8th of April- LEADERSHIP Talk with Prof. K Vijay Raghvan, Principal Scientific Advisor Govt. of India by Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, MHRD Cell on twitter live.

Prof. K Vijay Raghvan praised India and the government on the ways and techniques used by it to minimize the effect of COVID 19 as compared to many developed countries like Italy and USA. He said that “one of the best measures taken by the government was checking international travelers’ very early which helped a lot and our tracking system for their contacts was very good.  Innovative ideas were being received everyday towards fighting against COVID 19. The government has contacts with the scientists all over the world who also help in checking and analyzing the innovative ideas. These ideas and innovations fall under different categories like easily implementable, complex and innovative but really difficult to implement. On the basis of feedback of group of scientists citizens are responded to and on the basis of that the government receives much better responses from citizens as they take the responses very positively.” To the question of whether he was satisfied with the way Indian scientific community responded to COVID 19, he affirmed that the Indian scientific community has responded in the best way they could have like the scientist of Pune have been working for the drug vaccination along with the scientific community of Bangalore who are focusing on IT inputs along with medical vaccination. Delhi IIT is been helping in the diagnostic tests and likewise all the other scientists are contributing to their level best to fight against this COVID 19. Responding to Dr. Abhay Jere’s question on “In which areas should youngsters focus at this time of COVID 19 and not only at current time but also post COVID 19 which will be a great challenge to India?” Prof. K Vijay Raghvan said that social distancing is one of the major preventive measures of COVID 19 and technology can be used in order to make social distancing successful to the maximum extent. One of the most challenging focus for the youngsters will be how can economy be handled after the situation returns to normal and the life of people will be again in daily routine, companies will reopen and everything will start once again.

9th of April LEADERSHIP Talk with Prof. Anil D. Sahasrbudhe, Chairman AICTE by Dr. Abhay Jere, Chief Innovation Officer, MHRD Innovation Cell on twitter live show

The talk was about what AICTE expects students and faculty members during this crisis of COVID 19. The first question asked by Dr. Jere was “At this time of crisis of COVID 19, we are receiving large number of messages from students and faculties about colleges being closed down and academic calendar disturbed so in this scenario how do you expect the students, teachers and institutions to react so that there is no long term loss when it comes to academics.” To this question Prof Sahasrbudhe very positively answered that, “Since this COVID 19 crisis is not in the hands of anyone and has come up as an unexpected problem we as citizens of India should not panic first of all and try to fight this crisis as directed by our Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji. We all together should work towards flattening the curve of COVID 19 and get relieved from this problem as soon as possible. For the expectations from students and faculties we expect from them certain things and first of them is learning. Even in the crisis of COVID 19 our learning should not stop.” He stated “In today’s time with the use of technology we can enhance our learning through different sources being provided online like SWAYAM and other MOOC platforms, YouTube and other educational platforms. We all should enhance our knowledge especially in the technologies that are new and emerging like AI, IOT, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Robotics, 3D Printing, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, and Cyber Security with the help of different platforms available today.” On the point of different queries by different students to AICTE about their worries related to their examinations, next classes, future admissions, placements and internships he assured that, “ We should not panic at all and all these will fall in place may be with a delay of one month or so but none of these will be left.”

The discussion was taken forward by Dr. Jere by his next question about the new things that people can take up at this current time of mental health risks due to anxiety being faced by the people and to this Prof. Anil talked about the steps taken by AICTE in the very starting of lockdown which was a competition called IDEATHON an MHRD Innovation and AICTE along with some of the companies like FORGE where they came up with an idea that students will be given a challenge to address COVID 19 and their ideas will be received into thought of products that can be used. He told that this activity was very successful and approximately 5500 students participated in this with brilliant ideas among which top 20 students were awarded also. He also told that they are not going to stop here and soon going to launch the next activity SAMADHAN in which they will be getting the solutions to the problems encountered today by the students in more innovative manner. He told that they are trying their best so that the students at home can showcase their talent to the best they can.

On the view upon the placements and company’s view he responded “It totally depends on the economy which is been hit badly and our GDP is going to come down. There are possibilities that different new ways are going to be found out by the government of India and RBI to bring back the situation to normal and all we have to do is to have faith in the system. The students will get placements accordingly though it can be late by 1 month or 3 months or 6 months depending upon the situation.” Prof. Sahasrbudhe also inspired students by saying that, “With the help of different opportunities provided to the students at this time like IDEATHON & SAMADHAN, the students should think of becoming entrepreneurs and not working in the offices so that they can also give employment opportunities to 20 and more people which will help in growth and development of the country’s economy and GDP.”

