Tuesday 10 April 2012

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News


Fresh Polls in Jharkhand for Rajya Sabha- EC

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 04:51 AM PDT

NEW DELHI: The biennial election to the two Rajya Sabha seats from Jharkhand, which was countermanded over allegations of use of money-power and horse-trading, will now be held afresh on May 3, the Election Commission announced on Tuesday.

The three-member commission decided the fresh dates in its meeting held on Tuesday and a notification for the same would be issued on April 16, starting the process for filing of nominations.

The earlier notification of March 12 for holding biennial election to fill the two vacancies from Jharkhand was rescinded by President Pratibha Patil on March 31 following a recommendation by the EC in the wake of allegations of use of money power in the March 30 poll.

As per the fresh schedule, the nominations can now be filed upto April 23 and scrutiny will be done the next day.

The EC has fixed April 26 as the last date for withdrawal of nominations and polling would be held on May 3 between 9am to 4pm and counting to be done the same day at 5pm.

The term of office of two members of the Council of States elected from Jharkhand was to expire on April 2 due to the retirement of Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia and Mabel Rebello. The EC has said that the election process has to be completed by May 5.

The Election Commission has already written to the government for a CBI probe into the events that led to countermand of March 30 Rajya Sabha elections in Jharkhand.

The decision came after the Jharkhand high court asked the commission to constitute a probe.

 

India taking tough position against Chinese threat of Invasion

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 03:35 AM PDT

India is an example of countries which take an aggressive line vis-a-vis China thanks to encouragement from the West, a Chinese commentary said Tuesday.

“The so-called ‘China Threat’ theory chanted by the West has blinded some neighbouring countries into taking a hardline approach against China,” the commentary in the Global Times newspaper said.

“India is an example of this,” it added.

The commentary quoted the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as saying that India had become the largest buyer of arms in the region.

This, it said, had triggered “concerns from analysts that it (India) is engaging in an arms race with its northern neighbour (China).

Chinese Army

“Now if China’s policymakers were to hire a policy advisor from the West, it would most likely receive the suggestion to counter India’s hostility by encouraging or even supporting Pakistan to harass India, distracting it from focusing its military on China.”

The commentary said the US was no doubt a master of this “art” — “as it has been turning countries around the world against each other.

“This way, the US has ensured its geopolitical supremacy and benefit from arms sales in the meantime.”

In contrast, it said that China had been working hard to help better the relationship between India and Pakistan, “a move that has even been lambasted by some of its own nationals”.

“As a developing state itself, China understands how important a peaceful external environment means to India and Pakistan, where living standards still require major improvements.

“Hence, rather than aggravate regional tensions, China has been promoting dialogue and cooperation between the two.”

China has hailed improving relations between New Delhi and Islamabad following the visit of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to India.

An opinion piece published by Xinhua news agency Sunday echoed the stand, saying China “is happy to witness continuous improvement of the Pakistan-India ties”.

The Global Times commentary said: “This is no hollow diplomatic gesture. China has been committed to peaceful development, including efforts at fostering peace between long-term rivals…

“The West labels China as a threat because it fears the prospect its dominance on world affairs will be over.

“There is no need for profound historical or political knowledge to know where the threat truly lies.”

IIM Calcutta students playing with heavy job offers

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 02:21 AM PDT

IIM CalcuttaDespite the global economic slowdown, the final batch of 352 students of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) got placed during the campus selection, with the finance sector at 28.53 percent contributing the largest number of offers, followed by consulting companies with 26.80 percent of the offers.

The placement process conducted in slots got completed before time and witnessed the participation of over 50 well-known companies from various sectors, according to an IIM-C statement.

The ‘slot zero’ placement, where the most coveted firms participate, was driven primarily by the finance sector followed by consulting and consumer good makers.

The slot zero finance firms’ compensation generally comprised a fixed component ranging from Rs.30-40 lakh for domestic locations and Rs.40-60 lakh for foreign locations, plus a bonus component ranging from 100 percent to 200 percent.

In the same slot, consulting firms offered around Rs.20-25 lakh as base package plus bonus component for Indian locations, while marketing companies offered in the range of Rs.15-20 lakh for Indian locations.

While regular recruiters like Accenture Management Consulting, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Shell among others made offers across diverse profiles there were also 15 new companies participating in the recruitments.

Microsoft made the largest number of offers to candidates across three different profiles.

Internet and e-commerce companies also recruited candidates in large numbers. General Management roles were offered by corporate houses such as Aditya Birla Group, Hinduja, Adani Group, Punj Lloyd, Bosch, and Ericsson among others for their leadership roles.

IIM Calcutta Students

Offers were made in the consulting domain by firms such as Deloitte, Accenture, Capgemini, CTS, PwC, and BMGI among others which recruited students for senior positions such as Consultant/Senior Consultant.

Among the top recruits is a student who would be joining as the Head of India Retail Operations for a luxury apparel brand while another would be joining as the Assistant Vice President of Sales with Genpact.

While 95 pre-placement offers were made to students by companies, where students did their summer internship there were 130 job offers for students with work experience.

