The Penniless Economist.

Inflation in India

2008-04-11T14:15:00.003+05:30

Just as I post this the inflation rate in India has climbed to a three year high of 7.31%. While economists argue that inflation is a sometimes inevtiable consequence in an economy, which is burdened with several crippling economic tumours, while at the same time yearning for growth rates as high as 9%+. In fact, real growth rates have exceeded 8% on occasion over the last few years.

Ironically, the rising inflation sucks out the purchasing power of the poorest sections of the populace - negating or even reversing the real income increases over the last few years for this section.

India's Reserve Bank has been cautious as usual on this matter. On the one hand , the rising rupee against the dollar has put severe strain on the export industries, including the globally competitive IT sector - and the governement is being lobbied hard not to let the rupee strengthen further. However this just might be the only way to keep a tab on the inflation - and the government should hopefully bit the bullet this time - since inflation is likely to be a big issue in the forthcoming general election.

This article is from the Apr 10th edition of the Economist. It does discuss many of the above points in its usual incisive-but-dismissive-and-condescending style. The article is available online here.

The Indian government's knee-jerk response to inflation is as worrying as the rising prices

IN COLONIAL times, the Coronation Building in old Delhi was one of the city's most prestigious hotels. Today, it is home to a commodity-futures market. But you would not know it. The Rajdhani Oil and Oilseeds Exchange is hidden among a cluster of small shops and peopled by men in kurta pyjamas, their hair dyed with henna, reclining in the afternoon heat under rusted fans. Over an ageing intercom, they take orders to buy and sell mustard seed and jaggery for delivery one or two months hence. The day's opening and closing prices are chalked on a blackboard.

The blackboard shows that prices of the two commodities have fallen in recent weeks. This will come as a relief to India's policymakers, who are frantically seeking to suppress a nasty bout of commodity-price inflation. On April 4th the Ministry of Commerce and Industry revealed that wholesale-price inflation, the measure most closely watched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank, rose to 7% in the 12 months to March 22nd, its highest rate since December 2004. This price pressure is worrying. But the government's panicked response to it is even more so.

Behind the jump in inflation were higher prices for fuel, food (including edible oils) and metals. The price of iron ore leapt by 46%. This has spooked the government, which faces elections in several big states as well as a national poll before next spring. In response, it has cut import duties on edible oils and banned the export of pulses and rice (except for basmati rice). It even briefly banned the export of edible oils, such as coconut oil, much to the chagrin of Keralite emigrants to the Gulf, who swear by the stuff to keep their hair black and their joints flexible.

Steelmakers in particular have felt the sharp edge of the government's resolve. The Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a state-owned steelmaker, boasts that “there's a little bit of SAIL in everybody's life”, a slogan that runs above pictures of metal bridges, pipes, jugs and even dog-food bowls. After prices rose by more than 20% in the first three months of the year, everybody's life became a bit dearer. Carmakers and scooter-makers protested to the government. Dog-owners no doubt joined them in spirit.

The government threatened to add steel to its list of 15 “essential commodities”, which would allow it to dictate the production and distribution of the alloy. In response, steelmakers “voluntarily” agreed to cut the prices of steel bars used in construction and the corrugated sheets that poor households use for roofing. But steelmakers complain that they are merely passing on the rising costs of coke and iron ore. They fear being caught between “the two prongs of a pincer”, according to the Indian Steel Alliance, an industry group.

Commodity traders, such as the ones reclining in the Coronation Building, fear they may be next in line. Last year the government banned futures trading in two types of bean, rice and wheat, arguing that speculators were driving up prices, beyond what the fundamentals would dictate. Some in the leftist parties, on whose support the government relies, now argue it should extend the ban to other commodities, such as edible oils and perhaps even iron and steel.

This would be like “shooting the messenger”, argues B.C. Khatua, chairman of the Forward Markets Commission, which regulates futures exchanges. Before they were shut down, he points out, the futures markets conveyed the message that prices of wheat and rice would continue to rise. Sure enough, that is what happened.

Banning futures trading would do little to curb prices, especially for commodities like edible oils that are heavily imported. But it would arrest the development of India's financial system, which is finally growing more sophisticated. Since 2003, the government has allowed trading in future contracts for many commodities. One of the two main exchanges, the Multi Commodity Exchange, averages volumes of over $3 billion a day. The Rajdhani exchange turns over about $20m a month.

Great hopes for such markets were expressed this week in a report by a ten-man committee on financial-sector reform, appointed by the planning commission, and led by Raghuram Rajan, now of the Chicago Graduate School of Business, and formerly chief economist of the IMF. It laments “the knee-jerk reaction to ban [markets] or intervene in them whenever they send unpleasant messages.”

The futures market provides farmers with a sneak preview of the prices they will face in the months ahead, which should allow them to make an informed decision about what to sow. In principle, futures contracts should also allow farmers to lock in a price for their crops, insulating them from the vagaries of the spot market. At the moment, farmers are too small to participate in the market directly. But Mr Rajan's report suggests that small banks could aggregate the demands of farmers up to a practical size.

“Just as it is counter-intuitive to steer in the direction of the skid”, Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University once wrote, “it is difficult to persuade the layman” that the best solution to scarcity is a market price, which encourages supply and discourages demand. As Bajrang Lal Goyal, a trader who joined the Rajdhani exchange 40 years ago, points out, India's winter crop is just days away from hitting the market. If the politicians who bash the futures market could be bothered to look at the message it is conveying, they would see that the prices of several sensitive commodities are already on their way down. Just in time, that is, for the elections.

India's economy :What's holding India back?

2008-03-07T10:26:00.002+05:30

From the Economist Print Edition here.

This week, the cover story on the economist is how the India 'bubble' is going to deflate (though not burst) soon, largely because of the government's lack of commitment to sesrious reform.
Mar 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Failure to reform a bloated civil service is putting the country's huge economic achievements at risk.

“THE tiger is under grave threat,” India's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, intoned at one point in his budget speech on February 29th. He was referring to the stripy animals that prowl the country in declining numbers. But India's tigerish economy, which has grown by 9% a year on average over the past three years, is itself under threat.

In many ways India counts as one of liberalisation's greatest success stories. For years, it pottered along, weighed down by the regulations that made up the licence raj, producing only a feeble “Hindu” rate of growth. But over the past 15 years it has been transformed into a far more powerful beast. Its companies have become worldbeaters. Without India's strength, the world economy would have had far less to boast about.

Sadly, this achievement is more fragile than it looks. Many things restrain India's economy, from a government that depends on Communist support to the caste system, power cuts and rigid labour laws. But an enduring constraint is even more awkward: a state that makes a big claim on a poor country's resources but then uses them badly.
The state's cage

It is not unusual for a country's bureaucrats and politicians to be less efficient than its businesspeople; and the Indian civil servant, with his forms in triplicate, has been a caricature for so long that it is easy to forget the impossibility of many of the jobs involved (see article). But India's 10m-strong civil service is the size of a small country, and its unreformed public sector is a huge barrier to two things a growing population needs. The first is a faster rate of sustainable growth: the government's debts and its infrastructure failings set a lower-than-necessary speed-limit for the economy. The second is to spread the fruits of a growing economy to India's poor. By the government's own admission, most development spending fails to reach its intended recipients. This is bound to stir up resentment—and risks causing a backlash against business.

Like his prime minister, Manmohan Singh, Mr Chidambaram is by instinct a liberal and a reformer. He is remembered for his “dream budget” of 1997, which cut both taxes and tariffs—and helped spur today's boom. The new budget is his government's final one before it calls a fresh election, probably later this year. He gave an assured performance, doling out money freely and leaving voters appeased, opposition parties stumped and bondholders unruffled (see article). But the budget also confirmed several sad truths about how little reform the government has made during the good years.

Take the public finances. The government is predicting a budget deficit of 3.1% for the current fiscal year and 2.5% next. But these numbers are artificially low. They omit the states' deficits and also most of the cost of fertiliser and fuel subsidies (which all told add another 3.5% of GDP). Other big emerging markets have been less complacent, leaving India in the worst fiscal shape of the lot.

If growth slows, so will tax collection—and India's vigour may be ebbing already. Growth of 9% now looks more like a cyclical peak than a permanent achievement: bottlenecks throughout the economy mean it cannot go faster without setting off inflation. The effects of overheating became clear in an inflationary scare early last year. Growth has since slowed a tad, to 8.4% in the year to the fourth quarter, thanks partly to the intervention of a nervous central bank. India cannot absorb a lot more foreign capital without worrying about stockmarket turbulence or the strength of the rupee. Much of the foreign money it has attracted has gone into inflating share prices or just accumulated unproductively in foreign reserves.

The government's other boast is to have fostered “inclusive growth”. In his budget, Mr Chidambaram duly handed out extra money to a long list of worthy schemes, from school meals to rural road-building. But as he himself conceded, outlays and outcomes are not the same thing. Standing between the two is an administrative machine corroded by apathy and corruption. The government's subsidies fail to reach the poor, its schools fail to teach them and its rural clinics fail to treat them.

Mr Singh made administrative reform a priority when he took office in 2004, and he duly set up a commission to look into it. But even the finance minister admits that most of its deliberations have been academic. The civil service is expected shortly to be awarded a huge pay rise, which will be swiftly embraced, along with tougher performance standards, which will be studiously ignored. One indication of officials' resistance to change is Mr Chidambaram's new proposal to erase the debts of 30m small farmers. This loan waiver may be costly (over 1% of GDP) and crude, but it has one big virtue: it transfers money to relatively poor people at the stroke of a pen, bypassing the cumbersome machinery of the state.
Unleash peepul power

Reform has not completely petered out. The government has called for more independent scrutiny of public programmes and better monitoring of the money it hands out to some 1,000 schemes. It also plans to experiment with “smart cards” for the poor that could cut out bureaucratic middlemen. But administrative reform needs to go deeper than this—if only to prevent the public sector throttling economic growth.

The government's debt burden leaves it short of money for infrastructure. It is reluctant to free banks, pension funds and insurers to serve the market better, because it needs them to buy its bonds. The miserable record of its social spending deprives firms of well-nourished, well-schooled workers, and saps the political will for reform. State governments are left scrabbling to appease rural disgruntlement rather than investing in efforts to lift the productivity of land and labour.

The tiger may be the animal most Indians associate with their private sector; but a more apt symbol is the peepul (sacred fig) tree. Revered by many Indians, the peepul has a habit of making room for itself, poking up through roads, sometimes smothering its rivals. India's dynamic private sector has shown a similar skill. But if the next government again flunks reform, it could be the peepul itself that is smothered.

Asia, The US Slowdown and the "Decoupling" Phenomenon.

2008-01-23T20:12:00.000+05:30

A post from the latest Economist Magazine...Just to restart this blog after a long hiatus.
The piece talks about how Asia is going to be resilient to the (now largely recognized as very real) US Slowdown. However let me add that given the way the stock markets all over Asia have been sliding over the last couple of days, the Economist's view seems to have found few takers.
The article is here.

Next stop Asia?
Asia should withstand a knock from an American recession

INVESTORS in Asian stockmarkets were until recently big fans of the “decoupling” theory: the notion that Asian economies can shrug off an American recession. This week’s plunge in shares, taking the MSCI Emerging Asia Index down by 25% at one point from its October high, suggests they have changed their minds. But the fact that Asian markets have not decoupled does not necessarily mean that their economies will follow America's over a cliff.

Decoupling was always a misnomer, seeming to imply that an American recession would have no impact on Asia. In fact exports and hence profits would certainly be reduced. The pertinent argument is that they would be hurt by much less than in previous American downturns.

As well as hitting exports, America’s troubles could affect Asia through various financial channels. Asia’s exposure to the subprime mess is thought to be much smaller than that of American or European banks. Even so, Chinese bank shares tumbled this week on rumours that they would have to make much bigger write-downs on their holdings of American subprime securities. And if stockmarkets slide further as global investors flee from risky assets, this could dampen business and consumer confidence in the region.

Some Asian economies are more vulnerable than others: Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia have exports to America equivalent to 20% or more of their GDPs, compared with only 8% in China and 2% in India. There are already some ominous signs. Singapore’s exports to America are down by 11% over the past year, while Malaysia’s fell by 16%. Exports to other emerging economies and to the European Union surged, so total exports still grew by 6% in both economies. But that was much slower than at the start of the year, and the worry now is that demand from Europe has started to flag.

The growth in China’s exports to America slowed to only 1% (in yuan terms) in the year to December from over 20% in late 2006. So far the impact on GDP growth has been modest. Figures on China’s fourth-quarter GDP are to be published on Thursday January 24th and most economists expect growth to slow to a still healthy 9-10% this year.

China’s economy would probably still expand by around 8-9% even if export growth dried up. During the 2001 American recession China’s GDP barely slowed. In contrast, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia suffered full-blown recessions. America’s recession this time is likely to be deeper than in 2001 and Asia is now more integrated into the global economy. Doomsters conclude, therefore, that these economies could be hit harder this time.

The main reason to be more optimistic is that domestic demand (consumer spending and investment) is likely to remain strong and governments have more flexibility. Last year, despite a slowdown in America’s imports, most Asian economies grew faster as domestic demand speeded up. Robert Prior-Wandesforde, an economist at HSBC, says that those who argue that Asian economies can not decouple from America are ignoring the fact that they already have. Take Malaysia: exports to America plunged, yet its GDP growth quickened from 5.7% at the end of 2006 to 6.7% in the third quarter of last year.

Contrary to the popular view that Asia's meltdown in 2001 was entirely due to a slump in exports, Peter Redwood, at Barclays Capital, argues that a fall in investment played a bigger role. Firms had too much debt and excess capacity, particularly in the electronics sector, which was at the heart of the American recession. Today firms are in much better shape. Capacity utilisation is high across the region; outside China investment as a share of GDP is low by historical standards; corporate balance-sheets are stronger and real interest-rates are low. Firms are therefore much less likely to slash investment than in 2001.

Macroeconomic fundamentals are also much healthier in East Asia. Large foreign-exchange reserves make countries less vulnerable to foreign shocks. Budgets are in surplus or close to balance, giving policymakers more room for a fiscal stimulus to support growth.

Thus even if Asia’s exports clearly have not decoupled from America, its economies will be hurt less than in the past. Standard Chartered forecasts that emerging Asia will grow by an average of 6.4% in 2008, down from 7.8% in 2007. In 2001 growth dropped by three percentage points to 4.2%. Financial markets were slow to realise that Asian growth and hence the profits of some companies would be dented by an American downturn. But now they risk exaggerating the damage. Economic decoupling is not a myth.

Untouchable and unthinkable

2007-10-05T08:46:00.000+05:30

This article is also from the latest edition of the Economist.
Unlike the previous one (which was somewhat balanced) - this article takes a strong anti reservation stand.
The article is available here and at AFP.

Oct 4th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Hiring quotas would not help lower-caste Indians and would harm business

BUSINESSES in India are used to bad government. Indeed, this hardship has proved perversely useful: through coping with rotten infrastructure, throttling labour laws and mutable investment policies, many world-class Indian companies have emerged. A proposal to force firms to hire more workers from the dregs of Hinduism's caste system (see article) would be different. It would be a disaster.

India's long history of affirmative action springs from decent instincts. The caste system is possibly the world's ugliest social system. And it is sanctified by India's largest religion: according to the Laws of Manu, an ancient Hindu text, anybody from the lower orders who has the temerity to mention the name of a higher caste should have a red-hot nail thrust into his mouth; if he makes the mistake of telling a brahmin what to do, he gets hot oil poured into his ears and mouth.

Fortunately, India has moved on a bit since then. But socially and economically the place is still sharply stratified. Upper castes get a far larger share of good jobs than do lower castes; dalits—or untouchables—get virtually none. Which is why, soon after independence, India's government used affirmative action to try to redress the balance; and why calls for that action to be extended to business are so loud.

Affirmative action necessarily has a cost, both in fairness to those who in its absence would qualify for jobs and educational opportunities that they are denied, and consequently in efficiency. Still, if it went a long way to righting a big historical wrong, that might be justifiable.

But that hasn't happened in India. Nearly a quarter of university places and public-sector jobs have been reserved for dalits and tribal people since 1950; and, in 1993, a successor government handed a further quarter over to “other backward classes”. Yet there is no evidence that this has made any difference to the fortunes of the lower orders. They have certainly been getting richer—but, over the past two decades, at almost exactly the same rate as the rest of the population.

What's more, the policy has had dangerous side-effects. Cynical politicians promise their fellow caste members more jobs and university places. Reservation inflation has therefore been on the rise, infuriating the losers. As a result, battles over reservations have become a common source of riots, and politics has thus become increasingly polarised along caste lines.

Extending into the private sector a policy that has been a disaster in the public sector is lunacy. This must be clear to India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh. As finance minister in the early 1990s, he started dismantling a system of industrial quotas, thus unleashing the economy. He should understand better than anyone the likely effect of introducing a quota on people. Yet he has been threatening to impose penalties on companies that don't hire more low caste workers.

Don't blame business

Reservations in companies would not just damage business. They would also distract attention from the real source of the problem. Responsibility for lower castes' lack of advancement does not lie with the private sector. There is no evidence that companies discriminate against them. The real culprit is government, and the rotten educational system it has created.

Originally, reservations were supposed to be needed only for a decade. After that, it was reckoned, they would be unnecessary, because primary education would be universally available. Nearly six decades on, it is not. And the quality of much of India's higher education is execrable. By one reckoning, only a quarter of engineering graduates, the raw material of a booming computer-services industry, are employable. The government should concentrate on sorting out schools and universities, not piling new burdens on business.

There's another effective weapon against ancient prejudices: growth. As Indians get richer, their caste biases fade. Middle-class urban Indians are less likely to marry within their caste than the rural poor, and less likely to wrinkle their noses at a dalit. Happily, the ranks of the middle class are swelling in a fast-expanding economy—for which India has its businessmen to thank. Hobbling them with quotas will only make it harder for them to help the country change.

With reservations

2007-10-05T08:27:00.000+05:30

This article is from the latest edition of the "Economist." Best read without having to deal with my opinions on the issue ! :-)
Also Infosys reappears as the chosen representative of the aspiring Indian, for the nth time in Foreign writing highlighting India's progress. After Friedman, it HAS become a bit overdone methinks.

Also this time even the Economist hasn't really taken a stand on the issue, aiming to represent both sides of the reservation debate.
Sometime during BSchool (probably in one of those RMAS classes :)), i came to the conclusion that the caste system may never actually go away in India. Even with equality being the norm in the future, and cases of blatant discrimination thinning out - caste will retain its position as a symbol of identity, rather than social hierarchy - which could be important in a highly heterogeneous society like India. Gurcharan Das makes a very good argument for this scenario in "India Unbound."

I think the reservations in education and government service itself have done a reasonably good job on their own :-).And as this article points out- the private companies are not likely to reach out, through these affirmative action programs, to those who NEED this kind of assistance - merely upto those who WANT it, and can HAVE it (merely through an accident of birth).

The article is available here
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Oct 4th 2007 | BANGALORE, CHENNAI AND DELHI
From The Economist print edition
India's government is threatening to make companies hire more low-caste workers

A 23-YEAR-OLD dressed in white pyjama trousers and a black over-shirt represents two worlds in India that know almost nothing of each other. One is fast growing, but tiny: the world of business. Strolling through the Californian-style campus in Bangalore that serves as the headquarters of Infosys, a computer-services company, she grins and declares herself glad. Her brother, she adds shyly, is so proud that she is an “Infoscion”.

He is in the rural world where 70% of Indians reside: cultivating the family plot in Bannahalli Hundi, a village near Mysore. Life is less delightful there. Half the 4,000 population are brahmins, of the Hindu priestly caste. The rest, including the software engineer and her family, are dalits, members of a “scheduled caste” that was once considered untouchable.

Sixty years on this is still the case in Bannahalli Hundi, says the young woman, who does not want to be named. She has never entered the house of a brahmin neighbour. When a dalit was recently hired to cook at the village school, brahmins withdrew their children. Has there been no weakening of caste strictures in her lifetime? “I have not seen it,” she says.

The tale is in startling contrast to Infosys's modernity, and she is embarrassed by it. But it partly explains how she came to be hired by a company that is considered to be one of India's best. She is the beneficiary of a charitable training scheme for dalit university-leavers that Infosys launched last year.

In collaboration with the elite Bangalore-based International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Infosys is providing special training to low-caste engineering graduates who have failed to get a job in its industry. The training, which lasts seven months, does not promise employment. But of the 89 who completed the first course in May, all but four have found jobs. Infosys hired 17.

The charity was born of a threat. India's Congress-led government has told companies to hire more dalits and members of tribal communities. Together these groups represent around a quarter of India's population and half of its poor. Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, has given warning that “strong measures” will be taken if companies do not comply. Many interpret that to mean the government will impose caste-based hiring quotas.

Quotas already apply in education and government, where since 1950 22.5% of university places and government jobs have been “reserved” for dalits and tribal people. In addition, since 1993, 27% of government jobs have been reserved for members of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—castes only slightly higher up the Hindu hierarchy.

Promoting the wretched

This is not enough for supporters of reservations. Since the introduction of liberal reforms in the early 1990s, public-sector hiring has slowed and businesses have boomed. Extending reservations to companies, they argue, would therefore safeguard an existing policy of promoting the Hindu wretched. It would almost certainly require changes to the constitution. But low-caste politicians are delighted by the prospect, so it could happen.

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, a dalit leader called Mayawati, has said 30% of company jobs should be reserved for dalits, members of the OBCs and high-caste and Muslim poor. Chandra Bhan Prasad, a dalit journalist, applauds this and argues that it would be in the interest of companies. “It is in the culture of dalits that they are least likely to change their employment because they are so loyal to their masters,” he says. It would also help them become a “new caste [sic] of consumers”.

Businessmen are unconvinced. Government, in both its intrusiveness and its incompetence, is a hindrance to them. Caste-based hiring quotas would be just another burden. People given a right to a job tend not to work very hard. So, in an effort to avert Mr Singh's threat, many companies and organisations that represent them are launching their own affirmative-action schemes.

The Confederation of Indian Industry has introduced a package of dalit-friendly measures, including scholarships for bright low-caste students. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry plans to support entrepreneurs in India's poorest districts. Naukri.com, India's biggest online recruitment service, with over 10m subscribers, anticipates that companies will soon actively seek low-caste recruits. It has therefore started asking job-seekers to register their caste.

Basic training

Infosys's training scheme, as described by S. Sadagopan, the IIIT'S director, is a Pygmalion undertaking. Meeting the parents of his dalit students, he saw “almost an anger in their eyes”. For the first month the students were unresponsive. Their English was dismal. Mr Sadagopan felt compelled to introduce lessons in self-presentation, including table manners.

Matters improved. The course was based on Infosys's 16-week basic training, which 31,000 Indian graduates underwent last year. The low-caste lot scored similar marks and gained confidence. At a bonding session, filled with meditation and dancing, they wrote themselves a slogan: “As good as any, better than many”.

It is a moving story. But Mr Sadagopan's students were not all that deprived. In the words of three, now working for Infosys, they were “normal middle-class Indians”. A third of them were the sons and daughters of professionals. The worst had grades only a little below what Infosys routinely demands of its recruits. Almost all were from urban areas, where caste discrimination is rare.

One of them, Manjunath, says the only time he was ever reminded of his low caste was when he applied for a place at university. Had it not been reserved for him, he says, he might have worked a bit harder—and so joined Infosys without any special help. As for his colleague from Bannahalli Hundi, coming from one of the richer families in the village, she is its first female university graduate—of any caste.

The most that can be said for Infosys's programme—without devaluing Mr Sadagopan's efforts—is that it is a great opportunity for a tiny number of middle-class Indians, who happen also to be low-caste. The same would be true of caste-based reservations. This is because the percentage of India's workforce employed in the “organised” private sector (made up of firms that declare they have ten or more employees), where reservations might be applied, is also tiny: around 2%. And as far as anyone can tell (companies do not ask the caste of their employees), members of low castes are already well represented in low-skilled jobs there. Much of India's heavy industry, such as steelmaking, is located where the low-caste population is high. Tata Steel, which employs around 40,000 people in India, has its main operations in Jamshedpur, in the eastern “tribal belt”.

Membership of a caste, as of a guild or a church, provides businessmen with a useful network. In the informal economy, where banks fear to tread, caste bonds tend to be affirmed through business. The fact that most Indian companies are family-owned exaggerates this: to prevent wealth being diluted, it encourages marriages not only within the same caste, but also within the same family. A sugar baroness of south India's kamma caste, Rajshree Pathy, recently explained this practice to an Indian newspaper, the Business Standard: “The PSG family produces girls, the Lakshmi Mills family produces boys, they marry each other and live happily ever after.”

The modernisation of India's economy has brought more dynamic change. Among educated, urban Indians caste identity is fading. Inter-caste marriages are increasing. According to Jeevansathi.com, a matchmaking (or, as Indians say, “matrimonial”) website, 58% of its online matches involved inter-caste couples. Meanwhile, in rural India—where unions are not fixed online—intra-caste marriages remain the norm.

