16.06.23

Separate state or merger with Mizoram only solution to Manipur violence’

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Manipur’s Kuki leaders here on Sunday reiterated that there is no lasting solution to the current ethnic strife in the state except for the creation of a separate administration for the people of the hill districts as violence continued even after Union Home ministerAmit Shah’s visit to the strife-torn state.

Meiteis account for about 53% of Manipur’s Population and live mostly in the Imphal Valley. Tribals – Nagas and Kukis – constitute another 40% of the population and reside in the hill districts.

One of the Kuki legislators,Paolienlal Haokip, left Aizawl for Delhi on Sunday to hold a meeting of all the 10 Kuki legislators from Manipur there.

The 10 legislators belonging to the ethnic ‘Zo’ community in Manipur have demanded a separate administration under the Constitution of India for the ethnic ‘Zo’ inhabitants of Manipur hill areas, with the possibility of formation of ‘Greater Mizoram’.


Turn Assam into education hub: Himanta Biswa Sarma to academia

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Assam chief ministerHimanta Biswa Sarma urged the state’s academic to work towards transforming the state into an educational hub in eastern India. He made this call while speaking at the inaugural session of the two-day conclave on implementation of National Education Policy 2020 in Assam at Assam Administrative Staff College.

The government of Assam has taken steps for speedy implementation of the National Education Policy 2020 and accordingly launched this policy for higher education in the state on June 3.

The chief minister said there is a need for more discussion in the educational sphere on NE and to make students and parents fully aware of its various provisions. He also stressed on maintaining uniformity in academic calendar, syllabus and grading pattern by the universities in the state.

Gajapati-to-Gabon project inaugurated

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Union Education and Skill development Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Thursday inaugurated a project Gajapati to Gabon and said this is a good opportunity for Odisha.

He said, The Centurion University would send the trained farmers and research students of Gajapati district to Gabon. The famers would teach on how they are cultivating maize and wheat. By this, our traditional agricultural practices will reach the world stage.

The project is a reflection of the 2020 national education policy. Pradhan said, adding that during the Narendra Modi tenure the relationship between India and South Africa has been strengthened

Tamil Nadus NEET Bill is still with President: Ma Subramanian

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Nadus bill exempting itself fromNEETis still pending before thePresidentand the State Government continues to offer clarifications to various legal points raised by the different Union ministries, Health ministerMa Subramaniansaid.

He reacted strongly to Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s remark in an interview to TOI that TN’s opposition to NEET was pure politics. Subramanian said during one of the meetings in Delhi, Pradhan had told them off-the-record that there was 100% opposition to NEET even in his state, Odisha.

Juvenile fishing still a challenge: CMFRI report

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Juvenile fishing practice continues to be a major challenge to the states marine sector, according to a report by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). The report presented at a stakeholder workshop at CMFRI in Kochi pointed out that 31% of the threadfin breams (Kilimeen) caught from theKeralacoast last year were juveniles — below the minimumlegalsize (MLS).

In a case study done in threadfin breams to analyze the impact of the MLS implementation on Keralas marine fisheries, the CMFRI has found that standing stock Biomass had gone up by 27% while the yield was up by 47% and there was a 64% increase in recruitment of this fish after the regulation was put in place.

A significant Percentage of sharks (82%), which are not covered by the MLS regulations, caught off the Kerala coast last year were below their size at first maturity.

Karnataka govt may wait till Lok Sabha polls to accept caste census report

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Although chief minister Siddaramaiah had promised to roll out proposals of the contentious socio-economic caste survey report prepared by the Kantharaj commission, the government is likely to delay the process of accepting the report.

While multiple reasons, including legal hassles and political compulsions, are causing a delay, officials and senior Congress functionaries said the government is likely to wait till the completion of Lok Sabha , likely in April-May next year, before taking a final call on the issue.

In 2014, the then Siddaramaiah government had directedKarnatakaState Commission for Backward Classes (BC Commission) to conduct the survey, commonly known as the caste census. The briefwas to enumerate communities eligible for government welfare schemes.

Their contention was that the commission had miscalculated their Population, as a leaked version of the report suggested Lingayats account for 14% and Vokkaliga 11% of the population. The communities argued that it is much higher at 19% and 16%, respectively. Subsequent governments chose not to bite the bullet.

