As Sai Baba's condition worsens, succession war hots up in Puttaparthi

HYDERABAD: Even as devotees continue to be on edge about the health situation of Sathya Sai Baba, the names of his nephew R J Ratnakar and his caregiver, Satyajit, are emerging as possible persons who may have a bigger say in the Satya Sai Baba Central Trust. 

Sai Baba is the chairman of the trust that controls various activities being carried out in his name. 

Ratnakar (39) controls the cable TV transmission in Puttaparthi and also is a dealer of a Hindustan Petroleum petrol pump in Puttaparthi. Satyajit (33) who joined the Satya Sai school at the age of 5, studied at the Satya Sai Institute of Higher Learning where he completed his MBA standing first in the university. He offered to serve the Baba for his entire life and rose to become his personal caregiver. 

Even as doctors were attending the Baba — his weight has dropped to a mere 32 kg on his 25th day of hospitalization — the family members of the spiritual leader engaged with trust members about who will lead the organization in the post-Sai scenario. 

"Both the trust members and Baba's close family members agreed that Ratnakar and Satyajit could have a greater say in running the trust post-Sai Baba," said a source. 

Ratnakar is said to have some political links, though he himself is not a member of any party. His father Janakiramaiah, younger brother of Baba, was vice president of the Anantapur district Congress Committee from 1989 to 2000. He is the only family member who was made a member of the trust by Baba. 

On the other hand, Satyajit has been serving as personal attendant of Saibaba since 2002 and is reputed to be the only person who can allow access to any outsider to Yajur Mandir, the sanctum of Saibaba in Prasanti Nilayam. 

Some of the devotees of Saibaba and his family members are said to be upset over the fact that the trust is dominated by Tamils. 

"The central trust has as its members K Chakravarthi and R V Srinivasan. Now, Satyajit, also a Tamil Brahmin, is being foisted by them to run the trust affairs," said a family member who did not want to be identified. However, some sources say Saibaba hinted two days before his 85th birthday in November last year that Satyajit should be made a member of the central trust. 

On Thursday, at meeting among trust officials, family members and Andhra Pradesh government representatives Geeta Reddy (major industries minister) and L V Subramanyam (principal secretary, finance), the trust and family members agreed not to air any adverse comment against one another and maintain public decorum.

Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/As-Sai-Babas-condition-worsens-succession-war-hots-up-in-Puttaparthi/articleshow/8052662.cms

Law ministry proposes 20-yr term for babus

NEW DELHI: The law ministry has prepared a 10-point governance reforms agenda which envisages capping a bureaucrat's term to 20 years and seeks reforms in allocation of mining and land rights. 

The presentation made to key UPA functionaries, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, says all new recruitments to central government jobs should be for 20 years and any extension beyond that would depend on the outcome of intense review, the law ministry has said in its presentation on governance reforms. 

It has also suggested several transparent systems for exploitation of natural mineral resources which include a comprehensive survey of all mining blocks, allocation of mining leases through competitive process such as electronic auctions and imposition of export tax to discourage exports of raw minerals. 

The government has been contemplating administrative reforms to improve governance in the country. There has been widespread criticism in recent year about the deterioration in governance and delivery of public services. 

Regarding reforms of the bureaucracy the law ministry says that all public servants shall be subjected to two intensive reviews on completion of 14 years and 20 years of service. It calls for specific tenures to be fixed for each post to ensure objectivity, continuity and autonomy and to avoid arbitrary transfers. 

To curb naxalism, the law ministry has suggested payment of reasonable monthly amount in cash to all below poverty line families in the affected areas. It says mineral processing areas should be set up in these areas and those who lose their land for setting up such units should be made stakeholders either through equity or employment or both. 

"To improve the quality of life and also to mainstream them it is necessary that bulk of the proceeds from the exploitation of natural resources in the tribal areas should be utilized for their welfare," the ministry said in its presentation. 

On urban land management, it calls for a ban on allotment by public agencies through discretionary quotas and has backed immediate survey and preparation of accurate urban property records. 

It also suggests that the Real Estate Regulation Bill being proposed by the Urban Development Ministry should be expedited and all natural resources such as spectrum should be allotted by a competitive transparent process. 

"Because of the pressures of rapid urbanization urban land has become a scarce and valuable commodity. This has encouraged speculation, black marketing and unauthorized land markets," the law ministry says. 

