World Bank rates India as top receiver of remittances in 07

India is the top receiver of remittances from abroad in 2007, followed by China and Mexico, according to the World Bank's Migration and Remittances Fact book 2008, released here Wednesday.

The top five recipients of migrant remittances in 2007 were India ($27 billion), China ($25.7 billion), Mexico ($25 billion), the Philippines ($17 billion) and France ($12.5 billion), according to the fact book.

For 2007, recorded remittances flows worldwide were estimated at $318 billion, of which $240 billion went to developing countries. These flows do not include informal channels, which would significantly enlarge the volume of remittances if they were recorded.

"In many developing countries, remittances provide a life line for the poor," said Dilip Ratha, a senior economist, and author of the fact book with Zhimei Xu.

"They are often an essential source of foreign exchange and a stabilizing force for the economy in turbulent times."
http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14626704

Tata's Next Move: A WiMax Breakthrough in India

Tata Communications unveils an ambitious plan to become a global leader in wireless broadband by launching the world's largest commercial network.

AFP

The Tata logo on a car in Mumbai, India.

India is about to become the frontier for high-speed, mobile Internet connections. On Mar. 4, India's Tata Communications , an emerging broadband player, announced the countrywide rollout of a commercial WiMax network, the largest anywhere in the world of the high-speed, wireless broadband technology.

Already 10 Indian cities and 5,000 retail and business customers use the product, and by next year Tata will offer service in 115 cities nationwide. The folks at Tata can hardly contain their excitement. "WiMax is not experimental, it's oven-hot," says Tata's Prateek Pashine, in charge of the company's broadband and retail business.

Of course WiMax is not new. Most everyone in the industry has been talking about it for years. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has been propagating its virtues in pilot projects across the world, including India and Africa.

Powered by Intel Chips

Sprint will be rolling out a WiMax network in Washington next month, and in other US cities next year. Until now the most advanced use of WiMax has been in Japan and Korea, where Japanese carrier KDDI and Korea Telecom offer extensive WiMax networks. However the Japanese and Korean services are not available nationwide -- KDDI will have its major rollout only in 2009 -- and most people use them as supplements to the wired services.

It's in emerging economies like India, where there is little connectivity and where mobile usage is soaring because of the difficulty in getting broadband wires to homes and offices, that WiMax is likely to see its full potential as a commercially viable technology. Intel, whose silicon chips power WiMax, has been pushing for this technology for some years and its executives are practically salivating at the thought of the successful rollout in India. "The more countries and telcos that get behind this technology the better," says R. Sivakumar, chief executive of Intel South Asia. Predicting that the new technology will make other types of Internet access obsolete, he boasts "Tata will set the cat among the pigeons."

Tata Communications has been working on setting this up for a couple of years, and successfully completed field trials last December. It has used the technology from Telsima, a Sunnyvale, California maker of WiMax base-stations and the leading WiMax tech provider in the world. For now, the technology will be restricted to fixed wireless, but Tata plans to make it mobile by midyear. The company has invested about $100 million in the project (€64 million), which will increase to $500 million over the next four years as it begins to near its goal of having 50 million subscribers in India.

Global tech analysts are will be watching carefully. Though WiMax is prevalent in Korea, the Korean service is a slightly different version, says Bertrand Bidaud, a communications analyst with Gartner in Singapore. It's a Korea-specific pre-WiMax technology called WiBRO.

But the Indian market is where the conditions for a WiMax deployment are the best, he says, because of limited fixed lines. That means Tata has fewer hurdles to overcome. And as WiMax scales up fast, it will give service providers greater flexibility and costs will drop equally rapidly. "If it doesn't succeed in India, it will be difficult [for it to succeed] anywhere else, and Bharti, Tata has been virtually asleep, with a limited subscriber base for its limited product. In fact, even with as many as seven broadband providers in the market, the total Indian subscriber base is just 3.2 million and there is no clear market leader. But with the WiMax rollout Tata can gain a leadership position and add "a few thousand subscribers a day," says Alok Sharma, chief executive of Telsima. Tata is, of course, going for the heavy-billing corporate customer -- a target audience that is beginning to make big investments in technology.

