Aug

27

Sports ministry toys with the meaning of sports

August 27, 2009 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

India’s Youth Affairs and Sports ministry has now officially ruled that Formula 1 racing or F1 is not sports. The ministry’s ruling came in response to a private promoter’s request for about $36 million remittance for a license fee payment to the Formula 1 admin body. “…The proposed F1 race does not satisfy conditions which focus on human endeavour for excelling in competition with others, keeping in view the whole sports movement from Olympics downwards…”, ruled the sports ministry. A spokesman for the ministry, however, clarified the ministry’s stand, adding “….This project is absolutely beyond the realm of the common man. We expressed our inability to consider it…”.

The JPSK sports, floated by a private venture and officially and secretly backed by the Indian Olympic Association, had been closing in on the issue with their partnership with the UP chief minister Mayawati. So Mayawati, last year, created a special economic zone (SEZ) for her business partners in F1 racing, slating 2500 acres of prime land for the venture. But the differences between the ruling Congress and Mayawati’s BSP party, turned into a red flag for the F1 project. The Indian Olympic Association, has been controlled and ruled for years, by Congress party loyalist Suresh Kalmadi, whose connections to the party headquarters seem to have come up short for now.

Cricket, India’s biggest business (ahead of outsourcing), biggest religion (ahead of Hinduism) and biggest entertainment (ahead of Bollywood) and biggest sports (ahead of itself) is already beyond neck deep in politics, with the state and central bodies completely dominated and under the whim of powerful politicians. It wasn’t so all the time, however. It took Indian politicians a while to figure out the money equations involved in the sports entertainment industry. But now that they have wisened up, their eyes are on the other big prize in sports - the business of racing. The real reason Formula 1 racing isn’t getting a jump start is not about whether it is sports or entertainment. It is purely about which political players stand to make the most money out of it. So until that decision is made, the bureaucratic wordsmiths in the government will keep coming up with ways to rain on F1’s starting lineup in India.

When does a sport stop being a sport? When does it become ‘entertainment’? And at what point does the entertaining sport become a business? Looks like those questions will best be answered once all the business interests involved have been assured of their take in the matter.

Aug

13

The economics of swine flu - I

August 13, 2009 posted by indiatime | 8 Comments

The swine flu epidemic is so far purely a health crisis. And it will be so for a while. But one of the downsides of not having managed to stem the tide earlier, is slowly going to be seen on the economic front. Already, many avenues on that economic fronts are being hit hard:

1. Retail: since people will be staying home and not strolling in the malls and on the streets. With the festival and holiday season right around the corner, the impact is even worse, since many retailers make much of their annual income during these few months.

2. Entertainment: Especially, Bollywood, since so much of the business there is based on crowds showing up at the movies. Television, will however, have a bigger audience and many more eyeballs watching.

3. Transportation: Actually, transportation and civil aviation may be showing an uptick in the initial period, as people scramble to get to the place of their choice during such critical times. Most will be traveling home to be closer to families, plus since the cities are affected the most, there is a mini-exodus away from the cities to smaller towns and villages.

4. Tourism: Tourism will take a major hit, near-term as well as long-term. International tourism will drop rather drastically. Visuals of locals moving around in masks is hardly the kind of tourism commercial India would want the international tourists to see.

5. Food-related industries: e.g. a lot less eating out, and the restaurant industry will take a direct hit.

6. Pharmaceuticals: Typical flu season remedies are already in high demand, but the biggest beneficiaries are the mask-makers, especially those that make and distribute the special flu masks or respirators.

7. Medical Tourism: Takes a huge hit because of swine flu. With TV images of unclean hospitals with unhygienic conditions and discarded and infected masks lying around or thrown on the streets, it’s hard to convince the world that cheap is better.

8. Outsourcing: Although outsourcing is supposed to work remotely and via telecommutes, India is where the actual human factor of outsourcing lives, so any shift in the workforce is bound to affect that. In an industry where deadlines and timely deliveries can mean much, employees not showing up can prove quite inconvenient.

9. Sports: The world badminton tournament has already lost a few teams where players of some countries have chosen to flee home. Soon, Cricket too, may take a backseat to the epidemic flu. Thankfully, the commonwealth games are a year away.

