Ford Foundation fellowships to end in 2010

September 30th, 2009 CHENNAI - Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi Wednesday urged the government to earmark 50 percent of the seats in central universities for students from rural areas.

September 29th, 2009 LUCKNOW - Villagers in Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's Amethi constituency have stalled the construction of a private college whose foundation stone he had laid, alleging that the college authorities had illegally occupied the land, police said Tuesday. Armed with wooden sticks, a large number of locals in the Pakargaon village that falls under Gandhi's constituency, Monday evening visited the Rajiv Gandhi Vidyapeeth Degree College's site and forcibly stopped the construction.

August 3rd, 2009 KUALA LUMPUR - A recent move to close the Indian Studies Department at Universiti Malaya (UM) is being resisted by Malaysians of Indian origin. Closing the department is "disrespectful to the heritage of the Indian community", two NGOs of ethnic Indians have said.

July 25th, 2009 BHUBANESWAR - The Orissa government Saturday re-introduced a controversial bill proposing a Rs.150-billion (43.75 billion) university in the state to be promoted by NRI billionaire and chairman of Britain's Vedanta Resources Anil Agarwal. The Vedanta University Bill was introduced last year but fell through after stiff resistance from the opposition.

July 15th, 2009 BANGALORE - Nobel laureate Amartya Sen will chair a five-member jury of the Infosys Science Foundation, set up by IT bellwether Infosys Technologies Ltd, to select winners for its awards in five science disciplines, the company said Wednesday. Sen will chair the jury for social sciences.

June 18th, 2009 BANGALORE - The Azim Premji Foundation (APF) of Wipro chairman Azim Premji will soon be able to set up a private university in Karnataka, the state's first, with the cabinet approving a bill to facilitate it, Parliamentary Affairs Minister S. Suresh Kumar said Thursday.

June 8th, 2009 AHMEDABAD - Calorx Foundation, an NGO working in the field of education, will set up an institution for training secondary school teachers in Gujarat. The Calorx Teachers' University (CTU) will be located on 3.5 acres of land along the Sardar Patel Ring Road on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

May 30th, 2009 BANGALORE - Every weekend children of Koonankoppalu village in Karnataka eagerly await visiting teachers from India's tech hub to help them with mathematics, English and science. The village, around 120 km from Bangalore, boasts of one government-run primary school with 45 students.

May 27th, 2009 NEW DELHI - To curb the "menace" of corporal punishment in schools, a foundation was launched Wednesday named after Shanno Khan, the 11-year-old Delhi girl, who died after slipping into coma following alleged punishment by a teacher. "We pledge and resolve to fight the menace of corporal punishment until it is eradicated from schools in the remotest corners of the country," said Rohit Kochhar, a corporate law firm owner, who floated the Kochhar Shanno Foundation.

April 2nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation Thursday announced $100,000 grants for researchers to develop innovative ideas to address maternal and child health care issues. The third round of the world-wide initiative is targeted particularly at Indian researchers.

March 21st, 2009 KOLKATA - Most people in eastern India are unaware of the existing US scholarships, and hence they are lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of getting grants, a US education official said Friday. 'Eastern India is lagging behind compared to the rest of the country in terms of applying for scholarships to US...and this is not because, it lacks merit, but due to unawareness,' Sunrit Mullick, regional officer of United States-India Educational Foundation (USEFI), Kolkata, told reporters at a press conference at American Center here.

February 28th, 2009 HYDERABAD - United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi Friday laid the foundation stone for the permanent campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Andhra Pradesh's Medak district. The campus for the premier technology institute is coming up on 500 acres of land at a cost of Rs.10 billion in Kandi village, about 100 km from here.

February 10th, 2009 BHUBANESWAR - Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh will lay the foundation stone of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Orissa Thursday, an official said. Arjun Singh was to lay the foundation stone Wednesday but the programme was rescheduled, an official of the industry department told IANS.

February 10th, 2009 BHUBANESWAR - The campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Orissa would be complete in four years from now with Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh laying the foundation stone Thursday. The institute at Bhubaneswar is one among eight new IITs to be established in the country by the ministry of human resource during the Eleventh Plan period.

January 17th, 2009 BHOPAL - In order to help students choose a career according to their inclination and aptitude, the Madhya Pradesh government is organising a week long campaign from Jan 27 to Feb 2 to provide career guidance to over one million students, a state minister said Sunday. The event is being organised as part of the Swami Vivekanand Career Guidance Scheme.