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TOI : PUNE: Despite the Rs 60,000 cr loan-waiver announced by the Finance Minister, as many as 316 farmers in Vidarbha, 40 in Marathwada and 31 in western Maharashtra have ended their lives since January this year.

Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti says, “All these announcements have remained only on paper. Banks are after farmers to repay their loans. They are telling the farmers that they have not received any official communication from the government on the loan waiver. The government is looking at ad hoc measures, not permanent solutions. There is a wave of resentment among the farmers in Vidarbha.”

Farmers from the sugar belt echo Tiwari’s feelings. “Congress president Sonia Gandhi held a massive rally in Sangli recently, but paid no heed to our suffering. Seventeen farmers have ended their lives in Sangli this year,” says farmer Baba Sawant.

Apart from 17 cases in Sangli, six farmers have ended their lives in Satara, three in Solapur and one in Pune.

When contacted, a revenue official said the families of nine farmers in western Maharashtra have received help from the government. “The other cases are under consideration,” he added.

The farmers point out that despite the loan waiver, what is haunting their fraternity is the crumbling of the co-operative movement due to corruption involving political bigwigs, incomplete irrigation projects, insufficient institutional finance, inadequate inputs such as seeds and fertilisers, lack of marketing facilities and hold of money-lenders.

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TOI : PUNE: Valecha Engineering Limited, the firm undertaking the concretisation work of the Ganeshkhind road has alleged that the work was disrupted by some miscreants on Wednesday night and hence it has incurred a loss of more that Rs 43 lakh.

Sources in the firm told TOI that a political leader was involved in instigating some residents of Khairewadi to stop the work.

“Night is the time when we carry out major part of the work. We had just transported nearly 150 cubic metres of concrete costing Rs 7.5 lakh at the site when the work was stopped. All the cement became worthless as work was held up till morning and the cement got hardened,” a company official said, adding that the machinery too got damaged as it was stuck at the bottom of the cement heap. “Our staff requested them to only let them move the machinery, but they threatened to beat them up,” he said. The official pointed out that such problems are often faced by contractors when people interfere with the work, due to which the project gets delayed besides losses.

“The work has now started after meetings with civic officials, but what is the guarantee that such incidents won’t recur. We are the only firm in the city deploying such an expensive machinery,” the official said.

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TOI : ‘Serving humans is serving God,’ said Bhagwan Mahavir, the revered Jain Saint. Diligently following his teachings and spreading his word far and wide are thousands of followers born in a time when his wisdom is most needed.

An organisation committed to spreading Mahavir’s word is the Sri Jain Yuvak Sanghtana. The Sanghatna will be marking the Mahavir Jayanti celebrations on Friday by holding a unique blood donation camp. It aims to collect 10,000 bottle of blood from all over Pune. The Sanghtana will establish 30 blood collection centres, which will collect blood between 8 am to 4 pm. “This is a first of its kind camp in Pune,” states Sampat Jain, chairman of the Sanghatana.

To encourage blood donation, the donors will be given a gift on behalf of builder Gulabchandji Gundesha.

Meanwhile, the Siddhachal Bhavana Mandal presented a musical drama ‘Jo Mahavirayan’ based on the five Kalyanakas of Bhagwan Mahavir on the sixth day of its Mahavir Kalyanak Mahotsav on Wednesday. The five Kalyankas, Chavan, Janam, Diksha, Kevaldnyan and Nirvana were presented through the medium of lyrics, music, dance and dialogues. The second half of the day also witnessed a sermon by Pravinrishiji Maharaj.

As the tale of Rajkumar Vimal was narrated, the audience was asked to relive themselves of all sadness and pain. “Till sadness prevails, temptation will prevail. With temptation comes lust. It is hence that man needs to free himself of sadness,” Pravinrishiji Maharaj said. Print Save EMail Write to Editor Get personalised news s…More

TOI : PUNE: Ambiguities following recent Supreme Court verdict on OBC quota has put the Symbiosis International University (SIU) in a dilemma over going ahead with its much-publicised ‘voluntary affirmative action’ for phased introduction of quota at its institutes.

