Govt to ease medical colleges' approval criteria

The government is planning to "liberalise" approval criteria for medical colleges in view of the need for more under-graduate and post-graduate seats in medicine, according to PTI.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Wednesday the criteria for approving medical colleges both in government and private sectors would be "liberalised" without compromising standards.

"I realise the need for more medical colleges. The criteria for approving medical colleges both in the government and private sectors would be liberalised," he told members of the newly constituted Parliamentary Consultative Committee of Health Ministry, which met for the first time on Thursday.

Despite the Supreme Court quashing the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) mooted by the Medical Council of India in 2013, the Centre is still keen on it and a review petition has been filed before the apex court.

Mehbooba Mufti of PDP urged the government to provide affordable and quality health care to masses by starting medical insurance for the poor and a "drug bank", which will store important medicines, an official statement said.

Vardhan said the National Health Assurance Mission, which would be launched soon, would have the insurance component and government would pay the premiums for people below the poverty line.

"People above the poverty line would be linked to low-premium schemes, which the government would negotiate on their behalf with the medical insurance companies," he said.

Besides Mufti, Rekha Verma of BJP said trauma centres should be set up in states as their economies depend a lot on highways where accidents are frequent.

P.K. Sreemathi Teacher of CPI (M) and P. Venugopal of AIADMK highlighted the "successes" of health schemes in their states Kerala and Tamil Nadu, respectively, and called for incorporating them at the national level.

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IIM, Lucknow achieves 100 pc placement in 4.5 days news 2014

Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Lucknow has successfully placed its 30th batch in a record time of 4.5 days achieving a new high, according to PTI.

"IIML has achieved 100 per cent summer placements for its 30th batch of 464 students in a record time of 4.5 days. The institute had created history last year by placing the entire batch in 5.5 days during Summer Placements and five days during Final Placements", an IIM release issued here said.

The recruitment drive at one of the country's premier management institutes saw participation from 164 domestic and international recruiters. The highlight of the placement season was participation of firms like JP Morgan, Alvarez and Marsal, an international mutual fund company and four Indian private equity players. The top four segments based on roles offered were sales and marketing, finance, consulting and business development, including some extremely sought after and niche profiles in the finance domain.

The rest of the offers came from domains such as operations/supply chain, general management, systems/IT, market research, analytics and HR. Some of the top recruiters across different sectors were Amazon, Aditya Birla Group, Accenture, MH Alshaya, Cipla, Flipkart, Goldman Sachs, Hindustan Unilever, McKinsey, P&G, The Boston Consulting Group and Wipro. Some of the top firms from the FMCG/consumer goods/telecom sector were Asian Paints, Airtel, Coke, Colgate Palmolive, Dabur, GSK Consumer, Hindustan Unilever, ITC, Kellogg's, Mondelez, Marico, Mars, P&G, Pepsi, Reckitt Benckiser and Vodafone.

In addition to the traditional sales and marketing roles, these firms offered roles in supply chain management, IT, finance, HR, analytics with some of them being exclusive roles for IIM Lucknow. P&G, which was the top recruiter in this segment, opened the highest number of profiles this year. Banking Financial Services and Institution (BFSI) sector saw the participation of JP Morgan this year which hired IIML students for its 'Front-End Markets' profile. One of the additions to IIML portfolio was the social impact and education sector with a total of 14 firms, offering roles in sales and marketing, market research, business development, finance, IT, policy research and project implementation.

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Smriti Irani News 2014 - Government to set up innovation labs in every district

NEW DELHI: Innovation labs will soon be set up in every district for students to think of new ideas which will be funded by the government under an ambitious scheme to encourage research at both school and university level.

The ambitious 'Rashtriya Aavishkar Abhiyaan' programme would see the setting up of innovation labs in all districts to enable students develop his or her ideas, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said today.

"These labs will be linked to the proposed council of higher education on industry academia collaboration so that those innovation which have potential to turn into great business do not die."

"We will start a fund which will support such innovations. It will be launched by the dawn of next year," the minister said while speaking at a Microsoft event which was attended by the company's CEO Satya Nadella who is on a maiden trip to India.

Irani said there were huge expectations from the youth of the country and that the government had planned several initiatives for their benefit.

"Its the youth that makes me nervous...We are anxious today because there are a huge expectations. We came in with a promise with a better tomorrow," she said.

The government also intends to scale up the employability potential of the youth as they have a lot of expectations from the BJP regime and has voted for it "decisively", she said at the programme which was streamed live to 20 states, 300 cities and 750 locations.

