Nagaland
Chief minister exhorts youth
Expressing the opinion that education is the most important investment for development and progress of society, Nagaland chief minister Neiphiu Rio said the state government has established private colleges in almost every district. Addressing the All-Nagaland College Students Union’s 16th biennial confer-ence at Phek district on October 3, Rio said the state has a literacy rate of 79.55 percent, higher than the national average of 74.04 percent.
However, the chief minister expressed regret that despite 50 years of statehood, Nagaland still lacks technical and medical colleges. “Fifty years of state-hood and still the state government is pursuing the issue of establishing technical and medical colleges with the Union government,” he said.
The chief minister further added that despite a high literacy rate, “Naga society is yet to be civilized” and exhorted youth to take the lead in bringing change to Nagaland.
Jammu & Kashmir
Kashmir U special convocation
Describing universities as a repository of knowledge and information, Jammu & Kashmir governor N.N. Vohra called upon Kashmir University’s faculty to impart practical and values-based education and training to students and scholars to equip them for future challenges.
Addressing students and faculty of Kashmir University in Srinagar on the 132nd birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi (October 2), Vohra said univ-ersities are expected to be repositories of knowledge and unless they are able to transfer knowledge and information to society, they are “somehow failing” in their duties and responsibility. “Therefore, universities need to be proactive and make sure that the education dispensed to students and scholars provides them a global view on various aspects and problems of life,” he said, at a special convocation of Kashmir University.
The special convocation was convened to confer a Ph D upon Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, national research professor, School of Chemistry, at the University of Hyderabad. “I have had the opportunity to work with some students of Kashmir University whom I supervised for M Phil and Ph D degrees. They are brilliant and second to none in the world,” said Mehta, speaking on the occasion.
Karnataka
Premji calls for greater effort
Industry captain and philanthropist Azim Premji has called upon govern-ment and other stakeholders to invest greater resources to improve the state of education in the country.
Addressing the first convocation of the Azim Premji University (APU, estb. 2010) — which offers Masters progra-mmes in education and development with multiple specialisations — on October 2, Premji especially called upon state governments to become proactive. “They need to invest more in school education, in teacher education and other school-related issues, including higher education. They also need to reform governance of all related syst-ems,” he said, while lamenting the lack of education institutions offering study programmes in the field of education.
The founder-chairman of IT major Wipro Technologies, who has endowed APU with an irreversible corpus of Rs.65 crore, Premji added: “Equally, I have no doubt that other stakeholders need to do more. This means that more people and civil society organisations must engage in improving the government schooling system.”
Meghalaya
ADB loan for schools improvement
The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) has committed a US$100 million (Rs.617 crore) soft loan to imp-rove secondary education and vocati-onal training in the north-eastern state of Meghalaya (pop. 2 million). “A new $100 million project funded by ADB will improve secondary education and vocational training in India’s Megha-laya state so students are better equip-ped to find high-quality jobs after graduation,” said an ADB press note issued in New Delhi on October 1. This is the multilateral funding agency’s first loan in India to boost secondary education and skills training.
“Many of today’s students in Meghalaya are the first in their families to go to school, so we need to make sure they have the right curriculum, teaching, and equipment,” says Sungsup Ra, director of the human and social development division of ADB’s South Asia Department.
According to Ra, the loan will fund a project to upgrade the infrastructure of 117 government-aided private secon-dary schools and provide laboratories, libraries, clean drinking water, com-puters, and separate toilets for girls and boys, as also for physically-challenged children, for improving the learning environments of 18,000-20,000 students, of whom 40 percent are girls. ADB data indicates that 60 percent of the state’s secondary schools lack science laborat-ories and 72 percent don’t provide separate toilets for girls. Moreover, 5,700 secondary school teachers in the state are under-qualified.
According to an ADB spokesperson, an additional US$2 million (Rs.12 crore) grant from the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction will be utilised to strengthen capacity of related state government departments, including education and labour, to ensure the project reforms are sustained.
Punjab
Free bicycles for girl students
The Punjab state government will distribute free bicycles to over 100,000 girl students of government schools to motivate them to sign up for higher education. A press statement issued by the state government in Jagraon (Ludhiana district) on October 12, states that bicycles will be distributed to 152,330 class XI-XII girl students under the state government’s flagship ‘Mai Bhago Vidya’ Scheme this month.
According to a state government spokesperson, the government has already spent Rs.41.90 crore for procuring bicycles. The incumbent SAD-BJP government has resolved to distribute bicycles valued at Rs.30 crore annually to girl students.