stammering

President Pratibha Devisingh Patil of India created history on Wednesday by becoming the first serving female head of state to fly in an Indian Air Force Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft from the Lohegaon Air Force Base in Pune. What was even more remarkable was the fact that she achieved the feat at the ripe age of 74.

Patil landed at the air force base after 22 minutes of flying.

The Indian Air Force had earlier chalked out a special rectangular navigation route for Patil’s maiden sortie, which was originally scheduled to last for 30 minutes. The aircraft is said to have touched a maximum speed of 0.9 Mach (700 to 900 kmph).

President Patil was accompanied by award-winning Wing Commnader S Sajan, who has an experience of flying Sukhoi for 3,200 hours.

She thus becomes the second president to have flown in a Sukhoi after her predecessor A P J Abdul Kalam [ Images ].

Kalam undertook his flight on June 8, 2006. That flight was positioned as a familiarisation flight, besides being an act to inspire the youth of the country to join the armed forces.

In May 2004, former defence minister George Fernandes undertook a similar sortie, clocking 1.15 Mach (about 1,500 kmph). Fernandes, who was also in his early 70s, was exposed to a gravitational force of up to level 3G.

Indian soldiers take great pride in the crease of their trousers, the twirl of their moustache and the shine on the metal and leather they wear.

Arms, medals, epaulettes are all brought to the perfect shine before a parade. One key item of inspection is the glint on the ammunition boots.

One enterprising regiment, the story goes, instead of using polish bought a box of Asian Paints paint and used it to good effect on the boots. Asian Paints managing director & CEO PM Murty doesn’t know if it’s a true story, though he joined the company way back in 1971. What he does know is that such small purchases can make the distinction between profit and loss, survival and extinction.

Asian Paints has for long sold very small cans of paint which are used to colour the horns of bulls during the Pola festival in Maharashtra and the auspicious small red and yellow stripes at the bottom of the front door of Tamil Nadu homes.

This might not always be remunerative, but it has given a tremendous boost to the company’s brand recall. When the market is up, everybody makes money. But when the chips are down, only resilient brands stay afloat.

The growth of six core infrastructure industries eased to 1.8 per cent in July, the lowest this fiscal, as petroleum refinery acted as a drag on the sector.

A 14.4 per cent contraction in petroleum refinery products constricted expansion of the six key industries in July, against 5.1 per cent a year ago.

The core sector, which comprises petroleum refinery, crude oil, coal, electricity, cement and finished steel and accounts for 26.68 per cent in the country’s industrial production, had grown by 6.8 per cent in June and had then raised hopes of industrial recovery.

Crude oil, though at lower rates, dipped by 0.4 per cent in July against minus three per cent a year ago. However, coal expanded by 9.7 per cent against 5.5 per cent, electricity by 3.3 per cent as compared to 4.5 per cent, cement by 10.6 per cent as against 5.5 per cent and finished steel by 1.2 per cent as against 6 per cent.

However, thanks to better showing in the previous three months, core industries improved performance by 4.1 per cent for April-July period, against the corresponding months in the last fis

Income tax incentives on education loans expanded to cover vocational studies after schooling.

The All India Kisan Sabha has welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for admitting that the food grain production has been affected by a below average monsoon.

In a statement the Sabha says that paddy cultivation has been severly affected and that the PM had not announced any hike in the Minimum Support Price for the growers, as sought by them. The Sabha also calls for the reccomendations of the MS Swaminathan Foundation on calculating MSP be implemented.

The Kisan sabha welcomed the Centre’s move to reimburse 50 percent of diesel cost incurred by states. The National Food Safety Mission and the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana ( National Agriculture Development Scheme) were also targetted for not meeting their targets and failing to increase food production in the country. The lack of transfer of technology and information , especially by the Ministry of Agriculture has come in for a lot of flak.

The Supreme Court has held that if a man and a woman are residing together for a long time and have been accepted by the society as husband and wife, a presumption of a valid marriage can be drawn.

“A long cohabitation and acceptance of society of a man and woman as husband and wife goes a long way in establishing
a valid marriage,” a Bench of Justices S B Sinha and Cyriac Joseph observed.

The Bench said when disputes of valid marriages comes into question, courts can rely not only on the various material placed before it, but also draw a presumption on the basis of the conduct between the two parties. “In arriving at a finding of fact, indisputably the learned trial judge was not only entitled to analyse the evidences brought on record by the parties so as to come to a conclusion as to whether all the ingredients of a valid marriage as contained in Section 5 of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 stand established or not.

“A presumption of a valid marriage having regard to the fact that they had been residing together for a long time and has been accepted in society as husband and wife, could also be drawn,” the apex court said.

The Bench passed the ruling while dismissing an appeal of one Challamma, who questioned the claim of a woman’s marriage to her deceased son K Subramanya.

Prior to his marriage, Subramanya had nominated his mother Challamma as nominee in his insurance policies. After his death, Challamma sought the entire survival benefit accruing from the insurance policies to herself. She claimed that the other claimant, Tilaga, was not married to his son as there was no valid proof of the same. But the trial court awarded Challama only one-fourth of the amount and the remaining went to Tilaga, whose marriage with Subramanya was accepted by the judge on the basis of the material evidence produced before it.

Challama appealed to the Karnataka High Court but it dismissed her plea. She later approached the apex court. Rejecting her plea, the apex court said the question as to whether a valid marriage had taken place between deceased Subramanya and Tilaga is essentially a question of fact. In the present case, the wife had proved with material facts that she had married Subramanya and lived with him for over three years, the apex court said. Whereas, Challama could not adduce sufficient evidence to prove her charges, it noted. “A heavy burden, thus, lies on the person who seeks to prove that no marriage has taken place,” the Bench said. Further, the apex court said a nominee could not be treated as being equivalent to an heir or legatee. “The amount of interest under the policy could, therefore, be claimed by the heirs of the assured in accordance with the law of succession governing them,” the Bench added while dismissing the mother-in-law’s appeal.

