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indianexpress: AS ACADEMIA-INDUSTRY tie-ups become the buzz word, city-based Indian Institute of e-Business Management (IIeBM) has announced it will tie-up with corporates to impart specialist education to their employees. The institute will also launch specialised courses such as BPO management, NGO management, real estate management and hospitality management for students from July.

Speaking to reporters on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the institute, Col Vinod Marwah, joint-director of IIeBM, said it will venture into corporate training through their arm ‘Erudite of IIeBM’ and are in the process of finalising tie-ups with APW and Wipro Technologies to train their employees.

“We are currently in the process of finalising tie-ups with corporates and will look at training batches of about 50 people for non-specialised classroom training and smaller batches of about 25 people for group exercises. Though we have been conducting management development and executive training programmes for about 15 companies including Kanbay, Suzlon and Wipro Technologies, we thought the time was right to start contractual programmes with such corporates,” said joint-director of IIeBM, Jai Singh.

“It is observed that those entering BPOs are typically young students who do not possess managerial skill sets or the right domain expertise and hence have a problem working in teams and so our programmes will deal with these aspects.”

indianexpress: THE Pune model of mitigating load shedding by roping in private captive power projects (CPPs) to generate electricity may soon be implemented in cities like Nagpur, Nashik, Navi Mumbai, Aurangabad and Kolhapur. The Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) has suggested the CII-led public-private partnership to the state government as an interim measure to reduce load shedding.

“We have recommended the model to the state government in places where there are low transmission and distribution losses and enough capacity to generate power by the industry,” MERC chairman Pramod Deo said after a MSEDCL hearing for increasing load shedding on Wednesday night.
 
The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), which initiated the no load shedding model in Pune, has also written to MSEDCL extending its full support to start the project in other cities across the state. “We are willing to help set up the model to more cities. CII can help draw up the plan by collecting data on the power shortage and the captive power available,” CII chairman (Pune Zone) Pramod Chaudhari said.

While the model will not roll out relief against load shedding in the current year, CII is confident that they can have it up and running in several cities by 2008. “Our priority right now is to streamline the model in Pune and extend it after the one-year pilot project is over in May,” Chaudhari said.

However, the industries body implored the state government to bring down the price of high-speed diesel for promoting captive power generation to meet the energy shortfall. “It is necessary for the government to cut down sales tax and other duties on high speed diesel for captive power generation. This will encourage industries to go in for captive power projects and meet their energy demands,” Chaudhri said.

He said cutting sales tax on high-speed diesel would not cost the exchequer more than a few cores per month. “When the state is willing to show its concern for the power situation by buying expensive energy from Andhra Pradesh, they can also cut down diesel prices to meet our requirement internally,” he said.

indianexpress: THERE’S good news for those couples looking to get a registered marriage done at the earliest. You no longer need to stand in long-winding queues in front of the Registrar of Marriage Bureau to tie the knot.

Just hop, skip and jump to one of the 14 Pune Municipal Corporation’s ward offices and get married right there, right then.

The Public Health Department has issued a Government Regulation (GR) notification, empowering and appointing ward offices of the Municipal Corporation, Chief Officers of the Municipal Councils/Nagar Panchayats and Chief Executive Officers of the Cantonments to assume the role of marriage registrars. The notification will come in effect from March 1 this year.

This means that residents of Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Dehu and Pune Cantonment will have additional marriage registration centres at the ward office level and Cantonment board offices. As of today, people can only register their marriages at the Registrar of Marriage Bureaus — in the District Collector’s building near the Pune railway station — which faces a staff crunch and lack of facilities.

The office has just one table, one marriage officer, a clerk and a peon. The bureau receives over 700 applications every month

indianexpress: WITH e-learning picking up in a major way, the University of Pune has responded to the need for trained professionals to develop content for these courses. A postgraduate diploma course in Instructional Design, administered by the Department of Communication and Journalism in collaboration with e-learning centre Maximise Learning Pvt Ltd., will equip students to design content as well as develop the overall design and instructions for various online courses.

“While e-learning companies today recruit journalists and technical writers with good command over English language, there are many capabilities which need to be developed for the field of instructional design, such as interacting with subject experts to develop relevant content, using media and design principles to present content in an effective and engaging manner,” said Shrikant Gadre, coordinator at Maximise Learning.

The 30-day part-time course will be open for graduates in any discipline from a recognised university, who are proficient in English and typing on a computer keyboard. The selection procedure includes a screening test for English proficiency, which will be held on February 17. Fees for the course will be Rs 10,000.

Admission forms for the first batch beginning March 6 will be available at the Ranade Institute, Fergusson College Road, between 4 pm to 6 pm from February 15 onwards. For further details contact Shrikant Gadre at 66050600/ 94220 00101.