समय निकालें भारतीय भाषाओं के लिये
कृष्णने गोवर्धन उठाया तो गोप-गोपियोंने लाठीका टेक दिया - रामने सेतू बाँधा तो गिलहरीने हाथ बँटाया। आप भी हिंदी व भारतीय भाषाओंके लिये योगदान दें। इन्स्क्रिप्ट कीबोर्ड लेआउट सीखें। यह कक्षा पहली के पाठानुरूप (अआइई, कखगघचछजझ...) चलता है और उतनाही सरल है। फिर आप आठवीं फेल, अंग्रेजी न जाननेवाले बच्चोंको भी पाँच मिनटमें संगणक-टंकन सिखाकर उनकी दुआएँ बटोरिये।

रविवार, 27 जून 2010

Global RTI

Supplied by
Amitabh Thakur, President, National RTI Forum
In France, Article 14 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man called for access to information about the budget to be made freely available. The Conseil d’Etat found in April 2002 that the right of administrative documents is a fundamental right under Article 34 of the Constitution. The Law on Free Access to Administrative Documents (Law No. 78-753 of 17 July 1978) enables citizens to exercise a constitutional right to be informed of how tax money is spent and to hold the administration accountable. The law, however, exempts other branches and organs of the French state, including the parliamentary assemblies, State Audit Office and Conseil d’État, from providing access to documents. A nine member oversight body, the Commission on Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), supported by 10 rapporteurs and a nine person secretariat, meets fortnightly to review complaint.
In Germany, the Act to Regulate Access to Federal Government Information was adopted in June 2005 and went into force on 1 January 2006. There are extensive exemptions in the law. Drafts or notes are not included in the definition of official information. While in Japan, after a 20-year effort, the Law Concerning Access to Information Held by Administrative Organs was approved by the Diet in May 1999 and went into effect in April 2001. The law allows any individual or company, Japanese or foreign, to request administrative documents held by administrative agencies in electronic or printed form. There are six broad categories of exemptions. Exempted information can be disclosed by the head of the agency “when it is deemed that there is a particular public-interest need.” Appeals are referred by the agency to the Information Disclosure Review Board.
In South Africa, Section 32 of the South African Constitution of 1996 states that Everyone has the right of access to – (a) any information held by the state, and; (b) any information that is held by another person and that is required for the exercise or protection of any rights. The Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) was approved by Parliament in February 2000 and went into effect in March 2001 . It implements the constitutional right of access The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) has been designated to oversee the functioning of the Act.
The UK has the Freedom of Information Act adopted in November 2000 and into effect in January 2005. The Act gives any person a right of access to information held by over 100,000 public bodies. The bodies are required to respond within 20 working days. The Official Secrets Act, which still includes provisions originally adopted in 1911, criminalizes the unauthorized release of government information relating to national security. It has been frequently used against government whistleblowers and the media for printing information relating to the security services. The Information Commission is the external appeals body.
Finally, in the USA, Congress enacted the Administrative Procedures Act in 1946, section 3 of which required that government bodies to publish information about their structures, powers and procedures. Following a long period of hearings and unsuccessful bills, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted in 1966 and went into effect in 1967. It has been substantially amended several times, most recently in 1996 by the Electronic Freedom of Information Act. There are nine categories of discretionary exemptions: national security, internal agency rules, information protected by other statutes, business information, inter and intra-agency memos, personal privacy, law enforcement records, financial institutions and oil wells data. Appeals of denials or complaints about extensive delays can be made internally to the agency concerned. The federal courts can review de novo (without respect to agency decision) and overturn agency decisions.

बुधवार, 12 मई 2010

Profiting from Education -- Atanu Dey

Gayatri
date Fri, Aug 22, 2008
Profiting from Education
via Atanu Dey on India's Development by Atanu Dey on 8/4/08 atanudey@gmail.com

My contribution to the August issue of Pragati. I am reproducing the piece here below the fold, for the record. Regulars to this blog pretty much know my position on what needs to be done on education. Still you may find something of use.

Profiting from Education

India’s position in the emerging world of globally interconnected economies will doubtlessly be dictated by how successful it is in overcoming the severe limitation of its education system.

