Significance of Teachers Day
In India, Teachers’ Day is celebrated on September 5. The tradition started since 1962 and it was started to honour Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan whose birthday also happens to be on the same day.
Teachers’ Day is dedicated to all our teachers, mentors and gurus who guide us to be learned students and better human beings. It is a day that honours all the teachers and mentors — not just the academic ones, but also tutors or trainers in fields other than academics — and shows our gratitude towards their contributions in shaping our life.
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was a philosopher, scholar, an exemplary teacher, and a politician who dedicated his life towards education and shaping up the youth of the country. He was also the first Vice-President of India and the second President of India. His contributions in the field of education are exemplary.
He was born on September 5, 1888, in a middle class family in Thiruttani, Tamil Nadu. He was an outstanding student and studied philosophy at Christian College, Madras (now Chennai). He taught at various colleges in his lifetime from the University of Mysore (now Mysuru) to the University of Calcutta (now Kolkata). He was also appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University, Delhi University as well as Banaras Hindu University.
He was awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honour in the country in 1954 and was nominated 27 times for the Nobel Prize; 16 times for the Nobel Prize in literature, and 11 times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Jubel D’Cruz
India should try to become self-sufficient
Better late than never and government must be complimented for admitting that the economy has slowed down with GDP in the last quarter dropping to 5 per cent.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamam has taken over the reign recently and under difficult circumstances for which we need to give her sufficient time to understand the global turmoil which has even affected India. Unemployment and inflation are at an all time high but demand for our products overseas too affect these numbers and we need to change our stance to withstand global volatility.
We as a nation should try to become self-sufficient by meeting our own demand by concentrating on local manufacturing than on imports. People will not only get employment but cheaper products and profits as well as tax collections will benefit the government to reduce fiscal deficit. Opposition instead of criticizing GDP numbers should come out with solutions as well as cooperate to up that data. The government in power has won with a landslide margin and has the numbers to take tough decisions. The citizens may feel short term pain but if economy improves in the longer run, FM should take tough decisions for the betterment of the nation!
S.N. Kabra
NRC should be applied across the country
It refers to justified demand by Delhi BJP President to have National Register of Citizens (NRC) for Delhi also, following final draft of NRC for Assam having been published. Similar demand has been made by Shiv Sena for Maharashtra also. But it is unlikely that TMC-led West Bengal government may raise any such demand in fear of vote-bank anti-national politics.
NRC should be there for other parts of the country especially where there are apprehensions of infiltrators having been settled even though it will be ideal to have NRC for complete country. India should adopt strict measures like in Myanmar where President of that country even did not care for demands raised in name of human rights for snatching her Nobel Prize for tackling serious threats from Rohingyas from a particular community. Unfortunately, Rohingyas from a particular community have settled even in some sensitive areas of India posing a serious threat to national interest including national security.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
Well-planned merger of public-sector banks leaves some smaller banks untouched
At last after Union Cabinet had given nod in principle for merger of public-sector banks, step is taken in right director to reduce number of public-sector banks to 12 instead of 5 as anticipated. Well-planned merger on the whole keeping in view software used and regional balances will save lot of money by largely reducing unnecessary overheads and merger of nearing branches of merged banks apart from solving staff-shortage where surplus staff of merged branches will be available to overcome shortage of staff at big branches. Rather surplus staff so available can be utilized for seven-days-a-week banking for 12 hours daily giving two weekly holidays by rotation to staff. Also, bigger banks are able to absorb bigger shocks.
However while merger of some banks was done in a manner that branches of anchor bank may be spread nationwide rather than squeezed in specific reasons, same principle was not adopted in case of some left-out smaller banks like Punjab-Sind Bank and Bank of Maharashtra probably because of regional feelings of people attached with these left-out banks.
Now need is to have uniform banking-charges, interest-rates, requirements like minimum-balance and schemes in all public-sector banks in a manner that there may be common format of different types of forms for all public-sector banks which may be available on websites with a provision to fill these on websites before being downloaded without requiring hand-filled forms. All banks should have 15-digit account-numbers unlike Central Bank of India which has 10-digit account-numbers.
All branches of various banks should compulsorily have all government savings-schemes available in post-offices and contribution to 7.75-percent RBI bonds, apart from having a special counter for taking policies of LIC of India. All branches should have coin-packs of 100 in each denomination for ease of public though coin-bags of 2000 coins may be available for traders and big users in selected big branches. Commemorative coin-sets should also be available at selected bank-branches right from date of issue.
Madhu Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
