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reporter” of the events and schedules at the Indian High Commission, giving daily and weekly reports of the engagements of the high commissioner and other staff and other schedules which she diligently kept track of.

“We are pretty certain that no serious damage to India’s security interests have been caused (by her transgressions),” a senior security official admitted, speaking with full knowledge and authority.

“To the best of our knowledge, she has not passed on a single document to her handlers,” the official said. “Most of what she said was pretty routine stuff.”

Gupta, a member of the secondary cadre known as Indian Foreign Service-B, was employed as an Urdu translator who also mixed with Pakistan’s Urdu media journalists by being in the media department of the mission. She had earlier worked with the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), a foreign policy think tank, besides missions in Kuala Lumpur and Baghdad, before she was posted to Islamabad. She had then shown great keenness to go to Pakistan citing her fluency in Urdu.

The official said certain sections of the media, particularly TV, were having a free run in their speculation of what Gupta was up to and how much of India’s security may have been compromised by her actions, but said given the sensitive nature of the issue little can be done to counter what were essentially “blatant falsehoods and half-truths”.

He said the electronic media was only “feeding on itself” and was trying to make things as dramatic and salacious as possible in their familiar game to garner TRPs.

In parliament, Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur said Gupta did not have access to highly classified material but investigations were continuing and she was cooperating with her questioners.

“I rise to inform this august house that as a result of our counter intelligence effort, we had reason to believe that an official in the high commission of India in Islamabad had been passing information to the Pakistan intelligence agencies,” the minister said in a statement in the Lok Sabha.

“The position occupied by the official did not involve access to highly classified material. The official is cooperating with us in our enquiries. At this stage, for national security reasons, it is not possible to divulge more detail about the information that may have been compromised or to comment on this case as our investigations are continuing,” she added.

IGNOU to waive fees of sex workers, street children

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), one of the world’s largest universities, has decided to waive the fee of sex workers and street children enrolling for its courses to help them become educated and empowered.

Disclosing this at a media meet recently, IGNOU Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai said the university’s Kolkata Regional Centre ran a study centre at Durbar Mahila Samannya Samiti, an organisation of 65,000 sex workers, to educate them as also their

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He said the university has recently tied up with the Cochin International Airport Authority to conduct focused management courses in aviation and airport infrastructure and technology, after realising there was a paucity of aviation industry professionals.

He said, “The University had been working on a series of new and path-breaking ideas to meet the diverse and often daunting expectations of a large number of learners who cannot afford to acquire education from a conventional university. Many of the new programmes are being expressly aligned to the needs of industry.”

Pillai said IGNOU was very keen to reach out to the victims of violence and help them resurrect their lives through education.

It has also started a short term training programme for school head masters of the Sunderban region initially on a pilot basis to develop skills of the concerned to serve more effectively.

Pillai said the placement cell of the university was gearing up to meet employability demand through planned industry presentations and contact drives, and by working out a system of enhancing communication and personality skills, which have been identified as key need areas for several students.

Is the new school evaluation system adding to stress?

Is the government’s new move to make education more meaningful and less academics-oriented adding to the burden of the already stressed child? Most students feel so, but there are also supporters who say “just give it some time”.

CCE, or Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation as the new system is called, is a pet hate word of Apoorva Ghosh. A Class 9 student of a leading public school, Apoorva hates CCE for the “shackles” it has put around him - daily studies, endless projects, surprise tests and, what is worse according to him, he can’t talk and joke loudly with friends any more.

“CCE, CCE...I detest this new method,” mutters Apoorva, a fun-loving boy, as he toils through daily studies and hurries to finish a pending Hindi project. He has just handed over a mathematics project, and “has no time to breathe” as he has to finish the Hindi project.

“What is worse, now teachers openly warn us, ‘If we see you with your shirt outside your trouser we will give you low grades’, or ‘If you shout or speak loudly, we will reduce your grades’,” recounts the 14-year-old.

His mother Madhumita told IANS: “The new method has pushed my child into sitting for hours and studying or finishing projects every day. He is quite a laidback student, but now I find him scrambling to finish his work, he doesn’t want low CCE grades. The pressure is certainly there on the child to perform.”

Launched by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal last year in a move to do away with purely academics-based studies and the Class 10 board examinations of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the CCE also aims to include the child’s talents as in singing, theatre, debating and art as part of the assessment.

