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Their life begins and ends at brick-kilns
CCB online off-campus counselling a major drawback
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Cultures of 8 nations come alive at LPU
BSP protest against price rise
Of the purist and his honeyed strains
Meet the memory magician
Young World
ACHIEVER
82 donate blood at camp
War of words between SAD(A), Shiv Sena
‘Bhakti movement encouraged feudal values in society’
Balwant Kapur hockey tourney from Jan 17
Phillaur to have modern
grain market: Lakhowal
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Their life begins and ends at brick-kilns
Jalandhar, December 15 He was not born and he cannot die as he does not exist in government records. “The officials at the birth and death registration office refuse to enlist our names. They say we are brick-kiln workers and have no permanent address. It’s not enough for them to know that labourers have been living and dying here for the past many years. What kind of address proof can we give when one storm is enough to render us roofless,” laments Sukhwinder Kaur (35), who is in the profession for the past 25 years. A 4’x5’ brick shed which is about 4 feet high, houses around four to six people. There are no doors, just a tarpaulin piece to protect them from cold or heat waves. Some sleep in the open. Mosquitoes and diseases are part of their lives. They don’t have any voice or representatives. “Why will any politician look our way when we don’t have voter cards? The primary condition for a voter card is ration card; none of us has any. Besides, we are not even registered workers. Three years back my daughter (19) died of heat stroke while working at a brick-kin. When we demanded compensation from the employer, he just denied that she ever worked with him,” said Yashpal. Women workforce faces a lot of problems due to lack of toilets in the vicinity. They are forced to go to far-off fields. They have to go in early morning or late evening, and often become easy victims of molestation. When contacted, Assistant Labour Commissioner Inderjeet Singh said: “We conduct periodic inspections to check against any kind of exploitation. Labourers are getting the determined wages. As far as child labour is concerned, they are not officially employed. It’s obvious that when kids don’t go to school, they will help their parents. We are not responsible for their education. That comes under the jurisdiction of Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan.” “Social security for these workers is their paramount need. As per the National Sample Survey Organisation, about 25.94 million women workers have been added in the labour market since 2000. The tragedy is that the existing social security legislations cover only 8 per cent of the total workforce of 440 million Indians. The Social Security Act, 2008, should become capable of meeting the needs of these workers in the unorganised sector,” concludes All Majdoor Shakti Sangh president Iqbal Chand. There are around 300 registered brick-kilns in Jalandhar district and every factory employs 200 to 300 labourers. This means the district alone has around 55,000 unorganised brick-kiln workers. |
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CCB online off-campus counselling a major drawback
Jalandhar, December 15 A large number of eligible students of the AIEEE are still awaiting admission in NITs. However, the faulty counselling procedure has reduced the chances of prospective students, especially those belonging to the rural category, poor families, OBC, SC/ST and marginal and minority communities. It has been strongly mentioned that students should be given admission against 1,300 vacant seats in different NITs as the counselling has resulted in a large number of vacant seats in the departments of textile technology, biotechnology and industrial engineering at NIT, Jalandhar. In his letter, the Director has emphasised on the need to discontinue the online off-campus counselling which started this year. It mentions that even if the counselling has to be followed, shifting of students from one NIT to another should be stopped completely or the students should get only one chance to shift from one NIT to another. The faculty has also stated that after a few rounds of online counselling by the CCB, the filling of the rest of the seats should be done by the institute-level counselling based on AIEEE merit. The need to discourage the practice of allowing students to leave the NIT by deducting a mere amount of Rs 1,000 has also been mentioned. Talking to The Tribune, Dr Moin-u-Ddin said the current problem of vacant seats in various disciplines started during the changed admission procedure through the AIEEE/CCB where unlimited choices had been given to the students and a never-ending process of seat allotment was started. “Owing to this procedure, the counselling process took a long time, due to which the students who were waiting for admission in NITs had to take admission in government institutes or private institutes, due to massive deduction in admission fees,” he said. He further added that in the IIT-JEE counselling, there is no problem in filling the seats of textile courses at the IIT, Delhi, at one go as the counselling policy did not allow internal sliding. The faculty maintained that the department of textile technology never faced any problem in admission during the previous counselling procedure of the CET (Punjab) and even the CCB, AIEEE, a few years back. “The problem lies with the counselling and retention policy. After the first counselling, most of the seats in this course were filled, which proves that the branch is not a least preferred option among the students”, maintained Head of Textile Technology J.N. Chakraborty. The NIT, Jalandhar, is the only institute in the country which is running postgraduate programmes, including Ph.D in textile technology course with the active involvement of the textile industry in and around Punjab, including Vardhman, JCT and Nahar group. |
