All hostels in Panjab University, Chandigarh are disallowing independent access to the Net to residents, irrespective of their departments or level of education, because they are “not mature enough to access the Internet”. These pearls of wisdom belong to none other than the Dean, Student Welfare, Prof. Nirmal Singh, who opines that, “All they do is open bad sites.”

It makes me wonder if those in power to take such decisions and have them implemented are really so clueless, or is doing so more like an ego-trip for them, since whatever be the reason, in the end, only the end-user suffers and the organisation’s image (whether it be a University or a country) that takes a hit.

IAPT organises two Physics exams every year:

• National Graduate Physics Examination (NGPE) for B.Sc. (Bachelors) level students of Physics, and
• National Standard Examination in Physics (NSEP) for +2 (Pre-Grad) level students.

Approximately 30,000 students registered to write the NSEP examination held in November ‘05. The top 1% from those who gave the exam were selected for Indian Physics Olympiad (InPhO). The top 60 students from there went into a selection Camp in HBCSE, Mumbai out of which the top 30 participated in a 7-10 day camp from where the team of 5 was chosen to represent India in the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) held in Singapore this month.

Raghu Mahajan, one of the team members, is from Chandigarh. I remember the day he visited us to get my father’s advice on practicals (Vijai Singh, who (Update: teaches) has taught Physics in IIT, Kanpur and is the National Science Olympiads coordinator, referred him over).

Each member of the team won a medal—2 golds and 3 bronzes in all (Official IPhO results).

This has apparently been done since then (rather hastily I might add).

Given the fact that the Administration is pushing so hard on the IT front, the fact the official site has such an omission is more than surprising. Imagine a scenario where those in the administration who want to promote investment in IT approach a company. This company on a whim decides to check out the administration’s site for more information. There they realise that the IT aspirations of Chandigarh are myopic, that what is being preached is not being practised. A natural question that might come to mind is, “For an administration with that level of commitment to IT, how can expect support when it matters.”

Department of Information Technology Chandigarh has a better website than Chandigarh Administration. However, it does not contain a map of the city either. It provides the plan for the IT Park but does not provide its location relative to the city or its scale in relation to the city.

Even Municipal Council of Chandigarh supposedly has a website but I was unable to contact the web server.

Doesn’t quite make much sense, does it?

Chandigarh lacks a good radio station. We only have two: Local AIR and the limited duration Kasauli’s retransmission of AIR Delhi’s FM station. This is underlined by Rajesh Sawhney (President, Reliance Entertainment):

We have managed to get the key cities of Punjab, including Chandigarh. These markets are under-served by radio and we see great advertising potential here, especially from local advertisers.

So with Adlabs entry, things are finally looking up and maybe in another decade or so, we’ll have a healthy competition between different radio stations here.

Tricity? That’s Chandigarh and the satellite townships of Panchkula and Mohali. I’m waiting for the day when they are combined to create the Chandigarh Metropolitan Area (CMA). That seems unevitable; might take a few decades though (unless a Paki nuke wipes out the area… heh). Dark humour aside, I don’t remember where I read the three referred to as Tricity but I liked it as a noun and started referring to the three as such. I plan to formalise it completely now by using it in my posts.

In related news, I found Metroblogging through some link. It seems like a great idea. So I applied for Chandigarh. If you’re from Tricity and think you can post at least 3 times a week, perhaps you should apply as well. A city shows up on their list when they have 10 bloggers for one.