Kalimpong music in Commonwealth Games programme.. GJM to attend Mamta meeting ... 7 elephants died of train .. College result very poor ..

KalimNews: A Kalimpong boy and his team is engaged in arranging music for a  song to be sung in honour of  the representative participant and delegates of XIX Commonwealth Games. A welcome programme on 30th September is organised by the CWG 2010 with a gala ceremony.

Abhisek indeed is training the students  of a Delhi School called Banyan Tree who also happens to be music teacher of that school. Abhisek has arranged the music with his brother Anmol for the welcome ceremonial entertainment programme to be held on 30th. The students of that school will participate in playing the music while  Abhisek is rehearsing them for a special number.  

Anmol chandra Rai runs Noida School of Rock located in Noida, Delhi. It is affiliated to Trinity College of Music, Rock School and Royal School of Music, London. Anmol is the Director as well as faculty of Rock & Classical music while Abhisek is the Founder partner and faculty of Rock music. The duo brothers hail from Mission Compound Kalimpong and are the sons of Hem kr Rai and Anjana Rai. They also work in a private school of Delhi as music teacher. 
Morcha aims for Mamata good books

Bimal Gurung, Mamata Banerjee: Keen to bond?

TT, Sept. 22: Bimal Gurung will meet Mamata Banerjee during her visit to the hills, fuelling speculation that he was keen to be in her good books especially since the Trinamul Congress chief is a key player in state politics.

Gurung’s outfit, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, has also chalked out a welcome programme for Mamata, whose Darjeeling plans according to her party sources, however, have not yet been firmed up.

The Morcha is in fact going out of its way to welcome the Mamata with a gesture, which has not been extended to any political leader from Bengal till date. “A delegation headed by our party chief Bimal Gurung will be meeting her in Darjeeling. We have asked our party workers to welcome her all along the route and we will also request the hill people to attend her public meeting in Darjeeling,” said Roshan Giri, the general secretary of the Morcha.

In the past, the Morcha had even objected to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee coming to the hills and has strong words always to condemn the “gimmick tours” of other Bengal ministers as well.

Trinamul general secretary and central minister Mukul Roy said no dates for Mamata’s visit had been fixed yet. “As of now, Didi has not yet planned her Darjeeling visit,” said Roy today. “We will wait and watch to see what the fallout of the Ayodhya case verdict will be. Only after that will she chalk out her future plans. But yes, our leader has said she will be visiting Singur on September 25.”

About the Morcha support to Mamata’s visit to the hills, Roy said: “We appreciate the fact that the Morcha has decided to welcome our leader during her visit, whenever it takes place.”

The Morcha went a step further and maintained that it would be “good” if “Mamata visited the sites where the indefinite hunger strikes were on. Since September 17, Morcha members have been on indefinite fast on the premises of the district magistrate’s office, demanding that Nickole Tamang be produced alive in court. Nickole, a central committee member of the Morcha who had been arrested for his role in the murder of ABGL leader Madan Tamang, had disappeared from CID custody on August 22. The Morcha has alleged that Nickole was killed in cop custody.

Bhuniya visit

PCC president Manas Bhuniya, who arrived in Siliguri today around 8pm, said he would be back in the region on October 6 to discuss an “agenda paper” which would also include the Darjeeling hills. The paper will be prepared by a Congress committee under the leadership of former bureaucrat Sukhbilas Burma. 

TH, KOLKATA: The Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM) leadership has welcomed Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's proposed visit to the Darjeeling hills next week. Its president, Bimal Gurung, will be among those who will call on her.

“She is scheduled to arrive for a two-day visit to the hills on September 26 and we welcome her. A delegation of GJM leaders will be meeting her during her stay,” GJM general secretary Roshan Giri told The Hindu over telephone from Darjeeling on Wednesday.

Ms. Banerjee had earlier this month said that she would be visiting Darjeeling in an attempt to help restore peace in the region.

For one who is subverting peace in the State her visit to the hills can never be for the sake of restoring peace in the region, Biaman Bose, Secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had said recently, alleging that her party has been bent on creating lawlessness across the State.

