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Literary Society of Miranda House organizes interactive session with author Rosie Jones

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The Literary Society of Miranda House organized an interactive session with Rosie Jones the author of The Last King in India – Wajid Ali Shah, on 24th September.

 

The Last King in India is detailed biography of India’s last king Wajid Ali Shah, who was on the throne when the East India Company decided to take over him. The book talks about the dichotomy that prevails in the mind of people about the complex character of Wajid Ali, who according to the British is described as a debauched ruler who spent all his time with women, indulging in extravagance of art and theatre whereas most of the Indians believe him to be a gifted poet who was robbed of his throne by the East India Company. The book tells his story for the first time using original documents from Indian and British archives.

 

In the interaction, Rosie talked about the Oriental gaze in the novel and many other facts about the life of Wajid Ali. She talked about her journey of meeting various people to trace the descendants of the king. She also had a detailed discussion on the topics related to the book with Professor Shweta Sachdeva Jha of the English department of Miranda House, who was also the discussant of the event.

 

She revealed how her biography of Wajid Ali Shah gives the other side of the coin to his life’s history. She presented a lot of factual information regarding the British regime in India, the presence of Africans in the city of Awadh, women in Wajid Ali’s life and much more. A lot of scandalous pictures were also displayed showing the lavish lifestyle of the Kings of Awadh.

 

“It was not a very entertaining but an engaging and intellectual interactive session,” said Ragini Khullar, the president of the Literary Society of the college. “It was an enlightening talk that lifted the veil behind the supposed ‘decandent and debauched’ king” said Asmita Jain, a second year English honors student of the college.

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St. Stephen's

Complaint against DUTA President Nandita Narain

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A complaint has been made against Nandita Narain, the President of Delhi University Teacher’s Association (DUTA) by Anula Maurya, the Principal of Kalindi College and C.S. Dubey, the Chairman of School of Open Learning (SOL). Both of them have written to the Principal of St. Stephen College’s, Dr. Valson Thampu; Nandita Narain teaches Mathematics at St. Stephens. The complaint alleges misconduct and misbehavior in Kalindi and SOL.

Nandita Narain visited over 70 colleges regarding the recruitment of ad hoc teachers. However, her visit to Kalindi and SOL purportedly accuses DUTA of taking pictures, manhandling and misbehaving with the staff. DUTA is denying the allegations calling it a means of settle scores with Narain for having campaigned against the FYUP.

“We represent the teaching community and we will keep fighting for the causes we stand for. These complaints will not scare us.” Said Nandita Narain.

“If there is a rebellion, it is for DUTA as an organization. There is no point in complaining against one individual. This directly shows that they want to settle a score against us.” said Harish Khanna, the DUTA Secretary.

DUTA is planning to carry out a peaceful demonstration on September 17 in front of the HRD Ministry and another one at UGC on September 25.

 

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News

Delhi University Teacher’s Welfare Fund unaccounted for from the past four years

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The Delhi University Teachers’ Welfare Fund was set up by the teachers themselves to help the fellow teachers in urgent financial needs untimely death and medical reimbursements. Although certain revelations have come up recently, stating that the Welfare Fund has been non-operational and unaccounted for the last four years. To make the process properly administered, it is done via the institutions from where a certain amount of money is deducted from the salaries of the teachers. The fund is administered by a collective group of people who are collectively decided.

Earlier, in the competition of the committee called the Teachers’ Welfare Fund Committee, there would be some teacher representative from the DUTA, the elected teacher representative of the executive council, some members from the academic council, some professors and some non-teaching S.O. staff. But speculations state that the governing body is keeping everything secret about the ongoing matter of questioning of the funds.

Expressing deep concern over the matter, Delhi University Teachers’ Association’s president Nandita Narain says, “Everything about Delhi University has changed in the past four years. All representatives are being handpicked.” “The matter came into light when certain teachers who were in some financial distress applied for the funds. First they were told that there is one S.O. in the School of Open Learning to whom they need to submit their application to. DUTA was not made aware in any meeting about the existing place. We are trying to find out what’s going. There was no dialog between the Vice Chancellor, the administration and the DUTA.” She said. “What we heard from a certain teacher was that the fund was not being managed properly, so the S.O. has thrown up his hands because of the big mess. So we asked him to directly approach the VC to account him for the funds and where the money was going.”