Are Hindus of Pakistan afraid and helpless ?

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 01:18 AM PDT

Hindus in Pakistan are feeling “angry and helpless” after being targeted in a spate of incidents, including abductions and forced conversion of girls, says a leading rights activist and a Hindu leader.

“The Hindu community is not afraid…rather they feel helpless and angry,” Zohra Yusuf, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, told IANS on phone from Islamabad.

hindus in Pakistan
She said there is “forcible conversion of young Hindu women” and kidnapping for ransom in Balochistan and Sindh provinces.

“A case of forced conversion went right up to the Supreme Court where the young woman said she wanted to go back with her family,” she added.

The human rights activist said Hindus are now demanding a legislation to end conversions.

According to an estimate, Hindus constitute around 5.5 percent of Pakistan’s over 170 million people. Of them, over 90 percent live in Sindh while the rest are distributed in Punjab and Balochistan.

Some political parties and Hindu groups in Pakistan are upset over the kidnapping and conversion of Hindu girls in Sindh province and have taken to the streets.

The Human Rights Club, Young Hindu Forum, Minority Commission of Pakistan, Awami Jamhoori Party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and Pakistan Hindu Council held a demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club Sunday.

They alleged that a Hindu girl, Rinkal Kumari of Mirpur Mathelo town, was abducted and forcibly converted to Islam. Another girl, Asha Kumari, was kidnapped from Jacobabad about a month back.

Pakistan Hindu Council patron Ramesh Kumar Vankwani told IANS on phone from Karachi that the environment is “unsafe” for Hindus.

“Crimes against Hindus have gone up,” he said.

He said Gangaram Motiani, a Hindu and president of the Hinglaj Mata Shewa Mandli, was kidnapped in Bela area of Balochistan April 6. The incident took place ahead of one of the largest annual Hindu gatherings at the Hinglaj Mata temple.

Vankwani noted the problem has intensified since 2007.

“Every year, we get about 50 reports of Hindu girls being converted,” he said and demanded a law to stop the forced conversions.

Hindus in Pakistan are facing a tough time.

Lakki Chand Garji, 82, who is the ‘maharaja’ of the Kali Mata Mandir in Kalat town of Balochistan province and considered one of Pakistan’s most revered Hindu spiritual leaders, was kidnapped by a gang of armed men Dec 21, 2010.

Traders from the Hindu community have been targeted by kidnapping gangs. Three Hindu traders have been killed during attempted kidnappings in and around Quetta during the past three years.

In Pakistan’s Sindh province in November last year, three Hindu doctor brothers — Ajit Kumar, Ashok Kumar and Naresh Kumar — were gunned down.

Ram Singh Sodho, who was elected to the Sindh assembly in 2008 on a Pakistan Muslim League-Functional (PML-F) reserved seat for minorities, fled to India and sent in his resignation to assembly Speaker Nisar Ahmad Khoro, it was reported last year.

India gets its first 4G Technology from Airtel

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 01:11 AM PDT

Kolkata:  Airtel  today launched its  broadband wireless access (BWA) services based on 4G technology. With this launch, the firm became the first player to launch the 4G service in India. The high speed service was inaugurated here by union Communications Minister Kapil Sibal. Read more about 4G Technology here

4G is the fourth generation of cell phone mobile communications standards.It provides  mobile ultra-broadband Internet access, for example to laptops with USB wireless modems, to smartphones, and to other mobile devices.

A successor to the 3G and 2G families, 4G is expected to be five times quicker than 3G services. It would offer services such as high-definition mobile TV and video conferencing.

Airtel , which had bagged BWA spectrum in four telecom circles — Kolkata, Maharastra, Punjab and Karnataka — for Rs.3,314.36 crore in 2010, selected Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE to manage its services in Kolkata.

The other players are yet to announce plans to rollout 4G services.

The Anatomy of Facebook Instagram Deal

Posted: 10 Apr 2012 12:30 AM PDT

Facebook Instagram DealSo here is the headlines of the day, Facebook buys Instagram for 1 billion USD. In Indian Currency it translates to a massive 500 Crore Rupees.

So why would such a top web
site like Facebook buy an iPhone app which has merely 6 employees and virtually no revenue model. Om Mallick of GigaOM pointed that Facebook opted for Kill-the-Rival strategy, a very common in Silicon Valley.  Forbes  pointed out that Facebook wants it to become a Pinterest rival.Meanwhile in January,  Instagram has reached 30 million registered users who shared photographs using it.

But, why did Facebook Buy Instagram?

Facebook has 845 million monthly active users out of which 483 million use Mobile Services. Since most of the Instagram users are active on Social media (Facebook or Twitter), the net user gain (No. is users who use Instagram but not use Facebook) for Facebook would be about 10 Million monthly.

 

Is it a good deal?

