ORISSA PRIMARY EDUCATION: 'Bookless' in Orissa

After Irom Sharmila last year, Anna Hazare wins IIPM's 2011 Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize of Rs. 1cr. To be handed over on 9th May

Textbooks of many subjects haven't yet reached the schools

A conflict between the business interests of a group of entrepreneurs and the government policy has rendered lakhs of government school students 'bookless', if that is the term to be used. The half-yearly exams are almost there and the students are still to see how their textbooks look like, let alone reading them.

Ashok Sahu, a student of 6th standard of the Capital High School, Bhubaneswar, is still awaiting his Sanskrit textbook though new session had begun in April. Sasmita Priyadarshini of Rajabagicha High School of Cuttack is also awaiting her English textbook. If the situation in the state capital Bhubaneswar and the commercial capital Cuttack is such, then one can imagine what it could be like in remote areas such as Malkangiri or Kandhamal, which are 500 to 700 kilometers away from the seat of administration.

'We haven't yet received all textbooks and are managing with the old ones. Here five to six students share one book,' informs a student of Mudikunda Primary School at Phulbani town. The students of other small towns and villages of the district are also facing the same problems. Though there is a requirement of 7 lakh books, only 1.5 lakh have reached the schools.

Situation is not very different in the coastal district of Balasore, which is one of the highly literate districts of the state. Here, the total textbook requirement is around 4 lakh and only 1.3 lakh have reached the schools. The students studying in classes II, IV and VI are the worst affected as the syllabi of these classes have changed this year. So, they can't use the old textbooks. The inordinate delay in printing and distribution of textbooks, which has adversely affected the study in schools all across the state this year, is an outcome of a legal row between the Text Book Press (TBP) and Orissa Printers and Binders Federation (OPBF). Normally, the TBP prints and distributes around 2.5 crore books every year. As per government norms, if the cost of production and distribution exceeds Rs.5 crore, a national tender has to be floated. This year the total requirement was 2.64 crore books and its estimated cost exceeded Rs.6 crore. So, the Department of School and Mass Education floated a national tender,' said a senior officer of the press. The OPBF that had been assisting in printing textbooks previously, filed a petition in the Orissa High Court which ordered a stay on the process and finally cancelled the national tender on May 19 and ordered that the work be given to state small-scale industries. At last, text book printing and distribution work started in the last week of May, after a delay of two months. The department claims that about 2.10 crore textbooks (the total requirement is 2.64 crore) will be supplied soon.Pratap Jena, Minister of School and Mass Education assures, 'Some legal problems caused the delay and they would be taken care of from the next academic session.'

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WEST BENGAL HIGHER EDUCATION: No takers for engineering seats

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Those at the helm are clueless as to how to lure the students

Sitting in his Salt-lake office, the Chairman of the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination Board, Sidhartha Dutta, is not at all enjoying the situation. Not only him, actually the whole Board seems to be in a melancholic mood ' students are simply not applying to engineering colleges in this eastern state; 6,026 seats are currently vacant. A third round of counselling was slated between August 29-31 to fill up the vacant seats in the engineering colleges. That, too, is over now. The situation remains the same. West Bengal, unfortunately, leads the nation with respect to this ignominious figure of vacant engineering seats. The last year's slow down hang-over might have exacerbated the situation, but a solution is clearly not in sight. Terming it a nationwide phenomenon, Dutta is gives his reasoning: 'Nationally, about 45 lakh students appear for the school-leaving examinations every year. Of these, about 4.5 lakh are from the science stream which is about 10 per cent of the total. Out of these, about four lakh pass the examination. But there are five lakh engineering seats in the country.' In Dutta's view, it's a pure case of a demand and supply gap, with supply being much over the actual demand.

Talking to TSI, Dhritiman Chowdhury, a first year computer science student from Durgapur points out, 'Actually, there is almost a complete saturation in the IT and engineering fields. So today's youth are not at all willing to go for engineering. Their interest is rather growing towards basic science. Since the job prospects are dwindling, not many students are game for engineering these days.'

This is evidently a far cry from the days when engineering used to be a coveted course with parents ready to dole out lakhs to ensure their progenies join the stream. In the social context, this is a plus and a minus too. The plus: availability of vacant seats ensures that all those who're interested get the programme of their choice. The minus: if jobs are anyway not available, what use is doing a course at all? What is required is for the West Bengal Board to immediately undertake a comprehensive state-wide research report to find out the actual reasons such a situation has occurred; and if the reasoning is jobs, to advise the government appropriately. Not that the government would do anything ' but the least they should 'not' do is to close down or scrap the vacant seats and courses. It's better to have the problem of plenty than to suffer penurious illiteracy

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ASSAM POLITICS: Mahanta to lead the Opposition

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The former chief minister's elevation raises hopes in AGP

After a dismal showing in the 2001 and 2006 Assembly elections, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) ' the main opposition party in the Assam Assembly' is eager to regain its lost popularity ahead of the coming elections next year. After the Prafulla Kumar Mahanta led Asom Gana Prishad (Progressive)'s unification with the AGP last year, it's now time to show more goodwill gestures. So, AGP's Chandra Mohan Patowary decided to vacate the post of Leader of the Legislative Party of AGP to make way for Mahanta. Patowary in August had announced that he wanted to devote more time to organise the party and announced his unwillingness to carry on as the Leader of Opposition. The AGP's legislative party met on September 4 to elect Mahanta as their leader. After taking over as the Leader of Opposition, Mahanta told TSI that he would try his level best to implement party's agenda and would place sensitive issues of the state on the appropriate platform.

