To start with, CBSE is allowing the 1,814 schools in Delhi region to use the internet to send data of their students to CBSE so that their admit cards for the exams in 2009 can be issued on time and without any error.

CBSE had started the facility of online submission for its 145 foreign schools in the 2007-08 session that received an encouraging response since it saved schools from the effort of collecting the data and sending it to India by post. CBSE is now starting with Delhi region this session (2008-09) and plans to take it to other states if the schools respond well. "Earlier, schools had to send the list of candidates to us by post. We then checked manually for any discrepancies and sent the data back for correction. The representative of the school had to then bring the LOCs back to us. The procedure consumed a lot of time and the entire process often got delayed," said a CBSE official.

However, now schools can send the proforma of students from classes X and XII by email. According to CBSE officials, mistakes generally crept in the spellings of the names, date of birth or age. "These can be verified and corrected instantly as we can convey it to the school on the internet, who would do the needful immediately," said the official.

After finalising the data, CBSE dispatches admit cards by January every year. According to sources, this facility may be extended to five other regions of CBSE after gauging the response of Delhi schools and students may also be able to download their admit cards from the CBSE website from next session.

Himanshu Kandoi and M. Lakshmi Kiranmayi--both pursuing a two-year master's in management from the Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon--are dressed in business suits on a humid, monsoon-drenched morning. The freshmen explain they are posing for a photo shoot for the college brochure.

Kiranmayi, 22, is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, while Kandoi, 20, is a graduate of St Xavier's College, Kolkata, and training to be a chartered accountant.

Even away from the camera, the two remain poised and polished. They are evidence of MDI's steady success and ability to draw talent from across the country.

"It is among the top 10 colleges in India, and I wanted to get in," says Kiranmayi, who also made the initial cut at the sought-after Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), but did not ultimately receive an offer.

MDI admits students on the basis of Common Admission Test (CAT) scores, also administered by the elite Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). Its score cut-off for this year was in the 98th percentile. "I think we are at par with (the) IIMs," says Kandoi, who turned down an offer from IIM Shillong, a new IIM that started admitting students this academic session.

This pride of MDI pupils is for a business school that changed its identity in the mid-1990s from a government-funded institute to train bureaucrats to become better managers to an autonomous self-financing school that admits students of management. A feat, as the government is usually reluctant to let go of what it controls in Indian education.

"In 1994, under Abad Ahmed, MDI decided to diversify into business education," says Subir Verma, a professor and chairman of MDI's flagship programme in general management, which takes in 240 students.

MDI admits a total of 820 students every year to its various postgraduate programmes in management.

Following in the footsteps of the IIMs, the institute hiked fees for its flagship two-year programme from this year by 33% to Rs8 lakh, with extra hostel charges.

Director C.V. Baxi says the 40-acre institute meets the cost of its capital investment and working capital--such as faculty salaries--through its own resources, which include fees, besides borrowing from banks. "Our corpus funds are significant but not substantial," Baxi says.

The school--run by a registered educational society headed by a board of governors--is not obliged to disclose its finances. It plans to invest Rs60-70 crore in the next three years for expansion of hostels and classrooms and to build an auditorium.

All these will be brought out by the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry in its Rs.6000 crore plan.

The HRD Ministry is also putting together a revamped ICT scheme for all 1.8 lakh secondary schools and higher secondary schools. Under the scheme, school children will be taught Word Processing, PowerPoint, and Spreadsheets etc. to keep them abreast with the latest developments in field of computer-aided education.

The HRD Ministry is not only introducing hi-technologies in the schools but is also trying to employ qualified teachers in the schools.

The scheme, to be spread out over the 11th Plan period, will get an allocation of Rs.5500 crores as Rs.500 crores has already been used to enhance the laboratory and hardware facilities in over 20,000 schools.

If you are former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who will step behind the podium on September 13 to mentor PGP-M students at IIM-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) as part of a programme called Globalising Resurgent India through Innovative Transformation, you are probably thinking what nobody else is.

The best colleges offer agile programmes, fewer compulsory subjects and more electives

To let a bright bunch of individuals, galvanised by their own mercurial intellect, compete and deliver what a couple of hundred MPs have not been able to; all this because their institution has yet again proved it is in a class of its own.

IIM-A-Business Today (BT) Best B-school survey's topper for 2008-2009-has proved no hyperbole is too much to be able to describe its attributes.

