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Archive for April 22, 2007

Parents see red over wards taking after Men in Blue

April 22, 2007 at 8:10 am

· City

indianexpress: Even as many companies are changing their pitch on cricketers endorsing their products, with one of them depicting youngsters grooming themselves for the next world cup as the main protagonists, at the ground level, the youth are showing a growing disaffection for the game. There is a 50 per cent drop in attendance for some of the leading summer cricket camps in the city as cricket is no longer the preferred game.

There are over 20 such established camps that are run across the city for 45-60 days duration, with many of them running at half their normal intake of around 100. Clearly, it’s the parents who see red at the mention of the Men in Blue as they are seen dissuading their wards from putting on the flannels. Those fleeing the cricket grounds this summer seem to be making a beeline for the pools swimming, basketball courts and a host of other sporting grounds.
 
“For sure, this is the World Cup effect. We had two batches of 40 players each till last year. But this year only 50 have enrolled,” said Prakash Navrekar of Shivajians Cricket Club, one of the three clubs from the city qualified for the Maharashtra Cricket Association Invitation League. “In fact, in my 25 years of coaching, this is for the first time parents have deserted cricket camps,” he added.

Ramesh Dimbar, secretary of the Maharashtra Cricket Vikas Sanstha – more famous for Vijay Honrao’s coaching manual — was of the same opinion. “Though there are boys coming from Latur, Jalgaon and Aurangabad, the numbers have reduced considerably,” Dimbar said.

According to The Club of Maharashtra’s Avinash Kokate, parents are seeking fresh pastures for their children. “Basketball, swimming and karate are the alternatives being considered because they also help sustain good fitness levels,” Kokate said.

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‘Puneites financially vulnerable’

April 22, 2007 at 8:08 am

· City

indianexpress: WHILE the city may be slowly moving away from its tag of a pensioner’s paradise, in a recent survey on the earning, spending and saving habits of Indians, at least 89 per cent Puneites said that they save money for financial security during old age. The all-India survey conducted by Max New York Life along with NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) however points out that not many necessarily invest the saved money in high rate investments.

While 69 per cent deposit their savings in a bank, 20 per cent prefer keeping them at home. Not many invest in mutual funds, stock market, bonds or any high yielding savings tools.

As regards life insurance — one of the stable financial forces behind middle class Indians till pre-liberalisation — although 99 per cent of those surveyed are aware of it, only 53 per cent have a life insurance policy.

Also 82 per cent households in the city feel they cannot survive for more than a year on their current savings in case of loss of major source of household income. Meanwhile 9 per cent households said they will not be able to survive for more than six months and 66 per cent households said will be able to survive up to one year on their current savings.

“It shows how vulnerable Pune is when it comes to financial security,” said Rajender Sud, Senior Vice President - Head of Agency (North & East), Max New York Life.

So what does that mean for citizens of Pune, listed by Forbes as the third fastest growing city in the world? The report mentions that “It is possible for Pune households to earn more as economic growth accelerates, but their earnings might still not be sufficient to cover their increased needs and they remain at financial risk.”

However, 71 per cent households said they were confident of finding an equivalent in less than six months and only 6 per cent households said they were not sure of where they would find an equivalent of their major source of household income.

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Rs 35.5 lakh for UoP statistics department

April 22, 2007 at 8:07 am

· City

indianexpress: SCHOLARSHIPS for students pursuing MSc in Statistics, training by expert visiting faculty, and workshops on statistical computing — all this will soon be on the cards at the University of Pune’s Department of Statistics, thanks to a grant of Rs 35.5 lakh from the Bangalore-based statistical computing firm Cranes Software International Limited (CSIL).

The first installment of Rs 7 lakh of the grant, which was handed over to the university on April 19 by CSIL executive vice president and statistician Rajeev Karandikar, is for a period of five years, said Statistics department head Uttara Naik-Nimbalkar.
 
A total of four merit-based scholarships will be awarded to students of MSc Statistics, two each for first-year and second-year students. “The scholarship will be for Rs 1200 per month for a year,” she said.

Besides, experts from the field will be invited every year as visiting faculty, who will stay at the University and provide training to the students. A workshop will also be held on Statistical Computing. Another benefit of the grant will be the creation of contractual teaching positions in the department for a period of five years.

CSIL has also provided the department with its specially developed SYSTAT software, used for statistical data analysis.

CSIL is known for its SYSTAT and Sigma Plot software and is also the Indian distributor of MATLAB, which is a mathematics engineering software package.