The AGP had first grabbed the power in 1985 in the aftermath of the historic Assam Agitation. It came to power again in 1996, but lost. popularity as a section of people felt that the AGP governments led by PK Mahanta had failed to implement the Assam Accord. Some of the leaders accused Mahanta of not doing much to execute the Accord and he was removed from the party leadership. Mahanta then formed a new party called the Asom Gana Parishad (P). Reacting on the development, AGP general secretary Atul Bora said that the party would gain from the latest development. 'The AGP MLAs have elected Mahanta as their leader. This will definitely help the party,' he said, adding that positive outcomes have already been noticed during the 'janasanyug yatra' launched by the party earlier this month.

On the other hand, the All Assam Students' Union (AASU) has lodged their protest against the development by showing him black flags.

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OBAMA RATING: Obama's sliding popularity is causing alarm to Democrats

After Irom Sharmila last year, Anna Hazare wins IIPM's 2011 Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize of Rs. 1cr. To be handed over on 9th May

Plummeting rating

President Barack Obama's popularity has nose-dived consistently from the time he took office ' consequently, his Democratic Party is heading for a major defeat in the upcoming mid-term polls scheduled in November! The reason ' a series of failed initiatives, policy fiascos, and poor communication with the electorates. His healthcare policy has bombed, his handling of economy is disapproved, his job approval ratings are plunging and his inability to control poverty is faulted.

It is said history repeats itself! It has happened time and again in American politics that the victorious party in the Presidential Election has lost the next mid-term poll! It happened to Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1995 among others. However, this cannot be the only reason for the debacle of Barack Obama, with whom there is a sense of disillusionment among his supporters, who are perplexed to find little deliverance after all the tall promises he made during his election campaign. One of the biggest debacles in his domestic policy has been his healthcare reforms, which has pulled down the ratings. And worrying unemployment figures continue to pull it down further. A recent study by Gallup disclosed that Obama's approval had plummeted to 47 per cent in April this year, from 64 per cent in February 2009. In August 2010, the same was 41 per cent. Even the ardent Obama supporters are turning their backs on him. But fortunately for Obama, 83 per cent Democrats still commend his performance ' though this figure has dropped from 88 per cent in February last year. Republican support for Obama is only 14 per cent in August, down from 41 per cent in February 2009. The Democratic Party's approval rating is only 41 per cent positive, the lowest in Gallup's 18-year experience in measuring.

In spite of these ground realities, Obama's detachment is startling. Instead of taking head on the issues of economy, jobs and healthcare, he is pre-occupied with non-consequential issues of immigration policy, Islamic society, and the mosque near the site of 9/11 catastrophe! Notwithstanding this, what could be the final nail in the coffin is the census of poverty ratio of 2009 that is supposed to be released in the near future. The forecast says that a poverty increase from 13.2 per cent to 15 per cent is a good enough reason for the disheartened electorate to vote against the Democrats. If the projected figure turns out to be correct, it will establish the fact that one-seventh of America's population (which is 45 million) is poor! This is the largest increase of poverty in the history of United States beating the previous high of 13 per cent in 1980. Even though there could be a setback in the November polls, Obama can hope that his policies will be eventually appreciated by the electorates in the run up to the Presidential Election in 2012, if he decides to contest.

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STRIKE IRRATIONAL: Why can't esma be enforced

After Irom Sharmila last year, Anna Hazare wins IIPM's 2011 Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize of Rs. 1cr. To be handed over on 9th May

Govt. should enforce ESMA strongly to stop essential services strikes

If one flips back the pages of history, it would not take much time to gauge that the concept of strikes was developed to bring in political change in a country. With time, the whole motive of strike metamorphosed from bring political change to propagation of individual's (or of a small community's) interests, sidelining the bigger picture. Talking about India, strikes here have become a more common phenomenon. Initially, these were used by workers to protest against the industries and to call for collective bargaining sessions. Today, even the most educated classes of society, who at large are not at the bottom of the pyramid, resort to strikes.

Recently, more than 50 people lost their lives across the state of Rajasthan after 1,200 doctors and medical practitioners went on strike for three days. This was in spite of knowing the fact that a large population of patients rely on these medical colleges and hospitals for treatment. On the same lines, in June 2010, thousands of patients' medical treatment suffered because of a day-long strike at Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi. It has been seen that every time it comes to strikes, by and large the common man suffers the most. Airlines are another industry in frequent touch with strikes. So is the legal fraternity. In April and May this year, lawyers across Uttar Pradesh went on strike and didn't allow the judiciary to function in the state. Juxtapose the fact that India already has piles of cases pending, another nonworking and unproductive day would add to the pressure and woes. Same can be iterated for strikes called by oil company employee and bank employees, which straight away hits the economy and the market and lives of many daily wage workers.

Talking in numbers, statistics compiled by the Union Government's Labour Bureau reveals that the number of workers affected by strikes has risen from 570,000 in 2007 to 930,000 in 2009. A day long general strike causes a loss of around Rs 13,000 crore to the country. In countries like France, certain categories of public transport workers, if on strike can be prosecuted. Same goes for railroad employees in the US. Even in few of the US states, teachers are banned from calling strikes.

India too has its ESMA, the Essential Services Maintenance Act, using which the government can break the back of any strike. Although the government does invoke this act from time to time (the recent truckers' strike is a key example), it stops short of enforcing the act to its fullest. The recent AIIMS strike is a crying example. Doctors are covered under ESMA and cannot strike work. Period. However, in the AIIMS strike, and in many such similar strikes, the government ' which could set an example ' failed to do so. Even ESMA can enforce a fine of only Rs.200 per individual, though a jail term of 6 months can also be enforced. We say, either impose ESMA to its fullest, or update its powers to become practicable!

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