While the GJM leadership claimed that the focus of its meeting with Ms. Banerjee would be on development of the train service in the Darjeeling hills, it is expected that matters related to the ongoing dialogue with the Centre and the State Government on the proposed interim authority for the region will be a part of discussions.

“Ms. Banerjee is also expected to address a public rally in Darjeeling which will be attended by our [GJM] people”, Mr. Giri said.

“Respect verdict”

Meanwhile, on the subject of the Babri Masjid title suit, Ms. Banerjee said that whatever might be the verdict of the Special Bench of the Allahabad High Court people should ensure that there is no breach in peace and harmony. “I also appeal to all communities to respect the verdict of the court,” she said while speaking to journalists after a meeting of her party's core committee. “The aggrieved party can always seek to take further legal steps once the verdict is announced,” she added.

5 Elephants died  2 seiously injured in dooars 

KalimNews: Due to a high speeding train in the between Diana and Moraghat Forest neat Moraghat TE rail gate 7 elephants died. A herd of elephants were crossing the rail gate while a goods train hit them and 5 died on the spot while a baby elephant and a male was found severely injured.   Kalyan Das , DFO Jalpaiguri said that we are looking for other injured elephants, if any.A source later said that the 2 injured elephants also died and a herd of about 25 elephants are on the railway track and all the train movement between Banarhat and Dhupguri is stopped.

Colleges point negligence finger at NBU, Failure blamed on ‘absence’ too 

 

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, Sept. 22: The colleges in the Darjeeling hills have accused North Bengal university of “gross negligence” in evaluating the answer scripts of the undergraduate exams after many students were marked absent or had their results withheld.

While there is no regular pattern, as some institutions have also excelled in some streams, college authorities said those instances were rare. In most cases, the results have been disastrous (see chart).

Dipak Ray, principal of Darjeeling Government College, said: “I have strong reservations about the assessment process of the university. There has been gross negligence as many candidates who had appeared for the examinations have either been marked as absent or their results withheld.” Ray said of the 1,600 candidates who appeared for Part I and Part II examinations from his college, almost 70 per cent were unsuccessful, which includes students with “back papers”, and those whose results have not come. Honours students who have failed in one pass subject paper are known to have “backs” and can re-appear for it the next year. During the period, they can be promoted to the next class.

“There are gross discrepancies. For example, a student has got 45 per cent in political science and only 4 in English. The results are most unexpected if we look at the performance of the last 10 years,” said L.P. Gupta, the principal of Sonada Degree College.

Many colleges in the hills have decided to convene emergency meetings of the teachers’ council to discuss the results. Rajendra Dhakal, principal of Kalimpong College, said: “We are definitely not satisfied with the results. We will call a meeting of the teachers’ council to discuss the reason (for such bad performance).”

St Joseph’s College (North Point), which is known for its consistent good results across all streams, has faltered this time with the most miserable performance being in BSc and BCom.

The only two colleges in the hills satisfied with the results are Southfield College and Ghoom-Jorebunglow Degree College.

“Of the 714 students, 638 have cleared the examinations. Around 40 did not sit for their papers because of various reasons. In general we have fared well,” said Milan Tamang, officer-in-charge of the Ghoom college.

K. Ojha, principal of Southfield College, also termed the results “as expected’.” Our pass percentage in Part 1 honours is 90, while that in Part II is 96.4 per cent. We have attained a pass percentage of 72 percent in Part I general and 93 percent in Part II general courses,” said Ojha.

Sushanta Das, the controller of examinations, NBU, said dissatisfied candidates could go in for re-assessment. “The re-assessment will be done by another set of teachers. This is an age of the RTI and everything is transparent,” said Das.

Asked about the allegation of negligence in marking, Das said: “For Darjeeling Government College I can say that it had registered students in general course but they sat for the honours examinations. The computers could not take their marks, as their registration numbers did not match. This is why the university withheld the results.”

Four hurt in crash on bumpy NH31

Manas Bhuniya in Alipurduar on Wednesday. (Anirban Choudhury)

TT, Sept. 22: Four tourists from Howrah and Nandigram were seriously injured near Birpara this afternoon when a car rammed into the rear of a truck that had slammed brakes suddenly to avoid a large pothole — one of the many that dot the region.