Business has to some degree been a laggard in this process. Caste bonds rooted in expediency, not tradition, allow businessmen to borrow and lend money with a degree of accountability, which helps to minimise risk. They are not an affirmation of a vocational hierarchy within the Hindu universe. Nonetheless, in north India, where business is to this day dominated by members of ancient trading castes, like marwaris (whose famous names include Birla, Bajaj and Mittal) and bania (Ambani), it can look pretty traditional.

Rites of passage

Harish Damodaran investigated the caste origins of many of India's industrialists in a forthcoming book*. He identified three main trends. The first, which he calls a “bazaar to factory” route, is the passage of hereditary traders into industry. In northern India, some castes' monopolies have discouraged them from leaving their traditionally prescribed employment. So members of north India's farming castes—for example, jats and yadavs—rarely own a sugar or flour mill.

The second trend, “office to factory”, describes a recent movement of well-educated high-caste Hindus, including brahmins, into business. Lacking capital, these sophisticates tended to enter the services sector, where start-up costs are relatively low. India's world-class computer-services industry, including companies like Infosys, is the result.

The third trajectory, “field to factory”, is the transition into the business world of members of India's middle and lower-peasant castes. This must be the path of India's dalits, too. But they have not trodden it yet: across India, Mr Damodaran could not find a significant dalit industrialist.

There is no strong evidence that companies discriminate against low-caste job applicants. Upper-class Indians, who tend also to be high-caste Hindus, can be disparaging about their low-caste compatriots. “Once a thicky, always a thicky,” is how a rich businessman describes Ms Mayawati. Yet this at least partly reflects the fact that low-caste Hindus tend also to be low class; and in India, as in many countries, class prejudice is profound.

There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence that few able low-caste graduates are emerging from India's universities. Since it began registering the caste of its subscribers—almost by definition computer-literate and English-speaking—Naukri.com has added 38,000 young dalit and tribal job-seekers to its books. That represents 1% of the total who have registered in that time.

For reservationists, this confirms the need for quotas. Others interpret the facts differently: reservations don't seem to work. And statistics support this view. Reservations notwithstanding, low-caste Indians are getting less poor at almost the same rate as the general population. Between 1983 and 2004, their spending power increased by 26.7%, compared with 27.7% for the average Indian, according to the National Sample Survey Organisation, a government body.

Low-caste students struggle in schools without special help, which is rarely available. Their English—the language of India's middle class—tends to be poor. Many drop out. Up to half of university places reserved for low-caste students are left vacant. So, too, are many of the university posts reserved for low-caste teachers. Most Indians emerge from this system with an abysmal education. Low-caste Indians perhaps almost invariably do.

A measure of this fiasco can be found at the political-science department of one of India's prestigious post-graduate universities. Each year it chooses 50 students, from 1,500 applications, for its master's degree. Successful applicants will average no less than 55% in their undergraduate exams. Dalit applicants scrape in with as little as 30%. Nonetheless, practically every student will be awarded a first-class degree.

India is failing to equip its young, of whatever caste or religion, with the skills that its companies need. This is one of the biggest threats to sustaining high economic growth. India's outstanding computer-services companies—which will account for around a quarter of overall growth in the next few years—intend to hire over 1m engineering graduates in the next two years. It will be tough. To recruit 31,000 graduates last year, Infosys considered 1.3m applicants; only 65,000 passed a basic test. To address the skills shortage, the company is investing a whopping $450m in training. “We are building India's human resources,” says Mohandas Pai, Infosys's chief of human resources.

Alas, reservationists have other concerns. Caste politics are pervasive. On August 28th the Supreme Court struck down an effort by Andhra Pradesh's government to reserve 4% of government jobs and education places for poor Muslims. The court is meanwhile weighing a more dramatic measure announced by the government last year: to reserve 27% of university places for the OBCs. To placate irate students, many of them high-caste, the government promises to increase the number of university places accordingly. Education standards would no doubt fall further.

Even so, the policy may be unstoppable. Since reservations for the OBCs were introduced in the early 1990s the rise of political parties dedicated to these groups has been inexorable. So has the proliferation of the OBCs, to around 3,000 castes. They include millions who are not poor at all.

“A massive deliberate confusion” is how Surjit Bhalla, an economist at Oxus Investments, a hedge fund, characterises reservations for the OBCs. When they were awarded reservations, the OBCs were estimated to make up 53% of India's total population. More recent counting suggests they are only about one-third of the population, although their 27% reservation remains unchanged. Moreover, by most measures, the average OBC member is no poorer than the average Indian. “How can you discriminate against the average?” asks Mr Bhalla, despairingly.

There by mistake

And despair he may. Practically no politician dares speak out against this caste-based racket for fear of being labelled an apologist for the caste system. Rather like guests at the Hotel California, those that join the list never leave—even one or two castes that were allegedly included by mistake. The surpassing example is Tamil Nadu, which reserves a total of 69% of government jobs: 1% for tribal people, 18% for dalits, 30% for the OBCs and 20% for a subset of them—members of castes once categorised by British colonisers as “criminal tribes” and now known more delicately as “de-notified communities”.

There is little opposition to this policy in Tamil Nadu, for two reasons. It is one of India's more literate and prosperous states. And low-caste Hindus are unusually prominent in Tamil Nadu, which suggests to reservationists that the policy is working well. Textiles companies in Tirupur, a T-shirt hub, for example, are mostly owned by gounders, members of a peasant caste that is officially listed as an OBC.

One defender of the policy is N. Vasudevan, chief official of the Kafkaesque vision of bureaucratic hell that is the Backward Classes, Most Backward Classes and Minorities Welfare Department in Chennai, where workers languish behind mountains of never-opened files. Asked when it might end he replies: “When everyone becomes equal.”

There is an alternative view: that Tamil Nadu is more equal than most states not because it has lots of reservations but because, overall, it has been run less badly. It has therefore delivered above-average economic growth, from which low-caste Tamils have benefited.

In addition, low-caste businessmen in Tamil Nadu have had opportunities that have nothing to do with government policy. In contrast to north India, where commerce is dominated by members of a few business castes, south India's business community has been more open to members of non-business castes. According to Raman Mahadevan, a business historian, this is partly because members of the south's main trading caste, the chettiars, chose to concentrate their investments outside India during the 19th century, in Malaya and Singapore.

Partly as a result, little large-scale industry emerged in southern India until the 1930s. Around the same time, a popular movement against brahmins—especially lordly in the south—emboldened members of the lower and middle castes, including gounders, who were quick to convert their new assertiveness into business.

The Hindu caste system has never been rigid. Low-caste Hindus do not accept their lumpen position in the hierarchy. Indeed, like middle-class English families, they tend to cherish a myth of their former greatness. By imitating the habits of a more prestigious neighbour, in dress or ritual, some low castes have sneaked a rung or two up the ladder. More recently, in an effort to be classified as an OBC or a dalit caste, some middle-ranking castes have tried to climb a rung or two down.

Meanwhile, on the lowest rung of the ladder, dalit businessmen can be found operating in the informal economy, perhaps as small traders. They must be especially reliant on caste as a business network. But that reliance will change if they can expand into the organised sector. Where businessmen can gain access to credit without having to claim kinship, caste affiliations wither. As Mr Damodaran writes: “A kamma sugar magnate ultimately identifies his interests with other mill-owners and not with fellow kamma cane growers or workers.” And his business may flourish, unfettered.

India and Economic Blocs.

2007-09-12T15:42:00.000+05:30

Most developing countries in the world have been joining forces with each other forming economic blocs. This gives them easier access to each other's markets (and raw materials.) The concept exists internationally as well - under the UNO and European Union for example.The EU now includes several developing states as well - and in time, this should ensure that these states achieve a level of prosperity like the developed EU members through open trade.

Another successful trade bloc is the African Union. It has been credited with the rise of economies like Kenya , Namibia ,Ethiopia and Ivory Coast - though it is a little handicapped by the likes of Olusegun Obasanjo and Mugabe.

Of course, India has had its trade bloc as well - SAARC. It was started with rather high hopes. (Still remember me watching some cultural programmes sponsored by it on Doordarshan on Sundays,long long ago.)
However the bloc never really made progress beyond the annual posturing of the leaders of the member states. The main reason was that the two largest and most influential members -India and Pakistan - managed to derail the entire system by insisting on opening up the Kashmir issue at every forum including this one.
The smaller states also had their own peeves. Bangladesh was suspicious of Pakistan. Bhutan and Maldives never had any say in any of the matters - and have been accused within their own countries of openly towing India's line. Nepal views India and its intentions with suspicion, and this coloured their dealing on SAARC as well.

SAARC still exists of course. India did give "Most favoured nation" status to Pakistan sometime ago -as a goodwill gesture. Pakistan hasn't reciprocated, and this has given India another reason to cry foul. Increasingly the SAARC summits are viewed with frustration, and for the average Indian- the interest lies more with seeing the Indian and Pakistani heads of state together rather than with anything else.

Afghanistan has recently joined SAARC as well. For a change both India and Pakistan were united on this.India also wants Russia in, while Pakistan is keen on China. However the disagreement regarding admission of these countries means that both of them are still out. The wide disparities in stage of development, as well as international priorities, commitments, regional influence and alliances among the members have made it tough for it to be effective.

Several members have also concluded extra-SAARC agreements. India has openly backed Bhutan, Maldives and previously Nepal too. It has also opened up trade routes to China.

Ever since SAARC turned ineffective, India has tried to warm upto other trade blocs - most notably ASEAN. ASEAN is hailed as one of the most sucessful blocs worldwide and the driving force behind the rapid growth of its member states.ASEAN though initially to include India, finally allowed it to be part of the East Asia forum, and now is on the verge of concluding a free trade agreement with it.

Economics (and common sense) says that free trade helps nations achieve their development goals faster. Hence its in India's interest to maximize free trade and economic cooperation.However given India's increasing reputation as a bit of a regional bully, its historical proximity to Russia, its status as a nuclear weapon state, its new found friendship with the US, and its location amidst states like Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have made it tough for it to be trusted enough to be made a open trade partner.
Hopefully as the world sees India on the way to becoming a superpower (both economic and otherwise), everyone else should have very little choice on that.

Lessons from the Chinese (lack of) quality situation.

2007-09-11T11:11:00.000+05:30

Continuing my current obsession with China and all things Chinese - Rediff has this article on our take on the whole China-Mattel-Lead-in-Barbie-Dolls issue and the other recent news items highlighted by the western media regarding the quality issues facing China.

Regarding this particular article.I do feel that this is a bit off the mark with the rhetoric calling for environmental responsibility etc.
-------------------------------------------------------
A journalist called to know if we face the same problems that are plaguing Chinese exports of late: tainted pet food, toxic toothpaste, lead-paint in toys, chemicals in textiles, and so on.

It got me thinking: of China, of India, and more importantly, about the phenomenon we call the market.

The fact is that the US and other parts of the rich world, which are today crying foul about Chinese toxic exports, should have known better. They should have known that they were in the business of buying cheap food and cheap consumer products, and that in this business something was rotten.

They should have been aware that goods produced in their country are expensive, partly, because they pay for pollution control, surveillance and enforcement of regulations and for new technologies to get rid of newer and newer toxins.

So it is in the interest of the rich world to outsource production to feed its ravenous appetite. The economy of the rich world is built on the principle of consuming disposable products -- new toys that come with each season or with each new hit movie, and processed food that breaks all price-lines.

This madly consuming rich society needs cheap goods for its happiness and to make its economy profitable.

But these goods are cheap because the Chinese discount their environment in manufacturing them. In this market, "competitive advantage" lies in not paying the price for safeguarding the environment.

There is no doubt in my mind that if India is to also become the favourite junk provider of the world -- which we are desperate to be -- then we will have to do the same. The only difference between us and the Chinese is our democracy -- that is if we allow it to breathe.

Whether Indian industry likes it or not, the internal pressure it gets from consumer and environmental interests is its safety valve. This pressure is forcing the Indian industry to produce quality food and meet environmental standards, not only for exports but also for sale in domestic markets.

It is this, if anything, that distinguishes us from the Chinese, as I said to the journalist who called me. But this pressure will not be able to withstand the desperation to feed the cheap goods desire of the rich world.

There is also no doubt in my mind that the western world has used environmental safeguards to its advantage -- to keep out goods produced in the developing world by claiming that these are unsafe and do not meet stringent quality requirements. Over the years, the green stick has been another name for trade protectionism.

But it is also clear that the Chinese and the Indians cannot win this game by playing it. In this game of catch-up, the only option is to invest in first producing dirt and then invest in cleaning it up or invest in phasing it out. After this, another chemical must be introduced -- this is still not qualified to be a toxin but will soon become one. In this business, environmental protection is expensive and never-ending. In this green business, we cannot win.

It is for this reason that we must change the rules, if not the very game itself. We cannot keep arguing that our trade advantage lies in undermining environmental safety. We must argue instead that the environment is our competitive advantage. It is our advantage only if we can learn not to discount it but to use it.

We must build our industry and agriculture by learning from the expensive mistakes made by the western world. We can beat them, not by playing their game of catch-up, but by reinventing our economic pathway.

We can do agriculture today without first using the toxins that need to be cleaned up. This will mean reinventing the rules for organic and safe food production. We can produce cheaper goods by cutting out the unnecessary toxins that will need cleaning up tomorrow. This is the only choice.

Taking Flight

2007-09-10T14:14:00.001+05:30

One crib about industry in India, China and other developing countries is that they have failed to develop brands that are powerful worldwide. We are still largely viewed as being competitive on low cost or scale, rather than on quality or feature based differentiation.
In fact , in the recently published list of the world's most powerful brands, only "China Mobile" stands out from the list of otherwise American brands (and Toyota :)) Theres no Indian brand anywhere close.

The Economist carried this story on "Jet Airways" -India's largest Aviation company, trying to build a global brand.Interesting read.
By the way, I won't be too surprised if an Indian company makes it into this list sometime in the next ten years or so. It may not be Jet -but I vouch that it'll be a service brand.

-------------------------
Taking flight

Sep 6th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Naresh Goyal wants Jet Airways to be India's first global brand—and to escape its domestic market

IT IS not only a lust for power that inspires Naresh Goyal, the founder and chairman of Jet Airways, India's biggest private airline. Nor is it a need for vindication, important though this may be to a man whose application to fly to America was held up for two years by allegations of terrorist connections. Like many Indian entrepreneurs, Mr Goyal says he has a patriotic dream. “I want to produce a global Indian brand,” he says. “That's the passion for me, that's what drives me. The people of this country, we have the capability to produce a global brand.”

Jet, with its orange and blue logo, may well be the first. It is the only private Indian carrier flying long-haul routes—ferrying 23% of passengers between India and London, for example. On August 5th its first plane landed in America, launching a daily service from Mumbai to Newark via Jet's new hub in Brussels, and this week it began flights to Toronto. A new direct service between Mumbai and Johannesburg will be launched soon, and with 40 new planes on order, Jet will add more destinations next year, including San Francisco (via Shanghai) and Chicago. Mr Goyal, who owns 80% of the airline, predicts that by 2009 its international operations will contribute half its annual revenues, increasing them from $1.7 billion last year to $3 billion.

Mr Goyal started out as a travel agent acting for foreign airlines in India. At industry gatherings, he became known for having committed the world's flight schedules to memory. He has since lost none of his taste for detail. Last month Mr Goyal ordered Jet's top managers in Mumbai and Delhi to “adopt a plane”, which they must periodically check to be sure it has been properly cleaned. (Mr Goyal says he would love to do the same himself, but does not have time.)

The international expansion is partly about healthy demand. Over the past five years air traffic to America from India has grown faster than from anywhere else, increasing by 23% in the year to May compared with the previous 12 months. Coming the other way, the number of inbound passengers to India grew by 19% in 2006. By Mr Goyal's estimate, up to 80% of these passengers are of Indian origin, though now resident in Canada, America and Britain. So that is where he is expanding. “I want to operate where there is a captive market, and there are 30m Indians overseas—or, whatever, people of Indian origin,” he says, with a flick of his hand, suggesting he does not see the distinction. If these people do want to fly Indian, they may well want to fly Jet. Its service is outstanding. Air India, the state-owned carrier, is crummy by comparison, though it is improving.

But the expansion is also about escaping the dreadful conditions in India's domestic market. As well as having the fastest-growing aviation market in the world, India also has one of the most crowded. In 2003 the emergence of several low-cost carriers led to a price war. At the time, Jet controlled almost half the domestic market. Mr Goyal says Jet remained profitable during the struggle that has since ensued, but there is no hiding how much it suffered. Its market share has fallen to one-third—and that includes the custom of Air Sahara, a carrier acquired by Jet in April for $346m that it has since rebranded as a low-cost carrier, called JetLite. And in the past four years the main Indian stockmarket index has increased five-fold, yet Jet's share-price has fallen by 40% since its flotation in 2005.

Mr Goyal estimates that the Indian industry lost $500m last year. After some consolidation, prices are starting to rise. Nevertheless, despite his experiment with JetLite, Mr Goyal says low-cost carriers are not feasible in India. The country lacks the infrastructure and readily available skills to be had in Europe. “Here there are no alternative airports,” he says. “India has nothing called low-cost, only low-fare and low-margin. This is irrational pricing which will make the whole industry sick.”

So by expanding abroad, Mr Goyal hopes to escape his troubles—and his competitors—at home. Seats on domestic flights, such as between Mumbai and Bangalore, are sold abroad at premium prices. Inside India they are often sold at a loss. Moreover, India's other private airlines are not yet licensed to fly internationally. For that, airlines must have been in business for five years, which bars Jet's rivals. (That includes Kingfisher Airlines, launched in 2005 by Vijay Mallya, a flamboyant brewer. It too has global ambitions and excellent service—dished out by an all-female crew wearing distinctive tight-fitting red skirts.)

Although Mr Goyal does not think much of the low-cost business model, he admires his rivals in one way. In May 2005 Jet's application for a licence to fly to America was held up after a firm based in Maryland, also called Jet Airways, accused Mr Goyal's company of being a money-laundering outfit for al-Qaeda. Mr Goyal says some of his local competitors were behind the claim, which was later withdrawn. But he seems to have a sneaking admiration for the imaginative way in which they allegedly tried to impede him. “It's good, no? They dine and wine with me, we enjoy a cocktail together,” he says, erupting into a high-pitched giggle that punctuates his rapid speech. “Indians are very creative.”

A sprinkle of stardust

And so, for that matter, are a striking number of Jet's directors. They include several actors and musicians, including Bollywood's biggest star, Shah Rukh Khan. Mr Goyal denies, with a giggle, that these celebrities have been recruited to add glamour. “No, they add value,” he insists. “Shah Rukh, he's very clever.”

Yet their presence fits Mr Goyal's taste for networking. Striving to build India's first global brand apparently means mixing with India's other new billionaires, such as Lakshmi Mittal, a steel magnate, and Mukesh Ambani, of Reliance Industries, India's biggest private company. All of them, he says, have the same patriotic obsession: “making India great”. So is that all they talk about? “No,” Mr Goyal wheezes. “We talk about girls.”

China and its impact on Indian IT business.

2007-09-07T15:08:00.000+05:30

I'm based in Bangkok now, as part of a marketing project I'm working on for my current employer. Here China and its meteoric growth story seems to be on everyone's mind.

Our business has to deal with low cost manufacturing and lower prices coming in from china. The Thai community worries at large about flight of manufacturing, and increasing competition in services. Also in several commodities (coal and steel - to name just a couple) the demand from China keeps international prices so high, that other countries suffer consequently.

The often raised questions about China's broken financial systems , lack of English speaking workforce and its form of government are still valid. But of late , all three of these issues and several more are being ignored by the companies who are flocking to invest there. Clearly it IS becoming easier to startup and run in China.

I was browsing the internet and found this NASSCOM report on its website. Its on the impact China will have on India's IT industry. Given that this is one of India's few globally competitive industries - the report is worth pondering over.
Will look and post similar reports on other sectors. Guess this will be a bit of a long term endeavor from my end as well.

Only the 'Key Messages' is reproduced here. The report itself is free (for registered users - and registration is free too) and is a fascinating read.

-------------------------------------------------------
China has the potential to develop a large IT-BPO industry. Underlying this is substantial domestic market potential, a sizeable educated workforce and strong government emphasis on developing the IT -BPO sector.

- Domestic market potential: As one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies with an increasing participation in international trade and high levels of technology adoption, China represents substantial market potential for IT software and related business services.

- Sizeable workforce: The large population and high literacy levels, translating into a large outturn of educated job seekers, has equipped it with the essential ‘raw material’ required.

- Government emphasis on services, especially IT-BPO: The Chinese Government is aware of the country’s heavy dependence on manufacturing and has identified the development of the services sector as one of the focus areas for its 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2011).
However, currently the IT -BPO industry in China is still in its early phases of evolution. Frequent comparisons with India and commentary positioning China as a substitute destination is quite misplaced.

- Structure and Scale: China’s IT-BPO growth is being driven by its domestic market while India is a predominantly export led growth story. The scale of the sector in China is still less than a third of that in India. With both the countries witnessing strong growth, forecast to continue, it is unlikely that this difference will go away in the foreseeable future.

- Geographies Served: Indian IT-BPO exports are predominantly serving the US and the UK markets, which together account for more than 80 per cent of the total exports. On the other hand, China’s key export markets are Japan and Korea, where it has certain inherent linguistic / cultural advantages.

- Service Portfolio: The portfolio of IT-BPO services exports from China is dominated by application development, coding / testing and localization services.

The portfolio of services sourced from India is more broad-based including, application management, infrastructure services, offshore product development and engineering services.

- Process Maturity: India based providers have built robust processes for managing remote service delivery, transitioning of processes and integrating distributed workflows across large teams. This is still evolving in China. The average local Chinese service provider still suffers from sub-scale inefficiencies and lacks the experience of delivering on large contracts.
The current industry landscape in China bears some resemblance to earlier years of Indian IT-BPO. However, systemic weaknesses and comparatively evolved demand and competitive environments today pose some additional challenges.

- IT-BPO in China is witnessing early signs of growth: Leading Chinese firms have reported above average growth rates of 40-50 per cent over the past few years. Global venture capital investors have, over the past year, announced significant investments in 2-3 local firms – demonstrating their conviction in the China ITBPO story. Chinese firms are beginning to receive a steady stream of business enquiries – from western customers. Stakeholders are actively seeking to organize themselves, to build a concerted approach to industry development.

- China is also facing its share of challenges. Addressing sub-scale inefficiencies; building global recognition and addressing preconceived concerns about sourcing (IT -BPO) from China; recruiting, training and retaining talent were some of the key challenges highlighted in all our interactions.

- Complex tax and investment incentive systems across different provinces have encouraged companies to establish separate entities in each location. Highly controlled financial systems and regulation of ownership structures discouraging industry consolidation has resulted in a highly fragmented industry base.

- Another systemic challenge by the sector in China is the growing number of ‘unemployable’ resources being churned out by the expanding education system. The government has succeeded in significantly increasing the throughput of the education system in a relatively short span of time. However, the suitability of these graduates for employment in the global knowledge services industries remains questionable. It is estimated that over half of the 4 million students graduated without jobs in 2006 – and yet every firm met cited finding suitable
talent as one of their key concerns.

- Chinese firms are also beginning to face pressures of dealing with more evolved (western) outsourcers, intensifying competition from the indigenous players as well as global providers that have expanded their operations into China. The Chinese government is keen on promoting this sector. Rapid progress on the ‘tangible’ aspects of infrastructure and capacity creation is evident, softer aspects remain a challenge.

- Strong government support for the sector is evident in the various measures initiated since the start of the 10th Five-Year Plan. In addition to inducing industry capacity creation the government has identified 11 national software export bases that it will support private enterprises with interest rebates, R&D funding, personnel training, corporate qualification certification, export credit loans, credit insurance, commercial information and protection of intellectual rights.

- Results of the efforts being undertaken are very ‘visible’ – in the scale of physical and academic infrastructure created by the government over a short span of time. For example, the outturn of computer science and software graduates has increased from less than 100,000 in 2002 to about 400,000 in 2006.

- However, the softer aspects remain a challenge. The increased graduate outturn has not translated into a larger pool of employable resources. Language and cultural differences continue to bear on the experiences of working with Chinabased providers. Foreign-educated returning Chinese are seen as an essential bridge between cultures – but are in short supply. Despite continued efforts, IP protection and enforcement remains a key concern.

China is unlikely to bear on India’s lead in global services sourcing in any significant manner over the next 3-5 years. However, it must not be ignored. In fact, there is a strong case for increased partnership between the two countries as global corporations strive to strike a balance in their Sino-India co-sourcing models.

- First, the large domestic market potential makes China hard to overlook.

- Secondly, with most global corporations investing heavily in China and their
increasing adoption of the outsourced model, Indian firms are facing an increasing demand for onsite support (in China) from existing customers. In such a scenario, India-based firms will either have to develop such local service delivery capability or risk sharing their client relationships with locally present competitors. Learning how to do business in China will be integral to tapping these opportunities.

- Thirdly, India too can leverage China’s experiences. China’s programmed approach to rapidly developing key sectors of its economy and its demonstrated successes offer some learnings that may be adapted to the Indian IT-BPO context – to strengthen India’s proposition. Capacity creation in education and physical infrastructure is a case in point.

- Finally, while we have discussed the differences between the Indian and Chinese software and services sec tors, they also face some common challenges. Strengthening the education and training system to enhance the employability of graduates, developing products and service-models better suited for more price sensitive customers in the domestic markets, are prominent examples. Building on a collaborative approach, the two countries could seek innovative solutions to address some of these shared challenges.