DUTA’s white-paper is a document on the large scale mis-governance, financial scams and violation of the rule of law for which the association has documentary evidence. In this case, it consists of 450 pages of the lies which they got to know about this scam. She said that DUTA is currently looking into the matter, “We have put it in out white-paper which is one of the documents regarding the financial scams of this university and we have demanded that the body should have new staff quickly. We have visited honorable presidents Pratibha Patil and Pranab Mukherjee and nothing has been done to restore the peace in this matter. We will fight against this large scale victimization of teachers in this university.”

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Interviews

Interview with KMC’s RoboPhysicists Society

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The Robo Physicists Society of Kirori Mal College won two extremely prestigious accolades in May-June this year. From being the only international team whose paper on ‘Enabling Long Duration Missions Through Holistic Habitat Design’ got selected for a presentation at NASA, to securing13th position in the Mars Society’s Rover Challenge, the society has indeed made Delhi University and India proud.

While in a conversation with the team, they revealed some experiences of their journey. Here are some excerpts from the interview-

Question – From being regular undergraduate students of Delhi University to competing against people pursuing their PhDs and Masters internationally, what has your journey comprised of?

Team RoboPhysicists – The journey has been a wonderful learning experience till now. We met people who were more learned than us but that just encouraged us to do even better. We made great friends with the participants and even with the judges from NASA and learned a lot from them. As for the competition, we strived to do our best everywhere. More importantly, we were fuelled by our wish to make India stand at par with other international teams. As a result, we stood out at both the competitions and did better than quite a few other international colleges, competing with students who were more learned and more experienced than us.

Question – The challenges you faced in both the competitions were highly technical and the competition had engineers from international institutions. How did you go about these challenges?

Team RoboPhysicists – There’s no doubt about the fact that the challenges were highly technical. But here at DU, we pursue Physics and all that we did was to apply the concepts we learned to the real world. We didn’t need an “engineering” tag to take on to the challenges there. Our zeal and passion guided us and we strove more each day. The result was that our rover this
time was much more advanced than the last year.

Question – How did your society start out on international ventures like NASA and the Rover Challenge?

Team RoboPhysicists – Well the person who deserves the credit for this is our Faculty Advisor, Dr. Sumitra Mohanty. She is an Associate Professor in Physics at Kirori Mal College. She has been a voracious speaker disseminating her ideas and knowledge in various seminars and conferences around the globe. Under her dynamic advisor ship, the college has participated twice each in NASA’S Great Moonbuggy Challenge and NASA’s Lunabotics Mining Competition and in NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems
Concepts and Academic Linkage and in Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge.

Question – You must have interacted with fellow students, seniors and professors from all over the world. What were the common and different factors in their knowledge and education in comparison with us?

Team RoboPhysicists– There isn’t much difference. But one very noticeable difference was that in US, students aren’t bound by limits of the stream they are pursuing. It’s no surprise to find a mechanical guy taking up electronics in future, whereas that’s not the case in India’s education system. It’s good in a way that the students are open to options. Also their courses are designed in a way that they can understand where they can contribute the best. Education wise too, students there are more technologically “handy”.

Question – How was that moment when KMC’s RoboPhysicists Society became the only international team whose paper got selected for the presentation at NASA?

Team RoboPhysicists -The moment was unexplainable. It took us through all emotions in just a few moments. We did our best and submitted the paper. We were glad to realize that our work stood out and got selected. Even at the forum we received great appreciation; not just because we were the only international team but also because we were the only team without any aerospace
engineering student.

Question – How was the reception back in the college on your return after the tremendous victory?

Team RoboPhysicists– It was great. We got a lot of appreciation and encouragement at our college and even at the University. All our teachers were proud of us. We also got special appreciation from the Former Chief Minister, Smt. Sheila Dixit.

Question – Lastly, any message you would like to share with our readers, especially to those pursuing physics?

Team RoboPhysicists– Pursuing Physics is no child’s play. Take pride in what you are doing and go all out to explore and apply your classroom knowledge. We at KMC RoboPhysicists have tried to do our best and have proved ourselves time and again, competing not just with the best engineering institutes of India but also internationally. And we did it because we wished and
believed that we could do it.

 

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DUB News

Vishleshan, The Economics Seminar in Miranda House

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Arthashastra , the Economics Society Miranda House organized a seminar on 28th of August with honourable guest speaker Rajeev Malhotra. The seminar was aimed at discussion and interaction on the Union Budget and its importance, Budget 2014, GST and the Planning Commission.

