RESEARCH

A month or more after the shocking incident of an asthmatic girl's death inside a Delhi school for its authorities' negligence, the pressing need for sensitisation of the schools to the issue seems to have been relegated to the backburner ____________ Nithin Sridhar ____________ T he Government had, on 19 November 2007, set up the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights as a statutory body which would be authorised to summon and enforce the attendance of any person from any part of India and examining them on oath. Under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, the national commission would have all the powers of the Civil Court while inquiring into matter under the CPC. The national commission, while inquiring into a matter, could warrant any document and receive evidence on affidavits from authorities concerned. It could also requisition any public record or copy thereof from any court of office. Apart from having the power to forward a case to a M...

The report carrying her clarification on Rahul Gandhi's MPhil raises more questions than answers Dear Prof Alison Richard, I am a Delhi-based journalist investigating the academic credentials of Rahul Gandhi, the Indian National Congress candidate contesting from the constituency of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, for the Lok Sabha elections 2009. I would like to get a detailed confirmation of your interview with Press Trust of India, the report of which was carried by The Times of India , IBN and Zee News . Recently, they (a newspaper and two television news channels respectively) carried an identical story (the web pages of IBN and Zee News do not give PTI the credit) in their respective websites, saying you, in the capacity of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, have confirmed that Rahul Gandhi (son of former/late Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi) received the postgraduate degree of MPhil on Development Studies from your esteemed university. The three web pages are...

That is what the Government of India is up to issuing, by proposing to deem certifications by madrassah s and the CBSE equivalent _____________ Nithin Sridhar _____________ The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry plans to set up a Central Madrassa Board on the lines of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), HRD Minister Arjun Singh said on Tuesday. This would help modernise the education imparted by the Islamic seminaries across the country, the minister said. "There has been a long pending demand to set up Central Madrassa Board on lines of the CBSE. We are considering it. A bill in this regard will be introduced in the next session of Parliament," he said. Arjun Singh told the annual conference of State Minorities Commissions: "Madrassa education has received special attention in (my) ministry. Recently I approved recommendations regarding equivalence of madrassa qualification to the CBSE certificates. Read more... — "Arjun Singh for Central Madra...

Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Philip Kotler can be a marketing guru ________________ Surajit Dasgupta ________________ I f there are three natural numbers ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ such that a^2 + b^2 = c^2, you call them a Pythagorean triplet (e.g., 5, 12 and 13 make such a triplet as 5^2 + 12^2 = 13^2. And if you substitute 2 by any number, say, ‘n’, then you see that you are unable to find any set of three numbers, ‘a’, ‘b’ and ‘c’ satisfying the equation a^n + b^n = c^n for n ≠ 2. This is known as Fermat’s Last Theorem, which no one could prove mathematically for more than three centuries after the French mathematician’s death until Andrew Wiles of Princeton University, UK, proved it in the last decade. If Pythagoras of Samos and Pierre de Fermat had not formulated the above theorems, respectively, could Surajit Dasgupta have formulated them? Honestly, I do not suffer from such a grand delusion about my intellect. Now, sample this: As we, human beings, grow by age, we want our professional, socia...

A student wants to write a thesis on an untouched subject. He approaches a 'guide', a professor in the know of previously researched topics and also the person who can fetch the student his research degree. The latter exploits the former to the extent of extracting personal, menial jobs from the poor student. If the young chap obliges — which most of PhD aspirants do — he gets a doctorate, irrespective of his knowledge in the subject concerned. If not, he is thrown out of the system. That's the story of research in India ______________ Sandeep Nagar ______________ O ne wonders how many people give a serious thought to the fact that India is a premier country to supply scientific human resources to developing countries and yet we are so backward when it comes to scientific research. We took 23 years (1984-2007) to make a Light Combat Aircraft ( LCA ) when aviation just completed its first century and that too by assembling foreign parts*. We always get second-hand accompli...

Alliance Française, pull up your socks ________________ Surajit Dasgupta ________________ T his article was written three years ago, more as a diary entry that was not intended to be published. It remained tucked, saved in my e-mail account all these years. Today I'm forced to tell the story to all, for I have just been through a horrendous week-long experience of total lack of professionalism by the second seniormost teacher of the institute discussed here. The curricula of the institute have changed lately, rendering the facts related to the courses obsolete. However, the spirit of the teachers, as I heard from the students at the institute's canteen this afternoon, remains unchanged — incorrigibly laidback. Here is what happened last week. Readers who have been through my blog-post, “Don’t Dare Show Your Versatility in Public,” are already aware of the backgrounder to this. A teacher at AFD was entrusted with the task of translating our company’s product brochure by 2 May, w...