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Wednesday,
May 9, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Punjab to have cell on WTO
Mobiles allowed in key J&K areas
Balco fallout on Daewoo, Essar Surveying TV’s ‘vast wasteland’ No more porn: Yahoo! Call centre
forum set up |
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Trade panel recast Infosys traces hacker Number of domestic tourists falls
HDFC net up 18 pc, to pay 125 pc
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Punjab to have cell on WTO Ludhiana, May 8 The Chief Minister was addressing a gathering of industrialists after laying the foundation stone of the complex of the Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings in the focal point Dhandari Kalan. Mr Badal further announced that a special cell was being created in the Department of Industries under the supervision of a very senior officer of the rank of Additional Director to look after exclusively the small scale industries. This wing would maintain active coordination/liaison with all the national level and state level institutions to ensure that SSI units got full advantage of various schemes of these institutions. Mr Badal further announced the creation of a WTO cell in the Udyog Sahayak in the Industries Department. This cell will maintain liaison with the Union Ministry of Commerce and take up WTO related issues of SSI unit, with the Union Government. It would be a watchdog against dumping of commodities by other countries in India so that it could recommend timely and appropriate anti-dumping measures to Government of India. The Chief Minister also announced reduction of Rs 100 per sq yards in the price of land for plots in the focal point being developed in the Ladowal farm from Rs 700 to Rs 600. He said that the government was ready to provide art of the state facilities to entrepreneurs in this focal point. Mr Badal asked Mr Ramesh Inder Singh, Principal Secretary, Industry Punjab, to have a meeting with industrialists and sort out their difficulties in setting up units in the Ladowal Focal Point. As many as 1,250 acres of land have been earmarked out of the Central Seed Farm which has been acquired by the State Government. Mr Badal told the industrialists he would be having a detailed meeting with them on May 15 at Ludhiana to discuss their problems and further told Mr Ramesh Inder Singh to have interaction on
one day before that meeting alongwith the officers of the concerned departments to sort out the issues. Mr Ramesh Inder Singh told this reporter that the state government had consulted the experts of the Central Water Commission to take protective measures for the Ladowal Focal Point which was located close to the river Sutlej. He said that the state government would make arrangements that no disturbance was caused for one hundred years to the industrial units. Earlier, Mr Inderjit Singh Pradhan, President, Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings, Ludhiana, said that the proposed chamber complex would have courses for general management, personnel management and industrial relations, production management, sales management, financial management, project management and system study and data management for training of the youth. Mr Avtar Singh, General Secretary, Chamber, Mr K.K. Seth, Mr Om Parkash Munjal, Mr Vinod Thapar, President, Knitwear Club highlighted the difficulties arising out of the WTO and sought remedial measures. |
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Mobiles allowed in key J&K areas New Delhi, May 8 The sources said Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is likely to provide 10,000 connections to some of the areas in the state. However, when contacted, BSNL officials said the formal approval from the ministry was yet to come. Jammu and Srinagar districts will get 4,000 connections each, while Udhampur in Jammu and Anantnag in Kashmir will be the other two districts which will acquire 1,000 connections each by the end of this year or early next year. The sources said the facility will be extended to other parts of the state gradually. The plan to introduce the technology was shelved several times in the past as the Union Home Ministry opposed it for security reasons, mainly because of possible misuse by militants. However, the proposal has got a green signal owing to the relentless efforts of Information and Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan and Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah. Mr Mahajan had written letters to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Home Minister L.K. Advani for the introduction of cellular technology in the state. Earlier, intelligence agencies were opposing the use of the technology as they feared that militants would misuse the cellular phones. However, the green signal has been given now as militants are already well-equipped as far as communication devices are concerned. Militants have even acquired the latest Kenwood radio sets, the sources said.
PTI |
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Balco fallout on Daewoo, Essar New Delhi, May 8 Advocate General of the State Ravindra Srivastava told a three-Judge Bench headed by Justice B.N. Kirpal that the scheduled land acquired from tribals was leased to the Balco earlier, but with its privatisation the government thought it fit to issue notices asking them to show cause why their land lease be not cancelled. The Bench, also comprising Justice Ruma Pal and Justice Brijesh Kumar, asked the State Government as to why such notices were not issued to the Daewoo Power and Essar Steel as these private companies had also been given tribal land. Srivastava informed the court that the government would act most impartially and these companies “would be dealt with similarly. We do not intend to discriminate. The principle will be uniform and the notices will be issued to Daewoo and Essar also.” The Bench then issued notices to Daewoo and Essar saying they needed to be impleaded as the outcome of the hearing would affect these two companies. Meanwhile, the Court today said its hope that the situation at Balco would improve has been belied as the workers have rejected the new management’s offer to take two months salary advance and join work. For the Balco management, senior advocate Ashok Desai said that the management was still ready to give the two months salary advance and negotiate all industrial demands with the workers, but not the issue of disinvestment.