Mr Malhotra has served as the Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Finance and has formerly served as an Executive Officer at the Planning Commission. He is a professor, an Executive Director at Centre for Development and Finance. He is also a celebrated lead author of the book India Public Policy Report. The vision behind organizing this seminar was to invite engaging and eminent speakers to address a young audience on global economic conundrums.

“By inviting students from various colleges and specialties like Political Science, Commerce and Mathematics, we hope to encourage a multiplicity of perspectives on key issues.” said Raavi Agarwal, a third year student of Economics honors and the president of the Economics Society, “We felt a discussion on the Union Budget was imperative for an insight into the policy maker’s mindset which would help us understand the minutiae of the budget and public policy as a whole.”

The agenda of the seminar was an appraisal of the Union Budget and the role of Fiscal Policy and its entirety. The speaker, Rajeev Malhotra addressed questions regarding the effectiveness of public policy in India and bottlenecks to efficacy of policies. He also explained some key terms and concepts related to the FRBM act, Fiscal policy, Deficits and taxes while highlighting the key trends and figures of Fiscal deficits, GDP growth and other macroeconomic parameters through a PowerPoint presentation.

“We were thrilled with the overwhelming response from the students across the university. I found it an informative and enriching session and the students were also pleased with the actual content of the session. We hope to organize such numerous fruitful colloquia in the future.” said Raavi. “Mr. Malhotra gave us some key points on the discussed topics which are lucrative in the sense of application,” said Ayushi, a second year Economics Honors student of Miranda House who attended the seminar, “I enjoyed being part of the session as it was very interactive and alive.”

Image source: Vishleshan team

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Arts & Culture

Youth Act Fellowship 2014 by the Happy Hands Foundation

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A program which started out in 2009, Happy Hands Foundation is a venture that focuses on preserving and reviving the traditional arts enabling artisans to develop their own enterprise.  The vision behind this program is to foster culturally rich people by creating meaningful interaction with the arts, generating appreciation for cultural heritage and restoring dignity in crafts practice.

Youth Act Fellowship is a program initiated by Happy Hands Foundation last year, in order to engage the youth in their agenda of engaging the young people in the cultural heritage of the country. The fellowship is aimed at young people of age group of 17 to 21 who will be further introduced to the craft industry.

In 2013, the Youth Act Fellowship members went to Orissa regarding the famous coir craft in which the products are made from coconut fibers like doormats and mattresses. Take a look at their journey in the video below!

This year, the Fellows will be travelling to Sitarganj in Uttarakhand from 4th to 14th October. There, the fellows will learn the grass weaving craft and will exhibit their work on coming back in one of the galleries in Delhi.

The last date to apply for Youth Act Fellowship is 29th  August. The interested people can fill up the form here.
The candidates who will be shortlisted for the interview will be called by 1st September.

The prime focus of the organization is to work for artisans, providing them with design education through cluster development programs where enterprise training is also given, while engaging the youth.

“This fellowship is about experiencing craft in a more hands-on manner and focuses on building lasting relationships between the fellows, their peers and the rural crafts world”, said Medhavi Gandhi, Founder of Happy Hands Foundation, “It is also about welcoming new perspectives and fresh ideas which may or may not be perfectly aesthetic into the dynamic crafts’ space.”

