Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us. It is a pleasure to be with you. My name is Stanislav Krzysztofowski. With me is my colleague, Miho Belitski. We are working at the Business Development Department here at CloudFerro, and today we want to talk to you about how you can use Creatias for scientific activities. So let's start. I will start with a short introduction to Creatias. I suppose that majority of you knows what Creatias is. It's somewhat familiar with the platform, but I will spend a couple of minutes to introduce the rest.  So I will try to bring to the table the best what we offer to scientific communities to help them develop their research and applications. I will finish my part with an inspiration, I hope. I have a couple of examples of what can be done with Creatias in terms of scientific research. Then I will hand over the lecture to my colleague, who will give you an insight into the funding opportunities that we have recognized and want to pass to you. So let's start with the Creatias. Creatias is one of the diocese, diocese means Copernicus data and information access. It is a big data cloud platform for Earth observation data discovery, storing, downloading and processing, equipped with a set of technologies and tools that allow our users to do it. For the scientific communities, we believe that we have identified a number of challenges that members of the scientific community face when it comes to working with the Earth observation data. The first of those challenges is access to the data itself. Commonly access is not easy. It requires resources, networking, time, computing and so on and Creatias and our tools that we will show in a minute come forward to face this challenge, to make it easier for scientists. But even having the environment working, we know that for some of you, for some more scientific users, first contact with such a complex platform might be overwhelming. So we want to... those webinars and what we do is aimed at guiding you and making it easier for you to utilize at least parts of the platform so you can boost, you can enhance your capabilities during your research. So let's start with data. To what data users of Creatias have access and to what data you can have access when you pursue your scientific goals. The core set of collections available in the Creatias are collections from the Sentinel satellite family. Those are Sentinel's one, Sentinel's two, three and Sentinel 5P. This table, I will not describe in detail that table. It depicts what data types from each collections are available and how they are available. I will just describe you what does it mean. Full archive means that the whole collection, the coverage of the whole globe is available locally within the Earth observation data repository of the platform. When we are signifying that something is or durable or cached that means that to access that data you have to perform a query and order and that data will be ready in a later date because it's either have to be downloaded from the long-term archives or it has to be processed in a dedicated fashion, especially for you. So I've told you about those Sentinel's. I've mentioned the Sentinel 5P. Additionally, we host the Landsat 5, 7 and 8 data. As you know, only the Landsat 8 is still operational. So we collect up-to-date data for your use. Additionally, we have collections from NVSAT and SMOS. Those are to non-longer... Sorry, SMOS is operational and NVSAT Maris is not operational. They're also available for your use. To complement that data, four out of six Copernicus services data sets are available on the Creadias. Those are listed here. Additionally, with the digital elevation maps of different sorts, the main DEM that is being used is the Copernicus DEM and the SRTM. We have a couple others as well. Recently, we have added the option, the possibility of purchasing and ordering and downloading the very high resolution data. So the Creadias users are able to select an area of interest and purchase VHR data from those three operators. We are automatizing that process. So that's the data you can work with. As you can see, it's a much wider variety than what you can commonly get from simple data hubs. So that's one of the advantages of using Creadias for those scientific activities, that you have all the data within. Next advantage is that we offer you ready-to-use tools that will help you and will accelerate the process you're going through. Those applications are the main applications when it comes to interaction with the Creadias platform. For you, probably the most important would be the Creadias Finder, the Earth Observation Finder, the Cloud Dashboard and the Jupyter Notebook. I will focus on the Finder and the Jupyter Notebook, but I would like to mention that the main application that is being used within the platform to manage Cloud Resources is the Cloud Dashboard. But we know that for people with more of a scientific Earth Observation or remote sensing focus background, going into the, let's say, IT Cloud Resources might be a bit challenging. It might be a bit overwhelming and tricky. So we have prepared those graphical applications, such as Finder and the Jupyter Notebook. So you don't have to, initially, at the very first glance, you don't have to set up your own processing environment. You don't have to prepare a data selection algorithm on your own, because within the Creadias we have the Finder. That is an application with graphical interface and the API, so programmatic interface that is designed to help you browse, discover, and download the data and, of course, either data from the long-term archive or data processing from a set of ready-to-go processors that we have prepared for you. So that's the Finder. That's your data access point that allows you to work with the data. The next application I would like to talk about is the Jupyter Notebook. I suppose majority of you is familiar with the concept of notebooks. In case of the Creadias, it is a free of charge prototyping tool in order to access it, you just have to register an account and log into your account. It's a single account for every application within the environment, so you would use the same account for the Earth Observation Finder and the Jupyter Notebook and for the Cloud Dashboard, the application for resource management as well. So it's free of charge. It's accessible to all registered users. It's a ready-to-go, online, interactive processing environment with what is very important to our users, direct access to the whole Earth Observation Data Repository, which is currently holding more than, I think we have read the 20 petabytes of data threshold. So as you can see, it's a simple yet very powerful tool to interact with the data to set up your processing. In the next step, I will show you an example of such processing. So for scientific users, I will come back for a minute to the applications. For scientific users, for those who have expertise within the field of remote sensing and Earth Observation Data Processing, but might not be as well experienced in the cloud and administration fields, we have Creadias Portal, the all-out information and data hub. Then we have the EO Browser, a very simple application for visualization of data. The finder I have described, that's your entry point to interact with the data, to discover the data. You can do it graphically. You can do it using the API. The API is based on the REST API, which is an open search technology. It's quite typical. It's quite easy to use. So it makes interacting with the data quite straightforward. You have also the Cloud dashboard, which is a more advanced tool for setting up processing environments within the cloud itself. The setting up an environment is a means purchasing a product, such as virtual machine or object storage. For free of charge processing, we offer you Jupyter Network, which is a prototyping tool. It's well-versed. It has access to the Earth Observation Data. Additionally, within the Creadias platform, we have a whole set of third-party applications. I would like to mention just one at this moment. We offer you access to the WMS Server Configurator, hosted by us. It's a synergized technology that allows you to generate WMS data on demand within given configuration you have specified. So those are the tools that we offer you. Those are the tools that we feel that make interaction with the data and processing the data easier. So those tools should, we hope, give you more opportunities to perform your research of choice. And now I would like to give you two examples of data processing that has been performed within the Creadias infrastructure. The first example is the urban heat area analysis. It has been performed by scientists from the Warsaw Technical University with cooperation with us. It has been done using solely the Creadias Jupyter Network. It's an analysis of localized heat areas in urban environments. The input data that was required was coming from the Landsat 5, 7 and 8. Additionally, for that research, Plot Boundaries Registry was uploaded as well. And it gives you an example of what can be done with the platform and with the data because this research produces very viable and vital and useful information about the growth and changes of the urban heat islands that can be used in the decision-making process, in the decision-making of entities governing for said, let's say city or set of cities. So that gives you quite good insight what can be done. The other one, the next example is the S2GLC. It's a land cover classification prepared and performed by the Center for Space Research from Warsaw with cooperation with Creadias. It has resulted with a data collection that is a land cover classification for whole Europe based on the Sentinel-2 data from the year 2017. And that's another opportunity for you. The results of that research has been incorporated into the Creadias' Earth Observation Data Repository. It's available in the Earth Observation Finder and the Earth Observation Browser. So the data that has been produced during the research has been integrated into the platform and made the part of the platform. So our cooperation enhanced both researchers' capabilities to perform the research because of the resources and access to the Sentinel-2 data and ours the platform capabilities and to help our users because now everyone has access to that data collection and can build upon it. So I see it as a great example of opportunities that can be pursued in cooperation with our Dias. Now I would like to hand over to my colleague who will talk to you about the funding opportunities so Miho, please do. Thank you Stanislav for the presentation and my name is Miho and I want to tell you something more about this funding opportunities on Creadias because as we understand you as a scientific institution many brilliant ideas that could make use of our infrastructure and our facilities but there is always a problem how to finance your project. So we have identified for you today three main projects related to Earth observation topic and more general cloud computing for your project. One is Agri-Project. Second is Network of Resources provided by ESA so European Space Agency. Third is some internal CloudFaro policy for supporting scientific projects. So let me start from this Agri initiative. It's Open Cloud for Research Environment and the aim of this call is to provide the institutions research environment and education institutions with cloud processing capabilities. Basically the idea is to move the projects that are not currently exploiting much the cloud resources to offer them funding for cloud infrastructure and they are currently two paths they are being organized parallel. So one is Opera Cloud for Research CloudFunding for Research and this is basically for any infrastructure as a service or platform as a service funding related to research topics. And the second one I would like to focus on in this presentation is Opera Funding for Earth Observation Services so it's basically everything that is available on Creodias is strongly related to Earth Observation Services but cloud resources are as well appropriate in this case. Okay, so as I already mentioned this funding is directed to research