US will help Pak reconcile with India: Rice

he US has said it will support the new Pakistan government's efforts to reduce tensions and reconcile with India and pushed Islamabad to wield a "very solid" civilian control of its powerful military.

"The United States will support Pakistan's efforts to develop fruitful links with its neighbours and with the community of responsible nations," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said accepting her first first honorary degree at Air University, Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in her home state of Alabama.

This includes, Rice said, "intensified Pakistani-Afghan dialogue on regional security, continued efforts to reduce tensions and reconcile with India, and closer economic integration with the nations of South and Central Asia".

Replying to a question from the cadets, she said " Pakistan now will need to find a way to have very solid civilian control of the armed forces."

Stressing that the region was of vital interest to the US, she noted growing strategic partnership with India as factors which reflected the US' improved position across South and Central Asia.

"From our partnerships with the newly democratic Pakistan and a free Afghanistan that is fighting the Taliban, not governed by it, to our growing strategic partnership with India and our improved relationships all the way across South and Central Asia, the United States is in a dramatically different and better position in this region than we were in 2001."

Expedia brings the best of international travel deals to India

Expedia, the world's leading travel and ticketing portal, has launched its Indian arm, Expedia.co.in, to cater to travellers in the country. The Indian travel industry is booming and more and more Indian travellers are using the Web to plan and book holidays.

Online travel and hotel booking

Expedia India will offer a huge range of online hotel booking choices for Indian customers – more than 80,000 hotels for every budget and preference. The savvy Indian globe-trotter will be able to book accommodation across the globe. The portal will also offer a variety of online travel booking options, including flights, holiday packages, car rentals, cruises, etc, for Indian customers.

International travel deals

Expedia India will give users access to over 3,000 holiday options, besides special deals and offers. The best of international travel deals will also be a click away for Indians who have been bitten by wanderlust.

Indian travellers will also benefit from a variety of innovative tools like 360-degree virtual tours of rooms and facilities in popular hotels worldwide and have access to over 280,000 independent traveller reviews. To enhance customer experience, the portal will also have a friendly and expert local customer support team to talk to.

All products on Expedia India are for sale in Indian rupees. Prices are quoted upfront and include all taxes and supplier surcharges so customers are easily able to understand the total cost of their travel, without any hidden charges.

So the next time you want to travel, book your holiday with Expedia India.

Net changing India's education system

India's education system has been infamous for its orientation toward rote learning. However, the Internet is poised to bring about a change in teaching methodologies and is proving to be a boon for India's academically-inclined students.

Several portals have popped up in recent months offering various educational support. Prominent amongst them are portals such as 24X7guru.com, extramarks.com, 100percentile.com, testcenter.indiatimes.com, tenaday.co.in and mteducare.com.

Some sites provide educational support to school-going children, such as 24X7guru, which is targeted at students between Standard 3 and 10 (aged nine to 16). Others such as testcenter.indiatimes.com, cater to school-going children as well as college students, and offer separate packages for those who wish to take competitive examinations.

"The Internet complements the learning students get in schools," Viraf Kalyaniwalla, head of operations at Learn Smart India, told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview. Learn Smart India runs 24X7guru, an online assessment platform. "Our portal complements the efforts by the school teachers and parents in providing conceptually strong academic foundation to the younger generation," Kalyaniwalla added.

Sandeep Anand, CEO of Hundred Percentile Education (100Percentile), said in an e-mail interview: "Online education is the future of education." The education portal provides online assessment and performance analysis services to students of all levels.

According to Anand, online education is fast becoming an integral part of mainstream academics and is, in fact, the new face of education in India.

100Percentile specializes in training students for engineering examinations and was launched in November 2007 as a partnership with Vidyamandir Classes, which provides services to help students prepare for the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examinations (IIT-JEE). The IIT-JEE is an annual entrance examination used by various colleges in India for admission into their undergraduate programs.

Although 100Percentile has not started marketing its services as yet, Anand said, it managed to build a membership base of over 50,000 students within four months of operation.

Old to new knowledge
Many of these portals aim to move away from the concept of rote-learning that has prevailed in India for many decades now. Kalyaniwalla explained: "The application fundamentally believes that once a student understands the concepts, he is less likely to forget them, as opposed to the method of merely memorizing the text.

"Through our application, students get a complete understanding of the fundamentals. Therefore, their foundation [for higher learning] is very strong," he said.

These educational portals hold more importance for smaller towns in India, where there are fewer coaching centers.

Many of these portals are cost-effective too. For instance, some packages offered at 24X7guru are priced at US$24.9 (1,000 rupee) for a year, which works out to just 3 rupee (less than 10 US cents) a day.