Worse will Come.

2007-09-04T18:11:00.000+05:30

As ever the Economist remains steadily anti-Indo-US nuclear deal. But in this post, the justification and reasoning given is interesting.

FOR India's government, despite the hubbub in Parliament and barely veiled threats from its neighbour, Pakistan, the controversial deal it struck last month with America to allow civil nuclear co-operation between the two countries is already radiating success. Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, was in Delhi this week to cement a “strategic partnership”, despite Japan's decades-long discomfort with India's bomb. Meanwhile, Australia's cabinet, hitherto resolute in its refusal to sell uranium to any country outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (and only to a select few within it), has taken its cue from America and agreed in principle to sell uranium to India, even though India hasn't signed the NPT, and won't.

India is breaking out of the nuclear quarantine imposed after its first “peaceful” nuclear test in 1974. But for commerce to resume, it must first agree with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which safeguards will apply to nuclear facilities it has designated “civilian”. It will then need an exemption from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which bars nuclear trade with countries, such as India, that refuse to apply such international safeguards to all their nuclear facilities. Some governments are deeply unhappy at carving an India-sized hole in the nuclear rules. But none has yet vetoed it.

Unlike North Korea and Iran, which signed the NPT and then violated its rules, India (like Pakistan and Israel) never signed the treaty; its bombs are not illegal. Since no one expects it to give them up, the Bush administration argues it is better to bring India in from the cold and have it take on similar responsibilities to the treaty's five recognised nuclear powers: America, Britain, France, Russia and China. That, say the Americans, would be a net gain for non-proliferation.

This newspaper has long disputed that. Among other dangerous loopholes, some of which have widened since Congress gave its conditional go-ahead to the deal in December, India is pointedly not taking on the obligations and practices of the official five. Unlike them, it has refused to sign the test-ban treaty. Unlike them, it declines to end the production of fissile material—uranium and plutonium—for bombs.

America's readiness to make an Indian exception to all the rules risks snapping two of the joists that support the global non-proliferation structure. At the IAEA, India wants the right not just to say which reactors can be inspected, but when. Such unprecedented laxity in India will make it hard to get others—for example, Brazil, which already does some uranium enriching of its own—to accept the tougher inspections that the IAEA wants as standard for all NPT members.

Likewise, the hard-won clarity of the NSG's trade ban has helped maintain support for the NPT, despite the cheating antics of a few. Mere talk of fudging the rules last year encouraged Russia to break them, citing spurious “safety” concerns as an excuse to sell India uranium fuel. China, unhappy at America's coddling of India, is exploring more nuclear co-operation with Pakistan—which in turn threatens to match India, should it step up weapons production or test again.
Sending precisely the wrong message

Japan, the NPT member with the most capable nuclear industry outside the nuclear five, has told Iran and others that they should do as it does—scrupulously observe all IAEA safeguards—if they want to be trusted with nuclear technology. Exemptions for India will convey a different message: first get your bomb. Such rule-bending puts at risk the anti-nuclear regime that everyone else's safety and security is built on. Governments at the NSG and the IAEA that are unhappy with this need to find the courage of their convictions, and block it.

Offshore Service Locations

2007-09-04T17:55:00.000+05:30

This is certainly good news :)
The original post on the Economist website is here

Aug 30th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Infographics

India is still the most attractive country to which to move back-office operations, according to the 2007 Global Services Location Index compiled by A.T. Kearney. The index evaluates 50 countries according to three main categories: financial attractiveness, availability of skilled workers and the business environment. India stays ahead of China, ranked second, thanks to lower wage, infrastructure and regulatory costs. Both countries lead the rest by a good margin. Policies to promote service exports in Latin America have helped Brazil and Mexico rise in the global league. Less established locations in eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria and Slovakia, are now ranked higher than either Poland or the Czech Republic.

Maximum city blues

2007-09-04T09:19:00.000+05:30

Maximum city blues

Aug 30th 2007 | MUMBAI
From The Economist print edition
Great plans are in place to resuscitate South Asia's biggest city. As ever, the difficulty lies in implementing them
Eyevine

THERE is only one way to see Mumbai. That is by helicopter: whirring low over the rust-brown slums, godowns and Victorian Gothic monuments of India's city of commerce, its historic gateway; then soaring high over the hazy Arabian Sea beyond. It is exhilarating. Moreover, only by helicopter can one cross log-jammed central Mumbai—a distance of around 20km (12.5 miles)—in under two hours.

Mumbai is South Asia's biggest city. By 2015 the UN says it will be the world's second-biggest after Tokyo, with nearly 25m people. Yet already it is choking. Around half the population—of 14m, at a modest estimate—live in slums. Another 3m commute daily from surrounding suburbs. Most come by rail, though the service would be inadequate even if it were not hobbled by a shortage of trains and a surfeit of vagrants. At peak hours, 5,000 commuters cling to trains designed for 1,700. Hundreds die on the tracks each year.

Higher up the economic food-chain, the damage is commensurate. Airliners circle Mumbai by the hour, awaiting space to land. One of the airport's two runways is semi-retired, because 300,000 squatters have built shacks around it. The roads are even worse: Mumbai is traversed by two north-south highways, with no large axis between them. Yet every day an estimated 500 cars are added to the city's jams.

Mumbaikars have long seen the trouble ahead. In recent years, the state and central governments have recognised it too. There is much at stake, for India as well as Mumbai. Its recent high economic growth is an urban phenomenon. Indeed, the failure of rural India is why so many Indians come to town. Huge improvements in urban infrastructure are needed urgently.

Mumbai, moreover, for all its flaws, is the one Indian city with pretensions as an international financial hub. So state and central governments have made vast promises. The plans envisage overhauling laws and regulations and building Mumbai's infrastructure anew. The government of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, says this will cost $60 billion and take a decade.

The central government has earmarked $9 billion for Maharashtra's urban infrastructure. The private sector, it is hoped, will stump up most of the rest. Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (purveyor of the helicopter tour) plans to invest $8 billion in a vast manufacturing development—virtually a new city, in Navi (new) Mumbai (see map). Reliance, India's biggest private-sector company, says it will provide 2m jobs.

But there is a problem. To redevelop Mumbai and its hinterland involves moving people. And since in India third-world conditions are dignified (at least in theory) with first-world rights, this causes blockages. The invaders of Mumbai airport, for example, have at least four representatives in Maharashtra's state assembly.

Scrapping lousy laws in corrupt India is similarly fraught: as a rule, the more economic damage they do, the more powerful are the interests defending them. And so hardly a week passes without the stalling of some critical part of Mumbai's redevelopment. Last month was the turn, not for the first time, of one of the most crucial: a scheme to redevelop Dharavi slum, allegedly Asia's biggest, which would involve resettling around 300,000 people.

At its current pace, the redevelopment of Mumbai is probably not keeping up with the city's worsening decrepitude. Yet progress there has been, in three main areas: administrative reform, legal and regulatory reform, and infrastructure. Optimists—whose ranks include some of the redevelopers—say that, as a result, the way will be less tangled ahead.

The city's rulers have already pared back a few trailing branches. Mumbai is run by 16 separate agencies. To help co-ordinate them, the government has formed a redevelopment committee representing them all. But it will achieve little unless the promised axe is wielded on certain laws and building regulations. Two are most heinous. The Urban Land Ceiling Act, a law restricting urban land holdings, has left 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of Mumbai in a legal limbo. For three decades these parcels have been locked in the courts, prey to rent-seeking officials. In addition, rent controls ensure that most of Mumbai's best housing is let for peanuts on renewable leases. In such places, the rental market is dead. Denied control of their assets, landlords let splendid buildings crumble. In downtown Mumbai—one of the world's priciest markets for foreigners—3,000 houses stand vacant. Meanwhile, even middle-class immigrants to the city, having no better option, stay in the slums.

The central government says Maharashtra must repeal the urban-land law before it receives its infrastructure money. In July, for the umpteenth time, the state Parliament passed up an opportunity to do so. More promisingly, a law scrapping rent controls has been submitted to Parliament.

On infrastructure, there is less good news. The first 5.6km stage of a project to build a road over the sea, along Mumbai's western coast, is 60% completed, three years overdue and so far has cost double its $150m budget. The delay follows a costly redesign, after local fishermen protested that the road impeded their boats. Construction of an 11km metro, budgeted at some $500m, has not yet started—a year after Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, inaugurated its site by breaking a coconut over it. The government is in a legal battle to acquire a plot of land to store the metro's trains.

In Dharavi, the government has done all it can to avoid such headaches. Its plan is broadly in line with existing slum redevelopment policy. It would see Dharavi's low-lying shanties bulldozed and replaced by apartment blocks. Each unhoused family would be given title to a flat of 225 square feet (21 square metres). The leftover land would be split between the developer, as his fee, and the government. Previous slum redevelopments needed the approval of 70% of the affected slum-dwellers. Dharavi's, however, have been given no choice.

Worse, anyone who arrived there after 1994 will be ineligible for resettlement. Moreover, Dharavi is a peculiarly commercialised slum. Its cottage industries—including garments and handicrafts—earn millions of dollars in annual exports alone. After the redevelopment, Dharavi's traders would be offered space for rent. But much of the slum's industry will be lost.

It is nonetheless hard to know what the government could do better. The existing slum policy was launched a decade ago, with the aim of redeveloping all of Mumbai's slums by 2007. So far, 500,000 slum-dwellers have been resettled. But 2m new ones have arrived in the city.

Reliance would rejoice at any such progress. Its new city was supposed to extend over nearly 15,000 hectares, comprising two special economic zones (SEZs). These are tax havens for export-driven industries, introduced by the government last year. But the scheme has hit the skids. After skirmishes over a proposed SEZ in West Bengal in January, the government changed the rules. So Reliance will have to lop 5,000 hectares off Navi Mumbai, and will have no government help acquiring land. “Why do they worry about my bloody SEZ?” fumes Anand Jain, Mr Ambani's partner in the project. “Why not have ten SEZs and solve all Mumbai's problems?” As if he didn't know.

Will try and resurrect this blog shortly.

2007-02-14T16:14:00.000+05:30

Havent had the time to update this blog frankly. Hence the long gap between posts.

~The Sensex is at 14000+, and is steadily moving up, depsite concerns of overheating. India's GDP growth is almost at 9%
~Tata took over Corus, by overpaying quite a bit.The Birlas took over Novelis (Think i got that right.)
~I'm almost out of B-School.

Operation Corus.

2006-10-22T15:50:00.000+05:30

This article is about Tata Steel taking over Corus of the UK. This makes the Tata Group company the 5th largest steel producer in the world. Several analysts are pondering over the need for such a takeover. Possibilities include to guard against future hostile bids, acheive scale, entry into the European market and so on.
From various sources including DNA ,Economic Times and Zee News

In the biggest foreign takeover by an Indian company, Tata Steel and Corus Group on Friday reached an agreement on the acquisition of the European steel giant by the Indian firm for 4.3 billion pounds (Rs 36,500 crore).

The board of directors of both the companies approved the acquisition of Corus at a price of 455 pence per share in cash, paving the way for creating the world`s fifth largest steel entity with a capacity of 23.5 million tonnes per year.

"Corus directors consider the terms of the acquisition to be fair and reasonable, so far as shareholders are concerned. The directors intend to unanimously recommend that Corus shareholders vote in favour of the scheme," a joint statement released by Tata Steel and Corus said.

The acquisition will be made by Tata Steel UK, a wholly-owned indirect subsidiary of Tata Steel. The Indian firm has also been able to satisfactorily address the concerns of Corus` two main pension funds.

"This proposed acquisition represents a defining moment for Tata Steel and is entirely consistent with our strategy of growth through international expansion," Tata Group chief Ratan Tata said.

"We have compatible cultures of commitment to stakeholders and complimentary strengths in technology, efficiency, product mix and geographical spread," he said.

Corus Chairman Jim Leng said the combination with Tata represented "the right partner at the right time at the right price and on the right terms.

"This creates a well balanced company, strategically well placed to compete in an increasingly competitive global environment," Leng said.

The Tata-Corus deal comes close on the heels of the acquisition of Luxembourg-based Arcelor by Rotterdam-based Mittal Steel, owned by India-born industrialist L N Mittal. Arcelor-Mittal is now the world`s largest steel company with a combined output of about 110 million tonnes per year.

"The combined entity would be better equipped to remain at the leading edge of the fast changing steel industry," Ratan Tata said.

Leng said the deal with Tata followed talks with a number of Brazilian and Russian companies over the past one year.

The price of 455 pence per Corus shares is a premium of 26.2 per cent to the average closing price of 360.5 pence per Corus share for the twelve months period ended October 4, when the two sides first confirmed of the negotiations.

Tata Steel would fund the deal through its own cash resources and loans. The company is likely to raise about 1.8 billion pounds on its own and would get a loan of about 3.3 billion pounds from Deutche Bank, ABN Amro and credit issue.

As per the deal, at least 75 per cent Corus shareholders must tender their shares for Tata Steel to complete the transaction. The Indian firm has also been able to address the concerns of Corus` two pension schemes - the Corus Engineering Steels pension scheme and British Steel pension scheme - by increasing its contribution rate and paying additional funds.

Corus is Europe`s second largest steel producer, after Arcelor-Mittal, with revenues of 9.2 billion pounds in 2005 and steel output of 18.2 million tons in UK and Netherlands.

Tata Steel is India`s largest private sector steel firm with revenues of 5.0 billion dollars in 2005-06 and steel production of 5.3 million tonnes across India and South-East Asia. Tata Sons, Tata Steel and other Tata firms had combined revenues of about 22 billion dollars in 2005-06.

Tata Steel shares up 4%

Tata Steel stocks surged across the board on the bourses on Friday, on massive buying by funds and investors triggered by reports that Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus has accepted the company`s 4.3 billion pounds (Rs 36,500 crores) takeover bid.

Country`s largest steel maker, Tata Steel stocks shot up by Rs 19.30, or about 4 per cent at rs 521 at noon with over 55 lakh shares changing hands on the bourses.

The counter also recorded 112 block deals, placing the benchmark Sensex higher by 88 points at 12,811.59.

Tata Steel to be 40 mt company by 2012

Exuberant over acquisition of Corus, Tata Group said it would make Tata Steel a 32 billion dollar entity by 2011-12 with a combined capacity of 40 million tonnes annually from about 24 million tonnes now.

The acquisition of Anglo-Dutch giant Corus would not affect Tata Steel`s massive ongoing expansion programme in India and abroad, Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata said after announcing the acquisition agreement.

"While financing the deal, it has been taken care that no plan either in India or expansion in Jamshedpur and overseas expansion will be affected," he said, adding the deal is expected to be completed by the middle of January next year.

Tata Steel has a capacity of 5 million tonnes per year at present, while Corus has a capacity of 18.2 mtpa. The combined entity becomes the world`s fifth largest steel producer.

Elaborating on the financing, company officials said Tata Steel would pump in 3.88 billion dollar through its subsidiary - Tata Steel UK. The balance of about 5.63 billion dollars would be raised as debt from financial institutions including ABN Amro Bank, Deutsche Bank and credit issue.

Under the agreement, Ratan Tata would become Chairman of Corus Group. Jim Leng, who is currently the Chairman, would be the Deputy Chairman of Corus and Tata Steel.

Tata Steel Managing Director B Muthuraman, Tata Sons Director Ishaat Hussain and Arun Gandhi would join Corus board, while the European firm would also have three representatives in the board of Tata Steel.

On the apprehensions raised by credit rating agencies that the deal may affect Tata Steel`s financial risk profile, Tata said, "we believe that the offer we have made is right and at fair value. We believe it is the right offer."

Upbeat over an agreement reached by Tata Steel for acquiring Corus Group in an $8.09 billion deal, the biggest by an Indian company abroad, domestic steel players hailed the takeover as a stamp of authority of Indian entrepreneurs in overseas market.
According to India's largest steel producer Steel Authority of India Limited, the takeover shows the confidence of Indian entrepreneurs.
"It shows the competitive and financial strength of Indian entrepreneurs to go overseas and acquire assets," Sushil Maroo, Director (Finance), Jindal Steel and Power Limited said, similar feelings were echoed by SAIL Chairman SK Roongta who added that it shows the confidence of Indian entrepreneurs in overseas markets.
Consolidation of steel businesses by NRI steel tycoon LN Mittal and now by Tata Group will help the steel industry to tide over fluctuations in the market. "This is good for the sector and also for the country," Maroo added.
Corus Group's Board backed Tata Steel's 455 pence a share bid to takeover the Anglo-Dutch steelmaker. The deal valued at $8.09 billion would make Tata Steel the world's fifth largest steel producer.
Maroo of JSPL said that the Tata-Corus deal would also fire ambitions of many other Indian entrepreneurs.

TATA Steel and Corus may find it difficult to achieve the synergies and cost reductions they are hoping to generate by combining their operations into the world's fifth-biggest entity , analysts warned on Wednesday.

"The strategic rationale is difficult to comprehend ," Merrill Lynch said in a report on Wednesday . "Despite an arguably attractive offer of 455 pence per share, the potential Corus acquisition does not offer cost synergies or a growing market ," the note added.

"While the acquisition can quickly catapult Tata Steel towards global scale, with little immediate benefits visible, we expect concerns on likely dilution , integration issues, longer-term opportunity loss to weigh on the stock price in the near term," brokerage firm CLSA Asia Pacific Markets said.

Tata Steel on Tuesday said that it has made an indicative, non-binding , all-cash bid for Corus at 455 pence per share, valuing the European giant at an enterprise value of about $10bn. A final offer is expected sometime soon.

On Wednesday, Standard & Poor's (S&P ) placed Tata Steel's BBB corporate long-term corporate credit rating on credit watch with negative implications. S&P also placed Tata Steel's BBB foreiogn currency rating on credit watch with negative impications. "In S&P's view, the size of the acquisition and the potential cash outflow of about $10bn that Tata Steel may make in its offer to Corus could have an advser impact on its financial risjk profile," said S&P credit analyst Anshukant Taneja. A successful acquisition, however, can potentially improve the business profile of the merged entity. In resolving the Creditwatch placement, S&P will seek further information on the progress of the offer and the potential means of financing.

Analysts tracking the sector said the "extended timescale for visible benefits" is likely to affect the stock price performance. Tata's main purpose behind the acquisition is to help Corus cut costs by providing it access to cheap raw materials such as iron ore and steel slabs. Corus has little access to iron ore mines and its steel slab-making facilities turn out products that are more expensive than those in developing countries. Tata's acquisition gameplan has been to use its low-cost mines and slab-making facilities to supply to plants near growing markets around the world. According to World Steel Dynamics, Indian steel slab producers have a 22% cost advantage over European companies . While it takes $78 per tonne in India, the cost in Europe is about $100 per tonne.

However, Tata Steel does not have any spare slab-making capacity. It is establishing new capacity of about 1.8mt, but that is completely dedicated to NatSteel of Singapore and Millennium Steel of Thailand. Tata's new slab plant is likely to come up only by about '10 when the 6mt Orissa plant gets commissioned. Till then, analysts say, there will be little benefits. Even if Tata Steel finds a way to export slabs, freight costs from India to Europe are higher than those from Russia to Europe. This means that Tata Steel could be better off setting up a slab-making facility on the fringes of EU than in far away India.

There is also a problem with iron ore. A huge controversy is raging in the country over whether or not to ban exports of iron ore. Several domestic companies, including Tata Steel, have said ore exports should be banned and the mineral should be used to make value-added steel.

The government, analysts say, is unlikely to allow iron ore exports in large quantities. Plus Tata Steel itself would need new iron ore mines which could take about three years or so.

Corus is a high-cost operation and its plants, especially in the UK, are not considered very efficient . Tata Steel may face a difficult choice in dealing with this issue even as a whisper of plant closures or job losses is likely to produce a public outcry.

Corus, at the price of 455 pence per share, is valued higher than Tata Steel, though its earnings performance has been considerably weaker. As of '06-07 , Corus at the takeover price is valued 11.3 times price-to-earnings ratio and 6.5 times at EV/EBITDA per tonne, compared with Tata Steel's 7.4 times PER and 4.2 times.

Since the proposed Tata Steel special purpose vehicle (SPV) is likely to be merged with Tata Steel, that could dilute equity. Tata Steel also, thanks to this acquisition, will have to dilute equity further for raising money for its new expansion plans in Orissa and Jharkhand.

"As Tata will pay significantly high valuation for acquiring Corus and will have to dilute at lower valuation it may result in value destruction for existing shareholders," Mumbai-based Brics Securities said in a report.

End of the good times?

2006-06-11T23:51:00.000+05:30

Rather Ominous sounding article on the recent stock market corrections et al.
From Rediff columns dated June 10th '06

The change of mood is dramatic. The stock market seeks lower levels every day, and the same people who thought a month ago that a Sensex level of 12,000 was stretched but not unreasonable, now argue that the market will settle at or near 8,000.

Everyone expects interest rates to go up, in part because of the signals from the United States, and the effect will be to cool bank lending - which means slower growth in both consumption and investment.

Then, there is growing concern over the country's trade and current account deficits, especially since oil prices show no signs of softening from their current levels. This, coupled with the pulling out of money by foreign institutional investors, translates into pressure on the rupee - which has already fallen against a soft dollar and could fall further.

And while inflation is still quite low, it will climb now that petrol and diesel prices have been hiked. In short, whether it is the market for stocks, debt or currency, expectations have changed. Added to that are the macro-economic concerns about oil prices, inflation and the trade deficit.

That's not all. It turns out that more than half the companies saw a drop in profits last year (as reported by this newspaper yesterday), a disconcerting fact that was masked by the superb performance of the corporate giants, so the upbeat corporate story doesn't look quite so generalised any more.

As if to underline that point, some sectors are beginning to play to a new tune. The change of mood has already had knock-on effects in real estate (where prices have flattened, if not fallen), and in the public offer of shares, as some companies are postponing plans.

Sitting oddly on this pile of bad news and worse expectations is the evidence of new global confidence in "the India story". IBM's announcement of $6 billion worth of investment in India over the next three years is the headline of the week, on a scale matched only by the Posco steel project in Orissa.

Equally significant is Nissan's announcement that it will get Maruti to do contract manufacture of small cars, mostly for the export market but also for selling to Indian customers - significant, because it confirms that India is becoming a global hub for the production of small cars. And Motorola's announcement that it will start manufacturing mobile handsets in Tamil Nadu adds one more to the list of handset manufacturers who think the Indian telecom market is big enough to locate manufacturing plants here.

It seems that just as the FIIs begin to re-do their maths on India and other emerging markets, FDI inflow is being planned on a matching scale.

The question is whether this is the end of the good times, or whether the India story is still unfolding. Both, perhaps. All the main markets (stocks, real estate, commodities) had begun to see a lot of froth, so some cooling down and condensation is welcome; in fact, this helps a return to sanity and good judgment - and it must be hoped that real estate prices of Rs 50,000 and more per square foot will not be heard of again.

Incremental bank credit had been running ahead of deposit growth for some time, by definition that pace could not have lasted, and so a slowdown in lending was inevitable. In fact, a slowdown in US demand, prompted by higher interest rates, may not be unwelcome if it helps the US address its twin-deficit problem.

As for the economy, the combination of high oil prices, rising trade deficits, tighter money and pressure on the rupee, does mean an over-all loss of tempo. The issue is: how much will things slow down? If the economy can sustain 7 per cent growth for the next year or two (compared to the more than 8 per cent for the past three years) - and there is no reason why it should not - the new mood of near-panic on the market is unwarranted.
If the sober assessment is that this is more in the nature of a correction for the markets, and a step down in gear for the economy, within the same upbeat India story, there is no need for either companies or individuals to change their medium-term assumptions about the future.

India's Economic Contrasts

2006-03-02T12:56:00.000+05:30

BANGALORE, India, March 1, 2006: From the CBS website

With little more than big ideas and a home computer, Suhas founded his IT services company, Globals Inc, when he was just 14 — and became the world's youngest CEO.

CBS News Chief Foreign correspondent Lara Logan reports on one of the world's youngest and most successful entrepreneurs in part two of a special series India: Land of Contrasts.

It's the kind-of treatment usually reserved for India's Bollywood movie stars, not a 20-year old kid. But when Suhas Gopinath goes back to his old grade school, they let him know he's an inspiration. This local boy has made it big, reports CBS News correspondent Lara Logan.

Gopinath is the boss of a global software company that operates in 11 countries, including the United States. It's a remarkable achievement by any standard — but in India, a developing country saddled with the largest number of the world's poor, it's nothing short of a miracle.

Gopinath's inspiration was none other than Microsoft's Bill Gates.

With little more than big ideas and a home computer, Gopinath founded his IT services company, Globals Inc, when he was just 14 — and became the world's youngest CEO. Six years later, he has even bigger plans.

The new offices for his ever-expanding business in Bangalore are less than a block from the college where he's still studying and the modest house where he still lives with his parents.

Globals employs 600 people — the youngest, a 10-year-old adviser on Web design. Age is no barrier to employment — unless, of course, you're not young enough. The maximum age of his employees is 32.

