India

The government has had its cake and is eating it too. It's staying in power and movement on the nuclear deal has also been put on the fast track.

Somnath was telling off unruly MPs during the trust vote. But a day later, it was his turn to face the music for defying his party.

Kalawati, a farmer's widow has become an icon of the UPA's nuclear agenda. The widow from Vidarbha found special mention in Rahul Gandhi's Lok Sabha s

Let the Third Front come into existence, then only the effects will be known, Karunanidhi said.

After a day-long cliffhanger of a trust vote in the Lok Sabha, the UPA government romped home. As the drama unfolded and excitement built up, Netizens

If the Somnath Chatterjee was the most prominent figure to face the axe, 18 MPs from various parties have either been expelled or are on the verge of being turfed out.

Even as Congressmen woke up on Wednesday to celebrate the trust vote win, the leaders of 12 parties - all non-Congress, non-BJP - were getting ready for a breakfast with Mayawati.

There was intense speculation on Wednesday that the Congress high command has decided to project Manmohan Singh as the party's prime ministerial candidate.

In support of the view for review of the JMM judgment were also two former Chief Justices of India - Justice V N Khare and Justice R C Lahoti.

While Manorama and Kunnur were formerly with Congress, Sangliana is a retired IPS officer. All three had joined BJP before the 2004 general elections.

BJP's general secretary Arun Jaitley on Wednesday gave media the list of evidences against Samjawadi party general secretary Amar Singh who allegedly tried to bribe BJP MPs to win the trust vote.

Rajdeep Sardesai, Editor-in-Chief, CNN-IBN, which conducted the sting operation on bribing MPs, speaks to Onkar Singh.

The fear of losing the election is the only thing that motivates our netas. There is no higher, no greater, no nobler objective.

Action against Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was decided well before the trust vote, but was not announced lest it should affect discussion over issues that prompted the party to withdraw support to the UPA Government, Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said.

Indian companies led by Anil Ambani's Reliance Power (RPower), Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) and Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL) plan to invest over Rs 100,000 crore in the next five years to expand their presence in the nuclear energy sector after the country signs the nuclear agreement with the US, paving the way for import of fuel and transfer of technology.

India's only chance to acclimatise before the Test series ended in a tame draw with less than three days' play at the Nondescripts Cricket Club in Colombo. Having declared at an overnight 196 for 8, the tourists turned in an ordinary day in the field - Anil Kumble did not bowl a ball - as the Sri Lanka Board XI batted to 247 before handing the final session over.

The passage of play at the SCC was not enough to determine who holds the edge but, after losing the toss in unfriendly conditions, India's new-ball operators reduced Sri Lanka to 85 for 2 at stumps.

A round-up of the Emerging Players Tournament matches on July 23.

Dinesh Karthik did his chances of making the Test XI no harm, with a restrained knock of 58 not out. It helped India recover from a shaky 80 for 5 to 196 for 8 at stumps on the second day of their three-day practice match against a Sri Lanka Board XI.

Malinda Warnapura's brisk unbeaten 50 off 74 balls proved to be the difference between an emphatic session and a merely satisfactory one for India on a rain-hit opening day of the Test series.

NDTV.comGovernment puts N-deal on fast trackNDTV.com - 26 minutes agoThe government has had its cake and is eating it too. It's staying in power and movement on the nuclear deal has also been put on a fast track.Trust Vote over, Govt steps the gas on N-deal process IBNLive.comIndia, US put nuclear deal on fast track Economic TimesHindu - Calcutta Telegraph - Daily News & Analysis - Times of Indiaall 358 news articles

Times OnlineObama tells Israel he's committed to its securityThe Associated Press - 29 minutes agoJERUSALEM (AP) - Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama paid a predawn visit to the holiest place in Judaism on Thursday, bowing his head in prayer at the Western Wall.Video: Obama Says He's Committed to Israel's Security AssociatedPressBarack Obama: 'hopelessness and despair' growing in Middle East Times OnlineAFP - TIME - Newsweek - Salonall 1,183 news articles

NDTV.com2 Britons, Indian cleared of paedophilia chargeTimes of India - 36 minutes agoMUMBAI: Two former Royal Navy officers were acquitted by Bombay High Court in the infamous Anchorage paedophilia case on Wednesday.Bombay HC acquits Brits charged with sexual abuse IBNLive.comHC acquits paedophilia accused NDTV.comDaily News & Analysis - Hindu - BBC News - Zee Newsall 33 news articles

TopNewsBandh hampers life in the region, yet againTimes of India - 36 minutes agoCHANDIGARH: As is their wont, protest and bandhs usually leave the common man stranded and grumbling on the street. Having gained the notoriety of paralyzing essential services, the agitations - as witnessed in the region on Wednesday - reduce the Sikh-Dera showdown shuts Punjab down Daily News & AnalysisTotal bandh cripples normal life Expressindia.comHindustan Times - Chandigarh Newsline - NDTV.com - Times of Indiaall 182 news articles

Ram himself destroyed Setu, govt tells SCTimes of India - 36 minutes agoNEW DELHI: A day after it won the trust vote, the UPA government on Tuesday acquiesced in DMK's position in the Sethusamudram case to question in the Supreme Court the existence of Ram Setu by citing the scriptures and Puranas.Alignment 6 is most viable: Centre HinduRam destroyed Sethu: Centre’s new line in SC Economic TimesCalcutta Telegraph - Daily News & Analysis - The Statesman - Expressindia.comall 25 news articles  

With just seven days left to file tax returns, many are spending sleepless nights trying to figure their way through financial jargon and endless paperwork.

