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Country’s highest zoo attempts to save high altitude herbivores from extinction

Amazing Feats, Green Initiatives / Environment, Nature

The initiative taken by Darjeeling’s Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park (PNHZP) in conserving high altitude herbivores that have been on the path of extinction, has served to stem the rapid decline in their numbers.

Some of the animals that have been included in the conservation programme of PNHZP, the countries highest altitude zoo located at over 7,000 ft, are the Blue Sheep, the Himalayan Tahr, the Himalayan Goral and the Markhor.

All the four herbivores have been placed in the Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, which denotes that the species are ‘threatened’.

The conservation of these animals is also crucial for the Himalayan ecosystem.

“All the four herbivores are the main prey of the much endangered Snow leopard. A decrease in their numbers will naturally affect the existence of the elusive mountain cat,” Upashna Rai, the biologist in the PNHZP told The Hindu. Conserving these herbivores serves the dual purpose of protecting the snow leopard as well. The PNHZP is also involved in the global conservation and breeding programme of the snow leopard.

The Darjeeling Zoo has taken the initiative of breeding these high altitude herbivores and is also involving the other high altitude zoos in breeding and conservation of the species.

It has provided to each of the main zoos of Sikkim and Nainital one pair of the Blue Sheep and the Himalayan Goral as a part of an exchange programme.

In the PNHZP there are 11 Blue sheep (seven males, four females) eight Himalayan Tahrs ( three males, five females) 11 Himalayan Gorals (eight males, three females) and eight Markhors (three males, five females). Interestingly Markhor, an endangered species of goat, is the national animal of Pakistan.

“Our immediate goal is to distribute the species to the high altitude zoos of Sikkim, Nainital and Shimla. We are also testing the genetic purity of the animals before introducing new breeding lines,” A K Jha, the director of the PNHZP told The Hindu.

Dr Jha said that the conservation of the herbivores was aimed at having a healthy population of the animals in the zoos in case the species get extinct in the wild.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Shiv Sahay Singh / Kolkata – January 11th, 2015

Feminist Jasodhara passes away

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Leaders

Eminent Leftist feminist Jasodhara Bagchi breathed her last here on Friday morning. She was 77.

She suffered a cardiac arrest and multiple organ failure, her daughter Tista Bagchi told The Hindu .

Educated at the city’s Presidency University, Oxford University and Cambridge University, she taught English briefly at the Lady Brabourne College here. From 1964, she spent a major part of her life teaching English at Jadavpur University and went to become the founder-director of the School of Women’s Studies there. Although Ms.Bagchi retired in 1997, she continued to teach at the School of Women’s Studies as an emeritus professor till her death.

Married to renowned economist Amiya Bagchi, she was the former chairperson of the West Bengal Commission for Women. She wrote extensively on social and women’s issues and has been vocal in supporting women movements.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kolkata / by Special Correspondent / Kolkata – January 10th, 2015

School adopts US model to inspire kids in science

Education, Science & Technology, World Opinion

Kolkata :

Bengal is going to get its first STEM-based school in Barrackpore, some 25km from Kolkata, to encourage more children to take up science and arrest the decline in interest in engineering.

STEM — an acronym for ‘science, technology, engineering and mathematics’ — is a US-based teaching method that aims to inspire kids to become engineers rather than dreading the sciences and mathematics as many do now. STEM World School- the Barrackpore school, for instance, will have a STEM laboratory where attendance will be compulsory. The lab can accommodate 30 students at a time.

The STEM World School in Barrackpore will be affiliated to ICSE. Admissions for playgroup to Class VI will start from the 2015-2016 session, say officials.

The emphasis on science comes at a time when projections of a nationwide shortfall of technocrats threaten to hold back India’s progress.