You wouldn't think that Gopinath's small Indian company could be worth a $100 million to an American firm, but that's exactly how much he says he was offered by a Houston venture capitalist — for just 35 per cent of his business. Gopinath didn't hesitate to turn down the offer.

His story is an astounding example of what's possible in modern-day India's booming economy. However, his story is also the exception. Just 300 miles away, in the slums of India's capital, Delhi, a young man not much older than Gopinath is living a profoundly different existence.

Imagine waking up every morning to comb through mountains of rotting garbage, searching for anything he can sell. It's the only life 24-year-old Bisu Das has ever known.

If he's lucky, he'll make 2,000 rupees a month — that's about $40. Incredibly, that makes him better off than 300 million other Indians — more than the population of the entire United States — who live on less than $1 a day.

No matter what you've heard or read about India's poor, nothing can prepare you for actually seeing it, Logan says. The sight and stench are overwhelming, and there are more flies than you have ever seen in your life. The sheer horror of what poverty really looks like up close is shocking.

Das is one of thousands living in the midst of a massive garbage dump. He told Logan that it's hard not to feel angry. He never thought sifting through garbage would be his life.

So while India rides the economy Gopinath is helping to create, its biggest challenge may be not leaving Das and millions like him behind.

Bush in India

2006-02-24T16:01:00.000+05:30

From the pages of "The Economist"

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ON THE 13-hour flight next week from Washington to Delhi, George Bush could do a lot worse than to put aside his briefing books and curl up instead with E.M. Forster's best-known novel. “A Passage to India” is a tale, above all, of misunderstanding: of wrong signals, exaggerated expectations, offence unwittingly caused and taken, and inevitable disappointment. It is a parable of the complications that arise when eager Anglo-Saxons go travelling on the Indian subcontinent.

A degree of wide-eyed enthusiasm on Mr Bush's part is forgivable. India is a rich and exotic prize. Its booming high-tech service sector and tens of millions of affluent consumers have already convinced many of the world's business people that India is on the brink of replicating the astonishing burst of growth that transformed China from poor-house to power-house in little more than two decades. Add in the seductive fact that this “new China” is the world's largest democracy, and the arguments for forging a much closer partnership between India and America seem unassailable.
Rising India

It would not be before time, either. America has neglected India in the past. When Bill Clinton went to Delhi in 2000, his was the first presidential visit for 22 years, and it is surely not a good thing that Mr Bush has waited quite so long to make his own inaugural trip there. India is a nuclear power, home to more Muslims than any country but Indonesia; and it borders China, which many American policymakers see as at best a growing rival and at worst a future enemy. India is seldom regarded in the same way, even though it favoured the Soviet side in the cold war and even though Indian firms offer just as tough competition for parts of America's service sector as Chinese factories do to low-end manufacturing.

Despite all this, there are reasons to urge both sides to tread as carefully as angels before they rush in to an over-enthusiastic partnership. Mr Bush needs to avoid two kinds of mistake. The first, and most serious, would be to shower America's new friend with gifts that the United States can ill afford. Unfortunately, this has already happened. In July, when India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Washington, he came home with a remarkable present: a promise from Mr Bush that he would aim to share American civilian nuclear technology with India.

That was too generous. Under American and international law, such technology can be given only to countries that have renounced nuclear weapons and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India has never joined the treaty, and it tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Mr Bush, in effect, was driving a coach and horses through the treaty in order to suit his own strategic ends, a move that invites the accusation of hypocrisy from other nuclear states and wannabes not so favoured. The idea was that India, in return, should take steps to satisfy the Americans on a long list of nuclear-security concerns, such as not exporting weapons technology and continuing to observe a moratorium on testing. Most important, India was asked to separate its civilian and military nuclear programmes, with the former subject to a rigorous inspection regime.

So far, however, the proposals offered by the Indians actually to do all this are far from adequate. As Mr Bush packs his bags, desperate attempts are being made to bridge the gap. The obvious danger is that in order to portray his summit as a success Mr Bush will be tempted to accept even fewer safeguards from India. That would be a dangerous mistake: nuclear proliferation matters too much to allow excessive wiggle-room or create bad precedents. Fortunately, whatever deal is agreed between Mr Bush and Mr Singh will also require the approval of America's Congress, which has already taken a dim view of Mr Bush's nuclear generosity to India.
Fearful China

Sending the wrong signal on nuclear weapons is not the only potential pitfall in America's romance with India. Mr Bush should also be wary of sending the wrong signal about America's intentions towards China. Too often when Indian-American relations are discussed in Washington, the notion is invoked that India might somehow turn out to be a “counterweight” to China. Yet it is hard to see, in practical terms, what sort of counterweight India could actually be. On the contrary, that sort of talk is liable only to reinforce China's fear that America's grand strategic design is to encircle it and block its rise as a great power. That fear has already been strengthened by America's recent transfer of some of its military might from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The United States should not base its Asian strategy on that sort of balance-of-power diplomacy. Apart from anything else, India is far too canny, and cares too much about its own China relationship, to be drawn into such a game. Instead of encircling China, Mr Bush should concentrate on putting the American relationship with it on the right footing: deeper engagement, coupled with a determination to make China play by the rules. Yet Mr Bush's approach to this rising superpower has sometimes seemed almost casual: Hu Jintao, China's president, had been made to wait far too long for his state visit to Washington even before Hurricane Katrina forced him to cancel a visit last August. And Mr Bush has not worked hard enough at home to make the free-trade case against the protectionist hawks gunning for China (though, to be fair to him, he has not given them much comfort either).

Mr Bush must also take care to ensure that friendship with India does not damage his close ties to Pakistan, another American ally the president intends to visit on this trip. Pakistan is infinitely more fragile than India, but right now of much greater strategic significance to America. It is central to the fight against the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. On top of that, it has an awful record of selling (by unauthorised freelancers, claims its government) nuclear-weapons technology on the open market. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has lately shown signs of flexibility towards his country's long and dangerous dispute with India over Kashmir. But both countries need to show flexibility on Kashmir, and Mr Bush must take care not to tilt so far India's way that the Indians feel under no pressure to make concessions of their own. That will merely weaken Mr Musharraf and enfeeble a valuable American ally.

India itself has much to lose if its love-in with America goes wrong. For Mr Singh personally, the stakes are quite high. By backing American efforts to tackle Iran's nuclear ambitions, he has infuriated the left-wing parties on whose support his minority government depends, as well as some of his own party colleagues. If he cannot pull off a decent nuclear deal of his own, he will suffer for it. He is already learning that America's embrace is not the uncomplicated affair he might have hoped for. A visionary Indian project would see gas piped from Iran, via Pakistan. But as relations between America and Iran rapidly deteriorate, America is ever more reluctant to see it go ahead. Meanwhile, India's growing trade with America, whether in textiles or software services, is starting to run into a new generation of Asia-bashers in America. As E.M. Forster knew, no passage to India is ever entirely smooth.

The Battle for Bangalore...

2006-02-24T00:01:00.000+05:30

From the Times in UK!!!

Highlights emerging trends in the emerging software industry in India and the fact that India has become a destination for quality software development: not just cost-cutting outsourcing work.
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India is turning into a battleground for the hearts and minds of software developers. On one side are the forces of opensourcing, ranged against them is Bill Gates's Microsoft. It is a battle neither can afford to lose, writes Gervase Markham..

A nasty catfight has been going on in Washington and the American press. The essence of the battle calls into question the patriotism of CEOs who would sell out their countrymen for a quick buck by taking advantage of offshoring - a word guaranteed to cause an American software engineer to choke on his high-caffeine Jolt.

American companies, being squeezed by low-cost, high-work-ethic competition from Asia, are looking to cut overheads by outsourcing their IT jobs. The destination of much of this exodus is the booming tech sector of India, as the world's second most populous country leverages the widespread knowledge of English, a legacy of its colonial past. The nexus of this growth is Bangalore, which boasts more than 200 technology companies and the highest number of engineering colleges of any city in the world.

And now a different fight has begun in earnest. In terms of the global IT landscape, it is perhaps more significant. It is the battle for the hearts and minds of those tens of thousands of Indian software developers.

On one side is Microsoft, hoping to tempt them with visions of a smoothly-integrated development system from a single vendor. On the other side is the free software movement, talking about the importance of liberty, unrestrictive licensing and control of your own computing environment. At stake is the ability to harness the brainpower of an entire subcontinent of hackers.

In the most recent exchange of fire, Microsoft's shot made the loudest bang. Buoyed by a no doubt sincere but also profile-raising series of visits by Bill Gates to Delhi slums and AIDS counselling centres, there was extensive international coverage of Microsoft's "Ready Launch 2005" event at the Bangalore Palace. There, Gates announced a $1.7 billion investment in India over the next four years, split between "donations" of software to schools, job creation and building, and developer evangelism.

However, reading the reports, one can't help but see a slightly patronising tone in their approach. One announcement which typified this was "Code4Bill" - a recruiting exercise dressed up as a competition, involving a series of online tests and real-world interviews. These whittle down the entrants to a final 20 who win internships at Microsoft India, and maybe even (gasp!) a job. The lucky grand prize winner gets to work in the "Bill Gates Technical Assistants Team" in Redmond for a year.

By contrast, the FOSS.IN (FOSS stands for "free and open source software; .IN is the country code for India) conference, a week beforehand in the very same venue, received comparatively little publicity. There were 2,700 attendees gathered to hear big names in the Linux world such as Alan Cox, the impressively-bearded Welsh kernel hacker, who gave "brutally technical" programming talks. The event's sponsor list reads like a roll call in the ABM ("Anyone But Microsoft") army - Intel, Google, Sun, HP.

At first glance, despite the Microsoft marketing muscle and donated dollars, free software should be a shoo-in. In a country which wants to encourage entrepreneurship and expand its economy, why pay more for less control? However, the free software community has its own, rather unexpected hurdle to overcome - a cultural one. Despite India being "the world's largest consumer of free software", not much code is making its way back to the major projects. It seems that Indian developers often have a difficult time engaging with the community.

There have been several reasons suggested for this. One is that the Indian university system is more oriented to creating large numbers of employable graduates who pass tests, assembly-line style, than encouraging creativity and risk-taking. In a country where an engineering degree is the ticket to a reasonably comfortable life, no one wants to rock the boat. Another factor is that Indian developers are often most comfortable with a structured work plan and clearly-defined boundaries. This style of working is not a good fit for the self-motivated, somewhat chaotic style of the free software bazaar.

So at the moment, the scales are evenly balanced. India is there for the taking. In five years' time, will India be Coding 4 Bill, or Coding 2 Share?

Gervase Markham works for the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting choice and innovation on the internet. His blog is Hacking for Christ

SAP finds Indian techies too costly.

2006-02-06T19:03:00.000+05:30

From the Times of India

SAP, the world’s third-biggest software company, is cutting its recruitment of Indian experts because they are too expensive and is instead looking towards China, its CEO Henning Kagermann said in an interview.

With Indians pricing themselves out of the market, SAP preferred to recruit in China and low-cost eastern European nations. “India is getting too dear,” said SAP CEO Henning Kagermann in the interview with the Financial Times published on Monday.

“We’ve decided to only recruit a certain number more from there, and then to start looking around in other locations,” he added.

The Indian software industry, particularly companies based in Bangalore and other high-tech centres, has attracted huge interest over the past decade from international investors seeking sophisticated skills at low salaries.
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Addendum : Its to be noted that an entry level software programmer in India still commands just around $5000, compared to the $50000 for an American programmer.
However this rate is growing at an estimated 11-15% a year.Perhaps its higher.

Further, SAP itself is still hiring in India, albeit at a claimed "slower" rate.

Microsoft plans to double capacity at its Hyderabad center
Google has just set up shop in Bangalore
Cisco plans to inaugurate its swanky new campus in Bangalore.
IBM, CSC and other giants also have grand plas for their Indian operations.

However our real threat remain other low cost offshoring locations like China, Thailand, Malaysia etc

Finally...Sensex makes history, touches Peak 10000

2006-02-06T17:32:00.000+05:30

from Indiatimes Dated: 6th February.

The Sensex finally breached the coveted 10,000-point mark driven by robust buying interest across a host of index scrips.

The historic run on the bourses was accompanied by gains in all the 30 Sensex scrips. The 30-share benchmark index scaled a life-time high of 10,002.83, registering a gain of more than 250 points, over Friday's close of 9,742.58.

ICICI Bank was leading the pack of gainers on the Sensex with a gain of more than 6%. Pharma major Ranbaxy also jumped more than 5%, while gaining on the back of an overseas joint venture formed by the company.Among the other gainers, ONGC, Reliance Industries (RIL), L&T, HDFC, Hindalco, Cipla, TCS and Bajaj Auto also registered gains of more than 2%.

The NSE Nifty also jumped past the 3,000-point mark and scaled an intraday high of 3,009.45, which was barely 2 points below the life-time high of 3,011.05.
The market indices soon gathered momentum after opening on a cautious note. The BSE Sensex opened 3.51 points up at 9,746.09, while the NSE Nifty opened 0.35 points up at 2,940.95.

Buying interest was conspicuous across a host of sectors including auto, banking, software, engineering and FMCG sectors.The record-breaking rally materialised with any major broad-based catalysts, with the Q3 earnings season coming to an end and the mixed trends witnessed in the global markets on Friday/Monday.

The benchmark ended the previous week at 9,742.58, after scaling a life-time closing high of 9,919.89 on Tuesday, January 31, 2006. The 30-share benchmark index missed the elusive 10,000-point mark by barely six points in intraday trade last week.

The market observers expect the continuing strength in FII inflows and robust liquidity position of the domestic mutual funds to continue to provide support to the market sentiments.
The market sentiments are also likely to gain support from the pre-budget expectations in the near term. Traditionally, markets witness a pre-budget rally in the run-up to the union budget on expectations for possible government sops for India Inc to boost the country's economic growth.

India to launch rural job scheme.

2006-02-02T14:07:00.000+05:30

This is the "Employment guarantee scheme" which was promised by the UPA when it came to power, last year.Could turn out to be a major white elephant, which is expensive and poorly implemented. Also it will divert funds from healthcare , education and infrastructure.

Overall this scheme is a temporary Band-aid rather than an effective surgery to solve our country's chronic unemployment. The infrastructure envisioned to be built - roads, irrigation whatever, is bound to be of poor quality and haphazard.
And given our country's dismal implementation record, lets see how far this goes.
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From the BBCWorldwide Website:

The scheme will target India's 60m rural households
The Indian government is due to launch one of its most ambitious efforts to eradicate rural poverty.
Under the National Rural Guarantee Scheme one member from each of India's 60 million rural households is guaranteed 100 days of work each year.

They will receive a minimum wage of 60 rupees ($1.50) and if that does not work, an unemployment allowance.More than a third of India's population of more than one billion people lives on less than a dollar a day.

The first phase of the programme will cover 200 of the country's poorest and least developed districts.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will launch the scheme in a village in the drought-prone Anantapur district of southern Andhra Pradesh state.
The president of the governing Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi, will also be present on the occasion.

The Congress Party swept to power in 2004 after it pledged to improve the conditions of India's poor.

Critics
The programme will be extended to the entire country over the next four years and is being seen as an important effort to curb the migration of villagers to India's overcrowded cities.
The Congress campaign used the scheme in election campaigns

Analysts say this is the most ambitious pro-poor scheme launched by an Indian government, in a country where nearly 70% of the population lives in villages.
People employed by the scheme will work on projects such as building roads, improving rural infrastructure, constructing canals or working on water conservation schemes.

The government says special priority will be given to women.
However, critics say the scheme is too expensive and question whether the government will be able to support it.

They say rather than paying for unskilled manual labour, the government should invest in improving rural infrastructure - especially in health care and education.
Others say there is little transparency, which may lead to red tape and corruption.

India to become the world's 3rd largest economy by 2015

2006-01-28T07:45:00.000+05:30

This article is from HT
The heading obviously only holds in PPP terms. In absolute $ terms , we do have a long way to go yet.

Check the projections for 2050 and see where the US,China and India stand. A bit scary this.
Anyways it remains to be seen how this shift in the balance of economic power will impact the rest of the world.

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India is slated to become the third largest economy with a share of 14.3 per cent of global economy by 2015 and graduate to become the "third pole" and growth driver by 2035.

"As the share of USA in World GDP falls from 21 to 18 per cent and that of India rises from 6 to 11 per cent in 2025, the latter emerges as third pole in the global economy," economist Arvind Virmani said in an article published in ADB India Economic Bulletin.

India, which is now the fourth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, will overtake Japan and become third major economic power within 10 years.

India will increase its share from 8.2 in 2015 to 11.2 per cent of world GDP by 2025, and is projected to be about 60 per cent of the size of US economy.

"The transformation into tri-polar economy will be completed by 2035 with Indian economy only a little smaller than US economy but larger than that of Western Europe," Virmani, a director of economic think-tank ICRIER, said.

By 2035, India is likely to be a larger growth driver than the 6 largest countries in EU, though its impact will be a little over half that of the US.

India's share of global economy would be 14.3 per cent, while China will dominate with 30 per cent and USA at second place with 16 per cent by 2035.

China's economy is projected to become 50 per cent larger than US economy by 2025 and almost double that of USA by 2035, he said.

At this point China's share of the world economy will be equal to the share of the US and Indian economies taken together, he said.

India's Promise...

2006-01-13T21:55:00.000+05:30

Awesome article on why India is still developing ....and not developed. Found on the web here

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At the beginning of the great European explorations of the world, India was home to a fabulous amount of wealth. Indeed, all the invading empires from the Mughals to the British became vastly rich. And the Maharajahs and Nawabs in the Princely States that were scattered throughout India accumulated enormous wealth over many centuries.

The end of British colonialism left Indians with some amazing opportunities and daunting challenges. Few countries have started with so much promise.

Those that became leaders of the world’s largest democracy were given a modern physical infrastructure that included one of the best railway systems in the world. And they were in possession of a well-developed “institutional” infrastructure that provided the possibilities of gaining from the advantages associated with the rule of law.

But the new rulers in New Delhi that took over from the British soon began to squander the birthright of their own citizens. Much of India’s population suffers from dire poverty, caused by serial blunders in economic policy.

In a classic case of deflecting blame for their own shortcomings, many politicians insist that the size of the population is India’s biggest problem. It is hard to imagine a more cynical or despicable lie. If left free from the extensive interferences of various levels of government, the energy and creativity of the Indian people would soon allow them to be among the richest on earth.

Indians are not poor because there are too many people. Instead, many Indians are poor because of regulations that interfere with the creation of new businesses and jobs.

India was ranked 116^th in a report by the World Bank (“Doing Business”) that evaluates the ease of doing business in 155 countries. The rankings examine the time, cost and minimum capital requirement to start a business as well as the difficulty of hiring and firing workers. Also examined are barriers for obtaining licenses and registering property as well as access to credit and protection for investors.

India’s political culture is guided by socialist instincts that reflect the beliefs of its modern founders. In a preamble to the Indian Constitution modified by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency of the 1970s, India is identified as a “sovereign, secular, socialist republic”.

At the same time, an amended section in the Representation of Peoples Act required that all recognized and registered parties must swear by this Preamble. All parties must in theory stand for socialism. There are no parties that espouse classical liberalism, even while there are many communist parties.

There is difficulty in abandoning ideas with such honored lineage, but socialism has been widely discredited and abandoned so Indians should reconsider this commitment. Perhaps local disasters arising from India’s socialist state provide better reasons to give up on it.

Public policy guided by socialism promotes division, social instability and economic destruction. Socialism ignored the fact that poverty arises from low economic growth and insufficient capital formation. As indicated by its rank of 66 out of 127 countries in the Economic Freedom of the World report released by the Cato Institute (2005), India has too many policies that hinder private investments.

In the past, it was suggested that India experienced an unavoidably slow “Hindu rate of growth” based upon its dominant cultural heritage. Instead, socialism and interventionist policies caused slow economic growth in the past and imposed the greatest harm on the poor and unskilled that lost access to economic opportunities.

The Capital Access Index (CAI), constructed by the Milken Institute, evaluates the quality of domestic capital markets. The Index follows the premise that access to financial markets is the key to long-term growth and to reducing poverty and income gaps. India ranks 53^rd out of 121 countries surveyed.

At issue is nothing less than India’s future. Should the Indian state be a vehicle for groups to gain power who use it to further their own narrow ends? This approach seems likely to weaken and perhaps invite the destruction of India’s democracy.

Or should the Indian state of the future be a mechanism to protect the freedoms and rights of individuals living under a general law with shared allegiance to a secular state? If so, there is a better chance that India’s democracy will survive and more of its people can prosper.

India 'Loses 10m Female Births'

2006-01-10T02:53:00.000+05:30

From the "BBC" magazine article linked here

More than 10m female births in India may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years, according to medical research.

Researchers in India and Canada for the Lancet journal said prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girls a year.

Their research was based on a national survey of 1.1m households in 1998.

The researchers said the "girl deficit" was more common among educated women but did not vary according to religion.

The unusual gender balance in India has been known about for some time.

In most countries, women slightly outnumber men, but separate research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Ultrasound

The latest research is by Prabhat Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in Chandigarh, India.

They found that there was an increasing tendency to select boys when previous children had been girls.

The sex ratio is so skewed in some states, men cannot find brides

In cases where the preceding child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys in the next birth was 759 to 1,000.

This fell even further when the two preceding children were both girls. Then the ratio for the third child born was just 719 girls to 1,000 boys.

However, for a child following the birth of a male child, the gender ratio was roughly equal.

Prabhat Jha said conservative estimates in the research suggested half a million girls were being lost each year.

"If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10m missing female births would not be unreasonable."

'Shameful'

Sex selective abortions have been banned in India for more than a decade.

HAVE YOUR SAY

This just means that girls will be far more sought after in future

Christian Tiburtius, Reading

Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.

It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.

The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially.

The BBC's Jill McGivering says the problem is complicated by advances in technology. Ultrasound machines must be officially registered but many are now so light and portable, they are hard to monitor.

Although doctors in India must not tell couples the sex of a foetus, in practice, some just use coded signals instead, our correspondent says.

Last year the well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh, began a campaign across five northern and western states against female foeticide."There's no other form of violence that's more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful," he said.

MILLIONAIRES On the street

2006-01-01T14:44:00.000+05:30

MILLIONAIRES On the street :from The Times of India

A hawker who owns cars, a beggar who owns three houses, a sweeper who runs a company. In Indian cities there are happy endings

Then: Chaatwala
Now: Chaatwala with a Mercedes
Tucked away in a tiny bylane near UPSC in Delhi are a group of "Coco-Cola" umbrellas that are usually swarmed by hordes who are relishing the transitory joys of junk food. Brothers Jagdish and Gopal Das, along with two other brothers, run this roadside shop that comedian Mehmood used to frequent once. “We manage to earn enough to go home and eat one square meal,” says Gopal Dayal vainly trying to achieve modesty. When he is reminded that his family owns a Mercedes, Gopal mumbles, “ Hamare pitaji ke paas Mercedes hai, par woh to ab purani baat hai. (My father has a Mercedes but that’s an old story).”
Despite the success of the shop, the brothers lived under the constant fear of being uprooted by the municipality. “MCD has allotted us land near the garbage dump not far from here. Business dropped, so we came back,” says Gopal.

Then: Beggar
Now: Beggar who has investments
Sambhaji Kale has Rs 40,000 hard cash in the bank, a few thousands in investments, a flat in Mumbai suburb, Virar, two houses and a plot in Solapur. Kale, his wife and their four children beg at traffic signals. They make about Rs 1,000 a day but live in some wooden boxes near the Khar signal. Their Virar flat has been let out, chiefly because commuting from Virar to Mumbai’s nerve centres would have added to their expense.
The Kales enjoy a fair bit of adulation among their ilk. Everyone knows them well, even the postman who never fails to bring them letters and other correspondence from the bank to their wooden boxes on the wayside.

Then: Peon
Now: Peon who drives
It’s not clear how many cars the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai is entitled to but one of his peons has three. Rajesh Naik, 29, came to Mumbai from Sindhudurg five years ago. Now he owns two Tata Indicas and a second-hand Sumo. He had procured the vehicles on loan with the intention of hiring them out. He gets more than fifteen bookings per month and every booking fetches him about Rs 5,000, probably more than his pay. He has already paid off the loan of one of the Indicas, and hopes to pay the other by this year-end.
It’s hard to understand why he does not quit his peon job. “I will never leave it because it gives me respect and security.”

Then: Parking attendants
Now: Crorepatis
This story may not have the poignancy of urban toil but it still shows how Indian cities can make dreams come true. Six months ago, Patel brothers Vinubhai, 51, Girish, 45, and Chandrakant, 43, handed out parking tickets and sold paan outside a multiplex in Ahmedabad. Then one fine day, the sweeping multiplex culture suddenly took them to unexpected wealth. Their ancestral land on the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway, that used to be worth nothing much, sold for Rs 60 crore.
Now the brothers are waiting for their chartered accountant to help them make investments, and “help us avoid taxes”.

