Uttar Pradesh
AMU rebuffs Yadav
SAMAJWADI PARTY chief Mulayam Singh Yadav who was slated to address a seminar at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) on February 24, cancelled his visit after widespread protests led by university faculty on the AMU campus. Yadav had been invited to address the seminar organised by the Sir Syed Movement, a social organisation.
AMU Teachers Association secretary Aftab Alam welcomed the cancellation and said the university’s community is anguished by the callous manner in which the UP government handled last year’s riots in Muzaffarnagar. “We are also upset by Yadav’s opposition to the Communal Violence Prevention Bill. We had always looked upon the Samajwadi Party as a champion of secularism and we’re taken aback by the recent events,” he explained.
Gujarat
Embarrassing textbook howlers
CHIEF MINISTER Narendra Modi who is the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party anointed candidate for the PMO (prime minister’s office) and who holds out Gujarat as a model of socio-economic development, has been embarrassed by egregious factual, grammatical and spelling errors in a social science textbook produced by the state government for class VI-VIII students.
According to this text Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on October 30, 1948; Japan launched a nuclear attack on the United States during World War II; After Partition, a new country called ‘Islamic Islamabad’ came into being with its capital Khyber Ghat in the Hindukush mountains and all south Indians are ‘Madrasis’.
Despite these blatant errors, Gujarat State Board for School Textbooks (GSBST) executive president, Nitin Pethani, has declined to withdraw the textbooks issued to 50,000 English-medium primary school children. “There’s no major issue but only mistakes of translation. A two-member committee has been appointed to study the books. Once the committee’s report is ready, we will release errata,” he informed media personnel in Gandhinagar on February 26.
New Delhi
Jindal-Queen Mary concordat
TO INREASE educational interaction between India and the UK, the Delhi-based O.P. Jindal Global University (OPJGU) and Queen Mary University (QMU), London have signed an academic exchange and co-operation agreement. Under the accord, both universities will promote initiatives for collaborative teaching, research, and faculty and student exchanges in the humanities and social sciences. The agreement was signed in London by OPJGU vice chancellor C. Raj Kumar and Simon Gaskell, president of QMU, on February 14.
“UK-India higher education cooperation is a central pillar of relations between our two countries in the 21st century. Academic collaboration with QMU will open new vistas in joint programming and research in the humanities and social sciences within the Commonwealth context, and offer a new model for globalisation of higher education,” said Kumar in a statement.
Meghalaya
Dalai Lama lauds missionaries
ADDRESSING OVER ONE thousand members of over 13 different religious groups at the U Soso Tham auditorium in Shillong on February 5, Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama deplored religious conflicts arising out of differences in ideology and philosophy.
In particular, he lauded the work of Christian missionaries for promoting education and providing healthcare in remote areas worldwide. “I believe Christian missionaries make the greatest contribution in education and improving healthcare in remote corners of the world, including the remotest tribal areas of Odisha where there are Christian missionaries,” he said.
On a maiden three-day visit to Meghalaya, His Holiness opined that different faiths profess different philosophies, but their ultimate goal is love.
Jammu & Kashmir
Higher education promotion plan
JAMMU & KASHMIR chief minister Omar Abdullah approved a Rs.1,039 crore education plan, under which new universities and colleges will be promoted while extant higher education institutions in the state will be upgraded.
Addressing media personnel in Jammu on February 4, a state government spokesman said the state higher education plan (SHEP) was approved by the chief minister at the first meeting of the State Higher Education Council. The plan will soon be sent to the Union government for assistance under the newly launched Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a Centrally-sponsored higher education upgradation plan of the Union HRD ministry. Of the Rs.1,039 crore, the Centre’s share will be Rs.935.10 crore and the state’s share Rs.103.90 crore, he added.
The plan proposes an aggregate grant of Rs.20 crore each to the universities of Kashmir, Jammu, Islamic University of Science & Technology and Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University to be utilised for infrastructure development including upgradation of libraries, laboratories, equipment, hostels and sanitation facilities. Promotion of two new cluster universities in Jammu and Srinagar has also been proposed.