PU offers Manmohan Singh chair to Cambridge Professor

Chandigarh: Panjab University (PU) has offered the Dr Manmohan Singh chair to its alumnus Ajit Singh, professor emeritus at University of Cambridge.

Singh, who is a lifetime fellow at Queen's College in Cambridge, has been recommended by a committee set up by the varsity Vice-chancellor under the chairmanship of R P Bhambah, a university spokesman said here today.

The recommendation was “unanimously” accepted during the PU syndicate meeting held recently, he said.

The chair was instituted in 2009 in the department of economics and the PU had so far not found a suitable candidate for it.

Earlier, PU had extended the same offer to Nobel Prize winner and renowned economist Amartya Sen, who did not accept the offer, the spokesman said.

Singh had passed out of the PU and started teaching economics at Cambridge in 1965, the spokesman said.

Chief Minister to encourage setting up minority educational centres

New Delhi: Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna said his Government will encourage setting up of minority educational institutions in the state.

“We will encourage all efforts to promote minority educational institutes especially those of Muslims in our state. They need to be promoted especially for education of Muslim girls,” he said at an event here.

The Uttarakhand CM said for the first time, the state has created a separate department for minority affairs after the recently-formed Congress government came back to power.

Speaking on power situation in the state, Bahuguna said the state has been buying power despite having a rich hydel power potential in the form of rivers.

Noting that Hindu seers and saints in the state are against using Ganga water for power production but urged them that religious sentiments should not be allowed to hamper development projects.

“Religion should give people power and courage but not be an impediment in development of the nation,” Bahunguna said.

One-year rural posting made mandatory for MBBS students

New Delhi: Aspiring doctors will have to spend a year working in rural areas before getting their MBBS degrees, as the government has decided to make rural posting compulsory for them.

In a letter to the Medical Council of India (MCI), the Health Ministry has asked its Board of Governors to make rural posting for doctors mandatory and include it in the MBBS course curriculum.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said doctors will be attached with the Ministry's flagship National Rural Health Mission during the year-long rural posting which will also help improve health care services in villages.

Once this proposal becomes part of MBBS curriculum, a medical student, after completing 4.5 years of study and thereafter the hospital internship, will have to undergo a mandatory year-long house job in the form of a rural posting before getting the MBBS degree. Till then, the degree would be provisional.

Chairman of MCI Board of Governors K K Talwar told that the one-year compulsory rural posting for doctors is in the offing and modalities in this respect are being worked out. The posting would be made mandatory in a designated rural area.

“We are working on this. A mechanism is being evolved in this regard. An expert committee is looking into this and will recommend modalities in its meeting soon, after which the details worked out will be sent to the Health Ministry for its approval,” Talwar said.

Sources say the government is working to do away with the compulsory three-month rural posting during the year-long MBBS internship and the same will be made part of the one-year rural house job with an NRHM facility henceforth.

Talwar said this one-year mandatory rural posting will help aspiring doctors to learn from senior doctors who will act as mentors in the rural area. The MBBS graduates, he said, will be attached with a rural hospital and a nearby medical college during this one-year period.

They will also get a reasonable stipend from the NRHM for their services during this period, he said. Justifying the proposal, Azad said it takes almost seven years or even more to become a doctor and to actually get the permission to start prescribing medicines in developed countries whereas the MBBS course duration in India is much shorter.

The Minister said due to the shorter duration of the course here than in the developed nations, many students prefer to study MBBS course in India and then carry out higher studies abroad.

Talwar also said that it takes seven to eight years to obtain a medical undergraduate degree in most countries and studying in India is also cheaper than in the developed world.

“The rural posting will go in favour of students aspiring to be doctors as it will help them upgrade their skills when mentored by senior doctors. The provision will give them peripheral exposure while also granting them reasonable facilities where they can hone their skills,” he said. He said the Council will make all such recommendations to the Health Ministry soon before this proposal is implemented.

Government's efforts to attract doctors for rural postings through various incentives earlier did not yield any fruit, as there were no takers for 50 per cent reservation in postgraduate courses for MBBS doctors who opted for rural stints after taking undergraduate degree.

MBBS students who did a year of rural service were to get 10 marks as additional weightage in MD examination, while those who did three years service in backward areas were to get 30 marks. The scheme did not have a single taker.

“I say it with regret that our doctors have decided not to go to rural areas. Nobody has come forward to avail of the incentives offered by the Government,” Azad had said in Parliament last week.

States must assist differently abled school children: Sibal

New Delhi: With the number of differently abled school children in the country projected to be around 2.44 crore by this year, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today urged the states to reach out in dealing with such people.

Responding to a short notice question in Rajya Sabha, Sibal said the Centre assists differently abled children under various schemes, “dealing with the disabled is a state subject ...the actual reaching out has to be done by the state government.”

The Minister urged individual members to take up the matter of education of disabled children with respective state governments. “I hope the state governments take the responsibility,” he said.

Sibal said that since the inception of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, 30,47,399 children with special needs (CWSN) have been identified, out of which 26,62,746 have been enrolled in schools.

He said that 61 per cent of the teachers have been trained to teach students with disabilities. He said the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, provides the right to admission, attendance and completion of 8 years of elementary education to all children.

Girls outperform boys in SSLC exams in Karnataka

Bangalore: Girls outperformed boys in the SSLC examinations held in April this year in Karnataka with a pass percentage of 84.58 against 80.03.
    
The overall pass percentage was 82.26. As many as 7,31,991 candidates appeared for the examination, of which 6,02,147 passed, Primary and Secondary Education Minister Vishweshwar Bhat Kageri told reporters.
    
Udupi district stood first with 89.53 pass percentage, followed by Sirsi with 88.31. Hassan was in third spot with 85.92 pass percentage and Bidar last with 63.32 pass percentage, he said.
    
Students in Scheduled Tribe category (75.49 per cent) did better than Scheduled Caste students, who recorded a pass percentage of 72.64 per cent, Kageri said.
  
As much as 77.07 per cent of the candidates from government schools passed, while 85.46 per cent of candidates from unaided private schools passed in the examination, he added.   

In all, 132 candidates were debarred for malpractices, Kageri said adding that SSLC supplementary examinations would be held from June 18, 2012.
  
He also advised failed candidates,who apply for retotalling or photocopies to enroll in the supplementary exam before the last date of submission, without waiting for the result.
    
A total of 47 schools recorded zero percentage and there were no government schools in it, he said.   

Kegeri announced distribution of three computers for three students securing the highest marks in each taluka.