GSK will use its branding and marketing strength worldwide to distribute products from OTL in over 95 emerging markets except sub-Saharan Africa and India.

After a gap of exactly four months, foreign investors bought equities worth over Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 1,300 crore, says provisional data) in one session

A spat of sorts has started between the BJP and the news channel which carried out the sting operation during the trust vote with help of the party's MPs.

National Conference (NC) chief Omar Abdullah throwing his lot behind the UPA to defend the N-deal in Lok Sabha

Manmohan Singh on Tuesday won majority support in Parliament.

UPA's determination to go ahead with the project is a reward for DMK.

The Congress in Jammu and Kashmir has stirred up another controversy.

Activist 'sacrifices' life to protest against cancellation of land grant.

Six of the nine victims were security guards in West Chennai.

Asking members not to let this chance slip away, Lamy has asked ministers of seven important countries, both from the developed and the developing world including India, Brazil, China, the European Union, US, Japan and Australia to help in giving final shape to the texts on agriculture and industrial goods.

A new theory to explain mass extinctions has suggested that rising sea levels may have been responsible for the demise of the ferocious dinosaurs.

Bringing the controversy over the issue of resignation of Lok Sabha Speaker to a boil, the CPI(M) politbureau on Wednesday finally cracked the whip, expelling veteran leader Somnath Chatterjee from the party for defying the party dictat on the trust vote.

For a state, which is already reeling under immense power shortage, to know that its transformer damage rate is a whopping 30 % as against the national average of 2%, is bad news.

How much data have I backed up? Am I within my backup window? What is the state of my storage capacity? How much does it cost to protect my data?

The country’s coffee exports rose a modest 3.1% in the first six months of 2008 to 132,846 tonnes

The firms, which met 12,000 people to research the Olympic preferences of China’s consumers and changing trends, found that some Olympic sponsors are reaping ten times the return on their media investments that the laggards are able to generate

If the last house he is believed to have designed and built in 1999 at age 82 is any indicator, the late Laurie Baker never really did grow old

The aggregate market value, or market capitalization of companies controlled by Anil Ambani, perceived to be close to the Samajwadi Party’s Amar Singh, has risen 33% in the past five trading sessions

Scientific activity, investment and policy initiatives seem to be in harmony in China, where the number of published scientific papers has doubled in the past five years

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday acquitted the three accused -- two Brits and one Indian -- in the Anchorage paedophilia case.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) has made it clear that file notings cannot be exempted from disclosure under RTI Act unless they come in conflict with public interest.

Shiromani Akali Dal MP Sukhdev Singh Libra, who abstained during the confidence vote in the Manmohan Singh government, today said his conscience did not allow him to vote against a Sikh Prime Minister.

The high voltage political drama over the Indo-US nuclear deal, which culminated after the UPA survived the trust vote on Tuesday, is now giving sleepless nights to the NDA allies since two of their MPs have gone missing.

A new defence procurement policy will be in place within next 10 days which will give a level-playing field to all countries, said the Union Defence Minister A K Antony here.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The leader of a youth movement that swept the world this past year by encouraging Web users to share bits of their lives with selected friends, spoke on Wednesday of spreading his service across the Web, even while apologizing for past excesses.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Microsoft Corp co-founder Bill Gates pledged $375 million on Wednesday to fight what they called a global tobacco epidemic.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Beijing Olympics that goes smoothly without "unhealthy disturbances" will best serve Tibetans by fostering a more confident China, said the chief envoy of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States is prepared for the first time in world trade talks to discuss allowing more service professionals from India and other developing countries to work there, a U.S. industry official said.

THIMPHU (Reuters) - Bhutan will crown its fifth king on Nov. 6, ending a two-year wait for an auspicious date for the 27-year-old Oxford-educated King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck to don the Raven Crown.

As a financial journalist, covering politics and parliamentary debate is sometimes part of my job. What I witnessed on Tuesday in parliament — wads of cash being flashed around inside the lowerhouse– is something I had never bargained for. The civil-nuclear deal with the United States will go through, and some reforms may be pushed by the government with the help of its new allies. But politics will never be the same again, tainted by allegations of bribery and a vulgur display of money power. Shortly after his government won a convincing victory in parliament, Prime Minister…

Much as he tries astrologer Rajan Chopra can’t keep the pride out of his voice as he speaks to me for the second time in 24 hours. It’s victory march at 7 Race Course Road after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wins a closely-fought vote of confidence 275 to 256 in parliament and the temptation for Chopra to say “I told you so” is overwhelming. But Chopra, a political and corporate astrologer who predicted yesterday that the government would win the trust vote, says “it’s a victory for astrologers as well”. If popular predictions are anything to go by…

July is the season for shareholder meetings, an annual rite of passage for Indian companies, with directors, shareholders and reporters trooping into large, badly-lit auditoriums to hear the chairman speak glowingly of the achievements of the past year, and a litany of woes from shareholders. As a reporter who has covered many of these meetings of some of India’s largest companies, I have quickly learned that shareholders’ questions have little to do with family squabbles, succession policy, ill-advised acquisitions, or unflattering media reports. Instead, they usually range from…