The SIU has now sought a legal interpretation on whether the apex court judgement automatically supercedes a Delhi High Court order (issued last year) staying the OBC quota at Symbiosis institutes.

The Pune-based institution ranks among the country’s premier deemed universities with over 20,000 students on its roll for various under-graduate and post-graduate programmes. Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM) being the prominent among them.

During the thick of the OBC quota debate last year, the SIU hit national headlines by announcing phased introduction of 27 per cent OBC quota over a period of three years, as a voluntary affirmative action. The plan was to introduce seven per cent quota in the first year, raise it to 14 per cent in the second year and touch the 27 per cent mark in the third year. However, ‘Youth for Equality’ and one Anant Kumar opposed the move in Delhi high court. The HC then restrained SIU from going ahead with the quota. However by that time the SIU had effected 132 OBC admissions.

SIU head S.B. Mujumdar told reporters on Thursday that the institution was still not sure about the application of quota. “The SC verdict has resulted in a few ambiguities vis-a-vis what constitutes a creamy layer that has been kept out of the quota purview; whether the quota is applicable to the post-graduate (PG) courses and does the quota apply to private unaided institutions,” said Mujumdar.

Similarly, the issue of creamy layer remains to be decided, he said. Further, a bill that seeks to bring private unaided institutions within the OBC quota purview is pending in Parliament,…More

TOI : PUNE: Third-year bachelor of science (B.Sc) students complained of an out-of-syllabus question carrying 10 marks in the zoology (paper VI) exam conducted by the University of Pune on Thursday.

The 40-mark paper, titled developmental biology, had four questions of 10 marks each. “The fourth question, which provided a choice for solving one of the two sub-queries, had one sub-query totally out of syllabus,” an affected student told TOI.

She said students had no choice but to solve the only sub-query that was based on the syllabus. “Denying the choice goes against the pattern set for the question paper.”

Varsity’s director for public relations Arvind Nerkar, who spoke to controller of exam M.S. Phirange regarding the issue, said the complaint will be examined and due weightage would be given if the question is established as out of syllabus.

According to a parent, the university should either give an across the board 10 marks to students who attempted the question, or should value the paper for 30 marks and convert the same into 40 marks result. Print Save EMail Write to Editor Get personalised news s…More

TOI : PUNE: The firm that has undertaken the Ganeshkhind road concretisation work on Thursday alleged that 15-20 miscreants from Khairewadi held up the work on Wednesday night and destroyed machinery worth Rs 36 lakh and cement worth Rs 7.5 lakh.

Representatives of the contracting firm, Valecha Engineering Limited, said it has incurred huge losses as the miscreants stopped the work for the entire night and threatened the workers and engineers on site.

Sources in the firm told TOI that a political leader was involved in instigating some residents of Khairewadi to stop the work.

Narrating the incident, the representatives said some people in an inebriated condition came around 10 pm at the site opposite Central mall where concretisation work was going on and started threatening to destroy the machinery.

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TOI : PUNE: Politicians fighting to corner credit for the Rs 60,000-crore farm loan waiver should hang their heads in shame. The waiver has come as practically no relief, with as many as 316 farmers in Vidarbha, 40 in Marathwada and 31 in western Maharashtra ending their lives since January this year.

Activists working in these agrarian areas say that neither the intense build-up to the loan waiver nor its actual announcement has helped alleviate the misery of the farmers or take suicide off their minds.

In “suicide zone” Vidarbha, farmer deaths continue unabated. Kishore Tiwari of the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti says the number of deaths since January must be much more than the officially reported 316 as many suicides are not reported at all.

In chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s Marathwada, the number of farmer suicides has touched 40 this year but the administration does not believe all these cases are due to agricultural reasons. “We are looking into the reasons for the suicides. The district-level committees are also doing a check,” said Aurangabad divisional commissioner Sanjay Kumar. He refused to comment when asked whether the central government’s relief package announcement had failed to soothe the farmers.

In his Rs 60,000-crore relief package for farmers, finance minister P. Chidambaram had announced a complete waiver of loans given to small and marginal farmers and a settlement scheme for other farmers.

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