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INDIA SURGES AHEAD NEWS
September 2003
 
MISCELLANEOUS
 
VSNL Pips Biggies, Ranked Third Best Asian ISP
 

Mumbai: UK-based network specialist Netconfigs has ranked Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) as the third best internet service provider (ISP) in Asia and 29th in the world from among a total of 11,000 ISPs globally. The network specialist has ranked VSNL third after Reach, a Hong Kong-based ISP and Dacomnet, a Korean ISP, in an independent survey conducted on efficiency, maintenance and linkages with other networks, according to Netconfigs' website.

The Tata group firm is also ranked ahead of Singtel and Telecom Italia, two prominent ISPs in the world, according to the website. The ranking also highlights VSNL's "better reach to the various parts of the world," due to its reduced dependency on any particular carrier. VSNL connects to over 14 carriers and has route presence at many places across the globe.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 29, 2003

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India gets WHO Pat for TB Control Programme
 

India's tuberculosis (TB) control programme was praised for "achieving the fastest expansion with quality in the world" by a 40-member team of international experts." In less than five years, there has been exemplary progress and a random survey of 20 TB centres across India showed that the disease was being properly diagnosed, drugs were available and the monitoring was good," said Dr Leopold Blanc, coordinator, TB Strategy and Operations, World Health Organisation.

India's Rs 680-crore Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme has adopted the Directly Observed Treatment Strategy (DOTS) for the free treatment of patients. Under the programme, DOTS centres are set up where patients are made to take medicines under supervision to increase compliance. The programme has a 90 per cent cure rate. The government has also involved the private sector through medical associations and corporate hospitals.

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, September 27, 2003

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BHEL Bags Top Export Award
 

New Delhi: Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (Bhel) has won the top exporter's award for outstanding export performance amongst public and private sector companies for the thirteenth year in succession. Instituted by the Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC), Bhel has bagged the 'All India Trophy for Top Exporters' in the category of 'project exports' for the year 2000-01. During fiscal 2000-01, Bhel successfully completed three prestigious overseas projects which included 3x30 MW Hubara gas turbine-based turnkey power plant of Petroleum Development Oman, 90 MW Rusail gas turbine-based turnkey power plant of ministry of electricity and water, Oman, and the 78.2 MVA hydro generator package for Mingechaur hydro electric project in Azerbaijan. The units have since been commissioned and are performing well.

In this period, continued thrust on enhancing physical exports resulted in an export order booking of Rs 715 crore. The momentum is continuing and as a result of increased thrust on overseas business, Bhel bagged the highest-ever export orders worth Rs 1,455 crore during the last fiscal 2002-03, a quantum jump of nearly 82 per cent over the previous year. This included the single-largest overseas order received by any major capital goods manufacturing company in India, for setting up a 600 MW power station in Libya, comprising four gas turbines.

Courtesy: The Times of India, September 26, 2003

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Apollo Travels to West Asia Looking for Medical Tourists
 

Kolkata: South-east Asia's biggest health-care player, Apollo Hospitals Group, is now scouting West Asian and African countries to attract medical tourists from these 'potential' countries. While the Apollo Group has already signed agreements with a few medical insurance players, it is also soon going to set-up telemedicine centres at Oman, Dubai, Yemen, Sudan and Nigeria, followed by the other places.

In fact, the Apollo Group has also diversified in non-core medical sectors like ayurveda and health spa's and is fast extending these facilities in their hospitals. Apollo has already identified nine of its super-speciality units -- the ones in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bilaspur, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, Bangalore and Colombo. And the major crowd-puller apart from oncology, cardiology and orthopaedic replacement surgeries, would be major micro-surgeries and plastic surgeries. While the main drawback that West Asian nations have is poor management of the health-care delivery units despite good infrastructure, it's just the opposite in case of the African nations. "These drawbacks will make for a smooth way for the patients to consider India as their medical destination." "India has the highest success rate in major surgeries.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 26, 2003

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Indian Innovators Find Global Favour
 

While the unprecedented global popularity of the Indian Diaspora is on a constant upswing, there is more news to cheer. Eight young NRIs join an impressive list of people responsible for innovating anything from wireless networking to artificial organs, by making it to the prestigious List of World's 100 Top Young Innovators, complied by Technology Review, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT), magazine of innovation. Their works have been recognised for utterly transforming our world in the years to come, and will be honoured at a glittering ceremony tonight.

