Indian Current Affairs: 25.03.2007

Overtime wages offered by some small BPOs are far lower than the compensation given to unskilled labourers in even brick-kilns. Brick-kiln workers seem to be getting 17 per hour as overtime, while those working in small BPO firms in and around Noida are paid around Rs.12.50 per hour.

It is in Chikkaballapur Taluk of Kolar district and is home to the abandoned but perfectly preserved fort of Tipu Sultan.
Lord Cornwallis had stormed the sprawling 90 acre fort in 1791.
This is also the source of the Penner, Ponnaiyar and Palar rivers.

It is the most common type of brain tumour.
Some studies say that increased use of cell phones will probably lead to this tumour. There are studies which contradict this view point also.

Motion capture, Motion Tracking or Mocap, is a technique of digitally recording movements for entertainment, sports and medical applications. The motion capture computer software records the positions, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the motion. In entertainment applications this can reduce the costs of animation which otherwise requires the animator to draw each frame, or with more sophisticated software, key frames which are interpolated by the software. Motion capture saves time and creates more natural movements than manual animation, but is limited to motions that are anatomically possible. Some applications might require additional impossible movements like animated super hero martial arts or stretching and squishing that are not possible with real actors.

It gives customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways that provide the icing on the cake of providing information.
It uses brand relevant experiences to engage key audiences while creating a forum where these audiences interact with a brand. It involves high levels of interactivity and sensory impact and seeks to elicit an emotional response among the target through a more personal level of engagement than other media.

Is a four year business plan of the UPA government with six major components – irrigation, roads, houses, drinking water, electricity and telephone connectivity.
It has set a target of connecting 38,484 villages above 1,000 population and 20,867 habitations above 500 population in hilly and tribal areas with all-weather roads.

India may allow tied loans from Japan under ODA (Official Development Assistance)

Japan started the ODA to India in 1958. Today it reached a level of Rs. 85,596 crores in 2005-06. These loans are made available through JBIC (Japan Bank for International Cooperation).
Today Japan is next only to UK and Germany in giving assistance to India.
Tied loans are those which need to be spent in the country providing the loan (the donor country). In most cases, a developed country provides a bilateral loan or grant to a developing country with a mandate that the money be spent on goods or services produced in the selected country.
In its quest for securing funds for the Rs. 30,000 crore eastern and western DFC (Dedicated Freight Corridors), India is willing to accept assistance from Japan with a condition that 30% of the procurement required for projects will be made from Japan.

It is a standard which is introduced by ICAI – Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, w.e.f December 8, 2006.
This standard governs the method of accounting for retirement benefits in the financial statements of employers.
Now ICAI has allowed corporates to amortise these provisioning requirements up to a period of five years. This is an effort in the direction of benchmarking our system with international practices.

Multi-manager funds are designed to make an investor's life easier by packaging together teams of specialist investment managers into a single fund. They give the investor exposure to a range of expertise and styles that would be difficult (if not impossible) to replicate by themselves, as well as the expert oversight of the Multi-manager firm itself. In that sense they are a true investment one-stop-shop.

The main Multi-manager fund categories are, Fund of funds and Manager of managers. There are quite obvious differences between the two categories, most notably that the first invests in funds, whereas the second invests in stocks and shares through appointed investment managers.

When we say somebody performed a Houdini act, we mean that he/she has performed an impossible task.
The name Houdini comes from Harry Houdini. He was born Erich Weisz, and was a Hungarian-American magician, escapologist, stunt performer, as well as an investigator of spiritualists, and an amateur aviator.

It was awarded to Vice Chancellor RP Singh of Lucknow University.
This award was instituted in memory of Manjunath Shanmugam, the IIM graduate who was murdered for clamping down on the petroleum adulteration racket in UP as an employee of the Indian Oil Corporation.

Indian Current Affairs