Category Archives: Education

Scholarship for hill girl

Education, Inspiration / Positive News and Features
Swareena Gurung

Darjeeling:

Swareena Gurung, a-21-year-old student from Darjeeling, has bagged a Rs 34 lakh scholarship from Bengal government to pursue a post-graduate course at University of London.

Gurung, who completed her graduation from Miranda House in Delhi in literature, had applied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London and at the University of Oxford.

“My first preference was SOAS and I am also happy that I got a sponsorship of 36,526 pounds, which roughly translates to around Rs 34 lakh for MA South Asian Area Studies programme under the Bishwa Bangla Masters Scholarship,” said Gurung.

The one-year master degree course is specific to south Asia. The student, who completed her ICSE from St Helen’s School, Kurseong, and did her Plus Two at Loreto Convent, Darjeeling, had also got a seat at University of Oxford.

“Two students from Bengal get this scholarship every year. Bengal government has a tie-up with the SOAS but it is the university that selects the candidate for scholarship,” said Gurung.

The scholarship includes college fees to the tune of 18,980 pounds while the rest will be paid as maintenance expenses in three equal instalments.

Gurung’s major module would be culture. “We have to select a major module and I have selected culture, under which I will be studying politics and culture of contemporary south Asia,” said Gurung.

The student will be joining classes on September 24.

Asked about her plans, Gurung said: “I have kept my options open – either going for further academics or staring my career in journalism.”

Sudeep Gurung, the girl’s father, said: “We would like to thank the chief minister of West Bengal Mamta Banerjee and her government for introducing a scholarship through which students can pursue higher studies overseas.”

Sudeep is a businessman.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> West Bengal / by Vivek Chhetri / September 11th, 2018

Telugus rejoice 1000 full moons in city

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Records, All
The Andhra Association Calcutta, which houses the Andhra Association High School

Calcutta:

An association for Telugus in Calcutta, formed in 1936, is celebrating its existence for 1,000 full moons according to the Telugu calendar, an occasion known as Sahasra Purna Chandrodaya.

The Andhra Association Calcutta was set up to give Telugus a feeling of home away from home.

Sahasra Purna Chandrodaya is an occasion Telugus celebrate if they see 1,000 moons in a lifetime, an association official said.

“Our association has completed 1,000 full moons and we will celebrate the occasion. For us Telugus, seeing 1,000 full moons is an auspicious occasion,” Srinivas Vedula, president of the association, said.

“In Telugu families anyone living for 1,000 full moons thinks it to be a new life. If one’s spouse is alive, partners exchange garlands like a second wedding.”

Established in September 1936, the Andhra Association Calcutta is now 81 years old. The difference in food, culture and language prompted Telugus in the city to form the association.

Vadlamani Venkatesham Pantulu, an engineer working in Port Trust, had set up the association.

President Vedula said several Telugus approached Pantulu after which the engineer took a place on rent in Bhowanipore and turned it into a hostel for Telugus. “Here, people used to get food cooked the way they would get at home. Besides, interacting with fellow Telugus gave them a feeling of home.”

Even now the association directs people who approach them to places where they can get Telugu food or people. Yet at the same time, members mingle with people from other states so that they don’t remain exclusive without any contact with people from other cultures, Vedula said.

“During cultural programmes, we have Rabindrasangeet as well,” an association member said.

There are about 100,000 Telugus in Calcutta and a large number of them working in the IT sector in Salt Lake and New Town.

Andhra Pradesh has been split into two states but people from both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are members of the association. “It’s an association of Telugu people and not of people from a state,” Vedula said.

