Occupy Alien Lands with Pen

• Germany has 35,000 NRIs
• Switzerland has 13500 NRIs
• Austria: There are around 12,000 NRIs, mostly Keralites

---

NRIs in USA: 

• The US Census Bureau has pegged the average Indian American family annual income at $60,000 as against the national average of $38,885. It is estimated that annual buying power of Indian Americans stands at $25 billion.
• Today, NRIs are the second largest Asian group (2,226,585) in the US, behind only the Chinese (2,762,524). Source: 2003 American Community Survey
• Indians own 50% of all economy lodges and 35% of all hotels in the US, which have a combined market value of almost $40 billion.
• One in every nine Indians in the US is a millionaire, comprising 10% of US millionaires. Source: 2003 Merrill Lynch SA Market Study
• A University of California, Berkeley, study reported that one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are of Indian descent, while 7% of valley hi-tech firms are led by Indian CEOs. Source: Silicon India Readership Survey
• Indians along with other Asians, have the highest educational qualifications of all ethnic groups in the US. Almost 67% of all Indians have a bachelor’s or high degree (compared to 28% nationally). Almost 40% of all Indians have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness.

NRIs in UK:

• There are 1,051,800 people of Indian origin in the UK.
• The Indian emigrant community in the United Kingdom is now in its third generation. Nor NRIs have been remarkably successful and moved from their being bus-conductors, waiters, and small shopkeepers to their being doctors, lawyers, accountants and successful businesspeople.
• Indian food is now regarded as part of the British cuisine.
• A remarkable collection of the oral history of the British NRIs is available on Britain's leading NRI website History Talking.com. It's a web radio where you can listen to some of the leading NRIs living in the UK.
• Indian culture has been constantly referenced within wider British culture, at first as an "exotic" influence in films like My Beautiful Laundrette, but now increasingly as a familiar feature in films like Bend It Like Beckham.

NRIs in Malaysia

• NRI minority ethnic group, making up 7% of the Malaysian population.
• Most Indians migrated to Malaysia as plantation laborers under British rule-most of these are Tamil but some Malayalam- and Telugu
• 80% of ethnic Indians in Malaysia identify as Hindus. Deepavali and Thaipusam are the main festivals.

NRIs in Middle East:

NRI population in Middle East:

Saudi Arabia 1,400,000 , United Arab Emirates 1,200,000 , Kuwait 500,000. Oman 350,000
Qatar 175,000 , Bahrain 140,000 , Yemen 100,000 , Jordan 4,100

• Most of the people from Kerala and other south Indian states moved to the Gulf after the oil boom to work as labourers and for clerical jobs.They do not normally become citizens, retain their Indian passports and treated as second class citizens
• Indians still like to work in the Gulf is because of the tax-free income and minority are either employed in the highest echelons of major banks and corporations or have prospered greatly through conducting business in the region.
• Because of a lack of labour laws Indian workers are forced to work long hours outside in desert conditions, for low wages. Most of these single male Manual workers come from poor families in India

NRIs in Africa

South Africa 1,200,000 , Mauritius 800,000 , Reunion 250,000 , Kenya 70,000 , Uganda 60,000
Tanzania 50,000 , Madagascar 30,000 , Mozambique 21,000 , Zambia 20,000 , Zimbabwe 20,000 

• Most Asians in South Africa came as labourers who were brought by the British from India in the 19th century, mostly to work in what is now the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)\
• Others came as Indian traders from the Gujarat who migrated to South Africa at around the same time
• Mahatma Gandhi worked as a lawyer in the city in the early 1900

NRIs in Canada

• There are about 800,000 NRIs in the Canada. Out of this population, 42% are Hindu, 39% are Sikh, and the remainder are Muslim, Christian, Jain and Buddhist. Punjabis accounted for more than half of population
• More than 70% live in Toronto and Vancouver. The majority of Vancouver Indians are of Sikh Punjabi origin

NRI population in the world.