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HC notice to Bar Council for derecognising DU's law faculty 2014

NEW DELHI: The Delhi high court on Wednesday issued notice to the Bar Council of India (BCI) and Delhi Bar Council (DBC) on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking to quash the BCI's order last month that law graduates who passed out from the three centres of Delhi University's Law Faculty this year cannot be enrolled as advocates.

A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice R S Endlaw sought response from BCI and DBC by November 5 on a PIL filed by Vijay Kumar Chaurasia, an assistant professor at the Law Faculty.

On September 22, BCI, which regulates legal education in the country, asked state bar councils not to enroll the student who passed out from the three centres of DU's Law Faculty as advocates, as the Law Faculty failed to obtain "extension of approval of affiliation" from BCI despite repeated reminders.

The DU Law Faculty failed to obtain extension from the BCI beyond the academic year 2010-11.

Every year, the Law Faculty admits around 2,000 students in its three centres, two of which run in the evening.

Seeking quashing of the BCI order, Chaurasia told the court that the decision was arbitrary and against the Legal Education Rules, 2008.

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Australian scientist delivers lecture on Weed Science at Punjab Agricultural University

LUDHIANA: A Weed scientist from University of Adelaide, Australia, Gurjeet Gill, delivered a special lecture on "Weed Adaptation to Management Practices" at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) on Wednesday. As many as 80 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and scientist attended the lecture, organized by the department of Agronomy under the aegis of Indian Society of Weed Science. 

Gill revealed that weeds are genetically more diverse than crop plants and escape control measures by developing avoidance and resistance/tolerance tactics. He said that weed seeds having short dormancy periods germinate at sowing time or with rainfall, and can be killed with pre-emergence /early post emergence herbicides or by using stale bed technique. "However, weeds having longer seed dormancy periods germinate at later stages of crop growth and escape these control measures. It becomes very difficult to manage as they dominate weed flora over years and pose serious competition with crop plants", said Weed Scientist. "Rotational use of weed control approaches including rotational and judicious use of herbicides for sustainable weed management. He cited the example of development of resistance in gulli danda (Phalaris minor) to Isoproturon in India, just because of injudicious and continuous use of this herbicide in wheat". He indicated that development of a new herbicide is very costly and very few chemicals of new chemistry are in pipeline, hence there is a need to extend the life of existing herbicides by using them judiciously. 

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JNU teachers' body to examine increased instances of plagiarism 2014

NEW DELHI: Due to increased number of reports on instances of plagiarism in dissertations submitted in academic institutions, the Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA) has decided to set up a committee to look into the issue and other broader related issues. This was stated by the JNUTA on Wednesday. The executive council of the teachers body was authorized to set up the committee at the JNUTA's general body meeting on September 12, 2014.

According to Arun Kumar, president JNUTA, in a competitive environment where quality should be paramount, even a single sentence of plagiarism cannot be accepted. But there are instances where even 50% works lifted from other sources are accepted and given grades.

According to JNUTA, the University administration seems to be satisfied with mechanically solving the problem via the use of software, but it is not dealing with the wider underlying issue of relationship between the teacher and the taught. Further there is a need of an institutional mechanism to deal with the issue so that individuals are able to deal with the matter in an effective manner. Kumar added that Since JNU administration is not willing to deal with the wider issues, JNUTA has decided to look into the matter so that we can maintain JNU's academic standards and its image.

The committee which includes professor Pramod Yadav from School of Life Sciences, professor C S R Murthy from School of International Studies, professor V Sujatha from School of Social Sciences, professor Franson Manjali from School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies and professor Arvind Mishra from School of Social Sciences will examine the extent of plagiarism being found by the software being provided by the library, the impact of the use of the software on plagiarism in research work, how should the result of the use of software be interpreted by the supervisors/teachers, what could be an acceptable (if at all) level of plagiarism, among others. The committee will submit its report to JNUTA EC by the end of October. 

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Indian universities fail to make it to top 200 of Times list 2014

NEW DELHI: Asia has done well in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-15. But India has not only failed yet again to make it to the top 200, it has also dropped further down the list.

Punjab University, which dropped from 226-250 in 2013-14 rankings to 276-300 this year, continues to be India's top-ranked university on the list along with the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, which has made its entry to the rankings for the first time.

The second and third best Indian universities as per the Times Higher Education rankings — IIT Mumbai and IIT Roorkee, respectively — do not even feature among the top 350.

On the other hand, Japan has five universities in the top 200, Republic of Korea and Hong Kong have four each, China has three and Singapore has two.

"It is good news that India now has two universities in the world top 300, compared to just one last year, thanks to the participation for the first time in the rankings this year of the Indian Institute of Science, which can now be included in the analysis after starting to admit undergraduate students," said Phil Baty, editor of Times Higher Education World University Rankings.

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