Friday, August 14, 2015

GATE 2016 – Four Major Changes Introduced by IISc

India: Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering GATE 2016 has some changes by Indian Institute of Science IISc, Bangalore for this academic year admissions into Master of Engineering Degree programs.
Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore takes complete authority for conducting Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) entrance exam every year. In general this is an entrance test that is conducted all over India for admissions into various Engineering course for Post Graduation (Masters). Sources from officials say that this exam among Indian Engineering graduate students will be held from January 30 till February 7, 2016.
As this is huge thing to be done, IISc is coordinating with 7 IITs that are present in the country. It is known that at Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, Roorkee, Madras, Kharagpur and Guwahati, the seven IITs of India are located and IISc in joint administration with all these institutes is conducting this entrance exam.
Students are notified that GATE 2016 online registrations will be started from September 1 to October 1. And exam center can be changed on or before November 20. From December 17 onwards, students can download their hall tickets from official website, www.gate.iisc.ernet.in.
All the B.E/ B,Tech/ B.Pharmacy/ M.Sc/ M.A/ MCA graduates from any recognized university can apply to GATE 2016 and finish exam for Post Graduation study. Based on requirement from students, IISc has changed some of its rules to attend GATE 2016 entrance exam. The organization kindly requested all the students to have a look on it before attempting the test.

Changes Made in GATE 2016

  • Syllabus has been changed for GATE 2016 to that of previous year.
  • Total number of Papers are 23 including Petroleum Engineering (PE) (Earlier it was only 22).
  • Online virtual calculator will be provided at GATE official website, no need to carry your own calculators.
  • Answer Key will be provided in a short time and little amount of fee will be charged for it.
Online Registrations: September 1 to October 1
Exam Center Changing Option Last Date: November 2
GATE Hall Ticket Availability: December 17

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Know the Abbreviations and Clinical Terms:

COPD
Chronic Obstructive lung Disorder
CSF
Cerebrospinal Fluid
ABG
Arterial Blood Gases
AMD
Age related Macular Degeneration- eye problem
CMV
Cytomegalovirus – A virus causing infections of salivary glands
CPR
Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation
CRP
C-reactive protein – a protein in plasma increased in inflammation
DVT
Deep Vein Thrombosis
ECHO
Echocardiogram
GTT
Glucose Tolerance test
IBS
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
HCG
Human chorionic Gonadotrophin
HDL
High Density Lipoprotein
LDH
Lactate Dehydrogenase
LD
Lethal dose
MRI
Magnetic Resonance imagery
OT
Occupational therapy
OS, LE
Left eye
OU, BE
Both eyes
PKU
Phenylketouria
pH
Hydrogen ion Concentration
pCO2
Partial pressure of Carbon-dioxide
PP
Post prandial              
Fx
Fracture

Upcoming Events - Pharmacy

• IPA Convention, Mumbai, India, June 5-6, 2015, Visit: www.ipapharma.org

• IPSF Congress, Hyderabad, India, July 30 to August 9, 2015, Visit: www.ipsf2015.org 

• 75th FIP Congress, Dusseldorf, Germany, September 29-October 3, 2015 Visit: www.fip.org

Brain Ticklers - Pharmacy

1. Chronic long-term therapy of myastheniagravis is usually accomplished with: 
A. Edrophonium 
B. Neostigmine 
C. Echothiophate 
D. Carbachol 

2. Which of the following cholinomimetics is used in the treatment of atropine intoxication? 
A. Neostigmine 
B. Carbachol 
C. Physostigmine 
D. Lobeline 

3. Which neuromuscular blocking agent has the potential to cause the greatest release of histamine? A. Succinylcholine 
B. Tubocurarine 
C. Pancuronium 
D. Rocuronium 

4. Which of the following neuromuscular blocking agents cause cardiac arrhythmias? 
A. Vecuronium 
B. Tubocurarine 
C. Rapacuronium 
D. Succinylcholine

Solution of Brain Ticklers:
1. B. Neostigmine- Neostigmine and Pyridostigmine a class of medications called acetylcholinestrase inhibitors, typically taken every 4-6 hours, which treat just the symptoms associated with Myasthenia gravis. They can enhance the transmission of nerve impulses and increase muscle strength. 

2. C. Physostigmine- Atropine causes anticholinergic toxicity; physostigmine reverses this by inhibiting acetylcholinestrase, given I. V. 