Facebook spent 1 Billion $ for getting 10 Million Active users or  has actually paid 10$/user.  Now consider, Facebook ads on Google adwords. Whenever if you search Abhishek Bharadwaj Google, a Facebook ad comes up saying Find Abhishek Bharadwaj on Facebook.  If you are an Adwords advertiser, then you would know that the keyword used for such an ad is Your Friend.  When I made a search for Your Friend on Adwords Keyword Tool, the average CPC I found was Rs 45 which roughly equals 1$.  This means Facebook had to pay 1$ for each  new user who clicked its ad on Google.

 Why did Facebook pay 10 times more money ?.

Here I resort to some approximations:

Your Friend keyword displays the ad only when you search any name already in your Google's contact list. This list is derived from various Google products like Google Plus, Orkut, youtube, Google Buzz etc. most of which have the  networking concept  and so the 70%  of  list members are likely to be already on Facebook.  A simplification of the analysis means that of every 10 searches made for Your Friend keyword, 7 are likely to be an existing Facebook user.

The probability of a user joining Facebook after clicking the ad is 50 percent (the minimum I assume, though no official data provided by Facebook).

Let us suppose 100 users clicked the ad, which did cost Facebook 100$. Out of which 70 are existing user,while 30 are potential user.  Out of these 30 users, 15 (50% of 30 ) are likely to Signup as a new users.

What is the ROI then??

Facebook ends up paying 100 USD for 15 users. If we consider the fact that all new signups do not become active users, then out of these 15 users, only  10 users would remain active. So  the return of Investment is actually 10 users per 100 $ spent which is approximately same what Facebook is paying Instagram for.

Facebook  has purchased 10 million users at a cost of 10$/user from Instagram which is same what it has been doing with Google. So it is  like just another user growth campaigns for Facebook.

 

Thats not all

There are added bonus to this deal. Instagram dealt mainly with iPhone and Andriod users who represent the upper and middle  echelon of the society derived mainly from Business Class.  A section of users which spends money Online most of the time is not spendthrift and is addicted  to E-Commerce.  Thus such users would provide greater ROI to Facebook advertisers  which would further add to the value of company.

 

Upon announcement this morning, Instagram almost went viral. It became the most searched on Google, it was topping the trends on Twitter thereby fetching more  publicity, more signups , more app download. A person like me who hasnot ever used Instagram is writing about its prospective business model. Though it would directly affect Instagram, but somehow it would  help Facebook + Instagram pair  in future.

This is a blog post by Abhishek Bharadwaj, Founder of Biharprabha. The original article appeared here

Bilawal Bhutto says No to Indo-Pak Arms Race via Twitter

Posted: 09 Apr 2012 11:48 PM PDT

Pakistan People’s Party chief Bilawal Bhutto Zardari took to Twitter today to express his feelings about his first visit to India, saying it was a “shame” that the two countries were spending money on weapons at a time when many people on both sides of the border were living in poverty.

Bilawal also touched a chord in India’s youth, endearing himself to his admirers with his good looks, easy laughter, self-effacing manner and a down-to-earth body language.

Bilawal, 23, who joined his father, President Asif Ali Zardari, on a day-long private visit to India, wrote on the micro-blogging site: “It is such a shame (that two) countries (where) such large segments of our population live in desperate poverty must spend so much on weapons”.

Bilawal expressed his views on nuclear weapons, saying the atomic arsenal of both countries were adequate to “destroy each other multiple times over”. He added, “Surely just once would (be one) time too many”.

The two countries should instead invest in education, healthcare and business so that they could trade, “teach each other” and “heal each other”, he wrote. Earlier in the day, Bilawal announced his arrival in India by tweeting: “(As-salam-o-alaikum India, Peace be with you. I have just landed in Delhi. 1st ever visit”.
He also recalled his slain mother, former premier Benazir Bhutto’s quote that “there is a little bit of India in every Pakistani and a little bit of Pakistan in every Indian”.

Following a meeting between President Zardari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over lunch, Bilawal tweeted that his father and he had enjoyed the lunch “with Rahul Gandhi and PM Singh. Lovely meal. Much to learn from each other”.

After a visit to the famous Sufi shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer, Bilawal wrote that he had offered a “special prayer for our brave soldiers who lost their lives in the Siachen avalanche tragedy”.

The political scion who stood quietly by his father Asif Ali Zardari’s side and sometime behind him during the day, depending on protocol and the nature of the occasion, was clad in a black and white pathani – the traditional Pathan attire of loose white pants and black kurta.

At the shrine of the Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer in Rajasthan, Bilawal did not bother to change clothes despite the blistering heat.

As a mark of respect to the saint, who had blessed Mughal emperor Akbar with son Jahangir after a pilgrimage, Bilawal draped an “embroidered scarf around his shoulders and tied a pink turban”.

Bilwal in a message on the social media said, “he had found Ajmer spiritual and peaceful”.

His body language changed once he left the capital for Ajmer, a source close at the airport said. “He began to laugh dropping his official silence. He carries striking shades of mother, when he laughs,” the source said.

Born on Sept 21, 1988, he spent his childhood in Dubai and London during his family’s “self-exile”. He later attended the Rashid School for Boys in Dubai. A black belt in taekwondo, Bilwal studied history at Oxford in London and returned to Pakistan after his mother, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated.

No comments:

Post a Comment