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indianexpress: Expanding on its Self Help Group (SHG) programme, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) will soon allow post offices to extend credit to SHGs in Maharashtra, beginning with the six distressed districts of Vidarbha.

General manager at the Pune Regional Office of NABARD, J P Nema said, “NABARD would leverage the fact that traditionally the postman has known each person in the village.”

“The Memorandum of Understanding will be signed in mid-November with the Post Master General in Pune. The selected postal officials will then undergo training with us after which we will start the programme. Eventually this programme will be extending to the entire state,” said Nema.

NABARD picked Vidharba for this pilot project in Maharashtra because of its ‘worst condition’ in the state. “We are beginning with Wardha and the other neglected areas,” said Nema.

He added that the scheme, while not intended as an alternative to banks, would help alleviate distressed people in areas where bank penetration is poor.

Lending credence to this is the September 2005 study of NABARD on the socio- economic impact of SHGs that are at least five years old. The sample selected was from Indapur, Ambegaon, and Baramati blocks in Pune district. While 30 members earned less that Rs 10,000 pre-SHG, 29 of them had moved to higher slabs in the post-SHG phase with the study inferring that the SHG movement had maximum impact on the poorest.

indianexpress: Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s announcement to abolish octroi within the next three months has sent the state Finance and Urban Development departments in a tizzy. They are seeking alternatives to compensate the heavy revenue losses the municipal corporations would face if octroi is abolished.

Plans for an account-based octroi is emerging as a strong alternative but the State government has not decided on it. Municipal commissioner Praveensinh Pardeshi and member of the committee appointed by the State government to look into the matter said Pune would be part of the state plan in which octroi will be done away with in 2009. “The committee has recommended that Pune be part of the plan only in 2009. The recommendation of the committee was for account-based octroi,” said Pardeshi.

Octroi and property tax have been two major revenue sources for municipal corporations. In Pune, octroi collection for 2006-07 was around Rs 648 crore and next financial year the civic body expects Rs 745 crore.

“The committee has recommended account-based octroi instead of the current octroi system,” said Pardeshi. The committee observed that though there would be 10 -15 per cent loss in the account-based system, it will minimise the traders’ harassment and do away with inefficiency and lethargy in the current system.

indianexpress:  The rape and murder of 22-year-old Jyoti Kumari Choudhary on Thursday in the outskirts of Pune by the driver of her pick-up car and his friend has exposed the vulnerability and lack of safety of women employees working in BPO units and call centres.

Pune’s BPO-call centres and IT industry are big, with software export figures touching Rs 15.35 cr in 2006-07. As many as 6,000 cars ferry at least 30,000 people who are part of this boom from their home to workplaces and back.

Senior city police officials say call centres and IT companies have been orally directed time and again to beef up security measures for their staff, an advice that goes unheeded.

When the safety of these employees came up after a similar case in Bangalore last year, the city police drew up a plan to send written copies of safety rules to the BPO companies. However, barring a few meetings on safety and security of the staff, nothing was sent.

DCP Chandrashekhar Daithankar had, on Saturday, said BPO companies were not adhering to safety measures for their women employees. But on Sunday he said the BPO companies had been informed orally and no written directives were issued. “Written directives would be issued either on Monday or Tuesday,” Daithankar said.

indianexpress:  Civil Aviation Minister, Praful Patel said that the aviation sector is the future of the Indian economy and the sector alone will receive investment of Rs six lakh crore in the next 10 years besides creating 30 lakh jobs, helping contribute in a major way to the economy.

He was speaking at a function after inaugurating India’s first mobile simulator by Jeet Aerospace Limited for training pilots. He said: “There was a growing demand for training 1,500 pilots every year due to the phenomenal growth in the civil aviation sector.”

Emphasising that aviation is not a luxury and without connectivity there is no business anywhere Patel said with connectivity even countries such as Dubai and Singapore which have no heritage compared to us can muster several times India’s tourist traffic. He said with major upgradation programmes lined up in the aviation sector, we will be fourth country in the world to go for satellite navigation systems.

Having inaugurated India’s first mobile flight simulator been built by Captain Anil Gadgil and Kavita Gadgil whose son Flight Lieutenant Abhijit lost his life in a MIG crash at Suratgarh six years ago. He said that safety is very important in aviation and the simulator was a bold step by the family.

indianexpress: The informal traditions of local communities engaged in conservation and restoration of bio-diversity should be brought within the formal framework of the Bio-Diversity Act, was the consensus agreed upon at the workshop held in Pune to review the Maharashtra Draft Bio Diversity rules.

“To strengthen the process of conservation, we recommended that the State Bio-Diversity Board take decisions in consultation with the local Bio-Diversity management groups,” said member of Kalpavriksh Shantha Bhushan.