The TR100, chosen by the editors of Technology Review and an elite panel of judges, consists of 100 individuals, under 35, whose innovative work in technology has a profound impact on today's world.

The nanotechnology category had three Indian entries. Krishna Kumar, Ravikanth Pappu and Balaji Narasimhan.

Kumar, a Chemistry Professor at Tufts University, is recognised for his work in the field of protein design and engineering research, particularly on decorating proteins with Teflon- like Materials. This invention is a major breakthrough in helping solve a lot of health-related problems. "

Ravikanth, a principal at Thing Magic in Cambridge, has devised a cheap and simple solution for card identifiers, that will be highly difficult to forge, by developing radio-frequency identification technologies.

Reuben Singh, the 27-yr-old from Manchester, who was recently named the youngest rich in the world by Fortune magazine, is nominated in the Internet category. His innovation is AlldayPa.com, a company that uses custom software that enables a team of live personal assistants to handle calls, manage calendars, type letters and perform other tasks for business owners.

Sanjay Parekh, of Digital Envoy has the other nomination. Parekh developed a software that allows companies tailor services to their customers' locations. It also traces connections back through Internet switching stations to the network nodes where log-ins originate.

A Delhi University drop out, Vipul Ved Pakash, 25, frequently encountered the scourge of spam, and developed Vipul's Razor, a spam-fighting software tool, and co-founded Cloud mark with Napster's former Software chief, Jordan Ritter. It was the development of a free and commercial another software tool called SpamNet, that fights spam, which has been honoured under the Computing Category by TR.

It was Sangeeta Bhatia's innovation of using microchip-manufacturing tools to build artificial livers, that has been recognised in the Biotechnology and Medicine category.

Under the same category, Nimmi Ramanujan and Ram Samudrala were also named. While Nimmi has devised an instrument that can guide a biopsy needle to just the right spot, making diagnosing breast and cervical cancer faster, Samudrala, a professor with the University of Washington, wrote algorithms that can predict the functions of proteins from the sequence of a every protein encoded by an organism's genome.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 25, 2003

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NetApp of US Comes Calling to India
 

Bangalore: Yet another IT multinational is banking on the Indian talent pool to develop engineering and escalation support services. The California-based Network Appliance (NetApp) has set up a development centre in Bangalore, the first outside the US.

India will be a part of four other high-end support centres that NetApps has across the globe. The Indian centre will be responsible for the future software enhancements of NetCache - a product line which improves content delivery by storing content closer to end users, thereby eliminating network and server bottlenecks.

Besides the obvious cost advantage, the decision to move NetCache's entire software engineering activity may be attributed to the India's talent pool that India offers.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 24, 2003

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DHL to make India as South Asia Hub
 

New Delhi: DHL HAS identified India as one of its four key growth markets in the Asia-Pacific region. The company will soon start operations at its first world-class courier terminal at the Delhi international airport. The terminal, which would have an independent custom-bonded warehouse, would be soon replicated in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata airports as part of plans to make the country a "South Asia hub of choice", DHL worldwide express India country manager Chris Callen said. "This facility will be the first of its kind in India and will be among the best that DHL has built worldwide. We are spending close to Rs 18 crore on this project and have committed to go live by October 1, 2003," he said.