Temple Service via WiMax

But also important is the ordinary Indian retail customer who can watch movies via WiMax and enjoy Tata's other unique offerings. For instance, users can take in an early morning worship service at the famous Balaji temple in South India. The temple permitted Tata to install cameras so that Hindu devotees from around the world could watch the proceedings in the temple around the clock. To get connected initially, users will simply have to go to a store, buy a router, install it, and then they become instantly connected. It will be as easy as buying apples, Tata executives promise.

The Tata rollout is a chance for India to become cutting-edge in mobile Internet services, say WiMax boosters. For India, which "always used last year's fashion to dress itself up," says Sharma, it is a chance to launch a brand new. fourth-generation technology that the world can follow. "India is becoming the knowledge center of the world; it should take the lead in this," he adds.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,541215,00.html

Researchers? Only 156 per million in India

India lags behind China in spending on research and development work as well as number of scientific researchers, Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

Replying to supplementaries during Question Hour, he said the number of core researchers in India was about 1.5 lakh as compared to China's 8-10 lakh.

Number of persons doing research and development in Scandinavian countries is 7,000 per million of population and 4,700 per million of population in US. In India, there are 156 researchers per million of population.

"This is a very big issue," he said. R&D spending as percentage of GDP in India is only 0.8 per cent as compared to China's 1.23. Developed countries have R&D expenditure of upto 3 per cent of GDP. Of the 0.8 per cent expenditure in India, 80 per cent is by public sector, while the private sector share is only 20 per cent.

In China and US, the public sector share is only 30 per cent each, while in Japan it is only 18 per cent. Private sector component in R&D will have to increase, he said adding the Government had given a slew of tax incentives on R&D spend in sectors like pharma and electronics.

Sibal said to increase number of researchers in the country, university system will have to be strengthened by expanding and upgrading infrastructure as presently R&D quality in university is negligible.

The XIth Plan allocations for Scientific Departments including Departments of Science and Technology and Atomic Energy, has been increased three folds to Rs 75,304 crore during the XIth Plan (2007-2012) as compared to Rs 25,301.35 crore of Xth Plan Period, he said.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/12rnd.htm

Female condom for Rs 5 in India

A five-rupee female condom (FC) will now spearhead India's fight to control HIV spread among women.

Under the first phase, the National AIDS Control Organisation (Naco) is procuring 15 lakh female condoms from UK's Female Health Company (FHC), which will be doled out to sex workers and housewives in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal over the next 8 months. A decision on a countrywide upscale will be undertaken after reviewing data from these four states.

According to Naco director-general K Sujatha Rao, a year-long pre-programme acceptability and feasibility study, involving 60,000 women in 13 sites — 11 involving high risk groups like sex workers and two family planning programmes — in eight states from November 2006, found 60% women re-purchasing the condom and over 98% of the users finding it comfortable. Naco through UNFPA had procured five lakh condoms from FHC for its acceptability study.

Rao told TOI: "The pilot project was highly successful showing consistent use of FCs. We have, therefore, decided to scale up the programme under which we will first train women on how to use these condoms."

Union health minister A Ramadoss said: "When a male partner refuses to wear a condom, women need self-initiated methods to protect themselves against unplanned pregnancies and HIV/AIDS."

According to Manoj Gopalakrishna from Hindustan Latex Limited, India till now imported FCs making them expensive. "We have now set up an FC manufacturing unit in Kochi. FHC has transferred the condom manufacturing technology to us. We will manufacture 10 million FCs annually. Though the cost of making each condom will be Rs 40, it will be available to women for Rs 5 through 200 NGO-led targeted interventions."

Esther Bayliss from the Female Health Foundation told TOI: "Female condoms — FC1 and FC2 — are the only ones approved by US FDA and WHO. These condoms are the first and only female-initiated barrier method that is safe and effective if used correctly and consistently providing dual protection against the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS and unintended pregnancy."

Nearly 40% of the 2.5 million HIV positive victims living in India are women, most of them hapless housewives who don't look at their husbands as a threat and commercial sex workers unable to negotiate with clients refusing to use a condom.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Female_condom_for_Rs_5_in_India/rssarticleshow/2841558.cms

Indians: Charity rich, philanthropy poor

There is no paucity of funds or lack of individual commitment to society but Indians are stingy, say non-governmental organisations and experts.

