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Better connectivity has pushed up agricultural income in rural India by 17.6% and income from non-farm activities by 12.11%, a recent Planning Commission report said. The study conducted between January 2008 and May 2010, covered 14 districts in seven states.

"Farmers are now ensured that their products reach the market on time, particularly perishable products like vegetables. Roads helped them in moving from subsistence farming of traditional crops to marketable products like horticulture and off seasonal vegetables," Planning Commission former member Anwarul Hoda said.

The government has constructed about 18,240 kms of rural roads in 2009-10 under the flagship programme, about 76% of the target. As per the report, connectivity has increased mobility in remote areas creating opportunities for trade. It also helped in improving their socioeconomic life. Before rural roads, it was difficult to take patients to the hospitals and even the doctors in primary healthcare centres and sub centres were reluctant to join service in the unconnected habitation.

Source:Economic Times By Prachi Marwa Road To Riches: Better connectivity changes rural landscape

The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare - despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace.

The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon's ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to conduct virtual combat across the world's computer networks. He was appointed on Friday afternoon in a low-key ceremony at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

The creation of America's most senior cyber warrior comes just days after the US air force disclosed that some 30,000 of its troops had been re-assigned from technical support "to the frontlines of cyber warfare".

The creation of Cyber Command is in response to increasing anxiety over the vulnerability of the US's military and other networks to a cyber attack.

James Miller, the deputy under-secretary of defence for policy, has hinted that the US might consider a conventional military response to certain kinds of online attack.

Although Alexander pledged during his confirmation hearings before the Senate committee on armed services last month that Cyber Command would not contribute to the militarisation of cyberspace, the committee's chairman, Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that both Pentagon doctrine, and the legal framework for online operations, had failed to keep pace with rapid advances in cyber warfare.

In particular Levin voiced concern that US cyber operations to combat online threats to the US, routed through neutral third countries, "could have broad and damaging consequences" to wider American interests.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk By Peter Beaumont US Appoints First Cyber Warfare General

Scholars will be able to polish their practical skills and conduct experiments through virtual labs, a first for India.The Human Resource Development Ministry granted Rs 80 crore for the project last week.

"The idea is to expand the range of experiments for students in far-flung areas," a senior ministry official said.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will set up the online labs in partnership with institutes such as the National Institutes of Tech- nology and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

In the next six months, IIT- Delhi will begin rolling out some of the labs developed during the pilot project. Full-fledged labs will be ready in two years. Students can perform remote triggered or simulation-based experiments. In the first, the student has to log in and book a time-slot.
The control of the equipment will be given to the student, who can perform the experiment sitting in a college hundreds of kilometres away.

This doesn't require a physical instructor thanks to an instructional video and a step-by-step manual.

For simulated experiments, many students can simultane-ously log in and conduct the experiments.

swaha.sahoo@hindustantimes.com

So in villages that don't receive any FM radio stations, people have begun calling a number that has a recording of Bollywood tunes and listening to it on their headsets.

This primitive cellular "radio" service was used by close to 20 million Indians last year, phone company executives estimate.

"I call it the poor man's iTunes," says Mahesh Prasad, president of Reliance Communications Ltd., one of India's largest cellular companies. "A villager waiting for a bus has nothing to do. When he wants to kill some time, this is the only entertainment media available."<center></center>

The cricket fan without a television or radio can dial up and listen to the latest match live on his phone. Bharti Airtel Ltd., India's largest cell company by subscribers, has a special service that calls hundreds of thousands of farmers every day with recorded messages of weather reports and advice about crops.

Tata Teleservices has a service which lets farmers use their cellphones to control the pumps that water their crops.

Source: Live Mint Cellphone entertainment takes off in rural India

The play's focus is collateral, with the money lender Shylock demanding a particularly onerous form of recompense if his loan wasn't repaid: a pound of flesh. Mr. Geanakoplos, too, finds danger lurking in the assets that back loans. For him, the risk is that investors who can borrow too freely against those assets drive their prices far too high, setting up a bust that reverberates through the economy.

For years, his effort to understand this process didn't draw much interest. Now it does--yet another after-effect of the brutal deflating of the credit bubble. The crisis exposed the inadequacy of economists' traditional tool kit, forcing them to revisit questions many had long thought answered, such as how to tame disruptive boom-and-bust cycles.<center></center>

Mr. Geanakoplos is among a small band of academics offering new thinking about those cycles. A varied group ranging from finance specialists to abstract theorists, they are moving to economic center stage after years on the margins. The goal: Fix the models that encapsulate economists' understanding of the world and serve as policy-making tools at the world's biggest central banks. It is a task that could require a thorough overhaul of the way those models work.

"We could be looking at a paradigm shift," says Frederic Mishkin, a former Federal Reserve governor now at Columbia University.