The current building that houses the association’s office on Pratapaditya Road has the Andhra Association High School, where Telugus are a minority. “We have about 1,000 students and about a dozen of them are Telugus,” a member said.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Subhajoy Roy / September 03rd, 2018

Practice, chance and peace

Education, Records, All, World Opinion
From left) Filmmaker Suman Mukhopadhyay; BN Ramesh, additional director general and inspector general of police, West Bengal Human Rights Commission; Vishesh Gupta, the chairperson of Bharat Soka Gakkai; former Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar; dancer Alokananda Roy and Rashi Ahuja, director and head of external relations, Bharat Soka Gakkai at the conference at Science City on Saturday. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Science City:

For 36 years, a Japanese man has been writing and sending a peace proposal to the United Nations. Even at 90, Daisaku Ikeda stays committed to his life-long effort to steer the world away from conflicts and build a humanistic society. He has managed to spread his belief across 192 countries, including India, through the Buddhist society of Soka Gakkai that he leads.

The Soka education system, rooted in the society’s values, encompasses kindergartens in six countries, elementary to graduate level schools in Japan and a liberal arts university in California. Born to a family of seaweed farmers, the Buddhist philosopher and peacemaker has also founded an art museum, a music concert association and institutes for peace and policy research in Japan and the US.

The organisation’s India arm Bharat SokaGakkai held a conference on Ikeda’s 36th peace proposal at Science City on Saturday. “Soka means value creation. There is a lot of synergy between our values and the UN’s agenda,” said Vishesh Gupta, the chairperson of Bharat Soka Gakkai.

The guests were welcomed by volunteers clapping in rhythmic unison.

“Art can’t teach anyone anything. It only makes the human soul receptive to the good. Neither does artistic vision fall from the sky. It is the result of practice,” said filmmaker Suman Mukhopadhyay. He went on to talk of the issues he has addressed through his work on the stage and in films. He is planning a film on Kashmir, titled Paradise in Flames.

Dancer Alokananda Roy shared her experience of working with prisoners. “When I walked into a prison, I did not expect to meet people with heart. But if you treat them as human, they also feel human. I have worked with juvenile offenders, too, who are traumatised by society’s finger-pointing.They made a mistake. It’s fair to give them a second chance,” she argued. Her new students, however, have not made any mistake. They are transgenders. “They do not deserve to be cast aside.”

B.N. Ramesh, additional director general and inspector general of police, West Bengal Human Rights Commission, spoke of his experience of tackling insurgency-hit states across the country and people he met along the way, like an 11-year-old stone pelter in Kashmir.

Former Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar shared his experience of attending three Unesco conventions. On the agenda was restitution of cultural property, i.e. the question of returning cultural artefacts plundered from another nation. “Management of peace at the kitchen level calls for patience,” he said.

Using the acronym VUCA coined by the US army, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, he said: “That’s the world we face. Is peace worth discussing in such a world? But man’s capacity to destroy is equalled only by his capacity to save.”

He cited the genesis of a cross-cultural signal – the salutation. “When strangers met in the medieval times, it was customary to delink the right hand from the body to indicate that no weapon would be used. Warriors would also raise their visors to reveal their identity. The gesture was stylised over time.”

Sircar also mentioned the phenomenon of Mexican wave in sports stadiums. “It proves that there is dormant in man a capacity to act in unison, rising above identity and ideology thrust upon him,” he said.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Sudeshna Banerjee / July 16th, 2018

Machines, made in school

Education, Records, All, Science & Technology

The teenagers from Bijoygarh Higher Secondary School for Girls had never seen a remote-controlled car before. Neither had they heard of artificial intelligence. So they were extremely happy unravelling the wonders of science in the Atal Tinkering Laboratories (ATL) of Salt Lake School.

ATL is an initiative under Atal Innovative Mission, programmed by Niti Aayog, or the National Institution for Transforming India, a policy thinktank of the central government. Under the scheme, the government provides selected schools with grants to set up science laboratories. The idea is to encourage entrepreneurship through self-employment and to develop scientific interest in students. Over 2,000 schools in India have established laboratories under this initiative, including 68 in West Bengal. Salt Lake School is one of them.

The ATL lab in our school was inaugurated in December by the vice chancellor of Jadavpur University, Suranjan Das. Since then, and even before that, 20 students of our school have been working hand-in-hand to create products of scientific importance with utmost precision and dedication.

