditure on Payment of School/College Fee, purchase of syllabus books, purchase of stationery/equipments required for the course & payment of Boarding/Lodging charges.
May 19th, 2007
May 13th, 2007
Earlier we wrote about how Bokaro Steel Plant has agreed to set up an engineering college and a medical college in Jharkhand and urged our CM to pursue with RSP and other public and private sector metals and mines companies.
Today in Business Standard there is news that Central Coalfields has also agreed to set up an engineering college in Jharkhand. (Thanks to Deba Nayak for writing about it in the ornet.)
Orissa government must go after all the mining and metal related comapnies, be they public sector or private sector and urge them to do the same. The central public sectors in Orissa include NALCO, SAIL RSP, MCL, CIL and NTPC. We will write about the private sector in another positing.
May 13th, 2007
FAEA, the Foundation for academic excellence and access offers scholarships for socially and economically disadvantaged students. It has an impressive governing council. Its objective as described in its web pages are:
to secure social justice for students belonging to socially and economically disadvantaged sections of the society. It emphasizes equality of opportunity to help students become what they would like to be so that they have a choice and are not dictated by economic and social necessity. It enables economically and socially disadvantaged students to study in the institutions, which provide academic excellence, access to structures of power and economic opportunity.
Its web page and students manual give more details on its scholarship program.
May 12th, 2007
PIB reports about 667 fellowships annually for tribal (ST) students to pursue M.Phil and Ph.D. The avertisement for these fellowships and the application form are available at a UGC site. The deatils of this fellowship is available at another UGC site. There are fellowships under the same scheme for SC students also.
May 7th, 2007
New Indian Express reports that with seven more Ekalabya Schools of Orissa starting +2 science with 60 seats each, now all 10 Ekalabya Schools of Orissa will have +2 Science. I hope all 600 of these students each year get at least into 5 yr integrated MSc, Engineering or Medicine (and avail of ST quotas when necessary). That would be tremendous. Following is an excerpt from the New Indian Express article:
Continue Reading May 6th, 2007
I wrote the following in 1996 as a tribute to my teachers in Bhubaneswar who shaped my career. Although at that time, I had lost touch with many of those teachers, since then I have reconnected with some of them and at times will write about them.
Continue Reading May 2nd, 2007
Samaja reports that the Orissa government has handed over 25 acres of land to Balaji Trust for establishing a private medical college in Balangir. Earlier the Orissa government had signed an mou with them.
April 26th, 2007
Indian Express reports (thanks to Debendra Mohapatra for the tip on this) that the Department of Science and Technology of India has decided to offer 10,000 scholarships annually of Rs 1 lakh/year for students joining 5 year integrated M.Sc programs. The scheme was announced by the DST secretary T. Ramasami on April 10th at IISER Pune. It has not yet appeared in the Dept. of Sc. and Tech. website.
At present only few places in India offer such 5 yr M.Sc programs. Some of the places I know of are IISER Pune and Kolkata, NISER Bhubaneswar, IITs, BITs Pilani, Indian School of Mines, University of Mysore, University of Hyderabad, BESU, CUSAT, Pondicherry University, Sastra University, University of Pune, St. Xaviers Calcutta and some NITs.
It has been reported [1,2:ugc,3:kerela] that the UGC has also jumped into the fray in supporting universities and institutions that will have 5 yr integrated M.Sc programs.
This information has been passed on to key people in the Orissa government and they have promised to look into starting such programs in some of the universities and autonomous colleges in Orissa.
April 14th, 2007
Dear Friends:
Its time to convey to the Orissa government that they need to look out for all of Orissa and not just BBSR/CTC/Puri areas.
Following is a draft letter that one can send to the CM (cmo at ori.nic.in) about developing higher education and medical opportunities outside of the BBSR/CTC/Puri area. This is a draft. Please make changes to your liking.
If I missed your favorite location, please add them in your letter.
best regards
Chitta
Continue Reading April 11th, 2007
Dear all: Following is a letter that I have sent to the Chief minister. I would urge others to send a similar letter to cmo@ori.nic.in .
Thanks
Chitta
=========================================
Dear Chief minister:
I recently read that Bokaro steel plant (a unit of SAIL) has agreed with Jharkhand Government to set up an engineering college and medical college in Bokaro.
(See http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070226/asp/jamshedpur/story_7441681.asp)
Continue Reading April 8th, 2007
The news report mentions that the TATAs, Mittal and POSCO are planning to put huge sums of money in the “Corporate Social Responsibility” fund. We suggest that the Orissa government start a formal policy of “From mineral resources to Human resources” and require that any company using Orissa minerals should contribute to the HRD develpment of Orissa. Depending on the size of the minerals used by the company the contribution could be of the form of making a medical college, an engineering college, several ITIs, science and technology magnet schools etc.
This policy should not be only for new companies or private companies, this should be also applicable for public sector companies and companies that are already in Orissa.
In this regard it has been reported that Bokaro Steel plant (part of SAIL) will be opening a medical school as well as an engineering college in Jharkhand. Why is Rourkela Steel Plant (also part of SAIL) not doing the same in Orissa? Why is Orissa government not approaching them about it. The Orissa government should also approach other public sectors such as NALCO, MCL (Mahanadi Coal Fields), and NTPC as well as its own OMC (Orissa mining corporation). These biggies should open a medical college each near their operational area and not in Bhubaneswar.
We must write to Orissa CM about this. I will come up with a draft letter in a few days.
April 8th, 2007
(Editor’s comment: Please read more about the noble RMTS effort and consider contributing to it.)
Dear Friends: Please read the mail below from Dr. Swadheen Pattanayak and rejoice. It has been long 4 years but it seems only the other day when the list of 30 students selected from 1st RMTS(2003) was forwarded by Swadheen, to me in December 2003. Himalaya was second of thirty in the list of merit.
Continue Reading March 24th, 2007
A press release mentions that the UPA government has opened 72 Ekalavya Vidyalayas in tribal areas across India. 10 of those are in Orissa. Each is constructed using an one time allocation of 250 lakhs towards school building, hostels, teachers’ quarters, library, laboratory etc. An annual grant of 30 lakhs is then given to run the school.
March 14th, 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.
February 28th, 2007
Tathya.in has an article titled “Kalahandi Crying for Center of Higher Learning” which reports on Dr. Digambara Patra’s concerns. Following are some paragraphs from Dr. Patra’s recent mail to a newsgroup.
… Instead of looking at 30 districts, first the state government should focus on 13 undivided districts as there are still imbalances (I had made a table earlier on this
Continue Reading February 8th, 2007
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