New Delhi, October 1
Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today agreed to meet the protesting IIT federation members after they shot off a telegram to him, seeking an early appointment. Some advice to this effect is learnt to have come from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as well.

But an agreement to meet the agitators does not seem to indicate ministry’s readiness to climb down from its earlier position on IIT teachers’ pay revision, though it today said the IIT boards, chairmen of boards of governors and directors had enough freedom under the IIT Act to address the issues being raised by protesters.

The ministry, for instance, today said the IIT boards had the freedom to absorb an assistant professor, first to be recruited on contract, into regular service depending on his performance. The IIT federation has been seeking such appointment on regular basis, but the ministry, putting the ball in the IITs’ court, said the boards could extend or shorten an entrant’s contract, depending on his performance.

The ministry also said the 40 per cent cap on promotion among professors must stay to ensure competitiveness in the system. The IIT federation is objecting to this provision, but the ministry said the real issue was of IITs establishing a criterion whereby excellence was rewarded. “This criterion must be approved by the boards. The restriction of 40 per cent can be reviewed when the implementation has progressed to that level,” states an internal ministry note prepared on the eve of the meeting with protesters. The note advises IITs to “promote meritocracy and not gerontocracy”, adding, “none can say that 100 pc of eligible professors who apply for higher academic grade pay of Rs 12,000 from usual Rs 10,500 are excellent. But if the situation requires change in 40 pc cap, IIT boards can request the IIT council and the council can openly review it.”

The note, while defending the Centre for always according special treatment to IITs and facing flak for the same, refers to the IITs as “islands of elitism”. It accuses the IITs of being male-dominated, not alive to the needs of the marginalised section and refers to how the Centre has been castigated for disproportionately patronising them.

In 2003, the budgetary allocation to seven IITs was Rs 564 crore, whereas the allocation for primary education for the entire country was just Rs 3,577 crore. “The opportunity cost for IITs, when seen in the wake of brain drain, becomes very heavy. Another reservation is that the IITs generate only graduates of excellent quality. These graduates often migrate to the USA and other western countries for masters and show little inclination to continue in IITs,” the note states. It, however, assures protesters of “no change in government approach to existing autonomy provisions or the need to enhance brand competitiveness of IITs”.

New Delhi, October 1
The government is mulling fresh guidelines for integration of mental health with general health services.

If experts advising the Health Ministry on this critical issue have their say, there would be no separate mental health screening camps in India in the future. Traditionally, the mentally ill are required to attend special screening camps often organised on the outskirts of residential areas. By their very nature, such camps discourage sufferers from reporting their problems.

A consensus is building up within the Health Ministry now that general health camps must address the mental health needs of people, ensuring that those suffering from mental illnesses are seen as part of the larger population and not as “those with special or separate needs.”

“We are working on explicit guidelines that will spell out the need to truly integrate mental health with general services. There is growing evidence that separate mental health camps don’t help any cause expect that of stigmatising the sector. Such camps have been found to be of utter disuse,” said Health Ministry sources, who are expected to fresh guidelines once the Union Cabinet approves the pending district mental health programme that seeks to extend the National Mental Health Programme to additional districts. Currently, 123 districts are running the programme.

There’s also an indication that the proposed guidelines would deal with the issue of integrating mental health into the National Rural Health Mission which has a wide network of primary health services, given its reach and funding.

“Guidelines will advise states on how to use NRHM resources to detect mental disorders at early stages,” said ministry sources, admitting that the 27-year-old objective of integrating mental health with general health remains to be achieved.

Thankfully, there is new thinking now on the urgency to end separation in context of mental disorders. “We will have to start focusing on community care and rehabilitation and move away from the approach that sets a mental health patient apart from his peers,” experts working on the guidelines said.

The change is expected to happen once the Planning Commission and Expenditure Department clear the health ministry’s District Mental Health Programme and a cabinet approval is thereafter granted. Fresh guidelines would be part of the extended DMHP for which Rs 450 crore have been sought.

New Delhi, October 1
Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde found himself in a hot spot at today’s Cabinet meeting when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee ticked him off for his ministry’s lacklustre performance.

The Power Ministry was in the spotlight when Shinde sought the cabinet’s approval for amendments to the mega power policy for stepping up power generation. Making a case for these changes, the minister said work on adding power capacity had been slow due to lack of coal and gas.

