The university has instructed affiliated colleges to upload students’ marks on internal tests and attendance details
From this year, students at engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University will not only have to take their attendance seriously, but will also have to perform well in internal tests.
In a circular sent to over 500 affiliated colleges, the university has instructed managements to upload monthly data of their students’ performances in internal tests as well as their attendance details.
This decision has been taken, said Anna University officials, to make sure college managements did not tamper with the attendance or internal marks of students.
“We usually insist on colleges sending us the average score of the student and her attendance details after the practical exams. However, there have been many complaints that several colleges change the internal marks of candidates to improve their college results. We want to curb this practice,” said a university official.
Most private colleges are however, unhappy with the move.
As of now, at self-financing colleges, three tests each for 100 marks are conducted during the semester.
A student’s total marks obtained in all tests are put together out of 300, proportionately reduced for 15 marks and rounded to the nearest integer. All the internals tests are for 20 marks, of which 5 marks are allotted for attendance.
The principal of a self-financing college in Kancheepuram said, “We conduct at least two re-tests for a student if she fails in the internal tests, to help her improve. Now that we have to upload the marks immediately after the tests, students will have to face immense pressure to perform and will get absolutely no time to improve.”
He also said that most private colleges insisted on 90 per cent attendance, while Anna University only asked for 75 per cent attendance. “We have attendance taken in every class and send letters to parents of regular latecomers. In the best 15 engineering colleges, there are not more than 40 students in the entire college absent on any given day,” he said.
The head of the department at another private college said move posed a concern, as most engineering colleges were already short-staffed. They would now have to employ extra persons for the task.
“Verifying and entering the marks of over 3,000 students every month, is a huge task. Our faculty already teaches for more than 16 hours a week. This additional task will be a burden. They should be asked to focus on research and interactions with students, rather than doing monotonous data-entry work,” the professor said.
Anna University officials however said the move would ensure there was a check in place in the system, and would help students focus on academics.
“Most colleges grant full marks to their students for attendance and their data generally show very few students failing in the internal tests. But the university results of these students show a different, disappointing picture. Colleges have no reason to be concerned if they have done nothing wrong,” an official said.
I can walk English, I can talk English, I can laugh English because English is a very funny language.~ Amitabh Bachchan, Namak Halal
Everybody speaks English after 8 pm. The joke alludes to both time and a whiskey brand and illustrates how three pegs down, English becomes the lingua franca, when people are 'frank' and 'drank'.
Rajnath Singh is on his way to the Big Apple. The US of A. Where people roll their R's and he hates it, because his name begins with one. Jokes apart, the Bharatiya Janata Party president dropped the traditional culture bomb to get the chattering classes chattering. But if you think the wily politician did it for effect, you are wrong. He and others of his ilk genuinely believe English is evil. Because learning a new language broadens the horizons and shrinks vote banks.
Mulayam Singh Yadav, politically quite diametrically opposite to Rajnath Singh, believed that and implemented that in UP. Kids don't get to learn the English alphabet till they are in the sixth standard. Mulayam Singh also believed computers are evil. His English-speaking chief minister son is distributing free laptops to students. Rajnath Singh's son speaks fluent English as he defends the indefensible on news TV debates. Yes, there is a pattern to it.
Some people who know English do have a superiority complex, but it is far less virulent than the anti-English propaganda borne out of the inferiority complex of those who believe it threatens their status. English is seen as the great equaliser. It may not be a conspiracy, but there are far too many dolts who wage a war on English, want to deny the masses access to the language yet send their own to English-medium schools with a vengeance of the jilted.
Language politics is not new to the country. The whole Tamil politics, at a point, revolved around the opposition to Hindi. Urdu has come to be perceived as a language of one community, thanks to the narrow-minded politics around it. The state patronage has damaged it while claiming to save it. All attempts to save Sanskrit hasn't saved the classical language. English flourished because politicians have rarely tried to patronise it. Languages don't need protection. Languages evolve. Those who do not understand this do not understand the purpose of language. Hindi couldn't reach Madras when it was being pushed. It has more acceptability today even as Madras has changed to Chennai, because words spread. As English words have creeped into every language without us noticing. When Biharis say narbhasana, they rarely care about the word nervous. The song Upsetao nahin Moora in Gangs of Wasseypur was a tribute to that.