PTI
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Surveying TV’s ‘vast wasteland’ Chicago, May 8 “There’s a big improvement in one area, and that is the range of choice,” he told Reuters, pointing to the growth of cable TV, satellites, UHF channels and public broadcasting. “At the same time, there has been a severe deterioration, a coarsening of the material that’s on the tube every day, and the standards have declined very disappointingly.” On May 9, 1961, Minow, the then 35-year-old Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, told U.S. broadcasters they were filling the public airwaves with garbage. “I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air ... and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,” he told the National Association of Broadcasters soon after President John Kennedy named him to head the agency that regulates TV and radio. “I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland,” Minow said in a phrase that entered the language almost overnight, becoming what he later called “television’s first enduring sound bite.” ‘On to a vaster wasteland “My kids kid me a lot,” Minow said. “They say on my tombstone they’re going to put: ‘On to a Vaster Wasteland.’” In an interview in his office at a downtown Chicago law firm, Minow recalled that he thought the important part of his speech was a different two-word phrase: “public interest.” “The people own the air,” he reminded the broadcasters 40 years ago. “For every hour that the people give you, you owe them something.” But four decades of political and technological change have eroded the concept of the airwaves as a public resource. “I think it’s a tragedy,” Minow said. “The pioneers in the business knew that they were acting as trustees for the American people. Today, I’m afraid the current generation of broadcasters do not have that same sense of responsibility.” What went wrong? “Part of it is that the business has become much more competitive,” he said. “With the growth of choice has come a fierce dedication to a tenth of a rating point, and as a result the concept of public service deteriorated.” But Minow said the U.S. government also shared the blame. “In a moment of temporary insanity” in the 1970s, he said, the government “challenged the code of standards of the broadcasters as being anti-competitive.” The code limited the amount of time for commercials, set standards for children’s programming and stressed the industry’s public responsibility. “The only explanation I can make is that they must never have watched television,” he said. Minow said the United States is virtually alone in the world in its failure to provide public service air time to political candidates. “The reason we have such scandals in our political finance system is the mad rush to raise money to buy time on television,” he said. “I favour a system like the British or the Japanese, where it is required that, as a condition of a broadcast licence, a certain amount of public service time is allocated to the political parties on a fair basis.” Whose‘free’ time? “I think the reformers, like me, who are trying to change the system have made a mistake by calling for ‘free’ time, which implies it’s something the candidates are not entitled to as a matter of right but is rather something to be given to them by the broadcasters,” Minow said. “In fact it’s the broadcasters who are given free time. The broadcasters do not pay for the exclusive use of a channel, unlike cellular telephone operators, who have to pay billions of dollars to get a channel. We give the broadcasters a channel for nothing, and the original concept was that it was given to them in exchange for a commitment to public service. Somehow or other, through the years we’ve lost that.” Even though much programming is now distributed by other means, notably cable, Minow said broadcasting channels are still limited and in great demand. “When a licence or a channel opens up, you can have as many as 28 companies screaming, ‘Give it to me — don’t give it to the other 27,’” he said. “When they’re sold, that’s why they go for so much money.” Minow insists that, despite his criticisms, he watches a lot of TV, especially news and sports. “Some people say to me, ‘We admire what you do and we don’t have a television set.’ I say, ‘Well, you are missing life. You are closing the door to what’s going on in the world.’ I think television is very important,” he said. The city of Chicago recently honoured Minow in a way it has done with numerous notables from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. Across from the skyscraper where he practises law, the city designated a stretch of street as “Honorary Newton N. Minow Way.”
