A load of crap from an idle brain

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin closed more than $10 billion in agreements with India, increasing Russia’s role as a partner in defense, nuclear energy, aerospace and communications.

“Putin has been the architect of the strategic partnership between India and Russia,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said after meeting with his Russian counterpart in New Delhi today. “Relations with Russia are a key pillar of our foreign policy.”

Putin, in five visits over the past decade, has spearheaded Russia’s effort to revive Cold War-era ties to India and fend off growing competition for defense and energy contracts from the U.S. and Europe. The Kremlin is playing on Indian ambitions to become a global power capable of rivaling China and sending manned missions to outer space.

Russian companies signed more than a dozen deals, including agreements to deliver India’s second aircraft carrier in 2012, build as many as 16 nuclear reactors and sell 29 MiG-29 fighter jets. India also became the first country to win access to military use of Russia’s Glonass navigation network, a rival to the U.S. Global Positioning System. Putin promised to help send India’s first cosmonaut into space in three years and held open the possibility of joint moon exploration.

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The father of the Indian nuclear programme celebrates his birth centenary today – October 30.

He laid the foundation of India’s huge atomic energy establishment almost singlehandedly, nurturing and expanding it with his dynamic vision. Thanks in no small measure to Homi J. Bhabha’s dream, India’s atomic energy programme has acquired global stature today, capable of designing and testing nuclear weapons and aspiring to meet its growing demands for nuclear energy.

Born to Jehangir Hormusji Bhabha and Meherbai on Oct 30, 1909, in Bombay (now Mumbai), the young Bhabha led a sheltered and emotionally secure childhood. The very first glimmerings of a keen and inquisitive mind became apparent when a specialist told his very worried parents why he slept little — a hyperactive brain that kept him awake at nights.

Excellent family ties with the Tatas and their association with national leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru and also with the British imbued the sensitive boy with a sense of nationalism and perspective.

In 1924, Homi Bhabha passed the Senior Cambridge exam at the age of 15. But by then he had grasped the complexities of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as well as the intricacies of classical painting.

His arrival in Cambridge, a fount of nuclear physics, three years later in 1927, permitted his native genius to bloom for the next 12 years, where he obtained his PhD in physics with specialisation in cosmic rays, in 1934. He was just 25 then.

Bhabha met many of the greatest physicists of the time, namely Niels Bohr, James Franck, and Enrico Fermi, who played key roles in the Anglo-American atomic weapon programmes.

In March 1944, even before the world acquired a nodding acquaintance with the mighty potential of nuclear energy, Bhabha, then a professor, wrote to Sir Dorab J. Tata, who headed the Tata Trust, proposing an institute for nuclear physics in India.

“When nuclear energy has been successfully applied to power production in, say, a couple of decades from now,” Bhabha wrote with remarkable prescience, “India will not have to look abroad for its experts but will find them ready at hand.”

Thus the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) came into being on Dec 19, 1945, just four months after Hiroshima and three years before Indian independence.

Bhabha served as its first director, which placed him at the commanding heights of the country’s nuclear future, until his premature death in a plane crash in the Swiss Alps on Jan 24, 1966.

Bhabha was very particular about maintaining excellence. Addressing the then National Institute of Sciences, Bhabha said: “This is a field in which a large number of mediocre or second rate workers cannot make up for a few outstanding ones, and the few outstanding ones always take at least 10-15 years to grow.”

As the new nation’s prime minister, Nehru entrusted Bhabha with complete authority over all nuclear-related affairs and programmes. Both of them shared a close rapport. In April 1948 at Bhabha’s bidding, Nehru agreed to legislate the Atomic Energy Act in the Constituent Assembly, creating the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC).

On Jan 3, 1954, the IAEC decided to set up a new facility, the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET). In August the same year, the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) came into being with Bhabha as its secretary. Till date, it remains answerable only to the prime minister. Prime minister Indira Gandhi renamed AEET the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

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Other countries are taking benefits of all the hardwork done by the Bush government in signing the nuclear deal with India.  After US, France, Russia, Kazhakstan, Namibia, its the turn of Mongolia to sign the nuclear deal with India.

More deals with countries would mean that India wouldnt need to depend on a select group of countries for its demand of uranium to power its energy sector.

India on Monday signed a civil nuclear pact with uranium-rich Mongolia that will help it source uranium for its power plants.

According to a joint declaration signed by the two countries, participation of Indian companies through joint ventures and investments in the mining sector in Mongolia is on the cards. “A delegation from India has been invited to Mongolia to discuss the prospects for such a cooperation,” the declaration said.

Mongolia is the sixth country with which India signed the civil nuclear pact after the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group lifted a 34-year-old ban that had prevented it from trade in the field with the international community. India has earlier signed such agreements with US, France, Russia, Kazakhstan and Namibia.

The agreement — a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in the field of peaceful use of radioactive minerals and nuclear energy — was signed between officials of Department of Atomic energy from both sides in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj at Hyderabad House.

Four other agreements that were signed between the two countries dealt with loan assistance, health and medical science, cultural exchange programme and cooperation statistical matters.

“We have decided to update our bilateral ties to the level of a ‘Comprehensive Partnership’,” Singh said.

