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Grow maize for better returns: Aulakh
Ludhiana, February 21 Inaugurating a two-day workshop of agricultural officers on Kharif-2006, Dr Aulakh said, focus should be on “paddy and cotton and evolve technologies that would ensure optimum and efficient use of resources, particularly water”. The country was once again looking towards Punjab for sustainable food security. This itself puts great responsibility on the scientists, extension workers and officers of the state Department of Agriculture, who are to meet the new challenges, to tide over the crisis. This would improve income and economy of the farmers, as also checkmate their tendency to commit suicide. Giving statistics, Dr Aulakh said farmers were yoked under a staggering Rs 20,000 crore debt. In other word, 10 lakh farming families were, on an average, under a debt of Rs 2 lakh each. Reiterating the need to conserve water resources, he said for the coming paddy sowing, the state department and the PAU should jointly create awareness among farmers and educate them on how fast the water table was depleting “because of over usage. Dr Aulakh said to achieve long term higher productivity and for sustainable profits to the farmers, more stress should be laid on popularising maize, which has immense potential. “Even world-wide maize was at the centre stage of farm policies, as it logged production of 720 million tonnes last year. This was more than that of wheat (at 620 million tonnes and paddy at 590 million tonnes). Maize has potential for industrial use as it is source for manufacturing ethanol. It is imperative that the state Department of Agriculture impresses upon the government to ensure remunerative price support to the maize growers”. On biotechnology, Dr Aulakh said it was an expensive proposition. Despite the system constraints and restraints, scientists at the PAU were doing their best to improve the quality content of the field crops and breeding varieties and hybrids that were stress-tolerant. The total expenses in biotechnology were around four billion dollars in India compared to 224 billion dollars in the USA, per year. Infact, pharmaceutical multi-national company Pfizer alone had an annual budget of four billion dollars. Earlier, the Cane Commissioner, Punjab, Dr M.S. Sandhu, who represented the Directorate of Agriculture, gave Kharif-2006 targets for different crops and made suggestions to the university based on the field feed-back. He called for more focus on maize, sugarcane, pulses, oil seeds and need for appropriate package of practices for organic farming, identifying agriculture commodities and products which may come in the net of value added tax(VAT) and cost effective farm technologies, particularly to save water. The Director of Research, Dr B.S. Dhillon, said concerned over the irrational exploitation of natural resources PAU scientists’ focus was on making resource-based recommendations of agronomic practices.
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NAAC grade: govt colleges lose on hospitality
Ludhiana, February 21 According to sources, for getting top grades, good hospitality, accommodation in five-star hotels and lavish shopping to the peer-team matters the most. The sources say colleges having glorious history and students’ priority failed to attract the peer-teams of the NAAC and got lesser grades as compared to the colleges running on daily wage basis or on ad hoc with less qualified staff. “Government colleges in the state, despite having good status, got lesser grades because they can not afford five-star hospitality to the peer teams”, rued a retired Principal here. As per UGC’s NAAC accreditation, the assessment is made on seven points, including curricular aspects, teaching-learning and evaluation, research, consultancy and extension, infrastructure and learning resources, student support and progression, organisation and management and healthy practices. “It is unfortunate that leading and experienced colleges got B+ or A grades while privately managed colleges got better grades. Recently, while on accreditation assessment of one of the institutes here, the team was made to stay at a five-star hotel and expensive gifts were presented to the members. Interestingly, the institution was given B++ grade. I personally feel that accreditation procedure should be fair and unbiased”, added a retired professor on the condition of anonymity. The accredited colleges in the city include A.S. College, Khanna - A+; GCW (top infrastructure in the city, top priority of girl students) manages to get B++; Guru Nanak Khalsa College for Women - B++; Khalsa College for Women - A+; Malwa Central College of Education - B++; SCD Government College (more than 70 years of history and producing hundreds of bureaucrats) was given A; SDP College for Women - B+; Government Science College, Jagraon - B++; Kamla Lohtia SD College - B++; and Guru Nanak College for Girls - B++. The NAAC accreditation is valid for a period of five years.