Taking a cue from a popular 2006 Bollywood film, where the hero follows the path of non-violence to protest against injustice,  hundreds of travel agents in India sent sweets to airline offices on Monday to protest against a cut in their commission. Come October, and most airlines in India will stop paying commissions to travel agents, citing rising operational costs. This will effectively seal the fate of hundreds of agents who will have to close shop for good. In India, travel agents get a five percent commission on basic fare from airlines and most of them do not charge passengers any…

Are tensions over Kashmir and Afghanistan returning to haunt relations between India and Pakistan? At first glance, it looks unlikely. The two countries have more or less managed to hold to a ceasefire agreed at the end of 2003 on both the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Kashmir and on Siachen, and they have a slow-moving peace process which at least has India and Pakistan talking rather than fighting each other. India is far too interested in winning itself superpower status to let itself be distracted by some embarrassing fighting on its border. And Pakistan has enough problems dealing…

To most college students and recent grads, BAC is a unit of measurement to gage how many Jager bombs you had at Gramercy Club in Lincoln Park last night. To others it's short for, "You better go BAC to school and take your pre-med course requirements so you don't have to get a real job, stupid."Yes, Indians like to dance along to J-Kwon while everyone in the club gets tips(y), but they also like to study medicine. Problem is, some Indians in college are too busy doing the former to get to do the latter. Solution? The Post-Bac, or Post-Baccalaureate - a second bachelor's degree that allows the…

No Indian gathering would be complete without the requisite tray of Mattar Paneer heated from below with a blue gas flame. Whether the occasion be a Saraswati Puja in a church basement or a lunch buffet at Convention, Mattar Paneer, or stewed peas and chunks of cheese, will serve as the culinary keystone of a meal, seamlessly uniting the dry smokiness of the naan with the equally stark tuft of pilao. Here is something with moisture, something that will lubricate the joints of this dessicated meal and bring it to life with the fluidity of motion, for as any Indian knows, no meal is a meal…

In hopes of breaking the monotony of a lesson covering vectors, a young Indian male (lets be real), will call upon Ganesh. Likely, the teacher will start discussing Vectora and its corresponding magnitude and direction. He might even get up to Vectord , and the young mathlete will grow anxious, but resign himself to the reality of his small wish not reaching fruition.Enter: VectorfPessimism and caution are, now, tossed around in a randomized vector space; it is bound to happen. It has to happen.And the time is sublime. The student sees his teacher’s lips come together before the cathartic…

Perhaps it's the implicit recognition of Polytheism and the existence of a pantheon of deities that proffer the blessings of good fortune, wisdom and fecundity of the film's title that draw Indians to The Gods Must Be Crazy.Or maybe it's because the movie's release and popularity in the Eighties coincided with a time when large numbers of Indian immigrants had more recently arrived in America and found the movie's message of Western civilization's hypocrisy of consumption as civilization a pleasing balm to the culture shock of of leaving India for more "advanced" pastures.Or maybe the flick…

The Fortune 500 consulting company, splitting from Arthur Anderson and distancing itself from scandal, now offers itself as a reflexive utterance whenever one spots an Indian between the ages of 22 and 32 in Chicago’s South Loop, Manhattan’s Midtown North, or Delhi's Gurgaon.The initial shouts of “Accenture” at an Indian weren’t bold declarations (as in “WHALE!”, when one spots the blubbery mammal in the ocean{or on 18th street [word is bond]}). The declaration was confident but faced a 5 o’clock shadow of doubt (and a 6 o’clock stink of B.O.). It was fairly obvious that…

The US has congratulated the UPA Government, which won the trust vote in the Lok Sabha, for its "deep resolve" to go ahead with the historic Indo-US civilian nuclear deal.

Apprehending subversive activities from across the border, authorities impose night curfew in areas at this side of the International Border (IB) within one km distance of Jammu district.

The appointment of the principal at St Stephen’s College may take longer than expected as the institution has filed a fresh writ petition in the Delhi High Court, reports Ritika Chopra.

The family of people killed or crippled by the notorious Blueline buses may finally begin to get compensation as the Delhi High Court makes its intentions clear on the issue for the first time, reports Harish V Nair.

A Delhi-based Kashmiri freelance journalist, Syed Fayaz Mohammed Rizvi, who went missing under mysterious circumstances was allegedly kept in illegal detention by UP police, reports Tushar Srivastava.

A choppy market has given promoters a good opportunity to consolidate holdings in almost 300 companies in the April-June quarter. Heard on the street

Global business biggies such as Intel, Microsoft, Shell, Philips, Siemens and Bosch are keen to penetrate the 80 crore rural population. Managing global workforce

Four leading Delhi-based industrialists-Sunil Mittal, BM Munjal, Analjit Singh and Atul Punj have joined hands to bring the ISB to the north. Top business schools in India

Unlike blogs, Google's Knol encourages writers to reduce what they know about a topic to a single page that is not chronologically updated. Keep your PC cool

Online tickets for screenings were selling out as soon as they became available. On eBay, some tickets were selling for $80. Bachchan's Unforgettable Tour

Asin has decided not to be adamant anymore about signing new films before its release.

Glitz, glamour, charm, wit and of course, oodles of talent was the highlight of the Finals of NOKIA XPRESS MUSIC VOICE HUNT

The other day Dayanidhi Maran, the estranged grand nephew of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi opened up a part of his mind to the media in Chennai........

சத்யம் படத்திற்காக லைவ் ரெக்கார்டிங் செய்துவருகிறார் ஹாரிஸ் ஜெயராஜ்.

