Simple Ways you can find Food Adulteration at Home

With the alarming rate at which adulteration of food is increasing in India, it is not an exaggeration to say that almost nothing that we eat/drink daily is safe for our health. 
And what is further astonishing is that all the food items that I am referring to, make an essential part of our daily balanced diet.
One of the most potential ways we can do so is by performing simple tests to see whether or not the food item is fit for consumption.

Milk
·Put a drop of milk on a slanted surface. If the drop leaves a white trail, it’s a sign of pure milk. But, if it fails to leave the trail, it is adulterated.
·If the milk turns yellow when heated, and leaves a bitter and soapy kind of after taste, take it as a sure shot sign that it has synthetic substances added to it.

Coffee powder
Sprinkle a small amount of coffee powder on the surface of water contained in a glass. The coffee will remain afloat whereas the chicory in it will sink to the bottom leaving behind a coloured trail.

Chilli powder
Mix a spoonful of chilli powder in a glass full of water. If you spot a formation of coloured water extract, it is because the chilli powder is adulterated.

Mustard seeds and oil
Take a few seeds and crush them. The argemone seeds on being crushed will reveal a whitish structure on the inside. Mustard seeds, on the other hand, have a yellow inner surface.

Ice cream
If the ice cream starts to froth on adding a few drops of lemon juice to it, it indicates the presence of washing powder in it.

Green chillies
Soak a small cotton piece in paraffin and rub it against a small portion of the outer surface of green chilli or any other green vegetable for that matter. If the cotton turns green, it means that the vegetable is artificially coloured.

Sugar
Unadulterated sugar, when added to a glass of water, will sink directly to the bottom. But if it has chalk powder in it, the adulterants will remain at the surface of the water.

10. Black pepper
Add a few corns of pepper to alcohol. The pure corns will stay afloat whereas the pappaya seeds will sink.

11. Tea
Sprinkle some tea powder on a damp blotting paper. Change in the colour of the blotting paper to something similar to yellow, orange, or red proves the presence of artificial colour in it.

Infosys goes TCS way, splits business into smaller units

Infosys has borrowed a leaf from rival Tata Consultancy Services' playbook by deciding to split its business into smaller units, which will be managed by the company's next rung of management.

Since he took over as CEO two years ago, Vishal Sikka has weathered a bunch of management exits, the latest of which was that of Manish Tandon - who was in charge of healthcare, insurance and life sciences. The Bengaluru-based company responded by concentrating responsibility in the hands of its presidents, a move that was questioned by analysts."Infosys has just three members of its management team ultimately responsible for all the verticals among themselves (all the three are presidents) vs eight vertical heads at TCS," Viju George, analyst with JPMorgan, said in a note dated August 18.

Last Friday, Sikka said he was breaking up the company into smaller, more autonomous units with PNL (profit and loss) responsibilities, something that TCS had done seven years ago when N Chandrasekaran had taken over as CEO.

"It gives us scalability, it gives us isolation and accountability of individuals," Sikka told analysts at its analyst event in Pune. The smaller units, with revenues between $500 million and $700 million each, could have anywhere from a handful to a couple of dozen clients—structure that would give Sikka and his presidents the ability to zoom in on the particular needs of a particular cluster of clients.

Infosys declined to specify the number of units the company would be split into or discuss the names of the next generation of leaders.IT consultancy HfS' CEO Phil Fersht told ET that breaking divisions into smaller units would help in better coordination for deal pursuits but that the company would also need a consistent set of policies for pricing, outcome definition and key metrics.

TCS had split its company into smaller units in 2009, which, analysts said, contributed to its industry-beating performance over the last few years.

In an interview to a magazine that year, TCS CEO Chandrasekaran had said, "We have over 20 people managing their own profit and loss accounts, each with complete ownership. We wanted to break down the problem of growth to a manageable size, so that there are different people running after the targets".

In 2009, TCS had 23 'mini CEOS', each running a unit that made not more than $250 million in revenue and employed 3,000-5000 people. And each was given the task, and the freedom, to grow their units to $1 billion in revenue.That structure yielded big dividends for TCS. In FY10, TCS reported revenue of $6.34 billion compared to Infosys' $4.8 billion. In FY16, the gap between the two had widened considerably. TCS reported revenue of $16.5 billion. 

Infosys came in at $9.5 billion.But experts say that smaller units helped TCS because that was before the move to newer technologies started cutting into the industry's bread-and-butter arbitrage business. Infosys' slowdown in the past few years was because growth in its digital offerings could not move the needle as its traditional businesses decelerated."Creating smaller units may allow Infosys to better focus on some of these new growth areas and experiment with the new business models without disrupting its core business. However, it won't in of itself allow Infosys to return to the heady days growth of yesteryear," said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of IT advisory Everest Group.

He added that for growth to happen, Infosys would need to start growing the digital business and would have to grab a greater share in the traditional businesses.Growth boost aside, CEO Sikka said that Infosys was really just following the natural path for a business of its size. "Every large scale system in the universe is a distributed one, a decentralised one, so this is basically what we are doing."

Link: http://timesofindia.indiatimes...

Why you should file your Income Tax Returns on time?

With the income tax department allowing ample time for filing returns, many taxpayers take it easy. For the income earned in the past financial year (FY16), a taxpayer can file returns up to March 2018. However, sticking to the first deadline of July 31 2016 has its benefits.

Say, you make a mistake while filing returns — it can be a wrong computation or incorrect bank account details. If you file returns on time, the income tax (I-T) department will allow you to revise it as many times as you wish until the end of the assessment year. In case of belated filing, the taxpayer loses this advantage.

Missing the first deadline also means that the taxpayer cannot carry forward certain losses. The Income Tax Act allows individuals to carry forward losses under the ‘capital gains’ head and also business losses for professionals and businesspersons. These can be adjusted against the future gains for up to eight years. Due to the correction in stock market in the last financial year, many investors would have suffered a loss in their equity trade. Filing returns on time can help them utilise these losses in the coming years.

The only loss that’s allowed to be carry forward for latecomers is the loss from house property.

For those filing belated returns, they will also need to shell out a penalty. There will be a one per cent penalty every month under Section 234A on the liability if the return is not filed on time.

Those who file returns on time get faster refunds and their filing is processed quickly, too. Last year, many taxpayers who filed before the deadline got refunds within a fortnight. However, in case of belated filing, the processing and returns are both delayed – it can easily take six to eight months.

In the recent Union Budget, the period of filing returns has been reduced from two years to one year. Taxpayers will need to file returns before the end of the relevant assessment year. This will apply from the next assessment year. Tax experts, therefore, say one should start filing returns on time to avoid hassles later.