500 medical colleges needed in five years: Regulator

By IANS,

New Delhi: Projecting a need for 500 medical college in the next five years, the Medical Council of India (MCI) Saturday recommended that such institutions should each have at least 10 acres of land for a college and hospital and not more than 250 students.

"The council has given the central government certain recommendations and it is up to the government to notify them. The board of governors has done its exercise," MCI Chairperson Shiv Kumar Sarin told reporters.

As per the new regulations suggested, a medical college should have at least 10 acres of land to build a college and hospital. Earlier, the medical colleges were asked to have at least 25 acres of land.

In small towns and cities, the hospital should be built within 5 km radius of the college, the Council recommended.

"In colleges where there are 50 students, there should be 300 beds, for 100 students 300 beds, 150 students 700 beds, 200 students 900 beds, and for 250 students 1,100 beds," the recommendations said.

According to the new recommendation, a medical college can have 250 students. Earlier, the number of students admitted was 200.

It also puts emphasis on increasing the retirement age of the professors in medical colleges. Currently, the retirement age is 65 years. The new regulations recommend a five-year extension for the professors.

"If these regulations are followed, 8,000-10,000 medical graduates would increase annually in the country. As of now, there are 35,000 medical graduates in the country," Sarin said.

He said the last date of receiving the applications pertaining to establishment of medical colleges and hospitals is Sep 30. He also informed that they received 90 applications till September last year and this time they are expecting more applications.

Sarin added that the country needs 500 more medical colleges in the next five years and the government should also pitch in, instead of depending on the private sector.

The MCI chairperson said that India has a shortfall of 7.5 lakh doctors.

"We have 35,000 medical seats, 314 medical colleges and 23,000 doctor graduates in our country and compared to our population the availability of hospital and doctors number is very less, this issue should be addressed immediately," Sarin said.

Referring to World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations, Sarin said for every 1,000 people there should be one doctor. Our country will take take another 15 years to achieve this standard, he said.

Devi Prasad Shetty, member board of governors, MCI, said: "Medical colleges are less in north and eastern regions of India as compared to south and west. About 136 colleges are there in south alone followed by west with 58 while north India has only 71 colleges and east is the lowest with 36."

"The government stopped constructing medical colleges 15 years ago about 54 percent of the medical colleges are in private hands," he said.

As per MCI statistics every year 4.5 lakh women die during child birth due to lack of trained medical staff. In our country each gynaecologists deliver 72 babies a day, our country produces 28 million babies a year.

"India should add 10,000 medical seats each year between 2012-16 to get at least 50,000 medical undergraduates over five years. This can be achieved only be adding 100 new medical colleges every year for five years," an MCI official said.

http://twocircles.net/?q=2010sep18/500_medical_colleges_needed_five_years_regulator.html

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-even-i-question-the-truth-about-911-462904.html

10,000 Hindutva militants being recruited in Madhya Pradesh - India

By TCN Special Correspondent,

New Delhi: Ahead of Ayodhya verdict, while every concerned citizen is praying for peace and communal harmony in the country after the verdict, Rajesh Bidkar is on another mission. His mission is to unite Hindu youth for making India a Hindu Nation. And for this, he has launched a campaign—Hindu Yodhya Bharti Abhiyan (Campaign to recruit Hindu Soldiers).

Listen to the interview:

The outfit in the leadership of its Convener, Rajesh Bidkar and guidance of one Damodar Singh Ji Yadav has given a public call to recruit 10, 000 Hindu youth from Madhya Pradesh (MP) for the mission to establish a Hindu Rasthra. And this they are not doing underground but under the broad daylight. They have issued a poster and pasted it around the state of Madhya Pradesh.

A poster of Hindutva militants recruitment drive

To confirm the same, a Delhi based Independent Journalist, Vijay Pratap posing a potential solider, called Rajesh Bidkar on 16th of September. Rajesh Bidkar, in his conversation with Vijay Pratap acknowledged that his organization is a radical Hindu outfit and working towards the establishment of Hindu state. “It is a youth organistion with radical ideology and we are working with objective to make India a Hindu nation…,” he said while explaining the objectives of the organization. Regarding activities of the outfit he says, “we are building a radical ideological organization of 10, 000 people and we will issue orders time to time which Muslims have to abide…”. Bidkar also maintains that, his organization is not like other Hindu organization. On the issue of Ayodhya Verdict, he says “it is a matter national pride and radical Hindu organization has to play an important role”. Here is the voice tape, you can listen it yourselves and decide what they are doing?

Now, the most important question is that, will the government—both state as well as central act before it gets too late? Are the governments listening?

http://twocircles.net/?q=2010sep18/tcn_exclusive_10000_hindutva_militants_being_recruited_madhya_pradesh.html