Two of the injured are children.

In Calcutta, state finance minister Asim Dasgupta said the chief minister would write to the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), seeking an explanation for the bad condition of roads in north Bengal, especially NH31 that stretches from Siliguri to Alipurduar.

The injured were first taken to Birpara State General Hospital, where their names were recorded as Narayan Sahu, 60, Maya Murmu, 55, — both from Nandigram in East Midnapore — and Nandita Dey, 6, and Sayan Sahu, 8, from Salkia, Howrah. According to sources at the Birpara hospital, the four passed out soon after the admission and they were later referred to the Jalpaiguri District Hospital as they had head injuries and required CT-scans.

According to police, all of them were staying with relatives in Binnaguri and had hired a car to visit Lankapara, Birpara and Makrapara Kali temple. The accident occurred around 4.30pm at Din Dima Hatkhola, 63km from Alipurduar, when the vehicle was returning to Binnaguri.

“The truck and the car were going in the same direction. The driver of the truck applied the brakes suddenly while trying to avoid huge potholes on NH31 and the car slammed into its rear,” said Ramesh Chhetri, who had witnessed the crash. “Every day there is an accident because of the bad roads. Many school buses ply on the highway in this area and we are concerned about our children. The administration is doing nothing to repair the roads.”

The finance minister said there was a wrong impression among people that the national highways were maintained by the state public works department.

“The NHAI is fully responsible for the maintenance of these highways, but it claims that its job is only to widen and build new roads. I and PWD minister Kshiti Goswami will soon visit north Bengal,” Dasgupta told reporters at Writers’ Buildings after a cabinet meeting.

Hours before the accident, PCC president Manas Bhuniya, who is also the chairman of the Assembly standing committee for the PWD, said in Alipurduar that he would visit north Bengal in the first week of October to inspect the highways.

“Even cyclists cannot negotiate these bad roads. I will speak to the PWD engineers when I return to Calcutta. I will seek a report from them and return here during the first week of October and visit various places where the roads are bad. The Centre has recently released Rs 15 crore for road repairs in north Bengal, but the RSP minister cannot spend the money as he is controlled by the CPM,” said Bhuniya.

Cough syrup seized

TT, Siliguri, Sept. 22: Nearly 13,000 bottles of cough syrup were seized by customs officials from a truck in Bidhannagar last night.

Two persons have been arrested, and the officials claimed that they have got information on the kingpin of the racket involved in smuggling prescription drugs across the India-Bangladesh border.

“We spotted the truck near Itahar. The vehicle was travelling towards Malda when our officials chased it. The driver turned the truck towards Siliguri and we intercepted it near Bidhannagar, 40km from here,” said S.K. Das, the commissioner of central excise and service tax department, Siliguri. “We have also arrested Niranjan Singha and Rajkumar Paswan who could not produce valid documents for the drugs,” said Das. 

IGNOU test

TT, Siliguri: A total of 809 candidates will appear in an entrance test for 400 seats of the two-year BEd course under the Siliguri regional centre of Ignou here on September 26. Y. Bhutia, the regional director of Ignou, said candidates who have not received their hall tickets for the entrance tests, can contact the regional centre here with proof that they have submitted their application forms.

11th NSS Day observed by Students of Pranami Valika Vidya Mandir

Poverty free Sikkim

Prakha, Gangtok, Sep 22: Chief minister Pawan Chamling, who stepped into 61 years of age today, launched an ambitious mission to make Sikkim the first poverty free State in the country by 2013. He was born on September 22, 1950.

“Our mission is to make Sikkim a poverty free State in the next 36 months thereby setting up a model example for other States. The Below Poverty Line (BPL) percentage in Sikkim was 41 before we (Sikkim Democratic Front) came to power in 1994 and in 2005, the BPL percentage was brought down to around 20 percent. There has been a fifty percent drop in the BPL families in Sikkim”, said the Chief minister while launching the mission at Chintan Bhavan.