India has also agreed to provide Mongolia a soft loan of $ 25 million to help it stabilise its economy in the wake of the financial crisis. In the area of human resource development and capacity building, India will double the number of annual slots for Mongolia under its Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation programme from 60 to 120.

“I have assured the President of our readiness to assist Mongolia in the field of education, particularly in the teaching of English language, and information technology. We will assist Mongolia in the establishment of an Information Technology Centre,” the PM said. While describing the conversations with the Mongolian President as “extremely productive”, the PM said relations with Mongolia are an important pillar of our policy in the Asia-Pacific region.

The declaration also said that development of defence exchanges and cooperation on the basis of the Agreement on Cooperation in Defence Matters signed in 2001 will continue. “The fifth joint military exercise will be held in Mongolia later this month. The third meeting of the Joint Working Group on Defence Cooperation will be held in Ulaanbaatar at a mutually convenient time in 2010,” it said.

Picture source: EFTrends

News source: IndianExpress

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40 years after he took over his family’s vegetable oil company and turned it into a $5 billion company selling IT services, computers, consumer care, lighting and medical equipments, Azim Premji is on the lookout for his next billions.  He sees them coming from renewable sources of energy.  Water and Eco-energy are the two areas of focus for Wipro and that is where they believe the next billions will come for the company.

For those who know Premji, it is not uncommon to see the fifth richest Indian on the Forbes List and the 63-year-old chairman of Wipro switching off the lights before leaving office. It is this commitment to avoid waste that has turned Premji’s attention to ecology and sustainability.

In October 2008, even as it warned of slowing growth in its main software outsourcing business in the backdrop of a global financial crisis, Wipro released a recruitment ad for two new businesses, Wipro Water and Wipro EcoEnergy. The company has spent the previous two years preparing for this diversification, which may turn out to be the company’s third big change. The first was when a 21-year-old Premji took charge at Wipro after his father’s sudden death; the next was when the vanaspati and soap maker transformed itself into a multi-billion dollar information technology giant in the 80s and 90s.

Chief Financial Officer Suresh Senapathy says green services and solutions will bring in up to one out of every four dollars of the company’s revenue, three years from now. In the financial year ending March 2009, Wipro had revenue of more than Rs. 25,000 crore. Even if the revenue were to stagnate, a fourth of it — Rs. 6,250 crore — from ecology is no small amount. The plan also aligns well with Premji’s desire to ease down IT’s profit contribution from 93 percent currently to 70 percent in the next few years.

The new idea was first thought up by the 41-year-old head of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering (WIN), Anurag Behar. The two new ecology businesses will be housed under WIN. In January 2007, Behar made the first formal presentation about the ecology business to Wipro’s board of directors. The board reacted positively but also advised caution: Ecology was a nascent field with rapidly evolving technology and Wipro should not get locked in a technology that ran the risk of becoming obsolete soon.

Wipro has turned its 50-acre campus at Electronic City in Bangalore into a test bed. While 25,000 software engineers write code for Fortune 500 corporations, waste food from the cafeteria turns into methane for lighting burners, harvested rainwater is used to cool air-conditioning towers, a paper pulping plant recycles waste paper into writing pads and a micro windmill lights bulbs along the perimeter of the campus. Wipro’s Sarjapur campus a few kilometres away has India’s largest LED installations — all compact fluorescent lamps have been replaced with LED lights, helping save 75 percent in electricity consumption. Since 2003, Wipro has cut water usage in its offices across India by nearly two-thirds.

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I was thinking that it would be a 1:22 or 1:24 share swap.  That was going to be too much of a loss for me.  1:16 is not bad considering that my average price for RPL is quite ok.  So, over a period of few months the merger will be through and i will be holding the shares of Reliance Industries. A much better opportunity moving towards a more diversified company from a company with interests in just refining.

Was it unexpected? Not really.  For anyone who has knowledge of the past record of Reliance Industries, they have always done this.  Merging their subsidiaries with the parent company.  The only thing i was worried about was the merger ratio.  That’s why i kept buying the RPL stock when it was below 100 rupees only.

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), India’s largest company by market capitalisation, has offered one share for every 16 held in Reliance Petroleum (RPL) to merge its refinery subsidiary.  RIL will issue 69.2 million new shares to shareholders of RPL in order to buy back the company and will have 3.7 million shareholders after the merger. RIL’s equity capital will rise to Rs 1,643 crore and the promoter’s holdings will fall by 2 per cent to 47 per cent, the company said in a statement issued today.

Alok Agarwal, RIL’s chief financial officer, told reporters here today that no fresh treasury stock would be created and the parent’s holding in the petroleum unit would be cancelled. Almost 200 million existing treasury shares would continue, he added.

RIL’s absorption of RPL will be tax neutral for both the entities. “This merger is not about tax benefits. As far as taxation is concerned, the SEZ refinery is a separate undertaking. Both refineries will retain their tax benefits,” Agarwal said.

“This is about size, this is about diversification,” Agarwal said, adding the merger would give RIL the ability to take on projects much larger than done before.  RIL has set April 1, 2008 for the date of the amalgamation. The takeover is subject to approvals by the high courts at Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

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