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Indian doctors can take British exam
Ludhiana, February 21 In order to remove the bias the RCGP had developed an international examination with uniform academic standard and making it at the same time would seek to be more relevant to everyday practice of the candidate. The examination was being held in Brunei, Oman, Kuwait and Dubai. According to Dr Gursharan Singh, Secretary, Indian Medical Association, (IMA) Punjab, who recently attended a five-day workshop in Bangladesh and the meeting of the MRCGP (Int) board to evolve the modalities of this test and train the examiners, the RCGP had started looking at the South Asia almost three years ago to assess whether a similar process (for examination) could be developed there. At a conference at Aga Khan University in February 2003, the RCGP nominees had a detailed interaction with representatives from a number of South Asian countries and the general consensus at that time was that no single country could support an MRCGP (Int) process, but the region, collectively, could develop its own examination system, leading to the award of MRCGP (Int) to successful candidates. Thereafter, six countries - Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, worked towards this goal. The RCGP, along with the help of MRCGP (Int) body will conduct the test for the first time in South Asia in November 2006. “The procedure for a candidate to get the degree of MRCGP (Int), will be to appear in an examination which will be held in two parts — MCQ test and the OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination). This OSCE, to be conducted in February 2007, is a new concept internationally wherein the candidate is given a simulated patient instead of a real patient.”
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Education for disabled
Ludhiana, February 21 Ms Annie Koshi and Ms Renu Singh, resource persons, gave their inputs as to how schools could provide home-based learning for persons with severe physical and intellectual disabilities. The Principal of the school, Mr S.C. Saxena, in his welcome address said as principals they all had a responsibility in undertaking the endeavour. The Chairperson, Dr G. Balasubramanian, said all disabled children had the equal right to education in a normal set-up and CBSE schools would undertake a step-by-step process to achieve the goal of making all schools disabled friendly by 2020. The Director of Aashirwad, an NGO, Dr Neelam Sodhi, gave literature to the Principals for discussion. Different types of disablilities were discussed and practical solutions were dwelt upon.
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50 attend NSS camp
Ludhiana, February 21 Speaking on the occasion, Mr Kulpreet Singh appealed to the volunteers to take sensitive issues relating to the development of character and personality seriously. Principal Rajinder Singh appreciated the work done by the volunteers and asked them to imbibe good moral values. The camp provided impetus and encouragement to students to believe in dignity of labour and apply to the needs of today. Seminar on careers: Dr Gupta initiated the discussion by informing the students about various careers and courses available after B.Com, BCA and BA. Prof Rai emphasised the need for doing MBA, MCA, M Sc (IT), PGDCA courses to compete in the global market. Ms Shivani Bector informed the students about the minimum qualification and procedures for joining these courses. Ms Chandanpreet Kaur informed about the existing training and placement cell at the DIMT, Doraha. Dhoom organised:
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Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in new form
Ludhiana,
February 21 He was addressing the media this afternoon to apprise them of the new avatar of Challenge 2005. He said the end of Challenge 2005 will herald the beginning of yet another series. "After a survey, it was found that girls did not get as many SMS's as boys. So our new contest will see a girl and a boy singing duets. This will ensure that girls come to the forefront," he said. With the rundown to mahayudh coming to a close, Debojit from the inimitable Ismail Darbar's gharana and Vinit from the happening Himesh's gharana will put their heart and soul into their singing. "Thus India ki voice will be found out this week by the people of India," he said. Mr Ashish Kaul further said the winner of Sa Re.... will get a music contract with Sa Re Ga Ma Pa HMV and a 2- year sponsored stay in Mumbai. This programme has not only jacked up the TRPs of Zee Network but also provided many singers with the chance of play back singing in movies.
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‘Celiac disease on the rise’
Ludhiana, February 21 He made these remarks during his presentation at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research during the eighth Commonwealth Congress on Diarrhoea and Malnutrition in Dhaka recently.
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