and education community from Europe so it's 39 countries in this call. The only limitation is that you need to access, you need to be a member of an organization and this is founded in three ways. Why three is for individual researchers second is for research projects and individual institutions and third is for the consortium of institutions and I will tell you later how it depends some calls are for Wave 1 some is for Wave 2 and 3 we'll have a look at this later on. I would like to focus on this Earth Observation Call since the first Earth Observation Call is already open and it's going to be closed on 30th November so less than two weeks from now not much time left but on the other hand this call focuses on Wave 2 and 3 so individual institutes and consortium of institutes and the target of this call is to the projects that are involved in this call need to consume Earth Observation data in some way and now on since the call for project is open you don't need to specify which provider will provide your services you can choose it later on now you need to well define the objective of your project the way it's going to be performed and you need to fill the form in the appropriate way and the provider of the services will be chosen to fulfill your needs so you don't need at this stage to choose the exact provider of let's say data or cloud platform or you don't need to define the exact needs for your project you just need to present what's your idea how you're going to perform this idea and the important from the organizer point of view is that your project needs to create a nice output that can be used by Okri as a showcase that your project is that the project that they're financing is in fact leveraging the science scientific needs the funding tires are between 50,000 it depends on the wave but it's up to 100,000 euro depending on the needs but it's not strict limit so in case you have some brilliant idea that exceed the needs you can also apply they can also they can also take it into account what it's important this funding covers your processing needs or your data needs or application needs but it cannot cover your project's person hours so basically this funding does not allow you to finance entire project it's more like you have the idea or the project that is for instance not in cloud or not using or can leverage from additional data and you want to leverage this project with additional financing for platform services or additional application services if cloud computing for your processing or specialized data including let's say very high resolution data or storage for server for your application at the end of the project or storage for dissemination of your results so there is many possibilities how to receive this funding how to leverage from this call application is available online here I include the project web page and what is important I receive information from the organizers they are able in case you have some idea and you need some support in preparing the project they are able to let's say organize calls directly with you to maybe help you prepare the prepare to the project call of course they won't do it for you so there is still some job to do but from our point of view the application seems quite easy and user friendly I also included here the table from the organizers what is the time frame the first call is already open but the following calls for both IAIS projects infrastructure as a service project will be available in February and in July okay the other funding opportunities I would like to introduce to you is that work of resources organized by ISA so in principle it's dedicated to any user that needs resources for research or research project but it's important that the projects cannot be at this stage cannot be commercial so you cannot finance the project that will generate the exit revenue for you but it can be at the stage it's promising to develop your project at some point to commercial level this is available as well for research institution as for private companies there are some constraints still so for now as far as at this stage these projects need to be supported by ISA so it has to be somehow already supported by ISA such projects can receive sponsoring for up to 12 months and after this period user should be able to find this resources by himself and the systematic processing can only be funded if the data set remains available free of charge later on okay also one additional information that's sponsoring fix allocated processing resources can also be accepted only if it's demonstrated that it needs resources 24-7 so you need to justify the need for cloud-based services and here are some useful links where you can find more information on the project first is ISA site on EO4 Society with information on how to access the data and second one is in the portal of Norpoint Claudio Group which is responsible for managing of this network of resources and distribution of resources and then there you can see all the service providers that are providing the services through the Nor framework and I want also to introduce that next month we are together with Claudio to prepare the webinar on the Nor services so stay tuned and we want to present you more on this topic next month okay and finally how you can how we can be supported by CloudFerro in case you don't have you don't want to or you don't have the project that can be supported via Okri or Nor network of resources and first of all by design we offer 18.5% discount for scientific institutions and this is pretty straightforward to say I have got a scientific project can you apply a discount for us and we usually agree for this discount to scientific projects and the second option is that in case you have idea of some project that could use Earth observation data but you need financing or you need some you are looking for a partner to make a consortium and let's say commercialize the results or you have a project that already has the results but you need support in dissemination you can always contact us and we will think of some kind of on some kind of cooperation that would help you and us to leverage the so for you to disseminate results maybe and maybe leverage your processing capabilities but on the other hand for us to enrich our offering and maybe involve our business opportunities and prepare for other business opportunities also we are very happy to participate in some procurements that are currently being performed so if you need cloud provider to help you in commercial part of some procurement just contact us and we will see if there is possibility to cooperate this is from my site on this commercial ideas okay thank you thank you so much for giving us insight into the funding opportunities that can be leveraged to purchase resources within the creodias now we would like to give the floor to you if you have any questions it's a good time to ask them in the chat we will do our best to answer if you want to know more about either the platform or the capabilities of it or about the funding please ask now we will give you 30 seconds to think about those questions if they are coming up okay we have a question from Miss Agata Hostuo the question I will read it out loud the question is is it possible to apply for Okra funds for the ongoing research project Niko I think this question is for you yes so according to our knowledge yes it's possible the only thing you need to demonstrate is that the cloud resources will leverage your project in a way that otherwise would not be possible but it's the easy answer is yes this is the by design created for the project that already existing but will somehow leverage from cloud resources okay I mean they might be some details that need to be investigated so in case we can discuss it also later on if you need the best would be honestly if you have doubts after looking at the web page of the organizers you can always email them and they will for sure clarify this they are very responsive in terms of time response so this is I think the best idea but my knowledge is that it's possible thank you Mihał there is a next question is Creadias open to any researcher including non-European well the answer is yes Creadias is a platform that is open to anyone and everyone and everywhere and everywhere that's the nature of the digital age but I would like to elaborate on it first of all the data the majority of data that consists of the Earth observation data repository within the Creadias is free and open data within the Copernicus program the license for the data is free and open so it's freely available in any way other than technological restraints that we are that we are coming over so the Creadias platform and the data is free and open to everyone majority of the tools require registration some of the tools are free of charge those I've mentioned today the other tools and resources are charged in different modes funding for them Mihał has described I hope that answers your question we have one more question thanks for presentation of Creadias through the EOFinder you can order only data younger than six months does this data also apply to the Jupiter notebook API well I'm not sure if I understand if I will understand the question correctly but I'll do my best to answer so it depends my understanding of the question is are you able to order the same data through the Jupiter notebook as you would for the Earth observation finder I hope I'm correct I think the first issue is whether the EOFinder you can order data only below six months I got it Mr. Schultz and everyone the accessible data from the Creadias Jupiter notebook are the data sets that are available locally from the Jupiter notebook you can for example perform a query that will order the data using the the EOFinder API so through the notebook using the notebook you ask let's say ask the finder or order the data processing or download from the finder so those tools work in a single environment or somewhat interconnected you can interact with the finder using the Jupiter but normally only the local data are available from the Jupiter notebook level yes but I think it's also worth to clarify that not only data it depends on the collection whether on the time frame the collection is available depends on the collection it's not by default that the data are six months available because for some collection let's say for some Sentinel-1 data or Sentinel-5P so when we have the collection for the entire period bottom line is it depends on the data type and data collection is it available locally and what coverage is available locally majority of the data is available locally so it can be accessed from the Jupiter notebook for example some of the data types especially higher levels of processing are not available locally they are for example available to be ordered or they are being cached so they might be available but it doesn't have to be are there any other questions thank you for attending our webinar thank you for joining us we hope that it was informative and we would like to invite you to the next webinars and we would like to invite you to follow us on our in our social media and check out our website if you would like to know more feel free to contact me and Miho under our email addresses we will gladly follow up any topics and any ideas that may have come up during this session thank you and goodbye