10. Finance: Reduction in short and long-term investments is one of the adverse effects that is little discussed but is much-feared.

Scientists who study the effects of epidemics on economy, point out that the need for flexibility in resource allocation and the limitation of movement of the masses are two of the biggest challenges posed by epidemics. In a country like India, those challenges are further heightened, firstly by existing infrastructural challenges in resource allocation and distribution, and secondly by the size of the population where it’s not just limitation of people’s movement but the challenge of limitation of movement for a billion people.

Swine flu has already overwhelmed and overburdened some giant economies. For India, however, it brings economic challenges of proportions that are best best kept mum about. Unless controlled soon, we may be seeing the impact of this H1N1 flu for many years to come.

Jul

18

Bank robberies

July 18, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Yesterday, the Reserve Bank of India, responding to consumer complaints, has upped the ante on the banks to become accountable for delays in returning the erroneous ATM fees charged in cases of incomplete the particular transactions. Henceforth, the banks will have to re-credit the erroneously charged amounts within less than 12 days, even in cases of third-party ATMs. And those banks that don’t do so, will now end up paying their customers Rs 100 per day.

Almost every Indian who has ever opened account in an Indian bank, has more than a few painful memories and at least some bitter banking experience. Directives like yesterday’s will go a long way towards assuring bank customers that it is okay to deposit money in Indian banks.

Recently, a non-resident Indian (NRI) family that lives in the US but still has multiple bank accounts in Mumbai, allowed me in on their enlightening experience with a major bank in Mumbai. A while ago, this family put a substantial sum of money in a fixed deposit scheme with a famous government-owned bank in Mumbai. An year later, an emergency came up, and the family needed their cash back from the bank. At first, the bank gave them various excuses and told them about the hefty penalties for withdrawing out of the fixed deposit scheme.

‘We understand‘, said the family, ‘just take your darn fees and give us the rest of our money back‘.

‘We could have done that a year ago, but it is now almost impossible after the 26/11‘, said the bank, ‘we cannot be sure who is a terrorist or not and who has money deposited in here‘.

‘But we are not terrorists and this is our hard-earned money that we put into your stupid fixed deposit scheme‘, begged the family.

‘Well, there is one way we can give your money back‘, relented the bank - ‘We will still have to keep your money as collateral, but we will give you a loan based on that fixed deposit‘.

Realizing they weren’t getting their money from this famous bank, the family tried their luck with another major bank where they had money deposited around the same time a while back. So they visited the branch office where they had the account. ‘We cannot locate your papers‘, came back the branch manager, ‘our whole basement got flooded two years ago, and we lost quite a bit of paperwork in that‘.

Realizing they weren’t getting their money back from this second bank, they finally went back to their original neighborhood bank, a famous regional name. And then, to their horror, they found that their account had been making utility payments for their next-door neighbors to their empty apartment in Mumbai. ‘How did this happen‘, they asked the manager. ‘Well, we recently upgraded our computer systems, and looks like your neighbor also lives in the same building, and shares the same building number‘, answered the manager.

‘What are you going to do‘, I asked my friends a few months ago. ‘Well, we have definitely learnt from our mistakes and now have our money in the Bank of America branch across the street from our house‘, said my friend.

Two days ago, I sent them this news article about a Bank of America customer who was charged $23 quadrillion (an amount that is almost 50,000 times the world GDP) for a pack of cigarettes.

Jul

6

The annual budget presentation is probably India’s most watched and awaited parliamentary session. This morning, watching an old, inarticulate parliamentarian stutter and stumble and wipe his runny nose through numerical magic dust, I wondered when and how India’s citizens will demand to be taken a little bit more seriously. Spicing his ridiculous numbers presentation with words like ‘common man’, ‘farmers’, ‘rural schemes’ and ‘govertment’ (I know, it’s not a typo, the finance minister can’t say ‘government’), India’s 73-year old finance minister reportedly failed to evoke much response from the financial markets.

Rivaling the lukewarm market response, was the response from his own partymen siting next to him. With the prime minister Singh on his left and the party supremo Sonia on his right, the finance minister failed to get a traction on either neighbor’s emotions. I agree the bar is raised ridiculously high with the prime minister who sometimes makes Bollywood’s tragedy kings look like the greatest comedians of the day. But even the party’s cheerleader couldn’t hide her sheepish, almost guilty-faced response at her party’s disappointing practice of appointing long-time party faithfuls to the highest posts in the land.

