The government has raised the minimum wages under its ambitious job guarantee scheme, the National Employment Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) 17-30%, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The increase has been based on the increase in the Consumer Price Index for the agricultural labour, it said, adding that the total spend on the project […]
Pakistan and India may be traditional rivals, but that has not stopped the smaller neighbor from considering the import of a controversial product from India — the electronic voting machine or EVM. The Indian Election Commission said its Pakistani counterpart has asked for a demonstration of the Indian machine and will soon send samples to […]
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 […]
Devas Multimedia, at the centre of a controversy over satellite transponder deals with the government, has hit out at the Prime Minister’s statement that the government was determined to end the contract. The PM Manmohan Singh, speaking to editors in the capital, had said that there was no question of going ahead with the 2005 […]
Taiwanese PC brand Acer has unveiled the cheapest netbook by any major brand in India – the eM350, which will cost just Rs 10,999 including a free MTS data-card. The current starting price for branded netbooks is around Rs 14,000. The new netbook will have similar features to most netbooks in the market — at […]
Embattled satellite music firm Devas Multimedia today came out strongly against allegations of misappropriation of spectrum levelled by some media outlets. In media briefings in the capital, Devas’ founder and president, Ramachandran Viswanathan blamed corporate rivals and other vested interests for the controversy. He also denied that his firm had got a ‘sweetheart’ deal from […]
After nealry 2 months of deliberations, the environment ministry under Jairam Ramesh order the 31-storey Adarsh Co-operative Society building to be demolished. The final order, issued on Sunday, found the Society guilty of “negligence or an act of gross and deliberate misrepresentation” in failing to secure environmental clearance for their building. The order also found […]
The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) of government of India has asked state level agencies to report all violations of the coastal buffer zone rules within four months and initiate action in another four. The directive has been issued soon after the coastal management authorities got new powers under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) […]
Airtel, which announced its first 3g launch on Monday, will charge Rs 675 per month for a decent 1.25 GB of data usage and around Rs 2,000 for 14 GB, according to details released during the Bangalore launch. The rates are slightly lower than those of Reliance Communications for low volume users, but costlier for […]
Sony has become the first computer firm to launch AMD’s Fusion brand in India. The firm, which has been targeting the mass market in India recently, announced a new laptop with the highest powered Fusion chip yet — the E-350 dual core 1.6 GHz processor. The AMD Fusion is a revolutionary design from AMD that […]