Courtesy: The Pioneer, September 23, 2003

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Drug Research to Meet Global Norms
 

New Delhi: India's emerging pre-eminence in the area of drug research is set to be reinforced with a clutch of regulatory interventions aimed at upgrading Indian system to global standards. India can not only reduce the cost of research, but contribute enormously to the increasingly multi-centric, multi-country clinical trials of drug candidates sponsored by innovator drug companies across the globe. In an exclusive interview with ET, Mr D S Brar, the CEO of Ranbaxy Laboratories, which has won the ET Company of the Year Award, and Dr N K Ganguly, director-general, ICMR said India's multifarious ethnic conditions would offer a vast pool of generic material for clinical drug research.

According to Mr Brar, India could emerge as the top 10 destinations of the world for innovation in pharma in the next 10-15 years. "Here I count each member of the EU. "Even a country like China, which is more populous than India, is not as abundant in ethnic varieties as India.

Availability of diverse and untapped genetic material is of course a major consideration of clinical trial sponsors, designers and investigators. "India is unique in this context, with remote unstudied populations. Until a few years ago, Indian drug companies had been almost completely alien to the prerequisites of making an investigational new drug (IND) application. Now we receive as many as 107 such applications from Indian companies in single year for instance," says Dr Ganguly, who heads the IND application clearance committee attached to the office of the drugs controller general of India (DCGI).

A Rs 200-crore animal breeding facility being planned in Hyderabad, to be owned by drug companies, is expected to partly address the concerns on availability of animals for research. The Andhra government has already committed to give the land free for the project, while a few leading domestic drug companies are willing to fund it. The domestic capacity building should, indeed, encompass all areas - enhancing the skills and knowledge of the investigators as well as evaluators of the data, setting up of better labs and increasing access to patient population as well as animal subjects for trials. Although companies like Ranbaxy or Dr Reddy's, who are excelling other speciality generic companies in the drug master file submissions with the US-FDA could be exceptions, some Indian drug companies are only learning to make the dossiers on drug research data, according to Ganguly.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 22, 2003

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Ankara gets a Road Named after Tagore
 

September 18: It was a programme right after the Prime Minister's heart; unveiling a bust in honour of "one of India's greatest poet philosophers". Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee got an opportunity to wear another one of his hats - that of the chancellor of Visva-Bharati University that the Indian Prime Minister traditionally wears, when he inaugurated the Rabindranath Tagore Avenue in the Turkish capital this morning, "celebrating another valuable strand of the Indo-Turkish connection".

Mr Vajpayee said like many generations of poets, writers, scholars and reformers in India, Gurudev Tagore was influenced by the great Turkish Sufi mystic, Jalalettin Rumi, whose "message of peace and tolerance, and a world without boundaries found a deep echo in Tagore's consciousness". "The Rabindranath Tagore Avenue in Ankara will remain a symbol of the friendship between our two peoples," the Prime Minister said, mirroring the "strategically located Kemal Ataturk Marg in central Delhi, which runs adjacent to the official residence of the Prime Minister of India, and guards the sole public access to it".

Courtesy: The Statesman, September 19, 2003

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Brand IIT Going Global: To Set Up Campuses Abroad
 

Mumbai: Leveraging the almost gargantuan status that the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been able to carve for themselves over the past decade, the government now proposes use their brand equity to market Indian education abroad. A first step in this direction is a proposal to set up campuses of the IITs overseas. This follows growing demand from developing nations including Sri Lanka, Singapore, Mauritius and countries of West Asia and S-E Asia, said a government release.

This issue of casting the Indian educational net overseas was considered at length at the recent meeting of the council of IITs in New Delhi. Most of these countries have a low-level of science and technology activities and feel that IITs would serve as stepping stones to give a fillip to their scientific advancement.

