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First
Apparel Park in the Country Opened
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The
country's first apparel park, built
at an infrastructure cost of Rs 81
crore, was inaugurated at New Tirupur.
The park, spread in 165 acres of land,
has 52 leading exporters of Tirupur,
Mumbai and Delhi, who would put up
apparel manufacturing units worth
Rs 300 crore. A dream project of Tirupur
Exporters' Association, the knitwear
exporters in the region expect to
double their exports to Rs 10,000
crore from the present Rs 5,000 crore
in the next three years. A standard
unit in the park is likely to produce
7,500 pieces of garments a day and
at an average export price of three
dollars per piece, value of production
would be $22,500 or Rs 10.50 lakh
per day. With an assumed production
for 240 days in a year, the annual
turnover in a standard unit would
be a little over Rs 25 crore.
Courtesy:
The Economic Times, January 11, 2005
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NRI
Group to Develop Rural 'Heart' of
India
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A
30-year-old NRI from UK, Deepak Mistry,
who intends to work for the people
from rural India, will be undertaking
projects for the development of the
rural areas. Mr Mistry, who attended
the Third Pravasi Bharatiya Divas
in Mumbai, feels that the conventional
meet between the Indian government
and the NRIs is not just for financial
investment, but is much deeper than
the money matters. Mr Mistry is associated
with the Organisation of Non-Resident
Indians Participating in Development
Works. This Ahmedabad-based organisation
has 50 such young NRIs engaged in
the development works across the country.
Mr Mistry said, "The organisation
has currently undertaken the responsibility
of developing villages located in
states like Uttar-Pradesh, Maharashtra
and Andhra-Pradesh." He said: "The
organisation enables us to undertake
projects such as water harvesting,
educating the girl child in the rural
areas, implementing literacy programmes
across the villages and health-care
management programmes in the rural
areas. He said, "The progress of the
nation lies in the hands of the NRI
youth. Instead of concentrating on
the urban India, there is a need to
concentrate on the rural India which
resembles the heart of the country."
Courtesy:
The Asian Age, January 10, 2005
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Dual
Citizenship for NRIs Who Left After
January 26, 1950
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Paying
rich tributes to the 2.5 million knowledge
and opportunity-seeking Indians settled
abroad, the Prime Minister, Manmohan
Singh, today offered dual citizenship
to all those who migrated from the
country after it became a Republic
on January 26, 1950, provided their
home countries allowed them to do
so. Dr. Singh said he would work towards
the goal of getting Indian citizenship
for every single overseas Indian who
wished to get it. His announcement
was applauded by about 1,900 delegates
from the Indian diaspora in 70 countries
at the three-day-long Third Pravasi
Bharatiya Divas that he inaugurated.
The Prime Minister said the procedure
for applying for Indian citizenship
would be simplified and the Government
was considering options, including
the possibility of issuing smart cards
to overseas citizens. The Manmohan
Singh Government has set up a Ministry
of Overseas Indian Affairs to look
after the interests of the Indian
diaspora and the Pravasi Bharatiya
Divas aims at further cementing their
ties with the motherland. The Pravasi
Divas is celebrated on January 9 for
it was on this day 90 years ago that
the Great Pravasi (migrant), Mahatma
Gandhi, returned home from South Africa
to lead the country in its freedom
struggle. The chief guest today was
Jules Rattankoemar Ajodhia, Vice-President
of Suriname, who is of Indian origin.
Many leading persons of Indian origin,
including Singapore's Education Minister,
T. Shanmugaratnam, Leader of the Opposition
of Trinidad and Tobago, Basdev Pande,
Chairperson of the European Parliament
delegation for South-East Asia and
SAARC, Nina Gill, chief executive
of Cobra Beer, Karan Bilimoria and
tennis star, Vijay Amritraj, are participating
in the deliberations. 'Idea of India'
- "We speak different languages, we
practise different religions, our
cuisine is varied and so is our costume...
yet, there is a unifying idea that
binds us all together, which is the
idea of Indianness," the Prime Minister
said. He called it "the empire of
minds of the children of Mother India
spread over all continents including
the icy reaches of Antarctica, on
which the sun truly cannot set." The
Prime Minister said that since the
initiative of 1991 to liberalise and
modernise the Indian economy, successive
governments had taken steps that enabled
the Indians abroad to invest at home.Mr.
Ajodhia recounted the toil and achievements
of the Indian community of 24,000
indentured labourers who worked on
sugarcane and coffee plantations in
Surinam, replacing freed slaves. Many
of them returned to India but those
who stayed back had struggled and
succeeded in many professions.
Courtesy:
The Hindu, January 08, 2005
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A
Little Village in the Sun
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Here
is a bright little village in Andhra
Pradesh that is all solar and smoke-free
- the first of its kind in the country.
Bysanivaripalle, 125 km northwest
of Tirupati, has 36 families. Their
main means of livelihood is sericulture.
The eco-conscious residents of the
electrified village went in for the
first biogas plant in the region two
decades ago. The officials of the
Non-Conventional Energy Development
Corporation of Andhra Pradesh (NEDCAP)
did not need to put in much effort
to motivate them to go solar. Intersol,
an Austrian non-governmental organisation,
sponsored the provision of "Sk-14"
cookers here last year. Gadhia Solar,
a Valsad-based environmental body
that imports, supplies and installs
them, executed the job. It is the
single largest cluster of cookers
that Gadhia Solar has installed anywhere.