Back folks, let's get over to our man, Mr. Fred Ernest. Now, Fred folks is the CEO of Vista Gold. Vista Gold has a world-class gold project, Mount Todd in Australia. I happen to own Vista Gold as well as many tigers and tigers is out here. Fred Ernest, welcome back to TFNN. Tom, thank you, good afternoon. Absolutely. So, you know, pretty cool. We have the gold price out here in 1955.  It's de-risked. So, you know, if you can give us a little update, that'd be great, Fred. Yeah, thanks, Tom. You know, last year was a great year for us. We completed the feasibility study for the project and after that we retained CIBC Capital Markets as our strategic advisor.  But part of the year we started working on an internal scoping study to look at a smaller scale project, one that would have a lower capital cost and potentially be more attractive to potential partners. We hope to wrap that up a little bit later this quarter. We think that that will attract significant interest from those who, partners who are interested in the optionality of Mount Todd. Sure.  You know, inflation and in this particular case, I mean, the gold price has gone pretty dramatically higher since the last time I spoke with you. Let me ask this, Fred. When folks are doing, you know, large gold projects like this, right? What do they have to use as the price of gold? I mean, because we know gold can go up and down $200. You know what I mean? So you're doing a longer-term project. So what are big gold companies looking for to get involved in something like this? You know, that's an interesting question because every company has their own criteria. I see. Okay. Some are very conservative and using quite low gold prices as they're threshold for evaluating projects, you know, in the $13, $1400 range. I see. Others are a bit more progressive in looking at a $1600 gold price, which is where we did our study. Nice. And can you explain, and we all could see, there's no doubt, when you came out with the news release that you're looking at a smaller project that can bring it a much larger one, of course, the stock took off, which is awesome. So can you just explain how that works and how that would work somewhat to the clients? Yeah. So we're evaluating, you know, Mount Todd is large. We have 9.4 million ounces of total resource. We have a proven and probable reserve as reported in our feasibility study of just under 7 million ounces. But we've designed Mount Todd to be attractive to very large partners with a plant size of 50,000 tons a day. Wow. We're looking at a smaller project, 15,000 tons a day that would be scalable, that would allow us to build a project and instead of spending almost $900 million on initial capital, something that would be less than 400 million. So it's a way to bootstrap into the project and perhaps generate interest from a group of companies that would be very, very worthy partners but are mid-tier producers and can't quite bite off a $900 million capex for the project. Sure.  Each year. But that's exactly right. You know, and so that's why we designed the project, you know, to be appealing to a larger company. Unfortunately, larger companies are those that are acting most cautiously as we've gone through the last 10 or 12 months, you know, with the impacts and effects of inflation. We think that some of the mid-tier producers and those who are looking for an opportunity to grow and lock in a project that would add significantly to their production profile will find a smaller project that's expandable, very, very appealing. No, I think that's a great move. I mean, and there's no doubt, you know, the last run up, folks, is that when the run was up, everyone wanted to buy at the highs, Fred, right? When we go back to 2011, it's kind of funny how this works, right? But I guess, you know, everyone, I'm not quite sure whether we all learned, but the bottom line is that there's a difference. So you're in Australia, which is, can you talk to folks a little bit about Australia, because it's a great jurisdiction, right? And how is the currency going now in the jurisdiction? Yeah, so Australia is a resource-exporting country, well-established, very reliable mining laws. They're very supportive of the mining industry. In fact, most Australians, unlike here in the United States, most Australians own mining stocks. It's just part of their national culture. And so we find it to be a very safe, geopolitical jurisdiction, very easy to work at and understand the mining industry. As far as the currency goes and exchange rates, right now we're trading around 69 cents, say US per Aussie dollar. That's a very good exchange rate for the project. Our analysis was done at 71 cents. And it seems that it's pretty stable in that range. It's been going back and forth between 68 and 70 cents. So it's a really good exchange rate for us and the project. And when we have miners, right? I mean, the bottom line, miners folks can be in the middle of anywhere or nowhere.  Is that correct? Mount Todd is probably one of the most accessible large-scale mines in all of Australia. You know, it's about 250 kilometers south, southeast of Darwin, 30 minutes north of Catherine, 10 minutes east of the major highway that connects Darwin on the North Coast to Adelaide on the South. And we have paved roads right to the mine site. So this is a site that, you know, unlike many other operations that are remote, they require flying and fly out access or driving for hours and hours, you know, literally in two and a half, three hours at the most from the Darwin airport, I can be at site. And that just speaks to the accessibility of the project. With Catherine, you know, a community of somewhere in the range of 18,000 people, 30 minutes away, you know, we've got it. We've got a community close by, all the support we need and is a great place for families to live. That's amazing. That's pretty cool. And, you know, the bottom line is, is that all as we keep hearing, the mantra is that, you know, don't worry about inflation, don't worry about inflation, but the reality is, you know, listen, it seems to me that, yeah, inflation might come down, but it's got to be really hard to get it down to 2%.   I mean, it's pretty cool when you look at that context.  It's pretty amazing. It really is, you know, and while the numbers move around a little bit because of inflation and our cost for our wheat, we estimate that our capital costs are about 8% higher than they were a year ago. Okay. That's the gold moving up, you know, the amount taught economics have always demonstrated. It's very real plus. Absolutely. Well, listen, Fred, this is great, appreciate the update, and folks, change on the New York American Exchange VGZ. Fred, have a great one, safe one, and we plan on having you back again. Very well. Thank you, man. Have a great one. Stay right there, folks, we'll come right back.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick, this program with Real News. We have with us D. Raghunandan who has been studying the Indo-US relations for quite some time, particularly the defence relations. Raghunandan, we seem to have come across the kind of rubicon as it were with this designation of India as a major defence partner. By all accounts, this is equivalent to being a treaty partner, part of NATO or a part of what used to be Seattle centre which don't really exist anymore. What does it really mean in the relationship between the two countries in terms of defence agreement? I think it's been a long process of standing just this side of the rubicon till a formal declaration was made. I think this was what has been an offing since the India-US defence framework agreement way back which preceded the Indo-US nuclear deal. And this is what it has all been leading up to. But at that point of time India did not sign the Logistical Service Agreement which was a standard agreement as a first step to a defence relation. Exactly. But as I was saying, I think this is what all of that has been leading up to. It was an informal bilateral agreement to begin with but with a fairly explicit intention to gradually formalise it as one went along. So this process of getting India to sign the Logistics Agreement and the other agreements that would then form part of the architecture which then underpins this present agreement designating India as a major US defence partner I think has been some time in coming. There is a lot of pressure for India not to designate itself as a US partner, military partner particularly and that held back India. Exactly. Now this government seems to have decided there is no need to hold back. Initially the sweet talk with China signed. India seems to have now taken a very decisive tilt towards the US side. We saw that in the South China Sea issue also. India issued a fairly mature statement which finally because Philippines sort of backed off met that India was sort of an outlier in way it treated the South China Sea issue particularly the international court verdict. So do you see that India in this case is sort of increasingly becoming a part of the US attempt to really ring in China and sort of be a counterpart to China in this area. I think this is exactly what has been in the offing for some time. It has now come to fruition and actually signing on the dotted line to do this and in fact one of the many areas of or activities mentioned in the agreement between India and the US pertains to freedom of navigation and we all know what that means. That phrase may not have had the resonance that it does today 10 years ago but being specifically mentioned today it is very clear where this is headed and what it signifies. It also the agreement also talks about strengthening the US engagement in South Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific region and again we know what it means from a US strategic point of view. Basically getting India, Australia, Japan together that was always a presumption. You know one part of it is channeled we'll come back to this equation later but apart from that in terms of normal defence agreements the argument is interoperability of the two forces. Does it mean India is now going to be significant buyer of US equipment? Is that the implication of interoperability to my mind has always meant two things. One is increased use of Indian military facilities to host US military hardware and the second part has been this issue of buying US hardware because how do you ensure interoperability best which is what the US does with NATO allies. So, this has always been the case but in India there is this defence technology initiative that is a very important part of the India-US defence framework agreement which specifically talks about areas of collaboration between the US and India both for export of US hardware to India as well as co-development and technology transfer of sensitive defence equipment. One issue is India has always had sourcing from Russia. Do you think this would replace Israel, the US and other NATO partners is the major supplier of hardware in the future? Is that one of the implications? Absolutely, I think that's already been happening. India has been increasingly buying US hardware and of course Israeli hardware particularly missiles and so on but India has bought significant aircraft from the US. We've got the maritime reconnaissance aircraft. You've got the heavy lift transport aircraft, the globe master and the Hercules aircraft.  India has just signed an agreement for M777 Howitzer's field artillery guns and I think there is very little doubt left anymore that India is soon going to sign up an agreement with the United States to manufacture in India either the Lockheed Martin F-16 or Boeing's F-A-18 aircraft. I think one of the reasons for reducing the purchase of Rafale aircraft from France from the original 126 down to 36 has been that India had already decided to buy American aircraft so why buy the French aircraft now. If this paves the way certainly for acquisition of US aircraft and importantly paves the way for technology transfer and technology transfer therefore has been specifically also mentioned in the agreement. Coming back to the issue of the China issue that's really the big one in this mix because India initially did under Modi did initially make a lot of noise with China wanting to be friends. Andaman Mohan Singh was pretty much in love with Bush which he said publicly and did bring India much closer to the US. But under Manmohan Singh India also had very good relations with China. In fact the relations were normalized with China quite considerably. So do you think this in some sense is also playing out of the China-Pakistan relationship which India seems to have taken a lot of embrace to and therefore it's in some sense India's reaction to China is conditioned with India's relationship with Pakistan. Do you see that playing a role and do you see therefore India becoming much closer to form an alternate access against China. I see that today Pakistan is extremely close to China. Its military relations with China have deepened. Technology transfer from China to Pakistan co-manufactured manufacture of the JF-17 aircraft, military aircraft. All these are proceeding much faster than they had done earlier. Arguably this is also to do with the closer India has got to the United States. The more compelled Pakistan has felt to deepen its military ties with China. So it's very difficult to say which comes first. Do you think India is making to me a mistake by actually treating China-Pakistan as a major issue for its moves with China? So is there a reason for India to hyphenate its relationship India-Pakistan and not look upon China-Pakistan-China-India as a different issue? The more India plays the Pakistan card the more India is limiting itself in strategic terms as a South Asian power rather than the opposite projection of India as an Indian Ocean power.  