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Chronicle note: K. Gajendra Singh had a very distinguished career as Indian diplomat with a very varied experience. He belongs to the 1961 batch of Indian Foreign Service cadre. His career span includes many West Asian, African and European Countries, including Turkey, Jordan, Romania, France, etc. He was the Director General and Founder of Foreign Service Training Institute, New Delhi and Chairman of Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. Among his most successful operations was to evacuate nearly 140,000 Indian refugees who had come from Kuwait and Iraq in 1990-91 by air from Amman. He is a prolific writer and his articles about world economy, military and politics appear in a number of magazines.
The Class of 1958 is celebrating their golden jubilee reunion at New Delhi and Varanasi campus during Jan 4-7, 2009.)
For resume of Ambassador (Retd.) K. Gajendra Singh, click on: Ambassador K Gajendra Singh-resume.pdf
July 9, 1954; Hand in hand we have come together
Some enterprising classmates , with many scattered around the world specially in USA, have organised a milestone of our lives , a get together around end 2008 to celebrate the golden jubilee of our passing out from Benaras Engineering College (Benco) in 1958 , when we said good bye to our class and college mates, our hostels, verily our home for the preceding four years and in some cases five or even more .That is where we were transformed from adolescents to adults with our watchful but generally non-interfering teachers, the Gurujans. Yes, we had some excellent teachers, but most after graduating from the college itself had come up the ladder of lecturer to reader and finally, head of department, in fullness of time. But the class also learnt from each other at critical times. It was a kind of a group teaching itself .Some studied on their own, like myself , others formed study groups before the annual tests or inquisition ( there was no semester system then) around some gifted prime movers , like Jag Mohan .
We left or hostels that warm 1958 summer on cycle rikshaws, mostly via Banaras Cantonment Railway Station on to places of our birth, not to return again like the preceding years to our Alma mater, Kashi Vishwavidyalay, before July 9 and begin another year of fun and games and some serious studies as well. This sharing and living together, some fun, some hard work, mutual help cum give and take and even minor quarrels helped create life long bonds and the Benco spirit. One could turn up at Dehri-on Sone, or Tatanagar, Jamshedpur or elsewhere as at Thapar Institute, Patiala, as in my case, call on the senior most Benco Alumni and get a job, on the spot.
Jab We Met - 9 July, 1954.
In some ways, I consider July 9, 1954 as a more primordial coming together aka Jeb we met, when we entered our class rooms for the first time that day.
On reaching the college hostels on 8 July, 1954, I found that I was allotted roll number 139/54, a badge of prestige I've carried all my life, with some pride. With two hostels, Limbdi and Rajputana, reserved exclusively for Benco students, being full, the spillover was accommodated in the neighbouring Shyama Charan De hostel, where I found myself. This, later allowed interaction and exchanges with students from the colleges of agriculture, pharmacy, library science and others, which we, the Benco students, considering ourselves the Chitpavan Brahmins of university in a caste like pecking order, considered somewhat inferior beings .The Hindu caste or varna concept , permeates all walks of life in Indian polity. Its hold unfortunately remains unshakable.
My room partner Majumdar was already installed at SC De hostel .He welcomed me warmly (later in the year, I shifted with Ramesh Khattar). After depositing my steel trunk and bedding in my room, I decided to explore the two hostels and my new surroundings. In Rajputana hostel playroom I spotted Sardar Malkiat Singh playing table tennis .Assuming him to be a Sikh from Punjab, Bhiwani being my birth place (the state of Haryana had still not been carved out of Punjab) , I hung around for a few minutes , hoping to attract his attention and perhaps some help and guidance . This was the first time I had ventured out alone so far away from my home at the age of 16. Malkiat asked for my name. He and others laughed merrily. I realized they were pulling my leg. It was my first introduction to a mild form of ragging and that of growing up. Feeling somewhat betrayed and embarrassed I made for a quick exit. Later I would endlessly tease Malkiat, who was from Kenya, with Sardarji jokes, more so after failing a year, he joined our class.
