Latest News Update: Nov 27, 2009

Friday, November 27, 2009

[ZESTCaste] Prez asked to annul ST quota bias

http://www.morungexpress.com/regional/38433.html

Prez asked to annul ST quota bias

morungexpress

Dimapur, November 26 (MExN): The Naga Students' Federation and the
Eastern Nagaland Students' Federation today addressed a joint
statement to the President of India demanding annulment of certain
reservation discrepancies in Nagaland University. Both the students'
organizations have demanded annulment of a recent advertisement in NU,
understood to be against norms and regulations.
The letter addressed to the President of India, also the Visitor of
Nagaland University said that Nagaland state's population constitutes
"95%" of Scheduled Tribes (ST). For this, the question of reservation
for OBC and SC does not arise, the NSF and ENSF stated. "We demand
that the reservation quota in Nagaland University be implemented in
accordance with the office memorandum from the Ministry of Personnel,
Public Grievances and Pensions Department of Personnel and Training
dated July 5, 2005 wherein it is clearly stated that Nagaland state
can avail 45% reservation in group 'C' and 'D' category of posts in
any office," the letter stated.
Likewise, the two organizations took note of a recent advertisement
published by Nagaland University on August 10, 2009. Applications were
invited for non-teaching posts in Nagaland University. "We insist upon
your esteemed self to annul the said advertisement immediately as it
is not in accordance with the mentioned office memorandum and a fresh
advertisement be published in accordance with the reservation quota
for Scheduled Tribes in all vacant posts of the non-teaching staff at
Nagaland university."
The two students' organizations also lamented the state of affairs in
Nagaland University. Since its inception in 1994, the letter said, the
university has been "crammed with controversies" and has failed to
achieve any higher level of standards. It is hampering the growth
quality education. NSF and ENSF stated.
"It is also unfortunate to mention that the present trend of the
working system under the present administration of the university is
lacking behind…" the letter added. The President of India is requested
to intervene and address these issues in Nagaland University.

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[ZESTCaste] Plan panel pulls up Bengal on SC, ST welfare

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Plan-panel-pulls-up-Bengal-on-SC--ST-welfare/546874/

Plan panel pulls up Bengal on SC, ST welfare

Express News Service Posted online: Friday , Nov 27, 2009 at 0408 hrs

Kolkata : In spite of the state government's claims that the
allocation and spending of money for Scheduled Castes Sub Plan (SCSP)
and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) have been proper and based on the
recommendations of the Planning commission in the 11th Plan period,
representatives of the Centre and member of the Planning Commission,
Narendra Jadhav, today questioned the state government on the results
of the development not being satisfactory.

At a regional consultative workshop on the implementation of SCSP and
TSP for northern, eastern and north-eastern states in Kolkata today,
the state government was asked as to how, despite proper allocation of
funds, it claimed the results were not encouraging. The state
government, unlike other states, also failed to provide the details of
the percentage of population of SCs and STs below the poverty line.

Around 23 per cent of the state's population is Scheduled Castes while
5.5 per cent are STs. "The state government has spent 45 per cent of
funds in SC Sub Plan and 50 per cent of funds in the Tribal Sub Plan
in the first two-and-a-half years of the Plan period," said B P
Gopalika, the secretary of Backward Class Welfare Department of the
state.

Some state officials claimed funds could not be spent in areas facing
a law and order problem. "We have not been able to spend money in
areas like Lalgarh. The state government has a proposal of spending Rs
1 crore for tube wells in Lalgarh and about Rs 10 crore for housing of
the Lodha community, tribals who are mostly inhabitants of Midnapore,"
said a joint secretary of the department.

"The Planning Commission has been issuing guidelines from time to time
and the general feeling is that the results are not satisfactory,"
said Jadhav, who chaired the meeting.

Lashing out at the state government when some secretaries said they do
not have proper data on SCs and STs since they had joined the
concerned departments only recently, Jadhav said, "I will write to the
principal secretaries of all the states and ask why junior officers or
those who have joined recently do not have information and have been
sent for the deliberations."

