Sparsh

Vide Notification no. F.No.8-5/2008-TS.I (Vol.-IV) from Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 2012 (No.34 of 2012) has come into force on 29th day of June 2012 and consequently, the erstwhile Institute of Technology, BHU has become Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), Varanasi w.e.f. June 29, 2012. IT-BHU has always had the trait of becoming independent and autonomous. Now, that goal has been achieved. Speech given by Jawaharlal Nehru on 15th August 1947: ' Tryst with Destiny ' is coming back to my mind. In 2009, IT-BHU was slated for conversion into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) by amending the Institutes of Technology Act 1961 through The Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 2011, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on 24 March 2011 and by the Rajya Sabha on April 30, 2012. The institute is now officially known as IIT-BHU. To once visit Varanasi is a very desirable fate, and o...

1- Retuning Alha Udal : The lustrous versatility of film music, and change wrought by time. Gulzar knows our culture more than anybody in music industry. 2- Evaluating responses to India's macroeconomic crisis by Shubho Roy and Ajay Shah. 3- Not an April Fool : We are encouraged to over-share, for commercial reasons (just as we are encouraged to over-consume, but that's an issue for another time). 4- वक्‍त की छलनी में चेहरे गुम हो जाते हैं, गीत अमर रहता है ♦ जावेद अख्‍तर - पिछले दिनों जावेद अख्‍तर को राष्‍ट्रपति ने राज्‍यसभा की सदस्‍यता दी। 17 मई 2012 को जावेद साहब ने संसद में अपना पहला भाषण दिया। 5- Sheryl Sandberg’s Inspiring Speech At Harvard Business School . Sandberg urged the new graduates to think of their careers as a “jungle gym,” jumping around instead of following a preordained progression. She urged her listeners to take similar leaps, perhaps accepting a job that’s a step down from what one is currently doing if it offers the chance to learn something ...

1- Great compilation of cultural article at BBC Hindi : Enjoy Reading about Hindustani Tahzeeb 2- ऑन स्‍क्रीन ऑफ स्‍क्रीन : बहुरुपिया का माडर्न अवतार आमिर खान 3- Death by Dialogue By Trisha Gupta : What does it mean for the future of Hindi cinema if most films are now in fact conceived, thrashed out and largely executed not in Hindi but in English? Will filmmakers only tell the stories of a minuscule section of the population? 4- National Film Awards : The absurdity of censorship - An open letter to Hon’ble Minister for Information & Broadcasting on July 14, 2005 by Rakesh Sharma , a prominent Indian documentary film-maker. 5- Paradoxes of memory by Helmut König : Lasting peace agreements after wars and civil wars were for a long time considered to be conditional upon damnatio memoriae – the deliberate and reciprocal forgetting of violence and injustice. However, the established amnesty clause is only realistic where certain rules were not broken during war. The First...

A Day Trip to My Alma Mater : One of the best memoir and evaluation done by alumni on IIT system. The Disadvantages of an Elite Education : Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers. - By William Deresiewicz what do *you* want to do?! -- Author points correctly that forget science, everyone should be prioritizing their activities and asking themselves - is this *really* something *I* want to do?! Amusing Ourselves To Death : PBH: Huxley Vs. Orwell: Infinite Distractions Or Government Oppression? My Wishlist of Reading : Yayaver on Flipkart Reality is both good and bad depending on our view. Torture, suicide and terrorism are the three blind mice of our era with no one knowing clearly which of them is leading us astray. And all of them are born out of religion. They have played a major role in the grisly battle between terror and retribution. Similarly, prostitution is only product of repressed sexuality and marriage with...

1- The Dance of Indian Democracy covers about a democratic form of governance, a liberal constitution, and secular public institutions in India since 1947. 2- The email Interview with Anupama Rao is largely about her new book, The Caste Question: Dalits and The Politics of Modern India . Anupama Rao is an Associate Professor of South Asian History at Barnard College, New York. 3-The Southasian Idea debates intensly on Development and Violence: Some Clues? : How does one characterize the Indian state and understand its actions on the issues of development. 4- Over at An Academic View of India, Vikram highlights key differences between the US and India in the way their higher ed institutions interact with the community at large . Extending the discussion with more opinions by Prof. Abi at nanopolitan and Rahul Siddharthan at Universities and cities ; 5- Contract Workers at IITK: A Response to Commonly Held Misconceptions : Rahul Verman is attempting to understand various a...

Let’s be clear and honest to ourselves. Any thing that fails to change its philosophy with time, disappears soon. That holds pretty true for any educational institute also. Any organisation should be ready to accept change and should change accordingly. There was an article by Atanu Dey stating - " The full cost of a decent 4-year technical education today is around Rs 20 lakhs (or around US$ 45,000.) That’s a conservative estimate. So in today’s nominal rupees, the full cost of educating 300,000 engineers is Rs 6,000,000 lakhs (or US$ 13.5 billion.) The IITs do charge some fees but those fees have been a small fraction of the true cost of education. It is reasonable to peg the total subsidy to be of the order of the estimated Rs 6 million lakhs. The objective of this exercise is to get a feel for the total transfer of resources from the general public to reasonably well-to-do upper segment of society. That subsidy is a pure transfer or a grant, not a loan. The beneficiary is ...

Our Institute of Technology, like all other Faculties and Departments of the Banaras Hindu University , also owes its existence to the far-sighted vision and relentless efforts of its founder Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya . During the days of freedom struggle, three engineering and technological institutions were established by Malviyaji , viz. the Banaras Engineering College ( BENCO ) in 1919, the College of Mining and Metallurgy ( MINMET ) in 1923 and the College of Technology (TECHNO). The first-ever degree courses in Mining, Metallurgy, Ceramics and Pharmaceutics in India were pioneered at BHU . After our country became independent, post graduate and doctoral research programmes were also introduced. It is an established history that BENCO , MINMET and TECHNO produced outstanding engineers who manned various industries, academic institutions, R & D Labs and others, thus providing the much needed technological leadership/skills in various sectors of indigenous deve...