Briefly, here are a few pointers on the various measures announced:

- If you have a taxable income of over Rs.1 crore in India, you will be subjected to a surcharge of 10 percent, which at this time is proposed only for year 2013-14.
- Now a Tax Residency Certificate will not be sufficient condition to claim treaty benefits, and at this point it is still unclear what other conditions are in the Finance Bill.
- NRIs receiving royalties from India for technical services will be taxed at 25 percent instead of 10 percent.
- Good news. The Finance Minister has raised the duty free limit for NRIs bringing gold into the country.
- A new interest rate deduction on low ticket housing loans for first time home buyers in India
- A pledge by the finance ministry to make doing business in India easy, friendly and mutually beneficial, promises improvement in policies almost across the board. SMEs are included in this ambit

Of course there is much much more to consider and measure, something best done by consultants and experts who are equipped to help NRIs with their plans.

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Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram has amended an old customs rule that fixed the value of gold that could be carried into India by passengers to Rs.10,000 for males and Rs.20,000 for females. The new rules raise the value of gold exempted from taxes to Rs.50,000 for men and Rs.100,000 for women.

NRIs who raised the roof of complaints on the earlier limits are still not all happy, some are disappointed that the government did not fix the limit per the weight of gold, but rather by its ever volatile value that generally skyrockets.

A number of petitioners have spelled out their suggestions saying it would make more sense to allow a male passenger to carry 100gm of gold and a female passenger 200gm, free of tax.

Business people in the Gold and Jewellery trade welcomed the change as 'something better than nothing' say that but given Indians' obsession with gold and the spiraling rates they want the government to raise the limits even more, calling it only reasonable.

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Indrashis Saha, 18-months-old, who was detained in the custody of the US child protection agency in New Jersey, has finally returned to Kolkata after seven months.

Indrashis' father Debasish Saha was working on a project in New Jersey last July and after the infant injured his head after falling from his bed he was handed over to the child protection agency who believed he had been hurt due to parental negligence.

The child was allowed to leave the US with his uncle Bhaskar Kundu who along with the paternal grandparents and maternal grandmother were allowed custody. The child's grandfather thanked those who stood by them especially President Pranab Mukherjee

Indrashis' mother Pamela is expected to return to India shortly and father Debasish will return after the completion of the project he is working on.

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India has launched a smartphone into space loaded with a number of experimental 'Apps' some serious and some for fun. This is the world's first 'phonesat' to go into orbit as well as the first UK CubeSat to be launched.

The British built Strand-1 spacecraft, developed by scientists in Surrey was sent into a 785 km sun-synchronous orbit on the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO's) PSLV launcher from Sriharikota, India to test capabilities of smartphone components for a space environment.

It was developed by a team from the University of Surrey's Surrey Space Centre and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited. The Strand-1 is a training and demonstration mission designed to test commercial off-the-shelf technologies in space.

During the second phase the Strand-1 team plans to switch many of the satellite's in-orbit operations to the smartphone, Google Nexus One that uses the Android operating system.

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M Rajyalaxmi and her daughter Shravanti from New York, declared their baggage items at Delhi airport and were cleared by immigration and customs before they boarded a domestic flight to Hyderabad. However when they reached the city, they found their new iPad and a webcam worth over $900 missing from their bag.

Thieves had broken open the lock of the bag, slit sealed boxes containing electronic gadgets, and placed them back in their original position and resealed the bag. Fingerprints indicate that a person familiar with baggage movements may have committed the theft.

The family brought the theft to the notice of the airport manager who suggested they lodge a complaint by email.

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