• Middle East
• Saudi Arabia 1,400,000
• United Arab Emirates 1,200,000
• Kuwait 500,000
• Oman 350,000
• Qatar 175,000
• Bahrain 140,000
• Yemen 100,000
• Jordan 4,100
• Asia
• Hong Kong S.A.R. 35,000
• Malaysia 2,300,000
• Singapore 400,000
• Philippines 125,000
• South America
• Guyana 326,782
• Suriname 162,113
• Trinidad 473,735 
• Africa
• South Africa 1,200,000
• Mauritius 800,000
• Reunion 250,000
• Kenya 70,000
• Uganda 60,000
• Tanzania 50,000
• Madagascar 30,000
• Mozambique 21,000
• Zambia 20,000
• Zimbabwe 20,000
• Europe
• United Kingdom 1,500,000
• Netherlands 300,000
• France 70,000
• North America
• United States 2,500,000
• Canada 800,000
• Fiji 350,000
• Australia 150,000
• New Zealand 70,000

Source: NRIINTERNET.COM

India to Reach the Red Planet

April 09, 2014	THIS PAGE
Mars Orbiter Spacecraft Crosses Half Way Mark of it Journey Today (April 09, 2014) at 9:50 am IST, India's Mars Orbiter Spacecraft crossed the half-way mark of its journey to the Red Planet along the designated helio-centric trajectory. Mars Orbiter Spacecraft was launched onboard PSLV-C25 on November 05, 2013. On December 01, 2013, Trans Mars Injection manoeuvre was conducted successfully and the Spacecraft was set in its course towards Planet Mars through a helio-centric trajectory. Soon after the Spacecraft crossed the sphere of influence of Earth, a Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was performed successfully on December 11, 2013. ISRO has been continuously monitoring the Spacecraft using its Deep Space Network complemented by that of NASA-JPL. As the Spacecraft is on its designated trajectory, the TCM planned for April 2014 is not considered essential. If required, the next TCM is planned to be carried out in June 2014. Mars Orbiter Spacecraft and its five scientific instruments are in good health. Periodic tests are being done on the different levels of autonomy built into the Spacecraft for managing contingencies. At present, the radio distance between the Spacecraft and the Earth is 39 million km. A signal from the Earth to the Spacecraft and back to Earth takes 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Soon, the High Gain Antenna of the Spacecraft will be put in service for handling communications with the ground stations. The Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) manoeuvre would be performed on September 24, 2014. 100 Days Of Mars Orbiter Spacecraft Mars Orbiter Spacecraft, India's first interplanetary probe, was launched by PSLV-C25 at 1438 hours on November 5, 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. In its voyage towards Mars, the mission successfully completes 100 days in space tomorrow (February 12, 2014). Subsequent to six orbit raising manoeuvres around the Earth following the launch, the Trans Mars Injection(TMI) Manoeuvre on December 01, 2013 gave necessary thrust to the spacecraft to escape from Earth and to initiate the journey towards Mars, in a helio-centric Orbit. This journey, of course, is long wherein the spacecraft has to travel 680 million km out of which a travel of 190 million km is completed so far. The First Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre (TCM) was conducted on December 11, 2013. The trajectory of the spacecraft, till today, is as expected. Three more TCM operations are planned around April 2014, August 2014 and September 2014. The spacecraft health is normal. The spacecraft is continuously monitored by the ground station of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), located at Byalalu, near Bangalore. Except for a 40 minute break in the Telemetry data received from the spacecraft to the ground station, data has been continuously available for all the 100 days. The propulsion system of the spacecraft is configured for TCMs and the Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) Operation. On February 6, 2014, all the five payloads on Mars Orbiter spacecraft were switched 'ON' to check their health. The health parameters of all the payloads are normal. Presently, the spacecraft is at a radio distance of 16 million km causing a one way communication delay of approximately 55 seconds. After travelling the remaining distance of about 490 million km over the next 210 days, the spacecraft would be inserted into the Martian Orbit on September 24, 2014.

