THE MERCURIAN TIMES

Yesterday the Rail Budget was presented at the parliament. Here are some of the key points: 1.     Rail Budget 2016 is all about 'yatri ki garima' (passengers pride), 'rail ki gati' (speed of railways) and 'desh ki pragati' (country's progress). The Railway Minister said three pillars of the strategy: Nav Arjan (New Revenues), Nav Manak (New Norms) and Nav Sanrachna (New Structures) have been laid out to reflect the new thought process. 2.     Savings through efficient operation in 2015-16 at Rs 8,720 crore. 3.     LIC will invest Rs 1.5 lakh crore over next five years. 4.     2,500 km of broad guage line will be commissioned in 2016-17. 5.     All civil engineering contracts for dedicated freight corridor will be released soon. 6.     2000 km of lines will be electrified in 2016-17 7.     Two locomotive factories to be set up at a cost of Rs 40,000 crore. 8....

A payment gateway is an e-commerce application service provider service that authorizes credit card payments for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar.  A payment gateway facilitates the transfer of information between a payment portal (such as a website, mobile phone orinteractive voice response service) and the Front End Processor or acquiring bank. PROCESS The payment gateway is responsible for intermediating the transactions processed between a customers website and bank. After you purchase the product, our staff configure the payment gateway to communicate with your customer merchant bank account. You then configure your website to communicate with the payment gateway. All purchase or refund transaction requests are sent from the website to the payment gateway then onto the merchant bank account. The bank then responds to the request and sends this response back through our payment gateway and onto the website and end user...

Whatsapp Facebook Google Plus Twitter Emai Akshay Mehrotra's visiting card says: Hello, I'm Akshay. Need cash? "This is what we do, so we might as well put it on our cards," says the CEO of EarlySalary, a Pune-based startup that allows individuals to avail short-term loans of up to Rs 1 lakh in minutespll1! through their smartphones. To avail of a short-term personal loan, one needs to log on to the  EarlySalary  app through their social media account of say, Facebook or LinkedIn, answer a few questions about themselves, and upload their  PAN  number and bank statements. Within ten minutes, the credit is underwritten digitally, said Mehrotra who launched EarlySalary along with Ashish Goyal and Jay Jain. With PAN and bank account details, the company would be able to access a person's credit history, which would help it determine whether to lend or not and fix one's credit limit. The NBFC startup raised $1.5 million, or about Rs 10 cro...

Well, if you think, that we’ve spelled it wrong..then No!! C’mon, we’re talking about our politics fraternity that is no less than Bollywood in the entertainment quotient. You have doubts? Read further and then, you’ll agree! Indian Politics is abound with bollywood type dramedy, action ( oh yes! ), and well, our own brigade of superstars and hot shots! ( You better not under estimate their talent :P ) If bollywood boasts of Munni and sheila, then our Pollywood has M square beauties, if B-town has British beauty Katrina to rule the hearts of the heroes, then Congress has Italian lady, on the tunes of which party members move and groove ( special mention to Singh ji :P). Just like Bollywood has  oodles of “Entertainment, entertainment and entertainment..Pollywood has loads of drama, drama and drama, well literally! You can’t underscore them on this! The whole year round, the tussle between the opposition and the ruling party offers the aam janta much fodder to keep them ...

The big thrust areas of Union Budget 2016-17, which is Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s most closely watched budget, will be the agriculture and transport sectors and big-ticket disinvestment, including strategic sales in high-value companies such as Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), and oil and defence public sector units (PSUs) such as Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL), Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML). Mr. Jaitley will announce in his budget speech a new centrally sponsored scheme for irrigation. On the expenditure side, the big outgo will be on account of the implementation of the 7th Central Pay Commission recommendations for pay and pension hikes with effect from January 1 this year. The government has decided, to announce hikes slightly more generous than the Commission’s recommendations. The payouts that will b...

The online railway reservation system run by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has been the amuse of many in an era when everyone expects the online bookings to occur at the speed of 3G/4G but few know the story that goes on every day behind the walls of the building. With over 21 lakh hits daily and 3000 enquiries a second at peak hours of the day, the techies behind the computer try every bit as hard as we do while booking the tickets. IRCTC introduced NGeT (Next Generation e-Ticketing) System two years ago to handle the chaotic systems and limited capacity which was further improved by the addition of five more servers to the website’s passenger reservation system layer. While the techies at IRCTC say that there are no tricks for booking the tickets, a senior IT executive at the organisation, Ritu Jain states that the difference between them and the customers is that they do not complain because they are aware of the facts. The traffic on the web...