In some ways at 70 years, with a life time of experience, I feel that it was predetermined and perhaps destined that I join Benco. My physics teacher at Vaish College Bhiwani, Prof O.P. Dogra, who had studied for his M.Sc at BHU, spoke highly of its engineering college thus encouraging and prodding me towards Benco. To qualify for the School of Mining, Dhanbad, a day before the entrance tests at Delhi, I found that the Japanese table tennis team were playing exhibition matches in the city .I spent the whole day searching out the venue and then enjoyed some superb display by world champion Ichirio Ogimura and Watanabe. That saved me from spending a considerable part of my youth underground around Jharia coal fields. Also, I could not have sat for the civil services as only mechanical, civil and electrical engineering graduates were eligible in those days.
I missed admission by only a few marks to Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh (the only institution in East Punjab then ie current day Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh combined, with only 16 clear merit seats out of 40 for intermediate class students from the state). It was a blessing in disguise though I felt somewhat disappointed then as the degree course at Chandigarh was of 3 years duration only. I would have also got a scholarship and a class II Gazetted job of SDO (electrical) immediately on passing out .That was the job I had hoped for when I left Bhiwani for Banaras in 1954.
But I would have missed out on the all India ambiance, expanding my horizons and testing oneself against the very best of students from every state of India at Benco and BHU. The exposure during my formative years to an all India ethos, culture, languages, even cuisine remains an absolutely unparalleled and invaluable experience .The acquisition of that knowledge and experience apart from learning some engineering (you really learn a subject when you teach it) and Benco's merit based benchmark system imbued me with confidence and spurred me to take the engineering and civil services examinations. Character building and a catholic outlook based on honesty, integrity and self reliance helped me face successfully many difficult tasks in my career and life.
There were only five engineering graduates out of 275 in the civil services class of 1961 at the Academy in Mussourie (now-a-days almost half come from engineering stream). I was the first engineering graduate, as I put it, to gate crash into the Foreign Service, which was then the most sought after cadre. Of course my Benco years were of immense help as CMD of the Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd in 1985 and 86, then India's largest drug manufacturer. It remains a first for a diplomat to function at such high level in public sector. The ability to absorb stresses and strains (while preparing for examinations at Benco ) was very useful in handling visits of Prime Ministers or Presidents and a very daunting task during 1990-91 of evacuating to India by air nearly 140,000 Indian nationals who had come from Kuwait to Amman ( Jordan) where I was then posted. I also established an Institute for the Indian Ministry of External Affairs during 1987-89 to train and upgrade Indian and foreign diplomats.
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(Abhishek Khanna can be reached at: ak.bond@gmail.com)
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This is not as complicated thing as you all think. I will try to keep it as simple as possible
Ever wondered about all the savings you do- Provident fund, mutual fund, the part of your provident fund maintained by the company? Now try to calculate this for each working person in your country, and then scale it up to the whole world. For a very small estimate, you can keep the figure of about $ 100 trillion. Although the number will be much above it and can only be approximated and not calculated
Now when the companies like Lehman Brothers, etc. hire people at stinking high salaries as investment managers, they want those managers to attain a growth on the investments much better than a 4% that a bank gives or about 2-3% which US treasury and municipal bonds give. And then the greed increases to show higher and higher returns on the pamphlets of the mutual funds and other funds you know about.
Now the problem is this amount of roughly 100 trillion dollars was approximated to be almost half around year 2000. So imagine, you get 50 trillion dollars in the market and you want to earn high returns on them. So people started moving towards risky investments. In spite of hiring the best people, sometimes the greed and the pressure force the people to make wrong choices.
So these guys decided to foray into a new segment, housing mortgages. Give loans to people charge them interest and get a higher return for the next 30 years. Simple! Yes it was very simple till the point the greed started getting on nerves of people.
But as you know "bade log" don’t have so much time and patience to handle such a business. So the process started in a chain .A small broker called X sells you a mortgage, he works for bank Y, so you will have to give your EMI (Equated Monthly Installment) to bank Y every month for next 20-30 years depending upon your loan duration. And then this investment banker comes and gives the whole loan amount to bank (and some incentive). Now your cheques go to this investment banker. And now this investment banker made small shares of this loan and sold them off to investors around the world.
To simplify the process, you got a loan from hundreds of people across the world and your interest gives income to all the middlemen including broker, small bank, investment banker and the final investors.
