Spotlight

New Delhi, 4 May 2007

SCHOOL ADOPTS SOLAR POWER

NEW DELHI, May 5 (INFA): The future certainly looks bright for students from the Rajakiya Uchch Prathmik Vidyalaya in Dhund village in Rajasthan. Solar panels erected in the school premises ensure that computers installed as part of the Computer-aided Learning Programme (CALP), work without any disruption.

In a State where the power situation is very grim, particularly in rural areas, the CALP under the Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI) was facing serious power shortages. Following complaints from school authorities and big corporates who are partners in REI and have set up computer labs in schools, the State Education Department decided to run the computers on solar power. The pilot project launched in the school has met with considerable success with the panels generating enough power to run three computers for four hours each.

The Education Department is now set to install similar panels across 514 schools in all 32 districts of the State by the end of February this year. The cost incurred is met by funds provided under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan launched by the Central Government.

The contribution of renewable energy in the country’s power grid is growing at a healthy pace and is now 7.5 per cent of the total grid power capacity. This was revealed by a year-end review of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India.

Grid-connected power generation through renewable sources of energy touched 9100 MW during 2006, with wind alone contributing 6070 MW. India maintained its 4^th position in the world after Germany, Spain and the US, in wind power installation capacity.

Fortyfive MW of small hydropower projects have been commissioned during 2006 making a cumulative achievement of 1850 MW.

Grid-interactive biomass and bagasse co-generation power projects made a cumulative contribution of 1038 MW by the end of 2006. According to the report, about 2240 remote villages have so far been provided electricity through renewable energy sources.---INFA

TICKETS FOR BEIJING OLYMPIAD-2008

NEW DELHI, May 5 (INFA): Tickets for next year’s Olympic Games in China are now in sale. The Beijing Organising Committee for the Games (BOCOG) has put on sale more than seven million tickets, twentyfive per cent of which will be sold to the overseas public.

For overseas sales, the process will be determined in each country and territory by its National Olympic Committee, that is the Indian Olympic Association (IAO) in India and its agents.

The tickets are low-priced, affordable by the common man. The BOCOG has announced that the ticket pricing is in keeping with its efforts to make the Games accessible to the broadest spectrum of people. ---INFA

Spotlight

New Delhi, 1 May 2007

POWER FROM SEWERAGE SYSTEM

NEW DELHI, May 2 (INFA): Rapid urbanisation is putting a severe strain on the basic resources of cities the world over. One of the main problems plaguing these metros is the absence of an effective waste disposal mechanism. Thankfully, a few cities are waking up to these problems and devising measures to tackle them.

Vietnam’s largest city, Ho Chi Minh City, plans to use a new technology to generate power from wastewater. According to the Japanese company, “Tsukishima Kikai”, which has developed the technology, organic waste from the sewage system would be used to generate power.

The system consists of an aeration panel and an innovative air diffuser with high oxygen transfer efficiency. The waste would be treated in an anaerobic container for 20-30 days, after which it would be turned into biogas.

The technology reduces pathogens and unpleasant odours, stabilizes waste quality and improves treatment performance. The biogas which is obtained as a by-product is used to generate electricity.

The city officials are confident that the technology would be beneficial for the city which every day dumps over one million cu.m of domestic wastewater, 400,000 cu.m of industrial wastewater, 4000-5000 tonnes of household garbage and seven tonnes of untreated non-hazardous garbage into its rivers and canals.

Meanwhile, Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah state in western US is exploring a pilot project to convert sewer waste into energy to run a heating and cooling system in a downtown 8000 square foot building.

According to the city officials who are partly funding the project, the heat will come partly from solid waste, and mostly from warm water that runs in sewage pipes after draining out of toilets, showers, and sinks.

The sewage temperature---between 55⁰C and 60⁰C – combined with a constant ground temperature of about 55⁰C provides a viable ground source for a heat-pump system.

Through the pilot system is expensive and costs $20,000 more than traditional systems, it holds promise because of its environment-friendly nature. And the city officials believe that if it works well, it could eventually be used on a mass scale. ---INFA

BHEL’S PLAN FOR R&D

HYDERABAD, May 2 (INFA): The Hyderabad-based Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd. (BHEL) has drawn up plans to spend Rs.1,000 crore by the year 2012 on research and development.

It may be added that its expenditure on R&D rose from Rs. 124 crore in 2004-05 to Rs.238 crore last year, recording a 91 per cent increase in the last two years.

The focus would be on the power sector keeping in view the increasing demands in the future.---INFA

Spotlight

New Delhi, 30 April 2007

CRORES OF EDUCATION FUNDS SWINDLED

HYDERABAD, May 1 (INFA): The latest scam in Hyderabad relating to the swindling of education funds amounting to Rs.40 crore is causing great embarrassment to the powers that-be.