That's been a part of the problem with the Modi government and its vision. On the other hand, if India has a China-fixated vision and that China-fixated vision is linked with an Indo-U.S. military relationship that does not board well for the future, it runs a serious risk of irritating the Chinese dragon. This doesn't, as you said, it doesn't log well. It's really strategically a wrong move to get this kind of India playing its own role in that region, bilaterally with countries. Say for example, India is responding to requests from Vietnam to deepen defence relationships which is likely to have some repercussions in the South China seas, etc. Pursued by itself, it won't make such a big impact. But if India is seen to be doing all this as part of chessboard moves in tandem with the United States, I think that casts a very different look to what India does strategically in this region. It will be seen to be a subordinate. That's right. One last point I thought I would make is this particular defence agreement has now been legislated in the U.S. Congress. Within the American political context puts the India-U.S. defence relationship a little bit beyond the pale of fluctuations that might have been expected with the new Trump administration because this is now part of U.S. law. So this relationship is now set for the long haul. And this is something which I think we in India need to take into account from a strategic point of view. Thank you, Lagu, for being with us. We'll continue to discuss with you these issues and other issues as they develop. This is all the time we have for NewsClick today. Please keep watching NewsClick for future episodes. Do visit our website and also our Facebook page.


Good afternoon and welcome to this session and the second day of our second phase to phase interaction. Today I wish to discuss a few important aspects. In fact, two of them both very critical. Frankly, the task I shall be doing today is not a very pleasant task. You will soon know why. First, I would like to comment on the presence of participants in the phase to phase interaction. These sessions that we have arranged on three weekends permit two things. One is phase to phase interaction amongst the participants at a remote centre. And second, it permits interaction between all participants and IIT faculty. So, as you know if you ask a question and it is answered from here, it is the person who is asking the question and the person who is responding is seen by all participants across RCs. Now, what is in the minds of people is that these interactive sessions are primarily planned to permit such interaction between you and the faculty at IIT Mumbai. While it is one of the objectives, it is not the main objective. The main objective is to permit activities and interaction at the RC which is the main purpose. Which means that when you participate as a group of 20, 30, 40, 50 faculty members in an RC, there is a lot of discussion that happens within the participants. The afternoon labs are done often collectively. Now onwards as you know, we are forming teams and many of the activities will be based on teams. It is not just a team of three or four people working in isolation. We would expect discussions amongst teams, amongst all the participants. That is where the knowledge that we gain gets consolidated. We can raise some common doubts. These could be communicated to IIT Mumbai or put on the discussion forum and all of us will become visor through such discussions and interaction. That is the reason why we had said right upfront that participation in this critical part is mandatory. Now it is possible that for some genuine reason someone may not be able to attend either a session or half a session. First of all, it should be avoided. The reason must be very serious for you are not being able to participate. And even in such case when you are not able to participate in this critical part, because of some genuine reason, one, you must inform the workshop coordinator at your remote centre and inform the IIT Bombay team of your absence. More important than that, if for some genuine reason you are absent, it is your responsibility to make up for your absence. How do you make up for your absence? Immediately find out from the workshop coordinator and from other colleagues what exactly transpired. If there was an activity which was required to be completed during the face to face interaction sessions such as in the labs in the afternoon, you are expected to complete them either individually or with the help of remote centre coordinator, workshop coordinator, but you must complete those activities because that is part and parcel of the safety. So, I hope I am very clear. Nobody is supposed to miss these interactions. It is not adequate that you come, sign your presence in the morning and then disappear for the session. That is in fact worse because what is expected of you is that you participate and contribute to the discussions that happen within the participants group assembled at any RC and participate similarly in the lab session. So, I hope I am very clear on this and I hope that if there has been any absence because of some genuine reasons, if previously the matter has not been reported, we do get some e-mails saying that someone is not able to attain this date or that date. We presume that the person is taking care of making up for the absence by interacting with the workshop coordinator and other team members. If you are not done so, so far please start doing it in case you miss this or the next session. The second matter is more serious and unfortunately far more unclear. This relates to assignment submissions. As you know, the multiple individual assignments were required to be submitted in the first four weeks. These were peer assessed individually submitted. There are several individual online quizzes which were expected to be done. In coming weeks, you will be doing team assignments as well as individual assignments. For example, today Professor Sundar has given an assignment. Part of that is a team assignment which you will work during the lab sessions today. I believe that the team leader of every team is supposed to submit some kind of a paper design by scanning two, three, four pages that your team prepares and then uploading that as a team assignment. That is more for a record. Of course, each member of the team should carry these three or four pages paper design and subsequently work individually to prepare a simple website as he has directed. That will be peer assessed later after the assignment submit. Now, when I am doing such assignment submissions either individually as a member of the team, I have also agreed that all these assignments including for example, the course material and other lecture recorded, lectures recorded, interaction, etcetera, you remember we have said that we will release all of this in open source. We have all agreed for that. And the objective is that the combined learning by all of us is actually made available to a much wider body of colleague teachers across the country and perhaps elsewhere in the world. This is all good intention. But let us see unfortunately what has happened. Before I tell you what has actually happened in this FDP, I would like to comment on a key word called plagiarism. I hope all of you have heard about this word. If not, please understand the exact meaning of this. When a piece of work done by one person is copied by another person and submitted by the second person as his or her own work without clearly acknowledging the original author is termed as plagiarism. In common parlance, we call this copy. There are multiple instances when such copying can happen. For example, students copying answers in an examination or students copying either a complete assignment or a part of an assignment when they are required to submit it as a part of the course or subject that we teach. Amongst grownups, unfortunately such copying happens when some part of the research work done by a colleague either now or earlier is copied and verbatim reproduced and but it is reproduced as my work. Now when I do this, it is actually copying of a research paper, part of research paper, copying of a thesis, all of this are examples of plagiarism. Needless to say, such plagiarism is simply not accepted. Why the temptation occurs to plagiarism? So, let me put my points, all of you are aware of these. Number one, I am a student or I am a participant in a workshop like this. I do not have time to do the work on my own but I need to submit something within a deadline. So, I may be tempted that I do not have time but somebody, some friend of mine has done something since there are 4000 people submitting assignments, maybe it will pass. I will just copy his or her assignment and submit as my own. The other reason could be I am unable to do the work myself because perhaps I have not prepared, I have not studied properly but I have a compulsion to submit because either marks are involved if I am a student or a certificate is involved if I am a teacher. In our case, surely a certificate recognized by AICT is involved and that could tempt me if either I am inadequately prepared or I do not have time, I might think, I will just take somebody's submission, copy it and submit it. When I do so, I do it in the belief that one, my act will not be caught or no obviously that if my act is caught, there could be some penalty but I presume I believe that this act may not be caught. The second, even if there is some risk of being caught, I assess that risk and I say alright, there are 4000 people in this FDP they are submitting even if they catch. So, what could be the penalty perhaps likely to be no penalty or perhaps likely to be a minimal penalty. I consciously decide that I am willing to take that risk and the moment my mind accepts that risk, I become prey to the temptation. Now I am tempted to copy something, submit it as my own. The first time it happens, it is not caught, I am not penalized, I am tempted to do it the second time. This is actually part of a generic value system that crumbles if efforts are not made to curb such temptation. I am not blaming anyone. This is a human nature. All of us are great optimizers. All of us as human beings would like to try to minimize our efforts and maximize our gains and such temptations occur for marks among students, for recognition or certifications amongst faculty, for money amongst people who are grown up and that is what we call corruption in fact or for fame for whatever reason. In fact, the entire societal value system actually attempts to promote understanding that such things are bad and such things should not be done. That is the reason why we have legal system, justice, punishment, etcetera, etcetera. That is because whatever we dub as bad should not happen. If someone does a bad thing, there must be at least a rap on the knuckle or a severe penalty depending upon the act and the severity of the act. Now, this I speak generically, but let me come back to the academic value, which is what concerns us most at this time. First and foremost, all of us should understand one thing about digital submissions, which is what is happening in this FDP and which is what will happen increasingly in coming years and decades, not only for FDPs, but even for teaching that we normally. Those of you who teach in an environment with reasonable computerized facilities available, such as programming assignments, for example, in IIT