Money has an amazing power my friend. Every now and then the loan guidelines and credit scored required was loosened a bit. This also went for some time. And then a day came when the interest rates charged were very high and the rules very low. They started giving loans to people with bad credit or subprime people as they are commonly called. This was the era of NINA loans
Do you know about NINA loans? That means No Income No Asset loans. Even an amateur will say "what the hell?" when he hears about this loan. The thing worked as simple as that, go to a bank and say, hey I want a loan, and they will ask you, have you got a job mate? , you say yes, and there you go, no checking, not much of documentations and the loan is yours but with a higher interest rate. If you go and talk to the defaulters of the loans many of them will laugh that the banks were fools in the first place to offer such loans, and for the borrowers, who hates money? So subprime people were getting loans of any amount they wanted but the interest rate was considerably high!
Everyone from the smalltime broker to the investment banker was minting a hell lot of money. But you know the problem with this profession? You see the stats that on an average 2% people default the loans, so taking 4 times as the factor of safety at max 7-8% people will default and that can be covered with a higher rate of interest. But the world doesn’t go by the stats. It is never sure that it will rain on 29 June if it has been raining on the same date for past 15 years!
So these guys made some CDOs (Collateralized Debt Obligations; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation) and securities of the mortgages and sold them to the investors worldwide. Then suddenly one day, sometime around in 2006, some wise guys found the default rate rising at an alarming rate! Sensing some danger they asked the investment banker to stop buying loans from small banks. And hence these investment bankers had many loans which they were not able to sell to the securitizers and small banks had many which could not be sold to the investment bankers. And it takes some time to stop the brokers who were selling these loans like hot cakes. Therefore everyone had some or the other toxic loans at their hands, and big investment banks had loads of them.
You know about the balance transfer facility on credit cards? The other cards charge you lower interest if you pay your payment from their card; this is just a marketing thing to attract more customers. In US people live because of this facility. They finance their loans again and again with new banks to gain some interest advantage. But suddenly because of the oversupply of homes the market price of the homes became less. And the banks are not (so big) fools to give a loan of $200K on a property worth $100K. Hence the owners were not able to refinance them and neither could they pay the awful amount of interest charged on their loans. So they started defaulting. And as the old saying goes "Kharbooje ko dekh ke kharboojja rang badalta hai"
All you could hear around was fall in home prices and default on more loans. Chain reaction as they say. And since the investments were made by almost all the major banks, so everyone is in big trouble now. They chewed more than they could swallow and hence have an upset stomach now. Many of them dead!
Kissi ne sach hi kaha hai: "Lalach buri bala hai.”
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The Malaviya Smriti Bhavan at New Delhi was inaugurated on December 25, 2008 by our former President, Prof. APJ Kalam. His inauguration speech is provided below.
(Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya)
More info about Smriti Bhavan at: http://www.malaviyamission.in/smritiBhawanMore.htm
MALAVIYA SMRITI BHWAN
(National Memorial of Madan Mohan Malaviya)
at 52-53, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, New Delhi-110002
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http://www.khabrein.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18853&Itemid=88
Knowledge makes you Great: Abdul Kalam
(Prof. APJ Kalam)
New Delhi, Dec 28, 2008: Former president of India Dr APJ Abdul Kalam said here Thursday that knowledge makes a man great. India’s missile man has been trying his best to develop nation’s knowledge base by directly interacting with school kids, college and university students across the country.
He was the most admired president while he was in the office and remains one of the most favourite personalities in the country.
Following is the text of speech he delivered on the occasion of the launch of national memorial of Madan Mohan Malavia:
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At every point in time in human development, we have great individuals who are great scholars or professionals with great insight into issues that are topical, but more than that visualize a future course for posterity. Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya ji is one such great son of India. He excelled in every field of his association, be it the Freedom Movement, Journalism, Law, Education, Hindi, Upliftment of the Downtrodden, Social Welfare or Dharma. As an extraordinary visionary, he saw beyond the Country's freedom into the needs of a 'Resurgent Modern India'. He founded the Bañaras Hindu University, which is a pride of modern India. His thoughts, ideologies, and values are very important and extremely relevant today.
Mahatma Gandhi says that he went to Mahamana Malaviya and he appeared like the pure flow of Ganga. He saw it was possible to take bath in the sacred flow. Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru describes him as a giant among men, one of those who laid the foundation of modern Indian Nationalism. Dr. Radhakrishnan sees him as an outstanding sturdy patriot who realized that our country suffered on account of technical backwardness, lack of public spirit, and inattention to our own great culture. These were the defects which he attempted to remove by the establishment of BHU. Pandit Malaviya’s own hope and prayer in conceiving the BHU was that this centre of life and light, that is coming into existence will produce students who will not only be intellectually equal to the best of students in other parts of the world, but also will live a noble life, love their country and be loyal to the supreme ruler. What messages do original thinkers and creators of institutions give.