A group of schoolchildren from Austria
visited the village last year to witness
the project. "With 23 biogas plants
and 26 solar cookers, we do not have
to use a matchstick," says Sadananda
Reddy, a progressive sericulturist
who was honoured by the Karnataka
Government recently for his top quality
cocoons. The village saves 72 tonnes
of firewood, or 5,832 kg of LPG, cutting
carbon dioxide emissions to the tune
of 104 tonnes a year, according to
Jagadeeswar Reddy, NEDCAP's district
manager. The village has come in for
praise from the developer of the Sk-14
cooker, Dieter Seifert of Germany.
In an e-mail message, he says: "There
may be places where there are more
number of solar cookers, but I have
never come across an entire village
using just solar cookers and biogas,
which makes it a smoke-free village
in the real sense."
Courtesy:
The Hindu, January 07, 2005
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Mata
Amritha Announces Rs 100 cr for Relief
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The
biggest relief measure announced so
far, the Mata Amritananda Math in
Kerala has announced a Rs 100 crore
tsunami relief for the affected states.
Announcing this at her ashram in Vallikkavu,
Kollam on Monday, Mata said the sum
would be spent in consultation with
the Central government. Expressing
great regret at the sufferings of
the accident-hit people, the spiritual
head of the Math that has considerable
following said, the Math was willing
to adopt all the orphaned children
if their kin would leave them at any
of the Math centre in the country.
The Math also has plans to study the
Tsunami phenomenon, the Mata said.
If the government permitted, the Math
proposes to reconstruct all the houses
that have been completely destroyed
by the tsunami attack across Kerala.
These houses will be built according
to the specifications of the government.
The Math proposes to build houses
consisting of two rooms, a kitchen,
a small veranda and a toilet. Other
relief activities to be undertaken
pending government sanction are: Rs
1000 for buying kitchenware for every
affected family in the coastal states.
All applications are to be submitted
to the Math by Sunday. Math is gearing
up for major relief works in Tamil
Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Courtesy:
The Times of India, January 04, 2005
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This
Young Scientist sets his Sight on
Prevention of Diseases
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Small
things can sometimes make a lot of
difference, like the inclusion of
biotechnology in the high school curriculum
when M. Madan Babu stepped into standard
XI. Some might call it his luck, but
for the 25-year-old winner of the
prestigious Max Perutz prize for outstanding
research carried out at the MRC Laboratory
of Molecular Biology in Cambridge,
United Kingdom, the inclusion was
the turning point of his career. "The
school lessons exposed me to biotechnology
and developed my interest to pursue
higher studies in the field," says
Dr. Madan Babu, conferred with the
prize in October and presently working
in the field of computational molecular
biology. He recently completed his
assignments as a visiting fellow at
the National Centre for Biotechnology
Information, attached to the National
Institute of Health, United States
of America. Given his strong foundations,
especially working with P. Balaram,
professor at the Indian Institute
of Science as the Young Fellow of
the Institute, the long list of academic
awards from various institutions that
his resume contains doesn't come as
a surprise.
Courtesy:
The Hindu, January 03, 2005
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A
'Desi' Chip Maker Preferred Worldwide
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If
you fly by Alaskan Airlines, Hawaiian
Airlines or Ryan Air today you will
be able to enjoy one of the most advanced
digital media players in the world,
to hear music or view movies. Next
week in Las Vegas (United States),
at an international Consumer Electronics
Show, at least half dozen manufacturers
will unveil their own branded versions
of the portable media player - which
for the first time, will not only
play audio and video but also will
allow users to record and store up
to 50 full length movies - that will
cost around $ 300 a piece. One of
the world's more popular budget digital
movie cameras or `handycams', made
by the Taiwan-based Premier Image,
can be bought in India for about Rs.
8,000 on the baazee.com auction site.
And by mid 2005, at least two manufacturers
in Korea will be launching a new generation
of see-as-you-speak video telephones
that allow you to make cheap phone
calls that ride on the Internet. What
is the common link between these different
products? The fact that all of them
are fuelled by cutting-edge technology
and digital chips conceived and designed
by Ittiam Systems, an Information
Technology company wholly owned and
staffed by Indians, based in Bangalore,
that turned three today. Significantly,
it has just won recognition by independent
technology watchers as the ``world's
most preferred supplier of digital
signal processing intellectual property.''
The details of how this rating was
arrived at by the technology research
agency, Forward Concepts, show that
Ittiam is way ahead of competitors,
in the perception of digital electronics
manufacturers, both for its hardware
and its software. Indeed, the proud
`made in India' brand that Ittiam
has carved out for itself, is in a
new and emerging technology niche
- a `sangam' or confluence of hardware
and software, called embedded systems,
where a small number of chips on a
card - or even a single ``system on
a chip'', can fuel a number of different
applications. This is arguably, one
of the most significant achievements
by an Indian technology company in
2004.
Courtesy:
The Hindu, January 02, 2005
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