Sunday, July 11, 2010

Possible

It is possible. If we can clock 9% growth in GDP why not similar thing happen in other development index. All that we need is to show our concern for the same. We have the capability of formulating a decent plan, mobilizing resources and executing them. We have smart young Indians taking corporate India to newer glories. This is what they can achieve when they show their empathy for the poor and underdeveloped. From today's economic times.

TRIBAL TUNES
HOW THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED
Tata Steel Helps Families At Kalinganagar Achieve Millennium Goals
Nageshwar Patnaik BHUBANESWAR


THERE is something to cheer for the families displaced by the Tata Steel project at Kalinganagar. These families have achieved zero-dropout rate at elementary school level, sustainable environment, poverty eradication, increase in literacy rate, gender equality and empowerment of women.
The achievers of these challenging Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are not highly educated or extraordinary urban people, but ordinary members of self-help groups (SHGs) residing in rehabilitation colonies at Kalinga Nagar in Orissa’s Jajpur district. Helped by Tata Steel, the self-help groups called Tata Steel Parivars (TSPs) have successfully ensured that all children living in the colony went to school. Tata Steel is setting up a 6-mtpa integrated steel plant at Kalinganagar Industrial Complex.
“The noteworthy achievement of TSPs at Kalinganagar is that those families have achieved the target of 100% elementary education with zero-school dropout rate,” said Sukanta Rout, an educationist, who played a crucial role in motivating the children, mostly tribals, to go to school.
As many as 159 tribal children have been enrolled in the residential schools in Jajpur. Similarly, 50 children have got the opportunity of studying in one of the premier schools of the state — Kalinga Institute of Social Science (KISS) — here. As many as 213 children are studying in schools as day scholars. Simultaneously, there has been a significant jump in literacy levels of the TSPs to 65% in 2010 from 45% in 2005.
Most significantly, there has been an incredible and drastic change in the will power of women in these relocated families. The empowered women community are now selfemployed and are going overboard for what they are doing. They have engaged themselves in poultry farming, gardening, stone carving, saura painting and in setting up small industries like phenyl and pickles.
“A few years earlier, we were quite poor, we did not even have the money to buy food, let alone send our children to school. Now with our own income, we are not only meeting our day-today expenses but also supporting our school and college-going children,” said Jamiti Mahanta, head of an SHG.
While child and maternal health parameters are not encouraging in the country, the SHGs here have achieved zero-infant mortality.
“All we did to reduce the infant mortality rate is that we emphasised on institutional births. Women in advanced stages were taken to hospitals where they delivered healthy babies,” said Sabita Jamuda.
Ms Jamuda, who is the leader of at least 100 SHGs operating in the area, added that due to 100% institutional delivery and regular medical checks-ups, the zero-infant mortality rate target was achieved.
The survey showed that in TSPs, out of the 92 child births last year, only two children were delivered with low weight (less than 2.5 kg). However, no death was reported from those families last year. Among the over 300 babies delivered over the past five years, only one death occurred due to congenital anomaly.
Further, as a measure to combat HIV/AIDS, the self-help groups have taken steps to create awareness taking them to Red Ribbon Express with a proper campaign. This apart, they have developed a green sphere around them through massive plantation, thereby getting closer to the environmental sustainability.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Twisted

...Talent. That was the title of the Indian Express report published on 3rd July where a racket was busted where IIT student caught impersonating. Today The Telegraph reports an engineering student being killed in recruitment rivalry between two private colleges of south. According to the report, the senior students in these colleges get a certain percentage of the capitation fee for every freshers they recruit and for which kidnapping, intimidation, gang war are not uncommon.

Such students are part of the campus community and in minority. The majority of the students need to play an active role to avoid such derailment of the fellow students. Engineering students, in general do not like enforcement of strict disciplines, policing in hostels by authorities. Also this is the transition phase in their life where they learn to own up responsibilities before entering professional life. It will be good to see if they can manage their affair well. This needs self-discipline, accountability on their part on how they run their business and sending out SOS to admin. if they find that their best effort is failing to protect themselves and before such incidents happen. This may help avoid embarrassments like these which not only run individual career/life but also bring disrepute to fellow students, institute, nation - increases tension of guardian, family members and as a whole bring a lot of negativity about campus life which otherwise is the best part of one's life!
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Indian Express :: 03 July 2010

Twisted talent: IITian impersonated others in entrance exam for money

Santosh Singh, Sat Jul 03 2010,

Patna: They entered India’s top engineering colleges and then went about helping others get in — for a price. Police in Patna say they have busted a racket in which enginnering graduates and B.Tech students, including one from IIT Delhi, impersonated aspirants from Bihar, Orissa, Jharkhand, UP and Delhi at entrance exams.

