New plan schemes of ‘PRASAD’ and ‘Integrated Development of Tourist Circuits’

National Steering Committee for new plan schemes of ‘PRASAD’ and ‘Integrated Development of Tourist Circuits’ holds its first meeting Tourism Minister emphasizes synergy among stakeholders for speedy implementation of schemes

The first meeting of National Steering Committee for new plan schemes of PRASAD and Integrated Development of Tourist Circuits of Ministry of Tourism was held in New Delhi today. The meeting was chaired by the Minister of State for Culture (Independent Charge), Tourism (Independent Charge) and Civil Aviation, Dr. Mahesh Sharma. The meeting was attended by the representatives of various ministries like M/o Railways, M/o Water Resources, M/o Rural Development, M/o Urban Development, M/o Power, M/o Transport and Highways and Culture Ministry among others. The various stakeholders gave details of some of the projects to promote Tourism being implemented by them and how they can be dovetailed with PRASAD as well as scheme of Development of Tourist Circuits. Addressing the participants, the Minister emphasized the need for inter-ministerial cooperation and coordination to create proper synergy for the success of the schemes. Dr. Mahesh Sharma said that there is a need to promote rural tourism since even urban India is not familiar with the rural life. Apart from this, India has rich resources like rivers which can be beneficial for developing Cruise Tourism which is nonexistent in the country at present, he said. Suggesting the need for speedy implementation of PRASAD and Development of Integrated Circuits, the Minister said that there should be no delay in implementing those portions of the scheme which are within the ambit of the Central Government. He also urged the officials to launch within a week the projects already identified and in which a substantial ground work has already been done. The representatives of various ministries promised to send their proposals as discussed in the meeting in writing to the Ministry of Tourism. They suggested that there is not only a need to focus on infrastructure but emphasis should also be placed on soft skills like training of guides and generating livelihood and employment among local communities. Secretary(Culture), Mr Ravindra Singh pointed out that the locations for the Buddhist circuit must be finalized quickly and the Banaras circuit , which will form a good project to be taken up under the scheme, should also be developed. Secretary (Tourism), Dr Lalit Panwar highlighted the importance of Cruise Tourism saying that it comprises a negligible percentage of total tourism in the country and has a great potential.

Burning of cow dung cakes near Taj Mahal banned

Amid concerns over Taj Mahal turning yellow due to increasing pollution, the district administration has banned burning of cow dung cakes in the city while use of coal by small units will also be prohibited soon.

“A recent study published in an American journal says that due to brown and black carbon particles, the white marble of the Taj Mahal is turning yellow. Taking note of this, we have banned burning of cow dung cakes, used for cooking purposes in the city,” said Pradeep Bhatnagar, Agra Divisional Commissioner, who is also Taj Trapezium Zone Chairman.

While cow dung cakes are being used as fuel by poor people, coal is being used in large quantity mainly by manufacturers of bangles and “petha” sweet.

A large number of small units making “petha” operate in Agra, while bangle-making factories thrive in the outskirts of Agra and also neighbouring Firozabad.

Vehicular pollution

The other major concern is use of over 4,000 diesel-run trucks and tempos that have been told to switch to CNG by mid-2015. Black carbon soot generated by use of cow dung, coal and vehicular pollution is said to be the main cause behind major pollution in Agra that has started showing its impact on the “monument of love” – Taj Mahal – that is visited by lakhs of domestic and foreign tourists round the year.

“Carbon particles that get deposited on Taj Mahal do not easily get washed away in rain... It is difficult to erect scaffolds around the Taj Mahal to treat the monument chemically. Therefore, there is no other option but to take these important initiatives,” Mr. Bhatnagar noted.

The Agra Nagar Nigam has been asked to severely penalise those who flout the ban aimed at protecting the UNESCO World Heritage site. The government is also planning a special drive to distribute LPG connections to the poor who will be affected by the ban.

In its recent report, experts from two U.S. institutions – Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Wisconsin – besides the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur and the Archaeological Survey of India have raised concerns over pollution affecting the Taj Mahal. Even the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment and Forests took cognisance of the report last week and decided to take up damage-control work on priority basis.

