Suresh - An Inspiration to the Youth !

Fruits of the Development should reach All the People

Young CEO of Organic Apex - Company across 20 Countries

Also please watch video at Organic Apex

TV can be used as a Computer !

Gujarat Scientists Achievement - Possibility of Optical Computers Soon

Indian physicists trap light in 'nano' soup
India News Science/Health By K.S. Jayaraman, IANS
Bangalore : Indian scientists have demonstrated how to trap and retrieve light using a soup of micro and nano sized magnetic spheres - a major milestone in the path toward developing optical computers.The researchers claim that their unique mixture of tiny particles works at room temperature, holds photons - the particles of light - for far longer than other systems, and can also be tuned with a magnet to store any wavelength of visible light. The discovery made by a team led by Rasbindu Mehta at Bhavnagar University in Gujarat was first announced in the November issue of the Current Science journal published by the Indian Academy of Science in Bangalore.
Now, a report published in the latest issue of the Royal Chemical Society of London's journal Chemistry World says the discovery could pave the way for photonic 'microchips' that use photons for processing optical information in the same way electrons are manipulated in silicon chips in today's electronic devices and computers.For over a decade, scientists have been working towards light-based computing that could be many times faster than electronics as light travels at a speed of approximately 300,000 km per second.

Any microchip designed to process optical signals has to store photons, perhaps by slowing or trapping light in carefully designed crystals. Mehta's team coated micron-size magnetite spheres with oleic acid and dispersed them through a ferrofluid, which is a suspension of much smaller magnetic nanoparticles.When an external magnetic field was applied to the fluid, which was held in a glass cell, laser light passing through the medium was trapped inside. Photons escaped when the field was switched off.

"It is fantastic," said Hema Ramachandran, who heads the photonics unit at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, and was one of several physicists who witnessed the demonstration. "It was a chance discovery," said Mehta's colleague Rajesh Patel.
While investigating the optical properties of their transparent fluid, the researchers noticed that in a certain magnetic field range, light scattering - both forward and backward - became zero.
"We thought the light got trapped inside," said Patel. "So, we switched off the laser (which was shining light through the system) and then the magnetic field, and there it was - a flash of colour lighting up our dark room."

Mehta told IANS that his group is yet to develop a theory to explain this novel phenomenon. He believes that the spheres are aligned by the magnetic field and form micro cavities - filled by the ferrofluid - in which the photons get trapped, resonating back and forth. Changing the external magnetic field alters the refractive index of the cavities that in turn decides which wavelength of light is trapped by the system.

And what is more, according to Mehta, photons can be stored for as long as the magnetic field is switched on. "This is the first visual evidence of storage and retrieval of light for a long and controllable duration. In all other reports, storage time of photons is restricted to a few nanoseconds," he said .Experiments by physicists in the US have involved stopping light altogether by using a gas of sodium or rubidium atoms chilled to near absolute zero, though that system is too complex and not practical for microchips.

Although Mehta's team seems to have chanced on a method for taming light that is simple, inexpensive and unsophisticated, its practical application is still years away.

e-Governance in India

Please read at e-Governance in India

Rural India Online

Please read Rural India Online by clicking on Rural India Online

Software For Villages in India in Regional Languages

Danger of Getting Cancer by doing jobs having Day and Night Shifts

Billion Beats Issue1 and Issue2

To read online please visit www.abdulkalam.com and click on Billion Beats

TARNAKA TIMES NOVEMBER 2007 !

Billion Beats ePaper By our Beloved Abdul Kalam - Issue2

Please read at Billion Beats ePaper By our Beloved Abdul Kalam - Issue2

Innovative Technology - Attendance can be known from Remote place

Your personal tutor is just a click away

In an age when knowledge commands a premium and time is money, what better way than a person who can teach to do it over long-distance communications and reach more people, do it in an easy way and make more money? And what better way for a student to save on real-world tution fees?

Online tutoring, the business of using telecommunications or the Internet to make teaching and learning convenient, is a bit like a call centre offering support to a customer. But here, the customer is a student and the person at the other end is a qualified teacher imparting skills.

With online portals offering affordable educational support for students, it is a win-win situation for students, their parents as well as teachers working for these portals.

Launched a month ago, Delhi-based Extramarks.com Private Limited is a call centre that caters to NCERT course related queries of students of 6th to 12th standard students. Apart from students, parents and teachers can also register for free and access the community and share their queries and concerns with other members. Unlike a typical call centre in which phoning in is the normal way of getting queries resolved, at Extramarks a pupil can post her queries or doubts and get them answered by expert teachers.

Extramarks uses a points-based system for students and teachers earn on the basis of what they do on its website. For instance, asking a query from a teacher costs you 30 points whereas you earn 5 points if you log in to the website daily.

One can also buy 300 points for Rs 99, which means you can get 10 questions solved for Rs 100. It is a bit like asking an astrologer questions and paying according to the number of queries.