The undisputed leader for half a decade, IIM-A maintains its league among all the stakeholders including young executives, aspiring MBAs and recruiters. Says Vani Kabra, graduate of the London School of Economics (LSE) and MBA graduate from IIM-A, "While LSE was more diverse, IIM-A was definitely tougher and the quality of students far superior." It was at IIM-A that she received a true grounding in teamwork.

"The course structure requires you to work in teams for almost everything, from projects to assignments and presentations," she adds. What's more, exacting standards and long hours mean that students are ready for the 'real world' challenges. This is why IIM-A has been able to race ahead of IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B), despite IIM-B scoring ahead of it on many parameters.

NABI integrates three disciplines under its roof - agri-technology, food technology and nutrition technology. The BPU is designed to link research and development system with production facility, to serve as an incubator for start-up agri-food companies.

An Agri-food Park would also be set up within the cluster and would be operated on Public Private partnership model. Ministry sources said that this integration of R&D, production and enterprise has been planned for the first time in the country. The cluster has been designed with the help of Canadian experts.

NABI has been designed to be translational in the area of agriculture - new gene discovery, genomics, designer crops; food technology - food processing technologies, bioprocess engineering, food safety and nutrition science and technology - Public health nutrition technologies, functional foods and nutraceuticals, wellness foods.

The cluster will produce not only Ph Ds but also agri-food entrepreneurs and will spawn new industries in the region.

Ambedkar Vishwavidyalaya Act, 2007. It will be temporarily located in the campus of Integrated Institute of Technology Dwarka. Prof.

This year, the emphasis is on how to bring students of Sanskrit closer to the subject by stressing on its importance. In store for Sanskrit lovers are lectures by renowned writers and scholars of Sanskrit.

Commenting on the need for such a festival, he says that it is often thought that Sanskrit is the language of the select few. "That, however, is not the case-- it is as much a common's man's language as any other."

In his lecture, GC Tripathi spoke about the `Concept of Vak in Vedic Literature'. B Bhattacharya, Vice-Chancellor of JNU, praised the concept and said that the language should reach the common man.

The NPU, expected to start functioning from 2010, will provide training to police personnel in subjects like Biological Warfare, Conflict Resolution, Forensic Science and Terrorism.

The university will be setup on the lines of the National Defence Academy (NDA) and would act as a think-tank of the Central Government on internal security issues.

The proposed university would impart quality education, research and other academic activities in police-related subjects. It would also look at other areas of the physical and social sciences.

There are plans to affiliate all existing police training institutes in states and police and paramilitary academies, including the National Police Academy, CRPF Academy, BSF Academy, Internal Security Academy and the National Industry Academy, with the NPU.

The chief minister formally launched the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) last week, releasing its admission brochure for the 2008-09 academic year. The state university for IT which seeks to broadbase study of the subject will start enrolling students from this academic year and will temporarily function from the NSIT campus in Dwarka before shifting to its own campus in Okhla.

IIIT, according to director Panjaj Jalote, will be specifically looking at applications of IT in various fields like e-governance , defence, life sciences, education , finance, automobile engineering and mobile computing . It will be a research-led institute offering facilities for B tech, M Tech and Phd. Former Nasscom chief Karan Karnik, who is a member of the institute's board of directors, lauded the effort to create students who would create intellectual property rather than swell the ranks of educated job-seekers .

The form is available on the institute's website iiitd .ac.in. Last date for receiving completed forms is August 20 and the examination is on August 23.

Here is an indicative list of some of the training institutions. Most of our cities have institutes handling this subject. You may personally confirm the details of courses, infrastructural facilities, record of placement and the terms of admission before applying to these institutions.

*National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) at New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gandhinagar, Bangalore and Rae Bareli. Web site: www.niftindia.com

It is expected that units of NIFT would start functioning at Kannur, Bhopal, Shillong and Patna in 2008.

*National Institute of Design (NID), Paldi, Ahmedabad - 380 007

NID is a unique centre of excellence dealing with a wide variety of design programmes.

*NIFT-TEA Knitwear Fashion Institute, Tirupur - 641 606

*Pearl Academy of Fashion, 82, Sterling Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai - 600 034

*Institute of Design, 134, Boxwood Offices, Nungambakkam High Road, Chennai - 600 034