For many months, ATL had been an intra-school platform, enlightening students on the importance of robotics, cloud computing, programming, coding, artificial intelligence and more.

Finally we opened doors to students of other schools, in observance of ATL Community Day, to commemorate the birth anniversary of B.R. Ambedkar. Our school worked with Maya Foundation, a non-profit NGO that works to create awareness regarding menstrual health of adolescent girls and for the downtrodden sections of rural Bengal. They helped us welcome 12 girls from Bijoygarh. Some students of Salt Lake Point School also attended the exhibition.

As head boy of our school, I watched over my juniors working hard to make the event a success. “Innovation for all” was our motto and we gave it our best shot. My juniors demonstrated remote-controlled cars, which can be used for fire detection, and if fitted with small cameras, can help in investigation purposes. The remote was a mobile phone, and many of the girls from Bijoygarh tried operating it themselves.

The sight of their excited faces at the sight of the moving car was perhaps my moment of the day.

Aditya Mitra, a budding scientist from our school, demonstrated his hand-made laptop. He had built it with spare parts of other electronic gadgets. “Khub bhalo,” was the general reaction from guests, when I asked them to comment on the expo. They interacted with our students and enquired about making the gadgets and the principles working behind them.
The students from Salt Lake Point School were curious and eager too. “There are so many things we didn’t know earlier,” said one of them. “It has been a wonderful experience, getting to see and learn so much.”

Our students, too, were happy to showcase their hard work and explain the intricacies of their machines.

The exhibition was preceded by the inauguration ceremony, attended by scientist Chittaranjan Sinha. Speaking to the students, he emphasised on the importance of scientific innovation and new thinking to sustain our environment and asked us to help society on a wider scale. He encouraged students by telling stories from the lives of Acharya P.C. Roy and Acharya J.C. Bose. “India today is in the grip of grave disarray with superstitious beliefs reigning. Only scientific and rational thinking can save the nation,” he said.

MLA Sujit Bose spent time with us too and congratulated the students and the management for organising the event. Our principal, Sugata D’Souza delivered the vote of thanks and emphasised that this ATL laboratory shall be the nucleus for the development of a scientific temper in students of schools in our region.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Ananyo Chakraborty, Salt Lake School / July 13th, 2018

Presi alumni top post

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Records, All

Calcutta:

Nabaneeta Dev Sen has become the first woman president of the Presidency Alumni Association since its inception in 1951.

Dev Sen was officially anointed at a meeting at the association’s office on the Presidency campus on Friday.

“We have had 20 presidents before her. She happens to be the first woman,” said secretary Bivas Chaudhuri.

Dev Sen had filed her nomination for membership in the association’s executive council and was inducted as one of the 29 members at the association’s annual general meeting on June 23. “The executive council unanimously named her the next president,” Chaudhuri said.

Presidents have a tenure of one year. The 30th member of the council is the ex-officio chief patron, who is the university’s vice-chancellor.

Asked what role she would like the alumni association to play, Dev Sen replied: ” These are tough times. Let us see what can be done.”

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by The Telegraph Special Correspondent / July 07th, 2018

Students innovate wheelchair that climbs stairs, med box with alert

Education, Records, All, Science & Technology

Kolkata :

A wheelchair that can climb stairs, a medicine dispenser that sends out reminders to users, and a walking stick that helps people with visual impairment mavigate with the help of audio messages. These were among 30 innovations that students at 24 institutions in eastern India demonstrated at a CII meet on innovation and startups in the city.

Conscious of the difficulty that the elderly and infirm experience in climbing stairs, students at JIS College of Engineering presented a wheelchair designed to climb stairs, with the help of three sets of wheels that work in tandem. Another innovation was Urja, a multi-purpose electric source, presented by Anish Kumar Sarangi from Silicon Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar. The device can be used as a portable power source, a high-frequency mosquito repellent, a passive water filter, an LED light and a USB port, from which mobiles can be charged or USB fans can be operated. “Nearly two out of every 10 people in Asia and almost 300 million people in India do not have access to electricity. The challenge is to bring power to them.” Sarangi said.