3. B. Tubocurarine- d-tubocurarine causes the most histamine release by a direct effect on mast cells, it is contraindicated in asthmatics and patients with allergies. 

4. D. Succinylcholine is an ultra-short-acting depolarizing-type, skeletal muscle relaxant for intravenous (IV) administration succinylcholine may induce serious cardiac arrhythmias or cardiac arrest due to hyperkalemia

Monday, July 06, 2015

Students engineer an innovation

Three friends have created an Android app that makes searching for second-hand engineering textbooks easy

Are your old engineering textbooks gathering dust? Donate or sell them before they gather more dust. Seglio, an android mobile application, may help you do so.
The application has been developed by Prashanth T.V., Shankar S. and Karnik Ram, three third-year engineering students and friends.
“It is basically an exchange portal where people can post and search for second-hand engineering books. You can search by title, author and subject,” says Prashanth T.V., a resident of Raja Annamalaipuram and an electronics and communication engineering (ECE) student at Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering (SVCE). “When we were in the first year, we found it difficult to get books. Though books were available in the market, they were quite costly. Once we complete the semester, those books will be sold at the paper-mart. So, we preferred to buy second-hand books. But the search was tough. And we thought, ‘Why not have an exchange portal for second-hand books?’” says Prashanth.
“With some fundamental knowledge in programming we set out to create this app.It took a month to develop the app,” says Shankar S and Karnik Ram, third-year ECE students at SVCE and Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, respectively.
The portal was launched on June 27 as many colleges reopen in the first week of July. The portal has nearly 150 books now.
“At present, the portal is restricted to engineering books. A few rare books like Field and Wave Electromagnetic by David K. Cheng and Communication Systems by Simon Haykin have been posted at the portal. Gradually, we have plans to extend the services to include books on medicine, arts and science. In addition, features will be added to the app to accommodate books for school children,” the youngsters say.
“It is a no profit-no loss venture. It is up to the buyer and seller to negotiate the cost and we don’t intend to make any profit from the portal,” says Prashanth.
The boys explain the meaning of the name they have given the app: Seglio. “Seglio is a combination of Segundo which means second in Spanish and Biblio refers to books. We have made the user interface as friendly as possible, limiting it to just three tabs.” 
Link: https://play.google.com/
store/apps/details?id=com.
karnix.cyberteen.biblio
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/
seglio15

