No absurd mining please.

Under the instructions from the prime minister, environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh has from increased the allotted area for mining of coal from 344000hectare to 380000 hectare, which means cutting of 36000 hectares of forest reserves. The current coal production is 53cr tons and coal minister Mr Prakash Jaiswal is willing to increase it to 1000cr tons. Even the prime minister agrees that India needs electricity so there is a need of increasing the production of coal. According to the report of the energy research institute we have coal reserves available for mining for the next 40 yrs. and rest of the coal are present very deep inside the core of earth. So if we double the rate of extraction the reserves will last for next 20 yrs. This won’t be right from the energy conservation view. It is being said that in the next 20 yrs. there will be some new technology coming up for meeting the energy requirements and therefore we should extract more coal and hence increase our speed of development. But it is difficult to forecast the advancements of technology as seen in case of USA, they promoted the consumption assuming there will be new high-tech goods produced by them every time and will therefore keep up the economy and in order to meet the demands they provided easy loans resulting in the economic crisis in which they are stuck at present.

Even if we talk about the electricity being consumed, a major part is being consumed by the things of luxury and not for the basic requirements, many of the villages are not having electricity but many of the city dwellers and shopping malls are wasting electricity for the decoration purpose solely. This type of wastage must not be tolerated in an energy deficit country like ours. The electricity bill for a business person in Mumbai is 70 lakhs; this is really an astonishing figure. To cut forests for such showbiz is not at all right.

After the mining we are presently having a very poor policy of leaving the land barren. Generally an area is dug up and the soil is deposited at a place in the form of a hill and there are no signs of afforestation done there. This is the open cast procedure and is very out-dated. If we see the way mining is done in other countries we will have a lot to learn. In Germany the Roor areas which were once used for extravagation have now converted into beautiful forests. In Congo basin it was found that the forests take 42 years to redevelop so they distributed the areas in pockets, in one pocket mining will be done for 42 years and then will be left for next 42 years when it will be done on the other pocket ,so they will be getting both the woods and the coal in an effective way. While in India we have divided our forests as ‘go’ and “no go” and the area under ‘go‘ will be used for mining.

 

2010 bloodiest year for pakistan

A total of 1,224 people were killed and 2,157 more injured in 52 suicide attacks across Pakistan since January, making 2010 one of the bloodiest years since the turn of the century.

Though the total number of suicide bombings decreased 35 per cent this year as against the past year, 2010 was the bloodiest year since 2001 in terms of the number of the people killed in such attacks, The News daily reported today.

Pakistan witnessed 80 suicide attacks in 2009 that killed 1,217 people and injured 2,305 others.

On an average, suicide bombers killed 102 persons a month this year, compared to last year's average of 101 killings a month.
source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/latest-news/2010-bloodiest-year-for-pakistan-since-2001/articleshow/7157736.cms

Mining Policy

India has newly proposed a mining policy which aims to curtail illegal mining and empower people settled in and around mining areas. The new Bill proposes that companies share 26% of the profits from mining with the locals who lose land. The Bill seeks to expedite the grant of mineral concessions in a transparent manner and attract big investments in the sector.

In March, the Environment Ministry had marked as 'no-go' areas 155 coal blocks in nine coal fields that were intended to cater to 10 major power plants.

This had triggered a conflict between the Ministries of Environment and Coal, with the latter saying it would slow down power generation as the banned coal blocks had potential of producing about 660 million tonnes.

The ministry had contended that mining should be banned only in the cases of "pristine forests or wildlife sanctuaries."

The country has about 40 coal-based power plants, accounting for about 70 per cent of 162,366 MW of electricity production.

The current production of coal is about 530 million tonnes and the government is of the view that it needs to be doubled in the next six to seven years as the demand for power is going to increase manifold.

The protagonists in the government argue that coal reserves are usually located in forest areas and a way has to be found to mine these without affecting the ecology, including trees and wildlife.

This can be done by reclaiming and afforesting the pieces of land where mining is undertaken and completed and the process could be carried out in a phased manner, the sources said.

source: http://www4.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/reworked-policy-on-mining-to-be-unveiled-soon/articleshow/6630595.cms

mobile no portability

India has become the fastest growing mobile industry with around 15 million new connections every month. Nationally, every other Indian has a mobile connection. The metro mobile tele-density is four times higher than the rural mobile tele-density.Customers, initially elated with declining tariff plans, did not realize that the pressure for margins would lead to difficulties like poor voice quality, frequent call drops or no-signal zones even in the densely populated metros. The sudden spurt in the number of mobile subscribers - from 76 million in December 2005 to over 670 million today - too accentuated issues like poor customer care and inappropriate tariff plans. To be fair to the operators, the race for new additions led to lower margins.

