Lets Be "SOFT"

Hi All,
when i was working on our "End term project" i applied some thought on the work we do.
It is compulsory for all students to submit an end term project as a part for semester 4 curriculum.Each student submits two copies of his research report: one with university and another with institute.Please look at following statistics which will help you to understand the scale at which students submit their reports:

Total number of university: 239
Total seats for higher education in universities across India::50,000
( only technical and management )

Number of copies summited :2
Average number of pages in each report:50
Total number of printed pages:50 lack pages.
Cost of printing pages: Rs 50 lacks
Cost of binding: 75 lacks
Total cost: Rs 125 lacks

In this era of Information technology revolution, I strongly feel that, it will be better if universities and institutes across India should start to accept digital format copies of such reports. ( Generally called as "Soft Copy").Total of 50 lacks of pages are printed each year to fulfill the requirement of curriculum. I believe that at least at post graduation level access to computers and internet is available across India. in fact most of reports are first made into digital format ( using word processors like MS Word) and then printed into "hard copies". So if we can take a small step to change the requirement of submitting research reports from "hard copy" to "digital format", this will save printing of at least 50 lacks of pages.

In todays world various environmental issues like Global Warming, uneven rainfall, change in weather pattern are attributed to reduction of "green cover" (i.e. number of trees) from the surface of earth. By reducing usage of pages, ink and electricity (to print pages), we are not only reducing the cost of preparing report, but also saving the green belt in India. Already India has only 25% of its land covered with forest, when research has proved that it should at least be 33%.

The digitalization of these research reports will help universities to create and maintain a database which will be easy to use. Students from various institutes and universities will be able to access these reports for further studies.

So ppl, stop printing those reports and request all profs and institutes to accept "SOFT copy" of ur project. Atleast u can claim to save few thousand trees ( as we all know all project work is "inspiration" of someone else).