Bombay, they are all submitted online. Now, whenever you submit anything online in a digital form, the first and foremost thing that I must understand that if I made a submission, that submission remains as a record. It cannot be refuted. What it means is, if I have submitted something, whatever it is, my own or anybody else's copied, whatever, if I have submitted something, when it was submitted, who submitted it and what was submitted. All of this remains as a record in a server generally far removed from myself. So, whenever I submit, I must understand this, that it is not for now. Even one year later, 10 years later, that submission can be examined and it can be established, who submitted it, when it was submitted and what exactly was submitted. That cannot be refuted. More importantly, if such submissions contain text, then the text can be auto-analysed. Auto-analysed means what? I do not know whether you have heard of a software called Turnitin. Turnitin is actually a repository of an extremely large number of research papers. So, I will tell you how we use this Turnitin. It helps us to find out if a new research paper that comes to me contains any paragraphs or similarity with any one of the previously published lakhs of research papers. You know how we use it? Sometimes, our M.Tech students or P.A.D. students, when they submit their internal reports, let us say literature survey. Now, a literature survey is by definition a survey of what others have done. But there, our instructions are crystal clear. If you survey somebody else's paper, then number one, you must acknowledge that person. You must cite that person's name and research in the literature survey part. And number two, you are required to rephrase the wordings used by that researcher in his or her publication. You are not permitted to reproduce it verbatim. If you do that, you have to put it in double quote as a quotation. Many research scholars, many M.Tech students are often tempted to either omit the reference, pose somebody else's work as one's own work. So, what we do is every time we get a submission, we actually pass it through this Turnitin software. And this Turnitin very nicely gives me the percentage of the material in this paper, which appears to be common with this paper or that paper or that paper. What it means is that if my student has been tempted to copy from somebody else's paper, 99 percent I will be able to discover it at the first attempt when I see that. And therefore, I can clobber it. I can shout at my research scholar M.Tech student, tell him this nonsense must stop, make that person rewrite it and resubmit. This is the normal use of Turnitin. Please note that when such material, which has been copied, but without acknowledgement, is put in public domain. And remember, a submission to a research conference is a public domain submission. A submission such as you make for this FDP is incidentally also a public domain submission, because you are submitting it to a common side, which is committed IIT Bombay is committed as you all know to collect all of this and put it in open source for public good. Which means that if such plagiarized material is put in public domain, it may cause very serious damage to the reputation of both the individual and to the institution the individual belongs to. So, suppose I am a teacher in one of the colleges and I am tempted to plagiarize something and submit that assignment, then if that act is caught, I will be put to shame, my institute will be put to shame and additionally and unfortunately IIT Bombay will be put to shame, because IIT Bombay permitted such material to be released in open source. All of this you would agree must be avoided. Now, I come to the main point. The penalty of that the academic community imposes on such plagiarism whenever it is detected could be very serious, because this is considered a very serious matter globally. We often talk of developed countries and developing countries. We often have a wrong impression that developed country means a rich country, developing country means a poor country. While that may be so, the poverty is not merely in terms of money and riches. The poverty is also in terms of discipline, both self-discipline and social discipline. The matter of plagiarism is taken extremely seriously in all developed countries and in fact, it is taken very seriously globally, particularly in academy. So, in case of students, this may result in a fail grade or even expulsion. This happens in IIT Bombay. I mean, I have been teaching for 45 years. I always announce that even if you get less marks, it is okay, but if you copy anything, you will get a fail grade immediately in the court and the matter will be reported to the institute authority. There are cases where the institute authorities have decided to expel such students just to ensure that the rigor of the academic values is maintained. Such is the case that is followed everywhere practically in global academics, certainly also in India. After all, you as teachers, when you supervise examinations and when you note that some students have copied, do not you take similar action? You do. Sadly, if it happens with teachers, what should be done? Obviously, a very serious action must be taken by the concerned authorities. Now, when detected, a penalty is always imposed is the underlying fact. I would like all colleague teachers to know it. We do it for our students. We must do it for ourselves as well if such a thing happens. Sorry for this lengthy background, but let me come to the point now. A very sad point in my life of conducting so many FDPs, copying of assignments in this FDP has happened. Several cases have been detected and established. Now, as I speak, more auto analysis is happening. That means very shortly for all the submissions that have been already made and the submissions that will be made in future, we apply the same thing. We will do a detailed analysis both manual and automatic to determine if there is any copying case. Please remember that such occurrences are simply unacceptable. In fact, I will go one step forward and I will say that even helping someone do this is wrong. Suppose a friend comes to me and I say, he tells me, I am not able to understand this. Will you please give me your assignment so that I will upload it as mine? And because he is my friend, I say, go ahead and do that. That is wrong. In fact, it is worse. Please remember, if I give my assignment to a friend, I am not acting as his or her friend. I am actually acting as his or her enemy. I am geo-paradising his or her chances of learning number one. And I am putting him or her at great risk, because if the matter is caught, the person would be deeply penalised. And some of that murder will stick to my clothes as well, because I am the person who has helped. So, please remember, we all must collectively ensure that such nonsense does not happen at all. As far as the normal penalty is concerned for such copying when it happens in the case of an FDP, for example, going by the same norms that we apply to the students, these are the norms that we have decided. These norms are number one. In every such case where it is detected and please remember, it is not a question of one assignment or two assignments or all assignments. Coping is a copying. Theft is a theft is a theft. If that happens, then the penalty ordinarily would be number one. Certificate of FDP completion is denied. Even if a certificate is issued and the case is detected later, such certification can be revoked. Obvious penalty like giving a fail gate to a student. Report the names to the authority, which are the authorities. In this particular case, the authority is governing U is not IIT Bombay. We will of course report it to IIT Bombay as a matter of reporting, but the matter will be reported to the institution in which you serve and to AICT. Second, at the third and most important thing, what we have decided is we will display the list of such people publicly on NME ICT website. Please remember that we have to ensure that number one such acts do not happen and number two if such acts happen, then an appropriate penalty is imposed. Well, many of you might be considering, even those who are not indulged in any plagiarism may be considering that this penalty is too harsh and I admit this penalty is too harsh, but this is the penalty that we have been giving to our students for decades and there is no reason to assume that a similar penalty should not be imposed for the very, very mean act of falling pay to the temptation of copying and submitting something as my own assignment. This is a criminal activity academically and this must be penalized, but since this might be the first occasion when colleague teachers are tempted to do this, after all it is not very often that we teachers have to submit assignments is only when we attain FDPs, particularly hard FDPs such as this where lot of work is required to be done and all of us are compelled by circumstances to spend our time in several other things including our duties, our family commitment. So, it is quite possible that I did not get enough time or I could not prepare much and assuming that the risk is not much I was tempted to do this probably for the first time. Since such a possibility exists, my colleagues have advised me to permit one opportunity which will result in a softer penalty. Let me describe the process that I have decided to follow. This is the alternative this alternative will provide an opportunity to all participants. If a participant has been tempted to copy and submit then the participant will get a chance to admit if one has given into such temptation. Every such admission must result in complete details being given which assignment was copied when from whom. Further the participant must commit not to do so ever again because after all we are all trying to establish academic value and redo and submit the plagiarized submission. That means suppose I was tempted to copy two assignments in the past I must redo those assignments now truly on my own and submit them. Of course I will not get any marks or credits for those assignments. Let me tell you this is truly a soft alternative for example if I have copied let us say two out of three assignments I am required to resubmit them after admitting that I have copied when I resubmit those two assignments I still do not get any marks. Do I lose the opportunity to get a certificate because possibly I have done enough hard work for remaining FDP you will notice that the grading policy that has been announced allocates only a smaller percentage of marks for the submission of your assignment. If I have copied two assignments by falling into temptation then I will lose submission marks for those two assignments. But there are enough activities that have happened in the past and there will be enough activities going forward which will permit me to get a minimum score in this FDP so that I am able to get a proper certificate of completion. So all is not lost I still have a chance and I get an opportunity to correct myself. Of course how do we implement this for example. So there is one more point which I have not written here but which is uppermost in my mind. See for example even when my students are concerned and there have been occasions in the past where I have given them similar opportunity I do not want them to publicly confess. In fact if someone has fallen into temptation one is already feeling sad about it and one would feel very humble if it becomes known publicly that I have done this copy.  