"We raise 90 per cent of our funds to support orphanages from individuals and rest from trusts. There is no shortage of funds but a lack of heart amongst people who spend several thousand rupees on eating out but do not help the impoverished," says Anjali Gopalan, who heads Naz Foundation, a Delhi based NGO.

Most of the time people donate money only if it is connected to aid religious purposes, adds Gopalan.

Naz works for raising awareness to prevent spread of HIV/AIDS. Major-General Surat Sandhu (Retd.), Chairman, South Asian Fund Raising Group (SAFRG), says that while India is charity rich, it is philanthropy poor and NGOs need professional fundraisers to motivate and inspire people to contribute for social issues.

"Most of the NGOs suffer from fund crisis. There are 1.2 million NGOs in India but less than one per cent of NGOs have professional fund-raisers and that too in the metros only, what about other cities? The potential of giving in the country is huge but we are tapping a mere fraction of it," he says, while adding India has more than 87,000 millionaires in dollar terms and over 700,000 people earning more than Rs 2 million a year.

The civil society sector in the country raises funds upto $ 600 million in a year, while the potential is of more than $ 10 billion. Non-profit sector in US raises $ 260 billion each year from population of 295 million and UK raises $ 41 billion in a year from 60 million people.

"The credibility of an organisation is directly proportional to the number of 'Individual Supporters' it has. Out of 4.3 million individual supporters worldwide, 70,000 are from India. We have started fundraising with only 5,000 supporters and every year more thousands of people join this noble mission," says Dev Kumar Chatterjee of Greenpeace, an environment rights group.

A large number of people are still ignorant about environmental issues and they think twice before donating, he adds. Swami Agnivesh, a social activist, says that before independence there was a special bonding between Indians and the civil society used to fund everything from hospitals to schools but after the formation of government, the major portion of the fund do not reach to the needy people.

"NGOs are doing a great job by raising funds for the major issues prevailing in the country. Government grants a huge amount of money but only 1 per cent of that reaches to the cause. We should not depend on anyone and only through self sustaining capacity, we will be in a better position to address poverty and inequity that prevails," he adds.

Sandhu says, "Government grants Rs 6000 crore (Rs 60 billion) on NGOs whereas International NGOs give Rs 5000 crore (Rs 50 billion) through Foreign contribution regulation Act (FCRA) in a year. Non-resident Indians (NRIs) send over $ 23 billion into the country as remittances for the development purposes per year. But we still need to raise more funds from individuals as the contribution is much less than the potential."

According to Planning Commission report, funds which come from abroad for development purposes are much more than Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), so it is clear that funds are not well utilised and are being invested in wrong purposes," says Bejon Mishra of Consumer Voice, a NGO.

Mishra adds, "We need professional fund-raisers to exploit the resources to its potential. Most of the NGOs spend 60-70 per cent of their funds, which is meant to be utilised in the country, on hiring foreign consultants. We should create professionals here by organising workshops and conducting specialised courses in fund-raising."

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/05ngo.htm

Manmohan reminds Pak: Our destinies interlinked

Assuring the newly elected leadership in Pakistan that India seeks good relations with the neighbour, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday hoped the two sides would work on a framework for enduring peace.

"India wants to live in peace with Pakistan. The destinies of our two nations are interlinked. We need to put the past behind us," he said while replying to the debate on the Motion of Thanks to President's Address in the Lok Sabha.

"We need to think about our collective destiny, our collective security, our collective prosperity," he said while assuring the newly elected leadership in Pakistan that India seeks "good relations" with it.

Singh noted that in their first pronouncement after the recent elections in Pakistan, leaders of main political parties have spoken of their interest in developing close relations with India and working with it to bring about durable peace.

He said the dialogue resumed with Pakistan over the last few years was started when Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi were Prime Ministers.

Singh surprised the opposition BJP by describing steps taken by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and his then Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif as "most courageous".

"The most courageous steps to build peace were taken by Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. We have continued the process with President Musharraf."

Singh said in both India and Pakistan there was a consensus to have close and cooperative relations and a framework for enduring peace.

"I hope that the newly elected leaders in Pakistan can quickly move forward with us on this," he said.

