Lakshmi Mittal may be the richest Indian by virtue of his stake in world's biggest steel empire, but in terms of annual remuneration as a CEO he has been beaten by another India-born chief executive -- Arun Sarin.

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile player by revenue, gave more than 33 million dollars (about 16.9 million pounds) to Sarin as salary and other benefits in the form of cash, stocks and options in the financial year ended March 31, 2007.

Sarin got a base salary of 2.5 million dollars (1.27 million pounds), while his total cash remuneration including incentives and other benefits stood at 6.4 million dollars (3.24 million pounds), the company said in its annual report.

This is the largest ever annual cash remuneration received by Sarin as Vodafone CEO, exceeding his 3.196 million pound package in the year ended March 31, 2004.

This was higher than the salary taken by L N Mittal last year as CEO of Mittal Steel, to be renamed as ArcelorMittal.

The steel giant disclosed last month in its annual report Mittal earned a base salary of 2.005 million dollars, while total cash package including performance related payment stood at 3.68 million dollars.

Sarin was also granted shares worth seven million dollars (3.5 million pounds) under the company's short-term and long-term incentive plans, in addition to grant of stock options worth about 20 million dollars (10 million pounds).

The total share options held by Sarin at the end of last fiscal were valued at about 70 million dollars. Besides, he has accumulated shares worth about 22 million dollars, which have been given to him under various incentive plans.

In comparison, Mittal was awarded options worth just 1.8 million dollars as the Chairman and CEO of Mittal Steel, taking his total holding of options to about eight million dollars at the end of 2006.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com

ANAND Agricultural University (AAU), which issues advisories for farmers, has forecast 36 per cent more rainfall than average this monsoon across the state between June and October. Moving a step ahead from its previous monsoon predictions, this time, AAU has prepared a monsoon calendar giving district-wise rainfall prediction for 25 districts, using astro-meteorological technique. The forecasts are depicted in four different colours in a pocket-sized calendar.

AAU vice-chancellor, Prof M C Varshenya said, “Monsoon will arrive in the last week of June at almost all parts of the state; distributing majority of rains during July and August. It has been predicted that state as a whole will receive 36 per cent more rainfall than normal.” He also said that by September 16, monsoon will start ceasing. However, there is a possibility of receiving low to medium rainfall during the first week of October.

AAU registrar V P Macwan said that the shortcomings that the almanac faced last year have been corrected in this version.

Head of meteorology department, Vyas Pande said, “It has the unique feature of quantification of qualitative rainfall predictions made by astro-meteorological technique. For this, frequency analysis was done to find out the low projection limit for forecasting the intensity of daily rainfall prediction.”

Pande said, “This year’s calendar contains daily rainfall forecast with grades like no rainfall, low, medium, heavy and very heavy for each districts.”

AAU has prepared “Monsoon Research Almanac-2006” for eight different agro-climatic zones of the state in 2006, where rainfall predictions were validated with the observed rainfall during the year for all zones of the state, which came out to be 42 per cent to 74 per cent.

Courtesy : Expressindia.com