In my opinion, based on the study of number of visionaries like Swami Vivekananda, Vikram Sarabhai, Jamshedji Tata, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Pundit Madan Mohan Malaviya, I feel they have some unique characteristics:
*Visionaries take great efforts to get to the root of current issues, but conceive long lasting solutions
*They develop an integrative thinking
*They are courageous to launch an unexplored path, the impact of that may not be obvious at that time
*They don’t just see an institution merely as an educational or research set up, but as nurturing grounds for excellence , research and human values
*They remain as role models for posterity
*They are not deterred by differences of opinions but are wedded to their cause which is unquestionable
I am delighted to participate in the inauguration of National Memorial of Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya. My greetings to the organizers, participants, BHU Alumni and the distinguished guests.
Since I am in the midst of BHU Alumni, educationists and teachers, I would like to discuss with you about the “Mission of Education: Capacity Building”.
Capacity Building
A good educational model is the need of the hour to ensure that the students grow to contribute towards the development of the nation. Can we sow the seeds of capacity building among the students? There will be continuous innovation during the learning process. To realize this, special capacities are required to be built in education system for nurturing the students. The capacities which are required to be built are research and enquiry, creativity and innovation, use of high technology, entrepreneurial and moral leadership.
Research and enquiry: The 21st century is about the management of all the knowledge and information we have generated and the value addition we bring to it. We must give our students the skills with which they find a way through the sea of knowledge that we have created and continue with life long learning. Today, we have the ability, through technology, to really and truly teach ourselves to become the life-long learners. This is required for sustained economic development
Creativity and innovation: The management of knowledge in the 21st century is beyond the capacity of a single individual. The amount of information that we have around is overwhelming. The management of knowledge therefore must move out of the realm of the individual and shift into the realm of the networked groups. The students must learn how to manage knowledge collectively. When the information is networked the power and utility of the information grows as square as stated by Metcalfe's law. Information that is static does not grow. In the new digital economy information that is circulated creates innovation and contributes to national wealth.
Capacity to use high technology: Every student in our college should learn to know how to use the latest technologies for aiding his or her learning process. Universities should equip themselves with adequate computing equipment, laboratory equipments, and Internet facilities and provide an environment for the students to enhance their learning ability. In the midst of all the technological innovations and revolutions we cannot think that the role of the teachers will be diminished. In fact the teacher will become even more important and the whole world of education will become teacher assisted and would help in “tele-porting” the best teacher to every nook and corner of the country and propagate the knowledge.
Entrepreneurship: The aptitude for entrepreneurship should be cultivated right from the beginning and in the university environment. We must teach our students to take calculated risks for the sake of larger gain, but within the ethos of good business. They should also cultivate a disposition to do things right. This capacity will enable them to take up challenging tasks later.
Moral leadership: Moral leadership involves two aspects. First it requires the ability to have compelling and powerful dreams or visions of human betterment. Moral leadership requires a disposition to do the right thing and influence others also to do right things.
In sum, inquiry, creativity, technology, entrepreneurial and moral leadership are the five capacities required to be built through the education process. If we develop in all our students these five capacities, we will produce “Autonomous Learner” a self-directed, self controlled, lifelong learner who will have the capacity to both, respect authority and at the same time is capable of questioning authority, in an appropriate manner. These are the leaders who would work together as a “Self-organizing Network” and transform any State as a prosperous State. The most important part of the education is to imbibe the confidence among the students is the spirit of “we can do it”. These capacities will enable the students to meet the challenges of our national mission of transforming the nation into a developed country by 2020. The education system in the university must aim to generate large number of entrepreneurs apart from those students who have an aptitude towards research.
Five minds
In this process, the education system has to develop the five minds as described in the book “Five Minds” for the future by Howard Gardner.
a) The disciplinary mind: mastery of mind in different schools of thought including science mathematics and history and proficiency in at least one professional craft.
b) The synthesizing mind: ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate to others.
c) The creative mind: capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomenon.
d) The respectful mind: awareness of and application for differences among human beings.
e) The ethical mind: fulfillment of one’s responsibility as a worker and a citizen.