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[ZESTCaste] Moving beyond prelims

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/moving-beyond-prelims/546862/

Moving beyond prelims
Yoginder K. Alagh

Posted online: Friday , Nov 27, 2009 at 0339 hrs

Gresham's Law says bad money drives out good money. Since I am an
optimistic kind of blighter, I've an Alagh law: good ideas eventually
drive out bad ones. I once chaired a group which wrote a report on
higher civil service recruitment and training. It took a
year-and-a-half and the country's best and brightest helped us. Some
of it was implemented and some not. The latter included lowering the
age at first entrance, changing over from a Macaulay kind of testing
procedure to finding out the candidate's aptitude and skills for a
civil service career in the 21st century and a lifetime training
programme. The last one was implemented. The earlier two were not. One
does not know why — the report remained a classified document and I
was not given access to it later when I wanted it for some work — but
now someone's put it on the Internet. Dr Moily read the reports and
gracefully

acknowledged and endorsed the recommendations in the reports of the
Administrative Reforms Commission he chaired, beginning with the Tenth
Report. And they've been raised again by the chairman of the UPSC in
the inaugural UPSC Foundation Day Lecture Series earlier this month.

The lowering of the age of first entrance is a serious matter. The
idea of giving as many chances as possible to certain sections of the
population arises out of a concern that poor children should have a
level playing field. I am a great

believer in having candidates from poor families in the civil service,
and fully endorse the point that my former colleague Ram Vilas Paswan
often makes: a collector or SP of SC/ ST origin makes more difference
to outcomes than a minister. Also in JNU, I have seen how the best and
brightest could come from very poor families, if you had the patience
and were fair. But the percentage of candidates from poor SC/ ST
families coming from backward areas was unfortunately declining — a
matter of great concern. The Zakir Hussain Centre of Educational
Research at JNU was asked to find out; they reported that the cost of
preparing for the exams could be quite high — in fact above a lakh of
rupees a year in the urban areas they surveyed. Poor children cannot
pay this cost, so drop out. It was children from better-off sections
who could take advantage of the age relaxations. But there was a sunny
side. My experience of JNU showed that when you do a fair selection
and take only a few — in JNU tens of thousands applied and only nine
hundred were taken — then, at the national level, you get many
extraordinary candidates at lower ages. In the civil services lakhs of
candidates apply so the choice is even wider. At each point in the
scale you get many candidates. Therefore one would get very good
candidates at younger ages, from genuinely poor families, from
backward regions. Some allowance has to be made for candidates from
rural and backward areas, but very old entrants become a drag.

Dr Kalam, then not yet president, spent a lot of time with the
committee. He got the defence establishment's psychiatrists to sit
down with senior service officers and designed personality tests
especially for the civil services.

Services selection boards have been using them for a long time, but
the civil services have been holding out. The tests are not
infallible, of course, and since civil service selections can be
contested the idea is for the selection boards to take the results
into account as one factor. But the main work was to design a new
selection examination procedure taking into account this century's new
needs. The world over it is transparency, accountability, proclivity
towards technological savviness, concerns for the disadvantaged,
ability to network in a society where newer organisational forms are
increasingly solving social problems, energy to pursue objectives
under stress that are being looked for. The UK — the mother country
for our system — the US, France and many others are changing. We
remain in a cul-de-sac of coaching institutes producing the civil
servants of the future.

The first test should, as the UPSC chairman says, be an aptitude test.
Those who qualify should be tested in those skills and aptitudes that
are needed for a services career, governance, environment, technology
and an understanding of an increasingly networked world in terms of
opportunities and threats.

Once in, they have to be given the best training on a continuous
basis, encouraged to specialise, allowed mobility and protected from
the ravages of interference. But that, as they say, is another story.

The writer, a former Union minister, is chairman, Institute of Rural
Management, Anand

express@expressindia.com

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