Later on, Sibal too apologised for the episode and said that he had constituted a committee to remove all ‘objectionable’ cartoons from the books. He said that the book has already been withdrawn from the course in this regard and new books will not have such kind of objectionable cartoons.

By fachcha.com

India has planned to introduce one more signature university to promote innovative technological talents among the Indian students. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal has today said that government has planned to establish 14 Innovation Universities. The announcement has been made during his inaugural speech at India-UK Round Table Conference on Innovation and Skill Development in New Delhi.

“We aim at nurturing innovation in the educational system through actions in schools and colleges by talent spotting of innovations, and award of Innovation Fellowships”, the HRD Minister said. The conference was attended by the vice-chancellors of various universities, officials and educationists of UK and India.

“Each of the Innovation University shall consistently aspire for attainment of pinnacle of knowledge and will provide the knowledge manpower of the country in training professionals, specialists, scientists and researchers needed by the supporting national innovation system. Government has already framed a legislation for Universities of Research and Innovation which will provide a facilitating framework for creation of these institutions. These universities would be embedded in ecosystems developed for promoting synergies among education, research and incubation centres or industry.”

According to him these Innovation Universities will not be clones of each other, but will focus on one deep theme of innovation and will focus on one area or problem of global significance in general and India in particular such as urbanization, public health, water security, environmental sustainability, digital literacy etc.

The university will enjoy autonomy in designing their disciplines, admission criteria, academic programmes, credit systems.

Minutes of the meeting is available with fachcha.com. According to the documents available with ‘fachcha.com’ Gujrat Education Minister, Raman Lal Bora, has asked the Government of India that it would be difficult to establish co-ordination between children from higher class and children from slums and would result demoralized feeling (among children). Despite the fact that the system of EWS is being used as an important tool to implement RTI, the minister raised serious apprehension against the 25% reservation for the children from EWS families in private school.

The issue came during a meeting of Education Ministers of the various states in New Delhi. Kapil Sibal, Minister of HRD and Purundeshwari Devi, MoS, HRD too were present on the occasion. This is probably first time when the government of any state has shown their apprehension, favouring elitist and arrogant attitude of the private schools. Though, most of the state governments are working towards implementation of the EWS quota in the states the stunning anti-poor views has shocked HRD Ministry officials.

Though the officials do not come on the record on the issue but say that this is first time when we encountered such views from any government favouring anti-poor sentiments. “We have been receiving several suggestions and apprehensions from various stakeholders in this regard like lack of funds, delay in release of funds or other difficulties. But raising question on the EWS quota from a state government on the pre-text of opposing slum children versus children from high income group is first for us”, they say.

The HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, too was present in the meeting and tried to divert the issue by requesting him to discuss other related issue on the occasion. The meeting was attended by Education Ministers and representatives of Maharashtra, Bihar, Chhatisgarh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and other states.
chandan.sharma@fachcha.com

Govt. has asked institutions to explore the way to reduce the time span for completion of Ph.D. The issue came in a meeting, chaired by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday. The meeting was attended by the chairmen and directors of five IISERs.

The HRD Minister Kapil Sibal emphasized on the need to reduce the tenure of Ph.D. at least in some exceptional cases. According to the current practices it takes minimum three years to earn a Ph.D. degree.

The directors however, raised the issue of impact on quality of the research but agreed that the time span could be reduced in some exceptional students. The participants of the meeting had the view that students could be allowed to complete their Ph.D. in shorter period provided that the quality of the research paper maintained.

However, the issue of lesser number of students for IISER discussed widely in the meeting and Sibal asked the stakeholders to make efforts to increase intake of the students in the newly established institutions. It is notable that the IISERs has recently given nod for International Baccalaureate (IB) as a qualification for admission at undergraduate level to increase intake of the students in the institutions.

Virtual labs’ will provide a platform for students to understand experiments on world wide web. About 300 faculty and staff representing 152 institutions have been trained across India for the purpose.