“A recent study by Defence Research and Development Organisation revealed that just 4 out of 1,000 students in India opt for science, technology or research as their career. In contrast, this figure is 110 in Japan, 76 in Germany and 46 in Korea, indicating the dearth of young talent in these vital areas in our country. Because of this, India is at risk of a huge economic crisis, despite being the youngest country demographically,” said Paddy Sharma, a board member of the school. “The main objective in setting up a STEM school in Kolkata is to create critical thinkers, increase science literacy and give rise to the next generation of innovators,” said Hilda Peacock, former principal of La Martiniere for Girls, who is one of the advisors.

According to a survey, India will be facing a shortfall of 1.5 to 2.2 million engineers by 2020, Sharma added.

“Innovation leads to new products and processes that sustain economy. Innovation and science literacy depend on a solid knowledge base in STEM areas. We just need to remind kids that this kind of learning can be fun. We need to introduce children to the basic concepts of science, engineering, technology and mathematics in junior grades and continue with these programmes through high school,” she said. Michael Glanton, Democratic member of Georgia House of Representatives, USA, is one of the advisors.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Somdatta Basu, TNN / January 11th, 2015

Bringing smiles to a thousand lips

Amazing Feats, Inspiration / Positive News and Features, Leaders, Records, All, Science & Technology

Kolkata :

About 25 years ago, a surgeon at the state-run SSKM Hospital, Sankar Chatterjee, had applied stitches on the scalp of a Congress leader, a woman who was to create history in Bengal by single-handedly dislodging the Left Front from power.

Today, Chatterjee has created a sort of record by himself. As a project director of Smile Train programme, he has performed cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries on 1,000 underprivileged children in Tripura and Assam over the last six years.

“On August 16, 1990, I was on duty at SSKM Hospital when Mamata Banerjee was wheeled in with two deep injuries on her scalp. She had fended off a third blow with her left arm and fractured it. I was called in to repair the injuries to her scalp as a micro-surgeon. I applied 18 stitches on her scalp under local anesthesia. She didn’t even wince when I applied local anesthesia for the stitches,” Chatterjee recalled.

He took early retirement from state health service and became a part of Smile Train in 2008. He was assigned two hospitals at Agartala and Silchar where cleft surgeries were to be conducted free of cost.

“In Agartala and Silchar, my experience have been heartwarming. The smiles on the faces of the children after they see their ‘new’ faces on mirrors are worth dying for. I still remember a 14-year-old girl from Silchar who turned up a month after her surgery. She told me: ‘Daktarbabu, ami jiboney prothom baar lipstick lagiyechhi (Doctor, I have applied lipstick for the first time in my life).’ I was overwhelmed,” Chatterjee added.

Chatterjee completed his 100th cleft lip surgery in Silchar around the time when the film “Smile Pinki” bagged an Academy Award in 2008.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Jayanta Gupta, TNN / January 11th, 2015

Anthology on Jesuit Fathers’ contribution

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All, World Opinion

The Goethals Indian Library and Research Centre of St. Xavier’s College has published a book on the lives of the Jesuits who lived and worked in India, especially in Bengal, since the early 19th century.

The anthology was released by Father P. Franck Janin, Jesuit Provincial, South Belgian Province and Luxembourg, at Dhyan Ashram in Joka on Sunday.

Edited by Father Albert Huart and Father J. Felix Raj, Discovery of Bengal: The Jesuit Design marks the 200th year of the Restoration of the Society of Jesus. The book records the academic, social, cultural and spiritual contributions of the Jesuit fathers in shaping the moral growth of the race and the country.

Among the Jesuits who feature in the book are Fathers Henry Depelchin, Achille Verstraeten, Paul Joris, Cardinal Lawrence Picachy, Camille Bouche and Andre Bruylants.

“They attracted heartsby the qualities they displayed and posterity retains them as lessons of life learnt forever. Even after 200 years, their words and works reach those for whom they were intended – the inhabitants of The Kingdom of God. These men of moral might were armed with supreme sense of sacrifice and were gifted with grace and the zeal to establish ‘Good News of God’ and the promise of justice for humanity,” said Felix Raj, the principal of St. Xavier’s College.