In order to shore up their bottom lines in a scarce spectrum environment, customer service levels and the overall customer experience dropped. For the service providers to improve QoS there is an urgent need to grow the current less-than-$4 a month average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering a bouquet of value-added services. The current ARPU levels threaten the long term survival of most new entrants, especially as they look to the hinterland for growth.
According to IT intelligence firm, IDC India, two of every five mobile handsets sold in the country were multi SIM handsets, indicating that a significant number of Indian users are familiar with issues of quality of more than one service provider.While MNP assures customers the freedom to choose service providers, an improvement in the QoS alone will help the mobile customers stay loyal to their service provider.

source: http://www4.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/telecom/mobile-number-portability-will-improve-quality-of-service/articleshow/7004780.cms

newspaper comments

We know that due to our growing emphasis on improving welfare for the poor, we are set to spend a lot of money on various social programmes in the coming years. In the last 10 years, we have significantly raised our social spending. This year, the budget for the Natioanl Rural Employment Guarantee Act9 (NREGA) is Rs. 41,000 crore, for Indira Awas Yojana10 (IAY) Rs. 15,000 crore and for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan11 (SSA) Rs. 15,000 crore. As we have more social programmes, and various rights-right to food, right to education, right to work-get provided for within our welfare schemes we will see spending increase further. This expenditure is ultimately spent on individuals, on beneficiaries. Today, however, because of fundamental problems in confirming the identity of beneficiaries, we have not been successful in reaching benefits to the people who deserve it. The databases are such that there are large numbers of inclusion, as well as exclusion errors. A large number of people are claiming more than their share of public benefits, and there are large numbers of ghosts-people who do not exist but in whose name benefits are being claimed. At the same time, you have millions of deserving people who are not in the system because they do not have any identity. The NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) has estimated for example, that there are over 12 million poor left out from the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS).

Changes to be brought in IT in rural area

ICT brings about openness, accessibility, connectivity, democratization and decentralization that results ultimately in social transformation. To really capitalize on all the work we have done in the past what it means to me is to really bring broadband as major infrastructure to connect all our municipalities, connect all our panchayats, schools , colleges, R&D labs, governments so on and so forth. We have a program on National Knowledge Network to connect 1,500 nodes with 10-40 gigabit using fibre to interlink all our universities R&D labs, libraries to improve collaboration and share more information. Similarly, we plan to have a program to connect 250,000 panchayats to fibre. We already have 2,500 municipalities connected to broadband. 
-- Sam Pitroda

The coming of e- stamps

The postal department is working with USbased consulting firm Accenture to prepare a detailed modernisation plan.The electronic form of postal stamps will fully substitute paper stamps in two years,” said an official with the ministry of communications and Information Technology. India Post currently has electronic stamping facility in select urban postal circles. 
 “There have been cases of revenue leaks due to postal stamps being forged in some parts of the country,” said the official, without getting into details. The department sold stamps worth Rs 606 crore in 2008-09 . It reported a loss of Rs 3,638 crore in 2008-09 after posting a 34% jump in expenditure to Rs 9,500 crore. Revenues grew only 6.6% to Rs 5,862 crore during the period.  
Its accumulated losses stand at Rs 7,640 crore. Some premium segment products such as Speed Post are already using bar coded stamps and several large cities have computerised post offices. But most parts of the country, including rural and semi-urban areas , use paper stamps
Besides shifting to e-stamps , the postal department has initiated other e-enabled services to survive in a world that is going the digital way, particularly in the communications space. Its e-post service, for instance, allows sending of messages through email to be printed at post offices near to the address.

Conglomerates donating money.

Premji, chairman of India’s thirdbiggest IT services exporter Wipro, will do this by transferring about 8.6% stake worth over 8,000 crore to a private trust controlled by him. The trust will then use the money to finance the educational initiatives being carried out under the ambit of the Azim Premji Foundation. 
Sunil Mittal of Bharti and Shiv Nadar of HCL Technologies are spending money on education and the government is also stressing greater corporate involvement in social service activities.

Nadar recently donated over 580 crore by selling his 2.5% stake in HCL Technologies to fund the education initiatives of his eponymous foundation. Mittal’s Bharti Foundation is running free English-medium schools for about 30,000 students in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan , Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.

India 2nd in manufacturing

A study conducted by Deloitte and the US Council on Competitiveness has revealed that India is ranked second behind China in manufacturing competitiveness and will only narrow the gap over the next few years.

The Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index , based on the views of more than 400 senior manufacturing executives worldwide, has rated the overall manufacturing competitiveness of 26 countries.

More surprising (than China’s rise to the top) is that India is now positioned at number two and expected to gain an even stronger foothold over the next five years. “India’s rich talent pool of scientists, researchers , and engineers as well as its large, well-educated Englishspeaking workforce and democratic regime make it an attractive destination for manufacturers,” the study said.

Executives surveyed said that research and development capabilities paired with engineering , software, and technology integration abilities were essential ingredients for manufacturing enterprises. 
While China, India and South Korea, the three most manufacturing competitive economies would retain their position, Brazil is projected to replace US from the fourth slot. The US, where concerns of losing competitiveness are already causing some concern, is expected to slip to the fifth slot.

According to the senior manufacturing leaders who participated in the study, the most important drivers of global manufacturing competitiveness are the classic factors of production labour, materials and energy.


source:  http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-company/corporate-trends/India-ranks-second-in-manufacturing-competitiveness-Study/articleshow/7033483.cms