Government appoints Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar as ISRO chairman

Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar has been appointed chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

His name was cleared by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He will replace former ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan who had retired on 31 December 2014. He will have tenure of 3 years from the date he take charge.

Previously, Shailesh Nayak, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, was given additional charge of ISRO till the appointment of a new head following the retirement of K Radhakrishnan.

About Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar

• Education: He has an honours degree in Physics from National College, Bangalore University and an M Tech in Physical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.
• ISRO career: In 1975, he started his ISRO career with the Space Application Centre.
• He had played a key role in developing image sensors for Bhaskara- India’s first remote sensing satellite launched in 1979.
• He also had played important role in developing key components of India’s Chandrayaan-1 and Mangalyaan missions.
• Before this appointment, he was director of Space Application Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad.
• Awards: In 2014, he was awarded Padma Shri.

Kamal Kishore Goyanka selected for Vyas Samman 2014

Well-known Hindi scholar and writer Dr Kamal Kishore Goyankahas been selected for the prestigious Vyas Samman for the year 2014.

He has been chosen for this award for his research work‘Premchand Kee Kahaniyo Kaa Kaalkramanusar Adhyayan’.

Vyas Samman

• This award is instituted by the K.K. Birla Foundation. It was started in 1991.
•  It is awarded annually in recognition of the hindi literary work published in past 10 years.
• The award carries monetary award of 2.5 lakh rupees, a citation and a plaque.

Railway Ministry flagged off India’s first CNG train in Haryana

Railway Ministry has flagged off India’s first compressed natural gas (CNG) powered train between Rewari and Rohtak in Haryana.
It was flagged off by Union Minister for Railways Suresh Prabhu at Rewari junction of the Northern Railway zone.
Some facts about CNG train
It is powered by Diesel Electric Multiple Unit (DEMU). It is based on dual fuel system- diesel and CNG.
This train is integrated with 1,400 HP engine to run on dual fuel through fumigation technology.
It is capable of running at a speed of 100 km per hour.
Train comprised of two power cars and six car coaches, manufactured by Integral Coach Factory at Chennai with the CNG conversion kit supplied by Cummins.
Its successful implementation, marks a major landmark in adoption of green fuel by Indian Railways.
Implications:
It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions of Railways and also the consumption of diesel. Thus, contributing in environment conservation.
It will help to reduce the operating cost of locomotives by over 50% compared to conventional trains powered by diesel and electricity.

case study3/2015

You are the Secretary of the Environment Department in Kalahandi district of Orissa. Presently you are involved in looking at the impact of the infrastructure projects on the environment, natural flora and fauna and tribal population.

About 20 km away from the district headquarters, your department have given the clearance to built a road of breadth 30 feet. Since the road run through the local forests area thus there is no permission to built road boarder than 30 feet. Soon after the road is built you come to know that the road accidents in the area have increase manifold, especially near the school. As a result many school children have lost their lives in past few months.

When you order an enquiry into the issue you found that the traffic on the 30 feet road is very high.  The cases of accidents of school children on this 30 feet road are increasing day by day.  The official permission to broaden the road would be difficult under the present norms and even if given would take no less than 2 months.

What should you do?

Learning from one another

Indian research was deeply influenced by the knowledge of foreign works on the subject, and in turn, Indian maths influenced mathematical work in other countries

The skill of doing research, the hard preparation needed for doing new and original work — going beyond the old established knowledge, and indeed the courage to think in novel and daring lines — are all immensely helped by good and exciting teaching. For me, this began at home. My grandfather Kshiti Mohan Sen, who taught at Santiniketan, could excite my interest in Sanskrit studies, including heretical texts in Sanskrit, which still inspire my engagement in that wonderful language, as I pick up a book in Sanskrit today. Sanskrit, we have to remember, is not only the language in which the Hindu and many of the Buddhist texts came; it is also the vehicle, among many other radical thoughts, of comprehensive doubts about the supernatural expressed in the Lokayata texts, and also the medium in which the questioning of class and caste and legitimacy of power would be expressed with spectacular eloquence by Shudraka in his profound play, “Mricchakatikam” (“The Little Clay Cart”). It was great for me to be taught at a very early age the distinction between a great language as a general vehicle of thought and the specific ideas — religious or sceptical — that may be expressed in that language. That distinction remains important today.

