Rajasthan
Mid-day meal monitoring scheme
The state government has initiated an SMS-based system through which meals data will be transmitted by schools to a toll free number for daily monitoring by the education ministry. Earlier, mid-day meal data was reported monthly.
Under the new system, management committees of government schools have to send meals data including type of school, students’ attendance status, number of students given the mid-day meal, to a toll free number which will be monitored on a daily basis, district education officer Paras Chand Jain informed media personnel in Jaipur on August 1.
Currently, 6.25 million class I-VIII students in 73,199 government and aided primary schools statewide are provided free mid-day meals, according to government sources.
Meghalaya
Two-week teachers strike
More than 14,000 teachers of government-aided schools statewide have begun their participation in a 14-day strike ending September 4, called by the Joint Action Committee of All Teachers’ Association of Meghalaya (JACATAM). The teachers are protesting the state government’s delay in paying them salaries on a par with government school teachers. Students of over 4,500 government-aided schools across the state have already been adversely impacted by the strike, which began on August 22.
“The statewide general strike was called after the state government paid no heed to the demands of aided school teachers,” JACATAM chairman E.D. Nongsiang informed the media in Shillong on August 22. “We had to resort to strike action because there was no sign of the state government making any effort to agree even to a dialogue,” he added.
R.C. Laloo, the deputy chief and education minister, maintains that the government will respond to the strike after consulting school monitoring committees, established under the RTE Act, 2009.
Odisha
Laptops for girl students
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik distributed free-of-charge laptops to meritorious girl students and felicitated college girls trained in self-defence at a function in Bhubaneswar on August 20. “These laptops will help students become tech-savvy, a necessity for development,” said Patnaik speaking on the occasion. Higher education minister Pradeep Kumar Panigrahi added that 15,000 laptops will be distributed gratis to meritorious students statewide this year.
While felicitating the girls, Patnaik said this initiative was taken by the state government to empower women under the state’s youth policy launched in 2013.
Madhya Pradesh
Hindi medium engineering courses
Under a new initiative, the state’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (university), named after the former prime minister and Hindi language scholar, has launched Hindi medium courses for electrical, mechanical and civil engineering college students. “The process for admitting students into Hindi language electrical, mechanical and civil engineering degree and diploma programmes has begun,” the university’s vice chancellor Dr. Mohan Lal Chhipa informed the Bhopal media on August 20.
“We are determined to start these programmes in Hindi this year even if a single student enrolls. We have to break this mindset of English which has dominated the country for over 250 years. It hasn’t been ended 70 years after the country attained independence from foreign rule,” said Chhipa.
Telangana
IIT-H’s Japanese connection
The Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (estb.2008) has been awarded a five-year, Rs.30-crore multi-modal transportation research project by the government of Japan to reduce the earth’s carbon footprint.
Addressing the media in Hyderabad on August 18, IIT-H director Prof. U.B. Desai said this is the second SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development) project awarded to IIT-H.
Describing the relationship with Japan as unique in the history of Indian academia, Prof. Desai said: “IIT-H, which started functioning in August, 2008, has several research and development projects and friendship programmes with government and industry in Japan. About 25-30 faculty from Japan’s technical institutes and universities visit IIT-H annually and an equal number of our faculty visit that country.”
Jharkhand
BEO arrested for bribery
The state’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) arrested a block education officer (BEO) in West Singhbhum district on charges of accepting a bribe from assistant teacher Devkant Gaud.
Gaud, a government middle school teacher, filed a complaint with ACB accusing the BEO of demanding pay-offs from himself and Sursingh Tamsoy, principal of a primary school in Bidri. On August 12, ACB officials confirmed that the BEO had threatened the complainant with a departmental inquiry and salary cut for late-coming.
Paromita Sengupta with bureau inputs