மாமனார் ரஜினி காமெடிப் புயலுக்கு போன் செய்து பாராட்டும் அளவுக்கு அவரை ரசிக்க ஆரம்பித்திருக்கிறார். தனது படங்களில் கண்டிப்பாக அவர் இருக்க வேண்டும் என்று விரும்புகிறார். ஆனால், மருமகன் தனுஷோ அதற்கு நேர் மாறாக இருக்கிறார்.

That India’s democracy is the largest in the world is not unknown. We could even add ‘rowdiest’ and maybe ‘uncouth’; perhaps even illiterate, aggressive, and so on. Where else do you see the disrespect for the Speaker’s chair as in India? Where else do MPs stand and protest when there is nothing to shout your lungs out for? Where else does the Speaker almost beg the MPs to “please take your seats?”   An important day for Indian democracy, July 22, witnessed a lot of action, reactions and immense agitation. But then again, which Parliament session in independent India’s…

Nearly every thinking, literate person in the world has come across Dr. Brian Weiss’ bestseller Many Lives Many Masters – the gripping story of a young twenty something Catherine plagued by innumerable fears and a crippling depression. She comes across a gentle (skeptical) psychologist who attempts to lighten her load through the tried and tested technique of regression via hypnosis. However, the shock comes when Catherine is able to remember not only her troubled childhood and infancy, but also eighty-eight of her past lives.   Perhaps the compelling (somewhat sensationalist)…

It has been two weeks since July 6, 2007, and those five hours that made the world and her subjects stop at their heels and dedicate themselves to the two legendary players who graced the Centre Court for the final at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Championship 2007 for the third consecutive time. Here I am writing about that very final because it has taken these two weeks to let those five hours sink, and I have woken up from a trance which the tennis took me to.   This is a dedication in the memory of the epic which I was lucky to be a part of because to be a spectator to such theatre is an…

I am a normal girl, or maybe I am not. Perhaps, that is not as important as not wanting to be ‘abnormal’. This word has stayed in my medical history and psyche for as long as I can remember. Trips to the hospital for check ups were as frequent as exams in school. I was scared of only one. Exams always went well, but every check up would mean that my mother remained isolated and gloomy for the entire day. When I grew up, I understood why.   I was born with a disorder in my spinal cord and I am lucky to not have any other neurological problem due to that. But the disorder became more…

The much talked about sequel to Christopher Nolan’s Batman – The Dark Knight hit the big screens last week and how! Stellar cast, stellar technical cast, stellar performances mark the return of Gotham City’s caped crusader against crime as he rattles up the numbers at the Box Office, and also settles in snugly with all the critics around Tinseltown.   Christopher Nolan started the journey with Batman Begins in 2005 with a mission to portray his vision of Batman in the truest form possible, and he only takes it forward with his second movie in the ensemble piece. Gotham City is…

Cyn.in the Mumbai based Enterprise 2.0 collaboration company (profiled on Webyantra in Sep’06 ) has launched its platforms in two new avataars. Cyn.in V2 is now being offered in an on premise model packaged as what the company is calling a “software appliance“. Additionally Cyn.in V2 community edition is being released under the GNU GPL v3 license- it is full featured, free to download, use, hack and customize. It may be recalled that Cyn.in V1 is a SAAS platform and the new version is based on feedback from its users asking for a variant that could be installed behind…

One of the surprising developments at Proto was the announcement by Rediff (which incidentally was the platinum sponsor for the event) of its developer platform by opening up its APIs. The platform will allow developers to create an applications economy on Rediff on the lines of Facebook & Open Social. The move is laudable - it speaks of Rediff’s confidence in its own engineering prowess, though it can be argued that Rediff hardly has the social graph that is necessary for making this successful. RediffMail is likely to have the largest user base, but other services - iShare,…

The fourth edition of Proto happened in Delhi on the 18-19 of July and it was a great showmanship for Indian entrepreneurship, startups and technology. Here are some quick points of note: - 15 startups formed the line up for Proto IV. This included 3 in the IT/Software segment, 3 in Web 2.0, 4 from ecommerce and the rest were from disparate backgrounds. Surprisingly there was no representation from the mobile space this time around (wonder why?). Is this a symptom of the strangulation of Mobile2.0 at the hands of the telco operators? - I thought the pick of the lot were the ecommerce startups…

Amazon Web Services is having a major outage since the last couple of hours. The outage has affected a bunch of services. Simple DB, S3, SQS - all are down. Check out the latest status on the Amazon Web Services dashboard. Screenshot below. A bunch of services are having problems - Twitter, Scribd, Smugmug. SlideShare is affected as well. Our website is up but crucial parts dependent on Amazon are broken - new files cannot be uploaded, slideshows cannot be viewed on the site, blog embeds will not show up as well etc… Hope they kill the problem soon. If you are a SlideShare user, please…

I haven’t previously covered newly launched Facebook applications since there are just so many of them. But when you see something promising and innovative, why not? Navajo is a word based multiplayer game on the Facebook platform that you should check out. Built by an Indian startup, they are hoping to replicate the success of Scrabulous (built by another Indian team). The game is similar to the jumbled words puzzle that we see everyday in our daily newspapers. Except that you are playing in real time, synchronous mode in an interface that is just like your regular IM. The system…

GROWTH OF ISLAMIC RADICALS AND IGNITED MEDIA ARVIND K. PANDEY The bomb blasts in Bangladesh , London, Ayodhya, the routine ones in Iraq, the Beslan tragedy, train carnage in Spain are enough to prove that perpetrators...

