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Man who cycled 20,000 km across India suggests recycling waste is way forward
Aligarh :
The year will end on a “clean” note for 28-year-old Abhishek Kumar Sharma, a research student of environment at Kanpur University, who began a journey on bicycle in November 2014 to endorse Prime Minister Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Sharma completed the trip on December 22 and has staggering numbers and remarkable insights to talk about.
Sharma covered 20,000 km across 25 states, met chief ministers of 18 (Kerala was the best experience as CM Chandy was readily available), interacted with 402 district magistrates and addressed lakhs of students in over 200 lectures on environment and cleanliness.
Sharma submitted his findings with the Union urban development ministry on ‘How to Make Waste our Wealth’. The first seven days were tough: starting from Uttar Pradesh to Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, he battled cold in December, January and faced extreme heat in May-June in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
In Sharma’s opinion, with sensible solid waste management one can make wealth out of waste. “Mysore is the cleanest city. They have a self-sustainable model of waste management wherein they segregate waste as organic, inorganic, and recyclable. Kachra or junk goes to kabadiwallahs, organic waste is used for bio-fertilizers. I think South India is cleaner than North India,” he said.
Also, on his journey around India he found villages cleaner than cities. “This means educated people litter their surroundings expecting someone to pick it up,” he said. A village in Punjab, which has the same sarpanch for the past 15 years, is mentioned by him because the sarpanch invented interesting ways to keep his surroundings clean and healthy. “He made a biogas plant for all to use free of cost,” Sharma said.
The Smart Cities plan can only be successful if surroundings are clean and waste is managed effectively. “Municipal corporations should go beyond dumping waste – from one site to another, honestly that is all they do. To be able to make wealth out of waste they should segregate waste as organic, inorganic, recyclable and so on and put them to use accordingly.”
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Agra / by Eram Agha, TNN / December 28th, 2015
Engg student’s app makes marking attendance easier
Lucknow :
He was often marked absent despite having signed the sheet, a thin lined-piece of paper used for recording students’ attendance in college. Tired of getting the error rectified, 19-year-old computer science engineering student Manav Akela developed a mobile-based Android application, ‘IRegister’ that would help teachers record students’ attendance without mistakes and in a much simpler way using their smart phones.
“The attendance sheet is circulated and every student, one by one, is asked to write his/her name on it,” said Manav who spent almost three hours every day for three months in developing this app. “Sometimes, while circulating it, the paper tears off, or sometimes the teacher misplaces the paper. The app will prevent all such problems and errors,” he added.
Based on the concept of paperless operation, the app will free teachers of the burden of entering data and heavy calculations which take hours. “The app will not only save time but also paper,” said Manav, who lives beyond Rajajipuram and cycles 30 kilometres everyday to and from his engineering college.
One can download the app from Google Play Store or register with iregister.tk to begin. Once the app is downloaded, users will have to get a code by clicking the ‘Get Code’. This will take the user to the ‘Iregister’ website from where the code is generated. On entering the code, users will be shown five different rooms. In these rooms, a user can assign five different classes like CSE for computer science engineering, or ME for mechanical engineering. A user can navigate to the attendance sheet after assigning a class for each room.
Suppose a user has assigned room 1 as CSE class, he will be able to access seven features of the app. Here, he can mark a student present or absent. The app also allows exporting data saved on the app to the Excel sheet. The user can also make modifications like change student details as and when required. The most interesting feature is of sending a SMS to the parent in case a student is absent for three consecutive days. “Teachers can track attendance record of students in several classes,” he said.
The app, said Manav, is also beneficial for home-makers who take the pain of jotting down attendance details of milkman and newspaper vendor on the calendar. It can also be used to record attendance of convicts in jails.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Lucknow / TNN / December 31st, 2015