The Mamata Bannerjee Government has decided to go for more Government Aid for School Students thereby, distributing canvas, waterproof bags to 61 lakh Bengal school children studying from Class V to Class VIII. This decision has overshadowed the talks about introducing a new mining engineering institute in the state’s coal belt for which officials were asked to revamp both undergraduate and post graduate curricula that would make them more relevant for the current job market. A decent canvas bag costs around Rs 300 in the market and a back-of-the-hand calculation puts the cost of the scheme at Rs 183 crore. Bulk orders can, of course, bring down the cost substantially but still, the government would be spending a hefty sum on this proposal. And those among 54 lakh schoolchildren from Classes I- IV , who are yet to get the free shoes, too, can expect to get them over the next few weeks. The CM has made it very clear that she wants the bags to be sturdy and waterproof so that schoolchildren can use them in every season.
The recent polls have proved how much hit the cycle providing scheme to the 25 lakh girl school children have been and therefore expectations are of a similar political windfall from this new bag scheme. Apart from this, education minister Partha Chatterjee in the meeting pushed for the allowance of the registered students’ unions to operate “help-desks” in colleges to assist students in admission. However, the CM made it clear that she doesn’t want any kind of ‘excess’ and wont tolerate any kind of violence. She said that admissions will be done on basis of merit and via online system.
Mamata Bannerjee has asked for more beneficiaries under the ‘West Bengal Swami Vivekananda Merit-Cum-Means Scholar ship’ which at present covers about 59000- students and has a funding of roughly 40 crore rupees. She wants more students at the upper strata of the education sphere get covered mainly the UG and PG students. She also made her intentions clear about wanting a complete revamp of the university curricula and wants more emphasis on the IT related aspects of the teaching methodology. She wants to increase the number of undergraduate seats to take the number of grad students from 17% closer to the national average of 21%. A vision document for five-year and 10-year periods will be prepared for the school and higher education departments. Mamata approved the proposed mining institute in Asansol as because apart from IIT-Kharagpur and IIEST-Shibpur no other institute in Bengal teaches the subject.
Source: http://goo.gl/vNLGYl
