News

indianexpress: For over 13 years, his book brought hope to thousands of readers struggling to break through the shackles of the Indian social structure. Now, Narendra Jadhav’s stirring memoir Amcha Baap aan Amhi is set to inspire the minds of school children. Come June 2008, students in state board schools will have a chapter in their standard VII Marathi textbooks, which will comprise excerpts from Jadhav’s interview on the book.

Amcha Baap aan Amhi, published in 1993, depicts the story of Jadhav’s father Damodar, a Mahar, who battles the caste system to strive for a better life for his family. The book, originally written in Marathi, has been ranked among the top bestsellers in the state.

Apart from being translated into several other languages including English, French, German, Korean, and Spanish, the book has also inspired a 52-part television series.

Moreover, the book has had a record ten editions published in one single year, and was once ranked ahead of classics like Shyamchi Aai and Mahatma Gandhi’s Story of My Experiments with Truth.

“In the seventh standard syllabus, we wanted to introduce the students to eminent personalities, who have achieved success against all odds,” said Madhav Rajguru, special officer for Marathi at the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research. Jadhav, as the Vice Chancellor of the Pune University and the chief economic analyst with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), was chosen as one of the role models.

One of the chapters in the textbook will include excerpts from an interview with Jadhav by Rajguru and Shrikant Chaugule. Jadhav talks about the various factors that shaped his life, how he was able to achieve the goals set out for himself, and so on.

indianexpress: The national rollout of Aditya Birla group’s Rs 9,000 crore retail venture took off in Pune on Friday with the first more outlet in Viman Nagar. Two other more outlets will be opened at Nigdi and Padmavati on Saturday and by June 15, Pune will have a total of 14 more outlets up and running.

“The opening of more in Pune marks the beginning of a pan-India business for Aditya Birla Retail Limited (ABRL),” Sumant Sinha, CEO, ABRL said. While the group has begun with a series of more supermarket stores in Pune, there are plans to bring in hypermarkets as well. “There is room for more than one hypermarket in Pune,” he said. Sinha said the company would first consolidate its operations in Pune before venturing into other cities.

“It has taken us 136 days to put this store together. Fitch, the international retail design firm, has designed the stores. There are four key areas of merchandise in every store – fruits and vegetables, staple foods, processed foods and snack and non-food apparels,” Andrew Denby, CEO, Supermarkets, ABRL said.

For fruits and vegetables, the company has entered into an arrangement to source produce from 250 farmers in Pune. “Two collection centres have been set up in the city,” Sinha said.

indianexpress:  It has come to light over 1,000-odd buses of the Pune Municipal Transport are running without road permits. The Regional Transport Authority (RTA) in a letter on August 5, 2006 has withheld issual of road permits to the transport body’s buses after they failed to pay the passenger tax and child welfare cess. The dues together amount to almost Rs 55 crore.

In 2004, the state government had granted permission to PMT for hiring 150 buses on the condition of payment of passenger tax and child welfare cess in installments of Rs 1 crore per month. The transport body was also asked to pay taxes regularly from April 2004. The PMT had around Rs 29 crore as dues then.

However, in August 2006, the state government found that the transport body has failed to pay the taxes. The former than directed RTA to withhold permits of PMT buses for non-compliance of conditions put down by it. In a letter to the general managers on August 5, 2006, RTA gave directions for non-issual of permits to the buses.

On part of the PMT buses, following the RTA’s letter, D C Gupta — one of the private contractors of PMT — wrote a letter to Regional Transport Office (RTO) requesting issual of permits and RC books on August 19, 2006.

When enquiry was made regarding any action being taken on these buses for plying without permits, RTO officials said they have been sending letters to the respective general managers of the both the transport bodies. “We are not taking any stringent action as it will cause inconvenience to public,” the official said. The permits of a transport body are renewed after every five years.

indianexpress:  Municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi on Friday said the civic body is taking steps to ensure that heavy rain does not inundate the city this monsoon. He was speaking on Maharashtra’s state disaster management policy and action plan at a workshop organised by Prayas, an NGO working on policy analysis and advocacy that promotes public interest.

Pardeshi said the drainage system has been mapped using satellite imagery. “These are being used for better flood management,” he said, adding that many lessons learnt from earlier disasters such as the Killari quake were not being effectively applied in dealing with subsequent disasters.
 
Though government has a role to play in disaster management there is also a need to build capabilities of the local people to effectively cope with disasters

Thermax director Anu Agha, member of Maharashtra state disaster management authority Atul Deulgaonkar, representative of Oxfam-Australia Milind Bokil and Subodh Wagle of Prayas were the other panelists.

indianexpress: Purandar fort, which is about 40 km south-east of Pune, is all set to get developed as a tourist location. The district collectorate has outlined a Rs 8.5 crore plan for the fort, which is the birth place of Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj. The first phase of the plan will be undertaken this year.

The project was mooted by district guardian minister Ajit Pawar. It envisages an overall renovation of the fort premises. The fort, which figures repeatedly in history. It is connected with the rising of Shivaji against the Mughals and was the favourite stronghold of the Peshwas. This is for the first time the fort is being taken up for renovation. “The roads, footpaths and overall area development has been assigned to different departments. The Public Works Department (PWD) will take up constuction of the four roads leading to the fort. The State Highway 63 to Narayanpeth, the road from Narayanpeth to Purandar gate and the Purandar gate to the Sambhaji hall will all be renovated. Footpaths on both sides of the road leading to the fort entrance as well as the road leading to Kedareshwar temple too will be done up,’’ said collector Prabhakar Deshmukh of the first phase of the plan.

The Forest Department has agreed to undertake the greening up of the area. According to Deshmukh, the road leading to the fort would be lined with trees on both sides. “A separate monument, an office building, a dormitory, guest house and library are part of this innovative plan,’’ he added.

