11844 stories by IPA Staff
CIL New Head S Narsing Rao To Focus On Raising Efficiency
KOLKATA: Coal India’s new chairman S Narsing Rao, who takes charge on Tuesday, will focus on raising the state-run firm’s output and consider production-linked incentives for employees – a system he successfully implemented at Singaneri Collieries. “At Singareni Collieries I had introduced a production incentive system, where a worker...
M&M Plans Unmanned Sea Surveillance Vessels
Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), India’s biggest sport-utility vehicle maker, plans to build unmanned coastal surveillance vessels as the nation boosts security along its coastline following the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack. The company’s newly formed joint venture with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems will assemble the vessel at a facility...
Tata Motors, DefTech Tie Up For Truck Order From Malaysian Forces
NEW DELHI: Tata Motors and Malaysia’s DRB-HICOM Defence Technologies (Deftech) have signed an agreement to develop, promote and market the former’s high-mobility 4-by-4 trucks for the armed forces of Malaysia. Deftech, a wholly owned subsidiary of DRB-HICOM Berhad, will be initially working on two models in the 2.5-5-tonne payload...
Boeing To Help Set Up Transonic Tunnel Facility
HYDERABAD: Global aircraft major Boeing is setting up a transonic wind tunnel facility in Hyderabad. The facility, the first of its kind in the country and under ‘Defence offsets’, could involve an expenditure of Rs 400-450 crore. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will use the facility for...
DRDO To Test Indigenous Scram Jet Engine Next Year
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) will test the indigenously developed scram jet engine next year, according to DRDO chief V. K. Saraswat. “We have demonstrated the performance of a scram jet engine operating at Mach six speed (six times the speed of sound),” he said in an interview...
Work On Submarine-Fired ICBM In Advanced Stage
DRDO Chief Dr. VK Saraswat said that the work on the naval variant of the Long Range Strategic Missile (a moniker given by India to the Agni-V launched on April 20) was in “advanced” stage. With indigenous nuclear-attack submarine, INS Arihant (meaning destroyer of enemies) ready to get operational...
Petition Against Army Chief Designate Dismissed
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a petition challenging the appointment of Lt Gen Bikram Singh as the next Army chief. The court said that after carefully going through the petition and the material placed before it, it does not find any justiciable ground to entertain the...
Siachen – An Unending Conflict
Opportunityto find a lasting solution by Lt-Gen Harwant Singh (retd) Pakistan’s military appears to have finally realized the futility of continued confrontation with India at the Siachen Glacier. There are perhaps a number of factors which have brought about this change of heart. Cooling of relations with the United...
Inquiry Initiated Into Sukhoi Mishap
The Lohegaon Air Force Station has launched an internal inquiry into Thursday’s incident where a Sukhoi-30 aircraft skidded off the runway affecting flight operations. “We will inquire into the cause behind the incident and determine how such mishaps can be prevented in the future. It was however nothing major...
Bankers Seek Easier Share Sale Norms
MUMBAI: Investment bankers plan to approach the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), for relaxation of rules relating to the the institutional placement programme (IPP) and offer for sale (OFS) to achieve next year’s public shareholding deadline. Bankers will ask Sebi to relax certain norms like the 100...
Telecom Companies Blast Trai Move To Set 2G Base Price Unrealistically High
NEW DELHI: Four years and three months after former telecom minister A Raja gave away pan-India GSM mobile spectrum at R1,658 crore, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Monday fixed the auction reserve prices for the same spectrum ten times higher. Trai has set a steep reserve...
India May Get Own Version Of Sovereign Wealth Fund
NEW DELHI: The government plans to use disinvestment proceeds to set up its own version of a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) that will team up with state-run companies for acquiring overseas raw material and energy assets. A senior government official said about one-third of the proceeds from sale of...
Sibal: Govt Bent On Pushing Key Reform Bills
NEW DELHI: The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is to overlook the reservations of some of its allies on economic reforms-related legislation and press ahead in Parliament if it gets an assurance that sections of the opposition will vote with it. So hinted Kapil Sibal, human resource development minister,...
Draft “Muslim Family Law” Is Ready
From L.S. Herdenia BHOPAL: A nation-wide exercise has been launched to empower Muslim women and to protect them from matrimonial excesses, which they have to suffer in the name of Islam and the Quran. These excesses are committed by making a narrow and pro-male interpretation of the Quran. With...
Building Grassroots People’s Movements
By Praful Bidwai The message from the just-concluded congresses of India’s mainstream Left parties, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and Communist Party of India (CPI), is that they are down, not out—despite their stunning election defeats since 2009. They are honest enough to admit they are in decline...
Indian shares end down; Macquarie fund report hurts
Indian shares provisionally ended down 1.82 percent on Monday, after a Reuters report said Macquarie’s Asia hedge fund has exited its short positions in Indian single stock futures in response to proposed tax rules that could lower returns. The benchmark 30-share BSE index provisionally closed 316.31 points lower at...
World Trade Slows Down With Global Growth Slackening
By S. Sethuraman Finance Ministers from over 180 nations re-committed themselves “to act collectively to restore confidence, rekindle growth and create jobs”, at the bi-annual Fund-Bank meetings in Washington (April 20-21) against the backdrop of fragile global recovery, financial stresses in euro-zone posing risks of cross-border spill-overs, high oil...
Finally, Some Reliance Clarity On K-G Reservoir Output Riddle
MUMBAI: If the substantially differing estimates of gas reserves from the joint venture partners in the Krishna-Godavari (K-G) basin off the east coast have been puzzling oil industry watchers, there is now some official confirmation. Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), operator of the country’s premier deep water gas acreage, has...