But the real cue for the stock market could have come from the man sitting behind the finance minister. I think his continuous nose-picking kept distracting the market-watchers from digesting some of the nuances in the budget, and it surely turned off most housewives and young and old women.

The budget had nothing major that would show leadership or bold initiatives, and it didn’t have anything major for those who really needed some instant relief. It was the same-old same-old with some fringe frills and idiotic promises like halving poverty by half. An additional thousands-plus crores to the commonwealth games (which will need a few more thousand crores during the next budget), 100% tax deduction on political donations, and a $2 per day wage promise certainly did not make the budget a ‘common man’s budget.

As the old man went through his ill-rehearsed disaster, one saw little leadership, little novelty, little eloquence, and little hope. The road ahead looked dark and dreary, a little more like the potholed roads of Indian cities, with everyone stumbling and stuttering their way through. The speech ended after what seemed like eternity, eventually clearing way for Bollywood and Cricket news. Naked hips occupied the screen, moments ago soiled by runny political noses. “Beedi Jalai Le….” (light my cigarette), moaned the beauty on the screen. “…Did he have anything about cigarette tax….”, asked my neighbor who, for his own reasons, likes to watch big news items on my TV instead of his own. “…Not sure…I missed that part…”, I said.

“So what do you think, how is the market gonna take this”, high-pitched an excited soul who obviously couldn’t wait to call me after the thrilling budget session. Watching the TV screen, I imagined the finance minister doing the item song instead of the Bollywood damsel. “Down, down, no way but down”, I told him. “You’re a genius”, he called me back after an hour.

Jun

8

Move over Bernard Madoff, the now famous 50-billion dollar Ponzi fraudster from United States. Ahmedabad’s Manbai Rathod, a 60-year illiterate woman, is now turning out to be the brain behind a smarter financial scam, a scheme that duped tens of thousands all across India. Whereas Madoff promised a steady 10%-plus return, Manbai Rathod and her nephew promised a whopping 300% return over investment. And unlike Madoff, the Indian scamsters told investors to come back and collect their tripled wealth in days or weeks. What’s more, they delivered. For a while, that is.

Manbai Rathod and her nephew Ashok Jadeja are now the prime accused behind an investment scam that is said to have reached incredible proportions. Says The Times of the fraudulent scheme that lured many people across India,

…While some pawned jewellery and valuables, others halted construction of their dream house, some took a large sum on loan while others cheated on their husbands to lay their hands on some money….

The ‘money-tripling’ scheme initially targeted specific communities, Chharas and Sansis, promising them unimaginable riches. People from these communities were told that Sikodar Goddess (Sikodar Devi Mata) had blessed one Ashok Jadeja who was now willing to share the secret with the people from these communities. Soon, tipsters tipped the scale with people within and from outside these communities taking the goddess’s blessings way too seriously and handing over their bank accounts. With promises of their money doubling, tripling and quadrupling, gullibles all across the country gave in to their greed, pouring everything they had into Ashok Jadeja’s investment fund. The skeptics saw their neighbors doubling and tripling their monies in weeks and they too then, turned eager gullibles, pawning their smarts for the moneymaking opportunity of a lifetime.

Jadeja’s scheme was much simpler than his Wall Street counterparts, however. Jadeja and his wife sat outside a temple and financial devotees lined up and handed him their life savings. The devotees then came back after a few days to collect their now-doubled or tripled wealth. The easy money-tripling scheme spread like wildfire across many Indian states, from the western shores of Gujarat all the way to the eastern islands of Andaman and Nicobar, including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh. Investors from Pakistan got into the act as well, expanding Jadeja’s reach beyond India’s borders.

Those smart-alecs who actually did manage to double their money and did not reinvest back into the scam, their riches will soon be confiscated by India’s police who are now going through fraudster Jadeja’s lists.

You would think all those devotees and victims who succumbed to the Sikodar Goddess financial scandal, would now be crying prayers to Goddess Kali, hoping that the famed demon-killer vanquish Rathod, Jadeja and their buddies. Instead, many of the scam victims - men, women and children, recently attempted mass suicide by sleeping on the railway tracks.

