India to send two astronauts in space - ISRO

New Delhi: India will send two astronauts into space using an indigenous rocket and an announcement for this is likely to be made within a couple of months, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said on Tuesday.

In an interview to a private channel, ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan said that in the next few weeks, the government may announce approval of India's most expensive scientific programme - that of putting two Indian astronauts in space.

With this, India is set to join the select club of the US, Russia and china that have human space flight capabilities. The announcement has come two days before ISRO's test for an indigenous Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.

Radhakrishnan told NDTV that India has technical capabilities for sending astronauts into the space. He said that the government approval for this Rs. 124 billion venture may come in a couple of months.

On being asked if it will be announced in the Prime Minister's Independence Day speech, the ISRO chief confirmed that "the approval and announcement could happen even before that."

Radhakrishnan says ISRO is ready to launch Indian astronauts by 2017. "As of now what we have is a pre-project study," he said, adding that the astronaut programme will be implemented in phases.

The first phase is to test the unmanned crew module and a service module in space four years from now. After that the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) will be used to launch the Indian astronauts.

Countdown begins for rocket launch with Indian cryo-engine

Bangalore:The countdown to launch a heavy rocket with an Indian cryogenic engine to inject an advanced communication satellite in the geo-synchronous orbit began on Wednesday at the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhrapradesh, a space agency official said.

"The countdown began at 11.27 a.m. at our Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. All preparations for launching the geo-synchornous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-D3) carrying the geo-stationary experimental satellite (GSAT-4) on Thursday at 16.27 IST are progressing satisfactorily," ISRO Director S. Satish told the sources.

The spaceport is located on a small island off the Bay of Bengal, about 80 km north-east of Chennai.

The preparations during the 29-hour countdown includes filling up the second stage and four strap-ons of the 416-tonne rocket with about 200 tonnes of liquid propellants.

"In the run up to lift-off, the cryogenic upper stage will also be filled with propellants. Certain mandatory checks and charging of batteries on the 50-meter tall rocket and the 2.2-tonne satellite onboard will be carried during the countdown," Satish said.

Readiness of the ground stations at Sriharikota, Biak in Indonesia and the master control facility at Hasan in Karnataka, about 180 km from here, will also be tested by the space scientists and engineers simultaneously.

INDIA: New regulation for university accreditation

India's University Grants Commission has framed a regulation making it mandatory for all universities and colleges to be certified by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), commission chairman Professor Sukhdeo Thorat said last weekend, writes Ananya Dutta for The Hindu. The move is an attempt to assess and thereafter ensure the quality of education offered in institutions of higher education, Thorat explained.

Currently, certification from the NAAC, an autonomous body headquartered Bangalore and established by the University Grants Commission in 1994, is voluntary. "While there has been progress in the absolute numbers of students with access to higher education since the time of independence, the enrolment rate of about 11% in India is much less than the world average of 23% and not much higher than the 7% of Africa," he said.

The problem has been addressed in the 11th Five-year Plan, with the government announcing the creation of 1,440 new institutions including seven Indian Institutes of Technology and seven Indian Institutes of Management, which Thorat described as the "second wave of higher education in the country".

IGNOU Announces Rajiv Gandhi International Prize for Education and Technology Development

Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, Hon’ble President of India announced ‘Rajiv Gandhi International Prize for Education and Technology Development’, instituted by Indira Gandhi National Open University(IGNOU) at its Silver Jubilee celebrations today. The Prize will be given to an individual or an institution that has made significant contributions to educational technology for development, in the developing world. It will be decided by an International jury and will comprise a cash component of Rs. 5 lacs and a citation. The award ceremony will be held on the birth anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, every year.

The function was presided over by Shri Kapil Sibal, Hon’ble Minister for Human Resource Development. Smt. D. Purandeswari, Hon’ble Minister of State for HRD and Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member, Planning Commission (Education) were the Guests of Honour. Dr. Jadhav delivered the 24th Foundation Day Lecture on ‘Sustainablity, Innovation and Inclusion in the Education Sector’.

The occasion also marked the inauguration of several initiatives by the President of India, viz launching of the Flexible-learning Platform, the new Gyan Vani stations in IGNOU Regional Centres of Cochin, Cuttack , Pune and Tirunavelli and the launch of Gyandeep, the IGNOU- Indian Army Community College scheme. The Minister of Human Resource Development also released a calendar of IGNOU events for the Silver Jubilee year.

