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TOI : PUNE: District guardian minister Ajit Pawar on Sunday said the district administration has been instructed to make the necessary arrangements to provide services, such as uninterrupted water supply, healthcare services, and sanitation to warkaris at the palkhi processions to Pandharpur.

A special meeting was held in the city to review the arrangements for the palkhi procession which begins on June 27 from Alandi and Dehu.

The procession, which is expected to see a participation of lakhs of devotees, popularly known as warkaris, will reach the temple town of Pandharpur after covering three districts on foot in 21 days. The yearly procession covers more than 300-km distance in Pune, Satara and Solapur districts.

Pawar assured uninterrupted supply of water and tight security at all the halts on the palkhi procession routes. He said the district administration have been instructed to erect police booths and help centres on the palkhi route. He also instructed the set up of a dedicated control room for the procession.

Pawar said the government is prepared to provide the basic amenities to the warkaris. This will also include services like ambulance and fire protection. He said considering the good monsoon in last couple of years, the number of warkaris are expected to rise this year. “Considering this, the administration has been directed to beef up the security measures on the palkhi route and on the areas where the procession will halt,” he said.

Representatives from different organisations, district and local administrations, heads of the palkhi procession, divisional commissioner Nitin Kareer and district collector Chandrakant Delve were among who were present at the meeting.

“We have received suggestions and letters from various organisations. The government would address these and will try to make the palkhi procession hassle-free,” Pawar said. …More

TOI : Eighty-year-old Vidya Ketkar is a teacher with a difference. Her humble demeanour and unassuming attitude has endeared to many. And her teaching style, during her 32-year-old career, has always stressed on the practical rather than the theoretical. Going beyond books, she used instances from real life to help her students understand and become more knowledgeable.

“When I met leprosy patients and those who were physically handicapped, I was touched by their struggle for survival. I thought of introducing them to my students and involving both in a question-and answer-session,” says Ketkar, who used to teach mathematics at Vimalabai Garwave high school.

Through this unconventional approach, the interactions proved to be quite a learning lesson. This led Ketkar to better understand the hearing- visually- and physically-impaired. In fact, her continued communication with them led her to publish her observations in the early 1980s.

During that decade, Ketkar also undertook a project involving both students and leprosy patients. “I took students from 12 schools in urban and rural Pune to leprosy centres. The subject of leprosy wasn’t included in anything they studied. I had to find a way to teach them about reality and sensitise them,” says Ketkar. Her efforts were finally published as a project in 1982, titled ‘Destigmatising Leprosy’.

Today, Ketkar makes the most of retired life. Dividing her time between meeting old friends and new, she often lends a helping hand to recuperating patients in hospitals. “Very often, the family members of patients are too busy to visit them. So I fill in for them whenever I can,” she says.

This altruistic approach to life led to her selling off her property and donating Rs 17.5 lakh to various organisations and NGOS like Niwara, Nisargsevak, AFARM and Andha Shraddha Nirmulan Samiti.

“I don’t need so much money anyway,” says Ketkar. “I thought of putting it to…More

TOI : PUNE: A hike in auto rickshaw fares in Pune city was announced on Monday. As per the revised fare structure, commuters will have to pay Rs 10 for the first kilometre and Rs 8 for each of the next kilometres travelled. This is Rs 2 more than the existing fare structure.

The revised fares will come into effect from Wednesday after the Regional Transport Authority (RTA) comes out with the revised fare table on Tuesday.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the RTA held at the office of the divisional commissioner, Pune. Divisional commissioner Nitin Kareer, commissioner of police Jayant Umranikar and RTA member Baba Shinde were present at the meeting.

Addressing a press conference, Kareer said, “It has been decided that no further fare hike will be implemented unless the petrol price crosses the Rs 65-limit”. …More

TOI : PUNE: Results of the annual middle school (Std IV) scholarship examination touched a new high on Monday with an unprecedented 220 students scoring 300 out of 300 marks to make up the entire state merit list (rural segment) at rank no. 1 for the 2008 edition. Of these, 43 students were from the Pune district.