With an estimated 360 million of its citizens in the school-going age—a third of its entire population—it has an unmatched potential of becoming a major economic powerhouse. It has an opportunity to shape not only its own future but the future of the world at large. The challenges it faces in realizing that potential are many but the most formidable of them are those that are in a sense “self-inflicted.” The greatest hurdle in India’s path to the future is the near-monopoly government control of the education system.

The Numbers

A quick review of the numbers illuminates the challenges and opportunities. Of the total 360 million who should be in the K-12 system, around 140 million children are not in school. Not just a private loss—they will never have the opportunity to participate fully in the global economy—it is a loss to society because they will never be able to fully contribute to it.

Yet the spending for education is large. The Indian government has allocated around US$ 8.6 billion for FY2009 for education; private spending annually on K-12 tuition is an additional US$ 20 billion; tutoring adds another US$ 5 billion a year; private professional education is another US$ 7 billion. The education sector is expected to grow to around US$ 70 billion by 2012. Compare that to the US$ 45 billion spending for power, telecom, and transportation infrastructure in the 11th Plan.

Failed Public System

Regulations allow only non-profit trusts to run educational institutions. The results are disappointing and point to a failed public education system. The private sector schools do deliver much more than the public sector schools and do so comparatively more efficiently. Private schools account for only 7 percent of around 1 million K-12 schools and yet they accommodate 40 percent of the total enrolled. Studies show that public sector schools are plagued by teacher absenteeism, lack of basic infrastructure, and poor performance. India urgently needs to remedy the shortage of quality private schools.

The situation in tertiary education is not very good either. Published figures show India graduates 350,000 engineers and IT professionals a year, compared to China’s 600,000, and the United States’ 130,000. The quantity appears reasonable until one recalls that only about one out of four engineers is employable. This creates the paradoxical situation of vast numbers unemployed engineers on the one hand, and on the other employers desperately seeking skilled engineers.

Compared to China

Comparison with another comparably large developing country—namely China—is instructive. By 2005, China was graduating around 12,000 PhDs a year, about seven times what is did in 1995; India maintained an average of 700 PhDs every year during the same period.

The education system is supply-constrained. Around 400,000 compete in the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination for 10,000 seats in the few Indian Institutes of Technology, for instance. Another 240,000 took the common admissions test for the Indian Institutes of Management. On aggregate, over 2 million students take entrance tests for seats in the 1,200 private and 400 public professional schools. Test preparation is a huge market but ultimately the spending is directly unproductive and only serves as a means of rationing the limited quantity on supply relative to demand.

Foreign Education

Unable to find the opportunity domestically, Indians spend an estimated US$ 10 billion every year for higher education abroad. This lends support to the claim that if the education sector were to be liberalized—that is, if for-profit domestic and foreign private sector entities were allowed entry—then the capacity constraint will be released. Furthermore, market competition would ensure that the quality of the education would also improve.

The private sector is essentially denied the opportunity to fully participate in the education sector. Resistance against commercialization of education is held with what approaches religious conviction. Profit from education is anathema to Indian policymakers. The Supreme Court of India in a 1993 decision wrote:

“Imparting of education has never been treated as a trade or business in this country since time immemorial. It has been treated as a religious duty. It has been treated as a charitable activity. But never as a trade or business. . . The Unni Krishnan Decision does not imply that private schools cannot exist but states that they should not ‘commercialise education’ and impart education with the motivation to profit from it.”

The Market Response

But the market does find a way around and somehow manages to overcome to some degree the serious defects of the hobbled education system. However it is a costly exercise. Infosys spent US$ 120 million for a training facility employing 300 teachers to train its raw recruits; Wipro trains its recruits for three months before putting them to work; Satyam trains thousands in-house similarly. Therein lies a very clear and important lesson: that for-profit entities can and do promote social welfare in the education sector—they train people to become productive, thus enhancing private and social welfare.

Education as an Attractor

The argument for liberalizing the education system is simple enough to state. Globalization, which is essentially the free movement of capital in pursuit of profits, is an established fact. It means that global capital will continue to move differentially to those parts of the world where it most profitably complements the human capital available. Even though motivated by profit, global capital has the capacity to contribute directly to rapid economic growth, as evidenced by the growth stories of the East Asian economies in the past and of China more recently.

Only those economies that have the human capital to absorb global capital will benefit from globalization. Modern manufacturing is the basis for any large modern economy. It requires skilled manpower and therefore the emphasis on education and training. Currently India does have a small but significant position in the skilled services sector of business process outsourcing and information technology enabled services. But the news there is that shortage of skilled manpower is becoming a reality.