Jun

5

Richest Indians in American towns

June 5, 2009 posted by indiatime | 5 Comments

In his new book, ‘The Richest Man in Town’, W. Randall Jones, the founder of the financial lifestyle magazine Worth, writes about the richest individuals in 100 American towns. The book looks only at the richest person in a particular town, not the second or the third-richest. So some very rich individuals have been left out, just because there was a richer individual living in the same town.

Researching all these successful individuals, Jones found 12 common traits, attributes he calls his 12 commandments of wealth :

1. Don’t seek money for money’s sake
2. Find your perfect niche
3. Be your own boss
4. Get addicted to ambition
5. Be early
6. Execute or get executed
7. Fail so you can succeed
8. Location doesn’t matter
9. Don’t compromise your morals
10. Embrace selling
11. Learn from the best and the worst
12. Never retire

There are three Indian-Americans who figure in this unique book. They are not the richest Indian in the United States, but are surely the richest in the towns they live in. And they definitely seem to be practising the commandments of wealth common to this elite group.

Brothers Karthik and Guha Bala are the richest people in their town of Albany, NY. Co-founders of Vicarious Visions, a video-game powerhouse, they have created over 100 video games, selling more than 20 million units. The Bala brothers founded their company while in high school, a childhood dream that began in their family basement.

The other richest Indian in an American town is Bharat Desai, the richest man in two different towns - Fisher Island, Florida and Troy, Michigan. With a net worth of close to $2 billion, Desai is the founder of Syntel, a company he founded about 30 years ago, now said to be employing a workforce of almost 12,000. Desai’s company provides IT services to corporations, and has a huge workforce that is based out of India.

May

26

The payoff of stability

May 26, 2009 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

With Indians electing to elect the same government, the word about India’s political stability is out in the international investor community who now believe India to be one of the few bright spots to make a fast buck. It’s not that there aren’t any other bright spots at the end of the recession tunnel elsewhere. But with an impressive 28% registered returns for the month of May so far, India has made an impressive showing which was almost 4 times that of China and about 50 times some of developed markets around the world.

Some analysts are calling it the beginning of the super bull market for India. Most global fund managers who have put in their trust in the upswing of the world markets for later this year, are betting on India’s recent upsurge that began a few weeks before the national elections and has continued in the wake of the political stability following it.

Also helping India are the numbers showing its continuing leadership in the offshore arena, with the competing countries only managing to cut a very tiny slice of India’s share. And although some investors continue to worry about of the uncertainty over currency exchange rates, India’s upswing is expected to drive large chunks of investments towards the Indian market, at least until some of the other major markets do not start showing healthier returns.

So make hay while the sun shines folks. Barring an unforeseen crisis, the next few months promise to make the India investor a lot of money. And knowing that the global funds are impatient for some solid returns, this window of time, at least the next few months, might mean real happy days for India Inc.

Apr

11

India shining for shoe-shiners

April 11, 2009 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

Two stories from Mumbai, showing us the changing face of India:

1. A boot-polisher working at a Mumbai train station, is contesting this month’s parliamentary elections. Declaring assets worth about Rs 6 lakhs and a railway engine as his election logo, Ramsingh Shiras says he wants to become a member of India’s parliament for at least one time in a lifetime.

Surely a small goal for many of the incumbents running for seats this year, some of them have already had the privilege to be parliamentarians several times over. But an improbable goal for Ramsingh Shiras, who is hardly a shoo-in in the elections. He’s competing with two lifelong politicians - one of them an incumbent who inherited his father’s seat, and the other a 30-year veteran of local politics.

That’s a pity. And Ramsingh Shiras may not get the chance to polish the dirty, dusty image of today’s parliamentarians. If you happen to be by the Kalyan railway station during the next few weeks, take some time to walk by his space on the planet and speak to him about his vision document. And if you are one of the other two candidates, just be aware that this shoe-polisher would love to be in your shoes.

2. A Mumbai cobbler is aiming big with the smallest car. Maruti Bhandare, a suburban shoe-mender, made a one and half lakh rupees deposit at a local car dealership, booking India’s newest and smallest car - the Nano. Maruti made the giant leap from cobbling to car-ownership on the auspicious occasion of the birth anniversary of Lord Hanuman - the monkey God who is also known as ‘Maruti’, incidentally the name shared by India’s first wonder car in the 1980s.