The Real and the Unreal

More than 500 Indian workers have died in Qatar since 2012 :The guardian

India is a democratic nation with  around eight hundred  plus satellite channels and thousands of news magazines, internet publications and hundreds of radio channels. But I read in  The Guardian  that at least  500 Indians  have kicked the bucket to enable the Qatar authorities to quench the football kick of millions of foot ball fans across the world. in 2022. Why didn't none from India talk about this?   The media in India reports an accident that occurred in a distant world for months together.  But refuses to report the death of their country men in hundreds. The reason is obvious. None of them is a celebrity. Let us celebrate the rich and enrich our culture!

"More than 500 Indian migrant workers have died in Qatar since January 2012, revealing for the first time the shocking scale of death toll among those building the infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup.

Official figures confirmed by the Indian embassy in Doha reveal that 237 Indians working in Qatar died in 2012 and 241 in 2013. A further 24 Indians have died in January 2014.

The figures from the Indian embassy show that 233 Indian migrants died in 2010 and 239 in 2011, taking the total over four years to 974. Since the World Cup was awarded to Qatar in December 2010, there have been 717 recorded Indian deaths.

In November, Amnesty warned in a damning report that workers were enduring 12-hour days in sweltering conditions and living in squalid, overcrowded accommodation.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has warned that up to 4,000 workers may die before a ball is kicked in 2022 without meaningful reform of the kafala system, which ties workers to their employers, and stringent control of the myriad construction companies and subcontractors involved.

Photo and the news - Source: theguardian

PSLV FLIES FOR THE 25 TH TIME : CONGRATULATIONS!

PSLV-C24 Successfully Launches India's Second Dedicated Navigation Satellite IRNSS-1B ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C24, successfully launched IRNSS-1B, the second satellite in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), today evening (April 04, 2014) at 1714 hours IST from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. This is the twenty fifth consecutively successful mission of PSLV. The 'XL' configuration of PSLV was used for this mission. Previously, the same configuration of the vehicle was used five times to launch Chandrayaan-1, GSAT-12, RISAT-1, IRNSS-1A and Mars Orbiter Spacecraft. After the lift-off with the ignition of the first stage, the important flight events, namely, stage and strap-on ignitions, heat-shield separation, stage and strap-on separations and satellite injection took place exactly as planned. After a flight of about 19 minutes, IRNSS-1B Satellite, weighing 1432 kg, was injected to an elliptical orbit of 283 km X 20,630 km, which is very close to the intended orbit. After injection, the solar panels of IRNSS-1B were deployed automatically. ISRO's Master Control Facility (at Hassan, Karnataka) assumed the control of the satellite. In the coming days, five orbit manoeuvres will be conducted from Master Control Facility to position the satellite in its Geosynchronous Circular Orbit at 55 deg East longitude. . IRNSS-1B is the second of the seven satellites constituting the space segment of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. IRNSS-1A, the first satellite of the constellation, was successfully launched by PSLV on July 02, 2013. IRNSS-1A is functioning satisfactorily from its designated geosynchronous orbital position. IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. IRNSS would provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Services (SPS) - provided to all users - and Restricted Services (RS), provided only to authorised users. . . A number of ground stations responsible for the generation and transmission of navigation parameters, satellite control, satellite ranging and monitoring, etc., have been established in as many as 15 locations across the country. Two more satellites of this constellation, namely, IRNSS-1C and IRNSS-1D, are planned to be launched in the second half of 2014. The entire IRNSS constellation of seven satellites is planned to be completed by 2015-16.

Ocean in Moon?

Gravity measurements by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network suggest that Saturn's moon Enceladus, which has jets of water vapor and ice gushing from its south pole, also harbors a large interior ocean beneath an ice shell, as this illustration depicts.

Image Credit: 

NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Cassini spacecraft and Deep Space Network have uncovered evidence Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a large underground ocean of liquid water, furthering scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes.

Researchers theorized the presence of an interior reservoir of water in 2005 when Cassini discovered water vapor and ice spewing from vents near the moon's south pole. The new data provide the first geophysical measurements of the internal structure of Enceladus, consistent with the existence of a hidden ocean inside the moon. Findings from the gravity measurements are in the Friday April 4 edition of the journal Science.