Lanka and India at the Sinhalese Sports Club ground. (Watch) Unravelling the mystery of new spin sensation Ajantha Mendis will be the biggest challenge for India’s famed batsmen as they go into the first Test against Sri Lanka, seeking to achieve...

It finally happened , the timid, soft spoken , epitome of courtesy Dr. Man Mohan Singh our esteemed prime minister had to stoop to the level of other rabble rousing so called politicians to make his point. He had to take Mr.L. K. Advani by horns and show...

“Amal”, a modern day morality tale by Toronto-born Richie Mehta, was awarded the German star at the fifth Bollywood and Beyond, the country’s only festival of Indian cinema. Mehta’s debut film “Amal” was a festival favourite for heart-warming...

Like most of you, I watched and read about the proceedings of the last few days with a sense of sadness and great shame…Amidst all this, these words by Radha Rajan touched a raw nerve… Please read and think…(emphasis added) *** The Nation as Draupadi *** Parliament on 22nd July resembled the court of the Kauravas with [...]

To those of us whose image of “Samraat” Ashoka (Ashoka the Great) has been shaped by Amar Chitra Katha???or the eponymous movie, it will come as a suprise that there may actually have been three different Kings by the name of Ashok and the real history of the “Ashok the Great” may be more complex [...]

Why is the English mainstream media so scared of calling terrorists for what they are - instead of the silly label -?”militants”? Is this?not an insult to?our brave officers and soldiers who day in and day out expose themselves to enormous risks…and put their lives on the line to protect our country and uphold the sovereignty [...]

Irfan Husain on how the intelligentsia in Pakistan?is blissfully unaware (or indifferent) to the threat from Taliban Saurav Basu on Amir Khusro and the myth of composite culture and Kapil Sibal on?how the ‘NDA ditched UPA after vowing to support the N-deal’? . Excerpts from?A world without joy?by Irfan Husain writing in The Dawn, July 19 2008 (emphasis mine) …IMAGINE [...]

How many of you have heard the story of great warrior Arjun suffering an ignominious defeat?at the hands of a gang of marauders*? I had a vague recollection of it but?when someone mentioned it to me the other day, I decided to dig deeper.? Courtesy psych-prism, here is?the?short story…and within it, a great lesson for all [...]

During the last one month, I have met with 70 senior managers in a variety of organizations. 64 of them (over 90%) have been in their jobs for less than a year. Attrition is not a new phenomenon and people will continue looking for greener pastures. The scale of what is happening, however, is rather frightening. Does this mean there is no longer any value attached to attributes like loyalty? Or is it that executives no longer care? What are organizations doing to retain human talent, which at the best of times is scarce anyway. On the one hand, we lay so much emphasis on the value of human…

India is seen as an emerging economy having registered impressive growth rates for over a decade. The services sector has been doing very well and manufacturing has not performed poorly. What must come as a sobering thought to a nation of a billion people is that the latest Fortune 500 list has just 7 Indian companies. Of these, five are state owned – four in the petroleum sector that is showing high revenues thanks to oil being on the boil and one bank. Only two companies are in the private sector – Reliance Industries and Tata Steel. Reliance Industries would have been a much bigger…

The United States of America celebrates Independence Day tomorrow. The achievements in many areas from science to engineering to medicine to business to the liberal arts have been quite spectacular. The universe has been explored like never before as recent photographs from the Hubble Telescope and the Cassini Mission to Saturn confirm. Diseases have been conquered. Wealth has been created beyond anyone’s imagination. To all the people involved directly or indirectly in this magnificent journey, we pay a humble tribute and wish that the next century would be even more exciting, challenging,…

Today marks the last working day for Bill Gates at Microsoft. So much has been written and spoken about him that another column appears redundant. Some people may even feel a tinge of happiness that they no longer have to contend with the ruthless businessman that Gates has been portrayed as. The purpose of this post is to analyze what can be learned by young people from perhaps the most successful entrepreneur of our times. • Focus: Bill Gates has demonstrated over nearly thirty years the importance of clarity of thought and execution. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not move…

As the United States prepares for a Presidential election and general elections in India appear to be not far away, this may be a good time to look at the state of relations between the world’s greatest democracy and the world’s largest democracy. It seems paradoxical that two nations that have so much in common in terms of values and cherished ideals cannot see eye to eye on critical issues. For a start, we can consider the nuclear deal. Despite continued and stubborn resistance from the left, the present government gave indications yesterday that it would like to see the deal through.

In my latest trip to India, I had the privilege to meet with Dr R A Mashelkar, India’s foremost scientist. From 1995 to 2006, Dr. Mashelkar was Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). CSIR is the largest network of publicly funded industrial R&D institutions in the world, with thirty-eight labs and about 20,000 employees distributed across India. Under Mashelkar’s visionary leadership, CSIR evolved from an ivory tower R&D institution to a market-focused innovation engine that cranks out practical applications with high commercial and societal value.

Western multinationals like GE, Microsoft, Siemens, and Google are shifting their R&D to India, eager to tap into its vast reservoir of creative engineers and scientists. These multinationals are either building captive R&D centers in India, or contracting out their R&D work to India-based service providers like Wipro, which employs over 10,000 R&D experts. For followers of global business, this is not a surprising development. But the reverse trend is also happening: Indian companies with global ambitions are tapping into highly-specialized R&D talent only available (thus far) in the West.

