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Delhi @ a glance

Indian Nino may save the Monsoons

The El Nino phenomenon, which has often disrupted rainfall in India, has intensified to a level that exceeds its record set in 1997, but meteorologists are hopeful that a rain-boosting phenomenon over the Indian Ocean will help boost rainfall in the country throughout July .
They also point out that a similar development had helped neutralise the impact of El Nino in 1997, ensuring normal monsoon that year. The widely-respected Australian weather office said that the dreaded El Nino is strengthening further and would continue in the second half of the year.
“The 2015 El Niño continues to strengthen. Central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean sea surface temperature indices are more than 1 °C above average for the sixth consecutive week,“ it said, adding that models indicate further consolidation is likely.
At the same time, three out of five international models have suggested that the rain-boosting Indian Ocean Dipole, or IOD, is turning positive. IOD refers to differences in temperature between the western and eastern part of the Indian Ocean. A `positive' IOD period, which indicates warmer water in western Indian Ocean or the Arabian Sea, tend to boost the monsoon. Weathermen say it strengthened the monsoon in 2006.
DS Pai, head of long-range forecasting at the India Meteorological Department, said the IOD was currently neutral in the positive side.“As per our forecast, the current warm neutral IOD conditions over Indian Ocean are likely to continue throughout the summer and till the end of the year. A positive IOD in the September-November season will make no impact on the monsoon rains,“ he said.
He said the moderate El Nino conditions currently prevailing are likely to reach moderate to strong level during the monsoon season and continue till early part of the next year.
International forecasters have been almost unanimous in issuing warnings that El Nino, associated with warmer temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, will disrupt global rainfall patterns, which can parch parts of Asia and Australia, and trigger storms and floods in other regions.
India's worst drought in 37 years in 2009 took place in an El Nino year.Food prices shot up by an annual 20%, leading to persistently high inflation for years. This year, the national weather office has forecasted a 12% deficiency in the monsoon, but private forecaster Skymet has sharply differed and predicted normal rainfall. Rainfall so far in June has been more than 20% in excess.

2 new IITs to open doors from August

IIT aspirants will now have two more campuses to seek admissions this year. IIT campuses at Tirupati and Palakkad will be operational from August first week, offering 240 new seats in total. With the first round of counselling beginning on Thursday , students can opt for the two new IITs while filling in their choices. Among the five IITs that were proposed to be set-up in Jammu, Chattisgarh, Goa, Tirupati and Palakkad this year, these two new campuses will be the first to be operational. They will be mentored by IIT Madras. Each of these campuses will offer 120 students. With the additional seats, a total of 10,006 IIT seats are up or grabs this session.
IIT-M director Bhaskar Ramamurthi, who will be the mentor director for the two new IITs, said the new campuses will offer B.Tech courses in four core branches of civil, computer science, electrical and mechanical engineering with 30 seats allotted for each branch.Senior faculty members P B Sunil Kumar and K N Sathyanarayana will be the professors-in-charge for IIT-Palakkad and IIT-Tirupati respectively, until new directors are appointed.While IIT-Palakkad will open on August 3, the Tirupati campus will be functional from August 5. “Students need not be apprehensive about the quality of the two new IITs as we have worked extensively for the past 10 months to ensure that they will be comparable to all other existing IITs,“ said Ramamurthi. About 12 faculty members will be teaching in each campus which will include visiting professors from IIT-M.
Current and retired IIT professors will be part of the faculty in the new IITs. The director said there were several experienced retired IIT professors willing to teach at the new campuses. Apart from faculty , other aspects such as adequate hostel capacity , well-equipped laboratories and infrastructure have been given attention, he said. Both the IITs will be functional in he temporary campuses for about four years until the permanent campuses spanning across 500 acres are ready . The IIT-Palakkad temporary campus is located in the Ahalia Integrated Campus in Kozhippara while the IIT-Tirupati is situated on the Tirupati-Renigunta Road. Professor in-charge of IIT-Tirupati, K N Sathyanarayana, said they were hoping to develop on the aspect of smart infrastructure which the ministry of human resources department considers as one of the thrust areas of the IITs.