The fort was given as a jagir to Maloji Bhosale, grandfather of Shivaji Maharaj in 1596 AD. Incidentally, Shivaji had to struggle very hard to establish his control over the fort in 1646 AD. In 1665 AD, the fort was besieged by the Mughal forces. It was here that Murar Baji, the gallant commander of the fort, was killed.

indianexpress: The Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examination results will be declared on June 8. This was announced by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education in a statement on Friday. The results will be put up on the state board website, and given out to the respective junior colleges at the prescribed collection centres at 11 am.

There will be no merit list of state toppers this year. This is in line with the mode of results in practice in Central Board of Secondary Education and the Indian Certificate for Secondary Education .
 
However, information will be given regarding students who will receive awards instituted by various donors as well as the board. This summarised booklet will be submitted to the respective junior colleges, along with marksheets, and the summary of the marks obtained by the students in those colleges.

There will also be no detailed result booklet giving information of students in a particular divisional board, their seat numbers and marks obtained.

Those students who want to apply for revaluation of marks must approach the respective divisional board latest by June 18 along with the prescribed fee.

If students want to apply for the re-examination to be held in October 2007, applications should be sent with the requisite fee to the respective junior college latest by June 18, or June 28 with late fee.

reuters:  Children have always enjoyed make-believe. Now, some new Web sites are letting them live out their fantasies in virtual worlds using self-designed avatars.

Unlike the often-violent world of videogames, virtual sites such as Stardoll, Doppelganger, Club Penguin and Gaia Online hark back to a more innocent time of tea parties and playing outdoors — and they are winning young users in droves.

The success of Second Life, one of the most popular virtual lifestyle sites for adults, with even its own banks and real estate agents, has helped to raise interest in the genre.

At Stardoll, young girls can create their own online ‘MeDoll’ identities from a template that allows the user to choose everything from skin tone to eyebrow shapes.

Most important, it allows the user to dress-up their avatar in the latest teen fashion.

Stockholm-based Stardoll, which only started four years ago, has been a huge hit with girls aged seven to 17 years.

The founders say they have over 7 million users in dozens of countries, even though Stardoll only very recently became available in four languages other than English.

reuters: Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it would offer improved capacity to search copyrighted books on the Internet as the company battles Google Inc. for advertising dollars from Web-based services.

Microsoft said it had received permission from dozens of publishers including Cambridge University Press, McGraw-Hill Cos Inc. and Simon & Schuster, a CBS Corp. unit, to use their copyrighted titles.

The changes to its Live Search Books comes months after Microsoft attacked Google for what it called the Web search leader’s “cavalier” approach to copyright protection in services like Google Book Search.

The world’s top software maker said Google’s ambitious plan to scan millions of published works and make them available via its search system without first gaining copyright holders’ permission could open the door to massive infringement.

Microsoft’s Live Search Books is part of its “Live” online services aimed at augmenting its dominance in desktop software with a host of Web offerings to rival Google. Both companies aim to make money from Web services through advertising.

Microsoft said Live Search Books would now include a counter telling how many pages are left within the number of pages they are allowed to view, and tools to allow people to more easily search within books using specific keywords.

The preview pane will include a cover image, book summary and table of contents and the system will have links allowing readers to buy books from online retailers or the publisher.

reuters: Japan’s Tamagotchi virtual pets are set for a new life as movie stars, with an animated film about their exploits to debut later this year.

The egg-shaped Tamagotchi, which simulates the life of a real pet so that “owners” have to feed it and clean up after it, was wildly popular after its 1997 release by Bandai Co, now called Namco Bandai Holdings Inc. (7832.T: Quote, Profile, Research).

More than 40 million units were sold globally, with the 2004 release of the Tamagotchi Plus version introduced by Bandai America sparking a second wave of demand.

In the movie, set to come out in December, several of the Tamagotchi characters befriend a human girl who shows up at their home on a star.

“The Tamagotchi characters are pretty popular in their own right, and we thought it would be nice for people to see their favorite characters moving and acting in color,” a Bandai spokeswoman said.

reuters: Google Inc. said on Friday it is acquiring Feedburner Inc., bolstering the Internet advertising leader’s capacity to distribute both media and advertising to blogs via Web syndication technology.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, a Google spokesman said. Various blog reports in recent weeks had put the price of a potential deal at about $100 million, but those reports could not be confirmed.

Feedburner is a pioneer in the market for delivering the latest updated information to other Web sites using technology known as Really Simple Syndication (RSS). Customers include the Wall Street Journal, BBC and Amazon.com Inc..

“We’re constantly looking for ways to identify and offer new tools for content creators and Website publishers,” Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice present of product management, said in a blog post, adding that the purchase helps it provide new tools for its hundreds of thousands of advertising customers.

Feedburner also offers analytics to help Web publishers understand who reads their sites, as well as embedded advertising allowing Web site publishers to get paid based on the audiences they attract via RSS feeds.

The deal, while small in financial terms, is the latest in a series of rapid moves to consolidate the fast-growing online advertising market. The deal would expand Google’s existing blog advertising service, known as AdSense for feeds, which delivers targeted advertising tied to Web page content.

Two weeks ago, Google rival Microsoft Corp. announced its largest-ever acquisition, a $6 billion deal to buy aQuantive Inc., the largest independent online ad company. In April, Google agreed to acquire an aQuantive competitor, DoubleClick, for $3.1 billion.

Feedburner, based in Chicago, counts more than 430,000 Web site publishers as users of RSS. A total of 736,000 RSS feeds, including roughly 110,000 audio or video feeds, are delivered to readers as publishers update their Web sites, according to Feedburner.