Indian firms, across all industries, are filing a flurry of patents for all of the intellectual property (IP) they've generated. For instance, Infosys was just granted two patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office for holography and mobile communications. Earlier, Tata Motors received 40 patents for the design of Nano, its groundbreaking $2,500 car, which should hit Indian roads in October 2008. Some senior European execs that I met with this week pointed this out and suggested that India’s patent filing prowess provides evidence that the country is becoming a world-class innovator.

I recently participated in a panel with C-level execs from leading India-based firms, including DLF, Godrej Group, Marico, and Nokia India, to discuss the findings of the 2008 IBM Global CEO Study. The study, based on interviews with 1,130 corporate and public leaders worldwide, identifies how companies are innovating their business models to cope with rapid business, technological, and societal changes. While Western CEOs’ appetite for innovation is curbed by the US recession, the Indian CEOs in my panel seemed eager to capitalize on the twin-forces of globalization and rapid technology…

I recently caught up with senior execs from various business units at the Tata Group, India’s leading conglomerate. They were all rightfully proud of the $2,500 Nano, the world’s cheapest car. We discussed how, before it has even been released, the Nano is already a disruptive product innovation. The Nano offers a safer alternative to families riding dangerously on bikes in big Indian cities like Mumbai. Similarly, Nanos converted into taxis will be more comfortable and environmental-friendly than the unstable and polluting autorickshaws (there are more than 60,000 autorickshaws in…

Writing in his latest book A Farewell To Alms UC Davis Professor Gregory Clark provides insight into the possible reasons why the English (and Europeans in general)  are on the whole considered “gentlemanly” and more “polished” (except while watching football, of course). Clark’s reasoning can also be extended to explain why India didn’t develop in the same fashion. Clark writes:   The Darwinian struggle that shaped human nature did not end with the Neolithic Revolution but continued right up until the Industrial Revolution. … economic success…

Mohit Satyanand Though I have never invested in the shares of Reliance Industries, my recently gleaned understanding of the world petroleum scenario has made me respect the company’s vision in its refining projects. As I mentioned once earlier, RIL’s existing refinery, and the one nearing construction, reportedly have unparalleled flexibility to process heavy, high-sulphur (so-called sour) crude, especially that emanating from Iran. This crude sells at a huge discount to other crudes; once it is refined into diesel, though, RIL is able to sell the resultant distillates, especially…

Mukul Asher, a professor at the LKY School of Public Policy in Singapore and Amarendu Nandy, a research scholar at the same university, have a thought-provoking guest post: A recent ASSOCHAM Business Barometer Survey of 258 faculty members of MBA programs in India found that most professors did not know basic facts about the national and global economy. “89 per cent of the teachers were unable to tell the GDP growth rate scaled by the Indian economy in the financial year 2006-07. The survey further divulged that hardly 6 per cent of the lecturers surveyed read any business newspaper on…

By V Anantha Nageswaran For a while, at least, Asian currencies are caught between rocks and hard places. We struggle to construct realistic scenarios under which Asian currencies rally. Only a credible and reasonably aggressive policy response to the inflationary impulse washing through the region would do that. It would restore policy credibility, improve local currency returns for domestic savers, and slow import growth, thereby acting to restore trade surpluses. The actions of most regional central banks thus far, however, fall short of what is needed. While exports in some countries have…

So says Hugh Young in the Financial Times Indian companies have on the whole risen above the meanderings of government, and in so doing have provided a platform for their shares to do likewise. ……… Granted, unlike some of its Asian cousins, India will remain a frustrating place for investors, as sensible policies one week are followed by emotional, knee-jerk decisions the next. But India has never really been a top down story, and anyway, the corporate world has learnt to deal with such vacillation. Investors should focus on areas that are not dependent on reforms to come…

For folks connected to the Twitterverse, you have one more ‘person’ to follow - DesiPundit. This Twitter feed will contain links to DesiPundit posts and occasional important updates. So if you use Twitter more often than your RSS feed reader, you might want to follow DesiPundit. More importantly, you can send tips to DesiPundit using the @desipundit (replies) or d desipundit (direct message). We’ll give credit in form of a hat-tip to your twitter account unless you specify otherwise if we publish your shared link. Hopefully this will make it easier for people who don’t…

Sporadicblogger feels that girls’ schools and colleges allow young women to grow without the imposition of gender constructs. In several co-ed colleges, one sees that very few girls ever occupy union positions. If they do at all, they are elected into positions that are traditionally seen as a female domain-cultural representatives, literary representatives. Seldom will one find a girl sports representative… Sunita disagrees and hopes to send her daughter to a co-ed school. Co-ed boys and girls in my opinion learn early to accept each other just as fellow beings destined to share…

Cfriend at “Indian Retail Industry” has a mission- to promote and build camaraderie between the public and online retailers in India. In the most recent post, the major players are discussed along side their most effective strategies, With the prospects of becoming a long-term successful industry, major e-stores like Indiamart, Futurebazaar, Retailsdirect and Indiaplaza are relying heavily on the online retail boom. They are leaving no stone unturned in accelerating the conversion rate of its user traffic. The most bankable factor for drawing in consumers from the offline domain…

The Lady makes a case for confusion in a short, bittersweet poem. We spend our lives looking for answers, Because we think the next answer will change something,…

The UPA government has won the trust vote in parliament by a comfortable margin. But who are the winners and losers of India’s biggest political fight since this government came to power? Rohit takes a look at the winners and losers of the UPA trust vote exercise which presented much entertaining drama that we now expect from Indian politics. Indiatime looks closer at the top ten players who mattered on the day of the vote including their ’special interests’.