"This has been facilitated by the inadequacies in our urban property records and weak and pliable town planning. This has created a class of land mafia, which has become a source of black money and political clout." 

It says suggests the setting up of a district level ombudsman to ensure that rights of the citizens through the Right to Information Act, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Forest Right Act, Right to Education etc are protected and there is a redressal system at the grass-roots structure.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Law-ministry-proposes-20-yr-term-for-babus/articleshow/8052062.cms

Concerted campaign to scuttle Lokpal Bill: Santosh Hegde

BANGALORE: In less than a fortnight of its formation, the joint committee for drafting the Lokpal Bill is falling apart. Even as civil society representatives Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan are battling attacks on their integrity, another civil society leading light, Justice NSantosh Hegde, is thinking of quitting the panel. 

Stung by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh's references to his ineffectuality in dealing with corruption in Karnataka, Hegde, who is the Karnataka Lokayukta, told TOI: "I'm angry and hurt. I came to know through the media thatDigvijay Singh said I was trying to protect Karnataka CM B S Yeddyurappa on corruption charges. I've tried to be honest in my entire career."

He said he was reconsidering his decision to join the committee, but would take a final decision on Saturday after meeting the other civil society activists. He said there was a concerted campaign to discredit the civil society members of the joint committee. It would appear he was not prepared to face up to the campaign. 

While Hegde seemed to be wilting under the pressure, Anna Hazare himself appeared to be distancing himself from the controversy. He was heard saying on TV that he had nothing to do with the Bhushans. 

Hegde said, "There is a concerted effort to scuttle the Lokpal Bill, which has been pending for 42 years. It's something like former CM HD Kumaraswamy giving me suo motu powers for prosecution but governor Rameshwar Thakur declining sanction. Politicians do not like their conduct to be examined." 

He added, "I am apolitical and committee members from civil society don't belong to any political party. First, they targeted Anna Hazare. When that did not stick, their focus has been on Shanti Bhushan. While Arvind Kejriwal was too smart for them, I am their latest target." 

Clarifying that he did not want to go into the CD controversy relating to the Bhushans, Hegde said the smear campaign was only designed to nix the formulation of a strong anti-corruption law against politicians and bureaucrats. 

"Our concern should not be about how good or bad Shanti Bhushan is but how good or bad the proposed Lokpal Bill will be. The legislation has nothing to do with any panel member's conduct. It aims to create an institution," he said

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Concerted-campaign-to-scuttle-Lokpal-Bill-Santosh-Hegde/articleshow/8051534.cms

Empty stores greet Blackberry Playbook

TORONTO/NEW YORK: Research In Motion'sPlayBook tablet computer launched in almost empty stores on Tuesday, in a far cry from the frenzy that accompanies the debut of anything from rival Apple. 

At an Office Depot in Midtown New York, just three PlayBooks, RIM's answer to the Apple iPad , left the shelves in the 20 minutes after the store opened, a store employee said. 

"It's going to be a tough sell to the consumer," BGC Partner analyst Colin Gillis said of the PlayBook, a sleek but flawed gadget that doesn't yet offer the secure email that is the trademark of RIM's ubiquitous BlackBerry. 

The stakes could not be higher for RIM, whose security-focused BlackBerry once reigned supreme in financial, corporate and government circles. 

RIM has struggled to compete since Apple's iPhone and a slew of devices running Google's Android entered the smartphone fray, and early reviews panned the WiFi-only PlayBook for lacking email and organizer applications -- the gadget needs a BlackBerry to access those. 

In a likely blow to RIM, key U.S. carrier AT&T said it will not support the BlackBerry Bridge function that lets the PlayBook mirror a BlackBerry smartphone. 

AT&T, the second largest U.S. carrier, said it was still testing the secure software that lets existing BlackBerry users get email and other services on the larger PlayBook screen without incurring additional fees. 

"We just got the app for testing. Before we make it available to our customers we want to make sure we deliver the type of experience our customers would expect," AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said. "We have to test this app." 

RIM shares were down 2.2 percent at $53.62 on the Nasdaq. The stock is up some 14 percent since RIM unveiled the PlayBook in September, despite a recent slip from a peak above $70. Apple's shares are up some 17 percent in the period. 

Slow burn likely 

The PlayBook launch was a stark contrast to the frenzy when Apple launched its iPad 2 a month ago and consumers lined up overnight to buy the gadget. 