Then: Sweeper
Now: Owner of a housekeeping company
Bhagiram Tank likes to call himself “zero”. That was what he was in 1965 when he left Ghaziabad as a 15-year-old. His father was a cleaner at the Radio Club in Mumbai and Bhagiram replaced him. He cleaned bathrooms, kitchens, the swimming pool and the wedding hall.
Very soon he branched out to providing organised cleaning services as a smalltime contractor. Today, 30 big corporate houses including Pepsi, Modicare, Raymond, Essar, Procter & Gamble, Lupin and Chemtex are his clients. Tank now employs around 800 people at his Unique Housekeeping, and has diversified into the security business with a former army commando. He owns a two-bedroom flat in Kandivli and drives a Tata Sumo. “I never lost sight of my responsibilities. The only fantasy I had was to undergo plastic surgery and look handsome, but my doctor talked me out of it,” he says, laughing.

Then: Vada Pav hawker
Now: Earns Rs 3 lakh per month
“I am busy now, Come on Saturday,” Ashok Manohar Satam says blandly, when asked for an interview. On any weekday, from 9.30 in the morning till 9.30 in the night, Satam has no time for conversation. He is busy doing brisk business at his vada pav stall near the Central Telegraph Office opposite Flora Fountain in Mumbai.
Thirty five years ago, Satam and his three brothers helped their postman father who ran the stall only in the evenings. The vada pav cost 50 paise then and they managed to sell about 150 a day. Now, Satam sells about 2,000 vada pavs a day at Rs 5 a piece. Satam’s business has been growing at 10% per annum since the last few years. “Mumbai has a lot of prosperity now. More crowds, more people, more wealth,” he says.
Once his family of eight used to live in a one-room tenement, the kind of place from where most of Mumbai emerges for air. Now his family has moved into four flats, all in the same building. His 22-year-old son is studying hotel management, and a younger son is pursuing a science degree in Ruparel College.

CLEAN SWEEPER
BHAGIRAM TANK
USED TO BE A SWEEPER. NOW HE RUNS A HOUSE CLEANING AGENCY AND DRIVES A TATA SUMO. ONLY ONE WISH REMAINS UNFULFILLED. “I WANTED TO UNDERGO A PLASTIC SURGERY AND LOOK HANDSOME. BUT MY DOCTOR TALKED ME OUT OF IT.”

BREAD AND BUTTER
ASHOK SATAM
MAKES RS 3 LAKH A MONTH SELLING VADA PAV AT FLORA FOUNTAIN. ANOTHER VADA PAVWALA IN MATUNGA OWNS A HYUNDAI ACCENT AND HIS CHILDREN GO TO AN ENGLISHMEDIUM RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL

THE BETELS MUCHHAD PAANWALA PREMSHANKAR TIWARI
2 HOUSES 2 ALSATIANS 1 WATCHMAN 1 WEBSITE “MANY CARS” THAT’S WHAT THE BROTHERS FROM U.P. OWN AFTER SELLING PAANS IN MUMBAI

Managers vs Leaders

2005-12-23T21:50:00.000+05:30

Interesting article , I found on the net here

Something BSchools should definitely think hard about ---

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We often talk of management and leadership as if they are the same thing. They are not.

The two are related, but their central functions are different. Managers provide leadership, and leaders perform management functions. But managers don't perform the unique functions of leaders.

Here are some key differences:

* A manager takes care of where you are; a leader takes you to a new place.
* A manager deals with complexity; a leader deals with uncertainty.
* A manager is concerned with finding the facts; a leader makes decisions.
* A manager is concerned with doing things right; a leader is concerned with doing the right things.
* A manager's critical concern is efficiency; a leader focuses on effectiveness.
* A manager creates policies; a leader establishes principles.
* A manager sees and hears what is going on; a leader hears when there is no sound and sees when there is no light.
* A manager finds answers and solutions; a leader formulates the questions and identifies the problems.
* A manager looks for similarities between current and previous problems; a leader looks for differences.
* A manager thinks that a successful solution to a management problem can be used again; a leader wonders whether the problem in a new environment might require a different solution.

Multiple functions, limited resources and conflicting demands for time and resources, require management. It involves setting priorities, establishing processes, overseeing the execution of tasks and measuring progress against expectations. Management is focused on the short term, ensuring that resources are expended and progress is made within time frames of days, weeks and months. Leadership, which deals with uncertainty, is focused on the long term. The effects of a policy decision to invest in staff development, for example, might never be objectively determined or, at best, might only be seen after many years.

Management involves looking at the facts and assessing status, which can be aided by technical tools, such as spreadsheets, PERT (program evaluation and review technique) charts, and the like. Leadership involves looking at inadequate or nonexistent information and then making a decision. Leaders must have the courage to act and the humility to listen. They must be open to new data, but at some point act with the data available.

Management's concern with efficiency means doing things right to conserve resources. Leadership is focused on effectiveness - doing the right thing. For example, the military must manage its resources well to maximize efficiency. But in waging war, the military's critical responsibility is to be effective and win the war regardless of the resources required. Getting a bargain does not reflect effective leadership if it means losing the war. Good management is important, but good leadership is essential.

The public sector develops a lot of good managers, but very few leaders. Government focuses too much on abstract or formal education, rather than experience. The Senior Executive Service has provisions for mobility and development through experience, but they are rarely used.

Developing Leaders

Developing managers and leaders involves stages of understanding, not prescriptively, but conceptually.

Phase 1 is higher education or academic training that focuses on abstract learning, in which solutions to problems are provided in textbooks.

Phase 2 applies that abstract process to the actual workplace, in which there are often no right or wrong answers. This is the critical phase in which a future manager or leader develops the confidence to make decisions without knowing the right answers. This requires attempting tasks that are challenging, so that success will demonstrate competence.

Phase 3 involves social and political dimensions, as a performer moves from working independently to working with others as a supervisor or member of a product or process team. It is no longer enough to simply know the facts, since the process now includes others and involves subjectivity.

Phase 4 replaces simpler tasks that involve teams or small groups with complex tasks that involve independent, but often interrelated, large groups. In this pivotal stage, managers accept responsibility for things outside their expertise and rely on someone else to provide the facts. The manager may have more authority, but has become more dependent upon others. This might be the time to get more formal training, such as seminars or academic programs in management, to develop skills that weren't addressed in earlier education. There is no turning back after this transition from performing objective tasks to subjective decision-making and problem solving.

Phase 5 separates leaders from managers. The management role changes from maintaining an organization's values to creating them. Leaders establish the principles upon which their subordinates formulate policies.

Building on Strengths

Becoming a leader requires understanding oneself. There are many tools available, such as the Meyers Briggs profile, to help with that assessment. Recognizing personal characteristics is important in learning how to deal with others, recognizing strengths and weaknesses, and adopting an appropriate leadership style. An extrovert must learn to listen more and talk less. An introvert must speak up more and get heard. A manager who is more comfortable knowing all the details and giving explicit orders should not adopt a participative management style, but rather recognize the limitations of an authoritative style. Adopting a style that is inconsistent with one's personality not only creates stress but it often leads to failure.

Leaders also must understand their professional traits. One useful tool is the 360-degree feedback survey, which allows managers to get the perspectives of their bosses, peers and subordinates. Such a total view is valuable because managers tend to assess their behavior in terms of their intent, not the effect.

Today the federal system, both its structure and processes, is changing. New agencies, such as the Homeland Security Department, are being formed. The federal personnel system is being modified significantly. Outsourcing has become a household word in the government. Civil servants are going to a new place, and it will take leaders - not just managers - to get them there.

The New face of Bangalore.

2005-12-16T19:55:00.000+05:30

My city !

From "The Economist" magazine

THE arriving businessman, anxious to get to grips with India's information-technology industry in its very capital, may need a little patience. He might meet his first traffic jam just outside Bangalore's airport. He can examine the skeleton of the early stages of a planned flyover on the airport road. Construction started in February 2003 and was due to be completed in April 2004. Three-quarters of the work is still to be done, but the building site is idle. A dispute over cost escalation led to a cancellation of the contract (the rusting steel that forms the skeleton was getting more expensive by the day).

To say the least, this is bad public relations for Bangalore, the hub of the great Indian boom in software and remote services, such as call-centres (known as “business process outsourcing”, or BPO). It seems to confirm recent scare stories that the city has ground to a halt, and its government does not care. Late last year, some of the leading lights of Indian information technology (IT), such as Wipro's founder, Azim Premji, and his counterpart at Infosys, Narayana Murthy, gave warning that Bangalore was in trouble. The Indian Express, a national newspaper, took up the cause with a front-page series on “Bangalore crumbling”.

The government showed its disdain for the IT billionaires by allowing the withering of the “Bangalore Agenda Task Force”. This was an initiative led, and largely financed, by Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, to improve governance and infrastructure in Bangalore through partnership with the private sector. Worse still, from the IT industry's point of view, the government decided to apply an “entry tax” of 13.5% on goods brought into the state—a big burden on firms relying on imported computers.

For those perennially pessimistic about India, all this was just the latest proof that its democratic structure will always end up stifling its economic prospects. Bangalore alone accounts for about one-third of India's software exports and, with 265,000 workers, nearly one-third of total employment in IT services and BPO. No other Indian city has such an “ecosystem” of mutually reinforcing strengths. So one would expect Bangalore's woes to have a nationwide impact.

Yet Wipro and Infosys are taking on nearly 1,000 new staff every month. There were jitters this month on the stockmarket after Infosys forecast a sluggish quarter ahead. But NASSCOM, the industry's lobby, expects Indian IT services to continue to grow by 25-28% annually. BPO, from a much smaller base, will grow even faster, by 35-40%. The three biggest Indian IT firms—Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro—are now among the top ten globally in terms of stockmarket capitalisation, gross profits and employees.

There are a number of explanations for this paradox. First, Bangalore's troubles, while serious, are not terminal. Second, India has plenty of other locations for IT and BPO investment. But third, and most important, these are still businesses with fantastic potential, and India's advantages are so great that, however bad its aim, it will be hard-pressed to shoot itself in the foot.

Bangalore, say officials, is the fastest-growing city in India. Its population, only 800,000 in 1951, had grown to 5.6m in 2001, and is estimated at 7m now. It appealed to the British Raj's soldiers—and then to Indian pensioners—because of its beautiful, mild climate, the finest in India, and the lush greenery of its many parks and gardens.

That still helps draw the IT industry, as do its technical and scientific institutes. It is home to the Indian Institute of Science, singled out in the Indian budget this year as a centre of excellence in research and development to be promoted as a “world-class university”, as well as the location of the organisation spearheading India's space programme. Karnataka has 77 engineering colleges producing more than 29,000 graduates a year.

Now, to these attractions are added an abundance of talent, a relaxed and cosmopolitan atmosphere, and a lively nightlife. Many recent graduates come, at their parents' expense, to hunt for a job. The big IT firms have built huge campuses in Electronics City, a few kilometres out of town. Some are as modern and efficient as anything in Silicon Valley, from the state-of-the-art remote network-management systems to the cappuccino bars.

But commuting is a nightmare. Bangalore suffers the infrastructure shortcomings common to many Indian cities: a water shortage, inadequate sewers, an erratic power supply, and pot-holed roads too narrow for the traffic they need to bear. But Bangalore may be unique in the speed of its decline. Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Centre, an outfit that monitors the government's performance, says it shows that just a few months of neglect are enough to undo years of improvement. Hearing the negative signals about Bangalore that the new government sent out, many city workers stopped bothering. The result: “total urban chaos”, according to Sudip Banerjee, boss of Wipro's “enterprise solutions” division.

But this chaos has not infiltrated the Wipro campus, however, nor those of its competitors. They build much of their own infrastructure. Their virtual connections to the West sometimes seem stronger than their physical ties to India. “Our body is in India,” says Mr Nilekani, “but our head is in New York or somewhere.” So the impact of “crumbling” is diluted. In the long run, it may make Bangalore a less attractive destination. But firms still have to coax Bangalore-based staff with incentives to move elsewhere.

Few in the IT industry have much good to say about the new government. At least, however, it is pretending to be friendly to business. It has dropped the entry tax for exporting firms and is even talking of setting up a committee with the private sector, along the lines of Mr Nilekani's defunct task-force. All its talk of expansion will inevitably be bogged down in bureaucratic delay, and the building will itself cause disruption. Things will get worse before they get better. But are they now, or will they become, very much worse than elsewhere in India? Probably not.

Bangalore's troubles will, however, encourage local and foreign firms to examine the many other options available. It used to be, says Partha Iyengar of Gartner, a consultancy, echoing an old IBM advert, that in the IT industry, “no one ever got fired for choosing Bangalore”. Now the city is a “drastic victim of its own success” that is becoming less and less attractive. For the most sophisticated work, in research and development, Philips's Mr Hoekstra argues there is still no alternative: “if Bangalore sinks, India sinks”. But he wishes the Karnataka government had deterred the call-centres. For them, and many other BPO activities, there is plenty of choice.

Gartner has classified Indian cities in four “tiers” of attractiveness to foreign firms seeking to outsource work to India. Bangalore, along with Delhi and Mumbai, occupies the top tier. But it lists six places as “Tier 1-1” cities, just behind the leaders. They are Gurgaon and Noida, the fast-growing towns on the edges of Delhi; Mumbai's new town; Chennai (formerly Madras) and Hyderabad in the South and Pune in the West. Then there is a whole range of places just below that vying for business. Last month Dell, an American computer giant, opened a contact centre in Mohali in the north. Kolkata (once Calcutta) is trying to shed its image as a bastion of labour militancy and is aggressively courting investment in IT and BPO.

Most of the big Indian IT firms and many of the smaller ones have operations in several Indian cities. Vee Technologies, a BPO firm with its headquarters in Bangalore, employs 300 people there for its “high-cost work”, but about 500 in the town of Salem, about three hours away, where costs are lower and staff far easier to retain. Lakshmi Narayanan of Cognizant, an American IT firm with its main Indian base in Chennai, says IT job-hunters are starting to move there and to Hyderabad to look for work, as they do to Bangalore. Chennai alone has an estimated 100,000 software professionals, and is expected to add another 50,000 this year.

Mr Narayanan says companies such as his worry more about mounting costs than they do about the infrastructure. Bangalore, with the influx of foreign firms pushing up wages, is where they are mounting fastest. P.V. Kannan, boss of 24/7 Customer, a BPO firm, reckons the city is about 10% more expensive than other places in India. Staff attrition—running as high as 40% for the industry as a whole, and even higher at the lower end of the call-centre market—is a particular problem because of all the foreign firms.

The successful firms are expanding aggressively. OfficeTiger expects to double the number of its employees to about 4,000 by the end of the year. 24/7 Customer added 1,200 people in the past year, and has 4,200 now. It expects to grow by 40% this year and next.

Optimism about India's prospects in these businesses is based, firstly, on the sheer range of work now encompassed by the IT and BPO industries and, second, on its potential for further expansion. The business that started it all—offshore software development—still has plenty of room to grow. The world becomes more dependent on IT by the day. Even as new applications are churned out, old ones need maintaining and even newer ones developing.

The qualities of those graduates give India its biggest competitive advantage and, in the long run, the one that gives most cause for concern. Partha Iyengar of Gartner forecasts that in 5-7 years' time, many of the software processes at present performed manually in offices in Bangalore will be automated. India will have to move upmarket and “who is going to convert the army of programmers into businessmen?”

The biggest constraint on the growth of India's service industries may be the available talent pool. Nevertheless, the bullish projections for Indian IT and “IT-enabled services” produced in 2002 by NASSCOM and McKinsey seem within reach. They forecast that the combined industries would, by 2008, employ 4m people (up from fewer than 900,000 in 2004), earn $57 billion-65 billion from exports (compared with $17 billion in 2004), and account for 7% of GDP (compared with 4%).

The challenge this poses for the firms leading the boom is how to expand fast enough to meet demand without jeopardising quality. For quality, as much as cost, is what is driving the demand. It is in this context that Bangalore's troubles have to be seen: as the acute growing pains of a still-infant industry. It is a worry not because the difficulties are insuperable, but because some can be solved only by the government. India's IT industry has thrived in part because, unlike most other sectors of the economy, it has largely kept the government out of its business. That period is coming to an end. Neglect, the industry is learning, is not always benign.

The Rickshaws of Kolkata

2005-12-07T19:32:00.000+05:30

Here in Kolkata , these are everywhere. The government plans to ban them. But there's no denying that these have become part of the city's streets and the city itself would seem quite incomplete without them.

These photographs are from the "International Herald tribune" Asia-Pacific Page.

Could You Please Make Me a Shade Lighter?

2005-12-01T22:10:00.000+05:30

How Indians came to view fair skin as an ideal--and a business opportunity

This is an article from the TIME website.
The link to this article is here

Explains why "fair and lovely" is the world's largest selling fairness cream.
And why our matimonial ads are far more bizarre and comical than the ones mentioned in the article.
I dont agree with the sense of optimism , prevailing towards the end of the article. Life for women in India is no TV soap. And no amount of posturing by some ex-model in a serial is going to change centuries of prejudice. At least not in my lifetime.

The article hits the nail on the head by rightly mentioning about "racism" which most indians practice (maybe not in classrooms , offices or the street , but definitely in marriage alliances and such.) But it remains somthing we as a nation remain tightlipped about and even try to cover up and play down.

Being fair has nothing to do with beauty. It is merely aspirational. Being fair is equated with a higher social status. After all in our minds -- arent fair women supposed to be socially "forward" and racially superior ? They are NOT, but images and dogmas rule !

Anyways read and decide for yourself. ---------------------------

Up close, Rajashree Thakur makes a terrible ugly duckling. Her face is a flawless ocher, punctuated by ebony eyes and framed by jet black hair, and in the light of the setting sun, she glows. Thakur plays the lead in India's new hit soap Saat Phere ("seven circles around the fire," a Hindu marriage ritual), which, between riveting digressions into the lives, loves and secrets of a Rajasthani family, is the tragedy of Saloni, too unfortunate-looking for love. "It's not that Saloni isn't beautiful," clarifies Thakur, a former model. "It's that she's dark. Because of her complexion, her family thinks no one will marry her." At today's shoot in the hills north of Bombay, Saloni seeks solace at a temple after another day of dusky humiliation, only to be lectured on the virtues of fairness by a fat, ivory-skinned 9-year-old boy. "Ah, Saloni," grimaces Thakur. "She goes through hell."

The notion that Thakur's skin color could qualify her as unattractive is hard to fathom. Hers is a universal beauty, and in the West, despite concerns about the sun's rays and skin cancer, people spend billions of dollars trying to duplicate her café au lait tone. But Asia, from its geishas to its Ganesha gods, has always prized the pale. And in India the desire is a national obsession. You see it in the personal ads, which range from the general ("Whitish girl invites match") to the pinpoint specific ("Suitable alliance invited for ... fair, smart, only daughter having advanced training in footwear molds designing") but consistently mention the aspirant's light skin. You see it in pharmacies selling Fair & Lovely lightening soaps and creams and--new this season--Fair and Handsome, for men. And you see it in commercials, in which India's top two models, Katrina Kaif and Yana Gupta, are part English and part Czech, respectively. Lightness is big business. Fair and Handsome's maker, Mohan Goenka of Calcutta-based Emami, says the fairness-cosmetics market has grown two-thirds in the past five years, to an annual $250 million. India's 60,000 beauty salons do a roaring trade bleaching faces and blasting skin with tiny sand blowers.

No one can say for certain where this fascination with white skin originated. Thakur and Goenka point to pale-faced conquerors from Britain and central Asia who forcefully instilled a reverence for whiteness. Cultural conservatives complain Hollywood is pushing aside Indian heroes in favor of Westerners all too ready to display their pale flesh. Some sociologists argue that in a country where most people still farm, dark skin is associated with lowly labor in the outdoors.

Cory Wallia is Bollywood's top makeup artist and a man whose cautionary--and perhaps apocryphal--tales on whitening include the time the mother of a bride insisted he slap on so much white foundation that the young girl somehow turned blue. (The punch line? The mother approved.) He believes the real reason for the fairness craze is more troubling than most care to admit. While no one suspects that Westerners seek tans to change their ethnicity, Indians, he says, are motivated essentially to do just that. "Indians are more racist with other Indians than any American ever was with his slaves," Wallia says. "The desire for whiteness has very little to do with beauty."

But fashions--even cultures--can change. Although darkness is still akin to evil in rural India, Wallia says that in Bombay, reflecting its position as the capital of an increasingly cosmopolitan India, dusky is becoming a popular look. Thakur, as her character Saloni, may even be poised to become India's first overtly dark-skinned icon. "People stop me everywhere and ask me, 'Why are you crying so much on TV? It's not fair.'" In fact, says Thakur, the climax of Saat Phere will break another Indian taboo. "Saloni eventually decides she's not going to get married. She is educated, she can sing and dance very well, and she just doesn't consider her complexion a problem." And does the single, dark Saloni live happily ever after? Thakur laughs and says, "Of course. This is Indian TV. Not every rule was meant to be broken."

--------------------------------------------------

Heres what the channel says about the programme. --

Saat Phere is a story of a girl’s struggles against the stigmas forced upon her by society and her quest for her unique identity. Although India has progressed in various fields of technology, science & education, discrimination against women remains the root cause of regression in many societies in India leading to degradation of women.

One such story is that of Saloni, a dark complexioned 24-year-old girl. Salonis’s talent is overshadowed by her complexion. Faced with such a situation, Saloni is determined to not let society's will be imposed upon her and ruin her life and has the will, spirit and the courage to embark upon the journey to search for her own unique identity. Yehi hai Saloni ka Safar.

IIM-L seethes with anger, shock

2005-11-24T21:04:00.000+05:30

This is an article from Times of India , Bangalore Edition, dated today, 24th Nov '05. Sums up the mood in the IIMs on the death of one of their own.

By Prashant Srivastava/TNN

Lucknow: On the surface there is bereavement and condolences, but below it a storm of anger and dismay is brewing. Not just in IIM Lucknow, which lost an alumnus to the gun-weilding goons of the oil mafia, but also across the IIM fraternity—faculty and alumni included. And the anger is triggering the question of whether IIM graduates should opt for the public sector or government jobs.
To them S Manjunathan’s death doesn’t make sense. He was the happygo-lucky kind. A do-gooder with a song on his lips and honesty to live by. And above all, he was only doing his job. “Is it actually worth it for our students to work in an environment like this?’’ asks a shocked IIM Lucknow director, Dr Devi Singh. He says it is instances like these that will make the student community think twice before taking up assignments in Uttar Pradesh.
If hatred for the “system’’ is another fallout, it does not seem an overreaction, for the sales officer in Indian Oil Corporation was trying to check rampant malpractice of selling adulterated oil in the state. Manjunathan’s mentor Prof Debashis Chatterjee says, “politicians don’t have a right to stand on podiums and give long speeches on brain drain.’’ He adds that the student community and the academia has starting debating whether we are so feeble as to let this pass.
Second year student Satish Pulekar says the incident incited the students enough to stand in unison for the cause supported by Manjunathan. “We are taught to strictly adhere to the value system and not to compromise on any account. Such incidents, though highly traumatising, only firm our resolve to fight it all out,’’ he says. The sentiments are shared by batchmates Garima Dixit and Pooja Sikka.
The sole point of discussion among the students on Wednesday revolved around the huge difference between working in Manhattan and Uttar Pradesh. “Should we work at the expense of our lives?’’ they asked. “People say IIM graduates never do anything for the country, never join PSUs. Look what happened to one who did,’’ said a student bitterly.

IOC field staff have to face oil mafia alone By Sanjay Dutta/TNN

New Delhi: S Manjunathan may have sealed his fate the day he decided to join a state-owned oil company. As a sales officer of IOC, the government also made him police the adulteration mafia, worth Rs 10,000 crore a year. But unlike the mob, he had no protection for doing his job.
About 1,000 sales officers working throughout the country for the four state-owned oil marketing firms are living under the shadow of death for over a year now. This is when the government abolished the anti-adulteration cell in the oil ministry and asked the companies to check such malpractices under its marketing discipline guidelines.
Under this, a sales officer is supposed to take the prescribed action on the spot against a petrol pump owner or gas agency dealer when any malpractice.

I have nothing to say.....

2005-11-24T12:14:00.000+05:30

....but the total lack of media interest on the shocking Manjunath murder has ticked me off.
The Mumbai bye-elections, the murder of the Indian in Afghanistan got their articles.

Even the CAT exam ,had 4 FULL articles on it.
The nation bitched eloquently about the 1300 "privileged" students , who will make it into one of the IIMs, study for two years and then presumably work for some firang for the rest of their days (earning of course loads of $$ in the process.) Articles popped up debating whether the cut-offs this year will be 59.5 or 60.25 !!!

Does we care about , or even want to listen to the ones who place country and home above their own ambitions ? Perhaps they dont really look good on Page 1 (or 3).

I came across this article on someone -- who chose to join a PSU after graduating from IIML , when he so easily could have joined any hi-flying private firm, someone who refused to compromise on his principles, AND who paid with his life for his honesty and his uprightness.

I also must mention, that i first came across this article here. Not in a newspaper.
Other stories I found are here. and here.

Perhaps , the thousands who slog blindly for CAT and other exams, should understand that being a manager is not just about earning the big bucks, or about driving a Merc or working in a fancy highrise .
It also just might be about sweating it out in "Gola Gokrannath" , measuring adulteration levels in Petrol pumps, dealing with the corrupt mafia daily, keeping your head held high , maintaining your integrity and honesty. . . . and getting shot in the process.

Rest in peace, sir. You are an inspiration.