Singapore, a considerably well-developed country, recently sent a proposal to facilitate the presence of an IIT for post-graduate education and research with industry linkages in Singapore. The meeting felt that while the IITs could benefit by working with these institutes, their presence would also help in developing linkages with S-E Asia and China, as well as support in promoting India's economic and commercial interest in the Asia-Pacific region.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 18, 2003

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Film to Promote AIIMS Abroad
 

After 47 years, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is ready to take on the countries considered to be the harbinger of medical sciences. It has prepared a 20-minute-long film on its feats and advancements, something which gives the Institute an edge over its counterparts across the globe.The film, also an attempt to export health abroad, contains not only the prowess of the AIIMS. It features Queen Elizabeth and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then Prime Minister of India. The duo were witnessed to the opening of what has become now one of the best centres of medical services in the world.

A number of AIIMS faculty members serve as Visiting Professors across the globe, while many of them are with the agencies like WHO and UNICEF as consultants. In the recent past, the hospital had delegates from Russia, Bulgaria, Canada, Mozambique, United States and Poland."As an institution, AIIMS is magnificent in more ways than one, compared to any medical institutes in the world. Our treatment matches not only with the best in the world, but is also superb in many other respects," Dr P Venugopal, director, AIIMS, said. AIIMS is, perhaps, the only medical institute in the world where over 800 research papers are published every year.

At the same time, AIIMS offers the cheapest treatment in the world. "We provide the best treatment at a very affordable rate. A bypass surgery costs only US $ 1200 at AIIMS, while in other countries like the US it costs more than $ 50,000," Dr Shakti Gupta, spokesperson, said. "In areas like cardiac surgery, heart transplantation, nuclear medicine and cancer surgery, we are matchless" he added.

Being the best referral hospital in the country, the AIIMS gets a number of patients from foreign countries including US every year. Other countries from where the patients throng the AIIMS are Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, Mauritius, Mayanmar, Bhutan and Pakistan.

Courtesy: The Pioneer, September 17, 2003

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Indian Named Academic Chief of US University
 

An Indian American anthropologist has been appointed to a top position at New York's New School University. Arjun Appadurai, currently professor of international studies at Yale University, will be its chief academic officer, combining the functions of provost and senior vice-president for academic affairs.

University president Bob Kerrey, announcing the appointment, said: "Appadurai is an accomplished and well-known scholar, who is highly-regarded in the fields of international affairs, anthropology, sociology, and political science." The appointment takes effect from January 1, 2004.

The Mumbai-born Appadurai, reacting to the announcement, said he would be delighted to join Kerrey in leading "an extraordinary university, in the world's most vibrant city, as it brings its mission to a globalising world."

Courtesy: Hindustan Times, September 14, 2003

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Amity Students Head for Florida
 

New Delhi September 13: Four students of Amity Law School have cleared the domestic rounds for the "International Moot Court Competition" on "International Environment Law" to be held at the Stetson University College of Law in Florida on October 31.

Renowned law schools from all over India participated in the three-day domestic rounds conducted by the Chennai Law College at Chennai. The four teams which qualified for the semi-final rounds to represent India include the Indian Law School of Pune, NUJS of Kolkata, Kerala Law Academy and the Amity Law School of Delhi.

The Amity Law School students who will be flying to Florida for the International rounds are Himanshu Dodeja, Ashish Mohan, Deepika Bansal and Karan S.Chandhiok.

Courtesy: The Hindu, September 14, 2003

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Facts to Make Every Indian Proud
 

Q. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems?
A. Vinod Khosla

Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the today's computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm

Q. Who is the third richest man on the world?
A. According to the latest report on Fortune Magazine, it is AZIM PREMJI, who is the CEO of Wipro Industries. The Sultan of Brunei is at 6th position now.

Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 web based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia

Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli

Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard?
A. Rajiv Gupta

Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000, responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika

Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?
A. Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.

  • We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, even faring better than the whites and the natives. There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). YET,
    38% of doctors in USA are Indians.
    12% scientists in USA are Indians.
    36% of NASA scientists are Indians.
    34% of Microsoft employees are Indians.
    28% of IBM employees are Indians.
    17% of INTEL scientists are Indians.

    13% of XEROX employees are Indians.

