An unique effort to make Sanskrit a popular language

Guess what's keeping jointly our hi-tech gadget Indian students at respective US universities, pursuing high studies? It's an online Sanskrit magazine. 'Vishvavani' - the magazine is written in Sanskrit and hosted by Indian students, alumni and faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Maryland, Carnegie Mellon University, Caltech, Purdue. This magazine has been published under the banner of Campus Samskritam Network . This uniques magazine is consist of different sectons…it has a webzine called 'subhashitam' (wise saying), Sanskrit crossword puzzle etc. The editor duo of this magazine Sowmya Joisa and Avinash Varna demanded that Vishvavani is the only active online Sanskrit portal.

Blogging history depicts that Apoorvavani is the first online Sanskrit magazine but these days it is inactive.

This particular news remind me my Sanskrit classes in my Seventh and Eighth standards, when I was really bored with this language and had tried my best to get over from this.

Although Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages but the number of online publications is very less, so this effort by those people should deserve a Hats Off!

Bullying at workspace may worse your career than sexual harassment

Bullying at the agency, comprising unfavorable behavior like belittling comments, relentless critique or withholding of resources, is obviously more harmful than intimate molestation, says an original survey. Both bullying and intimate molestation can produce unfavorable job environments and unsound consequences for employees, but the researchers establish that hostility had more serious consequences. Employees who experienced bullying, deficiency of politeness or interpersonal dispute were more possible to stop their jobs, have lower welfare, be less satisfied with their job and have less rewarding relations with their bosses than employees who were sexually harassed, the researchers establish.

The findings of the study were presented Saturday at the Seventh International Conference on Work, Stress and Health, co-sponsored by the American Psychological Association, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Society for Occupational Health Psychology.

M. Sandy Hershcovis of University of Manitoba and Julian Barling of Queen's University, Ontario, who co-authored the study, reviewed 110 studies conducted over 21 years

'As sexual harassment becomes less acceptable in society, organisations may be more attuned to helping victims, who may therefore find it easier to cope,' said Hershcovis.

Union Budget: step mom like behaviour towards Indian IT firms and BPOs

After a money shower on sports, agriculture and mass relaxation in tax we have perhaps overlook the darker side of this union budget. Recently in a news program in CNN IBN 7, it is revealed that many IT firms of India are planning to move Singapore, Malaysia to cut short the spending. After this budget, the professional tax for Indian IT firms is 22-23% whereas in Malaysia its 15-18%, the land property tax is also very high in comparison to Malaysia and Singapore. This is to mention that a lion part of Indian revenue is generated by Software firms and BPOs. Now after this recent development in Union Budget suggests that there will be no exemption in SEZs/SEMs after 2009, so mid-level IT companies are moving to countries like Malaysia, Philippines.

Here, at this point, our finance ministry should ponder over one thing that is this a positive move to impose high taxes on IT companies as it is the most revenue generating industry and also highest job generating industry as well. If this decision persist for a long then again we will see brain drain like early ‘80s when most of our intelligence fled to USA.

Love Story gets maturity under the shades of Indo-Pak friendship

Year 2004 we all watched SRK got release from a Pakistani jail and crossed the Indo-Pak border to meet his love Preity Zinta…billions of Indian movie buffs were just moved with tears with that heart touching scene of Veer Zara. But that time we never knew that this could happen in real life when Kashmir Singh an Indian soldier get release from a Pakistani jail after 35 years of imprisonment and meet his wife at Indo-Pak border. Kashmir Singh was to be an Indian soldier and was arrested in Rawalpindi allegedly for spying in Pakistan on 1973.

Both Kashmir Singh and his wife Paramjit Kaur, who he said should be credited for working tirelessly for his release, profusely thanked Pakistan's caretaker Human Rights Minister Ansar Burney for securing him the freedom he had never thought would be possible one day.

While talking to media he gave full credit to his wife saying 'I am very happy to be back in my country. My wife deserves the credit for trying hard to secure my release and waiting all these years to see this happen,'

Reel life story turned to be a real life story…

Don't be so relaxed with taxes...it may go up from 2009/10

After a juicy union budget from Finance Minister Mr.P.Chidambaram, we all are very happy...as many of us could have manage to get pass with income taxes. But this may be for a fortnight as some financial experts fear to have some adverse effects.

V. Balakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys Technologies, predicted that taxes going upward to 22 percentage in the financial year 2009/10 from about 15 percentage now, if a 10-year taxation vacation ends in March 2009

India's export-driven software services sector had sought the extension of the Software Technology Park of India strategy beyond 2009, particularly for the welfare of tiny amd medium firms, in the federal budget. The proposition did not discover any reference in Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's 2008/09 budget on Friday.

"We will come under full tax regime in 2010," he said. "From 15 percent it will go to 22 percent, the effective tax rate."
The high taxes would get an influence of 2.5-3 percentage for the complete year on the earnings margins of India's second-largest software services exporter, he said.

Say No To Smoking...

Adult smokers in India suffer six to 10 years of living, and smoking still as few as one to seven cigarettes a day almost doubles the danger of death, the best results of India’s million-death survey have revealed. The survey has too thrown upward the first-ever nationally democratic number on the dimension of adults in India who have successfully stop smoke — just 2 per penny, among the lowest in the reality. In 2010, smoke will induce 935,000 deaths, among which 579,000 men and 93,000 women will perish prematurely between the ages of 30 and 69, according to the survey by doctors from India and Canada. In the survey, some 900 area workers organised by the Registrar General of India surveyed grownup deaths during a two-year period (2001-03) in 1. 1 million households across India, probing smoke patterns of 74,000 folk who had died.

Misguided youth

Bangalore police has been arrested an IT employee name Mohammed Yahya Kammakutty with the allegation of having connection with banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The IT capital of India has been shocked by this news. Corps of Detectives (CoD) of Bangalore Police has arrested this 32 year electrical engineer who is also an ex-employee of General Electric (GE) Software.

Kammakutty is born and brought up in a village near Kozhikode in Kerala and he is living in B’lore for last 8 years. Although he was sacked from his last employer GE Software but still he lived in B’lore.

This news rises a serious question: do our young talent and resources are misleading to wrong path of life?! Citizen of Kolkata perhaps well aware of early ‘70s situation when thousands talented Bengali students were misguided to Naxal movement and lost their lives.