AU to double intake for BE civil engg (Tamil)
Anna University
is planning to increase intake in BE civil engineering (Tamil medium) offered at College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) from 30 seats to 60 seats from the 2025-26 academic year.
On a pilot basis, the state govt launched two Tamil medium engineering programmes in civil and mechanical engineering at CEG in 2010.
These Tamil medium courses have been attracting top rankers as they provide an opportunity to study engineering on one of the premier campuses. The cut-off for Tamil medium course was around 186 out of 200 marks.
"We are planning to expand our civil engineering programmes. As a first step, we are increasing intake in Tamil medium course this year," said professor S Kanmani, head, department of civil engineering, CEG.
Students will study the course in Tamil and can write the exam in Tamil or English.
Professors said many graduates from the Tamil medium course got jobs in public works department (PWD) due to the reservation for Tamil medium students.
There was a court ruling that only those who studied from Class VI could avail of this reservation. Now, it is settled that studying a Tamil medium engineering course is enough to avail of this reservation.
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The department is planning to increase its intake in the civil engineering English medium course in the next academic year. "We are working towards have twinning degree programmes with top UK universities. After that, the civil engineering English medium intake will also be increased," Kanmani added.
The department is also planning to increase intake in PG courses such as environmental engineering due to high demand.
The present strength is 12 seats. It will also launch a new MTech programme in climate change and disaster management from the 2025-26 academic year.
"This new course will ensure disaster management experts are available even in rural areas," said A Ramachandran, emeritus professor and founder director of Centre for Climate Change and Disaster Management (CCCDM) at Anna University. The civil engineering department is also planning to offer an open elective to all students in the CEG on climate change to make engineers from all streams future-ready.
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Today on the show — How a rebel army in Myanmar became a major player in the rare earths industry, and what its new dominance means for China next door and for global supply chains. Despite the name, rare earths are really not that rare. They can be found all over the world. But they're almost never found on their own in nature. The minerals are mixed in with other elements in the ground, and often at low concentrations – and that makes mining them a complex process. In Myanmar, rare earths are usually extracted from the soil on hillsides. McLaughlin: So you have these very dramatic hill slopes with these collection pools that are sort of at the bottom, midway up the hill. The collection pools, they're lined with tarps. So the water tends to have this kind of turquoise color to it. Ha: And to get these rare earth elements into these vast collection pools, a process called in-situ leaching comes in. 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It goes from China into these mines and then, and then the trucks kind of go back out. Ha: A geospatial analysis found that, in just about 7 years, hundreds of new mining sites have sprung up in the area where Pangwa is located. China became the biggest buyer of Myanmar's rare earths. It imported more than $800 million dollars by 2021, that's eight hundred times what it bought just a decade ago. McLaughlin: They have large deposits of two specific elements, which are terbium and dysprosium. And they are important to making rare earth magnets. And these magnets are now found in a lot of electric vehicle drive trains, wind turbines, and guided missile systems. And these two elements are added to magnets to enhance their capabilities to make them able to work at higher temperatures, without losing the magnetism that they have. And so right now, these magnets are a huge point of contention between the US and China. While these magnets are coming from China, because that's where they are made, the elements that are going into them are coming from Myanmar, in many cases. Ha: And what kind of impact then are we seeing of this mining boom on the environment and on local communities? McLaughlin: You're seeing people and other groups realize that there is a huge amount of money, huge amount of demand. We're gonna see these mines expand probably outside of Kachin state to places that are controlled by other groups who think that they have similar geology. And they can also kind of cash in on this, you know, rare earth gold rush at the moment. But I think the environmental impact is probably the most pronounced right now. You're seeing the rivers and streams that are very important to the way of life for small villages and cities and towns in this part of the world getting totally ruined. And it is also becoming a cross border issue because these watersheds run through Southeast Asia. And so some of this stuff is now flowing into Thailand. And so you see the Thai government, Thai civil society becoming concerned about this. There's also concerns about the structure of the mines, the safety. You could imagine, pumping millions of gallons of liquid into the side of a hill makes it inherently unstable. Often people are getting trapped in tunnels or killed by landslides. So yes, overall environmentally and labor regulations wise, very much sort of the wild west at the moment. Ha: And while mining companies have been tearing up the ground in search of rare earth minerals, the region around the mines is being torn by a bloody conflict between the government and rebel groups. After the break, the crucial supply of rare earths in the hands of a rebel army – the risks for China and the world. For years, the town of Pangwa in northern Myanmar was under the control of a warlord allied with the country's military junta. The rare earths mines in the region were operated by Chinese companies, and the shipments