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Campus Central

KMC's Robo Physicists society wins accolades at NASA

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Enabling Long Duration Missions Through Holistic Habitat Design‘, got selected for a further presentation at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA. In the other competition held at Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA, the team secured the 13th position out of the 31 teams from 190 countries which also included 5 different teams from India. For the RASC-AL competition, after the team’s paper’s selection, they were given an opportunity to make a presentation on the topic in an event at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre. The rover created by the team for Mass Society’s University Rover Challenge successfully cleared all the tasks which included servicing of equipment and wireless operation. [caption id="attachment_25000" align="aligncenter" width="430"]rover KMC Mars Rover-03 in the Astronaut Assistance Task at University Rover Challenge, at Mars Desert Research Station.[/caption] “The rover we made was highly appreciated. It was capable of operating on the rocky surface of Mars and could also assist astronauts.” said Chetan Kumar, a third year Physics honors student of KMC who is also part of the Robo Physicists team. Dr. Mohanty, from the Physics department of Kirori Mal College, first came up with the idea of associating students from Delhi University to such international ventures five years ago and has also been active in numerous international conferences. Since then, the Robo Physicists society has taken part in numerous events including Lunabotics and the Rover Challenge. However, this year’s victory has been remarkable for the society becoming the only Indian team to establish such feat internationally. The society’s trip to NASA was sponsored by the University of Delhi. Both the projects were judged by people from the steering committee who were NASA engineers and the jury of RASC-AL, consisted of people from  Boeing NASA. The Mass Societies’ Rover Challenge’s panel of judges included the alumnus of NASA. “We got to work with and know people and professors from different universities.” said Chetan Kumar, “There were people from technical backgrounds. At RASC-AL, we faced competition from people doing Masters and Ph.D. Without the knowledge of engineering and astrophysics, we had to go back to the basics to understand it.” According to Aishwarya Girdhar, another member of the team, “The best part of the experience that we got being part of this competition was the exposure and the feeling of pride in representing India among so many countries from all over the world. You don’t have to be in top engineering colleges to have the knowledge and KMC’s Robo Physicists Society shows that.” Image Credits:   The official Facebook page of KMC Robo Physicists.]]>

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Admissions 2014

A second lifeline: Migration in Delhi University

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For many of the students out there who didn’t get through the college of their choice during their admissions in Delhi University, they still have a chance to be there under the migration norms of University of Delhi. According to this rule, students from one college are allowed to change their college in their second academic year. For inter college migration, the rules are-

  1. A student can migrate from one college of Delhi University to another in his/her third semester of B.A, B.Com., B.Sc., B.A.(H), B.Com(H) and B.Sc(H) courses considering the availability of seats and consent of principals of both the colleges.
  2. The eligibility criterion for the candidates requires them to have passed in both 1st and 2nd semester exams of the degree course under semester mode.
  3. The process to apply for migration includes contacting the office of the principal of the concerned college where he/she wants to migrate to obtain the no objection certificate first.
  4. The last date to apply for migration is 31st August, although the tentative dates for actual migration are issued by the University of Delhi.
  5. The documents required for migration are, (a) A No Objection Certificate from the principal/head of the College where he/she wants to migrate as well as where he/she is currently studying, (b) A leaving certificate from the principal/head of the concerned college and (c) The mark sheets of the examination already passed.

There are certain terms and conditions that are followed in the process of migration, which are-

  1. Candidates are not allowed from regular college to School of Open Learning (SOL) or Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board (NCWEB) as migration is allowed in semester mode and the SOL and NCWEB are in annual mode.
  2. Migration is not allowed from one college to another in a different course.
  3. Migration is not allowed at Post Graduation level.
  4. Applications for migration from one college to another shall be entertained by the principal of the college from which the migration is sought

P.C Jain, principal of Sri Ram College of Commerce said, “For a student to migrate from one college to another, he/she will need to have a written permit that the principals of both the colleges agree on the matter.” Anjali Johri a second year student of B. Tech in Computer Science in Shyama Prasad Mukherjee College states, “They are not allowing migration in our college. It is an opportunity for students to go some other college of his/her choice which we are not able to get.”

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Uncategorized

DFMC- From a Club to a Company

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We all are aware of the amount of talent that resides in Delhi University. More than often, this talent struggles to find a direction and right platform. Documentary and Film Making Club or DFMC is one such start-up by Ansh Agarwal, a Delhi University student. While making a short film, the idea of the need of a banner and credits made the team launch DFMC which was founded on 3rd March 2013 with a motive to make better short films and use greater talent at college level. Now, the club is a company which is hoped to go global soon.

Presently, DFMC operates in bringing together artists from various fields which is independent film making and music as of now. The interested artists can reach the club through docs.dfmc.in and submit their details and samples of their performances. When the network launches, scheduled for coming mid-August, the artists will be given a space to upload their content and reach the masses.

Moreover, other than a well-designed network where upcoming interested actors, directors and musicians can search for exactly what their work requirements are, considering their professional interests, it also provides all the artists to view and learn from each other’s works which they can also rate in terms of performance. The highly rated pieces are planned to be recommended directly to the respective film and music industry.

According to Ansh, the Chairman and CEO of DFMC, “In today’s time it’s pretty easy to follow you dream and do your stuff. But the only way that truly matters is to do what makes other people realize their dreams.” About his vision behind this project, he said, “Our vision is to have a place where each artist is known. If he’s good, he’ll be recognized and will find work.”

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