Assam
Education minister arrested
The Central Bureau of Investigation arrested Assam state education minister Ripun Borah and an associate on June 3, for allegedly offering a bribe of Rs.10 lakh to an official of the bureau who was investigating a murder charge against the minister.
The CBI official, who is probing the murder of student leader Daniel Toppo, filed a complaint alleging that the minister had offered him a bribe of Rs.10 lakh to hush up the case. Toppo, district president of All Assam Tea Tribe Students Union, opposed Borah during the 1996 assembly elections. The CBI was called in to investigate the case in 2001 after the Assam Police failed to make any headway in the murder of September 27, 2000. Borah, who had a long innings as Assam Pradesh Congress committee spokesman, is a suspect in the murder.
The CBI has registered a case under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Karnataka
IIIT-B launches finishing course
The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B) has launched a certification programme to enhance the employability of engineering graduates who are without jobs. According to IIIT-B sources, an estimated one-third of India’s output of 450,000 engineering graduates per year, find it difficult to secure employment.
The programme is designed for flexible learning, to suit the needs of slow learners and requirements of companies that hire at the entry level, says Prof. S.Sadagopan, the founder-director of IIIT-B. “Yogyata is a blended-learning progra-mme that includes a mix of several learning methodologies, including face-to-face classroom lectures and web-based, multimedia-enabled self learning courseware,” Prof. Sadagopan informed a press conference in Bangalore on June 3.
The Yogyata programme has been designed in collaboration with Radix Learning Ltd, a Bangalore-based multi-media firm. From September onwards students of engineering colleges in Karnataka will be admitted. From October, admission applications from students in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu will also be welcomed.
Kerala
India’s largest autonomous B-school
Following the sanctioning of an additional intake of 60 students per year into its postgraduate programme by the Kerala state government, the School of Communication and Management Studies (SCMS), Kochi (aka Cochin), has become the largest autonomous business school in India, claims a SCMS release dated June 2.
“The SCMS campus and the high quality of professional education offered, together with our record of placements in top multinational corporates prompted the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to expand the school’s annual intake to 330 students from this academic year onwards,” says the press release which also adds that SCMS Cochin is the only business school in Kerala accorded A grade certification of the National Board of Accreditation (a subsidiary of AICTE).
The postgrad programme of SCMS is ISO certified and also recognised by the Association of Indian Universities, as the equivalent of an MBA, say SCMS sources.
After the expansion of SCMS, Cochin and adding 120 seats of the SCMS School of Technology and Manage-ment, the SCMS Group (estb. 1976) has expanded the annual intake of its business management students to 450.
Maharashtra
Doctoral drought
A study sponsored by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-B) indicates an urgent need to launch a “national Ph D initiative in a mission mode” to increase the annual output of engineering and science doctoral students in India.
Conducted by IIT-B professors Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak P. Muley of the department of energy science and engineering, the study says that a series of initiatives are required to attract the best and brightest students into international standard research. “A National Ph D Initiative is urgently required to multiply the number of engineering Ph Ds from the current 1,000 per year to at least 10,000 annually to sustain Indian industry and the growth of engineering education in India,” say the authors of the study.
“This initiative will only work if taken up in a mission mode with special treatment accorded to Ph D students with all research facilities and modern offices. Student fellowships of Rs.10-12 lakh per year and industry support for 5,000 students is required,” says the IIT-B study, which also suggests establishment of a National Ph D Initiative steering committee with representatives from government, academia and industry.
Goa
Controversial textbooks withdrawn
The goa government formally withdrew two NCERT textbooks from its Secondary School Certificate syllabus on June 26, following objections from several NGOs including anti-tobbaco groups who objected to the content of class X history and Hindi textbooks. According to the NGOs, the history text contained glaring mistakes in addition to a photograph of a French soldier shown smoking a cigarette.
The National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication had objected to the photograph on the ground that it would encourage smoking among students. The issue had taken centrestage in Goa with parents threatening to boycott the recently concluded class X board examination.
“We will refer the objection to the Maharashtra SSC board with which we are affiliated for Hindi. The other textbooks will be referred to the Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education,” says the board’s chairman Bhaskar Nayak.
In the event of the Maharashtra SSC board rejecting the Hindi text, the Goa state government will provide new textbooks as amended by the Mahara-shtra SSC board to all 17,000 students in Goa free of charge. “The books will be available by July 3,” says Nayak.