Democracy vs Poverty Eradication

2005-11-23T17:54:00.000+05:30

This is an article from the Economist dated May12 th 2005.

A real eye opener.

ONE of many ways in which the Chinese economy outperformed India's in the last two decades of the 20th century was in reducing poverty. In China, the number of people living on less than $1 a day, adjusted to reflect purchasing power, fell by about 400m, according to the World Bank. In India, the figure dropped by just 70m. There are many explanations for this, such as India's higher birth-rate. But it is nonetheless, for democrats, a puzzle, and something of an embarrassment.

India, unlike China, is a vibrant democracy with a proudly robust habit of turfing lousy governments out of office. The poor not only represent a big chunk of the electorate; they also, proportionately, vote more than the rich do. As Larry Diamond, of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, puts it in a recent essay in a collection, published by the World Bank, one would logically expect such a democracy to choose “leaders, parties and policies that favour poverty reduction”. Yet, in this respect, at least, China's unelected heavies have done better.

This is a dismal conclusion for democrats, though most, like Mr Diamond, argue that the fault lies not with democracy itself so much as its partial implementation or hijacking by elites. Another new book, by Bimal Jalan, a leading Indian economist and former governor of the central bank, lists some of the woes afflicting Indian politics, such as the rise of small parties, the dwindling of inner-party democracy and the shrinking role of Parliament in ensuring accountability. “For the poor in India,” he concludes, the political system “does not have much to offer—except the periodic satisfaction of casting their votes.”

In another chapter of the World Bank book, Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, writes that India's record in eradicating poverty is “neither extraordinary nor abysmal”. However, he makes the disturbing suggestion that some of the reasons India and other democracies have not done better are related to the structure of democratic politics itself.

As with “tigerish” rates of economic growth, the “miracles” in reducing poverty have occurred almost exclusively in dictatorships. But so have the disasters—sometimes in the very same dictatorship. Amartya Sen, an Indian-born Nobel-prize-winning economist, has noted that democratic India, unlike its colonised predecessor, has avoided famine. China, on the other hand, suffered in 1959-61 probably the worst man-made famine in history, in which 30m may have died.

In poverty-reduction, as in growth, India is typical of other developing-country democracies, having achieved steady but not spectacular success. It is a small group: precious few poor countries have been democracies for very long—Botswana, Costa Rica, Jamaica, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Trinidad & Tobago, and a few others. Mr Varshney excludes Malaysia, which has eradicated poverty, as “at best half a democracy”. Other countries have democratised after becoming quite rich.

Voting one's caste

Why might democracy militate against poverty reduction in poor countries? Mr Varshney has two suggestions. First, democracies have a bias towards “direct” methods of tackling poverty, such as subsidies and hand-outs, which, in the long run, are less effective than “indirect” methods—ie, those that generate faster economic growth. In India, this seems undeniably true. Governments have built up whopping budget deficits, thanks largely to subsidies. Many farmers, for example, receive subsidised or free fuel, fertiliser, electricity and water. But little public money is spent on improvements that would do most to lift the growth rate: in infrastructure, primary education and basic health care. Everybody wants better roads, and nobody votes against them. But every politician promises to build them and hardly any do. Cutting subsidies, on the other hand, is a sure vote-loser.

Second, the poor are not necessarily a homogenous group. In a democratic system, they may organise themselves along lines other than economic class and “the shared identities of caste, ethnicity and religion are more likely to form historically enduring bonds”. If you are born poor, you may die rich. But your ethnic group is fixed. In India, with its myriad linguistic and caste-based groups, the upshot is a dispiriting beggar-thy-neighbour politics. Just as subsidies are easier to deliver than are roads and schools, so are affirmative-action schemes, giving jobs to members of specified castes.

The relationship between caste and class helps explain the wide regional discrepancies in India. Mr Sen has noted that in one Indian state, Kerala, infant mortality has fallen from 37 per 1,000 in 1979, the same as in China, to ten now, compared with 30 in China. He suggests that the improvement relates directly to India's democratic strengths. The collapse of the public health system in China in the reform era was possible because there was little political resistance, whereas the deficiencies of Indian primary health care are subject to constant public scrutiny. Mr Varshney points to another explanation for Kerala's good performance in reducing poverty: the “remarkable merging of caste and class”. This made the poor better-organised and more cohesive. Such a coincidence, he says, is rare. In most places, ethnicity and class cut across each other.

Even where they do, however, democracy, still young in the poor world, may yet prove better at reducing poverty than despotism has been. One of its many unquantifiable advantages is a capacity for self-improvement. In dictatorships, if the people are lucky, rulers may learn from their mistakes. In democracies, so can the people. In time, they may even get it right.

Indias best employers - PSUs ?

2005-11-21T12:18:00.000+05:30

I was reading an article on "India's best employers" in a leading business daily.
6 software firms.
2 banks
1 ITES firm
1 PSU.

A PSU ? Is it a fluke ? Isn't it a misfit. Read on and decide for yourself.

The software companies, banks and the ITES firm evoke no raised eyebrows.
The six software firms are well known organizations which have top-notch people practices and industry leading pay. The same holds true for the ITES firm (which until recently was run directly by the worlds largest company... so go figure)
The banks are BOTH foreign ones (Just in case your mind is working on the lines of "State bank of...")

Now to the star of the lineup - the PSU.
Think PSU, the first thought is of paan stained corridors, pot-bellied babus , stacks of files, overflowing cabinets, endless queues, and innumerable chaprasis. This might have been the case twenty years ago , under the shadow of quota rule and licenses, but in the era of liberalization , forced to compete with leaner private firms, PSUs have learnt to use their clout and the unwavering government backing (provided to most of the PSUs without question) to emerge winners.

Coming to the PSU - Its NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation)
People are so happy here , that the attrition rate is a stunning 0.4% and the average career here is 20 years long. Can we dismiss these numbers as a result of the public sector mindset or the lack of suitable employment elsewhere ? (I mean....how many companies in India can boast of being thermal power generators? :-P)
Contrary to other PSUs, NTPC has a reputation of being a fast mover. It finds innovative opportunities and converts them into money-spinners.
The learning here for any fresh recruit is huge. The training is liberal and provided in a planned and scheduled manner.The company sponsors higher education and vocational courses for its key executives.

The downsides ?
A gender ratio of 22:1 against women !!!
and
The "Government pay scale" (which to some extent is offset by the perks and other facilities)
But these are issues , the management seems t be addressing, when chilling out at the company's state of the art gymnasium or around the pool table.

But are PSUs prefered employers ?
They are not.
There used to be a time when the best technical talent of the country (from the IITs, RECs) as well as the best managers (from the IIMs) used to join PSUs.
Nowadays the tables have turned, and they have largely become unwanted by the top talent.

Maybe they cannot match the astronomical pay packages of the private firms.
Maybe its "uncool" to work in a "Government" firm.
Maybe a PSU just doesn't end up looking good on your CV.

The PSUs have a long heritage in our country and in many ways are insitutions , our country needs to be proud of.
They are key to our national security and in providing employment.
But in this era of increased competition, they need a major revamp, and a major image makeover, if they are to attract talent and stay competitive.

NTPC is an organization , worth emulating in this regard.

A female engineer in Tata Sons ?

2005-11-10T08:32:00.000+05:30

This is an article about how Sudha Murthy became an employee of Tata Sons. Intersting and Inspiring. Found it in an email.

An angry letter from a young lady made JRD Tata change his rule. Sudha was livid when a job advertisement posted by a Tata company at the institution where she was completing her post graduation stated that "Lady candidates need not apply". She dashed off a post card to JRD Tata, protesting against the discrimination.

Following this, Sudha was called for an interview and she became the first female engineer to work on the shop floor at Telco (now Tata Motors). It was the beginning of an association that would change her life in more ways than one."

There are two photographs that hang on my office wall. Everyday when I entered my office I look at them before starting my day. They are pictures of two old people. One is of a gentleman in a blue suit and the other is a black and white image of a man with dreamy eyes and a white beard. People have often asked me if the people in the photographs are related to me. Some have even asked me, "Is this black and white photo that of a Sufi saint or a religious Guru?"

I smile and reply "No, nor are they related to me. These people made an impact on my life. I am grateful to them." "Who are they?" "The man in the blue suit is Bharat Ratna JRD Tata and the black and white photo is of Jamsetji Tata."

"But why do you have them in your office?" " You can call it gratitude."

Then, invariably, I have to tell the person the following story. It was a long time ago. I was young and bright, bold and idealistic. I was in the final year of my Master's course in Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, then known as the Tata Institute.
Life was full of fun and joy. I did not know what helplessness or injustice meant.

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus . I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies' hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of Science.

I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from Universities in the US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco (now Tata Motors). It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

At the bottom was a small line: "Lady candidates need not apply.? I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

Though I was not keen on taking up the job, I saw it as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful!

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco's management about the injustice the company was perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco.

I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the", I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company's chairman then). I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote.

"The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives. They have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised how a company such a Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender."

I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco's Pune facility at the company's expense. I was taken aback by the telegram. My hostel mate told me I should use the opportunity to go to Pune free of cost and buy them the famous Pune saris for cheap! I collected Rs 30 each from everyone who wanted a sari. When I look back, I feel like laughing at the reasons for my going, but back then they seemed good enough to make the trip.

It was my first visit to Pune and I immediately fell in love with the city. To this day it remains dear to me. I feel as much at home in Pune as I do in Hubli, my hometown. The place changed my life in so many ways. As directed, I went to Telco's Pimpri office for the interview. There were six people on the panel and I realised then that this was serious business.

"This is the girl who wrote to JRD," I heard somebody whisper as soon as I entered the room. By then I knew for sure that I would not get the job. The realisation abolished all fear from my mind, so I was rather cool while the interview was being conducted. Even before the interview started, I reckoned the panel was biased, so I told them, rather impolitely, "I hope this is only a technical interview."

They were taken aback by my rudeness, and even today I am ashamed about my attitude. The panel asked me technical questions and I answered all of them.

Then an elderly gentleman with an affectionate voice told me, "Do you Know why we said lady candidates need not apply? The reason is that we have never employed any ladies on the shop floor. This is not a co-ed college, this is a factory. When it comes to academics, you are a first ranker throughout. We appreciate that, but people like you should work in research Laboratories." I was a young girl from small-town Hubli. My world had been a limited place. I did not know the ways of large corporate houses and their difficulties, so I answered, "But you must start somewhere, otherwise no woman will ever be able to work in your factories."

Finally, after a long interview, I was told I had been successful. So this was what the future had in store for me. Never had I thought I would take up a job in Pune . I met a shy young man from Karnataka there, we became good friends and we got married.

It was only after joining Telco that I realised who JRD was: the uncrowned King of Indian industry. Now I was scared, but I did not get to meet him till I was transferred to Bombay. One day I had to show some reports to Mr. Moolgaokar, our chairman, who we all knew as SM. I was in his office on the first floor of Bombay House (the Tata headquarters) when, suddenly JRD walked in. That was the first time I saw "appro JRD". Appro means "our" in Gujarati. This was the affectionate term by which people at Bombay House",

I was feeling very nervous, remembering my postcard episode. SM introduced me nicely, "Jeh (that's what his close associates called him), this young woman is an engineer and that too a postgraduate. She is the first woman to work on the Telco shop floor." JRD looked at me. I was praying he would not ask me any questions about my interview (or the postcard that preceded it).

Thankfully, he didn't. Instead, he remarked. "It is nice that girls are getting into engineering in our country. By the way, what is your name?"

"When I joined Telco I was Sudha Kulkarni, Sir," I replied. "Now I am Sudha Murthy. " He smiled and kindly smile and started a discussion with SM. As for me, I almost ran out of the room.

After that I used to see JRD on and off. He was the Tata Group chairman and I was merely an engineer. There was nothing that we had in common. I was in awe of him.

One day I was waiting for Murthy, my husband, to pick me up after office hours. To my surprise I saw JRD standing next to me. I did not know how to react. Yet again I started worrying about that postcard. Looking back, I realize JRD had forgotten about it. It must have been a small incident for him, but not so for me.

"Young lady, why are you here?" he asked. "Office time is over." I said, "Sir, I'm waiting for my husband to come and pick me up." JRD said, "It is getting dark and there's no one in the corridor. I'll wait with you till your husband comes."

I was quite used to waiting for Murthy, but having JRD waiting alongside made me extremely uncomfortable.

I was nervous. Out of the corner of my eye I looked at him. He wore a simple white pant and shirt. He was old, yet his face was glowing. There wasn't any air of superiority about him. I was thinking, "Look at this person. He is a chairman, a well-respected man in our country and he is waiting for the sake of an ordinary employee."

Then I saw Murthy and I rushed out. JRD called and said, "Young lady, tell your husband never to make his wife wait again."

In 1982 I had to resign from my job at Telco. I was reluctant to go, but I really did not have a choice. I was coming down the steps of Bombay House after wrapping up my final settlement when I saw JRD coming up. He was absorbed in thought. I wanted to say goodbye to him, so I stopped. He saw me and paused.

Gently, he said, "So what are you doing, Mrs Kulkarni?" (That was the way he always addressed me.) "Sir, I am leaving Telco." "Where are you going?" he asked. "Pune, Sir. My husband is starting a company called Infosys and I'm shifting to Pune."

"Oh! And what will you do when you are successful." "Sir, I don't know whether we will be successful." "Never start with diffidence," he advised me. "Always start with confidence. When you are successful you must give back to society. Society gives us so much; we must reciprocate. I wish you>all the best."

Then JRD continued walking up the stairs. I stood there for what seemed like a millennium. That was the last time I saw him alive. Many years later I met Ratan Tata in the same Bombay House, occupying the chair JRD once did. I told him of my many sweet memories of working with Telco.

Later he wrote to me, "It was nice hearing about Jeh from you. The sad part is that he's not alive to see you today."

I consider JRD a great man because, despite being an extremely busy person, he valued one postcard written by a young girl seeking justice. He must have received thousands of letters everyday. He could have thrown mine away, but he didn't do that. He respected the intentions of that unknown girl, who had neither influence nor money, and gave her an opportunity in his company. He did not merely give her a job; he changed her life and mindset forever.

Close to 50 per cent of the students in today's engineering colleges are girls. And there are women on the shop floor in many industry segments.

I see these changes and I think of JRD. If at all time stops and asks me what I want from life, I would say I wish JRD were alive today to see how the company we started has grown. He would have enjoyed it wholeheartedly.

My love and respect for the House of Tata remains undiminished by the passage of time. I always looked up to JRD . I saw him as a role model for his simplicity, his generosity, his kindness and the care he took of his employees. Those blue eyes always reminded me of the sky; they had the same vastness and magnificence.

(Sudha Murthy is a widely published writer and chairperson of the Infosys Foundation involved in a number of social development initiatives. Infosys chairman Narayan Murthy is her husband.)

Article sourced from: Lasting Legacies (Tata Review Special Commemorative Issue 2004), brought out by the house of Tatas to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of JRD Tata on July 29, 2004

Diwali in UP

2005-11-09T16:49:00.000+05:30

This one is from the Economic Times.
Its really interesting and thought provoking though...

THOSE who've read their Mahabharatha or watched the B R Chopra mega serial will always remember that climactic moment when Yudhishthira loses the wife in a game of dice and a weeping Draupadi is dragged to the gaming hall in the royal palace at Hastinapur where the disrobing of the Pandavas' wife is divinely pre-empted by Krishna. There was an entirely different twist to the tale last Tuesday on Diwali night in the Kundapura Kedarpur village in the Dhampur tehsil of UP's Bijnore district when a drunken 28-year-old Ram Singh gambled away first his money, then his ring and finally his watch before staking his wife for a sum of Rs 5,000 and losing her too. When the winner went to Ram Singh's house to claim the wife, what followed was completely contrary to what Vyasa had scripted. Instead of letting herself be dragged away, Ram Singh's wife picked up a burning log of wood and used it to beat up the winner who fled in tears to the nearest police station. The matter didn't end even when the cops intervened and the loser borrowed Rs 5,000 and paid off the winner in cash instead of kind. When Ram Singh returned home, he was severely beaten up by his wife. The thrashing stopped only when Ram Singh begged for forgiveness and wailed that he would never, ever gamble again in his life!

Draupadi has come a long way since the Mahabharatha! Today's Draupadi obviously believes that God helps those who help themselves! So much so that today's Duryodhana has to cower behind the law-enforcing Bhishma to escape retribution. And today's Yudhishthira has to fall at Draupadi's feet to be accepted by her. And if Ram Singh reforms, we could even see that traditional proverb being re-adapted to state that "behind every successful man is a woman with a broomstick or a burning log in hand!" And Kundapura Kedarpur village may have already left Kaliyuga behind and moved into a golden age of its own!

Sudha Murthy -- The Love Story

2005-11-09T16:18:00.000+05:30

The following is an excerpt from Sudha Murthy's Autobiography. It talks about the early years of her marriage and of Infosys.I found it truly amazing.

It was in Pune that I met Narayan Murty through my friend Prasanna who is now the Wipro chief, who was also training in Telco. Most of the books that Prasanna lent me had Murty's name on them which meant that I had a preconceived image of the man. Contrary to expectation, Murty was shy,bespectacled and an introvert. When he invited us for dinner.. I was a bit taken aback as I thought the young man was making a very fast move. I refused since I was the only girl
in the group. But Murty was relentless and we all decided to meet for dinner the next day at 7.30 p.m. at Green Fields hotel on the Main
Road,Pune.

The next day I went there at 7' o clock since I had to go to the
tailor near the hotel. And what do I see? Mr. Murty waiting in front
of the hotel and it was only seven. Till today, Murty maintains that I had mentioned (consciously!) that I would be going to the tailor at 7 so that I could meet him...And I maintain that I did not say any such thing consciously or unconsciously because I did not think of Murty as anything other than a friend at that stage. We have agreed to disagree on this matter. Soon, we became friends. Our conversations were filled with Murty's experiences abroad and the books that he has read.

My friends insisted that Murty was trying to impress me because he was interested in me. I kept denying it till one fine day, after dinner
Murty said, I want to tell you something. I knew this was it. It was coming. He said, I am 5'4" tall. I come from a lower middle class family. I can never become rich in my life and I can never give you any riches. You are beautiful, bright, and intelligent and you can get anyone you want. But will you marry me? I asked Murty to give me some time for an answer. My father didn't want me to marry a wannabe politician,(a communist at that) who didn't have a steady job and wanted to build an orphanage...

When I went to Hubli I told my parents about Murty and his proposal. My mother was positive since Murty was also from Karnataka, seemed intelligent and comes from a good family. But my father asked: What's his job, his salary, his qualifications etc? Murty was working as a research assistant and was earning less than me. He was willing to go dutch with me on our outings. My parents agreed to meet Murty in Pune on a particular day at10 a. m sharp. Murty did not turn up. How can I trust a man to take care of my daughter if he cannot keep an appointment, asked my father.

At 12noon Murty turned up in a bright red shirt! He had gone on work to Bombay, was stuck in a traffic jam on the ghats, so he hired a taxi(though it was very expensive for him) to meet his would-be father-in-law. Father was unimpressed. My father asked him what he wanted to become in life. Murty said he wanted to become a politician in the communist party and wanted to open an orphanage. My father gave his verdict. NO.

I don't want my daughter to marry somebody who wants to become a communist and then open an orphanage when he himself didn't have money to support his family.

Ironically, today, I have opened many orphanages something, which Murty wanted to do 25 years ago. By this time I realized I had developed a liking towards Murty which could only be termed as love. I wanted to marry Murty because he is an honest man. He proposed to me highlighting the negatives in his life. I promised my father that I will not marry Murty without his blessings though at the same time, I cannot marry anybody else. My father said he would agree if Murty promised to take up a steady job. But Murty refused saying he will not do things in life because somebody wanted him to. So, I was caught between the two most important people in my life.

The stalemate continued for three years during which our courtship took us to every restaurant and cinema hall in Pune. In those days, Murty was always broke. Moreover, he didn't earn much to manage.
Ironically today, he manages Infosys Technologies Ltd., one of the world's most reputed companies. He always owed me money. We used to go for dinner and he would say, I don't have money with me, you pay my share, I will return it to you later. For three years I maintained a book on Murty's debt to me.. No, he never returned the money and I finally tore it up after my wedding. The amount was a little over Rs 4000. During this interim period Murty quit his job as research assistant and started his own software business. Now, I had to pay his
salary too! Towards the late 70s computers were entering India in a big way.

During the fag end of 1977 Murty decided to take up a job as General Manager at Patni Computers in Bombay . But before he joined the company he wanted to marry me since he was to go on training to the US after joining. My father gave in as he was happy Murty had a decent job, now.

WE WERE MARRIED IN MURTY'S HOUSE IN BANGALORE ON FEBRUARY 10, 1978 WITH ONLY OUR TWO FAMILIES PRESENT.I GOT MY FIRST SILK SARI. THE WEDDING EXPENSES CAME TO ONLY RS 800 (US $17) WITH MURTY AND I POOLING IN RS 400 EACH.

I went to the US with Murty after marriage.Murty encouraged me to see America on my own because I loved travelling. I toured America for three months on backpack and had interesting experiences which will remain freshin my mind forever. Like the time when the New York police took me into custody because they thought I was an Italian trafficking drugs in Harlem. Or the time when I spent the night at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with an old couple. Murty panicked because he couldn't get a response from my hotel room even at midnight. He thought I was either killed or kidnapped.

IN 1981 MURTY WANTED TO START INFOSYS. HE HAD A VISION AND ZERO CAPITAL...initially I was very apprehensive about Murty getting into business. We did not have any business background.. Moreover we were living a comfortable life in Bombay with a regular pay check and I didn't want to rock the boat. But Murty was passionate about creating good quality software. I decided to support him. Typical of Murty, he just had a dream and no money. So I gave him Rs 10,000 which I had saved for a rainy day, without his knowledge and told him, This is all I have. Take it. I give you three years sabbatical leave. I will take care of the financial needs of our house. You go and chase your dreams without any worry. But you have only three years!

Murty and his six colleagues started Infosys in 1981,with enormous interest and hard work. In 1982 I left Telco and moved to Pune with Murty. We bought a small house on loan which also became the Infosys office. I was a clerk-cum-cook-cum-programmer.

I also took up a job as Senior Systems Analyst with Walchand group of Industries to support the house. In 1983 Infosys got their first client, MICO, in Bangalore. Murty moved to Bangalore and stayed with his mother while I went to Hubli to deliver my second child, Rohan. Ten days after my son was born, Murty left for the US on project work. I saw him only after a year, as I was unable to join Murty in the US because my son had infantile eczema, an allergy to vaccinations. So for more than a year I did not step outside our home for fear of my son contracting an infection. It was only after Rohan got all his vaccinations that I came to Bangalore where we rented a small house in Jayanagar and rented another house as Infosys headquarters. My father presented Murty a scooter to commute. I once again became a cook, programmer, clerk, secretary, office assistant et al. Nandan Nilekani (MD of Infosys) and his wife Rohini stayed with us. While Rohini babysat my son, I wrote programs for Infosys. There was no car, no phone, and just two kids and a bunch of us working hard, juggling our lives and having fun while Infosys was taking shape. It was not only me but also the wives of other partners too who gave their unstinted support. We all knew that our men were trying to build something good.

It was like a big joint family,taking care and looking out for one another. I still remember Sudha Gopalakrishna looking after my daughter Akshata with all care and love while Kumari Shibulal cooked for all of us. Murty made it very clear that it would either be me or him working at Infosys. Never the two of us together... I was involved with Infosys initially. Nandan Nilekani suggested I should be on the Board but Murty said he did not want a husband and wife team at Infosys. I was shocked since I had the relevant experience and technical qualifications. He said, Sudha if you want to work with Infosys, I will withdraw, happily. I was pained to know that I will not be involved in the company my husband was building and that I would have to give up a job that I am qualified to do and love doing.
It took me a couple of days to grasp the reason behind Murty's request.. I realized that to make Infosys a success one had to give one's 100 percent. One had to be focussed on it alone with no other distractions. If the two of us had to give 100 percent to Infosys then what would happen to our home and our children? One of us had to take care of our home while the other took care of Infosys.

I opted to be a homemaker, after all Infosys was Murty's dream. It was a big sacrificebut it was one that had to be made. Even today, Murty says, Sudha, I stepped on your career to make mine. You are responsible for my success. I might have given up my career for my husband's sake. But that does not make me a doormat...

Addendum - ON@TCC

2005-10-30T12:54:00.000+05:30

Attended a talk by Chetan Bhagat today. He's promoting his second book "One night at the call center"
I bought both his books and got them autographed too !
Posts on the books after I finish reading them first....after my Mid terms.

My earlier post (in which Chetan is mentioned is here )
Chetan's Website is here

Coming now to his talk...

He spoke on the 4Ps of marketing books in India. 95 bucks (Price) , Coffee shops, launches, Bookstores (Place) , countless interviews and promos (like this one, i guessed) (Promotion)
and His "insightful" book (Product)
Couldnt quite figure out how it fitted in though...

Also spoke on the "Book publishing in India" and the difficulties involved in getting a good book published in our country at a reasonable price. Must agree with him compelely here.

He did go a bit overboard with his take on how the IITJEE is being made simpler this year because the IITK chaps read his book and the pressures on the IITians.