The same number of questions solved with a tutor at home would take more than an hour, costing almost eight-nine times the money. Extramarks.com's future plans include introducing virtual classrooms using white board technology within the next three months and starting their services in the US and UK markets by next six months. "We are also creating our own content," Rohit Jain, CEO, Extramarks.com told Hindustan Times.

Leading education content provider company Educomp Solutions, which is a stock market listed company, currently serves over 3.6 million users across India, US and Singapore. It launched its online learning initiative through a portal, www.mathguru.com in July last year. The portal also addresses students studying in standards 6 to 12 and helps them solve their maths-related queries. However, the payment model involves an annual subscription of Rs 2,023.

"We have 15,000 registered users on Mathguru and are expecting the number to reach 25,000 by March 2008," Shantanu Prakash, CEO, Educomp India Private Limited told Hindustan Times.

While Mathguru is specific for one subject, students looking for guidance on solving queries related to physics, chemistry, general science and French and competitive examinations such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), IIT's entrance exam or medical college entrance exams have www.learninghour.com. Here, a six-month course for medical entrance costs Rs 7,500. For other subjects, the cost varies between Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500 or Rs 2,500 per month for 10 sessions (of one hour each) per subject depending on whether a student wants to study in a group of three, two or individually.

Your personal tutor is just a click away

In an age when knowledge commands a premium and time is money, what better way than a person who can teach to do it over long-distance communications and reach more people, do it in an easy way and make more money? And what better way for a student to save on real-world tution fees?

Online tutoring, the business of using telecommunications or the Internet to make teaching and learning convenient, is a bit like a call centre offering support to a customer. But here, the customer is a student and the person at the other end is a qualified teacher imparting skills.

With online portals offering affordable educational support for students, it is a win-win situation for students, their parents as well as teachers working for these portals.

Launched a month ago, Delhi-based Extramarks.com Private Limited is a call centre that caters to NCERT course related queries of students of 6th to 12th standard students. Apart from students, parents and teachers can also register for free and access the community and share their queries and concerns with other members. Unlike a typical call centre in which phoning in is the normal way of getting queries resolved, at Extramarks a pupil can post her queries or doubts and get them answered by expert teachers.

Extramarks uses a points-based system for students and teachers earn on the basis of what they do on its website. For instance, asking a query from a teacher costs you 30 points whereas you earn 5 points if you log in to the website daily.

One can also buy 300 points for Rs 99, which means you can get 10 questions solved for Rs 100. It is a bit like asking an astrologer questions and paying according to the number of queries.

The same number of questions solved with a tutor at home would take more than an hour, costing almost eight-nine times the money. Extramarks.com's future plans include introducing virtual classrooms using white board technology within the next three months and starting their services in the US and UK markets by next six months. "We are also creating our own content," Rohit Jain, CEO, Extramarks.com told Hindustan Times.

Leading education content provider company Educomp Solutions, which is a stock market listed company, currently serves over 3.6 million users across India, US and Singapore. It launched its online learning initiative through a portal, www.mathguru.com in July last year. The portal also addresses students studying in standards 6 to 12 and helps them solve their maths-related queries. However, the payment model involves an annual subscription of Rs 2,023.

"We have 15,000 registered users on Mathguru and are expecting the number to reach 25,000 by March 2008," Shantanu Prakash, CEO, Educomp India Private Limited told Hindustan Times.

While Mathguru is specific for one subject, students looking for guidance on solving queries related to physics, chemistry, general science and French and competitive examinations such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), IIT's entrance exam or medical college entrance exams have www.learninghour.com. Here, a six-month course for medical entrance costs Rs 7,500. For other subjects, the cost varies between Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500 or Rs 2,500 per month for 10 sessions (of one hour each) per subject depending on whether a student wants to study in a group of three, two or individually.

Your personal tutor is just a click away

In an age when knowledge commands a premium and time is money, what better way than a person who can teach to do it over long-distance communications and reach more people, do it in an easy way and make more money? And what better way for a student to save on real-world tution fees?

Online tutoring, the business of using telecommunications or the Internet to make teaching and learning convenient, is a bit like a call centre offering support to a customer. But here, the customer is a student and the person at the other end is a qualified teacher imparting skills.

With online portals offering affordable educational support for students, it is a win-win situation for students, their parents as well as teachers working for these portals.

Launched a month ago, Delhi-based Extramarks.com Private Limited is a call centre that caters to NCERT course related queries of students of 6th to 12th standard students. Apart from students, parents and teachers can also register for free and access the community and share their queries and concerns with other members. Unlike a typical call centre in which phoning in is the normal way of getting queries resolved, at Extramarks a pupil can post her queries or doubts and get them answered by expert teachers.

Extramarks uses a points-based system for students and teachers earn on the basis of what they do on its website. For instance, asking a query from a teacher costs you 30 points whereas you earn 5 points if you log in to the website daily.

One can also buy 300 points for Rs 99, which means you can get 10 questions solved for Rs 100. It is a bit like asking an astrologer questions and paying according to the number of queries.