Prudent fiscal and monetary policies have helped India in dodging the recession and sustaining the economy, the research arm of the rating agency Moody’s said.

Calling India a ’sprinter’, it said the downward trend in the country’s industrial output seemed to have ended, with a pick-up likely due to new infrastructure development.

Investor confidence in India had certainly improved, as reflected in the rapid increase in net capital inflows in the stock market during recent months, Sherman Chan, Moody’s Economy.com economist, said in a note on the recovery of the Asia-Pacific region on Wednesday.

“Amid increased sightings of green shoots, the bottom of the global downturn is now in sight,” she said, adding that “China, India and Indonesia have dodged recession and maintained strong growth despite the global turmoil.”

Key Asia-Pacific economies possess different structural characteristics and have thus embarked on different recovery trajectories. Australia and Korea, she said, would recover fast, Thailand and Singapore would take longer, and Japan will have it tough.

And all these economies are expected to grow in 2010.

Next in the recovery race in Asia Pacific region comes the ‘joggers’. “Australia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and South Korea will recover swiftly from the annual contraction this year.”

Following the ‘joggers’ are the ‘walkers’. “Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand will take a little longer to return to pre-crisis GDP levels,” the Sydney-based economist said.

And, in the last comes the ‘crawler’. “Japan looks worst off in the region, with a long and tough recovery path ahead due to a sluggish domestic sector,” she said.

Japan is the weakest link in the Asia-Pacific region with firms reporting excess capacity, including excess workers. Therefore, the outlook for investment and employment is dismal.

“Japan’s GDP will take several years to return to the pre-crisis level. An annual contraction of 6.5 per cent is likely in 2009, followed by an expected rebound of only 0.7 per cent in 2010 and 1.2 per cent in 2011,” she said, adding that the rapidly ageing population have left policymakers almost powerless in stimulating consumption growth.

Nearly two months after its introduction sparked a furore both in India and in America, the controversial Durbin-Grassley visa reform bill has again been brought before the United States Senate.

Its fate holds major ramifications for Indian individuals and Indian IT companies seeking US work visas, with some claiming that its passage could result in the decimation of the business model for Indian outsourcing firms like Wipro Technologies, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services.

According to the Senate’s web site, the bill has officially been logged as:

S. 887 - A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to reform and reduce fraud and abuse in certain visa programmes for aliens working temporarily in the United States and for other purposes.

It was introduced by US Senators Dick Durbin (Democrat-Illinois) and Charles Grassley (Republican-Iowa), and contains new stipulations that companies must follow to acquire temporary US work visas, commonly known as H-1Bs and L-1s.

The most controversial of these stipulations, the so-called ‘50/50′ provision, would prohibit companies with more than 50 US employees from obtaining any additional work visas if more than 50% of their entire US workforce is made up of H-1B or L-1 visa holders. The provision would essentially prevent companies like Wipro and Infosys from hiring more Indian workers to work in the US.

Citing rising unemployment, Grassley claims the provision would help protect American jobs. “The original rationale [for the visa programme] was that we needed to allow importation of managers and technical people when there weren’t enough Americans available. It seems to me ridiculous that companies now have more than half of their workers on [these visas] when there are certainly a lot of workers in the U.S. who can fill in some of those positions,” he’s reportedly said.

Opponents, on the other hand, call the bill a piece of socialist legislature and a sign of growing US protectionism. Top executives at firms like TATA and Infosys say the argument over the legislation could eventually deteriorate into a trade dispute between India and the US.

Suggesting that layoffs in the information technology and business process outsourcing industry are still less than 1 per cent of the total workforce, top National Association of Software and Service Companies executives have said that the industry has not yet come in the grip of large-scale layoffs.

“We have seen the slowdown affecting the primary markets and impacting consumer spending. But this has not necessarily translated into massive layoffs of IT industry personnel. At least, I am not aware of any,” Nasscom Chairman and Genpact President and CEO, Pramod Bhasin, said on the sidelines of the Nasscom BPO Strategy Summit held in Bangalore on Tuesday.

Stressing that no member-company of Nasscom has resorted to laying off employees in large numbers, Bhasin said a key fallout of the ongoing economic slowdown is that companies are less tolerant of non-performance from their employees than they were earlier.

“This is the difference we are seeing today and it has not manifested in huge layoffs. In fact, the current layoffs would represent less than 1 per cent of the total industry, maybe, 0.5 per cent. Besides, any vacancies presently arising at companies are not being filled up, as hiring plans have been affected by lower growth rates,” Bhasin said.

Nasscom President Som Mittal said, while there have been reports of small-scale layoffs running into the hundreds, the bigger issue is that no company is hiring in large numbers.

“The real issue is one of students passing out from colleges and finding themselves without adequate employment options. This is forcing them to pick up additional skills. Many more students than in the past are enrolling for MTech courses to increase their employment potential,” Mittal said.

Bhasin felt investments in new markets, research and development activity and expanding domain skills would increase in the face of the slowdown. “Once growth picks up, the industry will move more and more into the smaller towns, which will increase employment,” Bhasin said.

Mittal said there is a clear willingness on the part of everybody concerned — government, industry, employees and other stakeholders — to work together to overcome the situation.

Former Australian cricket captain, Steve Waugh cleaned muck from a water body in Kolkata during a cleanliness drive in the city.

Wading through the dirty waters of the canal, Waugh took many by surprise as he got his hands and feet dirty while cleaning the waste at Ananadapally region of the city on Thursday.

The enthusiasm soon caught on and many children also joined Waugh on his cleanliness drive.