Also a lot of gyan , on "following your heart" and "doing what you like" and the old be-patient-the-money-will-come etc.

Anyways a welcome change for me from my usual mugging schedule . Will post later on this and others soon.

Aravind Eye Hospitals

2005-10-22T12:18:00.000+05:30

We had a strategic management workshop here on campus. It was conducted by our distinguished alumni... The attendance was on the lower side. We - first years - had to contend with CV submissions, Company applications, Approaching Mid-terms and the incessant rainfall.
I was very much present for the inauguration and the first part of the session till 11:40 (which was about what follows in this post) but I confess leaving in the break , to attend to certain of my pending errands (like this blog.) I remain convinced of having lost out on a lot of value

The case dealt with the "aravind eye hospital" chain and how they are able to provide world class eye care at practically no cost. It was a real eye opener for me. Till then I had believed that quality always had to be bought. The concept of how high quality eye care can be provided, free of cost in remote Indian villages , to those who need it the most is something totally new to me.

This , story is something we need to be proud of. Harvard uses this as a case-study. And when I attended the presentation, I was stunned. (you'll soon see why.)
The company is a savvy marketer of services and its innovation and service-mindedness makes it stand out among clutter.

The Original Case study is available at http://www.savefile.com/files/2411751
This is a must read (though I will be summarizing it below)

The Eye hospital chain has 1400 beds and is the largest of its kind in the world. What makes it all the more remarkable is that it is in a largely rural setting in India. Facing a dream of eradicating needless blindness in India, the company faces 20 million patients and even at the stupendous rate of 1000000 surgeries a year (!!!), it cant keep pace with the burgeoning population.
The primary cause of blindness in India is cataract. I wont go into details here. Suffice it to say, it is very common and totally curable with a surgery,.
The chain was started by Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy in 1918.and expanded from 30 to 1400 beds.It has seven hospitals.

The hospital performs 70% of its surgeries free. The remaining 30% of the patients are charged and this money is used as a cross subsidy.

The company operates a main hospital (with top notch facilities which come at a price.) It also operates a more toned down, free and correspondingly chaotic "free Hospital". In addition there are a series of free eye camps (which are fairly well attended)
Free camps are held in villages and semi-rural towns. They are sponsored by other organizations with the hospital only in a supporting role. Such camps are sponsored by religious charities , Movie star Fan clubs or Lions' Club etc.

Lenses are manufactured captively at an unbelievable $3 per lens , while ensuring quality comparable with imported lenses.

Some other gems not available in the case -

* The company uses local media -newspapers, word of mouth, even folk music to spread awareness and information about eye health and its services in the community.
* The company uses satellite technology and GIS to map and locate target communities for eye camps (Those of who who think the IT revolution is only in cities, eat crow !)
* Several doctors are educated abroad (in the US for example)
* The costs are unbelievable . A surgery costs $50 , Glasses $5 and Intra ocular lenses come at $3

These kinds of organizations are real torchbearers in the path towards marketing to the rural customer. Their approach to their service holds lessons for all of us. They have managed to cut out the common misconceptions about rural Indians and their priorities and managed to bridge the HUGE gap that exists between the needs of the poor and Quality service to cover those needs.

IT - Factofthematter

2005-10-17T23:54:00.000+05:30

Rashmi's take on IT this time
Hope Software Junta agree to the observations
I go along based on my (limited) exp of IT in India...

There are two kinds of engineering students in India -- the cats whom all companies run after, and the underdogs, who are running after the companies. The cats usually bag the cool jobs which pay you well, send you abroad and keep you far far away from sweaty industrial shopfloors. 55,000 such cats found employment with the likes of Infosys, Wipro, TCS and other such companies in 2003-2004, by Nasscom estimates. But considering that India produces over 300,000 engineers annually, it's a dog's life for many fresh graduates out there.

So, what is it that separates the IT cats from the dogs? It's a question that needs to be asked, as yet another admissions season is upon us. The mad rush for engineering seats continues fuelled by this simple logic: Engineering has more value in the job market than an 'ordinary' BSc. And the jobs that are fuelling this perception are the lucrative software careers. Few would be happy building roads and bridges or working in factories -- as previous generations of engineers did.

Let's face it -- an engineering degree is a means to an end, not an end in itself. But it can turn into a dead end if you don't keep the following facts in mind:

* It's not what you study, but where you study that counts: Always, always choose college over branch. The reputation of a college is what determines campus placement prospects. This might mean doing civil engineering at VJTI although you have little interest in the subject. Live with it. At the end of 4 years, a bunch of software companies will visit the campus. If you pass their aptitude test and interviews, you're in.

It sounds illogical but companies look at it this way. "We believe in the generic concept of learnability," says Hema Ravichander, Senior VP (HR) at Infosys. "This, we define as the ability of the individual to derive generic knowledge from specific experiences and apply the same to future contexts." So when the company visits a campus engineers from any stream are welcome to apply for the aptitude test. All recruits are subsequently put through 14 1/2 weeks of intense training.

The scene at Wipro is similar. "At one time, we insisted on BE Electronics/Computer Science," says Ranjan Acharya, corporate VP, HRD, Wipro. "Now we look at basic analytical ability, understanding and grasping power." Wipro has a 45-day training program for computer engineers, and a longer one of 70-days for those from other streams.

Here's the catch, though. Infosys visits 60 to 70 engineering colleges for campus placements annually. IITs, NITs and a few top colleges in every state make up that list. "Historical relationship, performance of hires from a particular campus, ratio of offers made:joined are the main factors which determine which colleges we visit for placement year after year," says Ms Ravichander. Wipro visits 120 colleges, but its intake is less than Infy. TCS is the other large recruiter which visits about 130 colleges.

A relatively new recruiter -- Cognizant Technologies -- has also started hiring aggressively from premier engineering campuses. The company planned to pick up 60% of its targetted 4,000 new recruits for 2004 through campus placements.

* Performance does matter: The top software companies are pretty sticky when it comes to grades. It's not enough to just get into a great college, you must perform once you get there. Consistency is a very important -- companies will look at your grades right from class X onwards and expect to see a first class through all years of engineering. ATKTs (Allowed To Keep Term despite failing a subject) or dropped years are a strict no no.

This is a tall order, especially in some universities like Mumbai known for its vagaries, which often affect even the brightest students. As a popular shayari on Mumbai engineering campuses goes: Woh baap hi kya jiski beti nahin... Woh engineer hi kya jiski ATKT nahin.

Jokes apart, performance is key even if you get into a college which doesn't have attractive campus placements. A 60% throughout your engineering career ensures you still have a shot at your dream job. You can apply when these companies conduct aptitude tests off-campus.

The story goes like this. Companies have to make offers through the campus placement route, 12 to 15 months before the actual joining date. A lot can happen during this period -- often requirements drastically change. So a certain % of freshers are taken in at a later date, through off campus hiring. Infosys for example will visit various cities and test up to 10,000 applicants in a single day. Graduates from any engineering college can apply, as long as they have a first class throughout.

Aptitude tests normally cover arithmetic and analytical skills, GDs (group discussions) gauge communication skills and in the interview applicants are usually quizzed on basics from their core subjects. Any project work you may have done, as well as extra technical knowledge, eg having leant a popular programming language could help tip the scales in your favour.

Since many engineers are eventually put on the project management track, qualities such as leadership skills, teamwork and all round personality also matter.

* The year you graduate matters: An engineering course takes 4 years to complete. A lot can happen in the IT world in that time.

Some factors are simply not in your control. The graduating class of 2002 had a tough time finding jobs. 2003 was better, and the current year -- 2004 -- has seen a boom in demand for freshers. Infosys alone recruited 10,000 employees, a majority of them straight from engineering campuses. At Bangalore's RV College of Engineering 43% of the 460 students seeking placement were recruited by just 4 software companies -- Infy, TCS, Syntel and Cognizant.

This upward trend is expected to continue. But if you are entering an engineering college today, it's hard to tell exactly what the job scene will look like in 2008. Especially since the ups and downs in the US economy directly affect the fortunes of Indian software companies.

In boom years, students have more choices and better prospects. For example, at IIT Chennai last year, a strange thing happened. Less than half of the 450 eligible students took the TCS aptitude test. And there wasn't a single computer science student in that lot. Why? The salaries offered by Indian software companies (in the Rs 1.8 lakh to Rs 4 lakh per annum range) weren't attractive enough compared to other recruiters like McKinsey (Rs 7 lakhs pa), Intel and HLL (both offered Rs 4.6 lakhs pa).

In a tough year such as 2002 there was a major hue and cry when Infosys hinted it was reconsidering some of the offers made on the IIT campus several months earlier. The offers were later honoured. Companies realise that some years are hard on freshers. For example, in February 2004 TCS continued to invite entry level applications from engineers who had graduated in 2002 and 2003, as long as they had not been interviewed by the company within the last 6 months.

* You're no 22, try harder: It's true that graduating from a lesser known engineering school may mean you leave campus without a job. But it's not the end of the world. It simply means you have to conduct your own jobhunt. Respond to ads in newspapers, upload your resume on job sites and start doing the rounds of companies. Staying in touch with friends and seniors who've already got jobs is a great way to get to know about openings and entrance tests. Some companies actually prefer to recruit through employee referrals.

The good news is, a sustained effort of 3 to 6 months usually gets you a job. The important thing is to stay optimistic! As an underdog, you may end up joining an underdog company, ie a smaller outfit. But with the right experience and skills picked up along the way you can always hop, skip and jump your way to the software company of your dreams.

* Engineers@call centres: Last but not the least -- the call centre option. BPO outfits such as Wipro Spectramind actively recruit engineers, paying them higher salaries than regular graduates. And they have no dearth of applicants. But most engineers see call centre jobs -- even if they're in technical support -- only as a short term option.

If things don't work out on the software front, there's always the option of going in for higher studies. Which for most, boils down to an MBA. But remember, there are two kinds of MBA students in India -- the cats whom all companies run after, and the underdogs, who are running after the companies... But that, is another story waiting to be old.

MBA - Factofthematter

2005-10-17T23:50:00.000+05:30

Another article from Rashmi, also originally on Rediff
I am constrained to agree to this also.....

There are two kinds of folks who aim to clear the CAT -- the 'MBA nahin to kuch nahin' and the 'Kuch nahin to MBA.'The first category discovered at an early age that M, B and A spelt the magic and politically correct answer to the inevitable question: "Beta aap bade hokar kya banna chahte ho?"

The second took the medicine-engineering route only to be disillusioned with their course of study or future prospects. No particular pyaar for management but chalo, paisa to kam se kam zyaada milega.

The MBA programme -- which allows graduates from ANY stream to apply -- thus offers one final hope of personal and professional salvation.
In India, the MBA magic has worked on two fronts. Say you plan to do an MBA and parents will be a lot less worried about your taking up Eco or Commerce and avoiding the PMT/JEE.

Secondly, in case you did make it through those toughies and find you haven't the faintest interest in electronics or electrocardiograms, you can at least dream of leaping off the wrong bus onto the MBA bandwagon. The 'luxury coach' that offers a ride in the fast lane!

Unfortunately, these coaches are very few and very hard to get a seat on. And although in theory ANYONE from any background has an equal chance at making it there, the statistics paint a different picture.

Check IIM Ahmedabad's Class of 2006 profile -- 70% engineering grads, 8% commerce, 4% IT, 4% science 4%, 3% arts, 1% medicine. Incidentally, Ahmedabad has traditionally had a much more diverse class profile in the IIM fraternity -- the Class of 2004 at IIM-B, C and L all boasted 78% engineers!

The stats should bust a few prevailing myths:

Fact #1: Doing a management course at the undergrad level gives you absolutely no edge. Only 1% of IIM A's 2006 class had an BBA/BMS background.
Fact #2: Humanities are a bad choice if you dream of making it to an IIM. Even among the 3% Arts graduates who've made it, most would be students of Eco -- a quasi-numerical subject.
To put it extremely bluntly, only exceptional 'ordinary graduates' -- the kind who could probably have made it to an engineering school but chose not to -- make it to an IIM A. Many in fact come from colleges like SRCC and St Stephens where the cut-offs for Honours courses are mercilessly high.

Even among the engineers who make it, a large percentage are from the creme de la creme schools -- the IITs, RECs, VJTIs and DCEs. The IIM Calcutta batch profile in fact lists 'engineering' and 'IITs' as two separate categories! Together these grads hog close to 80% of the seats at the Institute.

Why should engineers dominate so completely in an area which purports to offer entry to any kind of graduate?

According to UGC figures (as of March 2002), India's 253 universities and 13,150 colleges churned out 2.5 million graduates annually. Of that number, just about 300,000 -- or 10% -- were engineers.

Now logically one may argue that those who make it through highly competitive engineering entrance exams represent the cream of the nation's Class 12 crop. So four years later they are again more likely to excel when it comes to another competitive exam.

Engineering as a course enjoys such a halo that all but a small sliver of the intelligent school age population ends up in that stream by default!
There is another, more disturbing explanation. Engineers have a huge advantage when it comes to numerical ability. The vast number of ordinary graduates, especially those who have not been in touch with mathematics since Class 10, simply cannot cope.

But the crucial question is this: Does wizardry with numbers a good manager make?

It is unclear why the CAT exam must make such a big deal of how fast you can polish off sums on permutations and combinations. Sure, accounts and finance and operations all deal with numbers. But the level of number crunching undertaken during one's MBA has hardly any co-relation with the actual work profile of most managers later in life. Because as you rise higher up the ladder, success is increasingly defined not by what you know or do, but how you manage and motivate your people.

Engineers are trained to believe every problem in the world has a logical solution. But, people -- whether as employees or consumers or clients -- are far from logical. Why, then rely on a uni-dimensional exam like CAT to identify talent? Yes, it is the fairest and toughest MBA entrance exam in the land -- but are the people being selected through the process the best potential managers?

Top B schools in the US use the GMAT score as ONE of several evaluation criteria. In 2003, 18% of applicants who scored 700 or greater were offered admission by Kellogg. But more than 13% of applicants who scored between 650 and 690 were also admitted. Chicago's Graduate School of Business clearly states that 'successful applicants not only have the credentials but they tell a compelling and well-rounded personal story through their application.'

Fat chance, here!
Sure, there is an interview and GD stage, but to get there you must first score in the 99th percentile (ie be in the top 1% of test takers). And this works for one simple reason: Most admissions are tainted by 'less deserving' candidates using influence or money power. The fact that neither works when it comes to CAT has built a solid equity for the IIM brand. To protect this equity, subjective criteria comes in only at the second stage -- after the CAT hurdle has been crossed. Any other, more holistic form of admission would never achieve the same reverence in this country!

The entire management entrance scene in India, then, boils down to selection of the 'brainiest' and then grooming them towards a management career. Rather than selecting the brains best suited for the purpose. Going by the old Cats and Dogs theory, the funda is to identify and aggregate all the cats in the graduate universe. Add the IIM chhaap and the world and his uncle will accept them as kings of the corporate jungle.

On the flip side, scratch the batch profile of an MBA school and the percentage of engineers you find can give you an accurate picture of where the school is ranked. The Big 4 -- IIM A, B, C, L as well as S P Jain and IIM-K -- admit over 70% engineering graduates. At XLRI (BMD) the figure is above 60% while the likes of MDI, FMS, Bajaj, XIM B and IIM-I boast 55% to 60% engineers.

As you go further down the ladder the number of engineers dips -- a strong local school such as NMIMS had 23% while Welingkar just 6%. At these schools, Commerce graduates dominate -- comprising 50% to 60% of the batch. Again, this reflects the inherent bias in the education system at an earlier stage -- 'students with marks' inevitably join Commerce over Science or Arts!

The engineering overload at B schools is rooted in the fact that there is a strong opportunity cost for an engineer seeking to do an MBA. If he or she is to spend about Rs 4 lakhs for a 2 year course, also forgoing asimilar or greater amount in salary (perhaps even a chance to work abroad, given the software boom) -- the course had better provide a great return. Only the top few schools provide that kind of long term brand value and short term job prospects.

IIM A, B and C placed on average 46% of their students in consulting, finance or banking (the high salary, top dollar variety of jobs). Just about 11% of the batch went into marketing/ sales.

At top B schools other than IIMs only 27% of the batch was placed in consultancy, banking or finance roles while almost 30% went into marketing.

As you go down the ladder marketing jobs dominate even more -- and the prestige/ salary value of the job to an engineer declines.

In the final analysis,"Kuch nahin to MBA" may sound bechara, but the strategy it actually works. Those engineers didn't 'waste' 4 years, they were just biding their time. Conversely, "MBA nahin to kuch nahin" is going to remain a pipe dream for the majority. Koi MBA to mil jayega -- there are 900 + institutes offering the course in this country - but top B schools will continue to elude other graduates.

As far as CAT is concerned, non engineers remain the underdogs.

The MBA Caste system

2005-10-17T23:46:00.000+05:30

This article is from Rediff and was written by Rashmi Bansal (of jammag and youthcurry fame)
I read this and thought to myself - How true !

here are two kinds of MBA institutes in India -- a handful from which you leave with a pedigree and the vast majority which offer just degrees. In the first category lie the IIMs, XLRI and, to a lesser extent, FMS and Bajaj -- the institutions which pioneered the concept of management education at a time when the IAS was a far more wanted career path.

In the second lies a vast array of institutes -- the good, the mediocre and the dubious. Evaluating the value proposition in the latter category is the daunting task faced by the majority of MBA aspirants.

The alumni is the brand

So what is it that sets the crème de la crème apart? Resources, faculty, infrastructure? That's just part of the story. By that reckoning, university departments like FMS and Bajaj should have been knocked off their pedestal a long time ago by newer entrants with deeper pockets. But 'pedigree', as the dictionary defines it, is a 'line of ancestors'. In the case of management education, ancestry has one simple definition -- the alumni.

The older institutes boast of alumni who joined the corporate world two-three decades ago and are at -- or very near -- the top today. The alumni effect is two-fold. At the obvious level, the companies they run ensure the alma mater is always on the recruitment radar. But, at a subtler level, alumni achievements rub off on the mother brand, and hence on the current crop of students.

In a sense, the alumni community IS the brand because they are the finished products, so to speak, of the MBA manufacturing process. And they form the one unique component in the matrix that cannot be duplicated by more recent institutes. That, in a nutshell, is the competitive advantage enjoyed by pedigree institutes which -- in the immediate future -- will remain unbeatable.

The 'merit-based' caste system

It's a modern form of the ancient caste system. Once you were born into it, now you arrive into it based on 'merit'. So, you have the 'Brahmin B schools' and some recruiters will visit only these schools, year after year, stating proudly, "We don't go to institutes below Bajaj." There is a certain prestige attached to such companies and this recruitment policy works simply because the number of jobs on offer is pretty small.

Hotshot consulting firms or investment banks essentially need to pick up a dozen fresh MBAs, at max. So it makes great sense to visit only the top schools. And there too, pick up the 'top' students. It's sad but true -- the Cats and Dogs phenomenon continues to hold sway. Despite the fact that all the folks who made it to an IIM-A beat the same odds, some ARE more equal than others.

The 'I schols' breed

This is the breed known as the 'I schols' -- a campus term for the top 20 students who are awarded 'industry scholarships'. The pecking order is swiftly and brutally established in the first few weeks on campus and usually holds good for the rest of the year. And whaddaya know? A large number of toppers are invariably IITians.

Partly because they are smart and hypercompetitive. But mostly, I think, because they're better equipped to face academic rigour and pressure. Four years at IIT, you've seen it all, done it all. The workload at an IIM, which hits the rest of the junta like a ton of bricks, is no big deal to an IIT grad.

A level playing field?

To offer a more level playing field, CVs sent to companies for summer placements at IIM-A now don't carry the student's CGPA. But the end result is still the same. Coveted recruiters look for the undergraduate background of the student and invariably shortlist those from IIT. IIM may be a brand name, but IIT-IIM is sone pe suhaga.

The IIT crowd will gleefully circulate this column in their e-groups, as further proof of their inherently superior status. Some, I expect, will feel compelled to write to me enumerating exactly how and why IITians really are a breed apart. Believe what you will. My point is: where does it end?

Reaping the benefits or paying the price?

We are reaping the benefits -- or paying the price -- for the actions of our ancestors. Company X has recruited a particular profile of candidates for the last 20 years and will thus continue to pick up the same kind of applicants. At the most basic level, this means it will stick to certain B schools, and within those B schools to certain kinds of students.

It's not just about how well you do at the interview but whether your profile matches with what's worked for the company in the past.

Yup, that's almost as crude as racial stereotyping but no point railing and flailing because that's how the human mind works. It unconsciously tries to fit each individual into a category, making complexity more manageable. We are invariably drawn to people like ourselves.

Companies rationalise that, this way, they get the people who fit into their culture. But the flip side of it is that everyone essentially thinks alike. And can that, in the longer run, really be considered a good thing?

Reasons of merit apart, the policy of sticking to a few select B schools keeps all concerned happy. Recruiters are happy to be in demand at the 'best' B schools, students are happy to be on the exclusive radar of the 'best' recruiters. Maintaining the status quo keeps the halo intact for both parties.

One man's Cat can be another man's Dog

So although numerous B school rankings may be published every year, it rarely if ever alters the recruiter's pecking order. For 'class' or the jobs requiring brainwork, it's a select few institutes. For 'mass' or the gruntwork jobs, it's down the B school ladder. And how low down this ladder a company will go depends on how many freshers it requires.

With so many new sectors opening up -- retail, insurance, BPO, telecom -- it would seem the job pie has grown exponentially. True, except that B school you graduate from often still determines whether you eat your slice at the chairman's table. Many companies follow differential recruitment policies. Better salary, designation and job profiles are offered to the more premium grads.

But, in an ironic twist, one man's Cat can be another's Dog. Several reputed companies -- especially Indian ones -- prefer to recruit from less elite campuses. These MBAs, they believe, work harder to prove themselves and are far more loyal to the organisation.

It's a different thing that, given half the chance, the same MBAs would jump to join the very MNCs that won't touch them!

One final consolation: Dog or cat, at the end of the day the MBA is but a rat. The right MBA can set a scorching pace. The question most forget to ask is -- am I running the right race?

MBA in India - Fact or Hype ?

2005-10-17T23:23:00.000+05:30

The stuff below is from the website of Arindam Chaudhuri (of Planman and IIPM fame)
This is his take on MBA education...
NOM to anyone....I dont agree with a word of what he says but I guess , everyones got the right to believe what he wants....
IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri are quite popular on Blogosphere these days, along with Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis. This has to do with a topic unrelated to this post.

Management education as a term has been defined, redefined and today it is being ill-defined. It's common knowledge that management education can be imparted after doing graduation in any stream, be it history, geography, economics, biology, engineering etc. The most important aspect of the above fact is that management is not that well developed a stream for which one has to spend years of education (5 years or more). What I mean is if one wants to do Masters in Geography, he necessary has to have a bachelors Degree in Geography and the same is with physics, economics, and all other streams of higher education. This is so as all these streams are very well developed and therefore to understand a Masters level theory for micro biology for example requires a perfect understanding of all the graduation level theories of the same subject. All the other fields of post graduate studies are post graduate in nature because of the higher level of technicalities and theories in them.

What I am trying to drive towards is the non challengeable fact that management as a stream of studies is more hype than content. Infact, after a certain point its actually not possible to develop it any further. That is why today, famous management experts, international management gurus as well as the top management consulting firms in a last ditch effort are trying to come out with newer models which at best border between being silly and at worst being ridiculous. The same theories are today being reformulated with different and more complicated jargons and new circles, triangles, and rectangles added in the same model. English is a beautiful language. From Hallmark to Archies, they all make millions out of this language by putting the same words like "I love you" in millions of different ways in their cards in an effort to produce emotions in their printing factories. Today's management consulting firms and experts are trying to use the same to keep their profession alive.

Anyway coming back to where we were, the fact is management is no nuclear physics for which a very high IQ is required nor is it so technical that only IIT and other top engineering graduates can only understand it. This time I am trying to drive towards the fact that the enormously tough entrance tests for MBA education is absolutely unwarranted and unnecessary. Neither has the level of input imparted got anything to do with it (my point about history to engineering students being offered MBA) nor has the nature of application of the subject. Infact the realization today is that people with more EQ (Emotional Quotient) are definitely better material for a successful manager than those with higher IQ who could definitely do the country some good working in the R&D labs for which the government invests so much on them rather than nurturing ambitions of becoming MBAs and then eventually leaving the country as well. These people (from IIT and likes) should either pay up for the investment the government makes on them as well as the opportunity cost or perhaps barred from changing streams or be asked to serve the public sector/defence sector/government initiatives for at least seven to ten years before they are allowed to venture into other areas. At this point a few lines on the IIT hype itself, I guess, would not be inappropriate.

Inspite of all the current hype which was built around the IITs the reality is that the IIT graduates have not served the country's interests the way they were expected to, because, they were rare commodities in the Indian market for engineers. Most of them were available floating around freely in America or some rare ones in the Indian MBA market. The reality also is that IIT education has nothing to do with the IT revolution and success stories in the Silicon Valley. Agreed many of the people involved in top positions in Silicon Valley might be ex IITians but it is the knowledge they acquired over the last 20 - 30 years and the entire shift in focus that they under went in their career after leaving IIT that helped them reach where they are today. Even today the software part of education at IIT is not world class. In fact it is a pity that they tied up with a private education company to spread the IIT, Kharagpur and IIT, Delhi certified courses through a shady arrangement with them (by setting up something called CEP, a private body with a managing director inside the IIT Kharagpur campus and FITT, another private body with a managing director inside the IIT, Delhi campus) in an effort to confuse the students that they were getting something from IIT.