Apple, which established the tablet market a year ago, sold almost 15 million iPads in 2010; RIM is expected to move 3 million PlayBooks in a similar window in 2011, according to 18 analysts polled by Reuters. 

Analysts say RIM should stay in the hunt with the PlayBook despite a likely slow start, as it overhauls its creaky platform with the QNX operating system it acquired last year. The Canadian company expects large businesses to buy PlayBooks in "the tens of thousands." 

Gartner, a research outfit focused on technology, estimates one in 10 touchscreen devices sold in 2015, or some 30 million, will be powered by QNX, which will likely also find its way onto RIM's smartphones in the next 12 months. 

That would place it third behind Apple at almost half the market and Android at just under 40 percent, leaving little room for Hewlett-Packard's soon-to-launch WebOS tablet and completely ignoring a possible Windows tablet platform. 

Retailers say solid pre-orders suggest there will be pent-up demand for a capable alternative to the iPad. 

"Based on those numbers coming in, we expect it to be successful," said Steve Coffin, operations manager at a Future Shop big box store near Toronto's financial district, dismissing the absence of lines of eager shoppers and highlighting strong pre-orders.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Empty-stores-greet-Blackberry-Playbook/articleshow/8034446.cms

Zarine's still on Sallu's radar!

Once a Salman protege, always a Salman protege. If you thought that he had forgotten Zarine Khanwho he had launched in Veer, you have another thing coming. 

She still reaches out to him whether she needs advice/help. And yes, he is guiding her career and has been instrumental in her meeting with key people in the industry. The girl is now starring in his buddy Sajid Nadiadwala's Housefull 2 and has also done an item number in Salman Khan's Ready. 

Clearly she managed to get these movies only because he is trying to help her find her feet in the industry after her dud-ly debut. Salman can't help but help out these girls. But Zarine is misreading his goodness and is totally fida over him. She has been telling the world how much she adores Salman and how without him she would be a nowhere. Wow, she figured that out! 

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Zarines-still-on-Sallus-radar/articleshow/8025682.cms

'Rani's item number for Housefull 2'

For the first time in her career, Rani Mukerji will do a hot disco number 

Rani Mukerji is certainly having fun. On the one hand, she has delivered a hard-hitting performance in her last film and on the other, she is gearing up for some matkas and jhatkas in the Housefull sequel. 

Yes, for the first time in her career, the actress will be seen in an item song. Even though she is a fantastic dancer, for some reason, she has stayed away from item songs so far in her career. However, she isn't ready to talk about it. A trained Odissi dancer, Rani says, "As of now, this is hearsay and I'd like to leave it at that. I have really not done an item number in my career, but I'm open to it. 

Doing it totally depends on how the song is being presented and if it excites me. I love dancing and I think such special songs have a lot of energy. It's fun to see and shoot." So will this number be choreographed by Vaibhavi Merchant, who is a close friend of Rani and has directed her dance moves in Bunty Aur Babli and Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic? We'll keep you posted. 

Now Dadasaheb Phalke award for the actress 

After collecting every other award in the country for her performance in No One Killed Jessica, Rani will soon add the Dada Saheb Phalke Academy Award to her collection. She confirms, "I'm happy that people have loved my film and my work. I have always let my work do the talking and I guess I have proved to my critics that I'm not over. It's a great feeling to be back winning awards.

The past three years had been challenging because I didn't have box office success behind me. People forget the body of work, and the amount of blood and sweat that you put in for years and write you off, so I'm very happy to get this prestigious award."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/news-interviews/Ranis-item-number-for-Housefull-2/articleshow/8025606.cms

Exports rise 37.5% to a record high of $246bn

NEW DELHI: India's exports rose 37.5% in 2010-11 to touch a record $246 billion as traders targeted new markets and gained from improved sentiments in the US and Europe. Provisional numbers released by the commerce department on Tuesday showed that engineering goods and petroleum helped exporters close the year with nearly 25% higher exports than the $200 billion targeted by the government (see table). 

But oil appeared to be the main culprit when it came to imports, which rose 21.5% to $350.3 billion during the last financial year. Oil imports crossed the $100 billion mark to close the year at $101.7 billion, with the possibility of upward revision. Higher-than-budgeted exports, however, helped the economy deal with a lower than estimated trade deficit of $104.4 billion, which may be revised to $105-110 billion. At the present level, it was lower than $109 billion in 2009-10. 