To develop these five minds, the culture, vision and the teacher’s way of life will imbibe these five minds among the students. These capacities and the minds are required among students to empower them and to become self reliant. As you are aware India is in the process of transforming into a developed nation. I visualize India in the year 2020 to have the following distinctive competitive profile.
Now, let me give my visualization of India during the year 2020.
Distinctive profile of the nation
1. A Nation where the rural and urban divide has reduced to a thin line.
2. A Nation where there is an equitable distribution and adequate access to energy and quality water.
3. A Nation where agriculture, industry and service sector work together in symphony.
4. A Nation where education with value system is not denied to any meritorious candidates because of societal or economic discrimination.
5. A Nation which is the best destination for the most talented scholars, scientists, and investors.
6. A Nation where the best of health care is available to all.
7. A Nation where the governance is responsive, transparent and corruption free.
8. A Nation where poverty has been totally eradicated, illiteracy removed and crimes against women and children are absent and none in the society feels alienated.
9. A Nation that is prosperous, healthy, secure, devoid of terrorism, peaceful and happy and continues with a sustainable growth path.
10. A Nation that is one of the best places to live in and is proud of its leadership.
Integrated Action for developed India
To achieve the distinctive profile of India, we have the mission of transforming India into a developed nation. We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing (2) Education and Healthcare (3) Information and Communication Technology (4) Infrastructure: Reliable and Quality Electric power, Surface transport and Infrastructure for all parts of the country and (5) Self reliance in critical technologies.
During my discussions with many concerned citizens of the country, it has been pointed out how there are many problems standing in the way of development process. That brings to my mind the famous expression of Signal to noise ratio in communications. Any developmental process is associated with challenges in management which is how to increase the development content in spite of obstacles. Shall we call it D/O (Development to Obstacles ratio). It may not be possible to totally remove O, but our challenge is to increase D to the maximum and reduce O to the minimum, so that D/O is maximum. Here I would like to recall my own experiences which I learnt whenever a failure or a problem occur, always I used to say to my team, we should not allow the problems to be our captain, the team leader has to become the captain of the problems and defeat the problems and succeed.
We will now look at the National Development Scene
I am confident Indian capability exists for realizing the India Vision 2020 profile. How do I say this? It is born out of my experience in my professional career of last 50 years, where organizations with integrated thinking have achieved state-of-the-art systems. What is now required for India Vision 2020 profile “Management for the billion”, what it can be?
We need the enabling environments in an integrated way.
a. Agricultural Environment,
b. Rural Environment,
c. Education and employment Environment,
d. Economic environment
e. Security Environment and
f. Political environment
The above enabling environment is essential for the sustainable and inclusive development of the nation.
Conclusion: Empowering
When the child is empowered by the parents, at various phases of growth, the child transforms into a responsible citizen. When the teacher is empowered with knowledge and experience, good young human beings with value systems take shape. When individual or a team is empowered with technology, transformation to higher potential for achievement is assured. When the leader of any institution empowers his or her people, leaders are born who can change the nation in multiple areas. When the women are empowered, society with harmony in the home is assured. When the political leaders of the nation empower the people through visionary policies, the prosperity of the nation is certain.
I appreciate and congratulate the team that was responsible in bringing out the beautiful dynamic memorial for remembering the great son of our country, Mahamana Madam Mohan Malaviya. With these words I inaugurate the National Memorial For Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya.
My best wishes to all the members for success in the mission of promoting quality education to the youth based on the tradition set by Mahamana Madan Mohan Malaviya.
May God bless you.
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Additional Links:
1) Memorial in honour of Madan Mohan Malviya
http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/27/stories/2008122757980400.htm
Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI: Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam inaugurated a national memorial in honour of veteran freedom fighter and founder of Banaras Hindu University, Madan Mohan Malviya, in the Capital on Thursday, marking the 147th birth anniversary of the national leader.
“Malviya Smriti Bhawan”, which houses a museum on the life and times of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, has been constructed by the Mahamana Malviya Mission (the BHU alumni association) here on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg near ITO.
At its first international meeting held in Delhi in 2001 and addressed by the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Mahamana Malviya Mission decided to build a national memorial in honour of Pandit Malviya. Subsequently, former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat laid the foundation stone of the memorial.