A Patna Police team swooped on Kaushal Kumar, a B.Tech from an Orissa engineering college and the alleged kingpin of the racket, in Bhubaneswar today. Three others — IIT Delhi student Ankur Agrawal, Kalinga Engineering College student Abhinav Anand, and Gopalganj (Bihar) resident Ajay Anand — were arrested from a hotel in Patna on Thursday. Ajay secured the 6,814th rank at the AIEEE this year, allegedly after Ankur appeared for him.

“Now that we have arrested the ringleader Kaushal, we will get to know the full spread of the network, and whether it involves other students from IITs,” Patna SP Manu Maharaj told The Indian Express.

Maharaj said Kaushal ran a placement cell and facilitated engineering admissions, but later switched to getting engineering students to write entrance exams for others. Abhinav ’s job was to scout for talented students willing to impersonate for money.

“Abhinav, who knew Ankur from their days together at coaching institutes in Kota, convinced him to appear for four engineering entrance exams in 2009 and 2010,” Maharaj said. Ankur, he added, cracked exams for three fake candidates: two in 2009, one in 2010.

Gandhi Maidan police station in-charge Inspector Aman Kumar, who arrested Ankur and Abhinav, said Kaushal collected Rs 4 lakh from each “successful” candidate.

“Ankur was likely to get Rs 1 lakh as his share from the deal struck with Ajay Anand. We seized Rs 60 lakh in cash and some photocopies of admission cards,” Inspector Kumar said. Ankur, he said, had come to Patna to collect his money.
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Tech student killed in recruitment rivalry
G.C. SHEKHAR

Chennai, July 5: Rivalry among private institutes to poach each other’s prospective freshers, with college seniors and alumni allegedly paid to act as touts and even kidnappers, has led to a student being beaten to death in Chennai.

Jharkhand boy Nirbhay Kumar Singh, a third-year BTech student and “recruiter” for MGR (Deemed) University, was attacked with clubs by a rival gang of students from Satyabhama (Deemed) University last night, police said. He died of his head injuries today.

Officers said MGR and Satyabhama were among the institutes that paid their current and former students to recruit freshers, who would shell out hefty capitation fees for management quota seats. The rivalry among these groups of recruiters, they said, sometimes led to gang fights over the kidnapping of each other’s freshers.

Nirbhay, 21, had arranged to admit Harshik Singh, a fellow student from Jharkhand, to his university but the rival gang had spirited him away and got him enrolled in Satyabhama, the police said. Nirbhay, son of a railway inspector in Ranchi, had come on a motorbike to the city’s Nilankarai area, looking for Harshik, when he was attacked.

Since there are about 100 private engineering colleges within 70km of Chennai, many of which have been struggling to fill their seats, the competition for freshers is fierce.

The recruitment racket, which mainly involves north Indian students, has become so lucrative that many former students, most of whom have not cleared their college arrears, are now full-time recruiters. They have fanned out to their hometowns and nearby villages scouting for prospective students for Chennai’s engineering colleges.

“We get up to Rs 50,000 per student depending on the capitation fee he pays,” said an ex-student of Satyabhama who lives near his old institute.

Senior students in their third or fourth year are exempted from tuition or hostel fees, instead of being paid money, if they bring in new students, police sources said.

An officer at Nilankarai police station said that freshers “brought” for admission to a particular institute were often kidnapped by gangs from a different college and forcibly enrolled with the latter institute.

“They have safe houses where such abducted students are kept till their admission process is over,” the officer said.

About 10,000 students from Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttaranchal study in three private universities — SRM, Satyabhama and MGR. Another 3,000-odd students from these states are enrolled in 30 private engineering colleges located around Chennai, police sources said.

In February, Vikas Singh, a fourth-year student of Satyabhama, was kidnapped by the rival gang of Sanjeev Singh and confined to a room in Puducherry. Vikas and Sanjeev, both from Bihar, had clashed over recruiting students from their home state.

Later, while Vikas was being brought to Chennai, the car overturned on the highway. Vikas used the mobile of one of his injured captors to call his father, then joint commissioner in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. The father then called the Tamil Nadu police chief, which led to Vikas’s rescue and the racket coming to light.

The managements of the private universities and colleges claim they have nothing to do with the racket.

“Some of the students and their parents, many of them in top government positions in their respective states, spread the word around that any admission from their states can happen only through these student recruiters.