That shift could change the way central bankers do their job, possibly leading them to wade more deeply into markets. They could, for example, place greater emphasis on the amount of borrowing in the economy, rather than just the interest rates at which borrowing is done. In boom times, that could lead them to restrict how much money various players, ranging from hedge funds to home buyers, can borrow.

Source: Live Mint Crisis compels economists to reach for new paradigm

Barely four months after dropping its proposal to force TV channels to show only “authorized” feed during security emergencies, the government is now seeking to censor news portals and other websites, that too even at normal times.

Draft rules released this month empower a designated Central government officer to block public access to any information on the Net for wideranging reasons of security and national interest.

One glaring infirmity in the draft rules prepared by the department of information technology is that they make no stipulation for a prior hearing to the affected website. This is despite the fact that the web host who does not comply with the direction to remove the offending information is liable to be punished with imprisonment up to seven years.

Times View: The desire to curb the media’s freedom seems to run deep in the government. How else do you explain that while the draft rules give sweeping powers to officials, no attention has been paid to a basic thing like a hearing first? Babus tend to be quick in dubbing things as anti-national or compromising national security. Why should their ‘‘request’’ always be heeded? Also, what will these babus do if the web host is located outside India? Will the domestic media, therefore, bear the brunt of this potential abuse of power? The government should think this through before it finalises the draft rules.

Website gag: IT Act amendments not final Government had made an abortive attempt to gag TV channels through a draft notification amending the cable television network rules, but the sweeping power to control the content on websites is being fleshed out in the rules drafted under the recent amendments to the information technology (IT) Act.

Though it was passed by Parliament in December and the Presidential assent to it came in February, the IT amendment Act 2008 will not come into effect till the various rules drafted under its provisions, including the one on blocking public access to websites, are finalized.

Under the draft rules framed under section 69A of the IT amendment Act, every state or Central government department will be empowered to decide whether a certain news item, article, blog or advertisement relating to its jurisdiction is safe to remain on the Net.

Once somebody sends a “complaint” against any information displayed on the Net, the department concerned will take a call on whether the matter in question affects any of the six concerns mentioned in section 69A: interest of sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order or incitement to commit any cognizable offence relating to the other five reasons.

If it is satisfied about the need to pull the challenged information out of the public domain, the department concerned will send a “request” in the prescribed form to the “designated officer” at the Centre chosen by the secretary of the IT department. An interministerial committee headed by the designated officer will recommend whether the request to censor the web site should be accepted or not.

If the IT secretary approves the committee’s recommendation to take action, the designated officer will direct the intermediary or web host to block the offending information within the stipulated time. In the event of non-compliance, the designated officer can initiate criminal proceedings under section 69A, which imposes a maximum sentence of seven years on the web host.

The only remedy provided by the draft rules to media organizations is that a review committee will meet every two months to check whether the directions to block information have been issued in accordance with the IT Act.

Source:Times Of India Website Gag: IT Act Amendments Not Final, Govt Arming Itself To Censor News Websites

• Caught In The Web; Draft Rules Stir A Hornet's Nest: From Business-Standard

Companies like Hindustan Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Cadbury's and Tata Tea have increased their digital ad budgets for individual brands. "FMCG companies are experimenting with increased budgets for one or two brands by increasing the brand outlay from 1per cent to 3-5 per cent. It's even 8-10 per cent in some categories,"says Prashant Mehta, chief operating officer, Komli, one of the largest digital advertising and technology companies in India.

The biggest plus point is that it is an interactive medium, so customers can be roped in easily. Look at the success of Sunsilk's sunsilkgangofgirls.com or Mattel's barbie.com. The GoaFest's internet & new media category saw a surge in entries, with the winners being brand campaigns such as Axe Spray Chocolate, Cadbury's `Celebrate with Cadbury Dairy Milk' and Tata Tea's `One Billion Votes'. Each of them had a huge role to play in the success of the brands.

But many FMCG companies say the digital medium will have only a limited role to play for some time, given the low internet penetration in the country. "The medium is not suitable for mass market brands as the target audience is not present online. It is better suited for brands targeted at urban consumers, professionals and housewives,"says Sangeeta Talwar, executive director, Tata Tea.

Not many agree with that. "FMCG companies must change their mindset to use the medium more effectively. They are used to one-way communication (television, print) and are using the medium largely to supplement their mass media campaigns and for one-way interaction,"says Rajesh Ghatge, executive director and chief operating officer of 141 Sercon, a digital media marketing company.

But these companies shouldn't forget that it's a growing medium that is being used by a lot of young users in the age group of 13-20 who access the internet in schools and at homes. "Marketers must also learn to engage with this segment," Ghatge says.

With inputs from Suvi Dogra

There are enough reasons why FMCG companies have no option but to experiment with digital ads. The internet medium has 50-60 million users online and is largely accessed by people in the age group of 20-35 years living in the metros and Tier I cities

NET SUCCESS:Sunsilk's sunsilkgangofgirls.com, Tata Tea's Jago Re and Axe Spray ads were big hits on the web