17th Sept, 2009 – HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCL), a leading global IT services provider, entered into a five year Transformational IT Infrastructure Management engagement with Oncor to seamlessly connect and support Oncor corporate functions, grid management operations and numerous community- based field service centers located throughout Oncor’s service area.

Oncor operates the largest electric distribution and transmission system in Texas, delivering power to more than 3 million homes and businesses through approximately 117,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines. “With this new contract, HCL will be investing in both the utilities sector and in Texas, through the development of a worldwide Utilities Center of Expertise in Dallas.

The Center will research and develop technologies to help transform the way energy is generated, marketed and delivered to customers around the world, which fits Oncor’s leadership in advanced Smart Grid technology deployment,” said R Srikrishna, Senior Vice President and Head – Global Sales, HCL Infrastructure Services Division (HCL ISD).

HCL’s scope of work (SoW) will cover end user computing (service desk, desk-side services) for approximately 3,600 employees; datacenter and network Services, business continuity /disaster recovery and consulting services supporting Oncor’s IT infrastructure architecture and platform modernization projects. “Our client services delivery model utilizes local personnel for on-site support, which contributes to local job base stability,” said Todd Crandall, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Energy and Utilities Sector, HCL Axon. “This engagement clearly underlines our commitment and dedicated focus in Texas.”

Now this is interesting they are also utilizing local personnel and following the govt. guidelines as the part of Obama’s initiative to save jobs and reducing the loss of jobs due to off-shoring – great going. I believe it is necessary – Everything can’t be remote!

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The Chennai Agriculture Department has created a record by producing more than 10 tonnes of paddy per hectare in select pockets in the State by adopting the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) technique. The average productivity in the State is 4 to 5 tonnes per hectare. The maximum yield was achieved by a farmer in Tiruvannamalai district, who had harvested 14.27 tonnes per hectare and by another farmer in Kallakurichi in Villupuram district whose per hectare yield was 13.38 tonnes.

I was happy to notice, at least some universities are actually progressed on the practical front, rather than disillusioning students with theoretical-memory-intensive-exhaustive-exam

s.

This, according to department officials … claimed that it was a phenomenal record as the average productivity was less than 3 tonnes in the country…Continuous monitoring by the officials and agriculture scientists of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) and the cooperation of the farmers resulted in the high yield …technique had proved to enhance rice productivity by 30 to 40 %per cent with comparatively less water, the is taking steps to popularize it for large-scale adoption.

Well, I was searching through sites and other places for the theory of this efficient technique when I landed here. One can find wealth of resources here. One of being the presentation down below. I’ve just uploaded the pdf version as is, so that people can view the presentation right away. Its a very enlightening presentation, gives a very good view point of what SRI is, and focus on statistics and yield improvement following the practice.

The SRI technique requires considerably less amount of following than that would have taken in the conventional methods -

• Seeds,
• Fertilizers,
• Labour,
• Water
• Nursery area.

On an average, a farmer could save at least Rs.1,600 per hectare by adopting the technique, the officials said.

Sources:

• The Hindu (Google) <|> HinduOnNet (Google)
• System of Rice Intensification <|> SRI, India Specific
• SRI India

I find The Hindu only one country newspaper which is keeping a track of all the developments in Indian agriculture at least SRI very-very closely. Just final closing words, I went to the Department of Agriculture, Andhra Pradesh Website and took some stats from there -

• Achievement of Action Plan 2007-08
  • Organized 3,557 demonstrations on SRI @ 100 ha area per demonstration
• Action Plan 2008-09
  • Demonstration on 0.4 Ha of Land area, each costing Rs. 3000/- per demonstrations.
  • It is planned to organize 1680 demonstrations with an estimated cost of Rs. 50.40 lakhs during the eleventh plan period.

I also went to the Tamil Nadu’s State Agriculture Website, but didn’t find an English version (that’s one), the other being no published document called ‘action plan‘. The best of all, the State Agricultural departmental webiste is not even listed on the department wise list of state website.

I think all the government have short-comings here or there! Anyways, I’m tired of the websites being created by NIC. They are worst ever Govt. websites in the whole damn world. I’ve an article kept in the draft mode for quite long time focused on technical shortcoming HOLES in NIC run websites, I will soon publish it.

Namaskaar for now!

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