You may know some of the following facts. These facts were recently published in a German magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA.

  • India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.
  • India invented the Number system. Aryabhatta invented 'zero.'
  • The world's first University was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
  • According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.
  • Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.
  • Although western media portray modern images of India as poverty striken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.
  • The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.
  • The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have last year (1999) officially published that Budhayan's works dates to the 6th Century, which is long before the European mathematicians.
  • Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 1053.
  • According to the Gemmological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.
  • USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.
  • The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.
  • Chess was invented in India.
  • Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted surgeries like caesareans, cataract, fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India.
  • When many cultures in the world were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilisation).
  • The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

Quotes About India:

  • We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. - Albert Einstein.
  • India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition. - Mark Twain.
  • If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. - French Scholar Romain Rolland.
  • India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. - Hu Suih. (Former Chinese ambassador to USA).

All of the above is just the tip of the iceberg, the list could be endless. But, if we don't see even a glimpse of that great India in the India that we see today, it clearly means that we are not working up to our potential; and that if we do, we could once again be an ever shining and inspiring country setting a bright path for rest of the world to follow. I hope you enjoyed it and work towards the welfare of INDIA.

Say proudly, I AM AN INDIAN.

Courtesy: www.listserv.ait.ac.th, September 13, 2003

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Shourie Launches WLL Service in Nepal
 

Kathmandu: Nepal's First private telecom operator United Telecom Limited (UTI), launched its basic telephony service based on WLL technology, marking the end of three-decade long monopoly of the state-owned Nepal Telecommunications Corporation (NTC). Minister for Communications Arun Shourie launched the service along with Nepal's Minister for Information and Communication Kamal Thapa at a function here on Wednesday evening. Thapa said the long standing telephone needs of the people in the capital would be met by the new venture. UTL is a joint venture between India's Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd., Telecommunications Consultants India and the local Nepal Ventures Private Ltd.

Courtesy: The Pioneer, September 12, 2003

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Indian Art Lights Up Global Canvas
 

Kolkata: Indian art seems to be coming up with different strokes. While international auctions by Christie's, Sotheby's and Bonham's are popularising contemporary Indian art, a trend of commercial overseas shows by individual galleries are silently catching up.

There were just a couple of exhibits abroad by galleries 3-4 years back, the number has risen to at least half a dozen annually now.

"Awareness and interest about Indian art is fast increasing overseas. Galleries, together with auctioneers, are now pushing boundaries. With the appreciation in prices of contemporary Indian art, staging commercial shows globally has become affordable," Dinesh Vazirani, director, Saffronart Gallery, told ET.

Saffronart unveiled six international exhibits in the last three years, and have done three shows with Mumbai's Pundole gallery in New York and one in Los Angeles in association with Chennai's Appa Rao Galleries.

"Banks, both MNCs and Indian, are of late showing a lot of interest in sponsoring art shows abroad. One expects the number of exhibits to double if they are backed by sponsorships."

Kolkata could be a smaller market for Indian art than Mumbai and Delhi. But, that has not prevented the city's Gallerie 88, a leading art house, from going overseas. It has mounted two shows in London in the last couple of years.

"Indian art is definitely on a high. Swelling prices have made it easier to cover the hefty costs involved in putting up a show overseas," he said.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 11, 2003

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E-learning Market in India Set to Grow at 25%
 

New Delhi: Standing against a projected global revenue of $23 billion by 2005, e-learning market in India stands at a meagre $5 million in 2002, primarily due to poor demand, according to Nasscom.

The e-learning market in India is in an infant stage and in 2002 it was approximately $4-5 million with an expected four year annual growth rate of 20-25 per cent", a Nasscom study said, adding the demand in Indian market is still low and mainly from MNCs. E-learning is internet-enabled learning that provides the tools to help companies tackle the learning challenges.