Diversifying the Economic Base

India needs to diversify its talent pool because economic development demands the ability to produce a diverse set of goods and services. Furthermore, for India’s economic growth, it has to serve as a global talent pool for all aspects of a modern economy—from services to manufacturing to research and development. Otherwise the unskilled and poorly educate will find themselves unemployed in the structural changes that are guaranteed in a globalized world. Most importantly, for driving domestic innovation, at the higher end of the education spectrum, one not only has to have quantity but world-class quality which can only be achieved if one has world-class institutions.

Manufacturing Human Capital

India has the raw numbers but lacks the financial resources to transform them into human capital in world-class educational institutions. Fortunately, global capital itself can help India build capacity for creating human capital. The argument for it is straightforward. Return on investment in education is positive and significant in the case of individuals. Therefore, given the ability to pay for it and the opportunity to gain an education, most people would educate themselves to their full potential. Therefore there are immense profits in education in India that global capital cannot afford to ignore.

The Indian government has to withdraw fully from tertiary education. The private sector has the incentive and the ability to provide tertiary education. Private sector investment will release the capacity constraint in education. For those who are unable to pay for the education upfront, they face what is called a credit-constraint, and they can be helped with educational loans from private and public sector financial institutions.

For K-12, the private sector already does address 40 percent of the market. By removing the restriction that only allows non-profit institutions, the capacity will grow and thus permit the scarce public funds to address the needs of the 140 million children not in school currently. The role of the government could then shift from funding schools to funding school children.

Paradigm Shift

What Indian education urgently requires is a paradigm shift, a different way of approaching the matter. The ostensible reason for not allowing private for-profit institution is to safeguard the interests of those who are poor. But one can be skeptical of that and a reasonable hypothesis advanced that through its monopolistic control, the government and its agents find an opportunity to extract rents from the supply-constrained market. This creates a system in which only the rich can afford to pay the rents and the poor get rationed out.

India cannot afford the current education system any more. Too many of its children are denied an education today. Globalization is a double-edged sword: it rewards talent as handsomely as it penalizes those who are unskilled. It is quite possible for India to employ global capital to solve its local problems—provided that it understands that voluntary trade is beneficial to both parties and both profit from it. Undoubtedly global capital will profit from investing in education in India. But that is only because India will profit even more from an educated population.

शनिवार, 3 अप्रैल 2010

Easy and difficult

Recd in mail from BK SEARCH LIGHT bksakaash@gmail.com

Easy is to get a place is someone's address book.
Difficult is to get a place in someone's heart.

Easy is to judge the mistakes of others
Difficult is to recognize our own mistakes

Easy is to talk without thinking
Difficult is to refrain the tongue

Easy is to hurt someone who loves us.
Difficult is to heal the wound...

Easy is to forgive others
Difficult is to ask for forgiveness

Easy is to set rules.
Difficult is to follow them...

Easy is to dream every night.
Difficult is to fight for a dream...

Easy is to show victory.
Difficult is to assume defeat with dignity...

Easy is to admire a full moon.
Difficult to see the other side...

Easy is to stumble with a stone.
Difficult is to get up...

Easy is to enjoy life every day.
Difficult to give its real value...

Easy is to promise something to someone.
Difficult is to fulfill that promise...

Easy is to say we love.
Difficult is to show it every day...

Easy is to criticize others.
Difficult is to improve oneself...

Easy is to make mistakes.
Difficult is to learn from them...

Easy is to weep for a lost love.
Difficult is to take care of it so not to lose it.

Easy is to think about improving.
Difficult is to stop thinking it and put it into action...

Easy is to think bad of others
Difficult is to give them the benefit of the doubt...

Easy is to receive
Difficult is to give

Easy to read this
Difficult to follow

Easy is keep the friendship with words
Difficult is to keep it with meanings.

