Monday, mar 12th, 2012

HEADLINES

• Cotton Export ban goes as government revokes ban.

NATIONAL NEWS

• Assam's traditional Ankiya Bhaona to get new lease of life
  • Assam's traditional theatre Ankiya Bhaona, with its roots embedded in the Vaishnav monasteries or Satras, is set to get a new lease of life with an initiative taken to popularise it among diverse communities of the State.
  • Bhaona owes its origin to the unique genre of plays, evolved by 15th Century Vaishnav saint Sankardeva and his disciple Madhavdeva, and is a kind of dance-drama with songs and dialogues in Brajavali
  • The Mahasabha, the apex body of around 600Satrainstitutions of the State, along with the Srimanta Sankar Foundation, organises an annual Bhaona festival —Setubandha(Building Bridges).
    
    
• Liberal arts varsity coming up in Pune, sans innovation tag
  • The Tagore University for the Liberal Arts, first institution to be established under the Human Resource Development Ministry's once ambitious Universities for Innovation programme, will be set up in Pune.
  • For, the group of experts, which was asked to draft a concept for such institutions, fears that such an emphasis is likely to inhibit its creative potential.
  • The experts include theatre personality Girish Karnad, academics Supriya Chaudhuri and Sunil Khilnani, and writer Ramachandra Guha.
  • the task of the Tagore University for the Liberal Arts should be to promote both arts and science under the rubric of liberal arts, in an interdisciplinary environment which allows creative interchange of scholars from different fields.
  • The university will have five schools: School of Humanities for teaching languages, literature, philosophy, cultural studies and creative writing; School of Social Sciences for teaching history, politics, sociology, economics and human sciences; School of Sciences for mathematical studies, biological sciences, physical sciences and environmental science; School of Performing Arts for dance, theatre, music, film and sports; and School of Visual and Applied Arts for painting, sculpture, graphic, arts, textile arts, crafts, design and photography.
  • The experts group has recommended that the university should have a Research Fund with an annual corpus of Rs 200 crore, administered by a Research Council with both internal and external members.
  • It will have complete autonomy over academic, administrative and financial matters, though it is subject to the reasonable provisions laid down by the higher education regulatory authority in India and funding agencies.
    
    
• Jairam announces national award for sanitation
  • Union Minister for Rural Development, Drinking Water and Sanitation Jairam Ramesh announced a national award for sanitation and water in the name of Maharashtrian saint Sant Gadge Baba
  • The award, constituted in the name of the Saint who strove towards service to society through cleanliness, will be for villages, individuals or organisations working in the field of sanitation and drinking water
  • Maharashtra's Sant Gadge Baba Swachta Abhiyan (cleanliness scheme) encourages villages to be open defecation-free, and such villages are awarded through the Nirmal Gram Yojana.
  • The women from Hiwre Bazaar would be taken to different parts of the country, as “Nirmal Gram Dhoot” (sanitation ambassadors).
  • He urged the State to follow the practice in Haryana, where villages have declared, “no toilets, no bride.”

• Initiative to standardize virtual keyboard
  • An initiative has been launched under the aegis of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to standardise virtual or touch-screen keyboards in Indian languages for use in smart phones and tablet computers.
  • The IEEE is a global not-for-profit professional body involved in formulating technical standards, among other things.

INTERNATIONAL

• Talks offer glimmer of hope in Syria
  • The United Nations' special envoy on Syria, Kofi Annan, has met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a second time, amid a glimmer of hope that behind-the-scenes international diplomacy on Syria may be beginning to yield some positive results.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An article on the kakodhar committee recommendations on railway safety
• Editorial on the Iranian oil and India
• A nice article on the role of BRICS in the current happenings around the world, in the context of Syria
• An article on the recent spate of attacks on the media