It does away with the marking system, replacing it with grades. Like - A1 for 91-100 marks, A2 for 81-90, B1- for 71-80, and so on till D - 33-40 marks - and finally E2 - 0-20 marks.

However, this has had a welcome fallout for Rishabh Krishnan, a Class 10 student of Apeejay School, Noida. His delighted mother Jayanti said, “The CCE has some good effects too. My son is an average student, but since the CCE takes other factors into consideration, he has got A2s in his report card, which feels so great.”

On the flip side, there are the bright children who are unhappy with the grading system. “Now there is no difference between a student who gets 100 and 91, both get an A1. What’s the use of killing ourselves studying to become top scorers?” wonders Sangeeta Chibber, a Class 9 student of a public school who has always been topping her class till now.

Under CCE, each term will have two Formative Assessments, which includes grading on the projects, the surprise tests, behaviour of the child, extra-curricular activities and the school unit test - based on 50 marks, and a Summative Assessment or a term examination - based on 50 marks.

While the schools have implemented the CBSE scheme and the teachers and students are grappling with the new method, most parents are at sea.

“My daughter now speaks in abbreviations like, ‘Our FA-1 begins next week and after that we will have FA-2, and the SA will be in September’. When I asked her what it means, she got impatient and said I should know it!” said Joyita Mathur, the mother of a Class 9 girl.

For teachers, the CCE means devising new methods of drawing the child’s talents out and thinking of interesting projects.

“It has just kicked off, but in the long run it is good for the child because now the child is graded for extra-curricular activities. So even if the child is poor in academics but good in sports or singing, that will fetch the child good grades. Academics is not everything under the new system,” said a teacher at a public school declining to be named.

An enthusiastic votary of the new system is Usha Subramaniam, a parent. “Initially, such things take time to settle down and there is resentment, but just wait and watch, it will do wonders for the education system.”

India has great media potential: FT

The Financial Times (FT), among the world’s leading business newspapers, is looking for opportunities in the Indian market as the country holds a “great potential” for print and other news media.

“India holds great potential for print and news media,” said John Ridding, FT chief executive officer, adding that his organisation is trying to breach into the Indian market as well as the other emerging markets of the world.

Addressing a session on ‘The Internet and the Crisis Confronting the News Media’, organised by the Aspen Institute India and the FT recently, Ridding said the potential for India in terms of print, television and internet media is immense.

“The amalgamation of the three can not only regain the readership that is being lost to the new forms of digital media, but it could also be the next big innovation since the printing press,” he said.

He emphasised that the internet can bring back the era of true journalism as it is hardly affected by the external pressures such as advertising and corporate partnerships.

Internet journalism can help achieve transparency in issues such as elections, governance and corruption, three of the major issues affecting the interaction between media and the people of India, he said.

“Internet does not hold to any national boundary which allows it to be one of the greatest mediums of information sharing. Businesses should change their models and tweak their strategies in order to achieve a better market share.

What publication corporations could not provide, the internet could. The cost of news and information on the Internet has always been free and thus more appealing to a majority of readers. In recent years, the internet has become the primary choice as it provides a platform for direct engagement between the readers and the journalists unlike in the print media,” he said.

According to him, the internet is a tool that corporations need to harness rather than shun.

Bill passed for mandatory care to emergency patients

The Lok Sabha recently passed a bill that will make it mandatory for doctors, hospital and other clinical establishments to treat emergency patients and not turn them away on baseless excuses.

The Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Bill, 2010, was moved by Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad in the lower house of parliament, which passed the bill, amidst din and vociferous protests by the opposition members over allocation of 2G spectrum.

The legislation makes obligatory for clinical establishments to provide treatment and stabilise anyone who comes in an “emergency medical condition”.

The legislation also sets up a national council which will classify, determine and develop standards of clinical establishments and also develop standards.

Besides, with registration of clinical establishments to be made mandatory, the council will also compile and pubic a national register.

As per the text, the bill, once passed, will apply to all clinical establishments belonging to any recognised systems of medicine, as well as single doctor establishments with or without beds.

Each state will set up a multi-member state council of clinical establishments, while the registering authority will be a multi-member body at the district level.

There will be two types of registrationprovisional and permanent, which will be provided after standards have been notified.

The legislation also ensures that all transactions under its purview would be transparent and in the public domain.