Digital India week: IIT Bombay students showcase ten relevant projects

By Karrishma Modhy /  03 Jul 2015 , 09:22
The Government of India launched Digital India week from 1 July. As as part of this, IIT Bombay showcased relevant projects today in an event held on their campus. The projects that were showcased included Spoken Tutorial, FOSSEE, e-Yantra, e-kalpa Virtual Labs and many more. Most of these projects are funded by National Mission on Education through ICT under the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India.More than 100 partners are celebrating Digital India Week along with IIT Bombay. We had a chance to visit IIT Bombay and get to know more about these projects.
1. Virtual Labs 
Virtual Labs has been designed to provide remote access to labs in various disciplines of science and engineering. It enables a user to perform experiments remotely as an on-demand service on the web. Virtual Labs can also be known to ‘complement’ a physical lab. Basically, this project aims to provide a complete learning management system, which includes web sources, video lectures along with animated demonstrations.
College students, school teachers and also instructors can take advantage of this system and it does not even require any additional infrastructure. Various topics are included in Virtual Labs such as physical sciences, biomedical engineering & biotechnology, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, electronics and communication engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical sciences and computer science.
2. T10KT
The ‘Train 10,000 Teacher’s’ Project workshop conducts classes on engineering subjects, along with faculty of engineering and science, through distance-learning method. The AVIEW platform which has been developed by Amrita University is used for live transmission and audio-video interaction. The course is delivered by the faculty at IIT and a rigorous approach is followed  with emphasis on problem solving, tutorial problems, assignments and laboratory exercises.
As of now, the project has reached out to about 85,000 teachers since 2009, through 342 remote centres across India. These recorded lecture contents are free to download. Some of the projects which have been included are computer programming, engineering thermodynamics, solar photovoltaics, analog electronics, research methodologies, databse management systems, fluid mechanics and cyber security.
3. Talk to a Teacher
Talk to A teacher is a project which allows learners to interact with a panel of faculty members from IIT Bombay live, as well as offline through an online forum. Currently, live sessions will happen every Thursday from 4pm to 5pm in the Electrical Engineering department. The ‘Ask A Question’ forum encourages learners to ask questions in various disciplines of engineering and science.
The program has answered over 450 live questions till date along with participation by more than 25 faculty members from IIT Bombay. ‘Courses on View’ is another part of the Talk to A Teacher initiative where courses which take place in the classroom are recorded and are made available through video-on-demand. ‘Researchoscope’ is an online discussion forum for researchers, wherein doctoral students at IIT Bombay present their research work. This interactive forum is used for any clarifications or for continuing a discussion about the presentation.
Professor Deepak Phatak says “The ‘Train 10,000 Teachers’ (T10KT) Project conducts ISTE workshops in core subjects, for faculty of engineering and science. These are conducted in distance mode through live transmission and audio-video interaction, using the A-VIEW platform. Expert faculty from IITs deliver the course. A rigorous approach is used, with emphasis on problem solving, tutorials, assignments, and laboratory exercises. These workshops are also conducted in blended MOOC format, with synchronous and asynchronous activity spread over six weeks, to make the learning more effective.”
4. e-Yantra
e-Yantra is a project sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) through the National Mission on Education through ICT. This initiative aims to spread education in Embedded systems and Robotics. It uses a homegrown robot to train students in project-based learning. The e-Yantra Lab Setup lets colleges teach Robotics and Embedded systems in an effective way by training four teachers from colleges in a region and engaging the teams through the reginal e-Yantra Robotics Teacher Competition, where teachers implement a Robotics project over a period of three months.
Robotics Labs are established in over 107 colleges in India as of January this year. In eYS 2014, 16 Mumbai University colleges along with 35 colleges from different regions of the country participated and 21 student projects in the field of embedded systems and robotics were exhibited.
Professsor Kavi Arya says, “e-Yantra, a project born out of IIT-Bombay Computer Science teaching practice, uses a homegrown robot to train students and teachers in “Project-based Learning.” It enthuses students through a National e-Yantra Robotics Competition(eYRC) which has been growing exponentially over the past 3 years.”The current edition of the competition, eYRC-2015, will be launched on August 1, 2015. It also grows an eco-system by setting up infrastructure and training teachers in colleges through the e-Yantra Lab Setup Initiative (eLSI).”
5. NPTEL
The NPTEL initiative provides e-learning through online web and video courses in Engineering, Science and humanities streams. The mission of the program is to enhance the quality of Engineering education in the country by providing free online courses. These courses are free to download. They are also available on YouTube along with a 3GP format for mobiles. Also, a few add-ons include video clipping, assignments and problems to solve as well.
Some of the subjects included are aerospace engineering, environmental science,  chemistry and biochemistry, engineering design, metallurgy and material science, ocean engineering, civil engineering and more.
6. D’source (e-Kalpa)
Digital Learning Environment for Design in India, also known as ‘e-kalpa’ is sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India as a part of the National Mission in Education through Information and Communication Technology. The main intention of this project is the creation of new learning environments, that will provide access to acquisition of critical knowledge, skills, and abilities in the field of design.
The overall objective of this project is the creation and development of new learning environments, related to design that will provide greater access and enhancement to acquisition of critical knowledge, skills and abilities for economic and social development in our country.
7. CDEEP
The CDEEP initiative is trying to expand a users reach, so that engineering and science students in every part of India and the world can have access to IIT Bombay’s courseware. These distance learning courses offered are the very same ones, that are taken by the students. To reach as many learners as possible, CDEEP is using different mediums and various technologies.
8. FOSSEE
IIT Bombay, FOSSEE have taken up the initiative of promoting FOSS ( Free and Open Source Software), for education. The CFD team at FOSEE, IIT Bombay promotes the use of OpenFOAM (Open source Field Operation and Manipulation) as being popular along with, easily available. OpenFOAM can also be widely used in Engineering colleges across India, as a replacement for commercial packages like Fluent and Star CCM.
OpenFOAM has a very large database paired with a range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics. FOSSEE team organises and conducts workshops, conferences and seminars to educate the users across India.
9. Spoken Tutorial 
The Spoken Tutorial project is the initiative of the ‘Talk to a Teacher’ activity of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (ICT), launched by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development, Government of India. As learning is more effective with animation and narration, audio-video demonstrations illustrate features with clarity.
The Spoken Tutorial Project aims to make spoken tutorials on FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) available in several Indian languages, for the learner to be able to learn in the language he/she is comfortable in. The target group is the community at large, including school children, college students, working professionals, retired professionals, housewives, teachers, trainers, research scholars, software users and developers.
10. TREELabs
Treelabs started as a concept in March 2009. The main aim of TREELabs is to create a lab, that can sustain and grow on its own, and with the focus to nurture inventions. It believes that inventing is step by step algorithmic process which can be taught.
TreeLabs creates inventions internally and also attracts participation by external inventors and entrepreneurs too. TREELabs has initiated in solar thermal energy collection, electrical power measurement, queue management system along with networked programmable modular instruments as well