“Humility, fortitude, power of prayer and passion for performing God’s will on earth endowed these Samaritans with the benediction that brought the light of the Lord to the masses of Bengal. This collection scripts the eternal immortal lives of the Jesuits who are today and forever in fellowship with us and with God.”

Copies of the anthology are available from the Goethals library at the college.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / by Staff Reporter / Monday – December 29th, 2014

Jadavpur University student may be CAT topper from Kolkata

Education, Records, All

Kolkata :

Soumyadeep Chakrabarti from the electronics and telecommunications department of Jadavpur University is the probable topper from the city in CAT 2014. Soumyadeep has scored 100 percentile.

Averse to the sudden spotlight, Soumyadeep refused to speak to the media. However, his friends from JU feel that it is a rare feat that could only have been achieved by Soumyadeep because of his dedication to studies.

“He is a brilliant student and a hard worker. Though I didn’t know that he was preparing for CAT, his academic scores in the university are pretty high,” said a JU teacher.

“Soumyadeep wants to be an entrepreneur after completing MBA. He is a little shy to divulge his scores since he is well aware that despite a 100 percentile, he may not get a berth in any of the top IIMs, which give much importance to group discussion and personal interview of candidates before a final list is prepared,” said a senior faculty member of a coaching centre.

According to sources, Soumyadeep is focusing on a berth in IIM-Ahmedabad followed by IIM-C and IIM-Bangalore. This was his first attempt at CAT.

“His overall percentile is 100. In Section 1, which is quantitative ability and data interpretation, he has scored 99.97 percentile. In Section 2, verbal ability and logical reasoning, he has 100 percentile. Overall, his score is 100 percentile. He started to prepare for CAT as early as his first year of engineering,” added the source.

Soumyadeep was trained at Career Launcher. “Students from Kolkata have done very well in CAT this year. The number of students with more than 99 percentile has increased as compared to last year. Students from JU, IIEST and St Xavier’s have done particularly well in CAT 2014. The normalization process applied by the IIMs has been more or less equitable this year. It had created a furore last year. I just wish the IIMs had been a little more transparent and let each student know his/her raw score, too,” said director of Career Launcher, Kolkata, and alumnus IIM-Bangalore, Naveen Saraff.

He, however, pointed out that a few students could not see their results on the websites, which reflects that their payment status was unsuccessful. “But they were given admit cards and even took the examination, which shows that there is some fault in the system,” added Saraff.

According to Ramnath Kanakadandi, national course director, T.I.M.E, “It is great that the results are out more than two weeks earlier this year. It means double benefit for students — early relief and more time to prepare for the next phase. Congratulations to the IIM authorities and TCS for pulling off a smooth job overall, despite having just a two-day window.”

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Somdatta Basu, TNN / December 30th, 2014

Sky’s the limit for these girls

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Education, Nature, Science & Technology, Travel, World Opinion

BirlaGirlsKOLKATA30dec2014

Lying on blankets at a height of 9,200ft, they gazed up at the sky and couldn’t believe what they saw. Khushi Goenka and two of her schoolmates from Modern High School for Girls were staring up at the Milky Way. With the naked eye.

In Hawaii to attend the second edition of the Pacific Astronomy & Engineering Summit at Imiloa Astronomy Center, the girls had seen the constellation through a telescope just the day before. “It was unbelievable because the previous day at the astronomy centre we had seen the constellation and other stars and there we were, seeing it again, this time with the naked eye,” said Khushi, a Class XII student.

Khushi, along with Class XI students Adwitiya Dawn and Shruti Keoliya, made up the only team from India invited to the five-day conference. Accompanied by their physics teacher Pamela Dutta, the girls worked in collaboration with Puragra (Raja) Guha Thakurta of the department of astronomy and astrophysics at University of California, Santa Cruz, and PhD student Emily Cunningham on the Halo 7D project.

