 |
|
| Friday,
May 9, 2003, Chandigarh, India
|
|
||||
One more PU panel on attendance norms Chandigarh, May 8 The issue has taken a new turn as the university will constitute a committee to specify the conditions under which the Syndicate will have the powers to condone lecture shortage of students. The university and affiliated colleges have a minimum attendance condition of 75 per cent. During the current academic session, the university had increased the attendance condition from 66 per cent to 75 cent. This was done following a circular from the University Grants Commission. The university, earlier, had bestowed powers upon the Vice Chancellor and the Syndicate to condone lectures of candidates who did not fulfil the minimum attendance condition despite condoning by the heads of departments. The university in 1999 had cut the powers of the Vice-Chancellor and the Syndicate to condone the lectures. During the current academic session, the university was faced with a piquant situation when more than 40 students from different teaching departments, including laws, political science and sociology were denied roll numbers in the semester examination due to attendance shortage. The university constituted at least four committees before the lectures were condoned. The university thought it was wise to reconsider its decision of bestowing the special powers of condoning lectures on the Syndicate and the Vice-Chancellor. It was felt that many times students had genuine reasons to be absent on account of emergencies. It was felt that the Syndicate should be restored the powers because the Vice-Chancellor said he would not like to be involved in the process. Prof P.P. Arya raised the issue in the Academic Council meeting recently where he said instead of giving blanket powers to the Syndicate, the university should first identify the circumstances under which a student should be allowed the special benefit of lecture condonation. |
|
53 kids given scholarships Chandigarh, May 8 Ms Rajesh Chowdhury, DEO, UT Administration, who was the guest of honour at today’s function announced that the results of Class VIII of the peripheral schools this year had shown marked improvement. Mr Onkar Chand, Chairman, Servants of the People Society, welcomed the chief guest and others present at the function and informed the gathering about the spirit behind the initiation of the scholarship scheme by late Dr Arora whose death anniversary falls on May 7. |
|
Tripathi on jury for Ovshinsky Award Chandigarh, May 8 The award was constituted in the memory of an American scientist,Prof Stanford R
Ovshinsky, who discovered non-crystalline chalcogenide in 1968 at the Xerox Corporation, USA. These materials are used in photocopy, optical mass, memories, integrated circuits, fibre optics, solar energy and telecommunications. The award will be conferred at a ceremony during the international conference on Advanced Materials and Crystal Growth with special topics on nanomaterials and multifunctional materials, scheduled to be organised in Romania in September. |
|
Questions outside syllabus: students Chandigarh, May 8 The students have written to the university authorities in this regard and are demanding grace marks as compensation. |
|
‘Little angels’ visit religious places Chandigarh, May 8 The tour started with Sector 20 mosque where children interacted with Maulana Mohammad Ajmad Khan who talked about universal love and harmony. The students also visited Sector 18 church and Sector 19 temple. The tour concluded with children partaking a ‘langar’ at Sector 19 gurdwara. This tour was the concluding part of silver jubilee celebrations of the school. Earlier, the school had organised activities like puppet show, picnics, magic show and a fancy dress competition. Ms Brij
Inder, Principal of the school, said, “In order to develop all round personality of children, the school focuses on integrating theory with practical knowledge. So every child is encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities.” |
|
Tiny tots on picnic Chandigarh, May 8 |
|
Pvt schools to close on May 17 Chandigarh, May 8 The government model and non-model schools of the city will close for 30 days starting from June 1. All educational institutions will reopen on July 1 for the new academic session. |
|
SCHOOL WORLD
Growing up along the banks of canals that criss-crossed north India in the 19th century young William merely wanted to be an irrigation engineer - a mere one notch above the position of a canal supervisor that his father held in the service of the Government of India. Towards that end he studied hard and managed to obtain a nomination to the first engineering school that had been opened in Roorkee for the sons of the sahibs who were so chhota that they could not afford to provide their off-springs a genteel education in far off England. The present day Roorkee IIT boasts of him as one of its most illustrious alumni from 1872. Little did William imagine that he would end up being Sir William, make the largest dam of its times far away in Egypt, in the land of the Pharaohs and be known as one of the early eco-sensitive irrigation engineers. That in turn led him into a spat with his fellow engineers who were strong supporters of the "big and costly dam" concept.
The dam that Willcocks built on the Nile between 1898 and 1902 at the small settlement called Assuan [hence Aswan] sought to serve two interests. One were the long term interests of the local farmers and the other the immediate interests of the British textile industry which was providing the funds for construction in order to enable the Egyptian fellah to produce more cotton for the mills of Britain. Willcocks designed his dam in such a way that the silt-laden waters which flooded the fields and had made them fertile for thousands of years now were allowed to pass through the dam and flood the fields. The relatively clear water that came through later was stored for irrigation during the dry season. Willcocks's original plan was even more daring and would have benefited the farmers more. That was to divert part of the floodwaters of the Nile into a depression in the desert that was called Wadi Rayan. In the 1930s, faced with continuous droughts the Government of India invited him to Calcutta to advise on the feasibility of making dams and barrages on the Ganga, its tributaries and canals. A series of embankments had already been constructed to stop floodwaters from overflowing into the adjacent fields, as had been the case for many centuries now. Willcocks was aghast. "You have bound the river in satanic chains", he is reported to have concluded. "Release it, let it flood the fields and spread life giving water and silt all around". He was suggesting a practise that had provided the Bengali farmer with bumper harvests for the past 1000 years before the British occupied India. Willcocks repeated a piece of commonsense known to the farmer, that the floods also brought in a fresh supply of fish into the rice fields, provided an additional source of food and also controlled mosquitoes. The government was not amused. Willcocks's advice was shelved and a series of dams and barrages constructed leading precisely to the problems that Willcocks had predicted, namely a series of crop failures in a province that had traditionally been known for its immense food supply.