It made the so called IIT certificates available from shoddy shops set up across the country. Eventually, the company got closed since even the IIT certification could not cover up the primitive contents that the IIT certified courses had.
I know so much about it because in an attempt to search for good partners to provide quality IT education to our students, I also fell for it and made an alliance with this private company. It is only later that I realized and was conveyed clearly by IIT, Kharagpur and IIT, Delhi that they had nothing to do directly with this firm!

However, coming back to the original context of MBA education, I remember, one of the ex deans of FMS, Delhi in a frantic bid to justify the tough entrance tests once said in an interview with CSR that so many questions in so little time basically was a test of the individuals ability to make quick decisions which is the most important aspect of management.
The reality however is that, if you take decisions too quickly you would turn out to be more of a damager than a manager. For a small change in a product such a lot of time consuming systematic research is required. Even before the research is undertaken a whole lot of time is spent on deciding who should be given the contract. All this because such a lot of money is at stake.

Looking at things around I am forced to feel that this country today has a mafia operating in the field of MBA education. A group of people with vested interests who want to keep this simple common sense education limited only to a few so that their starting salaries can be artificially jacked up to anything between Rs. 6 lakhs and 10 lakhs per annum. If they are so good then why don't our public sector companies too employ them and revive instead of going on sale. Why don't we produce 2000 MBAs in each of the IIMs with such phenomenal facilities, acres of land and huge buildings? It is not done so that companies get intimidated by the huge infrastructure, in which just about 150 to 200 students are made to feel in the ninth clouds, and get compelled to pay astronomical sums of money. These schools therefore create an artificial scarcity and capitalise on it. If the number of students are not artificially and unnecessary limited the salaries perhaps would come down to Rs. 1.2 lakhs per annum at the maximum which is their actual worth and with more better quality MBAs the growth rate of our country might break the 2% to 3% barrier which the current number of highly educated MBAs have been able to give the country.

In a land where the greatness of a teacher is reflected by the amount of education he has spread, here in this field of management we have teachers who want to limit the spread of education for their own respect in society as well as for the profits and superficial glamour of the MBA graduates. They are comparable to our corrupt and illiterate politicians who don't want to educate the public because of the fear that the first thing educated public would do is to reject them. Infact keeping in mind the level of education of our management educators they are a worse lot, for it is worse to be educated and yet wanting education to be limited so that you can milk it than to be uneducated and wanting the masses to remain so.

Being from the management field myself one might wonder what makes me write all this. The truth is inspite of all the hype I do believe that MBA is one field of education which shapes up personalities, so I love this field and I wish that thousands more could benefit out of it and in turn help the country develop faster. In my institute at least, this is what we strive for.

One night at a call center - II

2005-10-02T03:55:00.000+05:30

Back after a one week holiday :-D
Continuing my previous post....

The Attrition rate in Call centers is high because -
As I mentioned , the profession itself is not regarded "Permanent" nor is a call center professional respected. Infact there is a common perception of them being overgrown and otherwise unemployable students.

Why do people quit call-centers ?
Lets think....
The personal reasons are -

1. Higher Education - many pros view employment in a call center as a way to spend time and earn a few quick bucks while waiting for admission or preparing for a competitive exam such as GRE,CAT etc.. So obviously they quit once the admission date comes.
2. Other Jobs - Most Pros actively job hunt for other more "acceptable" jobs even as they work in the call-centers.
3. Marriage - Typically applicable only to women (who consist a HUGE chunk of call-center employees.) The late nights demanded by the work profile is definitely NOT in harmony with the indian concept of "family life"

An increasing number of people also quit because -

1. Health concerns - The chronic stress involved in the job burns out most people. Complaints of headaches, backaches, indigestion are commonplace.
2. Job profile- The manpower intensiveness of the job means that the scope for career advancement is limited within a call-canter. The frustration of doing the same thing over and over can be frustrating for most people.

All said and done...the industry itself is here to stay.
It will face huge churning of manpower and there will be a inevitable shakeout which will separate the men from the boys , but the long term for this sector looks bright and rosy.

This isn't a fad by any length of imagination. Companies have experienced REAL and TANGIBLE gains through outsourcing their backroom work to India. They cannot afford to neglect or ignore the outsourcing wave if they want to stay competitive.
India' s large manpower pool and fluency in language will ensure that the lead India has got in this field will not be lost in the , maybe, twenty years.

Career growth in this field is good right now...because of the rapid pace at which call centers are hiring. One may become a "Floor walker" or a "Team Lead" (Hope I got these Designations right !) after 3 or so years. However this may taper off.

There are only three credible threats to this industry as of now-

1. Rising costs - In an attempt to keep attrition low, call centres have lavished pay hikes on their employees , who of course accept them happily. This however has eroded (in a small way) the margins in the business. Continued pay-hikes may not be affordable for companies in the future because of the rate the industry is absorbing manpower and is growing. A strengthening rupee is not helping matters at all on this front.
2. Competition from other countries - Philippines has an edge because of the Filipinos apparently can be understood better by the Americans :-? It lags because of its small manpower pool. Mexico shares a common time zone with the US but lags on the language fluency front. China has a HUGE labor pool and is even cheaper than India. However it lags on the fluency front too. These disadvantages may be quickly overcome though
3. Government policy and inaction - Major Indian cities have horrible infrastructure. They force the call centers to invest in vehicles and cabs to transport employees etc (which do not bring in any profits at all.) Further the calling costs in India are one of the highest in the world. The real whammy comes from the governments policy. A recent ruling by the state government of Haryana requires call-centers not to employ women during the night hours !!!

One night at a call center - I

2005-09-30T19:35:00.000+05:30

"One night at a call center" - thats the title of Chetan Bhagats new book.
"Chetan Bhagat" - BE (IIT Delhi) PGDM (IIM Ahmedabad) , Investment banker, author of "Five Point Someone"
"Five Point Someone" - A hardhitting story about grades, peer-pressure , success, love ,expectation, and achievement set in an IIT.

Now about Chetan's new book....I was expecting something straight out of an IIM (Logical ?)
But its not about an IIM. Its a story set in one of India's call centers.

Have I read this new book ? No (I did read the prologue though)
Am i gonna read it (Probably ..Yes)
Am i going to review it ? Def. NO .. this blog isn't for that.

Still remember the day, i stepped into one of these places.
For millions of Indians, this is the one way they get to earn some cash, after "just a degree"
OR a way to scrape a living and send some cash back home OR a way to party OR a place to hang around till the job/admission/interview/transfer/passport/visa/groom comes around.

Row upon row of comfy ergonomic chairs. Sleek desktops. the latest Cisco IP Phones. Banners and streamers everywhere.. (it was the boss' birthday)
I glance at my watch. 11pm.Start of a new shift.
The employees trickle in.... Guys , girls everybody.....Fun seemed high in the agenda.
An hour later , the floor was in flow.....The smokers bay was thick with smoke. Every now and then, the coffee breaks would come and go.
Eight hours, and literally thousands of phone calls later, it was time for the future of India to be packed into a fleet of SUVs and driven straight home.

It is a fact that the Call-center industry has taken off in India. This trend of [art of the greater outsourcing story.New call-centers with thousands of seats, spring up and provide sought after jobs to millions of young men and women.
However on one side these call centers are touted as an answer to India's massive unemployment problem, they also struggle with unemployment rates (almost 30% annual.) Company's spend huge resources hiring and training new recruits (theres NEVER a short supply of youngsters here)

Let me try and answer the following -
1. Why have call centers mushroomed ?
2. Why is the profession looked down upon ? (Despite the evalueserve ad)
3. Why is the attrition rate high ?
4. Is it a fad? Can one stake ones career on it?
5. Career growth in this highly labor intensive industry
6. Possible roadblocks

1. Call centers operate on the cost differential between the foreign country (generally the US) and India. In the US, call centre jobs are located generally in the mid-west. Calls are handled by Housewives, students and the retired (generally to supplement their income)
The minimum wage in the US is (I think) $3 per hour. That's 140 Indian rupees. That's Rs.11 20 a day or around 28000 a month. Call center jobs are not sought after and in a labor scarce country like the US, manning call centers is a nightmare.
The situation in India is different. A large pool of English speaking youngsters. Will to work nights for as little as INR 8000 a month.And to top that , for the masses in India, call center jobs are sought after (since it pays)
Any company which outsources calls to India gains a HUGE cost advantage. The quality of service provided by Indian call centers is comparable to the US ones (with pseudonyms and accents , quite the norm). The company also spares itself the headache of staffing and maintaining a call-center.
Also i must mention that the connectivity of India with the rest of the world has improved tremendously over the last few years. Costs however remain high on this front.

2. India is typically a society where intelligence and uniqueness are heavily valued.
Hence the craze for engineering, law, medicine, management and other "intellectual" professions has not abated even in the least. Call center employees are considered menial, because of the perception that their work does not involve any "Skill"
Further there is also the perception , that a career in a call center is for the so-called underachievers in society.Hence the bias.

More in my next post ....

The Future Of Indian Software

2005-09-19T00:47:00.000+05:30

Hmmm...Most pundits (and managers , Software engineers and students) agree that India built up its software industry by using its most potent strength against a price-consious west -- Cheap labour.
But increasingly India's software industry has stopped clamouring about its cost-effectiveness (which everyone has come to understand, and respect) and is positioning itself on quality.
Most Indian firms routinely get CMM Level 5 certified. This is a rarity even in Silicon Valley,where Level 5 is relatively rare.
Indian software indutry has also reached scale.With TCS,Wipro and Infosys tipping 40000 employees and poised on 50000, they are really getting in there with the biggies worldwide.Mass hiring is quite the norm,with these three and companies Satyam ,Patni,IBM and Cognizant hiring incessantly to meet their huge manpower requirements.

My thoughts on the future..Purely my own..Agreements /Disagreements welcome

1.How long can India hold on to its No1 position in Software?
For the next 10-15 years, we can compete on our cost and headstart gained..However with cheaper destinations like Pakistan,Thailand,Russia and China catching up and cutting even our prices down and Our own manpower costs spiralling up (Salaries are raised 15-20% a year in an attempt by companies to keep talent and control attrition) we may not be able to ride the price wave too long...
We then focus on Quality.India is already onto this.Companies are getting CMM certified.Engineers are gaining technology degrees and Interational certifications.Processes are finetuned and quality tightened across the company.It will be long before anyone (including the Americans can beat us on this)
Finally we move up the value chain....Focus on consulting and high end services.Infosys has its consulting arm in place and most firms are taking baby steps in this direction.An Indian firm providing end-to-end solutions at high quality and at cheap prices will be a world-beater.
India's numero uno position is safe in the future (20-30 years min)

2.With scale, Can we keep up the quality standards of "Made in india" Software ?
This is a big challenge. Indian software firms have coped with the quality angle by building entire training centres which churn out an army of coders on demand for the firm (See post on Infosys training center)
With such levels of maturity,my guess is that we can

3.When is the crash of 2001 visiting again?
The burnt child dreads the fire.Weve learnt from our mistakes. The days of blind VCing and fancy Dot-Coms are over.Every company worth its name has enough money in reserve to keep its staff cooling their heels for a couple of years at least. The days of pink-slipping and benching are unlikely to happen on the 2001 scale ever again,simply because companies are more careful about hiring now.
The next crash hopefully should'nt happen.

4. Can India Companies ever do "Cutting Edge Work" ?
Indian companies still depend on testing/maintenance/application development for bulk of their revenues.Indian companies have slowly started moving into R&D and innovation but I dont see a Google,Yahoo or EBay popping out of India ,anytime soon.But we are getting there.

5. Careers in Software.
An amazing roller coaster ride. But onsite ops,sexed up salaries and rapid climbs up management are going to be tougher to get as the pyramid in every firm grows broader and broader, and competition within the firm intensifies.

6. Software cities of the future.
To ride the cost benefit, companies will follow the low cost engineers.
Current leaders -Bangalore,Delhi,Chennai,Hyderabad
Current Contenders - Mumbai,NOIDA,Kolkata,Thiruvanathapuram,Pune
The Future- Bhubhaneshwar, Trichy,Nagpur, Kochi,Mysore, Mangalore,DehraDun,
Jaipur and Lucknow

The NGO story : An inspiring story

2005-09-11T01:07:00.000+05:30

Following is from the IIM Calcutta website -

Access the original location here
This was also covered by tehelka.com.Click here
Parivaar's website can be accessed here

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Seventy-five homeless children in Kolkata have finally found their Parivaar. They have a roof over their heads, they go to school, play cricket, celebrate birthdays. Once again, they have won their childhood back, thanks to 26-year-old Vinayak Lohani.

Four years back, Lohani was at a crossroads. One path promised a smooth drive to success and the other a bumpy ride. An engineer, Lohani was working with Infosys when he joined the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. The future looked rosy and rich, and life seemed miles away from the tragedies of social reality. But Lohani took the other path — the bumpy one. The one not many dare to tread. For months, he walked the bylanes of slums and red-light areas of the city. That journey ended in the formation of Parivaar — a shelter for the homeless and abandoned children.

Parivaar helps rehabilitate orphans, street children and children of sex workers in Kolkata. Ask Vinayak why he chose Parivaar over career after IIM Calcutta, he retorts, “Are all of us sure why we want to do a particular thing and not anything else? I wonder if it really is. Societal norms set your path and give you limited choices. Like others, I too was following what was the norm — first engineering, a one-year stint at Infosys and then management. But now, looking back, I do consider myself a misfit in the IIM environment.”

It was not an easy decision. “I was discouraged by friends and well-wishers from pursuing this idea. Some did not take me seriously. But honestly speaking, there was something in me that was impelling me to do what I wanted to do,” recalls Vinayak. And so started Parivaar.

With just three children from Chetla and Kalighat, Vinayak started the journey to fulfil his dream. “For nine months, I faced humiliation. To get the money to start off things, I took up a part-time job as a faculty member in an institute, training students for management entrance exams. It was only then when people gradually started realising that I was serious about what I wanted to do,” Vinayak recalls.

Children at Parivaar have found the special magic of this unique family. They attend formal day schools and are provided evening tutorials by teachers at the shelter.
“Parivaar is just like a family. The children attend school and come back and are guided in studies by teachers here. They are broken in small groups of 5 to 10 children each. We feel if the right environment is provided any child can achieve anything through mainstream education,” says Lohani. “We are against vocational education programmes that many advocate, which have an underlying assumption that an underprivileged child is not worthy enough for long-term opportunities and thus should learn something to get two square meals. That’s not the way things should be in an egalitarian society. Without giving opportunities one cannot evaluate abilities.”

As a part of its initiative, Parivaar has been identifying vulnerable girls from red-light areas in collaborative effort with Sanlaap and CINI Asha, NGOs working in Kolkata. For such girls, Parivaar provides an alternative through education so that they do not get sucked into prostitution and therefore can look forward to a dignified life. As a result, Parivaar is looking for donors who can support about 25 of these girls whom they are planning to admit here, through the ‘Support A Child Scheme’.

Currently, over 150 IIM alumni are enrolled as donors with Parivaar under the ‘Support A Child Scheme’; they make regular contributions. As part of the future projects, Parivaar is starting one centre each in Raichak and Kharagpur in West Bengal by January 2005. Dressed in a dhoti-kurta, Vinayak is still restless. “I have achieved my goal, but that does not mean the end of my work. I have a long way to go.”
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The NGO story : Career scope

2005-09-10T17:07:00.000+05:30

Think of the world NGO and what comes to your mind ?
Well ,A few people who immediately spring to ,mind are Baba Amte, Mother Teresa, Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar.

NGO workers often find themselves slotted as idealists, feminists,dreamers and rebels.
In our country, running a succesful NGO requires nerves of steel. The bereaucracy and red-tape can be stifling. The public apathy appalling and the problems themselves almost unsurmountable in size and scale.

But hats off to the NGOs who have really made a difference.
There are some NGOs who exist merely to stay in the spotloght. Their executives seen only occasionally in Page 3 dos and parties. But there are hundreds and hundreds of others who keep out of the spotlight and prefer to make a diference to our country in a tireless , efficient way.

"A career in an NGO ?" chuckled my friend."You must be f****** crazy !" He has a point. Both of us are students of one of India's most reputed and elite management schools.Both of us could walk out of here with jobs that pay the equivalent of $17000 per year (To put that in prespective...India' s percapita income was $285 last year.)

I had a point too.NGOs have come a long way and have now become as professional as most companies. And gone are the days when only socialites (with lots of money) , housewives (with lots of time), retired people (with lots of experience) and students (with lots of enthusiasm)

Walk into any well run NGO and you will find lawyers,engineers even MBAs.
And mind you ..not all of them are there for the "satisfaction" and the "happiness." NGOs have started offering competitive pay to their employees.

The international NGOs are possibly the most sought after for employment. CARE and WorldVision being cases in point. The well run Indian ones include CRY (Child relief and You.)
Careers in NGOs abound for doctors, nurses,teachers ,lawyers and engineers.
MBAs are also sought after for their management skills. But it is a sad truth that most MBAs simply do not find the field lucrative enough to join.

The biggest plus ?
After MBA, what do you do ?
Work for a bank in New York ? Crunching numbers?
Work for an Consumer firm ? Hawking Cigarettes ?
Feed the hungry , help the destitute and bring a smile to the faces of countless of your fellow countrymen..
Does the last option look lucrative to you ?
Chances are that it does...Chances are that it doesnt.
A career in an NGO does not give you an A/C office, an official car and a fat bank balance.
But it will give you a deep sense of self worth and enough money to keep yourself comfortable.

There are of course a few, who have foregone oppurtunities for personal gain to help heal the lives of others. These are the real heroes of our country who deserve to be saluted.

One such hero in my next post...

CRY can be reached here
Careers in CRY is here

It offers an insight into the oppurtunities available.I'm sure they will be an eyeopener for most of us.

Porn in the Indian Workplace II

2005-09-08T16:11:00.000+05:30

[This continues and concludes my previous post]

Pornography in the workplace simply reflects the changing nature of sexual harassment.
There used to be a time , when India worshipped its women. Then came a time when India locked them up behind the confines of the household.

Now again we see Indian Women come out and make a mark for themselves in the community.
But is this really welcomed by the men ?
My guess is (by and large) - NO
Women , even today are restricted to entry level positions in even newer age companies...have any of us wondered why women comprise only 5% of managers while comprising 25-30% of entry level hires.
In most organizations, there is open hostility towards women who are ambitious. There is a clear belief (ironically reinforced by thousands of women every year) that a woman cannot make a career which is as long or as succesful as a man's. Marriage and childrean are often determinants of the career aspirations and ambitions of women.

Sure there are shining examples of women who have made it big in corporate india.Hats off to them...i mean....they really do deserve a standing ovation.
I'm sure everyone of them will tell you stories about how they were discriminated against in the early stages of their careers. All the ceilings they had to break and all the hurdles they faced.

My guess is that Indian men (who for all their pretensions are still unbelievably conservative at heart), are getting frustrated with all the women who are now holding their own in every profession. And Porn gives them a way to vent this frustration.
And has anyone noticed...Exposure and use of porn is highest in the knowledge industries,which also have the highest proportion of female employees.

Is this situation going to change ?
Not unless ,most of us men, start treating women as equals, and most women truly believing in themselves and be willing to stand up against such blatant discrimination. I'm 22 and I dont see this happening in my generation or the next one.

Porn in the Indian Workplace

2005-09-08T13:11:00.000+05:30

Recently I got an mail from my ex-classmate (who happens to be working in bangalore in one of its better known software companies.)

It had a whole bunch of pics attached......"Girl pics"..Exposed breasts , genitalia et al.I wasnt surprised at all. Men will be Men. Nudity will be nudity. THe male fascination for the female body isn't about to vanish overnight.

But what surprised me is that this email had been sent to me , from my pal's "Company" or "Official" id. This id was given to him for so-called "official " use.Even more shocking.....before being forwarded to me, this email had been forwarded to a whole list of people -- people working in India's biggest s/w firms--again using company email ids.

The issue here isn't about pornography itself.Its bad,its immoral,its illegal..blah..blah...blahBut I'm not gonna discuss that. My contention is simply that,at least nudity and porn should be kept out of the workplace...

I was speaking about this , to one of my friends....He used to work in a services firm , down in chennai. He tells me that porn is common place in the Indian workplace...Stories of entire harddisks of porn being freely circulated and viewed..Pornography being downloaded (using the company's high speed connection - no doubt).... Nude women being used as screen wallpapers...are commonplace.The list is endless.

This is a time ,when women are making themselves seen in these companies...Granted..In most firms they still comprise 20%.. But I believe its high time companies took note of their responsibility to provide a decent working atmosphere from them. India's sexual harassment laws are stringent enough , and every company has a sexual harassment cell.If the laws were followed to the letter, half of us would be in jail.

Its about time,companies took a little notice of this.... They do have a responsibility towards their employees...and in anycase, it makes sense for them too..This has led to a HUGE wastage of time,money and resourses.

Where does this problem stem from ? and how do we correct this ? More in my next blog....

Infosys - On its training programmes in Mysore

2005-09-08T13:06:00.000+05:30

INFOSYS BUILDS A REALISTIC DREAM

A true story of “Thinking Big and Achieving Bigger”From : Subir Roy in Rediff.com, June 16, 2005

[ Infosys is a Software Company, based in Bangalore, India...Its meteoric rise to becoming one of the country's largest firms and one of its most sought after employers , is an inspiration in itself and only highlights the immense inroads made by India into the world economy in the last 10 years. This article is on Infosys' training centre in Mysore, India, where thousands of college graduates are turned into some of the world's brightest software engineers ]

Infosys' top and bottom line certainly make it exceptional. But if you look a little deeper and seek what lies behind that exceptional performance you find a commitment to excellence and an ability to maintain quality even while expanding at a breathtaking pace.
If you are looking for symbols then Infosys' immediate real world performance, the sort that moves analysts, is represented by its glittering campus in Electronics City on the outskirts of Bangalore.

But if you look for a symbol of the deeper issues then you have to turn to the company's new Global Education Centre in Mysore. Infosys embodies a contradiction. It lives in the real world and is numbers driven to a fault. It seldom allows itself the luxury of extravagant thought on anything that is not deliverable in a pre-determined timeframe. But it has ideals that are among the loftiest.
The two come together in its Mysore centre.The extravagance is in its dimensions, spread over 270 acres, able to accommodate nearly 5,000 students at a time. It is the largest corporate training centre in the world.It is currently able to train 12,000 people a year, which can be taken to 15,000 when the need arises. The company is committed to spending $65 million on it.The centre has India's largest gym, arguably its best cricket field and a library facility that will be the envy of any company in the world. When the prime minister inaugurated it earlier this year he and Infosys chairman N R Narayana Murthy competed in heaping praise on each other.

But if you think Infosys let itself go on the centre you will be mistaken. It will simply train its own fresh recruits to man its global operations. It will not become a deemed university offering degrees or management capsules to outsiders, it will not take on the job, except in a token way, of training the IT leaders of emerging economies.It will not even become the core of a future Infosys which will aspire to become a global leader in technology.

Every body trains but why did Infosys give such primacy to a training centre? The answer comes in several parts. "Our industry, which is primarily based on good quality talent, has to ensure that the quality of raw material, people, is very high. So right from the beginning we have realised that good quality human resources is a strategic resource for us."And the scale? Naturally. Last year, out of 1.4 million applications, Infosys selected and offered jobs to 14,000, out of which 11,600 or so joined."One of the biggest challenge before any company is scalability. How do you scale up in terms of numbers without losing quality, productivity, response time, value system and focus on cost control.

So our Global Education Centre is a classical example of enhancing scalability."Why residential? "If we want to train very efficiently, make them efficient and effective in their work as quickly as possible, we have to create an environment where there is tremendous focus on learning, where there is an opportunity to work in a collaborative environment even beyond office hours, where there is opportunity to seek out faculty members on issues at all odd hours and make sure they learn whatever is needed quickly and efficiently."

Having set the scope and the scale, Narayana Murthy then raises the bar."My belief is that the first 14 weeks -- this is a 14-week training course -- must be the toughest. By this we can ascertain who among our new trainees can actually scale up to our expectations and who can't. IIM Ahmedabad is the same. If you can pass the first semester, the rest is easy. Once we know that these people can go through a tough yet rewarding experience, there is a lot of learning, a sense of fulfilment for the youngsters, and the job becomes easier for them."

Did Infosys seek inspiration from outside? Yes. "We have looked at several models, particularly when we started our Leadership Institute. We looked at eight models including Philips, GE, Motorola. In terms of the corporate training facility again we looked at five to six cases in different sectors of the economy."These models and the felt needs gave the final shape to the centre. "We realised we needed more and more situations where there is teamwork. Second, we needed situations where they can relate to the kind of work they will do in their job. Third, we said we should create more and more situations which will aid their thinking, rather than rote learning."These are the lessons Infosys learnt from others' and its own past experience. And from this was born the Global Education Centre and its curriculum.