The workshop organised by Vidarbha Nature Conservation Society and Forest Department (Wildlife) and held in Pune over Friday and Saturday is the second such meet in the State after the first one at Nagpur. The combined recommendations will be sent to the Government to bring about changes in the implementation process.

The Bio-Diversity Act was passed in 2002. Each state has been left to draft a set of rules and procedures to implement the Act allowing stakeholders including local environment protection groups and wildlife officers elbow room to strengthen the Act. The chief conservator of forests, wild life Prakash Thosare drafted the rules for Maharashtra.

indianexpress:� Starting your own website just became less daunting. It is no more a cryptic puzzle that only a professional website designer can deliver. Democratising the process is a Pune-based IT company, Infinishare Technologies that has come up with a software to host sites without going through long procedures at the website hosting companies and get an approval. In fact all you need is a personal computer and an Internet connection and the software, Purplenova enables you to host websites, picture albums, multimedia files, documents as well as web services straight from your PC.

Dr Srinivas Deshpande downloaded the software to set up a website on his own. “Since my site is under construction I change it at least 40 times a day but I don’t ever have to worry about uploading those changes. I simply make the updation on my document and it automatically gets updated on the site,” he adds.

Yogesh Dangre who runs a cyber café in Vishrantwadi too installed this software in his café as many of his users wanted to start their websites. Installing this software would mean extra service and business of course. “My computers are turned on the entire day, through this software my customers can easily host websites without uploading any information,” he said.

“The software was conceptualised a year ago and released in August. The basic strength of this software is that it saves you the trouble of uploading information each time and mailing heavy documents separately. So if you wish to share pictures, videos albums, blogs or even keep a track of your accounts, you can simply key it in on the software and send a URL link to the desired receivers,” said Infinishare Technologies vice president (marketing) Milind Pandit. “Even if your monitor is turned off and the machine is on, the information will be available to the users,” he added.

The product stemmed from a basic requirement to put Internet connections to maximum

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msnbc: U.S. engineers have long wanted to fold up an airplane inside a rocket and send it on a mission to cruise through the atmosphere of Mars. They now have a new potential customer for the concept: the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

DARPA started a program earlier this year called Rapid Eye to demonstrate technology that would lead to development of a rocket-delivered unmanned plane to fly high over the site of a natural disaster or other “hot spot.” The idea is to give the U.S. president a first, quick look at the scene, DARPA Director Tony Tether said, following his talk at the Geoint 2007 Symposium in San Antonio.

“We got this idea from NASA,” Tether said.

Engineers from NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and Langley Research Center in Virginia, who are working on competing concepts for “planetary aircraft,” began speaking with DARPA officials earlier this year about adapting some of their concepts for needs on Earth.

cnet: Google is ready to unveil a suite of software for mobile phones based on open-source technology, backed by some of the largest wireless industry companies in the world.

 The company is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to unveil the project, which is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world into a mobile platform code-named Android that’s designed to run on phones, according to sources familiar with Google’s plans. A software development kit for what’s being called “a complete mobile-phone software stack” is believed to be in the works and will be released relatively soon thereafter, the sources said. It’s not exactly clear what kind of software will come as part of that stack, but it’s said to include everything you need to run a phone.

Japanese wireless carriers KDDI and NTT DoCoMo are said to be heavily involved in what will be called the Open Handset Alliance, according to other sources. The rest of the more than 30 other companies involved reads like a who’s-who list of the mobile-computing industry, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, HTC, Intel, Samsung, Motorola, Sprint, and Texas Instruments.

Don’t expect to see a Google phone, or Gphone, on store shelves anytime soon. And in such a large project with so many different players, plans and some details could still change over the weekend. It’s unclear when the final version will be released. Google has repeatedly declined to talk about the Gphone or confirm the Monday event.

bbc: A driverless car called Boss has scooped a $2m prize in a Californian race for robotic vehicles.
 
Boss shared the road with human drivers to simulate traffic

Boss successfully drove around an urban environment, avoiding other cars, and covering 60 miles (85km) in less than six hours, all without any human control.

The modified Chevrolet Tahoe was one of six cars that crossed the finish line, from a pack of 11 robotic vehicles which set off at dawn. The others had to pull out after crashes or other problems.

The race was organised by the US military’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and is designed to develop unmanned vehicles that could be used in battle situations. Automotive manufacturers say the technology could eventually lead to self-driving cars.

Boss navigated around a simulated town, created on a disused US Air Force base in Victorville, in the Californian desert.

It had to deal with single and dual carriageway roads, junctions, buildings and car parks. As well as the 10 other driverless cars, Boss shared the road with more than 30 professional human drivers to simulate busy traffic.