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INDIA
City students part of UIDAI project The unique identification project started by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) in 2006 finds home gems Samarth Bharadwaj and Himanshu Bhatt part of a team of students from IIIT-Delhi , who are working and contributing to it. Both second-year research students at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Delhi have been working hard on the project which is an initiative to provide and uniqueness every individual to avoid duplicity and fake identities. Bharadwaj had begun working on
the project last year and there are four research students from IIIT who are conducting a feasibility study on finger prints of labourers and farmers — people who work with their hands — to analyse the quality of their fingerprints and find out if they can be used as a part of unique identification.
As part of the unique identification drive, fingerprints and retina identification will be stored as unique identifying features of people. It is usually difficult to get clear fingerprints of labourers and people who work with their hands, compared to other people, because they work with their hands for years and as a result they may have scars or warts, which make the fingerprints difficult to capture. Elaborating on the procedure, Bharadwaj said, “We were given a huge database of fingerprints.
No scholarship plans for Madrasas: Chhattisgarh govt
The Chhattisgarh Governmnet, on Monday, has informed the State assembly that it does not have any scholarship scheme
for Madrasa students. “There are 364 Madrasas in operation in the state, the teachers of these Madrasas are offered grant
from the central government’s Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM)”, said state education minister Brijmohan Agarwal to the state assembly. In reply to a congress member who wanted to know what the government was doing for Madrasa students, Brijmohan said that the state government has no scheme to provide scholarship to students studying in Madrasa schools.
IGNOU gears up to promote vocational education in Madhya Pradesh An agreement to work together in offering certificate, diploma and associate degree programmes in Vocational and Skill Education through its community college has brought together Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Madhya Pradesh Government. Prof. V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, VC, IGNOU after signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Commissioner of Higher Education, Government of Madhya Pradesh (MP) said, “Our government has declared 2010-2020 as the ‘Decade of Innovation’. We need to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth in education and skill development. New solutions in many areas are necessary to reach such targets in expedient ways. Andhra Pradesh govt gives English push at primary education level With English increasingly becoming the preferred language of education even among the students hailing from poorer sections of the society and also rural areas, the AP government has decided to lay emphasis on English right from Class I in its schools. Accordingly, English will now be taught as the second language from Class I from 2011-12 academic year, minister for primary education Sake Sailajanath said. “The basic idea is to provide access to children from poorer sections as well as rural areas to English education right from Class I rather than Class III, so that they compete with students of private schools,” said Sailajanath.
Pitroda points out urgency to reform Higher Education Advisor to Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovation, Sam Pitroda, has expressed his discontent on the education system and the government’s attitude towards higher education reforms. Speaking at the V-Cs’ conference Friday, Pitroda said the government must “act now” on education reforms “as there has been no progress in this regard in the last five years”. He said India desperately needed to devise its own model of education as western models did not work here and focus has to be drawn to the changing role of the teacher. Pitroda said he tried to follow up on the status of the many National Knowledge Commission recommendations, but he was continually told that discussions and consultations were on.
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