Pune city had a dominating presence in the state merit list (urban segment) by accounting for 53 out of the 157 students who made it to the list. Here too, the list ended at rank no. 3 with as many as 19 students sharing the first position, including nine from Pune.

Over 11.87 lakh students appeared for the exam and 9.78 lakh of these were declared as successful for an overall passing percentage of 76.78. This represented an improvement by 2.91 per cent over the 73.87 per cent success rate registered in 2007.

The scholarship exams for middle and high (Std VII) schools are simultaneously conducted in February each year across the state by the Pune-headquartered Maharashtra state council for examinations (MSCE), an autonomous exam-conducting body of the state government. …More

TOI : PUNE: In a horrifying incident, well-known physician Vijay Ramchandra Ghaisas (66) was brutally done to death with sharp weapons at his residence at Erandwane here on Monday morning.

The Deccan Gymkhana police, who suspect three persons to be involved in the killing, said Ghaisas was stabbed as many as 36 times in the stomach. The police are ruling out robbery as the motive behind the murder even though they found Rs 2,000 lying near Ghaisas’ body.

The incident came to light when Ghaisas’ maid, Vithabai Balu Gotal (55), arrived at the bungalow, ‘Suman’, which is located at lane no. 14 off Prabhat road, at 9.15 am. When she got no response after ringing the doorbell several times, she went to the other door at the rear of the bungalow.

According to the police, Gotal said that she saw a stranger running out of the bungalow from this entrance. On entering the house, she was aghast to find the doctor lying in a pool of blood. She said that just when she was about to raise an alarm, two men gagged her and pushed her into the bathroom before fleeing.

Gotal told the police that she got out of the bathroom and contacted a neighbour, Anil Dani, over the telephone. She then ran to the nearby Prabhat road police chowky. Meanwhile, Dani also called up the police.

Inspector Jaywant Deshmukh, in-charge of the Deccan Gymkhana police station, and other policemen rushed to the spot and began the investigations.

The police have found a rope at the scene of the crime and believe that the attackers may have tried to strangulate the doctor before stabbing him.

Interestingly, bloodstains were found at the door of the house and the police say the blood doesn’t match that of the doctor’s. It could be the blood of one of the…More

TOI : PUNE: Prashant Purushottam Agrawal of Adarsha education society’s arts, commerce and science college in Hingoli scored an unprecedented 200 out of 200 marks to emerge the state topper in ‘MHT-CET 2008′, the combined entrance exam for admissions to engineering, pharmacy and medical seats in Maharashtra.

Results of the test, which was written on May 8 by over 2.03 lakh students from across Maharashtra, were declared on Saturday by the director of medical education and research (DMER), who is also the competent authority for MHT-CET.

Prashant had appeared in the physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) section of the entrance exam. In the physics, chemistry and biology (PCB) section — meant for health sciences and pharmacy courses — Mumbai’s Shefali Pradeep Parikh of D.G. Ruparel junior college, Mahim, emerged tops in state by scoring 198 out of 200 marks.

Shefali was followed by Priyanka Sanjay Jog of Shivaji Science College, Nagpur, and Ishan Sunil Dabhade of D.G. Ruparel College, at second and third position, respectively. Both Priyanka and Ishan, scored 197 marks each, but Priyanka had a better score in biology, a key subject, to take the second position.

An official at the DMER headquarters in Mumbai told TOI that Vidarbha region registered the best passing percentage among the three regions. The passing percentage refers to students scoring the minimum prescribed marks or more to qualify for admissions to engineering, medical and pharmacy seats.

The qualifying benchmark is 50 per cent score for open category and 40 per cent for reserved category students. Allotment of seats is effected through a centralised process based on the merit list prepared from the MHT-CET scores.

Of the 2.03 lakh candidates, over 1.35 lakh appeared in the PCB section while the remaining 68,000 appeared in the PCM section, the official said.

Vidarbha’s passing percentage was 24.98 as against the rest of…More

TOI : When city-based International Longevity Centre-India (ILC-I) launched its helpline in the year 2006 for the elderly, it just received two calls of outright abuse, but today the frequency of calls has gone up to 5 per week. Clearly, Pune has forgotten to respect its seniors.

