26.02.2007

• This year’s Oscar Nomination having connection with India
• Deepa Mehta’s “Water” has been nominated in the foreign language film category. The country from which it is nominated is Canada. But it lost the title to “The Lives of Others” from Germany.
• What is its India connection? It is Directed by Deepa Mehta of Indian origin; a story centered around India; and the cast is Indian. Seema Biswas (Shakuntala), Lisa Ray (Kalyani), John Abraham (Narayan) and Sarala (Chuyia).
• In India in 1938, eight-year-old Chuyia--a child bride--learns she is now a widow. Taken from her parents, Chuyia is sent to live for the remainder of her life in a widow's ashram run by the greedy, tyrannical Madhumati. There, she is befriended by the beautiful Kalyani, a young widow who is shunned by the other women and forced by Madhumati to work as a prostitute.
• A little about Internet addresses
• In the current IPv4 (IP version 4) technology of TCP/IP based routing, there could be 450 crore (4.5 bn) unique Internet addresses. It is estimated that these addresses would be all used up by 2010.
• It is expected that IPv6 will roll out by then.
• Wikia
• Most of us have heard about wikipedia on the internet. It is a free online encyclopedia available on the web. Its uniqueness is that the content is contributed by anybody. And it is available for free. This is a not-for-profit venture and runs only on donations.
• Its founder Jimmy Wales has come out with another venture – a for-profit venture called “Wikia” and expects to launch a search engine before the end of 2007.
• Investment advisers to be regulated
• In a move to protect the investors from the investment advisors flooding the market, SEBI is coming out with a program of certifying the investment advisors.
• It is likely to mandate that the investment advice offered should be client specific and cannot be a free advice. Such advice cannot be given to public at large. Besides, the advisor is expected to have a certain minimum qualification to render such an advice.
• Let’s learn a bit about carbon emissions
• The magazine Time estimates that a flight from Tokyo to New York emits about 2,400 kg of carbon per passenger.
• Indian economy’s size
• Is 4^th largest in terms of PPP (Purchasing Power Parity)
• About 25,000 farmers committed suicide since 1997 all across the country.
• Rural India contributes to about 25% of the country’s GDP but gets only about 5% of the investments. Balance 95% of the investments go to urban India.
• Indian infrastructure
• India’s roads carry about 61% of the freight and 85% of the passenger traffic.
• National highways constitute only 2% of the total road network and account for 40% of the road traffic.
• Average truck and bus speed today is about 50 km/hour
• Indian Railways ply about 11,000 trains, carrying about 170 lakh passengers and 15 lakh tonnes of freight every day. It accounts for only about 25% of freight traffic.