Children in State can now claim right to education
The State government has finally notified the rules under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
While the notification was published in the Government gazette dated November 12, the rules were displayed in the public domain (www.tn.gov.in) on Tuesday evening.
With this, the State has taken an important milestone in ensuring education for all children between six and 14 years of age. Education activists and civil society were worried about the long delay in notifying the rules, and Tuesday's announcement was a cause for celebration as key provisions of the landmark legislation can now be implemented.
Notifying the rules meant a lot for every stakeholder responsible for a child's education. “It means action will follow on all important points in the Act, something we have been urging for quite some time. It also means filling gaps in the original Act,” said K. Shanmugavelayutham, convener, Tamil Nadu Forum for Creche and Childcare Services (TN-FORCES).
The publication of the rules also means that all children can now claim their right to education. “Without the State notifying the rules, though the Act was in place, the rights could not be claimed by a child,” said Aruna Rathnam, Education Specialist, UNICEF.
After the draft rules of the State government were published, activists, non-government organisations and members of the civil society came forward with suggestions, some of which have been incorporated in the notification.
These include giving more teeth to the School Management Committee and local bodies, defining ‘children belonging to disadvantaged groups and weaker sections' and providing clarity on school mapping, which is essential to identify neighbourhood schools where children can be admitted.
There was some disappointment, however, that the rules do not specify the manner in which schools ought to select students from the disadvantaged groups and weaker sections in their neighbourhood, to the extent of 25 per cent of the strength of their Class I or pre-school, as required under Section 12 of the Act.
At least 20 States have already notified their draft rules, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan and Delhi.
The notification of the rules would mean that there would be more control over private schools, feel educationists.
LOCAL AUTHORITY EMPOWERED
In the draft rules, responsibilities such as ensuring that children attend school and establishing neighbourhood schools were vested with the ‘Local Education Authority' and the State government. But the rules notified empower the local authority to do so. “This would mean that the power would shift from bureaucrats to local bodies,” said education activist S.S. Rajagopalan.
Panic as strong earthquake hits Indonesia’s Papua
A strong earthquake has hit Indonesia’s eastern province of Papua, causing panic among residents.
The earthquake struck at 8-42 a.m. local time Wednesday (11-42 p.m. GMT Tuesday). The Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency says in a preliminary estimate that its magnitude was 6.2.
The agency says the quake was centred about 34 kilometres (21 miles) southwest of the town of Oksibil at a depth of 57 kilometres (35 miles).
Residents in Oksibil ran out from houses in panic, but there are no immediate reports of damage or casualties.
Indonesia is located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.
Manmohan for poor-centric innovations
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday expressed regret that the innovation system in the country focussed mostly on the needs of the rich, and called for measures to change the situation.
“In recent times, we have made several innovations in areas such as space technology, atomic energy and automobiles. But, innovation in our country has, by and large, focussed mostly on the needs of the upper income groups and not adequately on solving the problems of the poor and the under-privileged. We wish to and we must change this state of affairs.”
Dr. Singh was speaking at a function got up by the National Innovation Council (NInC) on its completion of one year of existence.
There was need for a model of innovation that addressed problems in areas such as poverty eradication, people' health, rural communications, development of agriculture and animal husbandry, green energy and similar other challenges, he noted.
Recalling the government's announcement of the current decade as a decade of innovation, he reiterated that the Centre considered innovation had a critical role to play in the processes of the country's economic and social growth and development.
“Indeed, we see innovation as a truly game-changer to move from incremental change to radical change. And, therefore, it is our resolve to build an enabling environment for innovation to flourish in our country.”
Dr. Singh said, “Our democracy, which has been deepening through panchayats and broadening through civil society action, gives an opportunity to multiply to multiple thoughts to contend with each other. Our diversity is an advantage as there is evidence that innovation happens when people with diverse talents engage in a common endeavour. And demographically, we are also a very youthful nation. The young people are restless, they are impatient for change and they are innovative. We need to exploit these enormous advantages.”
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced that the Centre would provide Rs. 100 crore as seed money for setting up an India Inclusive Innovation Fund to promote new ideas aimed at developing low-cost technologies for the benefit of the poor. The Fund is being set up by the NInC. He also announced that the Meta-university programme, proposed to be launched by the NInC, would go into operation from next year.
NInC chairperson Sam Pitroda told reporters that students would be tested for their competencies before enrolling for another programme in another university. The students would be able to use open source learning material from across the globe.
Soon you can order Chromebook in India
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Internet giant Google's Chromebook, the much-celebrated mobile device tailor-made for Web browsing and running on its Chrome Operating System, is likely to be shipped in India by early 2012.
Speaking to presspersons at an interaction here, Sundar Pichai, senior vice-president, Chrome and Apps, Google, said: “I would be very surprised if Chromebooks are not shipped in India by early 2012. We see India as a huge potential market for us,” he said. Chrome, he pointed out, is very popular on laptops, where 98 per cent of the time is spent browsing, and, hence, he believes it was natural for them to take the next step: build an OS to bring the full power of the Web to users in a fast, simple and more secure package. In October 2011, Chrome overtook Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most popular browser in India.
Chromebook first began shipping globally in June with the devices being manufactured by Acer and Samsung.
Mr. Pichai, who leads the product management and innovation efforts for Google's consumer products including Chrome, Chrome OS, Gmail and Google Docs, says the user experience is key.
He added that over time there will be more hardware partners.
GOOGLE'S FLOP
On Google Plus, and the company's failed foray into the social media space with Buzz, Mr. Pichai said that it was “all part of the journey”. “We understood more about privacy and related implications through Google Buzz,” he said, pointing out that features on Plus such as ‘hangouts' and ‘circles' were products of this understanding. “Yes, there would not have been a Google Plus without Google Buzz.”
Google has around 2,000 employees working in India in offices in Hyderabad and Bangalore, with sales and marketing teams in Gurgaon and Mumbai. Mr. Pichai said the teams here were extremely talented and focussed on innovation, with a lot of technologists working keenly on the application feature suite here.
E-COMMERCE MARKET
Besides Google's Chrome and Chromebook, Mr. Pichai said that there is a huge e-commerce market in India that remains to be tapped.
“I found that online transactions are cumbersome and not at all easy,” he said, comparing this to the “seamless, easy” experience abroad, and the even smoother experience he had with Google Wallet while making simple grocery payments in the United States. A product like Google Wallet can take online money and transactions here to a different level, he added.
Manned spacecraft docks to the space station
A spacecraft carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts on Wednesday successfully docked to the International Space Station.
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The Soyuz TMA-22 with NASA astronaut Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin onboard docked to the orbiting station several minutes ahead of schedule Moscow time. The three blasted off from the Russia-leased cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday.
The 39-year-old Shkaplerov and 42-year-old Ivanishin are making their first flights into space. Burbank, 50, who will take over command of the space station, is a veteran of 12-day shuttle missions in 2000 and 2006. The three men are to remain aboard the space station until March.
The mission’s launch had been delayed for two months because of the crash of an unmanned Progress cargo ship in August. That failed launch raised doubts about future missions to the station, because the rocket the crashed ship used had the same upper stage as the booster rockets carrying Soyuz ships to orbit. The delay cut the mission onboard to three people.
American Michael Fossum, Russian Sergey Volkov and Japanese Satoshi Furukawa have been onboard since June and are due to return to Earth next week. Another launch next month will take the station back to its normal six-person crew mode.
William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations, said in a televised news briefing shortly after the docking that “the Russian team did the tremendous job of getting the launch and the docking ready.”
The three men are expected to move from their ship to the space station about two hours after the docking.
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