Rajnath Singh and those of his mind don't tire of giving examples of Japan, China, Germany and Russia. They forget that all these countries have a lingua franca. Japanese is the language that Japanese do business in, in their country. Not knowing English is no hurdle in doing business. India doesn't have one lingua franca, it has many. Lingua franca isn't an English word to begin with. Yet it's as English as shampoo, which originated from our own champi (head massage).
That's the beauty of language, any language. Languages are inclusive. The English we speak, before 8 pm or after, is not the English that the English speak. The English that the English speak is different from the Welsh English. American English, Indian English, Tamil English, Mumbai English and all. All make fun of each other and it's fun when a Bihari's Englis is pitted agnest the Malayali's. But there's a common thread that unites, as there are accents that divide. The RP is dead. English spoken with the melody of the local language will live long after Rajnath Singh, who speaks it in his own sweet melody.
India has an advantage when it comes to languages. Let us call that melting pot dividend. Scientists have discovered that children who speak more than one language are generally sharper than those who speak just one. Most Indians speak two languages. English is often the third language. And it has served us well. In return, we have given the world the Indian English.
English is as foreign as the chilli is. We are infamous the world over for our fondness for the hotness of it. It wasn't Indian to begin with, but we made it so our own that we don't even know it's not of Indian origin. So is cricket or tobacco. Tobacco made a late entry and Mughal king Jehangir fell in love with it. The guys who brought it to India used to smoke and snuff it. We chew it, we brush our teeth with it (yes, laal dantmanjan has enough tobacco to make you feel on top of the world). It's now a bigger bane here because we made it our own, created new ways to use it. Rajnath Singh doesn't smoke it, he is high on something else.
Indian Army is planning to put back a surveillance camera in the Chumar area along the LAC to keep an eye on the movement of the Chinese troops which had reportedly taken away a similar device last month.
The camera was said to have taken away by the Chinese side on June 17 when it had become non-functional and was returned to the Indian side on July 3 there after a protest was registered.
The camera was used to keep an eye on the movement of the Chinese Army troops in that area. The surveillance camera would be put back there for the same purpose, highly-placed sources told PTI here.
Such cameras have been put up at several places along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) and Indian troops sitting in their posts can keep an eye on the PLA troops, they said.
The particular camera in Chumar area was used several times by the Indian side to monitor and intercept the PLA patrols in the areas claimed by the Indian side as its territory, sources said.
India and China have been working towards signing a border pact to maintain peace and tranquillity along the LAC where a number of incursion incidents have been observed in the recent few months.
A Defence Ministry official said that during Defence Minister A K Antony's meetings with the Chinese leadership, the broader issue of incursion and other incidents were raised but no specific incident was highlighted.
Chinese troops last month intruded into the Chumar sector in Ladakh - the same area which had sparked off tensions in April - and smashed some bunkers besides cutting wires of cameras installed at the border post.
Chumar, located 300 km from Leh, has always been an area of discomfort for the Chinese troops as this is the only area along the China-India border where they do not have any direct access to the LAC.
Major Mariappan Saravanan (10 August 1972 – 29 May 1999), was an officer in the prestigious Bihar Regiment of the Indian Army who was killed during the Kargil War. He was killed in hand to hand combat with intruders after killing four intruders in the Batalik area of Kargil Sector on 29 May 1999, along with 33 soldiers and four other officers. Saravanan had just completed four years of service on 10 March 1999.
Major Sarvanan was possibly the first officer killed in the Kargil War. The attack led by him came in the early stages of the conflict when adequate information was not available. The men in 1 Bihar took an oath after Maj. Sarvanan’s fall to fight to the finish and recover the heights, to the battle cry of ‘Bajrang Bali ki Jai’, they launched subsequent offensives that saw it not just take the heights but drive the Pakistanis all the way across the Line of Control.His actions have led to him being referred to as the "Hero of Batalik"
The Kargil War (Hindi: कारगिल युद्ध kārgil yuddh, Urdu: کارگل جنگ kārgil jang), also known as the Kargil conflict,[note (I)] was an armed conflict between India and Pakistan that took place between May and July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and elsewhere along the Line of Control (LOC). The conflict is also referred to as Operation Vijay (Victory in Hindi) which was the name of the Indian operation to clear the Kargil sector.