The same number of questions solved with a tutor at home would take more than an hour, costing almost eight-nine times the money. Extramarks.com's future plans include introducing virtual classrooms using white board technology within the next three months and starting their services in the US and UK markets by next six months. "We are also creating our own content," Rohit Jain, CEO, Extramarks.com told Hindustan Times.

Leading education content provider company Educomp Solutions, which is a stock market listed company, currently serves over 3.6 million users across India, US and Singapore. It launched its online learning initiative through a portal, www.mathguru.com in July last year. The portal also addresses students studying in standards 6 to 12 and helps them solve their maths-related queries. However, the payment model involves an annual subscription of Rs 2,023.

"We have 15,000 registered users on Mathguru and are expecting the number to reach 25,000 by March 2008," Shantanu Prakash, CEO, Educomp India Private Limited told Hindustan Times.

While Mathguru is specific for one subject, students looking for guidance on solving queries related to physics, chemistry, general science and French and competitive examinations such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), IIT's entrance exam or medical college entrance exams have www.learninghour.com. Here, a six-month course for medical entrance costs Rs 7,500. For other subjects, the cost varies between Rs 1,000, Rs 1,500 or Rs 2,500 per month for 10 sessions (of one hour each) per subject depending on whether a student wants to study in a group of three, two or individually.

The Next Wave of Globalization: Offshoring R&D to India and China

Stephanie Overby, CIO

October 31, 2007

Entrepreneur-turned-academic Vivek Wadhwa is up front about his use of offshoring and importing foreign talent in a previous professional life as founder and CEO of two technology companies. "I was one of the first to outsource software development to Russia in the early '90s. I was one of the first to use H-1B visas to bring workers to the U.S.A.," Wadhwa says. "Why did I do that? Because it was cheaper."

That tactic is even more lucrative for corporations today, says Wadhwa: "When you have a person on H-1B waiting for a green card, you have them captive for six to 10 years."

Wadhwa, who was addressing an audience at Harvard University, where he is now a Wertheim Fellow at Harvard Law School's Labor and Worklife Program , says outsourcing work to lower-cost countries and importing temporary foreign workers is all part of a larger globalization transformation that is happening "an order of magnitude faster than the industrial revolution." According to Wadhwa, the ramifications of globalization will be much greater than the industrial revolution. "It will impact our standard of living here in the U.S. in the next five to 10 years."

For better or worse? That depends on whom you ask, says Wadhwa. And it may be beside the point. "Globalization is the reality," Wadhwa says. "Whether you like it or not, it's happening."

It's no longer just "low-end" work like call center positions or data entry or even midlevel programming that's being shipped to China and India. High-value research and development work also is moving offshore, says Pete Engardio, a BusinessWeek senior editor who has been writing about globalization for 20 years in addition to being a Harvard Law School Wertheim Fellow. And while cost is still the major driver, it's also about where talent and capabilities are available - and where they are available in mass.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom About Engineering Talent, Visa Arguments

In fact, globalization is happening so fast, academics like Wadhwa (also an executive in residence at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering can't keep pace. Inspired by his students, Wadhwa decided to fill the void with some research of his own. "I had four or five students come up to me one week and ask, 'What courses can we take that will make us outsourcing-proof?'" says Wadhwa. "These students were paying megabucks to study there and should be very well sought after and yet they were worried about their jobs. That didn't make sense to me." He and his students began to explore what he describes as commonly accepted misinformation about graduation rates around the globe and the "skills shortage" forcing U.S. companies to go abroad.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, America matriculates 70,000 students with undergraduate degrees in engineering every year, versus 350,000 produced by India and 600,000 produced by China. But China's numbers, which Wadhwa calls "propaganda," include "short cycle" degrees and rely on a looser definition of engineering. "The Chinese government told the provinces they had to produce more engineering degrees," Wadhwa says, "and the provinces gave them what they wanted."

India's numbers also include two-year diplomas. As a result, India and China can promote themselves as engineering-degree machines but "the vast majority of the graduates are unemployable," he says. (Wadhwa is currently getting a mix of cheers and jeers for his BusinessWeek.com column from Oct. 26, "The Science Education Myth", in which he cites an Urban Institute study that claims that U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering graduates than the job market can support.)

As for the talent crunch argument that Bill Gates and others employ when lobbying for more foreign worker visas, Wadhwa also pushes back. He and his students surveyed 78 leaders at U.S. companies that were outsourcing high-tech work. The majority said they had trouble finding qualified candidates in the U.S. However those same respondents recorded job acceptance rates of greater than 60 percent, with those rates either remaining constant or increasing, and time to fill an open position of four months or less. There's a shortage all right, says Wadhwa, but it's "a shortage of engineers below market price that work day and night like slave labor."

