Internationalized domain name Research at CDAC

An awareness raising national workshop on IDNs for Indian languages was organized on February 10, 2010 at New Delhi by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), under the aegis of Department of IT, Ministry of Communications and IT.
What is Internationalized domain name?
An internationalized domain name (IDN) is an Internet domain name which contains at least one label in the software application (such as browsers) containing a language specific alphabets. Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System as ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange ) strings.

Internationalized domain name & CDAC:
To ensure that India and Indian languages have their rightful place in this age of Information Technology (IT) with the entire Globe being integrated into a web-linked village with the knowledge as the sole differentiator, development of convivial Access Technology , CDAC GIST (Graphics and Intelligence based Script Technology) undertook research and study of various IDN related RFCs and their applicability vis-à-vis Indian Languages.

Objectives:

1. Primarily to ensure that a user can create and access URL’s in his own language and
2. Closely associated with the above, to ensure that the average user who is little aware of spoofing or phishing or pharming does not suffer financial loss or identity loss.
3. Thus an average user doesn't care about a seemingly trivial URL string unless he comes across it inadvertently and gets robbed. For him, वीत्त.भारत and.वीत.भारत look the same.
4. By clicking on the worng URL, (s)he could be phished or pharmed.

To prevent such spoofing and phishing attacks in IL scenario, a careful study of some scripts is done by CDAC GIST, especially in the area of homographs: characters and their combinations which look alike but are different in reality, as in the example given above..

The research is focused on Domain Names in Indian languages for Hindi, Gujarati, Oriya, Urdu, Gurumukhi etc. and includes the following :

NamePrep and StringPrep Profile - RFC-3492
PunyCode: Bootstring encoding - RFC-3454

Variant tables accompanied by the normalization tables were prepared which would help reducing vulnerability of an IDN against homograph attacks.

A single all script font (on the line of Sakal Bharati font) is also developed. In this font a special care of code-point wise different but visually similar characters is taken to help them being distinguished visually in the address bar of a browser.

Easy floating keyboards well equipped with the IDN restrictions are also being developed for inputting the URL at the Registry software for each language

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Public Health Foundation of India

Public Health Foundation of India is a response to redress the limited institutional capacity in India for strengthening training, research and policy development in the area of Public Health. PHFI is an autonomously governed public private partnership initiative launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006. The Foundation is managed by a fully empowered, independent, governing board that has representatives from multiple constituencies. The Board includes senior government officials, eminent Indian and international academic and scientific leaders, civil society representatives and corporate leaders.

In the series of Indian Institute of Public Health, the institutes were established in Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, Shillong and Delhi which shall be made operational in this year. Besides Centre of Excellence for Chronic Diseases at IIPH Delhi will augment PHFI’s capacity for research in chronic diseases in India.

The next in the series is world-class institute of Public Health which will be set up at Kumarabasta village near Bhubhneshwar, which shall be completed by 2012. A memorandum in this regard is signed by Health and Family welfare Secretary Anu Garg and PHFI president K Srinath Reddy. Please note that IIPH had already signed an MoU to establish eight institutes of Public health in different parts of the country.

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Rural Business Hubs

Rural Business Hubs is an initiative by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India and the Confederation of Indian Industry started in 2007.

Rural Business Hubs is a first-of-its-kind Public, Private and Panchayat Partnership which aims to foster and permeate economic growth into and for rural India.
The concept of Rural Business Hubs is based upon synnergically link rural products, skills and produces with the marketing and professional skills of the industry to overcome the impending factors which hinder economic growth from reaching rural India. Such impediments are Poor market linkages , weak Infrastructure , Fragmented farms and farming , Many layers of intermediaries , Lack of standardisation and grading etc.
Current Situation:
Till February 2010, Government has identified 35 districts for Rural Business Hubs intervention programme in consultation with State Governments. So far 26 district RBH workshops have been organised and champion products identified. In addition, financial assistance to 49 projects throughout the country has been extended for establishment of RBH.

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Oil Price Reforms: Kirit S. Parikh Committee Recomendations

Kirit S. Parikh, Chairman, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe), presented a report of the Expert Group on A Viable and Sustainable System of Pricing of Petroleum Products on February 4, 2010.

Who is Kirit S Parikh?
Dr. Kirit S. Parikh is Founder Director of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. He has also served as Senior Economic Advisor to United Nations Development Programme from October 1997 to September 1998. He has been a member of the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) of the Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and had been a member of EAC of Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, V.P.Singh, Chandra Shekhar and P.V. Narasimha Rao. He has also been member of Planning Commission.

He has been the editor of "India Development Reports" which provide a non-governmental assessment of India's development and policy options and member of numerous other boards. He is an author and co author of 15 books in the areas of planning, water resource management, appropriate technology for housing, optimum requirement for fertilizers, energy systems, national and international food policies, trade policies, general equilibrium modeling and natural resources accounting.

