The Hindu : New Delhi News : Strengthening governance

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Thursday, Dec 04, 2008
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Strengthening governance

To take stock of governance developments in the Asia-Pacific region, the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is hosting a conference of Network of Asia Pacific Schools and Institutes of Public Administration and Governance.

The three-day conference on “Strengthening governance in Asia-Pacific: Public sector administrative reforms and capacity-building to improve transparency and accountability” begins this Friday.

The Network came into existence in 2002 and for the first time its annual conference is being held in India.

About 50 institutions from the Asia-Pacific region will take part in the event.

The four sub-themes of the conference are: (i) Governance initiatives to fight corruption; (ii) Improving government transparency and accountability; Strengthening public accountability; and (iv) Engaging women and involving civil society and media.

“Improving and strengthening governance is a strategic priority of governments in the Asia and the Pacific region. Poor governance holds back and distorts the process of development and has a disproportionate impact on the poorer and weaker sections of society. Most of the Asia-Pacific countries have started evaluating innovations and best practices in governance to build objective criteria to evaluate their strength in terms of sustainability and replication,” said Amita Singh, a faculty member at the centre, who is also an academic adviser to Network-2008.

The Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Amre Moussa, visited Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi on Monday.

He inaugurated a garden on the campus called “Bagh-e-Mahmoud Darwish” in memory of the Palestinian revolutionary poet and freedom fighter Mahmoud Darwish who died in August this year.

The function was organised by the India Arab Cultural Centre at Jamia.

Dr. Moussa also released an English translation of the book “Karnak Café” by noted Egyptian writer Naghuib Mahfouz.

Speaking on the occasion, Centre director Zikrur Rahman talked about the “organic link” between the universities of Jamia Millia Islamia in India and Al-Quds in Palestine.

“The vision for their establishment was conceived at the same time by Moulana Mohamed Ali Jouhar, one of the founders of Jamia,” said a Jamia official.

Delhi University’s Faculty of Management Studies has won the national finals of Mahindra and Mahindra’s “The War Room”- a business strategy formulation competition.

The FMS team, “War Craft”, comprising final year students -- Azeez Narain, Nikhil Aggarwal, Nikhil Jain and Shivani Poddar -- beat off competition from other business schools of the country.

The national finals of the contest were modelled on actual war rooms the Mahindra and Mahindra group conducts for its managers and required the various teams to formulate future business strategies for the company in a sector of their choice.

NIIT and Adobe have joined hands to launch a state-of-the-art e-GURU Web and Multimedia curriculum based on professional software from Adobe for school children.

The newly-launched curriculum will cover the Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection which will include Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Premiere, Encore, Soundbooth, AfterEffects, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. This curriculum will give students aspiring fo r a career in website designing, video editing and sound editing an early access to professional creative tools.

Meanwhile, the Vivek Vihar centre of NIIT conducted the test for “Bhavishya Jyoti Scholarships” at its new location in B Block Market. Many students from the neighbouring area availed themselves of these scholarships.

The centre also observed World Computer Literacy Day earlier this week by giving free Internet access to students, women and senior citizens in the Capital’s trans-Yamuna area.

Parul Sharma

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