Policy initiatives help healthy urbanisation of Hyd

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Urbanization is inevitable as theeconomygrows. Cities are engines of economic Growth and the positive ripple effects of economic growth in urban areas lead to multi-fold increase in EMPLOYMENT andincome levels.
The national Average ofurbanisationin India is 31.16% presently.
Southern Indian states are more urban. The share of urban Population in in 2022, as per Telangana Socio-Economic Outlook 2022, is 46.8%. This puts Telangana among the top three urbanised states in the country along with Tamil Nadu at 48.45%, Kerala at 47.23% andMaharashtraat 45.23%.

Telangana will have more than 50% of its population urban before 2028, with Hyderabad Urban Agglomeration (HUA – the area within Outer Ring Road including Hyderabad) alone having at least 40% of the state’s population by then. This in turn implies that our GSDP will continue to grow faster than the rest of India.

Telangana already has a 20 MW plant running based on Waste to Energy (WTE) from the refuse derived fuel (RDF) at Jawaharnagar under PPP mode. Four new Plants (including doubling the capacity at Jawaharnagar) are under construction and Telangana shall produce 101 MW from WTE by March 2025, utilizing daily waste for the next three decades for HUA – a feat no other city will have in India.

A new legislation – Telangana Municipalities Act was enacted in 2019 replacing a number of archaic Acts. The central theme of this new Act is the citizen and how municipal Services serve the citizens in a time-bound transparent and user-convenient model. Among others, it brings professionalism in preparing and managing municipal budgets.
In order to bring Infrastructure improvements while acknowledging urban growth, the number of ULBs were increased from 68 to 142 in 2019. To strengthen these and also the existing ones, 4,700 crore worth of infrastructure works were sanctioned.

Jagan Sets Up Working Group on Education

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With the aim of raising the educational standards in government schools and shaping the students of these schools into world-class performers, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has set up a high-level working group to realise the aim.

The working group would be headed by the school Education principal secretary and consist of the IT secretary, school education commissioner, Samagra Shiksha project director and SCERT director apart from Ashutosh Chadha from Microsoft India, Shalini Kapoor from Amazon Web Services India, Shweta Khurana from Intel Asia Pacific, Jaijit Bhattacharya, president of the Centre for Digital economy Policy Research, Dr Archana Gulati, ex-adviser to Digital Communications, and representatives of Google and Nasscom.

Expertise in emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Lord Language Models (LLMs), data analytics, ChatGPT, Web 3.0, augmented reality, virtual reality, Internet of things, centre back digital currency, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing and gaming is aimed at, for these students.

The panel would make suggestions on developing suitable curriculum, lesson plans, methods of training, requirement of labs and human Resources to help students gain perfect knowledge in these subjects.

Polish tech’ to monitor Goa beach noise

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The , which is trying to curb the disturbance caused by noisy open-air parties and events along Goa’s coast, has finalised a Pune-based firm offering ‘Polish technology’ to help monitor Noise Pollution on 12 beaches, for now.

Goa State Pollution Control Board (GSPCB) chairman Mahesh Patil said that it has entered a five-year contract with Velan Technologies, which will install equipment made to meet the norms of the EU and the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The 12 spots include party hotspots like Baga, Calangute, Candolim, Vagator, Colva, and Morjim, among others.

Maha farmers sow barely 1% of total kharif crop land

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Farmers across Maharashtra have so far completed sowing on barely 1% of the total 1.42 crore hectares for till June 15 due to the delay in monsoon onset over the state this year.

The farmers have completed cultivation on over 1.48 lakh hectares till June 15 as against 66,000 hectares during the same period last year. Though the land under cultivation of kharif crops till now is more than what it was last year, the uncertainty over rain was not there in 2022 and cultivation had picked up in the last two weeks of June. But this time, the impact of cyclone Biparjoy and a full-blown El Nino was already visible on the southwest monsoon pattern over India.

Nearly 50% of 716 districts in India are currently recording large deficiency in monsoon rainfall, while another 19% are deficient, India Meteorological Department (IMD) data showed on Wednesday. All subdivisions of Maharashtra have a rain deficiency of over 79-80% so far.