Prof Sahasrbudhe on the request of Dr. Jere also explained about the portal being launched by AICTE to address the grievances and distress of students by stating “After the crisis of COVID 19 was announced many students had different problems regarding the colleges, hostels, accommodations, transportations, food, health issues, internships, academics and placements, etc. and looking to these problems AICTE launched a portal called HELPLINE specially for the students. There are two faces of the portal where on one side the students have to post their problems on the portal and on the other side are some 4000+ institutions providing some 15000+ services and we also roping in NGOs, social organizations, voluntary organizations, etc. that are willing to help students in this hour of crisis. It is a type match making of students who need help and people who are willing to help and that too in each district, town and states,” He also thanked his team Dr. Chandra Shekhar Buddha and two of the students who had done this in just one day for which many companies would have charged huge amounts of money and taken too much of time for creating such a helpful portal. Many of the retired persons have also joined the portal to provide pitching and counseling to the students who are in difficulty.

On Dr. Jere’s question about the online platforms like NEAT, SWAYAM as the moocs platform and SWAYAM PRABHA providing 32 DTH channels helping the students in this time of lockdown Prof. Anil said that, “These all three are important platforms each in their respective manner. NEAT is AI based personalized learning platform that provides different future employability options to students. SWAYAM and SWAYAM PRABHA are almost similar one is through internet and one is through TV respectively. For the students living in cities SWAYAM is good but for the students living in rural areas with low network bandwidth SWAYAM PRABHA is one of the best learning opportunities.” Finally talking about other AICTE initiatives Prof Anil told that, “We have different initiatives of AICTE. One of them is a mandatory 3 weeks student’s induction program for refresher of students and also a Course on Human Values and to handle these faculties need to be updated and for these various workshops had been conducted online. We also have ATAL ACADEMY which holds the faculty development program and they are also being made online. We are also receiving the responses in much higher numbers than we expected.” On one of the big step taken by AICTE for the internships made online he expressed that, “This is not the first time that we are making the internships online rather we have been doing since last few years where companies provide different situations to the students as their internship tasks and the process of finding out the best way to cope up with the situation helps the students to get the practical exposure of the market as they do in internships while they face the real market. We have appealed to different companies to give students such challenging statements which they can solve at home and they can also gain the experience of the industries.” He also told students not to believe on any rumors that there will be no internships in the companies and told that as soon as the situation comes to normal and lockdown opens the students can continue their internships in their companies by visiting them.

10th of April leadership talk by Prof. Partha Chakrabarty (Chairman, National Digital Library Ex – Director. IIT Kharagpur) with Dr. Abhay Jere as moderator

Prof. Chakrabarty informed that National Digital Library has integrated all their education material from KG to PG and put them together in the portal and any student can get access of that material at any of period of time. 45 millions collection of material which covers Books, Videos, Notes, Simulation, General, Research paper, etc. are categorized in terms of Classes, Teams, User Categories, Classical research, NPTEL Lectures, MI Lectures, etc. All the education Boards provide the text material free of cost. All citizens can access the integrated learning material through mobile app and website. It is a national level platform with currently 25 lakh users. It is an integrated platform and materials are contributed by Khan Academy and others to the National Digital library during the ongoing covid-19 crisis. There is also a filter option where one can filter education board, or types of classes. They also provide material for NET, GATE, UPSC, etc. All the materials are free and there is no need of any IP Address and they can access through the NDL portal itself.

Towards handling the Copy Rights issues they drive the copy right all over the world which also helps to make policies. For those who own material there are no copy right issues while for others they provide the link so that user can directly access with his/her copy rights. If any person using these materials creates a new material, there are rules and norms to be followed. If any person wants to contribute he/she can do so by providing links or content and take patent rights. If a person does not want to share copy rights then they can share at least the abstract. Today they have 20,000+ contributors in National Digital Library. They can share the material in 2 parts. First they can share the Thesis or Reports. Second they can share only the catalog (if they do not want to share the books digitally). Anyone who needs any books/Reports etc. can easily find out about its availability. They share the data with European countries libraries and American library. They are working with UNESCO so that they can provide the facilities to other countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan etc. and are thus cross interlinking worldwide. Currently they are managing in 30-40 languages and 10 Indian languages and others like Spanish, German, etc. are being worked upon. Currently they do not have any support for translation of foreign language and are working on the project.

Students also attended the informative facebook live session by Dr. M.P Poonia, Vice Chairman AICTE on the 10th of April on Personalized and Customized learning for employability skill enhancement and bridging learning gaps. Though this session was more relevant for engineering students our students found the talk interesting.

Overall the sessions were highly motivational, positivity oriented and were a useful and productive learning experience for the students addressing many of their genuine concerns arising out of the ongoing corona crisis that has brought the entire globe to a state of standstill.

One feature common to these talks was the emphasis that learning has to go on come what may and that things will soon be the same as it were before the pandemic onset. The nation’s economy will bounce back, students will find jobs and or create jobs, teachers will continue with their refreshers and impart practical knowledge with the same business as usual spirit to the students. And that all these called for actions on all of us as disciplined responsible citizens in response to the coordinated efforts of the state to counter the present difficult state of