Known to be outspoken, Mukherjee was quick to tell him off. “There can be a thousand and one excuses, but the fact is that we do not have power,” the Finance Minister told Shinde, who merely mumbled something inaudible in response.

The Power Minister explained that he planned to set up a special committee of former ministry secretaries to review the power situation and suggest remedial steps. Unimpressed with this proposal, Mukherjee wondered how former bureaucrats, who were responsible for the present state of affairs, could improve the situation.

This is not the first time that Shinde has been pushed on the backfoot on the prickly issue of the power situation in the country. This matter had figured at last month’s meeting of the Planning Commission, which was chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Power Minister was hard pressed to explain the delay in stepping up production of electricity even as large swathes of the country are faced with prolonged power cuts. This year’s poor monsoon has further aggravated matters.

India has set itself a target of adding 78,000 MW of power generation capacity by 2012 but, from all accounts, it is unlikely to do so given the slow pace of work on the various projects. “There is not a single power project that has crossed 50 per cent of its given target,” said a senior UPA minister. The inordinate delay in the completion of projects has been put down to lack of equipment, inadequate funds and delay in selection of project sites with land acquisition invariably holding up work. Then, there are the usual problems of getting coal and gas for the power projects, as Shinde mentioned at today’s meeting.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is said to be deeply concerned about the power situation, as it directly impacts the country’s GDP growth and has been monitoring the Power Ministry’s performance on a regular basis. However, this periodic review has not helped improve the situation.

New Delhi, October 1
It has been 140 years since the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. And his autobiography continues to be a bestseller with annual sales of 2,00,000 copies even in these rapidly changing times.

As India marks the Mahatma’s birth anniversary on Friday, the Ahmedabad-based Navjivan Trust said the sales of “My Experiments With Truth”, named by US President Barack Obama as one of his inspirations, remain high despite competition from other publishing houses.

Until 10 months ago, Navjivan Trust alone had the copyright on all of Gandhi’s works.

“The expiry of the copyright has had no adverse impact on sales. It is still as high as before,” said Jitendra Desai, managing trustee of Navjivan Trust.

“The sales of the autobiography are about 2,00,000 annually, in all languages,” he stressed.

The Navjivan Trust is concerned that Mahatma Gandhi’s books must remain accessible to the common person. Its own publications of Gandhi’s works are low priced and affordable.

Some publishers have begun to reprint some works of the Mahatma using fancy paper — and selling them for as high as Rs 4,000. Most of Gandhi’s written works have been compiled into 100 volumes. These are known as the Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi, and they run into about 50,000 pages.

The apostle of non-violence is said to be the only public figure to have written so much.

“He wrote without stopping. When his right hand got tired, he would use his left. There is still so much of his work not in the public domain --- as many as 30,000 pages are scattered in the form of letters and othes writings,” said Anupam Mishra, director of Gandhi Peace Foundation. These unpublished writings are with individuals and institutions.

Scholars and admirers of Mahatma Gandhi feel this should all be compiled and brought under a designate authority.

“Now, we want to regularise and make available the original corpus of his work. The concept is to collect, restore and reprint all the regional Gandhiana and to bring it into public domain,” said Dina Patel, a senior Gandhian scholar from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad.

Gandhians, representatives of the cultural affairs ministry as well as legal experts have met to discuss whether a perpetual copyright was feasible and what could be done to ensure that literary works were not altered and placed out of context.

In 1944, Gandhi signed a deed where he assigned the copyright of his writings to the Navjivan Trust in Ahmedabad.

According to the country’s Copyright Act of 1957, the works of a person go into the public domain 60 years after his or her death. Under the clause, the Navjivan Trust lost the copyright on Gandhi's works on January 1, 2009.

Since its inception, the trust has published some 300 volumes of Gandhi’s works including articles, letters and speeches, apart from translations of his autobiography. “We hope that since Navjivan and Sarva Seva Sangh have not stopped publishing cheaper versions, Gandhiji’s works remain within the common man's reach,” said Ramachandra Rahi, secretary of Gandhi Smarak Nidhi. — IANS

Hyderabad, October 1
After intense lobbying by his supporters failed to impress the high command, the Congress MP YS Jagan Mohan Reddy now appears reconciled to a long wait before staking claim over his father late Y S Rajasekhar Reddy’s political legacy.

