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India's $150 billion IT industry is one of the biggest employment generators, accounting for around 3.5 million white collared jobs in the country. However, the IT industry is experiencing tectonic shifts amid rising competition and increasing trend of automation. A report from US research firm HfS Research says that automation has put to risk 6.4 lakh low-skilled jobs - or nearly one in five jobs - in India's IT and BPO sector in next five years. At biggest risks are more routine or repetitive tasks in the IT sector. Automation is already making its presence felt in the Indian IT...

India on Monday forecast that annual economic growth would accelerate to 7.4 per cent in the year ending in March after its statisticians changed the way they measure Asia's third-largest economy. The new estimate is sharply higher than the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) growth projection of around 5.5 per cent under the old method as well as a revised 6.9 per cent growth a year earlier.

NEW DELHI: India is the strictest when it comes to tardiness as 42 per cent of employers in the country seem to have fired an employee for being late, the highest in the world, says a CareerBuilder survey. According to the survey, 42 per cent of employers in India have fired an employee for being late and among the nine surveyed countries. Brazil came in second, a distance 16 per cent behind, where 26 per cent of of employers have fired a staff for coming late, followed by France and Russia jointly at the third place (22 per cent). Meanwhile,...

Due to the buying spree in rural land, how much farmland has India lost? According to the ministry of agriculture, almost none. It says India lost 16,000 sq km, or 0.8% of her gross cropped area, in the 10-year period to 2010-11. The National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), in fact, says land under cultivation stayed constant in the last 10 years. Another number comes from the Census Department, which says area under urban use jumped by 24,000 sq km during the same period. Much of this would have been at the expense of rural land. "As cities grow, agricultural area...

NEW DELHI: Inflation is forecast to have risen to uncomfortable levels for policymakers in October due to stubbornly high food prices, adding to the pressure for further interest rate rises despite slowing economic growth. Data on Tuesday is forecast to show annual consumer inflation at 9.9 percent in October, up slightly from September, and figures on Friday are expected to show wholesale inflation running at an eight-month high of 6.90 percent, according to Reuters polls of economists. In a more positive sign, factory output is forecast to have risen 3.5 percent in September from a year earlier, much faster than...

KOLKATA: This may be music to Chidambaram's ears. The finance minister's efforts to curb gold imports are expected to bring down inflow of gold from overseas in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2013 by 71.23 per cent vis-a-vis last year. The country had imported 255 tonne during Q4 of calendar year 2012. The fourth quarter is the time of the year when gold demand increases in India. Bullion traders and jewellers say that India had imported only 23 tonne of gold in October for Dhanteras, when the entire country enters into a major gold buying spree. They say imports...

For 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. ... And the next place to wander to is Mars. - Carl Sagan (1943-1996), cosmologist, New York, 1976. Asia's first Mars mission took off on November 5 from India's south-east coast, in a blaze of fire, vapor and humanity's happily soaring aspirations in outer space. The Mars craft-loaded rocket, blasting off like a US$72 million version of Diwali festival fireworks, made India the third country to attempt a Mars visit - after the United States and Russia. The European Space Agency has also targeted the red planet. The 1,340-kilogram Mars...

India is on the verge of implementing an internal email policy for official communications in order to avoid using American-based web services that have been compromised by the National Security Agency. In December, India will unveil a new internal policy devised to avoid major email service providers - such as Gmail, Yahoo! or Outlook.com - that house their servers in the United States. A communications official confirmed Tuesday that the plan is near implementation, The Times of India reported. "Email policy of the government of India, as this policy will be called, is almost ready and we are taking views...

INDIA: Indians are warming up to the idea of buying their liquor online. The first website to offer the service started about six months ago. Since then, new liquor websites have come online at a rate of about one a month. As of October, there are more than five websites in India that sell liquor online. Their customers are mostly young adults, and women are in particularly high spirits about the service. Online portals offer a range of imported drinks. Businessman Sandeep Khullar, who is a social drinker, said: "It is a very welcome thing. Earlier, you have to stand...

Indian inflation unexpectedly accelerated to a seven-month high in September, adding to the case for a further increase in the benchmark interest rate. The wholesale-price index rose 6.46 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 6.1 percent advance in August, the Commerce Ministry said in New Delhi on Monday. The median of 33 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey was for a 6 percent climb. Gov. Raghuram Rajan, who took over at the Reserve Bank of India last month, raised the repurchase rate to 7.5 percent after vowing to tame inflation, which was almost 10 percent in September based...

At least 90 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in a stampede in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh Sunday, a senior police official said. "The death toll has risen to 91 and 10 others are in a critical condition," Deputy Inspector General of Police D.K. Arya told the media. "The incident happened at a temple in the state's Datia district, where some 500,000 devotees gathered for a religious festival," he said. He had earlier put the death toll at between 50 and 60. Quoting eye-witnesses, some local TV channels reported that the stampede broke out...

BANGALORE - India's current account deficit is arguably on the mend now. The same cannot be said about the country's fiscal deficit. The government, though, seems to believe otherwise as it reiterated its borrowing plan for the current financial year, which ends in March 2014. The government said it will stick to its overall borrowing target for the fiscal year of 5.79 trillion rupees (US$93 billion) as it announced plans to borrow 2.35 trillion rupees during the second half. What this means is that the government believes that it will be able to stick to its overall fiscal deficit target...

NEW DELHI – Indian student Appu Sharma was going to apply to a U.S. university to study economics but with the rupee on the ropes, he’s set his sights closer to home. “I’ll do my BA here and maybe my postgrad abroad if the rupee improves — my family can’t afford to pay foreign fees now,” the 17-year-old New Delhi Class 12 student said. With the currency hovering at record lows of nearly 69 rupees to the dollar and seen heading south, the estimated 300-million-strong middle-class are being forced to rethink many of their plans. Holidays abroad are being jettisoned...

MUMBAI, Aug 28 -- India’s rupee plummeted the most in two decades to a record as a surge in oil prices threatened to worsen the current account and push the economy toward its biggest crisis since 1991. Bonds fell. The US, France and the UK are considering limited military action against Syria after concluding the regime used chemical weapons against civilians, fanning concern unrest will disrupt Middle East oil supplies. The tension has worsened a rout that’s seen global funds pull US$8.7 billion (RM29.01 billion) from local debt since end-May on bets the Federal Reserve will pare stimulus. A 7.4...

An Indian navy submarine has caught fire after an explosion and sunk at a port in Mumbai, according to media reports. The Associated Press quoted Indian Navy spokesman Narendra Vispute as saying efforts were being made to ascertain the safety of about 18 navy personnel on the diesel-powered submarine. He said an explosion on the submarine caused a major fire. The cause is being investigated.

NEW DELHI- The Indian economy is likely to have grown at a mere 5% in the financial year that ended in March, the lowest growth rate in a decade; investments are falling and the fault lines of Indian politics lie fully exposed. With the government embroiled in a numerous corruption cases, leading to a sense of policy paralysis gripping the economy, business confidence has been on the wane. India's shinning story of a decade back has lost plenty of sheen of late due to growing frustration at a rising governance deficit. The very fact that the Indian economy is expected...

"Amidst crisis in the global financial markets, India on Friday reported a sharp drop in industrial growth to 1.3 per cent in August from a high of 10.9 a year-ago." More to see: http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/oct/10bcrisis5.htm