I have therefore decided that this alternative shall be implemented through an obligatory survey for all participants. So we will be putting up this obligatory survey or obligatory feedback exercise every participant all participants all 4000 participants who have registered and enrolled and who have made any submission so far whether they are continuing to engage with this FDP further or not it does not matter. Even a single submission made and suppose I did not find time I was involved in some other activities and I had to give up attending subsequent sessions of this FDP. Still one submission that I have made I am accountable for that submission and therefore I must fill up this obligatory feedback exercise. This will be set up on the moodle where every participant must say that look I have not copied any assignment period I state so my survey end to if I have been tempted to copy any assignment then I will give all the details. This will not be an anonymous survey because I must know who is saying what however normally as you know moodle surveys are visible to many people. Number one the first thing visible is how many people have submitted that is the reason why I am making it obligatory for everyone to submit because suppose there are I have I was tempted to copy and there were exactly 100 people like me then those 100 people will only submit their names will be visible and everybody will know are these 100 jokers have copied something. Now that will reduce my self esteem we do not want that to happen. Therefore, this survey shall be obligatory for everyone that means if there are 4000 or 3500 or whatever number of actual enrolled participants each one must submit. So obviously anybody looking at that survey will only see so many people have submitted all of them of course must submit what they have submitted however will not be visible. Now here is a trick moodle normally permits teachers teaching assistants non-editing teachers to look at the entire analysis and that means to look at every individual submission. This also is bad suppose for example I was tempted to copy something I am in some remote center X where I am participating. Now as you all either I have just mentioned I would not like people to know that I have done this but if I submit this survey and if my workshop coordinator was to read it if 10 other faculty members in IIT Bombay or teaching assistants everywhere was to read it I will lose myself. So we are setting up a mechanism such that this feedback survey submissions will not be visible will not be visible to non-editing teachers will not be visible to workshop coordinators these survey results will be visible only to a small group of senior faculty at IIT Bombay and I will take personal responsibility first. Second we will never make public the detailed submissions that are given by individuals that is my personal promise. This is because as I said earlier I value the self-esteem of every individual and certainly that of a colleague teacher but given this guarantee it is very very important that every faculty member participating in this FDP does complete this obligatory feedback exercise and exonerates oneself if one has been tempted or states very proudly that look I have never done this and I do not need to do. Please help me to collectively establish strong academic value this is something which is very very important I will conclude by saying that we as teachers are not only responsible to teach subjects to our students that of course we do we also know that students are clever enough to learn these subjects on their own often. However our main job is to motivate them to help them try to get enthusiastic about learning something and a still more important job to pass on the right value systems to the youth of the country that is our job. Please note that our students whether you like it or not our students hold us in some high esteem in fact they actually try to see role models in us our behavior is taken by them as if it is a model behavior. If it comes to be known that we ourselves are so weak in our values do you think our students will learn better value. On the other hand if our students are convinced that we are committed to establish and follow good value system then perhaps there is a chance that many students if not all will follow that value system and say yes that is the right way to do. Once again I apologize for taking a lot of your time in this important part of face to face interaction where we have a whole lot of very important and useful things to do but I felt that this was extremely critical I felt that I should not act one way only by imposing the penalties that are normally to be done and that I must offer an alternative for those colleagues who have unfortunately fallen prey to such temptations perhaps for the first time in this FD. So, I will just repeat this this survey will be put up 2 to 3 days later there will be a time period of about 4 to 5 days in which you have to submit the survey but please remember that those of you have been tempted to copy start assembling quietly within yourself all the records which assignment you had copied when you submitted that and from whom you had copied will be required to give that those of us who have not indulged in such unfortunate practice of course just have to say look I have not done this and that would be the end of the matter I repeat again if this is done we will not impose the normal penalty such participants are most welcome to continue to benefit from this FDP they will even be given a certificate of completion if they score the minimum required marks or grades in the remaining part of the of the course and of course in the other assignments which they have not copied and there is a very good chance because a large amount of such assessment is yet to be done I will conclude by saying please enjoy this FDP not be standing whatever I have said but please do reflect upon what I have said please do discuss among your own groups if you have any suggestions to make any observations to make please make them in a generic way not naming any person not showing any disrespect for any individual because we are all colleagues but if you have any general opinion if you have any general observations please do make them because collectively our wisdom should prevail on all of us and later on all the lacks of teachers to establish and nurture great academic value I would like you to get over this shock I am still reeling under this shock I have not got over this because frankly I never in my life expected that colleague teachers from other institutions would be tempted to do such thing I will come out of the shock but I hope you agree that this is the only way forward we have no choice people who are caught but do not admit for making that mistake will have to be penalized the penalty that I have outlined will be explicitly followed we will report the name of such people to the authorities namely their own institution and to AICT and we will publicize that yes that is the minimum that must happen of course such people will not be given completion certificate however I request you earnestly to consider the alternative this alternative is sadly not only for those people who are tempted to do such a mistake but is obligatory for everyone and why it is obligatory for everyone so that individual names are protected so that nobody knows who are the people who could have copied and as I promised since I respect the self-esteem of every individual as all of you do it is very very important that even such admissions of mistake should not be publicly known so I am promising once again that these will be known only to me and to a handful of my colleagues I am promising that this correspondence and this survey result will never be made public will never be shared by anyone else this shall always remain with us but with this we shall be able to proceed further in the remaining part of the FDP to do something useful for us and for everyone else there are four hand raises I will take those observations and comments so Marathwara Institute of Technology over to you there are some submissions where the blank formats are submitted as it is the structures given by the IIT Bombay they are submitted as it is downloaded and again submitted as they work and there are some null values given as some text is to be given so one two something is uploaded we have made the assessment that this is not correct there is this is not to be done see again it but whether that has been taken care in the final assessment or not I do not know how the local assessment is being done I will have to check up with a Jai Krishnan process Sridhar Iyer and Sahana's team to find out what they have done however there are two aspects I would suggest one is of course the assessment and the marks that are allotted to people the second and more important thing is all our colleagues who have made such submissions have obviously made mistake so they have to be told that what should be the right response or what should be what mistakes should be avoided I will have to talk to my colleague professors to find out how they are conducting the assessment but very obviously if I have resubmitted something which was given to me as a format then obviously that is not a proper assignment I deserve to get zero marks or if I have not submitted correct values and I have some null values I should not get proper marks in that assessment I don't know how they are handling it but thank you for pointing this out we'll take care of this situation any other observation please sir we are doing a parallel in moodle and one more thing in with a wiki so we are facing some problem how we have to upload in wiki in our submission can you give some ideas in wiki how and also with the grading activities will be considered only that the moodle and IIT Bombay their site only considered for the grading activities but wiki also you are told the parallel we are submitting some document in wiki how either this will be considered for grading activity for the only the timing you are doing can you give some ideas to the best of my knowledge the grading is to be done on the submissions made on moodle and submissions made on IIT Bombay that is the best of my knowledge wiki submissions are encouraged we also encourage our students to submit on wiki because wiki maintains a comprehensive record of all the related things which are put together you will notice that the wiki submissions will permit comprehensive single collection of all related submission if you read the grading policy the grading policy clearly states that in the course portfolio wiki the submission that you have given is also assessed and there are two marks portion assigned to that so you will notice that the lab session submission has two marks and course portfolio wiki submission has two marks this pertains to the first four weeks that were conducted by Professor Sarnamurthy Sridharayya and Jayakrishnan however the second component which is now ongoing does not have any proportion to wiki I hope that is clear yes sir thank you let us go to another institution BMS college of engineering this is regarding the plagiarism especially in MCQ multi multi choice questions we have two approaches generally one is what you have so I have deliberated on ethical approach why can't we adapt along with this technological approach like instead of only five questions I mean five same questions to all of us five different questions we can create a question bank and randomly a program that can generate different questions to different this will be probably a you know a sort of preventive method rather than a curative thank you very much for this suggestion to inform you there are some courses which we run where we do such randomization which is possible on the IIT Bombay X platform for example a programming course which I run we get about 10,000 variations of every quiz question that goes out so even if there are 10,000 students attempting the quiz nobody gets the same quiz it is not merely the permutation of the choices but in the programming question for example if I ask people to analyze a program and ask them what would be the output of this program if input is m is equal to 2 n is equal to 4 our randomization script actually permits us to generate questions with different values of m n n and it generates proper set of answers with those values not only that if I am a student and if I get one quiz today and I answer that quiz obviously the specific quiz will be different from any other quiz and tomorrow if I complain that look this is what I had answered I have a record on IIT Bombay X platform on what exact quiz was given to me so that there is no dispute such technological features are available unfortunately for this particular FDP in the quizzes that we have conducted so far we were not able to implement such coding or scripting for randomization. However