India has the fastest growing mobile subscriber base in the world and is now ranked 2nd right after China. In order to grow its mobile consumer base Indian and Chinese telecom operators have recognized there is a need to reach out to the rural areas and provide viable, sustainable and efficient telecom infrastructure before they can roll out mobile services to them. For instance, in India there has been a strong emphasis in rolling out mobile infrastructure to the rural market by operators like Airtel and there has been talk about sharing of infrastructure between the telecom operators. While…

Last week BlogHer, a community of women bloggers, made two major announcements.  It received $5 million in funding from  Peacock Equity and Venrock, a returning investor. Peacock Equity was co-founded in 2007 by GE Commercial Finance’s Media Communications and Entertainment business and NBC Universal. (more…) ShareThis

It has been almost a month since I wrote my last TechLife column in Financial Express, but I am back this week. In this week’s column I take a look at the complex world of video ad networks, which appears to be a global trend and Indian investors have also jumped into the bandwagon.  Just this month alone a couple of India-based VCs invested a significant amount of money in two video ad networks: Jivox and Ozone Media. How big is the market, what are the challenges and above all how do you make money are some of the questions that I tried to answer in this short piece. (more…)…

Here is a quick note about BlogHer 2008 interviews that I will post in the next couple of days.  I have two video interviews: the first is  with Lisa Stone, CEO and co-founder of BlogHer and the second one is a short highlight on what  is Open Source by Michelle Baker, CEO of  Mozilla Foundation. This  video snippet is from an interactive panel discussion on Open Source. I will also have a short write-up on Open Source and higlight some of the interesting points that were raised during the panel discussion. Tomorrow, I will have an audio interview with Melek Pulatkonak, CEO of Hakia, a…

There are no more women CEO’s in any large corporations in Silicon Valley reports San Jose Mercury News. The key word is “large corportions.” The last one standing was Diane Greene of VMware, who was abruptly replaced earlier this month. There was a time that HP was headed by Carly Fiorina, eBay was headed by Meg Whitman and VMware was headed by Diane Greene.  Interestingly these days  both Fiorina and Whitman are  involved in Senator McCain’s (R) campaign for Presidency. It is often mentioned that Whitman has political ambitions and might run for the Governor of…

Here is the insightful story of 2 failed startups: Monitor110: Raised $20mn in 3 rounds, but finally shut shop. 7 deadly sins? The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game No separation between the technology organization and the product organization Too much PR, too early Too much money Not close enough to the customer Slow to adapt to market reality Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board [More] Another startup, that bootstrapped for 1.5 years shut down has very practical advice: If your idea starts with…

Recently posted startup jobs: .Net techies Freelance PHP Developer Needed Sr. Sales Head / VP Sales - for CXO Level B2B Enterprise Sales Opening for dotnet programmers New Delhi based startup looking for technical person Several Engineering positions More Indian startup Jobs Do you think you can help bnet, one of the pluGGd.in reader? He plans to start an e-comm site: It is a city-based shopping website where I do not stock any items but users post items they have and my website would just be a platform between buyers and sellers much like ebay. I dont plan any servers, everything would run…

Shaadi has partnered with Zee’s DTH service for “Shaadi Active’”, a subscription based service that will enable marriage prospects/their parents to search for eligible bride / groom of their choice - right from their tv screens.[source] Next in the Portal-DTH partnership list - Job portals? The partnership is a good example of app distribution and most of the transactional portals are exploring newer ways to acquire audience - this also talks of the limited Internet audience that we have! Quick look at the current scenario: OTAs are planning to enter into offline space…

Part 2 of 3-part series on Online Communities/Social Media. Well, I have been meaning to write about the Firefox Download Day and their grand record. One brand which used Social Media Marketing and an existing community to generate buzz like never before. Of course the Guinness Record helped too. Guinness and Buzz Marketing A Guinness World Record is an established buzz marketing strategy for a brand and it isn’t like Firefox is doing a first. Typical record strategies include building the world’s “largest” something and examples of these records can be seen here. The…

The Indian startup directory is going big with new additions and here are a few interesting startups: Unleash Networks Provides innovative products in the area of security and network analysis. Their flagship product Unsniff Network Analyzer is the first to introduce advanced features like full stream analysis, advanced PDU analysis, and the ability to extract interesting pieces of information from observed traffic. Have recently launched a major open source project called Trisul. MQuotient MQuotient Solutions Ltd. is a product-based tech start-up building software products for the niche area…

Ringtones are a big business in India, the worlds 2nd largest mobile market. They in fact make up for more than 35% of all mobile VAS revenues. Isnt it time that companies stop charging for ringtones ? Why even pay the Rs. 7-15 for a ringtone ? If you want to stop paying for ringtone downloads and want to create your own ringtones from your MP3 files, here’s a step by step guide for doing so (this is an old story - I recently came across it while doing housekeeping on my delicious links). The process involves installing a couple of open source softwares, so the inintial setup might take…

Comscore has released numbers related to the Indian Internet usage for May 2008. As per the report: 28 million users in the age group 15 & older accessed Internet from home - work locations This indicates a 27% jump in the Internet usage from last year  India has one of the fastest growing Internet populations among the countries listed in the comScore world Metrix service The 28 million still represents only 3% of the population leaving room for tremendous growth (I’ve talked about this before) Some additional bits from the report: Average Indian visitor is online 25 times a month…

