Coal India's bid to cut-down its expenses on wages and rationalise its manpower structure while pursuing the ministerial directive to produce 908.1 million tonne (mt) of coal by 2020 has resulted in the company resorting to massive outsourcing of labourers.

During April-December 2015, the state-owned coal behemoth had paid Rs. 22,069.67 crore to its 3,26,000 direct employees while Rs. 3,853.04 crore was spent on wages to an estimated 2,90,000 labourers and other staff who are under the pay-roll of contractors.

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday described the meeting called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of the Budget session as 'successful' and said that the government would accommodate all the suggestions put forth by the opposition parties in the Parliament.

Naidu said the leaders of various political parties, who attended the meeting, spoke from the bottom of their heart.

IBM introduced a new open source development tool today called Quarks, which is supposed to help manufacturers and programmers develop efficient applications based on Internet of Things (IoT) sensor data.

Quarks is actually based on the IBM Streams product, a proprietary enterprise tool for processing large amounts of live data, but it’s been designed from the ground up to offer programmers and manufacturers an open source tool for building applications on top of connected devices. The idea is to provide a way for them to take advantage of live data coming off the devices in a simple, efficient way.

New Delhi, Feb. 15: ONGC Ltd has decided to prune its expenses because of the slump in global crude prices. The PSU has appointed global consultant McKinsey to advise it on cutting costs.

However, ONGC is unlikely to cut its capital expenditure as the state-owned firm wants to take advantage of the lower rates of services and rig rates to carry out exploration and production activity, officials said.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is in talks with the government to widen its jurisdiction over collective investment schemes (CIS), two persons familiar with the development said.

The capital markets regulator wants to be empowered to regulate all such schemes irrespective of the size of the corpus.

Mumbai: Market benchmark Sensex failed to capitalize on early momentum and plunged over 362 points on Monday to end at 23,191.97, dragged down by profit-booking amid contraction in exports last month.

The broader NSE Nifty too struggled and settled below the crucial 7,100-level. Sentiment took a hit after country’s exports dipped for the 14th month in a row, down 13.6% in January to $21 billion due to fall in petroleum and engineering goods shipments, even as trade deficit showed improvement.

New Delhi: Reliance Communications Ltd’s (R-Com’s) plan to combine its wireless business with smaller rival Aircel Ltd to create a new entity is unlikely to be concluded within the 90 days that the telcos gave themselves to finalize the merger, company officials and analysts said

The merger is subject to the condition that the two parties each reduce their debt to less than Rs.10,000 crore. That condition is unlikely to be met unless R-Com manages to sell its tower assets and Aircel sells some of its spectrum.

In a departure from its current practice, state-owned carrier Air India has decided that in the future, it will hire all pilots on contract, thus doing away with the permanent-employee status for them.

Sources said that the airline is set to hire 532 pilots in the future and of these, 200-250 will be recruited in the current year. The practice of hiring pilots on a contractual basis was started last year when Air India recruited 70 pilots who are currently undergoing training. Now, the airline has decided to institutionalise this practice.

NEW DELHI: In a few months, colourful, lighter and easier-to-handle cooking gas cylinders will make their way into Indian kitchens, long used to heavy and potentially hazardous steel containers. Most importantly, the new composite cylinders, made of fibre, will be safer because they do not explode even when engulfed in fire, potentially saving thousands of lives, who fall victim to kitchen accidents every year.

NEW DELHI: The luxury retail arm of real estate major DLF plans to launch a new luxury property, The Chanakya, and bring in brands such as Longchamp, Hunkemoller, G Star Raw, Juicy Couture, La Perla and Chanel Beauty to its Emporio and Promenade malls this year, a top official said.

"It's a very exciting time for retail and we are excited that new brands looking to enter the country are doing it with us," said Dinaz Madhukar, senior vice president at DLF Luxury Retail.

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