Reuters |
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No more porn: Yahoo! LONDON: It is not easy to make money from the Internet. It’s even more difficult for an internet business to make a profit — unless, that is, you are in the porn business. The news last week that unseated dot.com employees were falling over themselves to get jobs in the porn industry was more than just a sign of the times. Disillusioned dot.commers, hacked off with constantly being bounced around from one failed outfit to the next, reasoned that the only fail-safe solution was pornography. It wasn’t such a big surprise. Porn is one of the few profitable industries on the Internet, and “sex” has long been the most popular online search term, closely followed by “porn”, “nude”, “XXX”, “Playboy” and “erotic stories”. While the rest of the net is reeling from crumbling ad revenues, the sex industry has not even taken a hit because its main revenue stream is subscriptions, not advertising. It’s that old adage again: Sex always sells. No amount of economic downturn will affect this phenomenally successful industry that is becoming increasingly acceptable, especially among young professionals. Yet companies such as Yahoo! are opting out of the porn industry. Given the demand, the big business and the job security, this seems like a mad decision. Why? It all boils down to a public outcry, and a feeling that one of the biggest and arguably one of the most influential internet companies in the world shouldn’t be dealing in the business of porn. Despite the fact that Yahoo! has sold X-rated products for more than two years, when the Los Angeles Times ran a piece suggesting it was expanding its collection a month ago, a huge debate ensued. A few days later, Yahoo! backed down and said it would cease selling adult products, stop accepting banner adverts from porn sites, cut out classifieds and auction adult-type items, and pledged it would clamp down on sex-related message boards and clubs. The misconception, however, is that it will outlaw porn on its site, which it insists is not the case. A search still throws up 671 sites for “porn” and if Yahoo! users want to buy porn videos, they are redirected to an external site. To make the changes Yahoo! is currently introducing what has been described as “pretty extensive filtering software” but teething problems are expected. The reduction of porn on Yahoo.com won’t spell the death of Yahoo!, but it could derail its profit projections. Despite the new porn exclusion software, though, the company is still making its mind up. Last week, faced with a barrage of criticism from web users, it came back and said no decisions had been taken on whether the changes to its adult porn section would be permanent. “It’s the Internet, so lots of things are possible,” said Yahoo! spokesman Jackson Holtz, insisting it was just a re-evaluation of adult content across the network. Clearly, Yahoo! is playing it by ear. It doesn’t want to alienate users or conservative forces, nor does it want to rule out forever a guaranteed moneyspinner. Yahoo! has been put in a glaringly uncomfortable spotlight. It has now publicly back-peddled on a plan to expand its adult materials and caused a flap among other big internet portals, concerned about public approval.
By arrangement with The Guardian |
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Call centre
forum set up New Delhi, May 8 The trends in this direction were visible as in the year 2000-01. The call centre and back office services industry contribued Rs 2,100 crore in terms of revenue and employed more than 34,000 people. The first meeting of the forum would be held
during the India IT Enabled Services Conference 2001 during the end of this month in Chennai. “The forum aims to make India the most preferred hub for the call centres and back office operations by putting in place the best world practices. This would definitely make India a sustainable destination for the services over the next decade, thereby creating a million jobs,” said Mr Arun Seth, convener of the forum. The global IT enabled services opportunity are likely to grow to $ 142 billion by 2008. |
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Trade panel recast New Delhi, May 8 The reconstituted Committee headed by the Commerce & Industry Minister includes the following: Dr M.S. Swaminathan; Dr Abid Hussain, Member, National Commission to review the working of Constitution; Mr Muchkund Dubey, former Foreign Secretary; Mr B.L. Das, Foreign Ambassador to GATT; Dr R.A. Mashelkar, Director General, (CSIR); Mr P.P. Prabhu, former Commerce Secretary; Dr (Mrs) Isher Judge Ahluwalia, Director, ICRIER; Dr V.A. Pai Panandiker, President and Professor, Centre for Policy Research; Dr Amit Mitra, Secretary General, FICCI; Dr V.R. Panchmukhi, Director, RIS; Mr Tarun Das, Director General, CII; Mr Krishna Raj, Editor, Economic and Political Weekly; Mr Pradip S.Mehta, Secretary General, CUTS; Dr Suman Sahai, Convenor, Gene Campaign; Mr Prabir Sengupta, Commerce Secretary; Mr K.Dharmarajan, IIFT; and Mr Nripendra Misra, Special Secretary. |
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Infosys traces hacker Bangalore, May 8 “The attack seems to have been launched from an educational institution. We are trying to reach its administrators to pinpoint the source”, the Nasdaq-listed company said today. Infosys did not name the educational institution nor its location. Following the hacking of www.Infosysinbanking.Com yesterday, the service was brought down and was unavailable for some time. The website contains basic information on products offered to the banking industry and some brochures in an electronic form.
