Odisha HRD

PM’s Independence day speech: 30 new central universities, 8 new IITs, 7 new IIMs

Following are the relevant excerpts from the Prime Minister’s independence day speech(TOI) (Hindu)(PIB)

Towards this end, our Government has decided to invest in setting up good quality schools across the country. We will support 6,000 new high quality schools — one in every block of the country. Each such school will set standards of excellence for other schools in the area.

As our primary education programmes achieve a degree of success, there is growing demand for secondary schools and colleges. We are committed to universalizing secondary education. An extensive programme for this is being finalized.

We will also ensure that adequate numbers of colleges are set up across the country, especially in districts where enrolment levels are low. We will help States set up colleges in 370 such districts.

The University system, which has been relatively neglected in recent years, is now the focus of our reform and development agenda. We will set up thirty new Central Universities. Every state that does not have a central university will now have one.

In order to promote science and professional education, we are setting up five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, eight new Indian Institutes of Technology, seven new Indian Institutes of Management, and twenty new Indian Institutes of Information Technology. These will generate new educational opportunities for our youth. I am sure that, working together, we can ensure that at least a fifth of our children go to college as compared to one-tenth now.

The vast majority of our youth seek skilled employment after schooling. Last year I spoke the need for a Vocational Education Mission. Such a Mission is ready to be launched. We will soon launch a Mission on Vocational Education and Skill Development, through which we will open 1600 new industrial training institutes (ITIs) and polytechnics, 10,000 new vocational schools and 50,000 new Skill Development Centres.

We will ensure that annually, over 100 lakh students get vocational training – which is a four-fold increase from today’s level. We will seek the active help of the private sector in this initiative so that they not only assist in the training but also lend a hand in providing employment opportunities.

We should seek not just functional literacy, but good quality education – education that is affordable, accessible, equitable – and available to every boy and girl who seeks to study. For the needy we will provide more scholarships.

I wish to see a revolution in the field of modern education in the next few years. It is my fervent desire that India becomes a fully educated, modern, progressive nation. From this historic Red Fort, I would like this message to go to every corner of India – we will make India a nation of educated people, of skilled people, of creative people.

This is the first time eight new IITs have been formally and officially mentioned. Three of these were previously announced to be in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. So it would be a shame if Orissa does not get one of the remaining five.

1 comment August 15th, 2007

KISS students represent India in a under-14 International school rugby tournament

Following are excerpts from a report in The Hindu:

… Surmounting heavy odds, the well-trained rugby team of the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) was now ready to take on the world, representing India at an under-14 international school rugby tournament in London.

For the products of the country’s largest school for tribal communities, rugby was just the right tool to unleash their collective talent. Hitherto dismissed to their miserable tribal hinterland, the students had a mission: to prove their mettle to a world cynically ignorant of the tribal life, their dreams and ambitions.

KISS, a sister concern of the KIIT Deemed University, had picked them out of their poverty-stricken families to offer an education, to get them a slice of mainstream life. Nurtured in the residential campus since age six, the team members were now prepared to announce their arrival. London beckoned, so did recognition and fame.

The training

 Behind their collective exuberance was a well-tuned method. Thirty students had been selected from a first list of 56, who underwent rigorous training by a World Rugby Association coach.

The 30 proved their worth at a tournament in Kolkata on July 16, watched closely by their sponsors, the Kolkata Jungle Crows.

The final 12 now await the flight for the big fight on September 24, but not before some fine-tuning by an English coach, Paul Walsh, and two coaches from the Kolkata Rugby Association.

“We are confident of beating the other teams.” This remark by the KISS Rugby team captain to a visiting media team from Bangalore, had a solidity built on months of disciplined training. “From 6 a.m. to 7.30 a.m., 4 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., we are at it every day,” explained the team’s school coach, Manash Jena.

The team

 Tag Rugby was the team’s first brush with the game, 18 months ago. Graduating to full rugby in quick time, the team captained by Bikash Chandra Murmu practised hard. Any tribe-based differences forgotten, the students were now part of one team. It had Chitta Ranjan Mumu and Babula Malka, Raj Kishore Murmu and Bukai Hansda, Niranjan Biswal, Hadi Dhangada Majhi, Sahadev Majhi, Gauranga Jamuda, Narsingh Kerai, Barial Beshra and Ganesh Hembram. Represented were the tribes Banda, Santal, Bathudi, Kandha and Kolha, whose people were otherwise dismissed to the poor rural backyard of Orissa.

The vision

 Tribal people make up 23.13 per cent of Orissa’s population. It needed a body as systematic as KISS to pull them out of obscurity and neglect.

It was eventually left to philanthropist and Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) founder Achyutananda Samanta to make that critical difference through KISS. …

2 comments August 15th, 2007

ASBM to start course on Banking, Insurance and Financial Servive Management

Following are some excerpts from a Business standrad report on this.

Asian School of Business Management (ASBM), one of the premier business schools of Orissa today a Post-graduate Programme in Banking, Insurance and Financial Services Management (PGPBIFSM).

The programmed is tailored to meet manpower requirement in these sectors.  …

The director of ASBM Biswajit Patnaik said the PGPBIFSM course aims to bring appropriate balancing of banking, insurance and financial services. It is the only B-school focussing on the sectoral programmes, he claimed.

The school had launched the retail programme management earlier.

The new course contents 90 hours of elective study and 150 hours of soft skill development along with the foundation courses, specialisation and super specialisation programmes.

August 15th, 2007