Companies such as Mcgraw-Hill, Digital Think, SkillSoft, Mentergy are setting up operations in India which is a positive sign for the e-learning segment. Globally e-learning trend is towards consolidation as clients are increasingly looking at end-to-end solutions and system integraters like IBM e-learning. NIIT is one of the top e-learning players in the country.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 11, 2003

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India Set to become Developing World's Voice at Cancun
 

India is again being looked upon to emerge as a strong voice of developing countries at the WTO Ministerial Meet starting Wednesday at the Mexican resort of Cancun.At the Doha Ministerial in November 2001, India successfully withstood pressure and managed to secure vital concessions for the developing countries as in the matter of access to affordable medicines in the final Doha Development Agenda.

"India is on a stronger footing this time with China and Brazil having decided to support it in getting concessions on agriculture subsidies and better market access," director of the Institute of Economic Growth BB Bhattacharya told IANS.

Along with like-minded nations, India is expected to take on the might of the US and European Union on farm issues. Emerging as a major agriculture exporting country, India has a strong stake in ensuring that developing countries get better market access.With 70 per cent of the country dependent on agriculture, it will be an area of major concern for India, which is also striving to become a leading player in export of agriculture goods.

Courtesy: www.hindustantimes.com, September 09, 2003

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India again Big in Silicon Valley
 

Amidst the bloodbath of US recession, the entrepreneurship story in Silicon Valley has a new script. Indians who have made their millions in the US tech hub have driven philanthropic efforts back home. Now, their India plans are more than just charity. In fact, even as the big US tech players need to include offshoring in their financial statements, the Silicon Valley Indians obviously have an advantage in leveraging India as the country of their origin. From Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia's Televoice Corporation, which offers a two-way voice mailbox service to TiE founder Kanwal Rekhi's Ensim Inc which is doing Internet product development out of Pune for global markets, the India connection has become central to the Valley's business plans.

In general, India is becoming more dynamic and an attractive place to engage in while the US is mired in recession, especially in the hi-tech area. It is very clear now that any knowledge intensive industry will have to integrate India in its cost structure. This is especially true for software where it is unimaginable to not have an India connection.

For the mature Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, the feeling of giving back to the country of origin is much stronger than just the profits to be gained from outsourcing. According to those working in the valley doing something in India that will give a technology edge to people and society at large is not only about business advantage. It's also about culture and giving back to the country of origin.'' Brocade Technologies has recently entered a tie-up with the National Informatics Centre to set up a storage area network centre of excellence to transfer technology and share best practices. Deployment of cutting edge SAN technology will help NIC in areas like disaster recovery.

Today, for most IT companies, moving business activities off-shore, especially to India, has become a matter of survival. In any case, India is not just a back-office anymore, but a potential market for many products and services.

While the slowdown in the US economy has increased India's attractiveness as an investment destination. But it is not the only factor contributing towards the increased FDI that we are witnessing into the Indian tech/biotechnology sector. This increased VC interest in India has largely been driven by the tremendous progress our economy has made over the last decade and the fact that India's IT services and BPO industry are amongst the fastest growing sectors not only in India but around the world.

Courtesy: The Economic Times, September 08, 2003

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Indian Woman Breaks Glass Ceiling in West
 

London: A 34-year-old ethnic Indian woman with a passion for human rights and Harry Potter becomes the unofficial keeper of Britain's conscience from Tuesday, as lawyer Shami Chakrabarti takes control of Liberty, one of western Europe's oldest civil liberties organisations.

Chakrabarti, a senior lawyer specialising in human rights law, takes over as head of Liberty in a move seen to chip the unofficial glass ceiling for Indian women professionals in the West.

Chakrabarti's rise means she joins yet another so-called 'bleeding heart' ethnic Indian, on the frontline of British liberal-humanitarian endeavour. Ghosh heads Crisis, an organisation dedicated to combating homelessness. She is proudly described by her staff as formerly one of the British Home Office officials responsible for the implementation of the landmark Human Rights Act.

Courtesy: The Times of India, September 03, 2003