I also have to acknowledge my debt to my other teachers — in Santiniketan, at Presidency College, and at Trinity College in Cambridge — in helping me to find my way. I am delighted that the Infosys Foundation has initiated a new scheme for the training of rural teachers of mathematics and science. Since our school education is the basis of all our education — no matter how “high” our higher education maybe — the fruits of investment in good school education can be extraordinarily high. Narayana Murthy, who like me grew up in a family of teachers, knows that with visionary insight.

Wider role of teaching

I also want to say a few things about the wider role of teaching — in linking different nations and different cultures together. Teaching is not just a matter of instruction given by teachers to their individual students. The progress of science and of knowledge depends in general on the learning that one nation, one group of people, derives from what has been achieved by other nations and other groups of people.

For example, the golden age of Indian mathematics, which changed the face of mathematics in the world, was roughly from the fifth to the 12th century, and its beginning was directly inspired by what we Indians were learning from work done in Babylon, Greece and Rome. To be sure, there was an Indian tradition of analytical thinking going back much further, on which the stellar outbursts of mathematical work in India from around the fifth century drew, but we learned a lot about theorems and proofs and rigorous mathematical reasoning from the Greeks and the Romans and the Babylonians. There is no shame in learning from others, and then putting what we have learned to good use, and going on to create new knowledge, new understanding, and thrillingly novel ideas and results.

Indians of course were teaching other Indians. Perhaps the most powerful mathematician of ancient India, Brahmagupta, would not have been able to do such dazzling work without his having been influenced by the ideas of his own teachers, in particular Aryabhata, the pioneering leader of the Indian school of mathematics. Alberuni, the Iranian mathematician, who spent many years in India from the end of the 10th to the early years of the 11th century (and helped to make Arab mathematicians learn even more from Indian mathematics than they were already doing) thought that Brahmagupta was perhaps the finest mathematician and astronomer in India, and possibly in the world, and yet (argued Alberuni), Brahmagupta could be so productive only by standing on the shoulders of the great Aryabhata, who was not only an extraordinary scientist and mathematician, but also a superb teacher. Learning from each other continued over centuries, involving — in addition to Aryabhata and Brahmagupta — Varahamihira and Bhaskara, among many others.

And just as Indian mathematicians learned something from Babylonians, Greeks and Romans, they also taught some brilliantly new ideas to mathematicians elsewhere in the world. For example, Yi Xing [I-Hsing], who lived in China between the seventh and the eighth century, and who was, as Joseph Needham describes him, probably the finest Chinese mathematician of his time, knew all the relevant Indian texts. The Chinese mathematicians as well as the pioneering Arab mathematicians, including Al Khwarazmi (from whose name the term “algorithm” is derived), all knew Sanskrit and the Sanskritic literature in maths. What we are admiring here is not Indian mathematics done in splendid isolation (that rarely occurs anywhere in the world), but mathematics done with a huge role of international and interregional exchange of ideas. Indian research was deeply influenced by the knowledge of foreign works on the subject, and in turn, Indian maths influenced mathematical work even in those countries, including Greece and Rome and Baghdad, from where Indians themselves had learned many things.

Interconnections of traditions

Let me end with an example. The history of the term “sine” in Trigonometry illustrates how we learn from each other. That trigonometric idea was well developed by Aryabhata, who called it jya-ardha, and sometimes shortened it to jya. The Arab mathematicians, using Aryabhata’s idea, called it “jiba,” which is phonetically close. But jiba is a meaningless sound in Arabic, but jaib, which has the same consonants, is a good Arabic word, and since the Arabic script does not specify vowels, the later generation of Arab mathematicians used the term jaib, which means a bay or a cove. Then in 1150, when the Italian mathematician, Gherardo of Cremona, translated the word into Latin, he used the Latin word “sinus,” which means a bay or a cove in Latin. And it is from this — the Latin sinus — that the modern trigonometric terms “sine” is derived. In this one word we see the interconnection of three mathematical traditions — Indian, Arabic and European.

Teaching and learning are activities that link people together. Even as we celebrate science and research, we have to recognise the role of teaching and that of learning from each other — from our teachers, from our colleagues, from our students, from our friends, and from our fellow human beings. There is something extraordinarily great in these interconnections.