According to a report of the State government, there are 21,618 poor households all over Sikkim with North district having the lowest number of households at around 1300.

“Presently, the BPL families’ percentage in Sikkim is only around 6 to 7 percent as per Department of Economics, Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation (DESME) officials. Now we have to ensure in the next 36 months is to make the BPL percentage here to zero and also address the possibilities of families again falling back to BPL category”, said Chamling.

The Chief minister pointed out that in the past 16 years, his government has been allocating seventy percent of the annual budget for rural upliftment. “Our programmes were targeted for the welfare of the poor people. However, we now realized that the people had become habituated to receiving government grants”, he said.

Chamling added that fifty percent of the BPL families who were uplifted to Above Poverty Line (APL) category in Sikkim were basically due to government grants.

“The day such grants stop, these families will fall down to BPL category again which we have to prevent by creating income generation avenues and increasing their productivity”, said the Chief Minister directing all the departments to start programmes under the poverty free mission.

The mission statement states poverty is usually measured as either absolute or relative poverty. Absolute poverty, which has been defined as lack of basic human needs due inability to afford them, has been also almost eradicated in Sikkim, said State rural development department additional director Sandeep Tambe.

The State rural development department is the nodal agency for implementing the mission.

Tambe said that poor families in Sikkim are those who are living in kutcha (non-permanent) houses with bamboo walls held by mud plasters, having marginal holdings less than 0.5 acres and with income sources mainly from agriculture labour. There are vulnerable households like single mothers or families led by aged or disabled persons in the poor family category, he said.

As per the mission statement, the strategies to combat the remaining percentage of BPL families in Sikkim were to improve inter-village connectivity, housing for all withkutcha houses, providing land and homesteads to the landless Sikkimese and universal financial inclusion. Around 5000 households in Sikkim are living in kutcha houses and there are around 300 landless families presently. Such families would be provided with rural housing schemes and land through government land bank scheme. Such schemes are applicable only to Sikkim Subject holders.

In order to improve earning avenues for the people, the mission seeks to use Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act along with promotion of farm based livelihoods and providing capacity building in various employment generating fields. The mission also entails to set up strong safety net for vulnerable groups and providing them financial support to them.

A steering committee headed by the Chief minister has been formed to lead the mission while a task force headed by the State chief secretary to formulate policy directives and guidelines.

Annual reports on the mission would be submitted to be State Assembly to asses the progress.
New NC president
PTI, KATHMANDU, 22 SEPT: Veteran Nepali Congress leader Mr Sushil Koirala was today elected president of the country's oldest democratic party, defeating his nearest rival and ex- Premier Sher Bahadur Deuba by a margin of 335 votes, shortly before he was admitted to hospital for treatment of pneumonia.
72-year-old Mr Koirala, who had been functioning as acting president of the party following the demise of his uncle Girija Prasad Koirala in March, bagged 1,652 against Deuba's 1,317, out of over 3,000 ballots cast.
Part time tutor salary hike

TT, Kolkata:The state cabinet on Wednesday approved the government’s decision to allow part-time teachers of state-aided and state-run colleges to continue in service till the age of 60, without a break in tenure.

The state higher education department had issued the order on Tuesday, which also said that all part-time teachers who were retrenched or whose contracts were not renewed on or after January 1, 2008, would be engaged in the same posts.

The order, which will come into effect on October 1, has also hiked the pay of part-time teachers.

Teachers working for less than four years will be paid Rs 9,450 instead of Rs 7,000 per month. For those working between four and 10 years, the monthly salary has been enhanced from Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,800. Those working for more than 10 years will be paid Rs 13,500 instead of Rs 10,000. 

Oh baby, no Baby!