When asked about issues like the productivity and quality of Indian and Chinese employees versus their American counterparts, there was little debate among respondents to Wadhwa's survey. Eight-seven percent said U.S. workers were as productive as or more so than Indian or Chinese workers, and 96 percent said that their U.S. locations produced equal or higher quality work than their centers in China and India. The advantage with U.S. workers, according to survey respondents, included communication skills, understanding of U.S. industry, business acumen, education and proximity. Chinese workers were valued for their low labor cost and willingness to work long hours, while Indian workers were sought after for their low labor cost, work ethic, English skills and technical knowledge.

The View from India, Where R&D is Rising

In spite of the survey respondents' praise of American workers, the offshoring of engineering and IT work to China and India continues for a variety of reasons, including the availability and cost of labor, and its proximity to new product markets.

BusinessWeek's Engardio described for the audience what he saw on his latest trips to Asia. Bangalore, the capital of India's IT industry, is home to Motorola's R&D lab, where employees designed 40 percent of the value of company's latest RAZR models. Next door at NXP (a company spun off from Philips Semiconductors), workers are designing the chip sets for high definition televisions. General Electric's campus, called the Jack Welch Technology Center, features lovely low-slung buildings, first-class gyms and food courts-and much of GE's product design work. "When I talk to economists or I read a lot of the public discussion of outsourcing, they still draw a lot of distinctions between what's being done 'here' and what's being done 'there,'" says Engardio. "They'll say the high-end stuff is done here (in the U.S.). The low-end, repetitive stuff is done 'there.'" That's not true, says Engardio. GE and Motorola aren't just employing coders or call center workers abroad, "they're employing scientists."

North of Bangalore, Hyderabad has a booming biotech industrial zone, says Engardio, that stretches for miles, housing 37 contract research organizations. "Three years ago, you could not get a major pharmaceutical company to say they would shift R&D to India," Engardio says. "Today they're doing it. Big pharma is gearing up big time."

The same day Wadhwa and Engardio conducted their seminar at Harvard, General Motors announced its plans to build an advanced research center in Shanghai to develop hybrid and other leading-edge car technologies. "There are great quantitative and qualitative leaps in what is being doing in Asia," Engardio says.

And it's not just massive multinational corporations setting up R&D shops in Asia. Top-tier Indian IT service providers, once known for pure software development, are going after R&D business too, says Engardio. Satyam has set up a huge, industrial engineering facility. HCL Technologies is doing avionics work for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner .

How is all this high-end work getting done if the vast majority of engineering undergraduates in India are indeed "unemployable" out of school and India produces fewer than 1,000 PhDs a year (compared to nearly 8,000 in the U.S.)?

For one thing, says Wadhwa, the multinationals and third-party contractors are more than happy to train local graduates who may not be ready to hit the ground running. Some have set up their own six-month "finishing schools" to do just that. The problem with post-graduate degree production in India is proving to be no barrier, says Wadhwa, because many of the researchers and scientists currently working there were educated in the U.S. Due to the difficulty of obtaining work visas or green cards in the United States, these workers have sought greener pastures in India, China and elsewhere, he says.

For its part, China is actually working on improving its educational system the way it improved its manufacturing processes over the last two decades, according to Wadhwa. But India doesn't have to produce its own post-graduate degrees, says Engardio. "We're talking about chemists and molecular biologists with master's degrees or PhDs coming from U.S. to India where it's not doom and gloom," Engardio says. "There's a lot of opportunity."

While R&D Goes Offshore, Innovation Stays. For Now.

When you're talking about offshoring, Engardio says, the conversation is no longer just about costs. It's also about where talent and capabilities are available. Though cost-cutting remains the driver behind offshoring, Engardio says this work won't come back to the U.S. as India's wages or other costs rise. "The shift is permanent," Engardio says.

In other words, American workers may be terrific. But they're expensive. And there aren't enough of them, according to Engardio. If the U.S. held on to more of the foreign-born students awarded advanced degrees, there might not be as many of them available in India or China either, according to Wadhwa.

One of the drivers of this R&D shift overseas is the rise of virtual prototyping. That ability to design and test machines on a computer has made design work more mobile. And engineers trained in the necessary software are plentiful in India. That's good, says Engardio, because these companies need "lots and lots of engineers."

Also integral to the shift of product R&D offshore is the focus on embedded software. Fifty percent of the value in new cars, for example, is in the dashboard, Engardio says. "There's a tremendous need for engineering and software expertise," he says, "and the Indian IT services companies like Wipro and Tata have that. They are now the biggest industrial design companies in the world."

The dynamic turns R&D offshoring into a slightly different numbers game. "If you want to keep up and have to introduce this kind of innovation and the myriad services you need to offer, it would be very difficult to do in the U.S. just due to workforce capacity issues," Engardio says.