A cobbler owning a car may not mean much in the west, but is still a novelty on this side of the planet. What’s more amazing is that Maruti hasn’t sought any financing to make this dream a reality. He is paying hard-earned sweaty cash for his new car.

Immediately after his birth, Lord Hanuman is said to have made a giant leap, lunging at the Sun God. It has taken Maruti Bhandare 42 years of his life and 2 years of hard work to lunge at the Nano, which unfortunately, isn’t a solar-powered car yet, but will still be a lifetime dream coming true for a cobbler who is showing the courage to dream bigger than the size of his shoes.

Two stories from Mumbai, showing us how India’s shoes are getting bigger.

Apr

3

Election flowers bring manifesto showers

April 3, 2009 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

The funniest and saddest thing about India’s uncertainnial election seasons is the party manifestos and promisory documentation that precedes any last minute voting booth strategies. Unlike the other great democracy, Indian voters hardly get enough time to think over the policies, whet out the candidates or even comprehend the offering. There is a dangerous, but implicit understanding that such electioneering is WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get). That simple mantra has often strangled and choked India’s gullible masses into being tricked by the brand-makers and dream-merchants and strategizers sitting in plush air-conditioned offices.

Over the next few weeks, we will take a look at some of the manifestos from the main parties, those that have a chance to become the next bunch that will have the power to ruin this country.

So today, I am looking at one of such documents, the IT strategy for India by one of the opposition parties - the BJP. At first glance, this is a list of a few dozen promises that mainly focuses on equalizing the internet platform, democratizing the internet, and enabling the internet highways to penetrate the deepest darkest corners as well as the government corridors.

Sounds wonderful and one must give due credit to the BJP for having come this far. But here are my issues with this hastily-drafted futuristic document -

1. it doesn’t tell the masses what’s in it for them.

2. it doesn’t tell us where the money to achieve all these wonderful things will come from.

3. one can’t just give away 10 million laptops and hope for the best. If that happens, I bet you, there will be 10 million new surfers of porn (anot not 10 million new wikipedia readers) the next day. In a hot, humid & mendacious country those 10 million laptops can wreak havoc, if there isn’t a strategy to back all this up with better education and better equipped teachers.

4. “….Citizens will have a simple 1-800 Toll Free Number, 24×7x 365 days of the year, to contact their Member of Parliament…” - are you kidding me? are you kidding me? does BJP elite take us for fools? Come on guys, you can do better than that.

5. “….Special focus to bring women, SC/STs, OBCs and other weaker sections of society within the ambit of IT-enabled development...” - of course! additional bandwidth to the downtrodden, better-resolution laptops to kids who haven’t eaten in 6 months, free slumdog Jai Ho downloads for slumdogs.

6. “….Domestic IT hardware industry to be aggressively promoted to minimise dependence on imports….” - please don’t pull a George Fernandes again! Thirty years ago, BJP and its allies drove IBM out of India, right when Bill Gates was assembling his first machines in his hometown. Open source software with closed IT borders can’t be done unless our universities can create students who can write new programming languages and compilers and build googles and microsofts. Let’s not forget, we are not innovators, we are merely the adopters.

7. “….Government spending to be made corruption-free….” - if you buy that, I have a piece of land on the top floor of Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper that I want to sell to you.

8. “….Video conferencing to be made affordable and universally accessible….” - Within a few years, Craigslist India will be doing more erotic services business than any other website on the planet.

9. “….Direct transfer of welfare funds, preferably to the woman of the house….” - Can BJP guarantee that the husbands will not slap and kick and beat the the hell out of those women and steal that money to buy more liquor?

10. “…National Digital Highway Development Project to create India’s Internet backbone….” - Okay, maybe real highways and a decent transportation infrastructure is a pipe-dream. Let’s turn our attention to internet highways then. As for towns that don’t have electricity yet, no worries. Those laptop backlights can light up an entire house.

In a few days, we will see what the Congress party cool-aid tastes like.