Monday, June 22, 2015

In India’s largest Muslim ghetto

Uprooted from Mumbai after the 1992-93 riots, thousands of Muslim families found safety in Mumbra on the city’s outskirts. Visiting it over a few days, Basharat Peer discovered islands of progress amid large seas of neglect in the township that nine lakh people call home

On a recent afternoon, after a two-hour drive out of Mumbai, I followed a highway hugging the low hills of Mumbra, north-east of the city, near the Thane creek. As the road forked downhill, hundreds of grimy, teetering buildings stacked like tattered books in a neglected public library were the first glimpse intimation of Mumbra, India’s largest Muslim ghetto. Despite the heat, young boys played cricket in a clearing by a graveyard. A chaotic medley of vehicles choked the main street leading into the Kausa area of the ghetto.
Mumbra expanded with great velocity in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya. The Bombay riots of December 1992, which overwhelmingly killed Bombay Muslims, and the retaliatory bomb blasts in January 1993 by the Muslim underworld, reconfigured the social geography of the city. Bombay Muslims from riot-hit areas sought safety in numbers and found it in Mumbra, where Muslims from the Konkani coast had a long-standing presence. Through a combination of the desire for safety among Muslims, the relatively cheaper price of apartments, and continued rural-urban migration, Mumbra’s population grew 20 times from about 45,000 before the 1992 riots to more than 9,00,000 in the 2011 Census — possibly one of the fastest expansions of an urban area in India.
"Not Bombay, a village"
Assadullah Khan, an electrical engineer in his late 40s, was among the first groups of people who moved to Mumbra from Mumbai after the 1992-1993 violence. Mr. Khan was living in Kannua Nagar in the suburb of Vikhroli, a mixed neighbourhood, where Hindus and a smaller number of Muslims lived together without incident. Mr. Khan, who also gave part-time tuitions to students, was the only Muslim in his building. After the riots, most of his Muslim neighbours began to migrate to areas with a heavier concentration of their co-religionists. Mr. Khan was weighing his options.
A female neighbour warned him. “You should leave now,” she said. “Things are going to get worse.” He moved his wife and children to his in-laws’ house overnight. “A little later, I sold my apartment for much less than it would fetch on the market,” Mr. Khan told me. The market for distress sales was booming.
Mr. Khan found shelter in his brother-in-law’s apartment in Mumbra. “We then bought an apartment of our own and have lived here since,” he said. Thousands followed him, from Bhandup, Vikhroli, Ghatkopar, Behram Baug, and Walkeshwar. Uprooted from the charred geography of the city, they converted a semi-rural backwater into a promised land.
The Maharashtra and central governments, which had watched impassively through the riots, left the migrants to their own devices, but Mumbra grew. Power and water supply was feeble. There was little public infrastructure. The crisis provided a business opportunity for Mumbra builders; they set out to build illegal and substandard apartment blocks, which were (and still are) a lot cheaper by Mumbai standards. In the early 90s, an illegally built two-bedroom apartment in Mumbra would sell for around Rs. 2 lakh. “Most of the buildings are illegal,” a builder told me. “Today, an illegally built three bedroom costs Rs. 8-10 lakh. If I built that legally, it would cost Rs. 25-30 lakh.” Mumbra is a mixture of middle, lower-middle, and working class Muslims, but the majority are from the lower-middle and working classes. “Most people here couldn’t afford the legal market prices,” he said.
The poor building quality exacted a terrible cost in 2013 when a building collapse killed more than 70 people. It did not deter new arrivals. Rafiuddin Khan, a retired teacher in his 70s, lived most of his life in a tenement near Mohammad Ali Road — one of the oldest Muslim majority areas in Mumbai. “Our area was safe but I was tired of living with a growing family in two rooms,” he said. He sold his chawl; it fetched enough money to buy an apartment in a Mumbra apartment block. “It is a lot more space than we had in Bombay,” he said. He paused for a while, as if reimagining the vistas of his earlier life in the middle of the bustling metropolis. The ease of travel and the proximity to major public hospitals, schools, and colleges was missing in Mumbra. A journey to the city in a sardined local train took about an hour and half. “It is not Bombay, it is a village.”
Desire for upward mobility
The signs of aspiration are seen in the names of apartment blocks: Shimla Park, M.M. Valley, and Wafa Park. The impatience with the status quo and the desire for upward mobility screams from roadside billboards advertising the achievements of Mumbra boys and girls in coaching classes and private schools. A higher secondary level school, Al Hidayah School, has advertised with a collage of smiling student photographs and the percentages of their Senior Secondary School marks. There was pride in that data: Out of 24 students, 9 have secured above 75 per cent and 14 between 60 per cent and 70 per cent. Meanwhile, Shoeb Junior College simply said: 89.16 per cent success.
