India seems set of another bumper wheat crop in 2011 as the sown area has increased by 3.2% compared to the winter season a year ago. A total of 29.1 million hectares were sown with wheat for the current winter crop, according to statistics released by the agriculture ministry. The procurement of wheat by the […]
India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by around 8.6% during the year-ending March 2011, while per capital income — an indicator of how rich the citizens are — grew by 6.7% to Rs 3,000 per month per person, according to government’s quick estimates. GDP and per-capita income had grown by 8% and 6.1% during the […]
After sitting on the fence for three years, BBC Worldwide, one of the biggest English entertainment player in the world has decided to launch an India-specific channel. The $1 billion commercial arm of the non-profit British Broadcasting Corporation had added an India entertainment channel to the 41 global ones it already runs. An interview with […]
The year gone by was a gloomy year for the global outsourcing industry when value of new contracts slipped 30%, according to TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world. The biggest fall was witnessed in the BPO space which made up for around 22% of the total publicly disclosed deals tracked […]
Numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India have shown that while many of the new operators have trouble maintaining their newly acquired customers, they have successfully eroded the shares of old operators. The data showed that the new operators faced considerable difficulty in holding on to their new customers. According to the data, […]
World’s biggest anti-virus firm Symantec has warned Indians not to be tricked by new ‘World Cup’ themed viruses. The firm, which routinely monitors trends of how viruses and other ‘malware’ spread, said trick emails urging cricket fans to sign up for free World Cup tickets are best ignored. “One scam that the Symantec Probe Network […]
The first ever case of human infection with Crimea Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) virus in India has been reported from Ahmedabad, the government of India confirmed on Wednesday. The CCHF virus is known to be transmitted among animals through ticks. It does not produce disease in animals but kills from 20% to 40% of humans […]
The United States reassured India that its plan to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan by 2014 did not mean it was totally abandoning the war-torn country. In a meeting between the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry and the Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, the former reassured the latter that withdrawal will […]
Home Minister P Chidambaram refused to buy blackberry maker Research In Motion’s explanation that the firm cannot expose the data of its corporate clients. RIM had, last week, put its foot down on sharing of enterprise-customer data, pointing out that no enterprise connectivity provider in India allows the government to snoop on their customers’ data. […]
India was sorely disappointed by the Government of Pakistan’s failure to take “visible” steps against the Lashkar e Toiba militants accused in the Mumbai terror attacks, but the US consoled it by pointing out that the Pakistani civilian government was powerless before its own army. According to a US diplomatic cable written in February last […]
Home Minister P Chidambaram came out strongly in support of the Omar Abdullah government’s decision to ‘deport’ BJP senior leaders from Kashmir. The BJP leaders, Arun Jaitley and others, were physically ‘moved’ by the Jammu and Kashmir government yesterday night to Madhopur in Punjab and put up at a rest house. The BJP leaders were […]
Bangalore is the most ‘painful’ city in India to drive in, and the sixth most painful in the World, according to IBM’s fourth Commuter Pain study. The study ranked 20 of the World’s top cities on the basis of traffic jams, driver stress etc.. The worst city in the World to drive in this year […]
Cognizant Technologies, the fastest growing India-based IT services firm, warned of slower growth in 2011 compared to 2010 due to the exhaustion of ‘pent up’ demand. The firm, which posted another blockbuster quarter with a 45.2% jump in revenues, also announced an aggressive $500 million office-expansion program for accommodating 55,000 more employees. The firm, likely […]
Hit by an onslaught of tablets as well as a bad economic climate, growth in computer sales this year will be only a fraction of what was predicted earlier, IT market research firm Gartner has said. It has downgraded the PC market growth for this year from 9.3% announced earlier to just 3.8% today. This […]
Good intentions cannot be a substitute for good judgement. The Indian media has, with some exception, discharged its duty well in keeping many scams and corrupt deals high on the public’s consciousness and bringing corrupt public officials to book. But the latest controversy over satellite transponder deal between ISRO and Devas Multimedia is a clear-cut […]
iBall, famous for computer peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, web-cam etc., has just launched the iBall Slide, a tablet very similar to the Spice Mi-720 tablet except for built-in 3G support. In addition, the iBall Slide also suffers from a higher price of Rs 13,995, compared to Rs 11,990 for the Spice Mi-720 and Rs […]
Debian Linux, the world’s largest volunteer software project that counts its contributors in the thousands, released the sixth iteration of its Linux version, called Debian Squeeze. Debian is famous for being the parent of the most popular Linux brand — Ubuntu, promoted by Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Thawte who sold his firm to Verisign […]
China leads the World in software piracy, according to the software industry ‘advocacy’ group, the Business Software Alliance (BSA). According the results of a study of 15,000 users in 32 countries, the Chinese had a software ‘pirate rate’ of 86%, followed by Nigeria with 81% and Vietnam with 76%. Interestingly, India, which too is suspected […]
After getting the outlay for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) from Rs 30,000 crore to 40,000 crore last year, the rural development ministry is seeking a further increase to Rs 64,000 crore for the next year. The government will also start kick off a Rs 2,500 crore programme to check fraud accounts by […]
Despite the pretensions of being a global engineering talent pool, India is increasingly falling behind even countries like China in innovation, according to a white paper released by Delhi-based Zinnov Consulting. According to the paper, the number of patents filed in India is just one-eighth that of China. This is despite the fact a large […]