When this committee was Constituted?To advise on a viable and sustainable system of pricing petroleum products the establishment of a committee was announced by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee while presenting Budget 2009-10 on July 6, 2009. Dr. Parikh was appointed the chairman of this panel in August 2009.
The committee’s other members were: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations chairperson Isher Judge Ahluwalia, National Council of Applied Economic Research director-general Suman K Bery, Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla and Petroleum Secretary S. Sundareshan.

What are Key Recommendations?

1. Domestic petroleum product prices have to reflect that of international prices. The government should allow pass-through of international oil prices to domestic users. This will enable the public sector OMCs and upstream oil companies to remain financially stable and solvent.
2. There is no justification for continuance of subsidy for diesel and petrol and as such their prices should be raised by Rs 2.33 per litre and Rs 4.72 per litre respectively
3. An additional excise duty of Rs 80,000 per vehicle should be levied on diesel car owners
4. Smartcards should be used to provide subsidy to the target/needy group on kerosene and 14.2 LPG cylinders. Subsidy on LPG cylinders should be discontinued immediately except for the below the poverty line households.
5. The price of kerosene should be increased by Rs 6 per litre and that of LPG by Rs 100 per cylinder. The kerosene price increase should be in line with the nominal growth in agricultural GDP. LPG price should be increased in line with per capita income.
6. The government’s policy of incurring a cost of Rs 1.42 lakh crore towards compensating the OMCs for the under recoveries is a complete failure. The compensation burden has reached a level of 25 per cent of total revenue receipts in 2008-09, which is totally unviable and perilous to the long-term health of the economy.

The committee suggested that LPG and kerosene prices could be raised every year in step with the growth in per capital agricultural GDP at nominal rates and per capita income respectively. Freeing petrol and diesel prices would not only promote competition but also lead to more equitable sharing of inflation burden, affecting mostly people who can pay.

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Devendra Pandey Committee on Forest Rights Act

Kirit S. Parikh, Chairman, Integrated Research and Action for Development (IRADe), presented a report of the Expert Group on A Viable and Sustainable System of Pricing of Petroleum Products on February 4, 2010.

Who is Kirit S Parikh?
Dr. Kirit S. Parikh is Founder Director of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. He has also served as Senior Economic Advisor to United Nations Development Programme from October 1997 to September 1998. He has been a member of the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) of the Prime Minister of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and had been a member of EAC of Prime Ministers Rajiv Gandhi, V.P.Singh, Chandra Shekhar and P.V. Narasimha Rao. He has also been member of Planning Commission.

He has been the editor of "India Development Reports" which provide a non-governmental assessment of India's development and policy options and member of numerous other boards. He is an author and co author of 15 books in the areas of planning, water resource management, appropriate technology for housing, optimum requirement for fertilizers, energy systems, national and international food policies, trade policies, general equilibrium modeling and natural resources accounting.

When this committee was Constituted?To advise on a viable and sustainable system of pricing petroleum products the establishment of a committee was announced by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee while presenting Budget 2009-10 on July 6, 2009. Dr. Parikh was appointed the chairman of this panel in August 2009.
The committee’s other members were: Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations chairperson Isher Judge Ahluwalia, National Council of Applied Economic Research director-general Suman K Bery, Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla and Petroleum Secretary S. Sundareshan.

What are Key Recommendations?

1. Domestic petroleum product prices have to reflect that of international prices. The government should allow pass-through of international oil prices to domestic users. This will enable the public sector OMCs and upstream oil companies to remain financially stable and solvent.
2. There is no justification for continuance of subsidy for diesel and petrol and as such their prices should be raised by Rs 2.33 per litre and Rs 4.72 per litre respectively
3. An additional excise duty of Rs 80,000 per vehicle should be levied on diesel car owners
4. Smartcards should be used to provide subsidy to the target/needy group on kerosene and 14.2 LPG cylinders. Subsidy on LPG cylinders should be discontinued immediately except for the below the poverty line households.
5. The price of kerosene should be increased by Rs 6 per litre and that of LPG by Rs 100 per cylinder. The kerosene price increase should be in line with the nominal growth in agricultural GDP. LPG price should be increased in line with per capita income.
6. The government’s policy of incurring a cost of Rs 1.42 lakh crore towards compensating the OMCs for the under recoveries is a complete failure. The compensation burden has reached a level of 25 per cent of total revenue receipts in 2008-09, which is totally unviable and perilous to the long-term health of the economy.

The committee suggested that LPG and kerosene prices could be raised every year in step with the growth in per capital agricultural GDP at nominal rates and per capita income respectively. Freeing petrol and diesel prices would not only promote competition but also lead to more equitable sharing of inflation burden, affecting mostly people who can pay.

read more...