A load of crap from an idle brain

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.

Read the full article here

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