“You brutes will rot in hell for destroying my life. You’ll soon see your sisters too kill themselves the way I did.”
(Lines from the note left by the first-year B.Sc Chemistry student of University College, Thiruvananthapuram, who attempted suicide)
The office of the Deputy Directorate of Education in Palakkad is found to have caught up in a mess after the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC) filed a complaint against the office on charges of corruption in the advice letter sent to the PSC candidate.
It is suspected that the DDE office in Palakkad changed the number of posts for Junior Language Teacher (Arabic) from one to four, for which the advice memo was sent in May 2011. The Public Service Commission noticed the discrepancy when the appointed candidate’s documents were sent from the DDE office for verification at the PSC office.
Reportedly, the office of Deputy Directorate of Education has also delayed the process of transferring the documents of the appointed candidate for verification at the PSC office. Noticing a spate of malpractices, the PSC had strengthened the service verification in 2011. According to this, soon after the office concerned receives the advice letter from the PSC for the appointment of the candidate, the Government office is obliged to send back the documents of the candidate for verification.
This year, school students in Kerala will enjoy a complete summer break as the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has directed the Principal Secretary for General Education to issue an order banning vacation classes by all schools including the higher secondary, vocational higher secondary schools, and those affiliated to the ICSE and the CBSE.
The order comes on the basis of complaints received by the commission and media reports. The commission got to know that drinking water wasn’t being made available despite the directive by the commission on February 25th.
According to the sources, the Child Rights Commission had made it clear to the Secretary on various guidelines to be followed while conducting vacation classes. And these included availability of drinking water and toilet facilities. According to Dr. Leju P Thomas, teacher at St. Mary’s Higher Secondary School, Trivandrum, “This is a welcome change because summer classes at times are a strain on children.”
Ever since his campaigning days, current President of the United States, Donald Trump has been talking about reducing the number of immigrants to America. This included increased job preference to Americans and cutting down the number of approval on H1B visas. Ever since Trump has been planning this policy, it has sent out a panic of sorts among Indian students studying in the US and students who plan to go for courses in American Universities.
This has also caused a certain amount of distress among companies who send engineers and other qualified workers on the H1B visas for projects to their American offices. Also, according to a survey by consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Pvt Ltd, the number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March.
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, employers seeking H-1B work visas for 2018 declined for the first time in five years. The H1B is a non-immigrant visa allowing people to seek employment which are often given to skilled workers.
Close to three months after Jishnu Pranoy, an engineering student’s death, the family stills awaits for justice to be served against college management and authorities who abetted their son’s suicide. In an irony of sorts on the 60th anniversary of Kerala’s first Ministry coming into power, a mother protesting for justice was not only manhandled but arrested for staging a protest in front of DGP Loknath Behera’s office.
Jishnu’s mother, Mahija was not only stopped from holding a hunger strike in front of the police headquarters, but dragged by women police officials and forcefully taken to the Nandavanam police camp along with the remaining family members. As she complained about uneasiness while being taken to the police camp, she was admitted to a government hospital at Peroorkada and later shifted to the Trivandrum Medical College.
An angered mob gathered outside the DGP’s office, tried stopping Loknath Behera’s car. UDF as well as BJP has called for a hartal to protest against such behaviour by the police. Among arrested were also his father, uncle and 11 other family members.
Unwinding with a good book maybe the pastime for some, but it is turning into an uncommon hobby with time. Sangeetha Suryanarayanan, an IT professional, felt the same when her two boys wouldn’t read on their own. “When I was working, I would buy books for my kids, with the hope of getting them to read. But, they wouldn’t read on their own,” she says. “I then started reading out to them everyday. I made it a point to spend some time on that. I noticed the difference. They took to reading and now have the habit of reading before bedtime,” she adds.
Sangeetha who was based in Bangalore and has lived in the US for a few years, moved to Kochi in 2005, and started working for TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). She quit her job in 2014 because she wanted to do something in education. She realized that encouraging children to read was something she was interested in. So, she started a reading club at her house.
The Read Club
She invited kids in the neighbourhood and read out stories to them. She would encourage them to read out loud too. “Kids between ages 6 to 12 were coming to the club. I then thought of taking this ahead formally and so, started approaching government schools,” Sangeetha explains. This is how the R.E.A.D club, a social enterprise came about. “R.E.A.D stands for Read, Explore, Ask and Discover. It aims to provide an environment where children can get together to read beyond their curriculum, read more and read better, explore the world through stories, nurture their curious self and discover learning creatively,” she says.
After the management agreed to meet demands put forward by students, the Kerala Law Academy stir ended with the students ending their strike. The 29-day long distress began over alleged irregularities in giving internal marks and harassment of students by the Principal Dr. Lekshmi Nair.
The issue has caused a ripple effect with political leaders going on fast to students demanding resignation of the Principal. As the turmoil ended, the management declared that Dr. Lekshmi Nair will not be holding the post of Principal. The management agreed to appoint a new principal with all required qualification as prescribed by Kerala University as soon as possible. An agreement to this effect has been signed between students and representatives at the chamber of C Ravendranath, Education Minister, Kerala Government. However legal experts doubt the validity of such an agreement and many opine that the agreement may not stand the test of law if challenged before a Court.