The conference included presentations by scientists and astronomers from China, Japan, Canada and the US but the high point for the city girls was a meeting with five scientists who had spent four months in isolation in simulated Mars-like conditions.

“We met the HI-SEAS crew, a group of five scientists who had spent four months in isolation on a Mars-like surface on top of a mountain. We got hold of an aeronautical engineer and kept asking him absurd questions to satiate our curiosity and not letting him eat his plate of chicken that he hadn’t in the past months,” recalled Shruti.

After the girls returned to the city, Guha Thakurta visited their school and shared with Metro the importance of research and how the trip not only opened new avenues for the girls but also opened their minds to new ideas.

“It opens the eyes of students, especially those who are used to finding exact answers even to difficult problems, to the fact that there are problems that do not have a right answer. In research you have some idea of the question you are trying to answer but there is no guarantee you will find the answer,” explained Guha Thakurta, an astronomer for 30 years. “In most high schools, students are taught there is a correct answer and there is an incorrect answer. To know that there are many shades of grey in between is an eye-opener. The girls, on several occasions, were looking for answers but we would tell them we don’t know the answers or the answer is not known.”

Guha Thakurta said the girls understood the need for research and saw “some laws of physics, some of which they put in their presentation. Some of it they had learnt in class but what they had probably not seen is how someone who making a career as a researcher still uses the formula that they are learning in high schools”.

“In the initial document sent to us, the astronomy terms seemed alien and too technical. But as we started researching, the concepts became clear and we tried to make our presentation (calculating the mass and structure of Milky Way) as comprehensible as possible for the layman,” Adwitiya said.

The five-day trip included sessions by scientists and astronomers, visits to museums, trekking and cultural presentations and some bhangra and dandiya to get everyone at the conference on their feet.

“As far as education is concerned, travelling contributes hugely as does mixing with people and working together as a team on research. The girls had to Skype with California early in the morning before school and be there in time to attend school,” said Devi Kar, the director of Modern High School for Girls.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / by Jhinuk Mazumdar / Tuesday – December 30th, 2014

Web debut for historic society

Uncategorized
The homepage of the British Indian Association website
The homepage of the British Indian Association website

The British Indian Association may have lost its old building, and the street named after it may have been renamed after Abdul Hamid, but now it can boast its brand new website launched recently.

The association occupies several rooms on the third floor of a new office building at the head of Barretto Lane constructed on the site of its old building. The website (http://biakolkata.co.in) displays the history of the association, lists of its important members past and present, of the invaluable books, newspapers, and journals in its 163-year-old library, and of its publications 1868 onwards.

Apart from a rich collection of books, the association possesses paintings and other artefacts, among which are the portraits of local Indian dignitaries who were association members, and two busts of Radhakanta Deb and Kristo Das Paul.

The association was originally a political organisation that had a role in the creation of the Indian National Congress, whose early meetings were held in the old building. From a political organisation it became a landholders’ organisation, although it also took up causes that affected Indians in general. After the abolition of the zamindari system in the early 1950s, its functions may have been curtailed but over the years it has become a repository of valuable research material.

About 20 years before the establishment of the British Indian Association in 1851, the Zamindari Association, later renamed Landholders’ Society, was formed in 1831. But after the death of Dwarkanath Tagore, it was as good as dead. Thereafter, in 1839, the Bengal British India Society was formed. It was meant to further the interests of all classes of Indians through its recommendations and measures which had to be “consistent with pure loyalty to the person and government of the reigning sovereign of the British dominions”.