Then there's the other reason R&D is increasingly headquartered in India and China: proximity to emerging markets. Cisco now has 2,000 people doing R&D in India. "The head of that center sits in an office and looks like a modern day Pharaoh with the scale of building under way around him," says Engardio. "He says in five years, they will have 10,000 people. And by the way, I'm not looking for average engineers. I want innovators. These are no cheap bodies." Why? He's not looking at the U.S. as his major market for product sales. He's looking at emerging technology greenfields markets like Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. "All the new developments outfitted with next generation telecom networks we'll never see in the U.S.," says Engardio. "The next generation of services is going to be in Asia." So Cisco is situating the design work in India. "Is it going to work out?" asks Engardio. "Who knows? But it seems like the right bet."

Anything that a company's customer touches and feels will remain harder to offshore to India, China or anywhere else, says Engardio. And perhaps, most important, so too the innovation itself. The product ideas happen at headquarters and are executed elsewhere.

"The only thing (India) isn't doing is owning the intellectual property. The multinationals are pulling the strings and staying at the top of the food chain, which is why the debate over whether this is good or bad for the United States is very, very murky," says Engardio, "The American companies have India working for us, in a way."

© 2007 CXO Media Inc.

SMART MONEY FOR INDIA'S RURAL POOR

Smart money for India’s rural poor

India’s Finance Ministry and Planning Commission are looking into ways of using electronic smart cards to transform the distribution of relatively small amounts of government money to India’s 220 million people who live below the poverty line, and maybe to 200-300 million more who are only marginally better off. This would make it much more difficult for bureaucrats, politicians and middlemen to siphon off the funds as they move down the distribution chain.

“We already have the technology today to do this and it would be feasible to use it for putting money in the pockets of the rural poor within 18 to 24 months,” K.V.Kamath, managing director of ICICI Bank, a leading Indian financial institution, said in Delhi last week.

The Smart card system would not have been possible a few years ago because there was not sufficient telecom connectivity. But India now has 190 million cell phone users - rising by more than six million a month - plus 40 million fixed lines. This increased connectivity to remote areas opens up various possibilities for smart card use.

In a parallel technological development, ICICI is introducing biometric smart cards that enable people to identify themselves by their thumbprints at ATM and other terminals. It expects to have 220,000 cards in use by next March (justifying a claim Kamath sometimes makes about ICICI really being a technology company that’s into banking).

Other banks, including Citibank, are experimenting, but are not so far advanced. Adding to the potential network, state governments are opening 100,000 internet kiosks in rural areas, often linked by cell phone circuits, by the end of this year. India’s electorate, totaling 650 million, voted electronically in the 2004 general election, which demonstrated the practical potential of information technology, and national identity and social security numbers are being progressively issued, which could be used to access digitized data.

Put all that together, and India is on its way to transforming banking for the 70% of its 1.1 billion population who live in rural areas, once ways of ensuring security for mobile phone and smart card transactions have been worked out. Ideas about how the government could use the technology to improve what the experts call the “social delivery mechanisms” of poverty programs emerged in Delhi last week, when the debate at the launch of a book on economic reforms switched to India’s most crucial problem – how to deliver hand-outs and development aid without a large proportion leaking.

Lord Meghnad Desai, a professor at the London School of Economics, suggested a dollar a day could be delivered via smart cards – he later amended that to a more modest dollar a week, which would add about 14% to low-paid laborers’ weekly wages. N.K.Singh, a former top bureaucrat, whose collection of Indian Express newspaper articles was being launched as a book called “The Politics of Change,” later suggested that the cards should not just be used for the odd dollar, but for all government payments to the poor.

Currently billions of dollars a year are distributed by elected village officials and low level bureaucrats, who routinely take some of the money for themselves, sometimes denying money to authorized recipients. In some states, as an experiment, 200-rupee monthly payments are being credited to destitute old age pensioners’ post office accounts, reducing the opportunity for leakage. The idea now is that aid recipients would be allocated smart cards credited with the handouts. The cards would be swiped through small electronics terminals and authorized officials would hand out the money. That would still leave room for the officials to bully recipients and deny them their full allocations, maybe demanding a commission, but it would be simpler to administer than post office accounts and far less leakage-prone than the current system.

Palaniappan Chidambaram, the Finance Minister, agreed at last week’s meeting that smart cards could be used in this way. Yesterday he told me that a good starting point could be to issue smart cards for the government’s popular Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which has been allocated a minimum of $3 billion this year. “The technology is proven. We should quickly move to implementation,” he said. Some senior officials are concerned about how to persuade tens of thousands of bureaucrats, who gain by administering current programs, to give up their lucrative work. Chidambaram is not sure that this is a problem, but some of his officials tell me the process could take several years. The technology, it seems, is almost ready, but the bureaucrats may not be so keen.

USABF Second Delegation to India from Jan10 - Jan 16

Dont We need Abdul Kalam TV to build developed India ?

Please read at Need For Abdul Kalam TV

SAS and the opportunities in the Software Industry

Read and make your friends read India Together

Please read INDIA TOGETHER and GOOD NEWS INDIA

CATALYST TO PROMOTE NGO MOVEMENT IN INDIA

Catalyst was launched during Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in 2006. So far seven issues covering topics such as Critical Factors for India ’s Development, National agenda, NRI contributions, Ashoka Innovators For The Public. Water Scarcity, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Saluting Share and Care on their 25th year celebrations have been published. Articles have been written by professionals and experts such as Dr. Ajai Kumar , Dr. Nirupama Bajapai, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, Mr. Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Mr. Sam Pitroda , Dr. Abraham George, Dr. Jayaprakash Narayana, Dr. Thomas Abraham of GOPIO, and others.