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Self-reliance the motto for PMC’s facility centres

April 22, 2007 at 8:05 am

· City

indianexpress:  FOURTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD Anand Gaikwad is a happy man today. A plumber, working under the PMC’s civic centre, he not only feels secure, but respected as well.

In the mid 90s after an unsuccessful attempt at running an autorickshaw that plunged him into deep losses and drove him to do odd jobs for sustenance, Gaikwad learnt that the PMC had started facility centres which were helping skilled workers like him gain self-employment

The centres, an effort of the Urban Community Development, play the role of a go-between for service providers like Gaikwad and the end consumers. Set up on the lines of SMART (Self Employed Marketing Association for Grass-root Level Trainers), the centres work in two ways. They either provide a place to service workers from where they can operate or act as a contact between the workers and those in need of repair services for household equipments.

“When I was doing plumbing jobs on my own, there was always this fear of not being able to earn enough to feed the family. Now I have no such tensions as I can bank on the PMC,” says Gaikwad.

The centres were recently upgraded and named Rajiv Gandhi Suvidha Kendra at Karvenagar.

PMC Joint municipal commissioner (UCD) Ashok Kalamkar said, “Often, in case of problem with household equipments, people ask workers to take them and get them repaired. However, the workers do not have a shop or a place of their own. So, the centre provides them with the space.”

The PMC will run the facility centre for the first six months after which the trained workers will have to share the burden from their earnings. “This will instill a spirit of enterprise and self-sustainability in them. The centre will be theirs with the PMC only playing the supporting role,” he said.

Today, with no strong educational background, Gaikwad still manages to earn well. “I have an identity as a PMC’s service man. People trust me and know that they can rely on my services,” he says.

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Scores of nallas set to get official stamp

April 22, 2007 at 8:04 am

· City

indianexpress:  A clutch of nallas and their tributaries, non-existent as per the earlier city Development Plan (DP), are set to get the official stamp of recognition with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) deciding to crack the whip on encroachments that were hitherto allowed to flourish unchecked. The PMC plans to incorporate all nallas and tributaries in its proposed DP, the drafting of which begins later this year.

The PMC’s special team conducted the survey with help of satellite images during the last few months and came out with the finding that the nallas and tributaries in city measure more than 350 km and many of them are being encroached upon. For the survey, the city was divided into 24 parts and surveyors visited all parts of the city to take stock of the situation.
 
“Plan for protecting nallas in 24 watersheds of city is ready with the PMC. Next week this plan would be presented to the general body (GB). The city engineer is ready with the plan and once the GB sanction comes through the plan will be implemented,” said a PMC official.

Now that the PMC has the statistics on the length and width of all the nallas, the plan is to launch an anti-encroachment drive and follow it up with surprise checks every few months thereafter.

The DPs in the past had marked a few nallas and tributaries banning all construction activity on them, but the planners had overlooked the intricate networks of hundreds of natural streams in the city. As a result there was sustained encroachments by builders and squatters, besides dumping of urban waste on a massive scale.

“While sanctioning the construction plan, these nallas were not taken into consideration by the PMC. Developers got permission to construct on natural nallas, since they were non-existent in the DP,” said a PMC official.

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CME relaxes helmet rule for Bhopkhel residents

April 22, 2007 at 8:02 am

· City

indianexpress: THE 22,000 residents of Bhopkel village are heaving a sigh of relief. In a rare move, the College of Military Engineering (CME) at Dapodi, which probably was the only place in town where the helmet rule was strictly enforced, has relaxed the rule for villagers on two-wheelers to Bhopkhel from its gate.

Khed constituency MP Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil said, “With no other road for Bhopkhel, the villagers are forced to use the CME gates and were stopped by the militarymen for not wearing helmets.”
 
The villagers will now be issued special passes with their photographs, which will automatically exclude them from the helmet rule. It was after a meeting on April 13 that the CME agreed to relax the helmet rule for the villagers. The meeting was attended by CME Commandant Lt Gen R R Goswami, Deputy Station Commandant Maj Gen A K Bedi, Brig V K Bhat, Col S Sanyal, Col K K Rapswal, Col Anupam Shukla, Lt Col S Sihorkar, and Shiv Sena member Santosh Ghule. The meeting also agreed to issue of passes to four-wheelers from the village, provided the village submits a list of vehicles with relevant details to the CME.

Ghule said a large population of the village traveled to Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. “Most are industrial labourers, rickshaw drivers and taxi operators,” he said. The village has some 150 vehicles.

The only other option in sight for the villagers is a proposed bridge connecting Bhopkhel to Khadki. Ghule said the alternative road has been pending since 1997.

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