And if the college charges a capitation fee of Rs 4 lakh, these students mark it up as Rs 4.5 lakh and walk away with the extra Rs 50,000,” a placement officer of a private college said.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Abyss

Too disturbing not to take note of it. It is a collective failure. In this land of Buddha, Nanak, Kabir, Shankaracharya, Ramanuj, Khana, Leelabati, Meera ... or in recent times Vivekananda, Raman Maharshi, Netaji Subhash, Gandhi, Azad, Tagore, Laxmibai, Matangini ....what are we heading to? There were never a shortage of ideals in this country. Do we make our kids familiar with great lives? Do we ourselves try to lead one? Let good sense prevail. Let this madness stop. Let we all wake up before it is too late. Historically, we as a nation were better placed compared to rest of the world both on economic and social front. It had been and still is country blessed with natural resources - minerals, planes fed with rivers, forests, sea, mountains, desert what not. As a society we thrived with greatest of thinkers emanating from this place. We practised freedom, we respected diversity. In any direction we travel for 100KM we find a new dimension in culture emerging. The other unifying force had been in the faith of the good's triumph over evil, the highest place given to those whose lives are full of sacrifice and service. This was a great blend that preserved one's individuality, freedom at the same time the society came first. What is now seen as some textbook theory of borrowed texts was in practice here. Post 1947 we getting our economic quotients right but the society is facing a greater disorder. Much of it can be attributed to what has been mentioned in the following article and also not learning from our very own history. As it is said, "The greatest learning from history is that people have not learnt from it." While a national movement brought independence for us and we indeed are proud of it, it is time to launch another national movement to come out of this abyss, to let development every nook and corner of the country, to deluge the land with good thoughts and good deeds. Youth of India need to unite and lead from the front. All great changes of the world is brought by youth. This cannot be exception. Students in schools and colleges should take this up as a national mission project, use their social networking skills to flood the nation with positive thoughts and ideas, force negatives to take back seat. Let we elders be told how we can help, it will be a privilege for us to join hands with you. We could not but you surely will.

From today's TOI.

Young, Pampered & Reckless
It’s a heady concoction of sexual and material yearning. And it’s making city kids commit desperate acts, say experts
Prithvijit Mitra | TNN

Kolkata: It’s now being termed as the “city kid syndrome”. A label used to identify youngsters from affluent families, who are brash, daring, impulsive and often ruthless. They don’t hesitate to take chances in seeking pleasure even if that means they have to tread a risky path or even cross the line and break the law. And one out of every five Kolkata teenagers, say city psychiatrists, is ready to flirt with danger and is a serious threat to peers who are perhaps not even aware of his/her inclinations.
Early sexual awakening aided by exposure to sexually-implicit material is one of the major reasons, say experts. The murder of the five-year-old girl by two teenagers last Tuesday is not an isolated case. There have been several such murders in recent years and scores of attempted murderous attacks by youngsters for reasons as trivial as an iPod or a CD. Sexual attacks on teenaged girls have been on the rise as well. More shockingly, even preteenagers are being targeted as Tuesday’s incident showed.
“Children no longer have to try to lay their hands on adult material. They are routinely being exposed to sexually stimulating stuff in the media and on the internet. As these children are used to being pampered and getting what they want, they start believing they can get away with anything — even molestation or murder,” said Siladitya Ray, consulting psychiatrist, B P Poddar Hospital.
He cited the instance of a 15-yearold boy who had caressed a girl in his neighbouring flat and wanted to murder her when she later resisted his advances. “He was not repentant for having touched her forcibly and couldn’t accept her refusal. ‘‘I can’t take no for an answer for I never have, the boy told me,” added Ray.
The fact that hurting or killing is not pardonable is escaping many teenagers, experts point out. They are keen to have their way and don’t seem to care about the methods, said Arindam Mandal, consultant psychiatrist, Apollo Gleneagles Hospital. “It usually starts with stealing to acquire something. Then, they start bullying their parents and friends for more. The more the latter give in, the more aggressive they turn. The majority of these youngsters don’t regret doing this. Some don’t even hesitate to break the law and it is this group that is the most dangerous,” said Mandal.
Parents are to be blamed partially for these youngsters turning aggressive, said Ray. “They are taught to be competitive and look upon their peers as rivals from early childhood. Consequently, they indulge in a game of oneupmanship and can’t accept the fact that they don’t have what their friends possess. And for these misguided youngsters, the bone of contention could be a gadget or even a girl,” explained Ray.
The city youngsters’ idea of seeking pleasure is now a skewed one, some argued. It’s no longer fashionable to do the routine things. They derive a kick from treading the risky path — experimenting with drugs, alcohol, watching pornography, partying late and seeking the opposite sex’s attention. “Till five years ago, 18-year-olds would do these things occasionally. Now, you have 13-14 year-olds going out on dates or bunking school to arrange a party,” said Amarnath Mallik, psychiatrist.
The wired world has only made things easy for these errant youngsters and the task of disciplining them a virtually impossible one for their parents. “It’s no longer just the TV. Social networks, e-mail and chatrooms allow you to surf the virtual world any time. The longer a youngster stays hooked on them, the more will be the temptation to try the forbidden. You don’t even need to get out of your room to indulge in sleaze,” said Mandal.