12.11.2006

• Cost of tax collections
• The finance minister said that India’s percentage of cost to taxes collected was a measly 0.67%, and expected to touch about 0.64% this year.
• Large taxpayer units (LTUs) are going to be setup in the four metros. To be eligible to come under an LTU, an excise duty/service tax payer should have paid an amount of Rs. 5 cr or an income tax payment of Rs. 10 cr or more.
• Insurance penetration levels in India
• It is stated to be around 2.53% of the GDP, which is much lower than the peer average of around 5% globally.
• What is bancassurance?
• It is a term used to describe both banking and insurance being done through a common channel.
• Who is Jeff Bezos?
• He is the founder of Amazon.com, one of the biggest internet sensations of recent times. But of late the thunder is being stolen by Google and its founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
• Jeff Bezos is reportedly working on a new paradigm of making the infrastructural strengths built up by Amazon over the years, available to all businesses from across the globe. This includes things like making network facilities, disk storages, warehouse space etc., available to all other businesses at a very small price.
• We can say that right now there is a kind of war going on among the Internet leaders to corner as big a pie as possible of ‘the platform’ to enable businesses to do business.
• Internet censorship
• A French civil liberties group called RSF (Reporters Sans Frontiers) has compiled a list of countries that practice Internet censorship and identified 13 countries as the worst countries in this regard.
• They include Belarus, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

Today's topic for discussion: What do you think are the measures needed for making the North Eastern states of India develop and integrate well with the Indian mainstream? Perhaps you may like to take a look at some information presented here before you offer you suggestions.

Key in your suggestions by using the comments feature on this blog.