The cause of the war was the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants into positions on the Indian side of the LOC, which serves as the de facto border between the two states. During the initial stages of the war, Pakistan blamed the fighting entirely on independent Kashmiri insurgents, but documents left behind by casualties and later statements by Pakistan's Prime Minister and Chief of Army Staff showed involvement of Pakistani paramilitary forces, led by General Ashraf Rashid.The Indian Army, later on supported by the Indian Air Force, recaptured a majority of the positions on the Indian side of the LOC infiltrated by the Pakistani troops and militants. With international diplomatic opposition, the Pakistani forces withdrew from the remaining Indian positions along the LOC.
The war is one of the most recent examples of high altitude warfare in mountainous terrain, which posed significant logistical problems for the combating sides. To date, it is also the only instance of direct, conventional warfare between nuclear states (i.e., those possessing nuclear weapons). India had conducted its first successful test in 1974; Pakistan, which had been developing its nuclear capability in secret since around the same time, conducted its first known tests in 1998, just two weeks after a second series of tests by India.
The colossal monolithic statue of Gomateshwara (Shravanabelagola is a synonymous word), also called as Bahubali the Jain saint, created around 983 C.E by Chamundaraya, a minister of the Ganga King, Rachamalla (Raachmalla SathyaVaak IV 975-986 C.E) is located atop the Chandragiri hill (618 steps climb leads to the monolith on the hill), near the town of Shravanabelagola in Karnataka state. This statue is said to have been carved out of a single block of fine-grained white granite and is considered of great religious significance because Jains believe Bahubali was the first to attain moksha (freedom from cycle of birth and death). The image stands on a lotus. It has no support up to the thighs and is 60 feet (18 m) tall with the face measuring 6.5 feet (2.0 m). The statue is completely in the nude in the Jain custom and is visible from a distance of 30 km. With the serene expression on the face of the image, its curled hair with graceful locks, its proportional anatomy, the monolith size, and the combination of its artistry and craftsmanship have led it to be called the mightiest achievement in sculptural art in medieval Karnataka It is the largest monolithic statue in the world.
The neighboring areas of Shravanabelagola, apart from the Gomateshwara statue, have Jaina bastis and several images of the Jaina Tirthankars. A beautiful view of the surrounding areas could be seen from the top of the Chandragiri Hill. Every 12 years, thousands of devotees congregate here to perform the Mahamastakabhisheka, a spectacular ceremony in which the thousand-year-old statue is anointed with milk, curds, ghee, saffron and gold coins. The anointing last took place in February 2006, and the next ceremony will occur in 2018.
Chennai, July 1: India's first dedicated navigation satellite IRNSS-1A will be launched onboard PSLV-C22 around midnight today from the spaceport of Sriharikota with the mission countdown progressing smoothly.
ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is scheduled to blast off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, about 80 km from here, at 11.41 PM carrying the satellite.
"The 64-and-a-half hour countdown for the launch has begun at 7.11 AM yesterday and is progressing smoothly. Everything is on schedule and the launch would take place at 11.41 pm tomorrow," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spokesman Deviprasad Karnik told PTI.
The 1,425 kg IRNSS-1A, the first satellite in Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), has a mission life of 10 years and would provide accurate real-time position and timing information to users in the country as well as the region extending up to 1,500 km around it, ISRO said.
The IRNSS-1A, carrying two types of payloads - navigation and ranging payloads - would be injected into space about 20 minutes after lift-off.
On the unusual midnight launch, the first from Sriharikota, ISRO sources said the time for every launch was determined by the orbital parameters and inclination. Taking into consideration the requirements of IRNSS-1A, it had been fixed at 11.41 PM.
With a lift-off mass of 1,425 kg, the satellite also has two solar panels. Special thermal control schemes have been designed and implemented for some of the critical elements such as atomic clocks.
The IRNSS system, which would ultimately have seven satellites, was targeted to be completed by 2015 at a total cost of Rs 1,420 crores, ISRO sources said.
Applications of IRNSS include terrestrial aerial and marine navigation, disaster management, vehicle tracking and fleet management, navigation aide for hikers and travellers, visual and voice navigation for drivers, they said.
The fully deployed IRNSS system would consist of three satellites in GEO stationary orbit and four in inclined geosynchronous orbit, about 36,000 km altitude above earth.
The powerful "XL" version of the PSLV is being used in tomorrow's launch which would be the 24th mission of the rocket. Barring the failure of first mission in 1993, all the 22 subsequent PSLV flights till February this year have been successful.
This is the fourth occasion that ISRO is using an 'XL' version, the earlier launches being Chandrayaan 1 (PSLV-C11), GSAT-12 (PSLV-C17) and RISAT-1 (PSLV-C19)
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