Mar

23

Fordability and affordability

March 23, 2009 posted by indiatime | 11 Comments

In another hour or so, the Nano, Tata’s people’s car, the $2000 automotive wonder, opens for sale at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. For the Tatas to pull this off is a remarkable testament to the Indian auto giant and its owner’s drive to make yet another mark on the industry that Tatas have virtually owned in India for a good part of the last hundred years. In achieving that mark, Tatas had to clear two major hurdles - Fordability and affordability.

Fordability, if one were to define it, is the ability of an industry to bring the right people to the table, use the right tols and materials, innovate and revolutionize the past ways of working, and forge new methods of producing quality goods in mass quantities. Henry Ford did just that exactly a hundred years ago, revolutionizing the modern world with his Tin Lizzie.

Affordability, if one were to define it in Nanospeak, would be the car’s Rs. 1 Lakh price tag. With the ongoing global economic meltdown, amidst the job losses and the stock market woes, for a company to manage to introduce an inexpensive new car to the first time buyers, brings hope not just to those first time buyers, but to the suppliers and vendors and all the related industries who will be hoping for a turnaround in their fortunes, pinning their big fortunes on the little Nano.

There’s no question that the little Nano has miles to go before Tatas and everyone around them can rest and sleep. There are questions that won’t be answered until the first batch of consumer feedback hits the tarmac. For Nano’s most affordable non-AC version to hit the market right at the beginning of the hot Indian summer can cool some consumers’ enthusiasm. On the other hand, many consumers might be looking at it as not their first but their second family car, still an uncommon phenomenon in India. Then there are questions of burden on India’s already inadequate infrastructure, worsening environmental consequences in the already polluted metros, and fear of additional accidents to the already incredibly rising numbers on India’s crowded roads and highways.

Still, all those things notwithstanding, today is a special day for the Tatas. Like its founder Jamsetji Tata, the pioneer of the Tata group, who was born in Navsari, Gujarat and died in Bauheim, Germany; the little Nano is now expected to travel globally, cheerlead India’s industrial prowess, and jumpstart the new century’s joyride for India’s erstwhile profit corporation. For India Inc, that nanoramic transformation from Navsari to Nanover is a justifiably proud moment, no matter what the little devil has in store for us.

Mar

13

Kakodkar dares IITs to innovate

March 13, 2009 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Holi, the fantastic festival of colors, passed us by the day before, amidst all the so-called dark clouds of economic crisis and the security concerns and the political opportunism. I remember how life was once a happy hopping memory, from one festival to the next, a never-ending fun-filled gathering of friends and family, so vividly colorful & noisy.

Yesterday, speaking at the 50th anniversary of the Mumbai IIT campus, Anil Kakodkar, India’s eminent nuclear scientist, asked the country’s foremost learning place to provide a holistic learning experience. “…Can this be the institute where ideas germinate and take shape? Can you play a crucial role in the country’s decision-making process….”, he asked.

Kakodkar’s words about holistic learning, make one think of learning as a fun-filled gathering of ideas and experiments and thoughts and debates. The reason Kakodkar is throwing a challenge at and daring India’s most famous technical school to innovate is because IIT, the powerhouse and the showcase of India’s technical prowess has underdelivered. Majority of its alumni have done great for themselves and some have done way better than those that have done merely well. But IIT isn’t MIT yet and after almost 50 years, isn’t anywhere close to being the leading innovation factory that many once thought it would be.

IITians probably need to come out of their campuses and start building and innovating for the rest of us, who weren’t born as bright. On the 50th anniversary of the Mumbai IIT campus, Kakodkar’s message is a reminder that India once used to be the place of open universities and brilliant gatherings of Gurukuls, when most of the outside world was in the stone age. But that holier-than-others position has long been relinquished, and the reality check is long overdue. Still, innovators-at-heart can definitely find it within themselves the good old festive spirit of learning and education, something that would jumpstart the innovation movement, an inventive fire in student’s bellies.

In the area of innovation and inventions, some of the rest and much of the west is now light years ahead, but India is still in the stone age. Hopefully, Kakodkar’s words will help spark the fires. He isn’t Shah Rukh Khan, he isn’t Shilpa Shetty and he isn’t Sachin Tendulkar. So what he says may not mean much to most. But what he said were the most important words anyone spoke in the country yesterday. And the picture of the future he painted on the colorful day of the holi, is the kind of India that will one day bring sunshine, taking away all those dark clouds of economic gloom and doom.