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Cultures of 8 nations come alive at LPU
Jalandhar, December 15 He said, “The LPU offers education to students from 15 countries, 24 states of India and interns from seven foreign countries. The festival is a way to learn the cultural heritage of various countries. This programme is the first of a series of events under the broad programme aimed at celebrating the global cultural diversity over a couple of months.” Besides, the participants from foreign countries also displayed other unique offerings from their countries through stall exhibitions. Jimena, who is from Chile, prepared an indigenous dish “Chilean salad”. Carolina, representing Brazil, was all smiles as she dished out special chocolates called “Brigadeiro”, also referred to as the “national candy of Brazil”. Akra from Ivory Coast made people dance to the musical notes of his country as many from the audience approached him for casual “teach-me-this” requests. |
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BSP protest against price rise
Jalandhar, December 15 Aanganwari workers demonstrated against the alleged callous attitude of the government in accepting their genuine demands. Chairperson Dharamjeet Kaur slammed the SAD-BJP government for not living up to its promises. She said: “Employment of supervisor inducted by wrong means should be cancelled and new recruitment made on the basis of capability, as per rules.” They demanded scrapping of the age-limit set for promotions and pension scheme for the employees. “The Haryana government is providing facilities like over-time. Why is the same not being implemented in Punjab?” asked one of the protesting workers. Their other demands included implementation of annual agreement and to bring the ICDS scheme under government department. District president of the workers’ association Balwir Kaur said
they would continue to fight till their demands were accepted. Meanwhile, activists of the BSP protested at Company Bagh Chowk against the rise in prices of vegetables and other necessary things of daily use. Leading the protest, Dr Kamal Dev Jandu of the party slammed the government for neglecting the poor. “When every third person in the country
has to go to bed hungry, the lectures about so-called development stand void,” said Jandu. |
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Of the purist and his honeyed strains
Jalandhar, December 15 Sitar maestro Prateek Chaudhuri was in the city for a recital organised by SpicMacay at the APJ College of Fine Arts today. Called a purist and traditionalist, Prateek is the ninth gem of the string of sitarists in the Senia Gharana in which sitar was initiated by Masit Sen. Tutored by his father, and Dadaguru Mushtaq Ali Khan Sahab, he carries forward the Senia tradition of 17 frets (instead of 19, 20 or 21) in the sitar and sticks largely to the Dhrupad style because “I believe in the purity of swaras.” Accompanied at the tabla by Ustad Rashid Zafar Khan, Prateek set the stage on fire with his rendition of the Palash Sarang, an amalgamation of the Shudh Sarang and Bhimpalasi ragas. His signature dulcet alaapas gave way to the taans rendered with artful celerity. For a show of his dexterity in the taal, he chose musical conversations with his audience where, with a tap or clap, they hinted at the place where they wanted him to take up the “tihai”. An exercise meant to emphasise on the fact, “Agar aap taal se daroge, to voh aap par haavi ho jaegi.” The jugalbandi between the tabla and sitar was one of the high points of the recital and left the audience spellbound. Excerpts of the maestro’s interview with The Tribune: How did your journey in the sitar start? It started right from pre-nursery, in the initial days, I wasn’t really encouraged to take up music but then I thought why shouldn’t I represent my own gharana when we expect other people to do it? So I took up music, though not before I did my B. Com (honours). Since when did you get into the sitar in a big way? My first major performance was at the age of 18 at Yuva Utsav organised by the Sahitya Kala Parishad, Delhi. Later, I completed my Sangeet Shiromani from Delhi with a gold and went on to top my M.Phil in music, followed by a Ph.D. What do you think about the current
scenario in music? On the surface people say music doesn’t have young takers but I think it has. Most of the places I perform have many youngsters thronging auditoriums and recitals. What needs to be done is proper promotion and propagation. We need prime time slots on DD and more space in newspapers. Climate change, how? I have performed at places, for instance, at Okinawa (Japan) four years back and it was undergoing a drought. The organisers of the concert asked me to play something for rain. I played a variety of Malhar and it rained. It might have been a coincidence, but then music does have that kind of power. What are your future plans? I’m and will be working with my fusion group and also on another group called Soul of India with which I intend to promote Indian music in all its splendour. Also I will be working on some solo and group recordings. |
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Meet the memory magician
Jalandhar, December 15 Sanjiv Kumar, a resident