Congratulating the people of Pakistan for showing that they want to choose the democratic path, he extended "warmest good wishes" of the people and the Government of India as they consolidate democracy.

"A great daughter of Pakistan had to sacrifice her life in the process. We mourned with profound sadness the death of Benazir Bhutto," he said adding "the people of Pakistan have paid their tributes to her memory in their own way.

The Prime Minister said India wanted peace, stability and prosperity in South Asia. "We want mutually beneficial relations with all our neighbours, with all major powers and with all our economic partners."

http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080305/r_t_ie_nl_general/tnl-manmohan-reminds-pak-our-destinies-i-aaaedd4.html

Pakistan frees Indian spy suspect after 35 years

Kashmir Singh leaves prison on Monday in Lahore, Pakistan.

Pakistani authorities on Monday freed an Indian man who spent 35 years in prison, most of them on death row, after he was accused of spying.

Kashmir Singh, who is about 60 years old, was released from a prison in the eastern city of Lahore on the order of President Pervez Musharraf, said Javed Latif, superintendent of the Kot Lakhpath prison.

"I am seeing the lights, the hustle and bustle. I feel like I'm in some other world," he told The Associated Press while being driven through Lahore. "Listen, I am laughing. I don't remember the last time I laughed like this."

Singh was to reunite with his family Tuesday on the Indian side of Wagah, the main border crossing between the two countries.

"Tell my family I am joining them tomorrow morning. I am not dead, I got a new life," he said.

Pakistan and India, which have fought three wars in the 60 years since they received independence from Britain, frequently arrest each other's citizens, including many fishermen and others who say they strayed across the border inadvertently.

Many are accused of spying and held for years, usually with no contact with their families, although Singh's case appears extreme.

One letter from family in 24 years
A former policeman from Hoshiarpur town in the Indian state of Punjab who became a trader in electronic goods, Singh was arrested during a business trip to the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in 1973, said Ansar Burney, Pakistan's minister for human rights.

He was convicted and sentenced to death by a military court in Lahore, but Burney said the government stayed his execution in the late 1970s and that Singh's case then languished. He said some of the paperwork on Singh was missing.

Initially, Singh had been in touch with his family through letters but that contact broke down 24 years ago after he was shifted repeatedly between prisons, Burney said.

He said Singh's "only communication with his family over this time was a single letter that he received from them many years ago."

Burney said in a statement that he had been looking for Singh for quite some time but had been unable to locate him because for the past few years, Singh had been known in prison "by the name of Ibrahim."

Burney said he learned of Singh's identity in December during a visit to his jail and pleaded with Musharraf to grant him clemency on humanitarian grounds. Musharraf "kindly ended his death sentence and issued orders for his release," Burney said.

The minister said he will travel to India on Tuesday to see Singh unite with his wife as well as their two sons and a daughter.

"My real purpose in going with him to India is that when this pair of swans meet after 35 years, I want to capture it with my own eyes," Burney said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23451567/

Mumbai, Delhi among world's dirtiest cities

Mumbai and Delhi are among the 25 dirtiest cities in the world while the four Indian metros and Bangalore are among the 20 densest cities, according to the Forbes magazine.

The US business magazine also lists Sukinda in Orissa and Vapi in Gujarat among the 10 most polluted places globally.

While listing Mumbai as the seventh dirtiest, the magazine also cites a recent private sector proposal, Vision Mumbai, which seeks $1 billion government aid for infrastructure, pollution control and economic growth strategy.

Delhi at No.24 fares little better but gets drubbing for the pollution in Yamuna river, which is devoid of marine life and where "garbage and sewage flow freely, creating a rich environment for the growth of water-borne diseases contributing to extremely high rates of infant morbidity."

In neighbouring Bangladesh, Dhaka, with lead-poisoned air and water pollution from pesticide use, gets the dubious distinction of being the second dirtiest city in the world.

The top slot as the dirtiest city in the world is taken by Baku in Azerbaijan, suffering life-threatening levels of air pollution emitted from oil drilling.

The list, now on the magazine's website, is based on Mercer Human Resource Consulting's ranking of over 200 cities worldwide on levels of air pollution, waste management, water potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of infectious diseases. New York was used as the norm.