The Catalyst has been well received in India and among NRI community in the US (circulated 50000 copies of the 7 issues.). There is really no other magazine like the Catalyst in the market today based on our survey. This might surprise many, but it is true! There are theoretical journals published by academic institutions and international agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations.

Many NGOs have their own journals but discussing their activities. However, practical experiences at the grass-root level are not covered by any of them. Catalyst offers a neutral viewpoint, often the views of NGOs and others in the developmental arena who are carrying out their work in the field. Many of our readers call the Catalyst “the practical guide to development.”

We will be validating the claims made by authors through peer reviews and field visits. There will be an attempt to solicit different viewpoints on each article through published comments and opinions from the informed public. These changes will, in our opinion, improve upon what is already a quality magazine.

Catalyst has plans to support research in NGO movement at different Indian Universities and reputed institutions to learn more about the management of NGOs. We want to become for India ’s NGO movement what Harvard Business Review was for profit making organizations.

In response, we want to publish the Catalyst on a bi-monthly basis – 6 issues annually in the coming year --, each one focusing on an important topic in development. In subsequent years, we expect to have sufficient membership and advertisement revenues to make Catalyst a monthly. Currently Catalyst requiring an annual budget of $30000 is financed by founders, well wishers and annual subscribers donating $100 in the US and Rs. 500 in India . This limited budget has not allowed efforts to market Catalyst so far.

A meeting is planned on November 18th at Anjali Center at 3.00 PM to involve interested people in India ’s development through NGOs. There are more than one to two million NGOs in India today. No one is sure about the exact number or the contribution made by them. Despite all the criticism against the NGO movement in general, there are some outstanding NGOs who are making a difference. It is those NGOs Catalyst want to bring to the attention of the general public and help build a strong and vibrant NGO movement in India .

You can participate from the US in this exciting journey. You can help us to market Catalyst by introducing it to your friends. You can write articles about your own NGO or study other NGOs and write about them. Finally you can subscribe to the magazine and even consider making financial contribution. (see details for sending your subscription)

ASSOCIATION FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
501c(3) Non-Profit Organization; Federal Tax ID: 20-1848083

Name :
E-mail ID :
Address :
City : State :
Zip/Pin Code : Country:

Subscription:
India — Rs. 500 USA — $ 100
Cheques payable to IFHD in India Cheques payable to AFHD in USA

You can send gift copies of Catalyst to your colleges, Universities and friends in India for a nominal cost of $12.50 (Rs. 500) per year. This may be the best gift for students that you want to help.

For membership in America, mail to:
CATALYST FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
AFHD, 208, Parkway Drive
Roslyn Heights, NY, 11577
USA

For membership in India, mail to:
CATALYST FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IFHD, Balaji Residency, 12-13-705/10/AB
Gokul Nagar, Tarnaka, Hyderabad 500017
AP, India

Barefoot College in Tilonia in India aiming for the Solar Electrified Villages in India

Solar Energy training does not need any great education. Community has the answers for their problems which we can simply spread and be a catalyst.http://movingimagesindia.com/ makes the films for barefoot college.

Watch Video Here

Solar Car - By Indian from Delhi

Abdul Kalam - To The Youth

Youth below the age of 25 are the most powerful resources on the earth, under the earth and above the earth. We have to empower them through value-based education and leadership. Please read Kalam's message to the Youth at Kalams website

Nothing is impossible

Political System Towards Developed India

Capacity Building Model

Employment and education

Challenges of 21st Century

Power of the Youth

Youth movement for Developed India 2020

Defeat the problems and succeed

Accelerate Development: Aspiration of the youth

Profile of a globally competitive nation

Billion Beats ePaper By our Beloved Abdul Kalam

Please read at Billion Beats ePaper By Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam

Innovative Way of Solving Problems by Public Welfare Society in Hyderabad, India

Please visit how the problems can be solved by involving the people by clicking on INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS

SAVE YOURSELF FROM HEART ATTACK PPT

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Pravasbharatiya Diwas - Details of USABF's 2nd Annual Trade Delegation - JAN 7-9 in New Delhi

Dr. Navinchandra Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of Mauritius will be the Chief Guest of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas-2008. This was announced by the Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Shri Vayalar Ravi, in a press conference here today. He stated that the theme of the 6th edition of PBD is 'Engaging the Diaspora: the way forward' with the objective to encourage Overseas Indians to be part of the Socio-economic development of India. Announcing the dates and venue, the Minister said that the 6th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas will be held in Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi from 7th to 9th January, 2008. The main focus during the event will be on social areas and issues with special emphasis on women including Rural Women. The forthcoming PBD includes a two-day convention featuring diverse themes with eminent speakers; trade and Industry exhibition, business networking and cultural evenings, he added.