शनिवार, 6 जून 2009

2 links on disability

Dear all
Me Shrikant Gadre from Pune
here are 2 links of short films subject is disability
I request you to watch it and if you like please forward it to all
your friends,

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=nPf787sfn2E

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=yv4DLrAYZ4s

You also reply me about the film at shrikantgadre@ gmail.com
my cell no is 9422000101

शुक्रवार, 24 अप्रैल 2009

All from BENAZEER

दिल में एक जाने-तमन्नाने जगाह पाई है।
आज गुलशन मे नही घर मे बहार आई हैं।।

आ गया मेरे तसव्वुर में कोई पर्दानशीं
आज हर चीज नजर आने लगी मुझको हसीं
क्या कहूँ मै बडी दिलकश मेरी तनहाई है।।

बहकी- बहकी नशा-ए-हुस्न में खोई खोई
जैसे खैय्याम की रंगीन रुबाई कोई
दिलके शीशे में परी बनके उतर आई है।।

हुस्न के सामने इजहारे-वफा है मुश्किल
काश छिपकर ही वो सुन ले मेरा अफसाना-ए-दिल
जिसने ये प्यार की मंजिल मुझे दिखलाई है।।
-------------------------------------
हुस्न की बहारें लिये आये थे सनम
ऐसी बदनसबी हुई मिल सके न हम।।
उनका करम भी आज सितम होके रह गये
एक नगमा था जो आज कही खोके रह गया
हल्की सी एक खुशी है तो हलका सा एक गम।।
------------------------------------------
मिल जा मिल जा मिल जा रे जाने जाना
----------------------------------------------
मुबारक है वो दिल जिसको किसीसे प्यार हो जाये
नजरवालोंसे छिपकर यार का दीदार हो जाये।
--------------------------------------------------------------

खरा तो एकचि धर्म -- साने गुरुजी

खरा तो एकचि धर्म -- अनुवादाचे काम चालू आहे.
खरा तो एकचि धर्म -------------- एकही धर्म है सच्चा
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे -------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम -- (जगत् को प्यार दे पायें)To choose 1 of 2

जगी जे दीन अति पतित-------------- यहाँ जो दीन हैं - पतित
जगी जे दीन पद - दलित-------------- यहाँ जो दीन - पद - दलित
तया जाऊन उठवावे-------------- उन्हें जाकर उठाये हम ।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे-------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम ॥

जयांना कोणी ना जगती-------------- जिन्हें कोई नही अपने
सदा जे अंतरी रडती-------------- दु:खी जो अपने अंतर में
तया जाऊन सुखवावे-------------- सुखी उनको कराये हम ।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे -------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम॥

समस्ता धीर तो द्यावा-------------- कहीं धीरज बँधा पायें
सुखाचा शब्द बोलावा-------------- कभी हँसकर करें बातें
अनाथा साहय ते द्यावे-------------- अनाथोंको खुशी दें हम।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे -------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम॥

सदा जे आर्त अति विकल------------ सदासे आर्त जो विकल
जयांना गांजती सकल-------------- गिराते हैं जिन्हे सबल
तया जाऊन हसवावे-------------- उन्हे चलकर हंसाये हम ।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे-------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम ॥

कुणा ना व्यर्थ शिणवावे ---------- किसी को व्यर्थ ना छेडें
कुणा ना व्यर्थ हिणवावे---------- किसी को व्यर्थ ना कोसें
समस्ता बंधु मानावे ---------- हरेक को बंधु जानें हम।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे-------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम ॥

प्रभूची लेकरे सारी ---------- प्रभू के ये सभी बच्चे
तयाला सर्वही प्यारी ---------- सभी उसके लिये प्यारे
कुणा ना तुच्छ लेखावे ---------- तुच्छता ना दिखायें हम।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे-------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम ॥

जिथे अंधार औदास्य---------- अंधेरा हो उदासी का
जिथे नैराश्य आलस्य ---------- निराशा या कि आलस का
प्रकाशा तेथ नव न्यावे ---------- उजाला ले के जायें हम।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे-------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम ॥

असे जे आपणांपाशी ---------- जगत् से जो भी है पाया
असे जे वित्त वा विद्या ---------- कमाया है जो धन विद्या
सदा ते देतची जावे ---------- उन्हे सबपर लुटायें हम।
जगाला प्रेम अर्पावे -------------- सभी को प्यार बाँटे हम
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

मंगलवार, 7 अप्रैल 2009

The blog एक शाम मेरे नाम by manish kumar

एक शाम मेरे नाम A wonderful blog by manishkmr1111@yahoo.com
This blog allows you to see video or listen to an audio of poems, poets, film songs, full of great emotions.
See the blog at
http://ek-shaam-mere-naam.blogspot.com/