Talking about Gyandeep, the IGNOU-Army Community College scheme, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil said, ”Gyandeep will create a process of certification of Higher education of soldiers. Till now the skills that the army personnel acquired while in service were not reflected through any formal degrees awarded to them. I am happy that through this new collaboration between IGNOU and the Army, the

soldiers will get appropriate certification. This will help them start a new professional life at the end of their careers in the Army.” The President also made a special reference to IGNOU’s Convergence scheme, which brings together the strengths of face-to-face conventional education and the flexibility of Open and Distance learning.

Calling IGNOU a pioneer in Open and Distance education, Shri Sibal,MHRD said, “Giving access and quality education to the Indian youth is not possible with just formal education. Access can happen only with the help of technology, like Virtual labs and interactive teaching.” He further added that Open and Distance learning is not just about giving degrees and diplomas, it’s giving access to information to the Disadvantaged sections of the society. The linkage between learning and livelihood can be enhanced through Open and Distance learning and IGNOU is contributing to the dream of a Global Knowledge –based society.

Smt. D Purandeswari, Minister of State for HRD said,” After the passing of the Right to Education Bill, the training of teachers has assumed great importance. So has increasing the number of certified workers in the country. Looking at the objectives of the National Skills Mission and complimenting such activites, the University should try to create maximum employment opportunities for the youth”.

The Flexi-learning platform, the Silver Jubilee initiative launched by IGNOU today, will provide open access to IGNOU Programmes. It will give prospective learners an opportunity to sample a programme before enrolling and to access IGNOU Learning materials. Students can access this facility by logging into www.ignouflexilearn.ac.in. Under Gyandeep, the other Silver Jubilee initiative, 47 Regimental Army Centres have already been registered as Army Community colleges in the country.

Speaking about new initiatives being undertaken by IGNOU in the Silver Jubilee year, Vice Chancellor, Professor VN Rajasekharan Pillai said,”IGNOU is instituting ISRO Chair for Satellite Education, Raman Chair for Science Education. On the anvil are several international initiatives for rural development. The University has also launched the Student Satisfaction Survey for feedback from its students about IGNOU academic programmes.”

CAT 2009 a dent on the image of IIMs

New Delhi: “A dent is surely visible on the image of a premier institute like the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) after the Common Admission Test (CAT) 2009’s failure,” says Mr. Shiv Kumar, Head of Research and Development, Career Launcher, a coaching institute for the preparation of CAT.

With a new day, there was a new story to tell. The highly competitive CAT, which went online for the first time this year, was hit by technical glitches and poor management, affecting students in as many as 24 test centres in 13 cities across the country.

In an exclusive interview with the National Network of Education, Mr. Kumar clearly said that, “The situation today is akin to what happened in CAT-2003 when the papers were leaked out. They should have avoided such blunders by conducting test-runs across the nation.”

He harped upon the need of the management to conduct mock drills so that there were no hiccups faced by them. The students, coming from far-flung places had to face such an inconvenience after reaching the test centres.

The system did not work and the students were told to wait until the concerned persons arrive at a solution and ultimately they were asked to go back with a new date assigned to them.

Upon being asked whether the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) should re-schedule the whole date sheet until they resolve the problem he was ready with a prompt “No”.

He said, “I don’t think that the IIMs should re-schedule the whole date sheet as you can’t be sure that these glitches won’t re-occur. Considering the vast number in which the aspirants appear across the nation, there will always be some stray cases here and there.”

He claimed that this is going to be an “often-heard story” owing to the masses that the CAT caters to. “Suppose, I am not able to take the exam, there isn’t any common ground upon which the solution can be meted out,” he clearly stated.

He further put across his point by stating that, “It is not just the online test which is facing the problem, even the paper-pencil test faced difficulties. I am not sure if there is any single solution to the problem. Keeping in mind the convenience of the students, they provided them with a slot extending up to ten days, out of which they were free to choose any day.”

Although, the US firm Prometric that has developed the computer system for CAT and the CAT committee said the test had been mostly successful, Gautam Puri, vice chairman of Career Launcher, said that "This is a case of mismanagement, lack of planning and implementation. There are approximately 150-200 students taking CAT in each centre and that is not such a heavy number” local servers can take that load easily. There was no proper testing of the online version of the exam."

The impact of such a faux pas was experienced nationwide among the CAT aspirants and Mr. Kumar had a “mixed bag” of experience from students to share with us as some of them felt better upon learning that their session has been re-scheduled and they can get some extra time for preparation while others came complaining saying, "This was the best day I could appear for the examination."