1. USABF'S TRADE DELEGATION TO INDIA WEF JAN 10, 2008-JAN 16TH, 2008, DELHI, BANGALORE AND MUMBAI

USABF'S FIRST ANNUAL AWARDS AND BANQUET DINNER ON JAN 11TH , 2008 , NEW DELHI

USABF is planning it's 2nd annual trade delegation to India from the US starting on Jan10th,2008.New Delhi, the capital of the country will be the location of the inaguration of this trade delegation with lot's of local and International media along with Chief Guest's ranging from the highest positions in the Government Sector and Leading Private Sector Entrepreneur's of India and the US.Details of the 2007's inagural event's press release is as follows-

Please click here to see the pictures at US ASIA BUSINESS FORUM 'S (USABF'S) Jan 2007 's inaugural US Delegation to India at the Hotel Ashoka in Delhi.

http:// img404.imageshac k.us/img404/1994/usabfpicmunship1040613dr6.jpg

http://img404.imageshac k.us/img404/5633/usabfpicmunship1040629jv5.jpg

Honorable Minister , Mr Das Munshi hoped that USABF would play the role of a catalyst and will act as a bridge to harmonise the activities of FICCI, CII & ASSOCHAM. The list of other VVIP's who addressed the gathering from US and Canada were Honorable Chief Minister of Delhi, Mrs Sheila Dixit, and Honorable Minister of Urban Development, Mr Ajay Maken, Mr Rambabu Sharma, President of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Party, Mr John Fennerty, Deputy Economic Counsellor, Embassy of The USA just to name a few.

US Asia Business Forum (a non-profit organization) based in Los Angeles California has led a successful trade delegation from US to India consisting of investors from areas of Entertainment, IT, Banking & Financial Services, Healthcare, Real Estate and Construction. This delegation consisted of well known names of US like Ramesh Kapur - Chair of the DNC, Nirmal Sinha – PBD 2007 Awardee and more than 30 other entrepreneurs from US & Canada. Agreements worth more than US$ 2 Billion were signed between various companies from India & US.

Mr Kishore (Kevin) Kaul & Mr Gurbax Bhasin, Executive Directors, US Asia Business Forum in their inaugural welcome addresses in the presence of more than 200 well known personalities from US & India and press from all over the globe said that these attempts being made by US Asia Business Forum will strengthen trade relations between US & India.

Mr. Kevin Kaul, and Mr. Gurbax Bhasin (Executive Directors) spoke about the role played by the US Asia Business Forum in expanding the trade relations between the two countries.

A presentation on Incredible India was made on behalf of Ministry of Tourism by Rajvir Mittal, Regional Director – North India.

The delegation was treated at Tea by the Delhi Chief Minister Mrs. Shiela Dixit in the evening.

Mr. Gurbax Bhasin also Executive Director US Asia Business Form gave a vote of thanks.
2008 , JAN 10TH WILL BE THE 2ND ANNUAL TRADE DELEGATION TO INDIA STARTING AT NEW DELHI- PLEASE MAKE YOUR RESERVATIONS NOW.DETAILS OF THE PROGRAMME,ETC WILL FOLLOW.

Indian youth are simply unemployable: - India Labour Report 2007 !

If its jobs India's youth are looking for, there are many waiting to be snapped up. The problem, says the India Labour Report 2007, is that the Indian youth are simply ''unemployable''. ''90% of employment opportunities require vocational skills. But 90% of our college and school output has only bookish knowledge,'' says the study commissioned by TeamLease Services, a human resource and staffing agency. While only 8% of the youth are unemployed, 53% have some kind of skill deprivation. This becomes critical, as nearly 90% of jobs in India are still skill based, with the bulk of employment coming from farming, fisheries and other related. work.

''Youth unemployability is a bigger crisis than unemployment as poor quality of skills or education show up in low incomes rather than unemployment. 58% of graduates make less than Rs 75,000 per year,'' the report says. Little wonder then that India's per capita income continues to be among the lowest in the world, despite being the fastest growing economy in the world. That is also the reason, economists say, while India will grow to be among the richest countries in the world, its citizens will not be as wealthy as the average American and European citizen. The math is fairly simple. Between a little over a billion people, even a marginal increase in their earnings can propel the country's GDP into a different league. For the people who put it there though, things will change only marginally.

The India Labour report estimates that repairing this skill deficit could cost Rs 4,90,000 crore, or 10% of our GDP over the next two years. While current budgets facilitate for 25% of this amount, merely allocating more funds is not the solution. Failure in quality education and skills, lack of technical and vocational training and policy blunders make it imperative that our system needs a structural change, the report states. A negligible percentage of children who complete the primary level of education continue to the diploma level and even smaller ratios go on further. The discontinuation of education leads to the accumulation of job seekers in the bottom of the education pyramid and the immediate fallout of this is the low skill levels among the working population.