to demonstrate your point and I am very thankful that you raise this point let me use this opportunity to tell everyone else that the colleague from BMS college is raising actually very important point because later on when we use this technology for our students and if 100 students are sitting in the lab there could be obviously copying from neighbors in the quiz answers because these are online quizzes I am actually teaching at this case one-on-one course for the summer batch in IIT Bombay right now I have 85 students who all sit in the lab next to each other but believe me everybody gets a online quiz with a different question every set of five questions is different for everyone there is absolutely no chance of copying in fact in the first lab my students tried to look here and there in the neighbor and when they discovered that this idiotic professor has done some fanciest stuff and everybody is getting a different question they stopped looking here and there and started answering the question so once again sorry for the elaborate explanation but I am grateful that you raise this issue to demonstrate that this can be done on IIT Bombay X in the week when I will discuss the features of books platform to demonstrate this I will actually create a quiz discuss how such randomization is done in this particular platform and encourage all of us to use such randomization in future thank you once again thank you there is two more supplements to further add on to the idea city what you are already very normally suggested why can't our lab sessions in our lab sessions we can create some questions and send it which can become a question bank very well said in fact one of the motivations that I had while designing the last portion of the FDP namely creation and nurturing of collaborative communities and also the final submission specification which is a team effort for creating an OER I do have in mind that the open educational resource that would be created by many teams would actually be a set of such quiz questions pertaining to a specific domain or subdomain yeah the last supplement yes coming back to your ethical approach I kindly request to encourage those who are doing sincerely and who really have got some difficulties either either in time or especially the technical slag you can kindly consider extending the resubmission especially those who have demanded willing time so many of us we could not load up or upload our assignments in time but we missed very marginally the technology can clearly say who has missed who hasn't missed you can that this will encourage those who are doing sincerely to do give some consideration and to give them a second chance need not be for everybody a technology can be well utilized to see who deserves and who doesn't yeah very good and important point that you have made I have not made any announcement in this regard so our rules as of now remain firm that if you miss a deadline then your submission will not be assessed I will talk to my colleague whether the submission dates could be defined such that there is a deadline for submission and assessment but if I miss the deadline I am still permitted to submit whether it is considered for marking or not is a different matter but I have a record of all such submissions and as you said technologically I can assess who are the people who submitted within five minutes half an hour one hour or one day of that and not ten days later and give appropriate credit this credit cannot be given in terms of marks because we have already announced our grading scheme but I will tell you what I propose to discuss with my own colleague we have decided that people must get minimum 50 percent score in all quantitative assessment what I will do is and that is what we do in our relative grading to our students also that if we find a number of faculty members scoring close to 50 percent but not crossing that 50 percent barrier then in all such cases we will examine when they have submitted and if they have submitted just missing the deadline then we will consider that and lower what we call the passing percentage so that serious minded people who are sincerely trying to do something do not suffer and they will get qualified we agree with these points thank you thank you very much only my colleague Jaipur over to you I have a question related to undergraduate B.T. program and postgraduate M.T. program in B.T. program we have got the assignment as well as the laboratories work in that most of the undergraduate student they generally copy now how to stop that first question is that and if we talk about the M.T. phases and other part even the seminar and the project report there also how much level of plagiarism is permitted because even if we check by I authenticate or turn it which are the paid software that there is some limitation is there beyond that limitation we cannot omitted so kindly suggest us sir I had made one suggestion to AICT which I will repeat for all our colleague participants to seriously consider we have found the best bet is that all M.T.C. dissertation and all B.T.C. project reports must be compulsorily put on the institute website they must be publicly available is remember that half the problem that happened in any society is because of non transparency if I submit an M.T.C thesis and let us say I have copied your thesis and submitted one as mine as long as it remains only with a within a few examiners who are unable to find that copying I will get my M.T.C. and may really pass away but if I am required to publish that M.T.C thesis and make it visible publicly then I may be worried because if not today tomorrow somebody else may suddenly say a Lallu Fadak has copied from such and such person and this M.T.C. should be revoked that would act as a deterrent that is the reason why I mentioned even in my presentation that a digital record is permanent and is non refutable a paper record you can do lot of hanky panky and you may not be able to process so my serious suggestion to all our colleagues to their college administration please make it obligatory that every B.T.C. report every M.C.A. report every M.T.C. report is publicly available it is available in IIT Bombay of course it often it is available as abstract some but sometimes with the complete dissertation there is only one or two situations where the entire thing may not be public and I will tell you those situations which are exempted even in IIT Bombay number one if it is a sponsored project where somebody has funded the project and the intellectual property right is shared with that sponsoring organization then those portions of the M.T.C. thesis which relate to the protected intellectual property right are not required to be publicized yet the remaining part is required to be publicized but let me hasten to tell you that such M.T.C. dissertations are hardly 10 percent of the total M.T.C. dissertation and at the B.E. level or M.C.A. level there are hardly any such sponsored project therefore there is no excuse for anyone to say my project is mine I will not publish a project which has been assessed as an university submission is a public property and must be publicly known. So my sincere suggestion is in fact I will when I will discuss the OER repository I will discuss the space and I will tell you how this can be very easily established the open source software available to build that repository and all that you need to do is my dear B.T.C. student my dear M.C.A. student my dear M.T.C. student you have submitted your thesis but unless you upload it on this side under certification that this is my M.T.C. this is you will not get your degree simple and make that visible to everyone. Thank you very much sir. Thank you. Thank you. Let me go to the the Sarvajanik College of Engineering over to you. Sir I am personally very much thankful for promoting the academic values that are very much essentially required with ongoing mass activity of education in the higher at higher level. Sir my query is regarding the Tarnatin platform that our university has been assigning to or whether make it compulsory for all the M.E. thesis whoever are to be submitted to the university it is made compulsory to be checked through the Tarnatin website. Sir my question is that we practice in a way that each of the student is selected one slot on the website and in this slot the student is advised to check again and again by changing or rather updating the same thesis and bring it down to the level of copied content as permitted by the university. Now sir if this document so far it is a thesis document is okay but if the student wishes to change the entire file to check some other report then still the report is not published but will the Tarnatin refer to a document which is checked by some other student within the Tarnatin platform or it will consider only the publicly disclosed on the web available material only. This is a good question unfortunately I do not know the correct answer but you are very right if the Tarnatin is an intelligent platform it should take every submitted report for checking also as an addition to the corpus but I do not know whether the Tarnatin platform does it today or not most probably it relies only on the published material but I love to check in with my colleagues and I will get back to you most probably I request you to post this question on discussion forum and I or somebody else will respond to it but thank you for raising this one from the previous first to first discussion that we had can we can we continue the question with that sir yes sir it was suggested by the faculty that those students who can who are attending the lip classroom activities basically which are out of class activities and then coming up in the class for the in-class activity certain incentives can be announced for the students so sir what kind of incentives could be announced except for the marks there are two types of incentives which work best not only with students but even with us grown-ups one incentive is of course mark or grade which you correctly point out that cannot be provided the other incentive is a financial incentive so for example we can declare an award now where do you give this award from so you may say that you will collect let's say hundred rupees from every student in the class and that becomes your kitty and out of that collection you will reward someone who does an extraordinary job the second and less expensive mechanism of doing it is public acknowledgement and shabaski that means if there are a few students who do an extraordinary job publicize their names not only to the class but to the entire academic community of your department and of your institution believe me most of us are encouraged by public acknowledgement of some good work that we have done we have benefited tremendously by adopting this approach amongst our students community in IIT I see no reason why it will not work with your community in fact there is one additional suggestion that I would make in terms of conducting flip classroom more easily in institutions which largely run undergraduate program and therefore they do not have teaching assistants in the form of mtech students m e students or PhD students IIT systems benefit from the presence of a large number of postgraduate students now let me tell you this notion that teaching assistants must be either post graduates or PhD students is not entirely correct while we should have such people but in colleges where such senior students or researchers are not available it should be perfectly all right to try another mechanism of getting teaching assistants and that is from our own undergraduate community and let me tell you this is not hypothetical in IIT Bombay in addition to mtech and PID students we ordinarily deploy third year or fourth year we take students as teaching assistants for our core courses they are selected on the basis of applications they want to apply for being TAs and they participate in conducting labs and they participate in conducting flip classroom session in fact the summer course that I am teaching CS 101 I have four TAs from amongst the applicants who are all B Tech students we take second year third year or fourth year students and who work with me to