Subsequently, the Landholders’ Society and the Bengal British India at a meeting held on October 29, 1851, at Kasaitola (subsequently Bentinck Street) decided to form the British Indian Association by merging the two bodies to highlight the grievances of Indians. The first committee of the association was composed of Radhakanta Deb, Kalikrishna Deb, Debendranath Tagore, Digambar Mitra, Prasanna Kumar Tagore, Peary Chand Mitra and Sambhunath Pandit. Besides rajas and maharajas and zamindars, Derozians and the intellectual aristocracy of the Bengal Presidency also held important positions on the committee. Traders and businessmen were also members. But membership was strictly confined to Indians. The objects of the association “were related partly to improvements in the local administration of the country and partly to the system of Indian government laid by Parliament”. Joteendra Mohan Tagore and Joykrishna Mukherji enabled the association to have a home at 18 Raneemoody Gully, whose name was later changed to British Indian Street.

The association had “an all-India outlook” and championed the causes of the Indian people at a time when there was no strong political body in the country.

After the Indigo Rebellion of 1859-60, it pleaded with the government to appoint a commission of inquiry to solve the problems of indigo cultivation. The association suggested measures on epidemics, floods, famines, taxation, the practice of Sati, burning ghats and property and inheritance. The association gave the people the first lesson in the art of fighting constitutionally for their rights and giving expression to their opinions. Now it will support research work and try to survive as an institution promoting excellence.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story / Sunday – December 28th, 2014

History in mint condition

Arts, Culture & Entertainment, Historical Links / Pre-Independence, Records, All

Coins from Bengal are on display as part of Mudra Utsav, the annual exhibition and conference organised by Numismatic Society of Calcutta, at Haldiram Banquet Hall in Ballygunge till Sunday.

“Coins make history speak. They are not just a means of exchange but also a store of value. Their metallic quality helps judge the economic state of a reign while their spread indicates how far a ruler’s sovereignty extended,” said former finance minister and economics teacher, Asim Dasgupta, at the inauguration. He also referred to remarkable work by the numismatist fraternity, singling out Bratindra Nath Mukherjee’s discovery of an ancient script called Shell lipi.

Chhanda Mukherjee, former deputy keeper, numismatics and epigraphy, at Indian Museum, referred to areas in Bengal such as Chandraketugarh, Murshidabad and Pandua-Mahanad area of Hooghly where coins have been found. “The earliest hoard of Gupta coins was found right here in Kalighat,” she said.

Some of the coins mentioned by Mukherjee are on display at the exhibition. Ujjwal Kumar Saha’s Gupta coins date back to the reigns of Samudragupta and Chandragupta I. There are also gold dinars of the Kushan era. Somnath Basu’s collection is on independent rulers of Bengal, from Fakr al Din Mubarak Shah (1334-1349) to Daud Shah Karanani (1572-1576). Ravi Shankar Sharma has displayed Mughal coins from Bengal mints. There are Akbar rupees minted in Satgaon (also known as Saptagram, now in Bangladesh) and in Bang, a soobah of Bengal. “These coins were minted after Akbar’s conquest of Satgaon,” Sharma said.

Mints were there in Patna too, built by Magadh ruler Ajatashatru around 490 BC. A Shah Jahan rupee represents the Patna mint. The only Mughal coin in Bengali script was issued from Alamgirnagar, Aurangzeb’s name for Cooch Behar. “The coin is rare as the area changed hands soon,” Sharma added.

The East India Company, too, had issued bilingual sikkas, with both Bengali and Persian scripts, from their Benaras, Farukabad and Calcutta mints once they realised the Shah Jahan II Mughal coins that they had been copying did not suit the largely Bengali-speaking populace of the Bengal Presidency.

Another notable exhibit is a punch-marked coin from the Bari-Wateshwar area of present-day Bangladesh. Carrying a sun, a boat, an open cross and a six-armed symbol, the silver alloy coin dates back to 3rd to 2nd century BC. “I procured the coin just last week,” said Anup Mitra, president of the society.

Collectors of coins and stamps will also find a lot of interesting items on sale at stalls put up by dealers.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph, Calcutta / Front Page> Calcutta> Story> Caleidoscope / Sunday – December 28th, 2014