Malviya Smriti Bhawan will propagate the ideals and thoughts of Madan Mohan Malviya. Mahamana Malviya Mission is already running many ‘Malviya Mission’ centres at many places like Lucknow, Varanasi, Delhi, Jammu, Ambikapur and Bishunpur.
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2) Malaviya Bhavan foundation stone laid by Vive-President on December 25, 2002
http://pib.nic.in/archieve/phtgalry/pgyr2002/pg122002/pg25dec2002/251220025.html
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The Vice President Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat unveiling foundation stone plaque of Mahamana Malaviya Smriti Bhavan in New Delhi on December 25, 2002 (Wednesday). |
http://www.itbhu.org/chronicle/archives/2007/09/index.html#001462
http://www.itbhuglobal.org/chronicle/archives/2008/11/index-reports.php#003886
4) Website of former President of India, Prof. APJ Kalam
http://www.abdulkalam.com/kalam/index.jsp
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With the current recession like economic situation in our country, students are finding it difficult to get jobs as well as finding companies for mandatory industrial training. The summer training or internship is a bigger issue for students than job search, as the training is compulsory and often a student has to find it by him/herself.
We are thankful for some of our alumni who have taken keen interest in the issue and provided students with necessary internships in the companies they work or own. We request our alumni to come forward and help our students in this difficult time. Alumni can forward the info to our student volunteers who work with TPO (Training and Placement Officer) for training and summer internship.
According to Nikhaar Jain (volunteer for TPO for chemical dept.), as per the institute procedure, Seats for training should be notified to TPO (Training & Placement Office) via an official mail from HR Manager or Training Manager of the respective organization.
TPO then informs the respective branches and then it gets allotted to students.
For more info about TPO: http://www.itbhu.ac.in/tpo/index.html
You may also contact Prof. S. N. Singh at:
Dr. S. N. Singh
Training & Placement Office
Ph: +91-542-2307007, E-mail: ittpo@bhu.ac.in; ittpo@sify.com
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Here is the feedback and suggestions received from our alumnus, Vijay M. Kamat (Chemical 1977) who works as General Manager: Technical and Supply Chain Management at BASF Styrenics Pvt. Ltd, Navi Mumbai, India. He visited our campus in January 2008 as part of 1977 batch reunion. Since then, he has helped two students from chemical engineering dept. to get summer internship at his company. He will continue to help more students to get summer internship; it will further help students if there is proper communication established between him/his company and students/faculty.
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Industrial training imparted to undergrads now depends upon Institute's public relations with industry, and the aptitude of the students. Two students from our institute joined our company for summer training. However, I failed to get feedback from the students either during or after training.
The feedback I got of these students from my counterpart i.e. Chief of Operations was that the students were good. Both the boys were clear about the careers they wanted to pursue. They were keen to take up IT jobs for a couple of years and then wanted to take up further study in Management school.
Why I was keen to talk to the student was to know about his plans for future or any of other boys who would be interested in taking up job in core industry? We at BASF India Ltd took one trainee each from UDCT Bombay and TSEC Bombay. These boys may not stay for long once they get experience. It will be better if someone from our dept. get in touch with me or our company during students’ training. This is because if you know someone in a company for such training or jobs, the chances for getting placement are improved. And once the ball starts rolling, there is no stopping; then you need not be in touch with your Contact in the industry.
My information about most of grads from Non-IT discipline is more or less the same. What we used consider as a specialized course in Engineering is now perceived as a standard graduation degree platform for either MS or MBA. Very few students from premium colleges would like to make career in core engineering discipline. If they work for a couple of years, it is for industrial experience which would enable them to take up an MBA course, if not an MS/M. Tech. course. With the result we in industry settle for students from non-premier colleges.
I found one of the trainees, as very young; like all young kids his mind is very much occupied with very ambitious projects and dreams for his future.
If any of boys or department has interest in providing students to industrial training in future, I am always available to help.
Kind regards,
Vijay M. Kamat
General Manager: Technical & Supply Chain
E-Mail: vijay.kamat@basf.com
BASF Styrenics Pvt. Ltd.,
Thane-Belapur Road, Turbhe, Navi Mumbai, 400705, India
Company website:
http://www.basf-india.com/BASF-india/html/home/BASF_Styrenics.htm
BASF - The Chemical Company
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(Mrs. and Mr. Vijay M. Kamat)
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http://www.orkut.com/Main#Community.aspx?cmm=12212
We are all familiar with various yahoo groups for our IT-BHU community, which includes alumni, students and faculty. The yahoo groups include itbhu (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/itbhu/), bhu_usa (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bhu_usa/) and various batch/branch based yahoo groups.