of Mohalla Kot Ram Dass of Jalandhar, at the age of 25, is a budding memory wizard. It’s in his habit to diligently play with numerals. He can tell you what week day your birthday fell on, just by asking the birth date, month and year. What’s all the more amazing is that his capability to scan days ranges from 1700 AD to 2300 AD. “I have made a calendar in my brain of years from 1700 to 2300 AD. I have prepared some fundamental calendars which I keep in my mind in the form of pictures and signs. I bring out the respective dates and days by referring to these calendars,” said Sanjiv. I started practising these exercises to enhance my memory in 2004 when I found a book by Harry Lauren on the subject. Since then I have developed some memory machines to deal with different mathematical formulae, geographical maps, history dates and even literary paragraphs, which can be of great help to school-going students, he claimed. Not only this, he can draw the map of any country within seconds, he can tell you the location of the capital of that country, he can read a series of numbers both forward and backward just after listening to them once, he can tell you STD codes of 250 cities of the country. In addition to this, he
can easily recall even three-page-long matter written in Morse codes, usually known as dot-dash language. “To enhance memory, we need to develop a skill to create pictures in the brain of what we listen to. With practice, we learn how to decipher codes, which would be imprinted in our brain in the form of these pictures”, he added. Born in a family of labourers, he failed to pursue his studies after class XII. He wanted to get some of his memory machines patented and to open an academy to enhance memory skills of students, but failed to do so owing to want of money. |
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Lecture on stress-free teaching
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, December 15 Extension lecture
The MGN College of Education organised an extension lecture under its enrichment programme series. Resource person P.K. Sahu from Allahabad University elaborated on “communication process”. During the second lecture, educationist Dr S.P. Malhotra, national Fellow at NUEPA, Delhi, was the key speaker. Educational trip
Twenty-eight students of Kanya Maha Vidyalaya went for an educational trip to the Chhatbir zoo, Ropar. The students accompanied by teachers from the departments of biology and environment science were taught about the flora and fauna of the surroundings. Seminar held
Sanskriti KMV School organised a seminar on health awareness, which was attended by students along with their mothers. Dr Sushma Chawla, president of the National Association of Reproductive Child Health of India (NARCHI), and Dr Deepali Luthra were the guest speakers. The duo gave medical tips to adolescent girls. A lecture on “female medical ailments” was also given to the audience. Earlier the audience members filled questionnaires and interacted with students. Free samples of iron and calcium tablets were distributed among the audience. Students selected
Students of the Prem Chand Markanda SD College for Women bagged the second position in the senior state ball badminton (boys and girls) championships. The students have also been selected for the national team for the championship, which would be held in Andhra Pradesh. Annual function
Sahibzada Ajit Singh Ji Public School, Sarhali, near here, celebrated its seventh annual function on December 12. On this occasion students presented a cultural programme. Student wins title
Tarunjot Kaur, a student of class XI of Guru Amar Dass Public School, Model Town, won the ‘She-Khalsa 2009’ in the SAGA contest organised by Kesh Sambhal Sanstha, Delhi. Lab inaugurated
A research lab was inaugurated in the postgraduate department of physics at Kanya Maha Vidyalaya. The research lab would be working on the latest techniques and advancements in the field of spectroscopy and physics. |
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5 NIT students make it to PGCL
Kusum Arora/TNS
Jalandhar, December 15 Karan Singh, a student of electronics and communication engineering (ECE) of the NIT, is among those who got placement as trainee engineers at an annual package of Rs 11 lakh. The boy from Kanpur, said after bagging placement with one of the top PSUs of India, he would be able to solemnise the marriage of his sister in style. “It feels great and responsible after being selected to the PGCL. I would be able to fulfil all the dreams of my parents now,” he said. Jaspreet Kaur of Kapurthala said she was confident about her placement as she had a good academic record. “It is for the first time that a girl from our family has hit the top slot of the country,” she quipped. NIT Director Dr Moin-u-Ddin said earlier the placements in the PGCL were confined to the IITs only. However, this year the PGCL approached some of the NITs, which included the NIT, Jalandhar. “The PGCL has 237 centres across the country and the students would be joining in July after the completion of their final semester. Apart from this, Maruti Udyog, Saint Gobain and Infosys would also be visiting the campus in the coming days,” he added. Another student, Dhiraj Singh of Bathinda said as soon as he was selected, the first thing he did was he spoke to his mother over the phone. “I lost my father two years back and a brother who was also a student of the NIT here. My mother was more sure and confident about my selection,” he added. For Sumeet Dhanoa of Amritsar the placement came on expected lines. “I bagged placement with the PGCL owing to the constant support and motivation by my teachers,” she maintained. Sumeet said, “Although considered to be a sought-after career option among men, the field has vast avenues for girls as well. And nothing could be better than the PGCL.” Gaurav Awal from Jalandhar said there was nothing better than bagging a placement in one of the best government sector undertaking. “It was my good CGPA record coupled with an excellent academic track record that I could ensure a place with the PGCL,” he added.