"The way we deduce gravity variations is a concept in physics called the Doppler Effect, the same principle used with a speed-measuring radar gun," said Sami Asmar of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., a coauthor of the paper. "As the spacecraft flies by Enceladus, its velocity is perturbed by an amount that depends on variations in the gravity field that we're trying to measure. We see the change in velocity as a change in radio frequency, received at our ground stations here all the way across the solar system."

The gravity measurements suggest a large, possibly regional, ocean about 6 miles (10 kilometers) deep, beneath an ice shell about 19 to 25 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) thick. The subsurface ocean evidence supports the inclusion of Enceladus among the most likely places in our solar system to host microbial life. Before Cassini reached Saturn in July 2004, no version of that short list included this icy moon, barely 300 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter.

"This then provides one possible story to explain why water is gushing out of these fractures we see at the south pole," said David Stevenson of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, one of the paper's co-authors.

Cassini has flown near Enceladus 19 times. Three flybys, from 2010 to 2012, yielded precise trajectory measurements. The gravitational tug of a planetary body, such as Enceladus, alters a spacecraft's flight path. Variations in the gravity field, such as those caused by mountains on the surface or differences in underground composition, can be detected as changes in the spacecraft's velocity, measured from Earth.

The technique of analyzing a radio signal between Cassini and the Deep Space Network can detect changes in velocity as small as less than one foot per hour (90 microns per second). With this precision, the flyby data yielded evidence of a zone inside the southern end of the moon with higher density than other portions of the interior.

The south pole area has a surface depression that causes a dip in the local tug of gravity. However, the magnitude of the dip is less than expected given the size of the depression, leading researchers to conclude the depression's effect is partially offset by a high-density feature in the region, beneath the surface.

"The Cassini gravity measurements show a negative gravity anomaly at the south pole that however is not as large as expected from the deep depression detected by the onboard camera," said the paper's lead author, Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome. "Hence the conclusion that there must be a denser material at depth that compensates the missing mass: very likely liquid water, which is seven percent denser than ice. The magnitude of the anomaly gave us the size of the water reservoir."

There is no certainty the subsurface ocean supplies the water plume spraying out of surface fractures near the south pole of Enceladus, however, scientists reason it is a real possibility. The fractures may lead down to a part of the moon that is tidally heated by the moon's repeated flexing, as it follows an eccentric orbit around Saturn.

Much of the excitement about the Cassini mission's discovery of the Enceladus water plume stems from the possibility that it originates from a wet environment that could be a favorable environment for microbial life.

"Material from Enceladus’ south polar jets contains salty water and organic molecules, the basic chemical ingredients for life," said Linda Spilker, Cassini's project scientist at JPL. "Their discovery expanded our view of the 'habitable zone' within our solar system and in planetary systems of other stars. This new validation that an ocean of water underlies the jets furthers understanding about this intriguing environment."  

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. 

PSLV-C24

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle,usually known by its abbreviation PSLV is the first operational launch vehicle of ISRO. PSLV is capable of launching 1600 kg satellites in 620 km sun-synchronous polar orbit and 1050 kg satellite in geo-synchronous transfer orbit. In the standard configuration, it measures 44.4 m tall, with a lift off weight of 295 tonnes. PSLV has four stages using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. The first stage is one of the largest solid propellant boosters in the world and carries 139 tonnes of propellant. A cluster of six strap-ons attached to the first stage motor, four of which are ignited on the ground and two are air-lit.

The reliability rate of PSLV has been superb. There had been 24 continuously successful flights of PSLV, till November 2013 . With its variant configurations, PSLV has proved its multi-payload, multi-mission capability in a single launch and its geosynchronous launch capability. In the Chandrayaan-mission, another variant of PSLV with an extended version of strap-on motors, PSOM-XL, the payload haul was enhanced to 1750 kg in 620 km SSPO. PSLV has rightfully earned the status of workhorse launch vehicle of ISRO.

Courtesy: ISRO