The mastermind of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) scam is allegedly 45-year-old Sarasa Devi, a former School teacher, who developed close contacts with the Telugu Desam Party, Congress leaders and bureaucrats.

In collusion with an Assistant Accounts Officer, V. Subramanyam, in the SSA Project Director’s office, she allegedly siphoned off unutilized SSA funds remitted back to the project office from the districts in an organized manner since December 2004.

It is amazing that top bosses in the Education Department remained oblivious to the swindling of crores of rupees under their very nose. On a tip-off from the Central Government, they woke up from their slumber and unearthed the scam.

Sarasa Devi has reportedly flaunted her alleged proximity to a personal security officer to Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy in a bid to overawe the police officials investigating the scam.  The Opposition parties---the TDP, TRS, CPI-M, and the CPI are out to capitalize on the scam to put the CMO in the dock.  They have made demands varying from a judicial inquiry by a sitting Judge to a CBI probe.

The State Government promptly entrusted the case initially to Central Crime Station and then to the CBI-CID, even while ordering a Departmental inquiry by a senior IAS official.

The Chief Minister has assured stern action against the guilty once the investigation is completed. 

This swindling episode is nothing new. During the TDP regime, two scholarship scams surfaced in 2002 wherein the accused floated bogus colleges and claimed scholarship amounts in the name of fictitious students for several years. They misappropriated Rs.41 crore.---INFA

HIGH SEA FISH DEPLETES: FAO

NEW DELHI, May 1 (INFA): Several species fished on the high seas outside the reach of national jurisdictions are in danger of over-exploitation, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned.

Twentyfive per cent of all fish stocks monitored by the agency are either over-exploited, depleted or are recovering from depletion, according to a report. More than half of highly migratory oceanic sharks and two-thirds of high-seas fish stocks, including hakes, Atlantic cod and halibur orange roughly, basking shark and bluefin tuna, are either depleted or at high risk of collapse, the report, State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, said.

While these stocks represent only a small fraction of the world’s fishery resources, they are key indicators of the state of massive piece of the ocean ecosystem, according the FAO’s report. Of particular concern are ‘straddling stocks,” or species which frequently navigate between national maritime boundaries and the high seas.

The report said that the global trade in fish and fishery products, the most traded food in the world, has reached a record high, with an export value of $71.5 billion, up 23 per cent from 2000.----INFA

Spotlight

New Delhi,16 April 2007

A HISTORIC COMEBACK

HYDERABAD, April 17 (INFA): In a first-of-its-kind event in the country, the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council has been revived, 22 years after it was abolished by the Telugu Desam Government in 1985.

In no other State has the Council been resurrected once it was scrapped.  In all, 64 newly-elected and nominated members, took oath as the members of the Council on April 2 last.

No doubt, the revival of the Council has taken a tortuously long time due to political vicissitudes in the State. To fulfill the Congress poll promise in 2004, the United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre enacted the AP Legislative Council Bill in 2005 and it became an Act in January, 2006.

However, it took over almost a year for the Election Commission to complete the preliminary steps for the conduct of elections to the Council, which has a total strength of 90 members.

Elections were held in March for 75 out of 78 elected seats. Polls to three seats from Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy local authorities quota have been put off in the absence of elected civic bodies in Hyderabad and adjoining municipalities.

The conduct of polls was not a smooth affair, with the Opposition parties, led by the Telugu Desam Party kicking up controversies, initially, on the delimitation of graduates and teachers constituencies and the enrolment of voters and later on the “open ballot” system followed by congress members in eight districts in elections from local authorities.

Results of the polls to eight seats each from graduates and teachers’ Constituencies, 31 seats from Assembly quota and five from local authorities have been recently announced.  The Opposition alleged that instead of nominating distinguished personalities in various fields, the Governor accommodated mostly Congressmen. In fact, the Congress picked up ex-ministers, former MLAs, ex-MLCs and former MPs as its candidates from the Assembly, local authorities and nomination quotas. The ruling party is, thus, poised to gain effective control of the Council with a two-thirds majority.---INFA

GOOGLE GOES SOLAR

NEW DELHI, April 17 (INFA): The internet search leader ‘Google Inc’, is converting its headquarters in Mountain View, California, to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America.

The ambitious project which would be the largest solar project proposed in the State will require installing more than 9200 solar panels on the 1 million square foot Googleplex campus. The panels are to be installed by Pasadena-based ‘EI Solutions’, a large scale solar power systems provider.