Gone are the days of Hum Do Hamare Do. Today,couples in the country are childless by choice... (TOI, 23 Sept, 2010)

At a get-together, all the kids huddle around Monisha and play a game which other adults find difficult to enjoy. Each child takes turns, runs around the house taking a particular route and somewhere along the journey, a shape emerges. As a child, Monisha played this game for hours. At 38, she prefers to spend her time with the children than sit around with the other women and discuss parties.
By evening all the seven children want Monisha to stay back, but she and her husband Anish Palshekar have to get home. They are both chatty during the drive. Ace of Spades, followed by some Judas Priest and Scorpions plays in the background. Meanwhile, the rest of the cousins still finishing dessert wonder why the Palshekars don't want their own children.
That decision was taken about 15 years ago, a few days before their marriage. "Neither have we regretted it, nor have we looked back," says Anish, an IAS officer with the Indian Railways. For this couple, not having a child was a basic and informed choice. "Why does everyone need to have a child of their own? There are so many children in India and people can adopt them. Also, we thought of the freedom we would have and decided not to have a child," he adds. Weekends and vacations are never quiet for the Palshekars. "We are consumed by the lineup of things that are playing in Mumbai, which we want to catch," says Monisha. "I have to say that the freedom we have is something we really cherish."
Not surprisingly, the Palshekars always stay at a show till the curtains drop or the credits roll, while most of their friends rush home to be with their children. But it would be wrong to think of them as selfish. For, Anish has given years of his life teaching street children and Monisha, even today, works with women and children in India's hinterland.
These two are part of India's rising population of DINKs (Double Income No Kids). Time was when having a kid - or three - was the norm. And a childless couple, a rarity. If at all there was a pair that didn't have a kid, friends and family were sure there was, "some problem". Not anymore. In the new India, people are childless by choice. And the stigma attached to the concept is slowly wearing off.
Forty-five year-old Dipshita Singh, a scientist, points to children running around naked in the slums and says, "When you don't have your own children, you feel every child is yours. It's not something I want to say so I sound good. But my husband and I have been able to reach out to a lot of children." For the Singhs, opting to not have children was a decision taken jointly after they realised that there were too many conflicts one had to tackle in life. "We didn't want someone to come into this world to live that tough life," she offers by way of explanation. But the Singhs rarely do things just by themselves. "Our concept of a family is not represented by a Maruti car: the husband and wife in the front and two children in the back. For us, family is about my husband and my parents and his and our brothers and sisters, and their children too."
"The decision to skip having a child comes from a combination of many things," explains Shamsah Sonawalla, a consultant psychiatrist at Jaslok Hospital. "Time was when not having a child was considered selfish but not anymore. Couples have a lot to keep themselves busy and don't feel the need to 'fill the void' with a child. Also, now the 'self' is of prime importance. And not everybody wants to give up on that to have a little person to look after."
No wonder the decision not to have a kid is coming younger. At 30, media planner Poonam Kulkarni has no intention of becoming a mom. "In fact, it was a decision my husband and I made when we were still dating to avoid any misunderstanding in the future. Having a child is a life-long responsibility and you have to put your child's needs before your own. Both my husband and I are inherently selfish people," she says candidly. Poonam and her husband Rohan fill in the void (" if you want to call it that,'' they chorus) by tending to dogs. "We are the foster care equivalent for dogs,'' she says, half in jest.
Some other couples admit to not wanting to go through the "labour pains'' of parenthood - from changing diapers to getting home to putting the child to bed even before the rock concert starts, running around for school and college admission forms to footing the child's education and marriage and honeymoon bills. For others, they feel the world is just not worthwhile place to bring someone into it. Some state that their own childhood was no fairy tale. While there's a bunch for whom the entire thought of investing 20 years in raising a child sounds "scary'' .
Whatever the reason, the tribe of those not wanting children is certainly growing. In 2005-06 , the International Institute for Population Studies (which studies demography), found that of the 1 lakh women interviewed for the NFHS 3 survey across India, 2.3 per cent did not have children and did not plan on having them. Unfortunately, this question was not asked in any of the previous surveys. "It is a small number. But we are seeing couples making a conscious decision not to have children," said Sulabha Parsuraman, head of the department of population policies and programmes.
Her colleague Dr Arokya Swamy says that the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is an indicator of how urban India is waiting too long to have babies, if at all. "In Chennai, the TFR is 1.4 which means that roughly half the couples have two children and the rest have only one. Moreover, if one looks at the rising incidence of infertility, it is clear that couples are leaving it too late to have kids.'' That too, by choice.
(Some names have been changed)