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82 donate blood at camp
Jalandhar, December 15 Raj Kumar Chaudhary, branch head, Wholesale Banking Operation, Jalandhar, claimed that donors voluntarily participated in the camp
organised at its branches on the GT Road and at Vijay Nagar. Dr Mohinderjit Singh, District Vice-Governor, Lion Club Jalandhar, inaugurated the camp. |
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War of words between SAD(A), Shiv Sena
Phagwara, December 15 SAD (A) state executive member Jathedar Rajinder Singh Fauji criticised the statements of a few Shiv Sena leaders who had announced removal of stickers of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale from vehicles. In a press release, Fauji challenged the Shiv Sena leaders to show their strength by organising any congregation of Swami Ashutosh and dared them to remove any sticker of Bhindranwale from any vehicle. He appealed to religious and social Hindu leaders to control the provocative actions of the Shiv Sena and urged the administration to book elements which were spoiling the peaceful atmosphere of the state. —
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‘Bhakti movement encouraged feudal values in society’
Jalandhar, December 15 He is Dr Seva Singh, a lecturer of Hindi at Guru Nanak Dev University, who retired as chairman of Sant Kabir Chair. He currently resides at Kapurthala. Seva Singh has authored
eight books on Indian philosophy. Excerpts from an interview: What inspired you into choosing philosophy? Social vices like casteism, exploitation of the down-trodden, widespread superstitions, poverty and lack of unity among the working classes used to haunt me. I wanted to do something for their emancipation.
In the book, you have delved deep into the Bhakti movement and its ramifications on the society. What kind of role did it play? The book deals with the movement from the 1st to 10th century. During the period of expansion, when the civilised societies overtook certain tribes and found it impossible to eliminate them all, they evolved a strategy to involve them in the mainstream, but marginally. It was a process of assimilation and segregation at the same time. Different tribes were made into different castes. Do you mean that Bhakti movement was started
with the motive of divide and rule? Yes, it asked the assimilated tribes to surrender without questioning or complaining about the social hierarchies which placed them at the bottom. But great saints like
Guru Nanak Dev and Kabir too were part of this movement? No, they were the rebels of the Bhakti Movement, who opposed feudal values. They actually belonged to the Renaissance. But during the colonial period there was a conspiracy to identify them with the Bhakti Movement, hence, marring our non-spiritual growth. Tell us something about your other books. To name some, I authored “Maya and Mayawad” which traces the development of Indian philosophy from material to idealist outlook. Another book, on Bhagwadgita was a critical study of the caste system and our philosophy. Then one dealt with the issue of woman as a sex taboo - a study of conflict between matriarchal and patriarchal societies. What does your upcoming book deal with? It studies the Bhakti Movement from the 10th to 16th century and will be out in 2010. |
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Balwant Kapur hockey tourney from Jan 17
Jalandhar, December 15 The tournament will be played on league-cum-knockout basis. Teams from all over the country, including the holders Government Senior Secondary School, Jalandhar, and runners-up Lyallpur Khalsa School, Jalandhar, will participate in the tournament. President of the organising committee of the tournament Harbhajan Singh Kapur said the winners would be given an award of Rs 1 lakh, while the runners-up would get
Rs 60,000. The winners of the third place would be given Rs 40,000. He said four best players, including best goalkeeper, best fullback, best halfback and best forward, would be given Rs 5,000 each.“Interested teams can send their entries for the tournament,” he added. |
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Phillaur to have modern
grain market: Lakhowal
Phillaur, December 15 Addressing a seminar on better agriculture organised by the Mandi Board in Phillaur, Lakhowal inspired farmers to take care of water and cautioned people that the entire land could end up as barren within the next 20 years if preventive measures to stop water wastage were not initiated. He told the farmers to adopt the path of diversification of crops according to the changing scenario. Chief Parliamentary Secretary Sarwan Singh Phillaur also addressed the seminar. —
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Jalandhar, December 15
Jalandhar, December 15
Jalandhar, December 15
Jalandhar, December 15
Jalandhar, December 15
Jalandhar, December 15