Courtesy : Samachar.com

FOSAAC NEWS LETTER - QUALITY HUMAN CAPITAL IS THE DRIVER

1. HRD or Human Resource Development is the most important factor when comparing India i.e. to Germany, Japan & S. Korea. In S. Korea the Deputy PM is the Education Minister! Education is the key driver!
2. Literacy in India is hardly 61%. It is estimated to be still lower as per international norms of definition.
3. The school drop-out rates in India prove this point. It is estimated to be about 90% from KG to 12^th.
4. Vocational Education & Training is hardly in existence in India. We have many people of young age; but they have no skills and therefore are not employable! China has 500,000 Vocational schools.
5. Higher & Technical Education takes a big beating in India. The Indian government is not able to provide primary and secondary education for the youth of India, but wants to control higher education!
6. Higher and Technical Education including Medical education is highly controlled from the centre; there is acute shortage of seats and of opportunity of high quality and ample capacity of all forms of Higher & Technical education, including Vocational Education & Training. Tuition/coaching are for profit.NOT education!
7. Nearly 99% of all entrance examination participants in the IIT's and IIM's are rejected due to capacity constraints! The rejected top 40% get admission anywhere in the world provided they pay for it!
8. Nearly 160,000 students leave India every year for H&TE to overseas universities resulting in a foreign exchange out flow of about US$ 10 billion per yr. This amount is sufficient to build 40 IIM's or 20 IIT's per year! Rationing of Higher education seats leads to a 'Black Market' and the menace of 'Capitation Fees'.
9. Human development Index is very low in India leading to multiple problems such as corruption, population, poverty, unemployment, productivity, environment, HIV/AIDS, primary health, infant mortality, terrorism, etc.
10. If India has to grow into a Developed Nation, it must put its 'House in Order' in the form of high class education in Primary, Secondary, Vocational & Higher Education.
11. Quality Human Capital is the driver!

PROPOSAL - TRUE EDUCATION (ARTICLE IN CATALYST BY DR.BHAMY SHENOY)

Please download/read the Proposal on True Education which we are going to propose to the Minister of Education at the meeting to be held at chagantivaripalem, Muppalla Mandal, Andhra Pradesh,India on 4th November 2007 by clicking on TRUE EDUCATION

Announcement for IDCA Fourth International Conference in India on January 10 in New Delhi

Dear IDCA Member or Friend,

Once again thanks to all of you who attended Chicago conference on October 6-7 and made it successful.I hope you had some time for RR after the 2 busy days. We would very much appreciate your feedback as to what you liked and what needs improvement. Those of you who already gave your feedback form after the conference we sincerely thank you. We will seriously consider your feedback and will do our best to adopt your suggestions.

Many of us will be visiting India in December /January for various reasons. Like last year, IDCA is once again planning for its conference in India following the Pravasi Bhartiya Diwas on January 8-9 to make it easier for many NRIs who were not able to attend the Chicago conference, and also to learn about the experiences of leading NGOs in India and promote networking and collaboration between them.

After two weeks of RR its about time that we begin planning for our Fourth International Conference in India on January 10 at IIT Delhi or closeby facility. We are hoping that Jay Sehgal and his team along with few other NGOs and some faculty at IIT Delhi- Center for Rural Development and Technology, will be helping with this event.

Before we move forward we need your suggestions and support on some of the things that are critical.

I will list these here and seek your reply by this Friday.

1. Will you be able to attend the 1 day conference in Delhi on January 10, 2008?

2. If invited, will you be willing to share experiences of your NGO?

3. If yes, what will be your area of interest? Please check one or more.

Water____Education_____ Healthcare______ Livelihoods_______ Governance___ Environment/Ecology______

4. Do you know anyone else who should be invited to speak or participate? Please provide full information.

5. Do you have any suggestions for the Keynote speakers? Please provide names with contact information.

6. Can you financially support the conference? How much? $__________Rs._________

7. Do you know anyone who can provide financial support? Provide names with full contact information.

8. What do you think should be the proposed registration Fee?

NRIs: Early (November 25) $50._____Regular (December 20) $75______Late and onsite: $100._____

Resident Indian : Early (November 25)Rs. 1000._____Regular (December 20)Rs.1500____ Late and onsite:Rs. 2000_____

9. How else you would be able to support this conference?

10. What should be realistic goal for attendance? 100____150____200_____250_____

11. We would like to have at least 2 NGOs from each of the states of India. Who could you recommend from your state? Provide names and their contact information.

12. Any Suggestion for conference Theme? Our current thought is:

Transforming Development to Alleviate Poverty and Mitigate Climate Change

Looking forward to hearing from you by Thursday October 25.

Regards,

Mohan L. Jain, Ph.D.
Trustee and Founder President,
India Development Coalition of America
www.idc-america.org
m.jain@idc-america.org
"Working Together to Accelerate Sustainable Development in India"
630-303-9592 (O)