Its been almost three months since Orkut apps went live. It seemed like a good time to visit and review some of the most popular Orkut apps and see how well they’re faring. Orkut has the largest Indian audience amongst all social networks and not surprisingly, it seems that Indian apps seem to the dominate the top 10 list. At the time of this writing, six out of the top 10 Orkut apps were either targeted towards the Indian audience or were built by Indian companies. Lets look at three of the most popular Orkut apps below: Chakpak Movies: This Erasmic funded company’s Orkut app…

US based Rocketalk has launched their social entertainment focused mobile app in India. The app runs on Java and Symbian based phones. Application features include: * Social networking * MMS * Communities * IM & Chat * Music & video downloads * Content & premium services Rocketalk has raised $7.1 million from iSherpa Ventures, EDF Ventures and Mission ventures. MobMe, the Trivandrum incubated startup, already has a good headstart & so Rocketalk will definitely need to step it up a notch to compete. CommentsJuly 22, 2008, Nikhil Mathew commented: what is the mobme product.

Is that awesome or what !! Yes, Kerala’s first Unconference event - BlogCamp Kerala 2008 will be held on 16th August at Alleppey, Kerala. The event is hosted by Kerala Tourism, who has provided the event venue - a houseboat. Yes, the event has the distinction of being the first such event to be conducted on a houseboat. More details about the event here. Copyright © Pranav Dharma -StartupDunia, 2006-2008 436351e6071a7eb576c4616f80308eb7 Related PostsYahoo India wants to help me blogBlogsJam, a web based blog aggregator for IndiansConvert any blog feed into audio using…

After the success of Opera Mini and iPhone’s Safari, Microsoft plans to bring Internet Explorer to the mobile phones. The phone will be available in the third quarter of 2008, reports Telecom Tiger.   Opera has recently released Opera Mini for browser. WATBlog had reviewed it in an early post. From what we saw, we were pretty impressed. Opera Mini had the potential to become the default browser on every mobile screen.   Even Apple, with Safari for the iPhone has been successful in placing their browser in many hands. Literally.   Now, knowing Microsoft’s past, and…

It was just today that we brought you the news about Zapak launching a mobile gaming site at http://zapak.mobi. Now, we have just been told that NDTV Active, the mobile portal from NDTV now brings your mobile Java based games, courtesy of Hovr.   NDTV Active is a mobile portal from the house of NDTV, which brings you daily news, astro predictions, Movies’ talks, Cricket and Profit content. The site will now bring you some exciting line-up of downloadable games from Hovr. These games are ad-supported games which can be downloaded free of cost from the site. Along with the games,…

You are reading it first here: Well that was quick! I just got informed by Bharatmatrimony that they too have tied up with Tata Sky and unlike Shaadi.com - Dishtv alliance have already launched the service on the Tata Sky yesterday itself. So as I write this blog the press conference is being held at chennai. One can check out the details of actve matrimony on the Tata Sky site here       Its almost ironical that we mentioned in our post covering the shaadi and dishtv (which was done just an hour ago!) tie up that the reaction would come in the form of bharatmatrimony or…

Well taking the web everywhere seems to be the funda being followed by the big web players. So if earlier it was about opening offline centres now Shaadi.com has set its eyes on the set top box users by tying up with DTH player DishTv to provide Shaadi Active a service that will allow DishTv viewers to browse through matrimonial profiles on their TV Screens! As per release dishtv’s ‘Shaadi Active’ service will work exactly like the online shaadi.com i.e. viewers will be able to screen, search prospective bride/grooms and then contact them. To make sure the same profiles dont turn up…

Zapak, the immensely popular gaming site from the house of Reliance Entertainment has just launched Zapak.mobi, a mobile gaming site for all the mobile aficionados out there. The site, which is directly accessible via GPRS, has been optimized for mobile browsers found on most handsets in the market these days and the games have been designed for handsets that support Java based games. The games that will be made available for download on the site will be free of charge for everyone. This is Zapak’s first entry into mobile gaming, even though they already had a WAP version of their site…

Hope you are not getting bored reading too much about iPhone. It’s my duty to update my visitors with whatever update I have. So, there are some strong rumors about iPhone & Airtel. One of my friend updated my last week that he spoke to some Airtel guy who is knowledgeable. He told that Airtel is trying to launch iPhone in India in August first week. The price is expected to be around Rs.25,000. I heard it $199, why Rs.25k here? Yes, this might be a question in everyone’s mind who is interested in iPhone. In US you can get iPhone 8 GB model for $199 & 16 GB model at $299.

Many of us use gmail because of it’s simple design & featureset it has to offer us. Google has introduced a new security feature for gmail, remote lagout. Many of use more than two computers to login to gmail. If you take my example, I login to gmail from home & office. Some times we often leave the browser opened & not being logged out of gmail, if the computer is at office or any public place your account might be mis-used. Now sitting at home computer you can logout of gmail in office computer or any other computer. Footer in gmail contains your session details, when you…

Google has stopped working on Browser Sync for Firefox. That means you can’t have Google Sync to work on the latest version of Firfox, i.e, Firefox 3. For those who don’t know about Google Sync, it syncs your browsing history, bookmarks…on different installations of Firefox! If you have Firefox on two or more computers, you can sync all your browsing data by installing Google Browser Sync addon for Firefox. But, now Google has discontinued development on Browser Sync for Firefox. I think this is one of the feature which browser should have inbuilt like in opera 9.5 (latest…