M.Rajivlochan,
Department of History, Panjab University, Chandigarh |
|||||
|
According to the latest research, the roots of morality first appear in the earliest months of an infant's life. Parents who respond instantly to a newborn's cries lay an important moral groundwork. If you make an effort to understand what the baby is feeling, then the baby will work to understand what other people are feeling. In fact, empathy is among the first moral emotions to
develop. Children are by nature impulsive and desperately need guidance to form good habits. Children start to behave in ways consistent with adult moral standards because parents and teacher follow up good behaviour with positive reinforcement in the form of approval, affection, and other rewards. Children also learn through observing moral role models. A model's characteristics have a major impact on children's willingness to imitate their behaviour. Children are more likely to copy the prosocial action of an adult who is warm and responsive than one who is cold and distant. Warmth makes children more receptive to the model and more attentive to the model's behaviour. Another characteristic that affects children's willingness to imitate is whether adults practice what they preach. When models say one thing and do another, children generally choose the most lenient standard of behaviour that adults demonstrate. Most parents respond to misbehaviour by scolding, criticizing and spanking in the hope that pain would teach them to be more moral in future. Yet, punitive discipline, power assertion, love withdrawal seldom promotes conscience formation in children.
Maturity of moral reasoning is correlated with peer popularity, participation in social organizations, and service in leadership roles. It is important that children be exposed to diverse peer value systems for stimulating moral thought. Cognitive probing, emotionally involved discussions on moral issues with peers are especially effective in stimulating moral development. Morality changes with age from concrete, externally orientated reasoning to more abstract, principled justification for moral choices. Research suggests a powerful role for environmental contexts in the development of moral understanding. In order to foster advanced moral reasoning children need support at various levels including family, peers, schooling and wider society.
|
|
D.R. Sharma is president of
CAT Bar Assn Chandigarh, May 8 There are more than 400 members of the association, but the elections were held unanimously. Mr Sharma was earlier elected secretary of the association for six terms. During the year 2002-2003 he was the vice-president of the association. |
NEW RELEASES Tips Films will release “Ishq Vishq”, their first film of the year. The film opens today at Neelam, Chandigarh, and Suraj, Panchkula. “Ishq Vishk” is touted as a college romance full of heartbreaks and dreams with a standard lesson in love triangles. The film promises to bring alive the youthful moments in everyone’s life. The film has a memorable combination of good music, funny as well as poignant moments and recognisable characters from our own lives to tell a story which almost all of us have already lived sometime in our life. “Ishq Vishk” marks the directorial debut of music video director Ken Ghosh. It also introduces TV artistes Pankaj Kapoor and Neelima Azim’s son Shahid and MTV veejay Shenaj Treasurywala in the lead roles, along with Amrita Rao. Kumar S. Taurani and Ramesh S. Taurani have produced the film. It has a catchy and youthful soundtrack by Anu Malik, who has teamed with Alisha Chinai after a gap. Lyrics have been penned by Sameer. The nine tracks are rendered by Kumar Sanu, Udit Narayan, Alka Yagnik, Sonu Nigam, Priya and Prachi. In “Ishq Vishq”, Anu Malik teams once again after a gap with the pop-diva Alisha Chinai.
DP |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 123 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
In the polite society of 19th century Egypt he also earned something of a bad reputation: for being a fellow who was closer to the fellah, the farmer than to his colleagues. To make things worse he preferred to spend the nights out on the riverbank and traverse the nearby desert much as his father did in India. Not the comfort of a Rest House for this sahib. He also did the most dreadful things like encouraging farmers to work for their own benefit rather than that of the government and once, in 1894, used the furniture of the Khedive's Rest House to plug an unwarranted outflow in the Delta Barrage. That is another matter that the farmers thanked Willcocks's quick action since it stored enough water in the barrage that year to last till
June.![Sir William Willcocks had a reputation for being "sallow, eyes-half-closed, dressed anyway" [following Fred Pearce in the New Scientist, 20 September 2002]](c4.jpg)
In the dry season this store of water would be slowly released into the river for irrigation purposes. Such a plan would have been cheap and effective. But there are times when financiers and technical experts prefer to back up a costlier though relatively inefficient plan rather than a cheap and efficient one. That was the Aswan dam which, to suit the ideas of other engineers, was built at a cost of £7 million. Willcocks's estimate was that it should not cost more than £ 2.5 million. The British did not like Willcocks's continuous criticism of the way in which irrigation projects in Egypt were being implemented. He was even accused of having fomented a peasant revolt. 
For a great many parents, nothing is more important than raising a "good child", one who knows right from wrong and is empathetic and kind. In today's fast paced world, where moral role models are few and acts of violence, even by children, are common, the desire to raise a moral child has taken on a new sense of urgency.
Though all children are born with the capacity to act morally, that ability can be lost. Children who are abused or neglected often fail to acquire a basic sense of trust and belonging that influences how people behave when they are older. Children come to expect the world to be the way they have experienced it - whether that means cold, forbidding, and callous or warm, loving, and upright.
A few films made it to cinema houses in April due to the month-long strike by producers. Only “The Hero”, “Yeh Dil” and children’s film “Chhota Jadugar” were released defying the strike. With over 10 films lined up for release, hopes are high and the audience have much to look forward to.