Dholera Airport update

The work on much awaited international airport at Dholera, a major transport link for the industries coming up in the 920 sq km Dholera special investment region (SIR), is likely to begin in the third quarter of 2015-16.
The Airport Authority of India (AAI) has approached Union ministry for environment and forests (MoEF) for final environmental clearance. The public hearing for the proposed airport, some 20 kms from the port town of Dholera in the Gulf of Cambay , was completed in April with no major objections raised by the local villagers.
The airport was the dream project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat. It is being touted as the second international airport in Gujarat, about 100-km from state's financial hub Ahmedabad.
The state government has formed Dholera International Airport Company Ltd (DIACL) as a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for development of the airport. “The airport will be developed alongside the activation area of the SIR spread in 22-km radius.The development of the SIR and the airport complement each other,“ said Amit Chavda, managing director, (DIACL).
“We have completed all formalities from our side and sought environment clearance from the centre. Since there were no major objection to the project we hope to get clearance soon,“ he added.
The airport will come up on 1,426 hectares of land near village Navagam in Dholera block. DIACL has also applied for in-principle approval from the ministry of civil aviation for the airport project supported by Japan International Cooperation Agency .
The airport also assumes significance as it will come up in Dholera SIR (DSIR) which is node in Gujarat for the proposed Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) between Delhi and Mumbai covering a total length of 1,483-km and passing through six states.
DSIR is being developed by Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Limited (DMICDC).

Netflix plans India entry

After Singapore-based on-demand internet video provider Hooq launched operations here, the pioneer of internet TV , US-based Netflix, has firmed up plans to enter India by 2016. This has sent domestic DTH players into a tizzy with some of the major ones chalking out strategies to diversify beyond television. On the cards are iconic shows including Buniyaad, Nukkad and Malgudi Days on various mobile devices across iOS and Android.
Netflix is one of the leading on-demand internet streaming media companies in the world with around 62 million subscribers. More than 40 million of those users are in the US, a market which has become crowded with HBO Now, Sling TV and Sony entering the content streaming segment. Even Hooq, which lets a user stream and download movies and TV shows in India for Rs 199 per month, is a joint venture between SingTel, Warner Bros and Sony Pictures Television.
With 4G about to become a nationwide reality soon, it's no surprise that Netflix wants to enter the market, which is leading the world in mobile internet user growth. According to a recent report by one of Silicon Valley's leading VC firms Kleiner Perkins, India leads the world's internet user growth across all platforms. A Tata Sky spokesperson said that the Mumbai-based company is in talks with various content providers. Content could be in the form of television shows or movies that would be made available across iOS and Android platforms for a fee.
There are several video-on demand players present here including Hotstar, Ogle, Big Flix and Spuul but satisfying customer service has been limited due to scratchy internet connections.

Cabinet gives nod to 6 more IIMs

The Cabinet approved setting up of six more Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), one each in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and poll-bound Bihar.
The premier management institutes will come up in Bodh Gaya, Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Amritsar, Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh and Sambalpur in Odisha, Union telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. With the new institutes, the number of IIMs will go up to 19.
“These new IIMs will begin functioning from assigned temporary campuses and shift to their permanent sites after construction of their campuses is completed,“ Prasad said.He added that the government intends to commence the first academic session of the six new institutes from 2015-16.
Each IIM will start with 140 students in post-graduate programme courses. The minister said the annual intake will increase to 560 students each year by the end of seven years.
Admission to the postgraduate programme in management, which will be the flagship programme of these institutions, will be through the Common Admis sion Test (CAT) being conducted by the IIMs.
At present, there are IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow, Kozhikode, Indore, Shillong, Tiruchirappalli, Raipur, Udaipur, Rohtak, Ranchi and Kashipur.
During his budget speech last year, finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced Jammu as one of the possible venues for the new IIMs, but it has been dropped.