“CII has formed innovation clubs at different colleges. Commercially viable projects are selected by the jury. Those projects, along with their prototypes, are displayed and some of them adapted in industries. We focus on four main fields: agriculture, education, finance and health,” said Dipankar Chakrabarti, co-chairman, CII Eastern Region Startup & Innovation Taskforce.

Students at Sudhir Chandra Sur Degree Engineering College have created an automatic medicine dispenser for which an app has been developed. Once the medicine schedules are fed into the dispenser the machine can deliver tablets or syrup at the correct time.

Among the other innovations was a solar AC proposed by Narula Institute of Technology. Its students have also proposed smart gloves that can translate gestures into speech to facilitate easier communication by people with speech impairment.

Jadavpur University students have proposed a light, portable, durable and fire-proof cabin that can be used by armed forces at the border.

MCKV Institute of Engineering presented a walking stick and a safety app that gets triggered when a ring worn by the user comes in contact with the mobile. The stick is fitted with GPS and guides the user —a visually impaired person—with audio directions.

Software Technology Parks of India additional director and officer in-charge Manjit Nayak felt most proposals had the potential to be developed into products. “A Class XII student from Bihar came up with a wireless device with which one can remotely control a tractor,” he said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> News> City News> Kolkata News> Schools & Colleges / TNN / July 03rd, 2018

City girls set for world debut

Education, Records, All, Sports, World Opinion

Six rowing champs part of 10-member India team

(From left to right) Aishwarya, Shreya, Shramana, Shweta, Shreyaa and Semanti at the Bengal Rowing Club. Pictures by Bishwarup Dutta

Calcutta:

Six girls from Calcutta will be part of the 10-member Indian women’s team for the World University Rowing Championship to be held in Shanghai from August 10 to 13.

Some 500 participants from 25 countries, including the US, the UK, Germany and Australia, will compete at the Shanghai Water Sports Centre in Qingpu district.

The finalists were selected at a trial camp in Chandigarh on June 18.

The top rowers from Indian universities attended the camp. The Calcutta contingent comprised four girls from Jadavpur University and two from Calcutta University.

Team JU

Semanti Choudhury, Shramana Saha and sisters Shreyaa and Shweta Brahmachari had won gold in the 2000m women’s fours in the national university championships at Chandigarh earlier this month.

The win was special because the team edged out Punjab University, the hot favourites, by 1.5 seconds.

“It is going to be a huge challenge in China,” Semanti, who has just completed her MSc in economics at Jadavpur University, said.

The senior-most in the group, she’s been rowing for more than a decade. Painting is her other passion.

Shreyaa, the older of the Brahmachari sisters, is doing her MSc in Chemistry from JU. “For me, it is labs and lakes,” Shreyaa, who lives in Southern Avenue, said. She got introduced to the lakes while taking swimming lessons at Anderson Club.

She shifted to rowing in 2009 at the Lake Club. Early morning trainings made her leave the bed at 5am. The two sisters slept together and it was their mother who prodded the younger daughter, Shweta, to follow suit.

“You, too, should get up early. Why don’t you join her for rowing,” Shweta remembered her mother telling her.

Shreyaa won her first medal (bronze) in 2010, the first time she took part in the sub-junior nationals in Roorkee. Shweta started rowing in the winter of 2010 and within six months, won gold in the sub-junior nationals in Calcutta.

Shramana, a first-year English honours student at JU, loves playing the double bass guitar. “I hardly have a social life. For me, the strings and the oars complement each other,” she said.

Team CU

Aishwarya Krishnan and Shreya Iyer, childhood buddies turned rowing partners, together won Bengal’s lone gold medal in the Senior National Championships in Pune last December.