“When we moved here, we clearly felt the absence of things we were used to in the city,” said Mr. Khan, the engineer. The ghetto had a few government schools, which were abysmally overcrowded and lacked infrastructure. Mr. Khan gave up engineering and set up a tuition centre, Unique Classes. When an old Sikh family, which had run a private high school in Mumbra decided to sell the school, Mr. Khan bought it, renaming it Assadullah Khan English High School and Junior College. It already has 1,400 students. “We are trying to fill the gaps ourselves,” he said. Despite having around a million residents, the Maharashtra government has not set up a single public college in Mumbra.
Beyond the doors of the ghetto, a Mumbra address often carries a degree of prejudice and suspicion. A lawyer spoke of trying to buy an Idea Internet dongle at a Thane shop and being turned away; an Urdu publisher spoke of waiting months to get a landline and broadband connection from BSNL. A few weeks ago, a private school in Panvel, a suburb 24 kilometres from Mumbra, decided to ban admissions of students from the ghetto, claiming that they behave badly. Waris Pathan, the Byculla area legislator from Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, led a protest against the school administration, which eventually revoked its decision.
Neglect and discrimination
One evening, I met Nazim Qazi, a sanitation officer with Thane Municipality. Before moving to Mumbra, when his wife, a schoolteacher, got a job in the area, he lived in Andheri and Thane, working as a freelance Hindi journalist, writing about cinema and the underworld — the two great Bombay themes. He gave it up for a more stable income at Thane Municipality.
Mr. Qazi lived in a relatively spacious, meticulously neat two-bedroom apartment with his wife, son, and two daughters. He saw certain benefits in living in Mumbra. “Women can walk around anytime and nobody will bother them. We have been here since 1999 and we sleep in peace, without any fear of riots or disturbances.” He loved hearing the azaan, the call for prayer, five times a day. “It has been easy to raise my children with Muslim values here,” he said.
As we spoke, Shehzad Faisal Qazi, his 20-year-old son, who has a mechanical engineering degree from Anjuman-I-Islam College, a minority institution in Panvel, joined us. A fashionable young man with rimless glasses, Mr. Faisal had recently returned from Coimbatore, where he and his college mates had won several top positions in a Go-Kart design competition. They were trying to patent an anti-skid mechanism for cars. He was about to leave for New Delhi to take classes for the Indian Administrative Services examination.
Along with the strivings, a sense of neglect and discrimination pervades Mumbra, which does not have a single public hospital. The nearest public hospitals are in Kalua and Thane. Several clinics and rudimentary private hospitals have come up. Mumbra goes without electricity for at least six hours everyday. “We are No. 1 in load-shedding,” Mr. Qazi laughed. “But things are a lot better compared to even five years ago.”
The evidence of incremental progress was visible in Mumbra. Some streets had been paved with tar. State Bank of India, HDFC, and Bank of Maharashtra had opened branches or ATMs. A Domino’s Pizza outlet opened last year. The absence of banking facilities or companies denying home delivery of products has, for years, been the standard attitude towards India’s Muslim ghettoes. Barely an hour from the Indian Parliament, the Okhla Muslim ghetto in New Delhi did not have a single bank despite a population of several lakh. Two years ago, Jammu and Kashmir Bank opened a branch in Zakir Nagar. Juhapura, the Ahmedabad ghetto, whose population doubled after the 2002 riots, still does not get piped water or gas, and remains excluded from Ahmedabad’s vaunted public transport network.
Run-ins with police
Mumbra also lives with a hostile relationship with the police. It was home to Ishrat Jahan, who was killed along with three other men by the Gujarat police. The Central Bureau of Investigation later described the killings as a “fake encounter”. Taunts of being a safe house for terrorists are often thrown at Mumbra. Last March, several hundered policemen raided Mumbra one and a half hours after midnight. A video recorded by a local journalist shows scores of men being paraded through dark streets by the police, bundled into police vans, and held for hours in Mumbra police station. Around 80 people, including young students, poets and old men were arrested. The police claimed to be looking for two petty thieves wanted for chain-snatching.
One afternoon, I met Ishrat Jahan’s family in Mumbra. They continue to litigate and fight the everyday battles of existence on the periphery. Ishrat’s sister Musarat Jahan recently completed her B.A. in Psychology through a correspondence course, but her mother, Shamima Kausar, is too scarred to let her step out and seek work. “I can’t trust the world anymore,” said Ms. Kausar. Yet, there are bills to pay. Ishrat’s brother Anwar Iqbal used to do odd jobs to support the family. Initially, he was denied employment because he was Ishrat’s brother, but he persisted and found work at a BPO in Thane. “It is an American company,” said Ms. Jahan. “He doesn’t make calls, he does data entry.”