In a clear indication that the young MP has fallen in line with the high command, his family members today vacated the Chief Minister’s official residence at Begumpet here and moved into a private house. Jagan, who is presently camping in Bangalore, is expected to arrive in the city on October 5 and straightaway go to the new premises in Banjara Hills. At present, his sister Sharmila is staying in the house located at Sagar Society in the posh Banjara Hills area.

Arrangements are being made to set up a full-fledged office for the MP at the Banjara Hills residence and other facilities to enable him to receive the visitors.

The state Congress general secretary Ambati Rambabu and former Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams trust board chairman B Karunakar Reddy, both close confidants of Jagan, are supervising arrangements for his new camp office

With central leadership sending out clear signals that it wants to continue K Rosaiah as the CM, Jagan, a political novice, had appealed to his followers to maintain restraint and leave the

decision on succession issue to the high command. According to party sources, Jagan is presently busy completing formalities to hand over the ownership of his businesses to his close

relatives after which he would take to full-time politics. His business dealings had come under cloud in the past following the opposition charges of irregularities and nepotism. Thirty-six-year old MP has business interests in infrastructure, power, cement and media sectors.

Jagan is scheduled to leave for his family estate at Idupulapaya in Kadapa district on October 2, where he would pay homage to his late father. From there, he would proceed to Kadapa to take part in the party’s membership drive.

New Delhi, October 1
Lt General AS Lamba, yesterday took over as the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Army Training Command at Shimla.

He was commissioned into the Regiment of Artillery in June 1971. He has vast experience of conventional warfare and unconventional counter insurgency operations. He has participated in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war besides serving on almost all fronts in Nagaland and Manipur.

He has commanded an Infantry Brigade in Counter Insurgency and later in and the elite 21 strike corps in central India.

New Delhi, October 1
A group of Punjab Congressmen led by PPCC working president Mohinder Singh Kaypee today met Home Minister P Chidambaram and sought a review of 177 cases filed against party workers and supporters by the ruling SAD-BJP government in the state.

Kaypee was accompanied by Congress working committee member Jagmeet Brar, Gurdaspur MP Pratap Singh Bajwa and Ashwani Sekhri. The latter said only those cases in which “there had been blatant victimization” of party workers had been taken up with the minister. The group’s leaders said the Punjab Congress would shortly announce its plans on launching an agitation against Parkash Singh Badal’s regime, which they called “autocratic.” “The party will stage protests to show how the state machinery is being used by the SAD-BJP combine to terrorise Congress party workers”, they added.

Mumbai, October 1
Three-and-a-half months after his arrest for allegedly raping his domestic help, actor Shiney Ahuja today got bail from the Bombay High Court on the condition that he will stay in Delhi till the trial commenced to ensure that there was no tampering of evidence.

The court asked the 36-year-old actor to pay a surety amount of Rs 50,000 within three weeks, surrender his passport and refrain from offering any inducement to witnesses, directly or indirectly.

“There are two aspects in such cases-an accused may try to flee or tamper with the evidence. In this case, since he is a permanent resident of Mumbai, he may not try to flee and to ensure that there is no tampering of evidence, certain conditions must be put,” Justice A P Deshpande observed.

Shiney, who hails from Delhi, will have to report to the police station nearest to his place of stay at regular intervals.

However, he will have to spend two more nights in the Arthur Road jail as his family could not complete some necessary paper work.

Reacting to the High Court order, the actor’s wife, Anupam, looking relieved said: “I’m overwhelmed to hear that Shiney has been granted bail. From day one, I have been saying that this is a frame up. We’ve full faith in the judiciary. He will be finally back with the family”.

Shiney was arrested on June 15 after his maid lodged a complaint with Oshivara police station that the actor had raped her at his residence. The wife and child of the actor were not at home when the alleged incident occurred. He will be released on bail from the Arthur Road jail. The court ruled that Shiney would be permitted to come to Mumbai only during the trial. — PTI

Lucknow, October 1
Forty-seven suspects were arrested in Hathras today for setting afire five bogies of the Delhi-bound Mahananda Express (at Hathras), injuring around 12 persons.

The suspects have been booked for rioting, injuring public servant on duty, attempt to murder and damaging public property and other related sections of the IPC.

Briefing the press, ADG (Law and Order) AK Jain said the police was searching for the other members of the mob that created disturbance in Hathras yesterday, bringing to halt traffic on the Firozabad-Delhi section of Northern Railways.

Jain said after preliminary investigation, NSA or Gangster Act might be imposed on the suspects.