The duo defeated Chandigarh and Odisha in the 500m women’s double sculls.

Shreya has just completed her graduation in psychology from Loreto College. Aishwarya studies commerce in St Xavier’s College. Both started rowing when they were in school, one after the other. The turning point in their careers came in 2015 when they became partners in double sculls. The two have since won several medals.

“We are super excited. Our strength is our chemistry,” Shreya said.

Rowing apart, Aishwarya is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer. Shreya’s other passion is violin.

The training

Shweta and Shramana are members of the Bengal Rowing Club. The rest are Lake Club members.

All six will leave for the training camp in Chandigarh in a few days.

But they are already into full throttle practice mode at the Rabindra Sarobar lake.

Shreya and Aishwarya are focusing on double sculls while the four from Jadavpur are training for women’s fours.

They are training in two shifts at the moment – early morning and evening.

Apart from boat sessions, long-distance running, ergometers and gymmimg are part of their schedule.

All four are on a junk-free and high-protein diet.

“We have not competed with so many formidable teams on an international level earlier. But we will give everything we have got,” Aishwarya said.

Kolkata library that celebrates parallel literature turns 40

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Records, All
Visitors browse the collection at the library. Photo: Special Arrangement

Little Magazine Library grew from artistic writing.

Nestled in Temar Lane, off College Street, Little Magazine Library is a bright yellow building. The small entrance to this home-turned-library in Kolkata opens up to wall after wall of books. Seated in the midst of these mountains is founder Sandip Dutta, the owner of the library that turned 40 on Saturday.

His quest to open a library of this kind, which would eventually host poet Mahasweta Devi and other literary figures, began on one of his many trips to the National Library in 1972, when he was 21.

“When I walked into the National Library, I saw the little magazines thrown on the floor. Dust and worms had wrecked most of them,” he said.

Mr. Dutta launched his archive when the country was taken up by the little magazine movement in the 1970s. It made its way across Maharashtra, Kerala and West Bengal, nurturing marginalised, less-known writers. In Bengal, the movement gathered steam through post-modernist Bengali literature.

Periodicals prosper

The coming of the Hungry Generation writers popularised periodicals like Krittibash (edited by Sunil Gangopadhyay and Dipak Majumdar), Sabuj Patra, Kali Kalam, Kobita Saptahiki (edited by Shakti Chattopadhyay) and Kallol.

Initially, Mr. Dutta organised an exhibition, which showcased about 750 little magazines from his collection. By 1978, he had set it up, and was working to clear the confusion about what the magazines meant: “People often take ‘little’ in this case to mean ‘for children,’ but few realise it is a non-commercial, parallel establishment that celebrates artistic voices.”

Sandip Dutta in his library with a new member. Photo: Special Arrangement.

The venture started off with 1,500 magazines and was known as ‘Library and Laboratory for Bengali Little Magazines.’ It later became the ‘Kolkata Little Magazine Library and Research Center,’ housing about 60,000 periodicals, 1,600 of them digitised. It also houses research material on 60 topics: from film, music, politics and feminist theory to subaltern studies.

Filmmaker Jojo Karlekar, who made a documentary, Little Magazine Voices, says, “I don’t think it is possible to ever be comprehensive about it.”

Mahasweta Devi was a regular patron. When she lost the manuscripts and a few publications, Mr. Dutta was given the task of retrieving them.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Bulbul Rajagopal / Kolkata – June 23rd, 2018

Students unite over water of the world

Education, Green Initiatives / Environment, Records, All, Science & Technology, World Opinion

Chowringhee:

A study on quality of water brought together schoolchildren from Calcutta and Kentucky.

Students of 10 schools from Calcutta, Durgapur, Kharagpur, Ranchi and Guwahati studied the quality of water from various sources and the Kentucky students assessed the impact of coal mines on water. They presented their projects at American Center on Friday.