Students of Trinity College of Engineering, Kerala are developing TASSAT


  • By Kaustubh Katdare, June 19, 2015 at 9:33 AM
    Engineering students at the Trinity College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram have taken up an innovative project - to develop a student satellite called TASSAT. The TASSAT stands for Trinity Adrak Student Satellite; with Oman based company 'Al Adrak' as the main sponsor of the project. The student-professor team is aiming to complete the project with a functional prototype by 2018. As the final year students working on the project graduate, the team will include juniors from the college to keep the team size intact.

    The city of Thiruvananthapuram has several divisions of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) along with the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center which is responsible for launching majority of the ambitious ISRO missions. This apparently has influenced the local engineering talent. Arun Surendran, the strategic director of Trinity College said that they visited Nanyang Technological University (NTU) at Singapore to understand the feasibility of the TASSAT project.

    Trinity-COE-Nanyang-University-TASSAT.
    Trinity Team at Nanyang University [ Photo Credit: Facebook]​

    The NTU has been using ISRO facilities to launch satellites using PSLV and they have a similar, sustainable program at their campus. Surendran aims to have similar project at his college that would allow for continuous creation of CubeSats and NanoSats.

    The project is expected to see contribution from various engineering departments at the college in order to help keep the project on schedule. The project will offer a big boost for all the engineering students to explore new ideas while sharpening their engineering and technical skills. 
  • Source: http://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/students-of-trinity-college-of-engineering-kerala-are-developing-tassat.81235/

Rahmani 30 sends 81 to IIT in 7 yrs, calls it ‘revolution’

Thirty one students from different Rahmani centres have cracked IIT-JEE this year. The centre in Patna alone had 15 successful students out of 21 candidates.


 
Rahmani, Rahmani 30, Bihar, Rahmani, IIT, Rahmani IIT, Rahmani 30 IIT, Maulana Wali Rahmani, All India Personal Muslim Law, IIT-JEE, indian express










Rahmani plans MBBS entrance preparatory centre for girls.
Written by Santosh Singh | Patna | Published on:June 22, 2015 1:45 am

With 80 students in IITs in seven years, Rahmani 30 is helping poor Muslim aspirants overcome a “mental block” that they cannot make it to prestigious institutes, and look beyond ITIs (Industrial Training Institutes), says Maulana Wali Rahmani, founder of the IIT-JEE preparatory centre and also general secretary of the All India Personal Muslim Law Board. He believes under the mentorship of former Bihar DGP Abhyananad, who conceptualised Super 30 to teach poor students to crack the entrance exam, “we are at cusp of social revolution without any government support”.
Thirty one students from different Rahmani centres have cracked IIT-JEE this year. The centre in Patna alone had 15 successful students out of 21 candidates. Speaking at a function to felicitate the successful candidates, Maulana Wali Rahmani said instead of blaming the system for poor education among Muslims, the society itself should take an initiative in this direction. “We have been preparing Muslim girls for medical entrance tests now, and are looking for space to start a coaching of Muslim girls,” said Rahmani, who was Bihar Legislative Council deputy chairperson.