An earlier statement released by the Students Federation of India (SFI) after a meeting with the management to resolve the issue, said that the Dr. Lekshmi Nair will step away for five years and will not continue as a faculty during those five years. Even the University had taken note of this and issued a press release on this regard. However this was not acceptable to other Student Unions and they continued their strike unlike SFI who withdrew from the strike.
It has been 30 days since Jishnu Pranoy, 18, a first-year BTech (Computer Science) student of Nehru College of Engineering in Thrissur committed suicide. The incident has caused a ripple effect with protests and students coming out with various horror stories about the management. In the meantime, it seems like happenings at the Kerala Law Academy has pulled focus off the matter at the Nehru College.
Regular lectures haven’t been resumed at the college till now. It has come to The Kochi Post’s attention that lectures for the Pharmacy department will begin from today. There hasn’t been any decision about resuming lectures of the Engineering department. Since the unfortunate suicide of Jishnu, Vice principal N.K. Sakthivel, faculty member C.P. Praveen, and Public Relations Officer of the college K.V. Sanjith, have been suspended as part of the inquiry process. The students however seem to feel that the Principal of the institution, Dr AS Varadarajan too, should be asked to step down.
‘Will Jishnu get justice’ seems to be the question students are raising. “Ever since the issue at the Kerala Law Academy has cropped up, Jishnu’s case seems to have lost focus. Officials in the management are corrupt. They try to silence everything using money,” says a student who didn’t wish to be named. “A meeting of parents and teachers was called, but only parents of students who hadn’t participated in the protests were invited for the meeting. Parents of students from the Pharmacy department were invited as they did not show any interest in the matter stating that it doesn’t affect their wards,” says Akhil Mohandas, secretary of ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), Nehru College Union.
There have been various opinions about what has been going on at the Kerala Law Academy. While some have been supporting Dr Lekshmi Nair, others have been criticising her to the extent of denigrating her. Just yesterday, Madhyamam, a Malayalam news daily published a cartoon depicting her with donkey ears, as an animal to be controlled.
Over various charges of harassment, oppression and favouritism, Lekshmi Nair, the principal of the college was forced to step down on Tuesday. The Students Federation of India (SFI) came out with an official statement that the celebrity chef and television personality should step away for five years.
Her acts as an educator may have been condemnable but such a caricature of her persona comes across more as a personal attack. Lekshmi Nair who had earlier written an open letter in the Kochi Post, tried to clear her stand on the issue and charges against her management. She had stated the allegations charged upon her to be ‘far from the truth’. She also expressed whether the problem is about her being a woman or her rules.
Parents have lot of expectations from their children when it comes to education, choosing a career, and all other important decisions of their lives. Jishnu Pranoy’s parents also had many dreams and expectations from their 18-year-old son, all of which abruptly shattered after hearing the news that Jishnu killed himself following the mental harassment he had to face after he was accused of cheating in the university exam.
Jishnu was a first-year student of Computer Science at the Nehru College of Engineering and Research Centre, Pampady, Thrissur. The incidents that compelled him to take such a drastic step, according to his friends were – Jishnu being caught turning around while the examination was going on by an invigilator named Praveen, and being accused of copying.
The invigilator scolded Jishnu and asked him to strike off the answer. He was also threatened to be debarred from the examination, which meant he could not attend the examination for the next three years. Despite repeatedly claiming that he had not cheated, Mr. Praveen asked him to go to the vice-principal’s office. Later in the evening, Jishnu’s friends discovered he was missing from the roll call session in the hostel and found him hanging in the bathroom. He had also cut his veins before hanging himself.
Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS), an NGO in Malappuram district, sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education and Literacy, has bagged the prestigious UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy, for its literacy-linked skill development activities. The Sansthan that was set up in 2006 comes under the aegis of Nilambur Muslim Orphanage Committee and has gained recognition for a series of vocational training, awareness classes, and other activities.
Apart from implementing various projects launched by the Ministry, JSS also operates various innovative initiatives; beneficiaries of which are tribes, differently abled and economically backward sections in the coastal area of Kerala.
Explaining the activities of JSS, Deepa C., assistant programme coordinator, says, “As much as 95 per cent of our beneficiaries are women who are illiterate and struggle to find a means of livelihood. We conduct field visits and prepare the kind of schemes that are required to promote the backward sections. We also take extra care that these people learn a skill, so that they can use it to earn their livelihood.”
Much was said by the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government when the seat allocation process for private medical colleges in the State was announced. It even made a statement that the entire process of seat allocation and decision on the fee structure would be under the control of the government itself. But when it came to self-financing medical colleges, the government’s stand changed. And the rest is a story of chaos for the students.
As the government changed its initial stand on the issue, the fee structure seems to have been affected. Like in the previous years, the change in fees is going to be a burden for the students. This time, the hike in fees of the self-financed medical colleges is around 30-35%.
The agreement signed between the self-financed medical colleges and the government says that 50% merit seats of the total seats would be handled by the government. Out of these 50% seats, in 30% of merit seats the fee would be Rs. 2.50 lakh. In the previous year it was Rs. 1.85 lakh. The rest of the 20% seats would be for below poverty line (BPL) category. The fee for this group would be Rs. 25,000 as it was in the previous years. In the rest of the 50% seats that is allocated to the managements, 35% of the seats comes under the category of management quota for Rs. 11 lakh. In the previous year, it was Rs. 8.50 lakh. The remaining 15% of the NRI quota seats would carry a fee of Rs. 15 lakh, which was Rs. 12.50 lakh in the previous year.