While, instances of abuse continue to rise, most citizens are clueless about what qualifies as ‘abuse’. As per the ILC’s definition, a single or repeated act or lack of appropriate behaviour or mistreatment, occurring within any relationship, where there is an expectation or trust, which causes harm or distress to older persons, is called abuse.

“Even not speaking to your mother for no apparent reason is abuse,” clarifies Sharatchandra Gokhale, president of ILC-I. Broadly speaking, abuse can be: physical abuse, psychological or emotional abuse, sexual abuse, financial or material abuse and intentional or unintentional neglect and abandonment.

“The rise in calls is depressing, but the trend clearly indicates that an increasing number of senior citizens are being ill-treated. Sadly, the perpetrators are mostly their children,” he says.

While Gokhale categorises these calls as incidents of “outright abuse”, he feels the number just represents the tip of the iceberg. “We are sure that many incidents remain under wraps and go unreported,” he adds. With India’s elderly population projected to increase to 137 million by the year 2021, the statement is indeed spine chilling.

As per the 2001 census, the elderly constituted 7.5 per cent of the total population and three fourths of the elderly population lived in India’s rural areas. “Urbanisation, westernisation and the growing demand to stay in nuclear families are the primary reasons for increasing instances of abuse,” cites Gokhale.

Painting a gruesome picture of the state of our old parents and grandparents, the additional commissioner of Mumbai police in 2006, at a round table on Elder Abuse organised by ILC-…More

TOI : PUNE: Civic activist and convenor of ‘Pedestrians first’ Prashant Inamdar has raised concerns over the setting up of traffic police booths on footpaths and zebra crossings, claiming that they cause hindrance to pedestrian movement.

Speaking to press reporters here on Friday, Inamdar said that pedestrian lives are put in danger, as they have to step on to the roads since the traffic booths block the footpath.

“Some of the booths also obstruct the path of turning vehicles or block the view of the traffic signal lights, leading to unsafe traffic conditions. After gathering information, we have learnt that private agencies have installed the booths in public places without prior approval from the PMC or traffic police. They have been set up at junctions to suit their commercial interest which is a misuse of public space,” Inamdar claimed. He said that the traffic police booths provided earlier were not user-friendly and hence were lying unused.

“However, even the new booths are not being used by the traffic police as their convenience has not been considered. The very purpose of installing the booths has thus been defeated,” Inamdar said.

He added that he has asked municipal commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi to instruct ward offices to remove all such hazardous traffic police booths. …More

TOI : PUNE: Consider this. Of the 22,600 city students, who appeared in the MHT-CET 2008, only three have made it to the list of top 100 scorers in the state in the physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) group, for engineering seats.

It is a similar picture in the physics, chemistry and biology (PCB) group also for Pune students which are for the medical admissions. If one takes a closer look at the performance by students from other districts, Pune has once again lagged behind in the MHT-CET outcome.

Feedback from students collected by various CET coaching centres has revealed that the scoring in Maths has not been on the expected lines. And also, the Physics paper involved ‘more than usual’ arithematical calculations, making the paper very lenghty.

Harish Butale who has been spearheading an effort for the past few years to improve of CET performance of Pune students observed, “Medical results in particular have been tough in this year. Last year, the medical admissions closed at the score of 181. But this year, due to tough results the cut-off point may come down to around 168.”

“Last year over 350 students from Pune scorced 190 and above in the PCB group but this year there is a sharp fall,” said Butale adding that low scoring in physics has contributed to this decline.

According to the coaching expert Bindusar Khanade, a lack of orientation and approach towards competitive entrance tests like the MHT-CET was behind the poor showing by Pune students. “The realisation ought to be there that the higher secondary certificate (HSC) and the CET requirements are fairly different and call for different approach,” he said.

Butale concurred with this view and pointed out that few colleges take special effort to provide CET orientation to students. Further, studies by various organisations at state and national levels have shown…More