Students of Union Chapel School at American Center on Friday. Pictures by Ankit Datta

The students of DAV Model School, Durgapur, were declared winner for their study on the water of Barakar river flowing through Jharkhand and Bengal. They shared the prize with the students of Belfry High School, Kentucky, who based their project on wells in East Kentucky.

Students of Belfry High School, Kentucky – Pictures by Ankit Datta

Ten schools from eastern India and 12 from Kentucky tested samples from 121 water bodies, including rivers, wetlands, ditches, canals, wells and ponds in their own areas. The findings were shared with the community to discourage contamination of water.

The project titled Exploring Water Quality in Eastern India and Kentucky was launched by the US consulate general in Calcutta, in collaboration with University of Kentucky and Association of Social and Environmental Development,

“We hope the participants will take the lead in championing positive social change regarding water quality and conservation,” said Jamie Dragon, director, American Center.

The students of Belfry High School investigated water in 10 wells near coal mines.

“We will present a proposal to the Environmental Protection Agency in the US because well water is not regulated,” said Haridas Chandran, physics teacher at Belfry.

The students of DAV Model School, Durgapur, checked the pH level of Barakar river water and its residual chlorine content. One of the findings was that storing the water for long is not recommended because the absence of residual chlorine can trigger a significant growth of microbes.

“We carried out some tests in the school laboratory and the rest on river banks,” said Soumit Das, Class XII.

Garden High School worked on wetlands and Sri Sri Academy on water quality of Hooghly.

Carol Hanley, who guided the students in India and Kentucky, said they had to choose a waterbody that had both cultural and scientific significance.

“We call this community- based science so that science becomes real,” said Hanley, the director, College of Architecture, Food and Environment, University of Kentucky.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by A Staff Reporter / June 23rd, 2018

Id gift for buddy trio’s business idea

Business & Economy, Education, Travel
(From left) Md Wasim Ali Ansari, Azhar Rabbani and Ayush Singh at The Kidopreneur Summit at Novotel on Saturday. Picture by Biswajit Kundu

Calcutta:

They gave Id celebrations at home a miss to pitch their business module before a roomful of entrepreneurs. Azhar Rabbani and Mohammad Wasim Ali Ansari, along with Ayush Singh, have devised a plan to provide easy accommodation to outstation students through an app.

The three friends beat six other teams to bag the first prize at The Kidoprenuer Summit, in association with The Telegraph, at Novotel on Saturday. Co-hosted by Sonali’s Cubo, Merchants’ Chamber of Commerce and Srei Infrastructure Finance, the one-of-its-kind conclave gave young entrepreneurs a chance to showcase their innovative business ideas.

The OFY (Only For You) Homes project hopes to address the accommodation problems that students of other cities face when they come to Calcutta to study. “More than 60 colleges in and around the city don’t offer hostel facilities and at any time around 30,000 students are looking for a place to stay,” said Ayush, 17, a student of Shree Jain Vidyalaya.

The boys plan to offer standardised paying guest accommodation and flats on rent through an app. “Students can rent a home for any period of time and also share it with a maximum of four roommates. We will offer packages. They can get food, Internet, electricity and other amenities at Rs 6,000 to Rs 12,000 a month,” said Azhar, 18, of Seth Anandram Jaipuria College.

College mate Wasim, 18, said the trio have been working out the logistics for the past three months. “We hope to launch the app by the year end. We are tying up with people who rent out rooms,” he said.

Yubasana Kapas, 14, of Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School won the third prize for her plan to showcase Bengal’s art and culture before foreign patrons.

Three students – Kaushik Sardar, Shane Romel Kujur and Gaurav Bordoloi – from National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, bagged the second prize for Pedals Go, an app-based rental plan for bicycles.

“The event has brought three generations of entrepreneurs on one platform,” said Vayjayanti Pugalia, who curated the event.

The summit saw young entrepreneurs from across the country exchange notes with business stalwarts from the city and share their stories and challenges.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Chandreyee Ghose (additional reporting by Samabrita Sen) / June 17th, 2018