In an earlier Forbes list of the 20 densest urban areas in the world, Mumbai and Kolkata occupied the top two slots, packing in over 23,000 people per square kilometre.

India and China combine to claim nine of the 20 slots, according to 2007 statistics from citymayors.com.

Chennai is at No.8, Delhi at No.13 and Bangalore at No.19 in the list of densely populated cities. Karachi in Pakistan is at No.3.

Living in a dense place affects quality of living, unless you have loads of money and the place is gentrified like Tokyo and New York, the magazine commented. Dense is, however, a relative term. "A Mumbai native visiting New York is bound to feel like a New Yorker vacationing on a Wyoming dude ranch," it added.

In Forbes' list of 10 most polluted places on earth, two Indian towns figure. In Sukinda, Orissa, large swathes of the area's surface water and drinking water contain very high covalent chromium levels, potentially affecting 2.6 million people, the magazine said.

Sukinda is home to almost all of the country's chromite ore deposits and one of the largest opencast chromite ore mines in the world.

In Vapi, the pollutants are chemicals and heavy metals from industrial estates, potentially affecting over 70,000 people. Mercury in the groundwater here is reported to be 96 times higher than the World health Organisation (WHO) standards.

Local produce can contain up to 60 times more heavy metals, such as copper, chromium, cadmium and zinc than non-contaminated produce in control groups, Forbes reported.

China and Russia contributed another two cities each to the 10 most polluted places list, prepared by the non-profit Blacksmith Institute.

"In some towns, life expectancy approaches medieval rates, and birth defects are the norm, not the exception," according to the institute. "In others, children's asthma rates are measured above 90 percent and mental retardation is endemic."

Forbes added: "Fast-track economic growth and years of unregulated mining and chemical production have laid waste to the homes of millions."

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1153981

All you wanted to know about IPL

What is the Indian Premier League?
It’s a Twenty20 tournament involving eight teams (cities), starting April 18 and ending on June 1. Launched on September 14, 2007, it’ll be organized by the BCCI and has the sanction of the ICC. The model, based on the same lines as the English Premier League (EPL) in football and the National Basketball League (NBA) in the US, is franchise-based and the eight teams will be owned by a host of businessmen and celebrities. The players will be bought through auction and will represent the teams/cities who bid for them. The matches will be played on home and away basis.

Who has the TV rights of IPL?
Sony Television and Singapore-based World Sports Group, who paid a whopping $1billion to bag the rights for 10 years.

Which are the eight teams and their franchisees?
1. Mumbai (Mukesh Ambani)
2. Hyderabad (Deccan Chronicle)
3. Kolkata (Shah Rukh’s Red Chillies Entertainment)
4. Chennai (India Cements)
5. Delhi (GMR Holdings)
6. Bangalore (Vijay Mallya)
7. Mohali (Preity Zinta & Ness Wadia)
8. Jaipur (Emerging Media)

What is the money involved?
Overall prize money is US$5million, with the winners getting $2m. The remaining money will be given in the form of awards like ‘man-of-the-match’ etc.

How much does the Board get?
The BCCI has earned $723.59m from the ‘sale’ of the eight teams. On top of that, the Board will get around $1billion from the sale of TV rights.

Will the IPL dates clash with cricket seasons of other countries?
For India, no. It’s off-season here. But it clashes with the tours of other countries. The BCCI plans to sort this out during the ICC chief executives’ meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

Some other salient features of the IPL are...
*The franchisees will have the freedom to run the teams in their own style, bring their own sponsors and even name the team as they wish (after consulting the IPL board)
* After the auction in the inaugural year, they will be free to trade their players, as is done in various leagues around the world
* The players also get a share in the profits, starting from TV revenue, gate money and merchandising
* The teams can be listed on the stock exchange
* Top players in the teams are expected to earn a minimum of Rs 1-2 crore per season as guarantee money. They are also slated to get salaries on which there won’t be any cap
* All IPL matches will be played under lights, as per ICC rules. The League will feature a total of 59 matches that would be spread over 44 days. All matches will be played on Saturdays and Sundays plus one yet-to-be-decided weekday. There will be two matches per day, the start time being 5pm
* The IPL governing council will be in charge of running, operating and managing the league independently

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1152110

Smoking kills million Indians a year: Study

Smoking is killing nearly a million people a year in India, exacting a higher toll than previously thought, but allied problems are often different to those seen in the West, according to research published on Thursday.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows Indian smokers prefer traditional leaf-wrapped, hand-rolled "beedis" to manufactured filter brands; are more likely to die of tuberculosis than cancer; and, almost never quit.