PTI
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Number of domestic tourists falls Chandigarh, May 8 Reportedly, in case of foreign tourists to the state too, only a marginal increase of approximately 75,000 was witnessed in two years. While in 1998-99, the number of foreign tourists who visited Haryana was 67,636, it was 78,846 in 1999-2000 and in 2000-2001 it increased to 1,43,485. “We are planning to involve private parties in tourism related projects in the state with a view to give fillip to this sector”, said Mr S P
Thakur, MD, Haryana Tourism. These projects, reportedly, will include tourist resorts, amusement parks, jeep safaris etc. According to the department officials, the implementation of the same would begin within next two to three months. |
HDFC net up 18 pc, to pay 125 pc Mumbai, May 8 The board has recommended a 125 per cent (Rs 12.50 per share) dividend for the reporting year as against 190 per cent in 1999-2000 including 100 per cent special dividend. It also approved the increase in limit for shareholding by Foreign Institutional Investors/Overseas Corporate Bodies and Non-Resident Indians to 49 per cent from the current limit of 40 per cent of its paid-up equity share capital. Income from operations in the reporting year increased by 18.03 per cent at Rs 2,376.53 crore (Rs 2,013.35 crore in last fiscal) while other income was higher at Rs 5.82 crore (Rs 2.21 crore). The income from operations includes interest on loans — Rs 1,626.28 crore, fees and other charges — Rs 102.82 crore, dividend income — Rs 121.74 crore, profit on sale of investments — Rs 85.25 crore, lease rental income — Rs 47.49 crore and other operating income — Rs 392.95 crore. In the fourth quarter ended March 2001, the net profit rose 17.63 per cent at Rs 157.6 crore (Rs 133.97 crore) while total income was Rs 659.91 crore (Rs 571.61 crore). The loan portfolio, inclusive of investment in preference shares and debentures for financing real estate projects was Rs 14,014 crore (Rs 11,077 crore), up by 27 per cent, HDFC said. During the year, HDFC mobilised a gross amount of Rs 2,717 crore by way of retail deposits (Rs 1,891 crore). MASCOT SYSTEMS, today announced a turnover of Rs 350.6 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 46.67 crore for the fiscal year 2001. It also announced a maiden dividend of 15 per cent to its shareholders. It has set up a target of Rs 500 crore revenue and Rs 75 crore net profit for the current fiscal. The company provided solutions in the areas of e-business, business intelligence, custom solutions, application re-engineering and application maintenance outsourcing. It had a strong base in the United States, Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Japan. WOCKHARDT has inked an exclusive alliance with Japan-based Eisai Company to launch “Methycobal”, the latter’s product used in treating nerve disorders, in India. “Methcobal tablets, to be launched in July this year, will be manufactured in India under technical assistance from Eisai”, Wockhardt chairman Habil F Khorakiwala said in a release issued from
Mumbai. CADILA PHARMACEUTICALS has received the government go-ahead for commercialisation of five products including a HIV detection kit. “We have lined up five products for commercialisation for which approvals have been received,”
I.A. Mody, Chairman Cadila Pharmaceuticals said. K.K. BIRLA GROUP companies plans to increase their stake in Govind Sugar Mills by 25.13 per cent by purchasing one lakh new preferential shares of the company at a price of Rs 5.10 crore. Incidentally, Govind Sugar Mills, a K.K. Birla group company proposes to issue ordinary shares on preferential basis to finance requirement of long-term working capital and for strengthening its capital base. GODREJ INDUSTRIES, formerly Godrej Soaps, has reported a 33.34 per cent fall in net profit at Rs 40.65 crore for the financial year ended March 31, 2001, compared to Rs 60.99 crore in previous fiscal. The board has recommended a 30 per cent (Rs 3 per share) dividend as compared to 27 per cent (Rs 2.70 per share) last year. Income from operations increased by 21.04 per cent at Rs 890.02 crore (Rs 735.25 crore in 1999-2000). BLUE DART EXPRESS has recorded a 87.08 per cent jump in its net profit for year ending March 2001 at Rs 23.03 crore corresponding to Rs 12.31 crore in last fiscal. The board, which met in Mumbai today, announced a 35 per cent dividend as against 20 per cent in the last fiscal and recommended issue of bonus shares in the ratio of 1:1 (one equity share for every one share held). SATYAM: The (RBI) can now notified that foreign institutional investors (FIIs) can now purchase equity shares and convertible debentures of Satyam Computer Services upto 49 per cent of their paid-up capital. The purchases could be made through capital and secondary markets in India following the company passing a resolution at its board and general body meetings to this effect.
UNI, PTI |
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Microsoft Dhindsa’s offer Road Congress meet Paul Foundation |
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