of the precious metals ran like clockwork. Reporter Tim McLaughlin says the Chinese government generally sees Myanmar's military regime as a stabilizing force along its border. McLaughlin: Beijing's greatest fear is that the country would splinter apart and there would be some sort of Syria type situation right on a huge border that they have. And so they sat on the fence for a while and then when they saw the Myanmar military started to struggle last year and maybe losing some key strategic outposts, they really kind of, came off the fence and threw their support behind the Myanmar military, not because I think there's any deep love there. I think it's because they really fear the country just crumbling and they think, much like the Myanmar military does, that they are kind of the glue holding this all together. Ha: But that changed late last year, when the KIA, the armed ethnic group battling the military junta, advanced on Pangwa. McLaughlin: The Kachin Independence Army is fighting a larger, decades-long struggle against the Myanmar military for greater autonomy for the Kachin ethnic people. Late last year, The KIA started fighting their way towards this point looking to capture not just Pangwa, but capture all of Kachin's special region one and kind of take it as their own. Ha: The KIA took control of Pangwa, along with the hundreds of valuable rare-earth mines. Overnight, that made the rebel army one of the largest players in the rare earths industry. But Tim says this change of control in Pangwa has put China in a difficult position. Its border with Myanmar is long, so it needs to secure the cooperation of the military junta. But it also needs the rare earths that are now controlled by the rebels. McLaughlin: The KIA is complicated because they are fighting the Myanmar junta, and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare earths from them, so funding them, but then they're also supporting the Myanmar military, the junta. So they are on both sides of this fight. And they, they have voiced their displeasure to the KIA. They've also closed the border on occasion to try to sort of force their hand. So we did see the mining shut down and saw the border close for a long time. It is since reopened, because we could see the exports going out of Myanmar into China now. So an agreement of some sort between these companies, between the KIA, between China has been reached for now. But like many things in Myanmar at the moment, how long it will last, how steady it is is an open question. Ha: By purchasing the rare earths mined in Myanmar, China is effectively funding the KIA – perhaps the military junta's greatest and most long-standing enemy. This puts China in a pickle, and that's why it's now looking for other suppliers of these in-demand elements. McLaughlin: You'll see much more coming from Laos. You'll see, mining start up in parts of Myanmar where Beijing has better relations with the armed groups, that have closer relations to Beijing. And so you know the big official Chinese companies could go in and operate. You're not relying on this kind of ragtag middlemen to kind of do this stuff. Ha: As China tries to find other places beyond Myanmar for rare earths, the US is also scrambling to find its own alternative to China. Last month, a rare earth mine opened in Wyoming – the first in the US in more than 70 years. At the same time, the US is also tentatively eyeing Myanmar for rare earths. McLaughlin: There's been some interest from State Department and other groups about kind of sussing out and getting a feel for the current situation and what it's like on the ground. Right now the US has very limited engagement with, uh, Myanmar. Myanmar is massively unstable at the moment. You know, you have the junta fighting armed ethnic groups. You have them fighting smaller pro-democracy groups that popped up after the coup. The Junta is starting plans for an election, which I think could be very destabilizing. And then of course you see the military running a really horrific campaign against its own citizens. Ha: And Tim says there are more than just political and humanitarian considerations for the US to factor. McLaughlin: There's just really, really, really huge logistical issues. I mean it would take moving tons of rare earths material from a sort of undeveloped, far remote corner of the country, and then you'd have to move it across a country that's covered with hundreds of warring ethnic groups and, uh, armed groups to a point of exit. Then the question is, where do you bring it to refine it? And the answer to that question is you bring it to China. Because China's the only place that has the capability to refine this stuff. So now we're back where we started. Right? And that is, assuming that Beijing would allow this. Why would China allow any US firms or companies or linked people, come into their own backyard and take what they have obviously deemed a national security asset from them? So there's a myriad of issues. There's obviously the sort of moral issues of the country and, and dealing with various militaries, but just the logistics, the geopolitics of it alone, makes it sound almost inconceivable. Ha: And now you have this rebel army added to the geopolitical mix – it's such a wildcard. McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean I don't think there's another situation that ever reached sort of the geopolitical tension that we're seeing now between the US and China with rare earth in the middle. And so you have these big superpowers and these big tech companies and huge investments. And then when you drill down, one of the key players here is this group that really was born out of a anti-colonial struggle against the Myanmar government. And then I think the other thing, kind of wild card here is, technology and the advancements. Maybe, rare earth magnets will be innovated out of existence. You already see some companies touting that they're running their EV motors with batteries that don't have rare earth in them. Maybe we're not talking about them in the same way, whether it's in 10 years or 15 or 20 years. So there's also this other kind of unknown as to kind of where this whole industry goes.