Rahmani 30 is the first non-government venture that came up in 2008 to prepare poor Muslim students for engineering entrance tests. The institute, which provides free food and lodging for students for its one-year and two-year programme, has so far helped 138 candidates succeed in various engineering entrance tests.

Abhayanand, also a physicist, said the proposal for Rahmani 30 came after he had dissociated himself from the successful venture of Super 30, and noted that the success rate of Muslim students was dismal in engineering exams.
“It is gratifying to see the journey of students who came from far-off villages and very humble background. People learn about us through word of mouth and Urdu press. We have provided them only basic facilities here. But, they generally have great minds — 42 of them have made it to Olympiad tests of science papers,” said Abhayanand.
Ashar Ahmad, who belongs to Gilani in Nalanda and secured 2167th rank in the IIT-JEE, said: “The rigorous revision of the combined test paper, informal teaching set-up and interaction with seniors were the key.” Ashar’s father Imdad Ahsan is a private teacher, who earns only around Rs 8,000 a month.
Saif Ali, whose father is a mill worker in Kolkata, said: “I will be the first IITian in my family. I will ensure my father does not have to work. I will come back to Rahmani 30 during vacations. Abhayanand’s words of ‘give back to society’ rings in ear.”

Friday, June 19, 2015

DCG(I) to formulate guidelines for e-commerce marketplace to ensure safety of consumers

FICCI appointed as the nodal agency for consolidating the guidelines
The role, responsibilities and liabilities of e-commerce marketplace and the product sellers
need to be clearly defined. It becomes even more critical to have a framework in place when 
the intermediary is selling drugs where the safety and health of the consumer is of paramount
importance. This was stated by Dr GN Singh, Drugs Controller General (India) at a FICCI 
consultative meeting on ‘Pharma Guidelines for Reinforcing Due Diligence for Intermediaries 
(E-commerce Marketplace)’ in New Delhi.
FICCI talks of due diligence by marketplace to ensure consumer safety while selling of drugs online. FICCI has been appointed as the nodal agency by the DCG(I) for consolidating the guidelines and was seeking views of OPPI, All India Chemists and Druggists Association, States Chemists and Druggists Associations, Indian Medical Association, CIPI, BDMA, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry and consumer forums, in this regard.
Singh said that pharmaceuticals industry needs a new regulatory framework to effectively bring e-pharmacy under its ambit. The Drugs and Cosmetics Act does not have any guidelines for e-commerce players in pharma. Hence, it is essential to create guidelines for e-pharmacy that checks efficaciously the use of technology as safety of patient, quality of drugs and robust supply chain are prerequisites for DCG(I).
With the advent of technology, e-commerce industry has entered in healthcare space in the form of e-pharmacy. However, there are issues such as complaint being filed against e-commerce player/s for online sale of prescription based drugs. To resolve these issues, Singh suggested that it would be beneficial for the regulator to engage with stakeholders in constructive brainstorming deliberations to reach a consensus. He added that the Indian Government was forthcoming in adopting industry’s recommendations and the DCG(I) would assist in providing a legal status to implementable suggestions of industry.
Singh assured that the interest of small retailers will be protected and it would be ensured that e-pharmacy does not disturb the existing supply chain system in place. The aim would be to integrate e-pharmacy in the existing system. Besides industry, in the consultative meetings, consumers, doctors and pharmacists should be adequately represented to have a holistic view on the issue, which would enable formulation of an innovative policy framework. He added that the Indian regulatory body was also engaging with international regulators in the space to derive a forward looking policy.
Dr. Arbind Prasad, Director General, FICCI, said that FICCI in consultation with stakeholders had prepared a representation for DCG(I) titled ‘Suggestive Guidelines for Reinforcing Due Diligence for Intermediaries (E-Commerce Marketplaces)’. He informed that the document comprehensively discusses the challenges faced by the sector and also proposes recommendations which can be deliberated upon to resolve these issues.
During the meeting, Singh actively interacted with the stakeholders, noted their concerns and responded to their pertinent queries. Among the stakeholders who spoke on the occasion was Dr KK Aggarwal, Honorary Secretary General, Indian Medical Association.