help me conduct this flip classroom sessions far more effectively because as you can guess it's a people intensive task I have to engage with my students in discussion and I cannot do it alone now this has not been tried by most of our colleges namely trying to involve third year and fourth year B Tech students as undergraduate TAs for my core courses I would strongly suggest that this be encouraged because this has given great positive results they have been situations in IIT Bombay where some of the better TAs are not my M Tech or PhD students but are the third year fourth year undergraduate students because some of the first year rights relate to them very easily of course this cannot be done for all the undergraduate courses particularly when I am teaching a third year course then at most I can take a fourth year undergraduate as a TA in IIT Bombay there is an approved procedure of paying a TA ship to such students for the entire semester the amount is not very large but that amount works as an additional incentive for senior B Tech students to participate of course there is an extra work that I have to do as a teacher for example at the beginning of the semester I have to conduct a training session for these TAs informing them what is flip classroom and how to run it and then for every week or two weeks or three weeks of portion I have to actually discuss with my students what are the problem that I am going to consider in my flip classroom and what kind of questions students may have but on the whole it has been an extremely pleasant and useful experience right sir so I take it as the student must be encouraged so we need to find a particular matter to encourage them to get into the circle yes that is what I thank you thank you NMIMS shirpur tulia over to you sir in our peer assessment we have been given a column of feedback at the end where we can show that if the people have not worked or given their screencast and has outsourced the video so in that case sir we would like to know can this be taken by the organizers to find out the plagiarism I suppose it can be done however as far as plagiarism for the FDP is concerned we would limit this activity strictly at the moment to self declaration and self confession and anything else that we would like to do we would do it only at our end I would not like individual remote centers or individual workshop coordinators to try and be deeper into this please remember what I said the self-esteem of every colleague teacher is as important to me as that of my own and we would not like any activity or any public discussion on the matter of how such plagiarism could be detected so I value your suggestion what I would request is that not only you but any other colleagues across the country who have such suggestions please write an individual email to me directly don't write this in discussion forum but write such emails directly to me I will take cognizance of all these emails and will perhaps prepare a consolidated paper on how to deal with such future plagiarism but your suggestion is important I take the point okay thank you sir beside this I would like to keep my opinion that we though we have several techniques like randomization or by putting up on turn it in or so okay but it's finally to our integrity that we need to watch upon us that what we are preaching we should also this you are 100 right there is no mechanism better than the self-check and self-control that is the reason why everywhere in the world confession is considered an extremely powerful cleansing mechanism for self I may be tempted to make a mistake but probably nobody else will ever be able to catch it only when I confess first to myself and second to someone in confidence saying sorry I made that mistake I will not do it that is the correct implementation of the value system anything else will not work generically in all cases I agree with you and that is where that is what I meant when I said collectively we need to enhance the value system that prevails amongst us and if we succeed in doing that I am sure we will enhance the value system amongst the students as well but it's a long uphill task and we have to perpetually keep doing is there any more questions I want to ask you one thing that we are regularly using turn 18 for checking the assignment and research paper which we are submitting on the website like elsewhere but there we face one problem that say for example I have previously submitted my research paper and my name institute name also shown in the plagiarize and the percentage goes around 20 to 25 percent so can we can we deal such type of problem while giving the document for turn 18 yes and no you can simply remove the name of the author and the name of the institution or affiliation and submit that however let me tell you that the percentage that turn in written gives needs to be taken with a pinch of salt ordinarily unless the commonality is reported to be more than 60 percent I would not bother too much so anything between 30 percent to 60 percent I would tell my student that look there is some some problem here please go back and cross check yourself but anything which is 15 percent or 20 percent of course you have to be very careful what this percentage is for example if the 20 percent is reported but the entire 20 percent belongs to two or three complete paragraphs outlining the major research finding which has been copied by someone else then I should be bashed on the head however if it is because of such similarities as you mentioned it is okay in general then you have to take the output of the turn it in in a very in a slightly subjective manner you cannot take it just as a quantitative judgment let us admit there is no foolproof mechanism of catching copying after all are we able to catch all copying done by our students in examination so it is no different when it comes to research okay okay sir thank you thank you let us go to the next institution thanks for conducting such a great faculty development program so that most of the teaching fraternity can get very benefited now sir my question is related to the plagiarism of course I want to write an article or a research paper and I copy I take a few lines or a paragraph from somewhere else and I cite that paragraph now is it considered as plagiarism material so I have taken a reference or I have cited that paragraph or the content so let me explain the view of the academic community if you take a paragraph exactly as is although you cite the reference you must put the entire paragraph in double quotes that means that that will indicate that you have taken the entire paragraph as is without modifying it and then you cite then that is not considered plagiarism but that is also not considered very good writing practice so if I have submitted a paper which has such three or four paragraphs copied entirely from some other place and I have cited that this paragraph is from this reference this paragraph is from this reference I will not be accused of plagiarism but the reviewer will probably throw away that paper saying that Fatak does not seem to have applied his mind and he has not put the research finding of these four papers in his own words which is what is expected in a good research paper so I hope I am very clear no plagiarism but no value add in the research paper that I submit in general I must learn to put even the cited thoughts of others in my own words in my own perspective that is what is expected when I submit a research paper just like I can take an example of software engineering the definition of software engineering is states in software engineering software is a collection of programs according to the IEEE software is assumed to be a collection of programs procedures and their documentation most of the most of the books this definition is very much common correct incidentally in your research papers you are not only permitted to quote such definitions verbatim but you are encouraged to do so because this is not about a research finding this is just the definition of a terminology which you must quote verbatim otherwise it will lose its value that is most certainly not plagiarism what is the acceptable limit of plagiarism zero zero zero absolutely there is zero tolerance let me tell you at least in IIT Bombay the prevailing opinion is plagiarism is one of the worst academic crimes that can be committed by anyone so if it is a worst crime it means it is like what you call murder and if I murder someone what is the punishment I get I am let crowd infasi period there is there is absolutely no justification of any plagiarism now of course I am not committing a murder of another living entity I am murdering somebody else's intellectual property right without technology so what is this suitable punishment to me I should be ostrich the academic community should laugh at me should put me to shame if you know there have been even vice chancellors who have been forced to resign from their position not necessarily because they made a mistake but a student of theirs wrote a joint paper in which material was plagiarized so even if I am one of the four authors and if the paper contains plagiarism I get as much blame as anybody else and if I am holding an academic position the correct penalty is to force me to come down from that position immediately more importantly I should become a laughing stock amongst all my colleagues I should be ashamed I should then apologize say I will never do it in future and move forward there is no doubt in my mind that there is no question of defining percentage tolerance a 60 copy kia to take a 30 percent copy kia to take a this is all nonsense plagiarism is an academic crime of the greatest proportion I will also share with you how I hold it to what another senior colleague of mine had mentioned you might have heard about Mr. N. Vittal I hope you you know about Mr. Vittal he was our CVC chief is the first chief vigilance officer and he was responsible for framing many of the government financial rules is a great person who tried to eliminate corruption from India so when I was discussing with him telling him that why you have made the procurement rules so complicated that for IT procurement many companies I used to advise banks and financial institutions and they were finding it very difficult to implement the procurement rules that government had circulated and I said why you have done that you know what he told me he says Fatak you come from the city of Bombay which has the great degree of professionalism but you come to Delhi and you go to many other places the corruption is spreading like cancer and we must take surgical action against it let me tell you plagiarism is nothing but academic corruption and we must prevent it spread surgically wherever required let us have no doubt about it that is how we have to proceed next question oh one more question okay go ahead from the RBS campus yes I am from the faculty of agriculture RBS college there are a lot of a student PG student involved in the research but the problem is the most of the students come from the rural area and even the there is not this type of online material available in the different colleges at college level so my question is what type of step would you like to suggest to make the student innovative in the crop agriculture education sir it's a important question but sadly it's a very generic question what you are effectively asking is how do I improve the entire education and research system in India where large number of people do not have access to online material now this is a generic question which is beyond the scope of this FDP beyond your scope and my scope please raise this in the discussion forum and we will be glad to have a generic debate on this but personally I don't believe that there is any miracle solution that will solve the problem all of us will have to work upon it I have lot of opinions and suggestions on this but I don't think this is the place to discuss that generic problem I appreciate your question but we will defer the answer and discussion on this question to some other opportunities if there are any more questions please raise them either in the discussion forum or send email to us thank you so much over and out