"The extreme risks from smoking that we found surprised us, as smokers in India start at a later age than those in Europe or America and smoke less," said lead author Prabhat Jha of the Toronto-based Centre for Global Health Research.

He said the study was prompted by a lack of research into the nature of smoking in India and other developing countries.

The results are partly explained by the fact that, unlike in the West, many people in India are infected with asymptomatic tuberculosis. Smoking can cause enough damage to the lungs that the latent infection can no longer be contained, researchers said.

As a result, tuberculosis is the most common cause of smoking-related deaths among Indian men.

Around 120 million people smoke in India, most of them men, according to the study.

Indian health authorities want tobacco companies to print grisly images of tobacco-related diseases on packets of cigarettes and beedis, but face opposition from politicians keen to protect the jobs of tobacco workers.

The study said that more than half of Indian smokers are illiterate and only 2 percent ever quit - and mostly only because they are too sick to continue.

The research involved tracking deaths between 2001 and 2003 in more than a million homes across India chosen to be nationally representative of the population.

Researchers arrived at their results by comparing the smoking history of 74,000 Indians who had recently died with 78,000 living Indians.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080214/r_t_ie_nl_general/tnl-smoking-kills-million-indians-a-year-aaaedd4.html

World's thinnest laptop comes to India

Apple unveiled the world's thinnest notebook, MacBook Air, in India on Wednesday.

Angeline Tan, product marketing manager of Apple, introduced the notebook here, which measures 4 mm at its thinnest point.

The MacBook Air was first launched at the MacWorld expo in San Francisco on January 15.

In India, it will ship in two weeks through Apple authorised resellers and authorised dealers for a suggested retail price of Rs.96,100 ($2,421).

The features of the MacBook Air include a 13.3-inch liquid crystal display, a full-size backlit keyboard and a built-in video camera.

MacBook Air delivers up to five hours of battery life and includes Wi-Fi networking.

With an Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1.6 or 1.8 GHz of processing power, Apple's standard model contains a 1.8-inch hard drive offering 80 GB of storage.

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2778499.cms

1000 Condom Tester needed in India

Durex is looking for a few lucky Indians to do, what is quite possibly, the world's best job - testing Durex products.

If you are among the lucky 1000 selected, you'll then have to provide Durex with feedback about product performance. After testing them - of course!

Consistent, relevant and informative feedback could fetch you huge rewards. How much more pleasurable can a job be?

If you believe in working hard for greater job satisfaction, here’s the opportunity for you. In what’s being touted as “the best job on earth”, condom-maker Durex wants to recruit Indian men above the age of 18 to test its “product performance”.

Besides the obvious perks, there would be the satisfaction of knowing that you are doing the country and larger Asian identity a large service. For, however much sexologist may insist that size does not matter, the fact remains that Asians are less endowed than most other races. Even a 2006 ICMR study mapping Indian penis size said the international condom sizes available in India are oversized for smaller Indian men, causing slippages and breakages — of the condoms.

World Health Organisation experts say there are variations in penis size across ethnic groups. Men of African descent are wider and longer, Caucasians are medium, while Asians are narrower and shorter.

So if you are not embarrassed reporting to work in a piece of latex, here’s a chance to prove them wrong. The selected 1,000 applicants will get a condom hamper — no texture or flavour specified — with which they can get to work right away. Once they have exhausted themselves testing the products, all they need to do is send the feedback and have a chance of winning iPods and gift vouchers, besides the “Grand Prize” of Rs 25,000.

“Durex wants to ensure that its condoms are best meeting the needs of Indians and what better way to know this than to ask Indians first hand. Our expectations with Indians are high,” said R. Srinivasan, VP, TTK-LIG Ltd, which markets Durex condoms in India. Similar surveys have got enthusiastic response in France, Germany and Malaysia.