"We have students enrolled with us from all parts of the country," Kalyaniwalla of 24X7guru.com said. "Since the Internet penetration has gone beyond urban areas, many students situated in smaller towns and cities are also benefiting from our portal."

Anand said: "Nearly 75 percent of our students are from Delhi and other major cities of India. But we have still not begun marketing our products. Therefore, it is heartening to see that nearly 25 percent of our students belong to smaller cities and towns across India."

"With innovative e-learning and assessment services being created by 100Percentile and other such portals, we will soon see the benefits of e-learning percolating down to students from rural areas and small towns across the country," he added.

Does the Internet then hold the key to changing India's education system? According to Kalyaniwalla, it certainly does.

"Education will move beyond the three-hour examination structure and would focus on the conceptual clarity and knowledge of fundamentals," he said. "The mission of 24x7guru.com is to bring forth this change in the education system in the country."

However, low penetration of personal computers and broadband is proving to be a big impediment in delivering the real benefits of e-education to remote areas in India.

"But there are considerable efforts underway to augment the communication infrastructure in the country," Anand said.

According to a study by online research firm JuxtConsult, the overall Internet population in urban India grew by 28 percent between April 2006 and April 2007. The country's online user population stood at 30.3 million in April 2007.

Industry estimates suggest that Internet accessibility in India will grow to over 126 million users by 2010.

Indian sports: A maze of records

The publicity that Virender Sehwag received when he scored a triple century a couple of weeks ago in the test against South Africa was remarkable. His achievement was lauded even more than Calcutta golfer SSP Chowrasia’s historic win which earned him a winner’s cheque of Rs 1.6 crore against the best of the European PGA Tour when he won the Emaar MGF Masters at Delhi Golf Club in February this year.

What was missed by the cricket crazed media though — was the fact that India did not win the test match which ended in a tame draw because the track was actually lame and gave up so many runs that the bowlers stood no chance against the run flow. Sehwag’s score should really be discounted 50% considering the conditions and the relative ease with which that particular pitch gave up runs.

Records seem to be a huge focus for the Indian media in terms of cricket. This gives us an idea — why not get Jyoti Randhawa, Jeev Milkha singh, Arjun Atwal, Shiv Kapur, Chowrasia and the others play an official Professional Golfers Tour of India ( PGTI) event at a really easy track like the Qutab Golf Club, in Delhi. My guess is they will break the world record for scoring in a professional tournament. Would that make the front page of the main dailies?

The lowest score ever recorded in an official professional tournament is 59. At the par 71 Qutab GC, this would mean a 12 under par which is well within grasp of these players. Recently Indian professional Sanjay Kumar scored a round of 60 or 12 under par at the par 72 rated Jack Nicklaus designed Classic Golf Resort in Gurgaon during a pro-am tournament. So a world record 14 under at Qutab is well within reach.

An Indian breaking the world professional golf tour event scoring record could get the media excited about golf the way they do every time an Indian cricketer breaks some record. With more cricket being played than ever before, it is no surprise that Indians are piling up record total numbers of runs and wickets – especially since the one day game is not really that old and that Indians are playing more one dayers and tests than any other team in the world. It is little wonder Indians are going to break these type of total records.

What would be a better measure of performance in cricket is run averages per innings and per number of balls – not totals. For a bowler it should be number of runs given per wicket claimed and number of runs averaged per over. However shouldn’t these records only count if the team wins the match? Or should the media and public go crazy about the misleading records the media trumpets despite the matches being drawn or lost.

After all the dismal show by the Indian team in the 2nd test against South Africa should have actually shown the team up for their class. The Indian team not being able to score more than 76 runs in an Inning and getting defeated by an innings and some hundred runs is akin to Jeev, Jyoti and company not being able to shoot less than 80 in any round of a four day pro event while their competitors are shooting under 70 ! That’s what an innings defeat really is. Point Noted sports scribes?

Lets take a minute to ponder the significance of Jeev Milkha Singh’s invitation to the “by invitation only” elite tournament - Augusta Masters. The first time an invitation was extended to an Asian player was three years ago when China’s Zhang Liang Wei was invited to Augusta. This was an obvious recognition of the huge golf boom in China and that nation’s growing economic clout. That year I wrote in this column that despite Jyoti and Jeev being ranked ahead of the Chinese star, Indian golf was not considered important enough to merit that tournament’s attention.

This year invitations have been extended to three Asian players – a record. Jeev has already made a strong start in the tournament with a one under par 71, at the time of writing this column and we hope he holds the Indian flag high. Its through golf that the really important economic power houses follow India’s progress on the world scene.

After all Americans. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Europeans are blissfully uninterested in cricket scores. But they do watch those golf balls roll !

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