Thursday, March 3, 2011

Info On BUDGET 2011

IT & ITeS:

• Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT) to be levied on units operating in Special Economic Zones (SEZ).
• MAT rates to be hiked from 18% to 18.50% while surcharge is reduced from 7.50% to 5%.
• Excise duty on parts of ink jet and laser jet printers reduced from 10% to 5%.
• Excise duty of 5% has been imposed on specified IT products such as microprocessor other than motherboards, floppy disc drives, CD-Rom drive.
• Full exemption is provided for components of computer connectivity cable imported for its manufacture.
• Full exemption on payment of additional duty of customs on packaged/canned software.

Education:

• An allocation of Rs 520.57 bn in FY12 for education, which is an increase of 24% over FY11.
• The proposal to increase the plan allocation for school education to Rs 389.57 bn in FY12 from Rs 310.36 bn in FY11.
• An allocation of Rs 210 bn for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan which is 40% higher than Rs 150 bn allocated in FY11. A revised Centrally Sponsored Scheme “Vocationalisation of Secondary Education”
will be implemented from FY12 to improve the employability of the youth.
• An allocation of Rs 103.80 bn for National Programme of Mid Day Meals in schools.
• An allocation of Rs 52.54 bn for University Grants Commission; Rs 56.60 bn for technical education and Rs 9.43 bn for National Mission in Education through information & communication technology.
• Connectivity to all 1,500 institutions of Higher Learning and Research through optical fiber backbone to be provided by March, 2012.
• Additional Rs 5 bn proposed to be provided for National Skill Development Fund during FY12.
• Introduce a scholarship scheme in FY12 for needy students belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes studying in classes ninth and tenth which would benefit about 40 lakh Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students.
• Rs 500 mn each to upcoming centres of Aligarh Muslim University at Murshidabad in West Bengal and Malappuram in Kerala.
• Rs 1 bn as one-time grant to the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University at Pookode, Kerala.
• Rs 100 mn each for setting up Kolkata and Allahabad Centres of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Wardha.
• Rs 2 bn as one time grant to IIT, Kharagpur.
• Rs 200 mn for Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu.
• Rs 200 mn for IIM, Kolkata, to set up its Financial Research and Trading Laboratory.
• Rs 2 bn for Maulana Azad Education Foundation.
• Rs 100 mn for Centre for Development Economics and Ratan Tata Library, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi and Rs 100 mn for Madras School of Economics.

Agriculture:

• The total plan outlay for agriculture & allied sector is to be increased by 19.79% to Rs 147.44 bn.
• The target agricultural credit is proposed to be raised to Rs 4,750 bn in FY12 from Rs 3,750 bn in FY11.
• The Government raised the corpus of RIDF (Rural Infrastructure Development Fund) XVII to Rs 180 bn in FY12 from Rs 160 bn in FY11 wherein the additional allocation would be dedicated to creation of warehousing facilities.
• Interest subvention proposed to be enhanced from 2% to 3% for providing short-term crop loans to farmers who repay their crop loan on time.
• In view of enhanced target for flow of agriculture credit, capital base of NABARD to be strengthened by Rs 30 bn in a phased manner.
• Rs 100 bn to be contributed to NABARD’s Short-term Rural Credit fund for FY12.
• An allocation under Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) increased to Rs 78.60 bn in FY12 from Rs 67.55 bn in FY11.
• An allocation of Rs 17 bn for National Horticulture Mission including Rs 5 bn for north east and Himalayan states.
• An allocation of Rs 13.50 bn for National Food Security Mission.
• An allocation of Rs 7.80 bn for Macro Management in Agriculture.
• An allocation of Rs 11.50 bn for National Mission on Micro Irrigation.
• An allocation of Rs 7 bn for National Agricultural Insurance Scheme including Rs 1.50 bn for Modified national Agriculture insurance scheme.
• An allocation of Rs 5.50 bn for integrated oilseeds, oil palms, pulses and maize development.
• Removal of production and distribution bottlenecks for items like fruits and vegetables, milk, meat, poultry and fish to be the focus of attention this year.
• To improve rice based cropping system in the eastern region, an allocation of Rs 4 bn has been made.
• An allocation of Rs 3 bn made to promote 60,000 pulses villages in rainfed areas.
• An allocation of Rs 3 bn to bring 60,000 hectares under oil palm plantations - an initiative to yield about 3 lakh metric tonnes of palm oil annually in five years.
• As an initiative on vegetable clusters, an allocation of Rs 3 bn made for implementation of vegetable initiative to provide quality vegetable at competitive prices.
• An allocation of Rs 3 bn provided to promote higher production of Bajra, Jowar, Ragi and other millets, which are highly nutritious and have several medicinal properties.
• An allocation of Rs 3 bn provided for Accelerated Fodder Development Programme to benefit farmers in 25,000 villages.
• The Government to promote organic farming methods, combining modern technology with traditional farming practices.
• An approval being given to set up 15 more Mega Food Parks during FY12.
• Augmentation of storage capacity through private entrepreneurs and warehousing corporations has been fast tracked.
• Capital investment in creation of modern storage capacity will be eligible for viability gap funding of the Finance Ministry. It is also proposed to recognize cold chains and post-harvest storage as an
infrastructure sub-sector.
• In view of recent episode of inflation, need for State Governments to review and enforce a reformed Agriculture Produce Marketing Act been recognised.
• National Food Security Bill (NFSB) which will be introduced in the Parliament during the course of the current year.
• Extended full exemption from excise duty to air-conditioning equipment and refrigeration panels for cold chain infrastructure.
• Include conveyor belts in the full exemption from excise duty to equipments used in cold storages, mandis and warehouses.
• Basic customs duty reduced for specified agricultural machinery to 2.50% from 5% and the concession is also being extended to parts of such machinery to encourage their domestic production.
• Basic customs duty reduced on micro-irrigation equipment to 5% from 7.50%.
• De-oiled rice bran cake fully exempted from basic customs duty. Simultaneously, an export duty of 10% to be levied on its export.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Top 20 Software Testing tips.

1) Learn to analyze your test results thoroughly
2) Learn to maximize the test coverage
3) To ensure maximum test coverage break your application under test (AUT) into smaller functional modules.
4) While writing test cases, write test cases for intended functionality first i.e. for valid conditions according to requirements.
5) Think positive. Start testing the application by intend of finding bugs/errors. Don’t think beforehand that there will not be any bugs in the application.
6) Write your test cases in requirement analysis and design phase itself. This way you can ensure all the requirements are testable.
7) Make your test cases available to developers prior to coding. Don’t keep your test cases with you waiting to get final application release for testing, thinking that you can log more bugs.
8 ) If possible identify and group your test cases for regression testing.
9) Applications requiring critical response time should be thoroughly tested for performance. Performance testing is the critical part of many applications.
10) Programmers should not test their own code. As discussed in our previous post, basic unit testing of developed application should be enough for developers to release the application for testers.
11) Go beyond requirement testing. Test application for what it is not supposed to do.
12) While doing regression testing use previous bug graph (Bug graph – number of bugs found against time for different modules). This module-wise bug graph can be useful to predict the most probable bug part of the application.
13) Note down the new terms, concepts you learn while testing.
14) Many times testers or developers make changes in code base for application under test.
15) Keep developers away from test environment. This is required step to detect any configuration changes missing in release or deployment document.
16) It’s a good practice to involve testers right from software requirement and design phase.
17) Testing teams should share best testing practices, experience with other teams in their organization.
18) Increase your conversation with developers to know more about the product. Whenever possible make face-to-face communication for resolving disputes quickly and to avoid any misunderstandings.
19) Don’t run out of time to do high priority testing tasks. Prioritize your testing work from high to low priority and plan your work accordingly.
20) Write clear, descriptive, unambiguous bug report. Do not only provide the bug symptoms but also provide the effect of the bug and all possible solutions.