However, our community has also a bigger presence online under Orkut community. Apart from IT-BHU and IT-BHU USA groups, we have department based groups on Orkut. Each departmental group has links for other related Orkut community, based on batch, employer or hostel.
The biggest among them is IT-BHU group with current 4,832 members. It was started in February 2004 by Akhil Sopory (Civil 2002). According to Akhil, “I put the Orkut group together when I heard some colleagues in the university from the IITs talking about "Orkut"; and when I checked - I did not find anything for ITBHU. It has become a pretty big community now and we can all hope it keeps growing and gets more and more illustrious members. “
The Orkut communities of our alumni/students are also open to people from other institutes. The discussion forum is open for all to view. Each group is supported by few moderators. Each Orkut group has list of forums and polls on the front page. Member profiles can be viewed by anyone. The Community has live discussion forums on wide ranging of subjects, from the campus news to corporate job opportunities.
Orkut is owned by Google. You can join Orkut by clicking the above link and selecting “join” on the left. To join Orkut, simply sign in with your Google Account.
In October this year, Orkut has introduced what it describes as a "safety filter" that automatically filters out adult content such as sexually suggestive phrases or images.
According to the company website, “Orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. Orkut's social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you've never met before.”
Here is the message received from Akhil Sopory, founder of IT-BHU Orkut:
“Orkut is a social networking site operated by Google. It has been designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil and second most visited site in India. Orkut has many features – one such being creating Communities.
I was “invited” to be part of the Orkut website by a friend while I was pursuing my Masters degree. I realized that IT-BHU did not have a community, so I created one to provide a common connection between my IT friends. Over time this community has evolved into a large database of IT-BHU students & Alumni and has currently over 4500 members worldwide. Members of the community post topics of interest, inform other members about an event, ask questions, create polls or just reminisce.
On Orkut, you can also be part of the various communities setup for individual branches of IT-BHU. You will find a link to most of them in the related communities section. Orkut does not require an invitation and can work with existing Google accounts.
The community is moderated by Shubham Basu (2002, Ceramics), Vikas Singh (2002, Civil), Shivam Sinha (2006 Mining) and Abhijit Raja (2007 Civil). We are eagerly looking for volunteers who would like to be involved in moderating the community. “
(Akhil Sopory)
Akhil Sopory can be contacted at: Akhil.Sopory@gmail.com
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Major Orkut Communities for IT-BHU Departments
Name | Total members | Group Owner |
IT-BHU | 4,832 | Akhil Sopory (Civil 2002) |
ITBHU | 506 | Anubhav savant (Electrical 1999) |
ITBHU-USA | 55 | None |
Applied Math IT-BHU | 12 | Praveen Gupta (Applied Maths) |
Biochemical eng @ it bhu | 4 | Not disclosed |
Biomedical Engineering IT-BHU | 107 | Sandeep Jaiswal (Biomedical 2005) |
IT-BHU-Ceramics | 303 | Ashish Gupta (Ceramic 2002) |
Chem Engg@ IT-BHU | 587 | Raghu Kainkaryam (Chemical 2004) |
Civil Engg @IT BHU | 376 | Ms. Veenu Kabra (Civil 2004) |
CSE-ITBHU | 408 | Pankaj Yadav (CSE 2005) |
Duals @ IT-BHU | 70 | Vipul Shukla (Ceramic 2010 Dual) |
Ece ITBHU | 322 | Aakash Sahu (Electronics 2008) |
Electrical Engg. IT BHU | 668 | Kapil Malik (Electrical 2006) |
Engineering physics it bhu | 2 | Vidhya Lakshmi (Applied Physics) |
Mech Engg. @ IT-BHU | 538 | Ravish Agarwal (Mechanical 2004) |
Metallurgy @ ITBHU | 314 | Subhajoy Das (Metallurgy 2007) |
Mining Engg @ IT BHU | 296 | Vishal Singh (Mining 2006) |
PHARMA @ IT BHU | 246 | Rajesh Kumar (Pharmaceutical 2005) |
