Teachers may not need to cook midday meals, update voter lists

NEWDELHI: School teachers across the country may get relief from taskssuchasupdatingvoterlists or even cooking midday meals for the students of their schools.

The current draft of the New Education Policy (NEP) being steered by the human resource development (HRD) minister suggests that teaching is a specialised job.

The HRD ministry is learnt to have decided to include these provisions in the final NEP draft to address the problem of teachers’ time being spent on nonteaching activities.

To be sure, the draft only talks of “election work in non-election period” which means that teachers will be asked to do what is called election duty — usually being involved in the actual voting process.

“Teachers should not be engaged in work that is not directly related to teaching except for rare events that do not interfere with their work. Especially, teachers will not be involved in election work during non-election period, cooking of midday meals, and other administrative tasks,” said a senior HRD ministry official.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, elaborated that often teachers are marked as booth officers and have to undertake the task of compiling and updating voter lists. This involves going door to door to find out who has moved in and who has moved out.

NEW DELHI: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will demonstrate a soft-landing on moon in the near future, said ISROchairpersonKSivanatthe IIT-Delhiconvocationceremony, over a month after the Vikram lander failed to do so.

“Let me assure that ISRO will pullallitsexperience,knowledge and technical prowess to set thingsrightanddemonstratesoft landing in near future. And Chandrayaan-2 is not the end of story,” he said.

Scientists fromISRO lost contact with the Vikram lander just beforethetouchdownduringthe “15 minutes of terror”.

Had it landed, India would have been the fourth country to land on the moon after the USA, erstwhile USSR, and China. It wouldhavebeenthefirstcountry to have landed near the lunar South Pole. “On the technology part— yes, we could not achieve soft-landing, but all the systems functioned until 300m from Moon’s surface. Very valuable data is available to set things right,” said Sivan.

Forthis,hegavetheexampleof theAugmentedSatelliteLaunch Vehicle(ASLV),thelaunchvehicle programme that was terminated in favour of developing what is now the country’s workhorse rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

Asfortakingrisks,hegavethe exampleofthefounderofIndia’s space programme, Vikram Sarabhai. “Starting a space programmeinacountrylikeIndiain the 1960’s was one big crazy idea. ButDrVikramSarabhaiforesaw thepotentialofspacetechnology in transforming India,” he said.

Attheceremony,healsospoke about the upcoming solar mission,AdityaL1,thehumanspace flight programme, testing of the 200 ton semi-cryoengine and the smallsatellitelaunchvehiclethat is to have its test flight in December this year or January 2020.