With trade adding up to nearly $600 billion in 2010-11, it now accounts for nearly 50% of India'sgross domestic product (GDP). While there was all-round cheer and expectation of reaching the $450 billion export target ahead of the 2014 deadline, the government warned that a steep rise during the current financial year might be a tough task. To begin with, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma warned of the possible adverse impact of higher global oil prices, which would push up production costs. 

Commerce secretary Rahul Khullar added growth worries in the US and Europe and problems in Japan to the list. "At the moment, 2011 is not looking very good," he said while adding that the government would try to push for a 25% growth in the current financial year too. In March, exports went up by 43.9% to $29.1 billion, while imports rose 17.3% to 34.7 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $5.6 billion.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Exports-rise-375-to-a-record-high-of-246bn/articleshow/8032392.cms

Another malady, another Pulitzer: Indian Doc's book on cancer wins prize

WASHINGTON: She is an interpreter of maladies. He's the biographer of one of the great maladies of all time. Dr Siddharth Mukherjee, a New Delhi-born oncologist, has been awarded a Pulitzer Prizefor his book "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer," more than a decade afterJhumpa Lahiri won the prize for her similarly-titled collection of short stories. 

While the New York-based Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer for fiction, Dr Mukherjee, 41, who also lives in Big Apple, has been awarded the 2011 prize for general non-fiction. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee described the book, which has won rave reviews, as "an elegant inquiry, at once clinical and personal, into the long history of an insidious disease that, despite treatment breakthroughs, still bedevils medical science." 

Mukherjee joins a growing band of Indian-origin physicians who seem endowed with literary DNA. Among them, Dr Abraham Verghese, who began his writing career in the late 1980s with "My Own Country: A Doctor's story," which centered on the AIDS in the US, Dr Atul Gawande, a staff writer for the New Yorker and most recently author of 'The Checklist Manifesto," and Dr Deepak Chopra, the new age spiritual guru of mind-body dynamics, whose books are numerous. 

Mukherjee, who is currently serving as Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University and is also a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center, began his writing career more recently after an encounter with a patient who had stomach cancer, who told him she was willing to go on fighting, but she needed to know what she was battling. He couldn't point her to a book that could explain cancer, and he began writing as an answer to her query. 

Mukherjee tells the stories of several cancer patients and survivors, while recognizing pioneering researchers, including the breakthrough provided by the Indian scientist, Yellapragada Subba Rao (1895-1948) who synthesized the Folic Acid for the first antifolate clinical trials conducted by Sidney Farber, who initiated the treatment of childhood leukemia. 

Largely unrecognized and forgotten both in India and in the US (where he spent much of his career), Subba Rao is also credited with developing Methotrexate, one of the first cancer chemotherapy agents and still in widespread clinical use. In his book, Mukherjee muses about why Subba Rao, who came from the provincial town of Bhimavaram in Andhra Pradesh, never got his due (his peers won the Nobel), describing him as "a reclusive, nocturnal, heavily accented vegetarian who lived in a one-room apartment downtown, befriended only by other nocturnal recluses." 

Mukherjee came from a slightly different India to a more welcoming US. After schooling in New Delhi (St. Columba's, five years junior to Shah Rukh Khan), he went on to major in biology atStanford University, before winning a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University where he earned a Ph.D. in immunology. After graduation, he attended Harvard Medical School to train as an internist and won an oncology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is married to the artist Sarah Sze, who is herself an accomplished sculptor and a recipient of the 2003 MacArthur Fellows "genius grant." 

Incidentally, Lahiri and Mukherjee are not the first Pulitzer winners of Indian-origin. That honor belongs to Gobind Bihari Lal, a US-based science writer (and contemporary of Subba Rao), who shared the 1937 Pulitzer with three other Americans "for their coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University," -- the same university which denied Subba Rao a regular faculty position forcing him to go work at Lederle Laboratories. 

Although the Pulitzer award carries a modest prize of $10,000, the book will get another publicity bump, adding to the already significant critical acclaim. Published by Simon and Schuster in 2010, it was nominated as a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and made the Top Ten list under various categories in The New York Times, Time magazine and The Oprah magazine. 

Among the finalists Mukherjee pipped in non-fiction category were Nicholas Carr for "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain," and SC Gwynne for "Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History."

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Another-malady-another-Pulitzer-Indian-Docs-book-on-cancer-wins-prize/articleshow/8029070.cms