Mar

2

The enigma, the optimism and the economy

March 2, 2009 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

The New York Times is wondering why, while the rest of the world grapples with a terrible financial crisis, India seems to be maintaining a sense of calm and optimism. With country after country reporting a shrinking economy, India seems to be making unexpectedly positive news - with Rolls Royce introducing new models, BMW introducing new showrooms, and new cellphone users equal to the population of Netherlands just in the month of January alone.

There is little doubt even in most Indians’ minds that their country is an enigma hard to comprehend and difficult to understand. In fact, most who study India, are perplexed and baffled about India’s ways and means. It’s a country full of surprizes, contradictions, and paradoxes. Slumdogs, bloodhounds, and peacocks. Colors, flavors, and sounds.

Economists are said to attribute India’s resilience to its ‘youthful population, domestic demand, and business innovation’. The third of those three is a lie that won’t hide for long. There is little innovation going on, in business, universities or elsewhere. The part of youthful population may be true but is of little consequence when it comes to age-old resilience. Centuries of invasions, monarchies and occupations have made India a tolerant and a patient country where, until late, materialistic expectations were but a privilege of the few and much of the population was just happy to be able to survive.

That leaves domestic demand as the one and only reasonable explanation for India’s seeming resilience. With one-fifth of the world’s consumers living in India, there is little wonder that the Indian economy, although hard hit, keeps chugging along. It’s like that old principle of inertia where objects in motion will find it hard to come to a grinding halt (unless the odometer was tampered with to begin with). By the time the screeching sounds of a tattering economy make it to our ears, the worldwide recession will be close to making a 180 and India will once again, have astonished its foes and pleased its complimenters.

In a few weeks from now, the world’s largest electioneering spectacle will be center stage in India, a wondrous exercise in logistics, a mindbending game where a billion Indians will choose the next batch of crooks and liars who will promise to boost India’s economic engines and make its merry-go-rounds whirl and send Indians to Mars and Venus. I wonder if the average Indian worries about those things. Although the faces on the streets of Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata and Chennai seem a little concerned, there is this enigmatic smile on each of those faces. If I didn’t know better, I might even have called it idiotic.

Feb

27

Ethics alert for India Inc.

February 27, 2009 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

There is growing concern in India about President Obama’s singling out the American corporations that currently outsource to India. That decision has more to do with the current economic crisis and less to do with the havoc wreaked by Indian companies like Satyam. Still, the list of Indian companies showing up on the malpractice radar seems to be growing every month, threatening to malign India’s hard-earned stature as a reliable trade partner.

Early last month, Satyam Computers, one of the biggest names in India’s IT outsourcing world, became synonymous with fraud and falsification when its CEO confessed to cheating on company’s books.

Earlier this month, several Indian-origin owners of American companies were arrested for H-1B visa fraud. The arrests marked but a drop in the bucket in the H-1B visa malpractice routinely being carried out mostly by Indian consulting companies, ranging from falsifying documents to disrespecting labor laws.

In the area of Pharmaceutical outsourcing, Ranbaxy laboratories, the largest Indian drug manufacturer was recently found to have faked lab tests and data to seek approvals for its drugs. This week, the US Food & Drug Administration decided to end drug evaluations at Ranbaxy’s India plant, citing significant questions about the reliability of data.

Another pharmaceutical company called AM2PAT, this one based in North Carolina but owned by one Dushyant Patel, an Indian-American, is also in the news for selling lifesaving medicines mixed with sediment and debris. AM2PAT’s product quality was so screwed up that people had noticed food particles, among other things, in its heparin syringes. It has been revealed that this Indian American company’s chief microbiologist was a teenager who had dropped out of high school. AM2PAT president Dushyant Patel is absconding and has apparently fled to India.

Indian companies will not be booted out as many have feared, watching President Obama speak to the congress the other day. But Indians will need to be ready for thorough scrutiny, detailed diligence and tougher times ahead, thanks to the crooked corporations that have maligned the majority of Indian companies aspiring to expand their horizons. I think it may be comparatively easier to recover from IT and accounting malpractices, but areas such as pharmaceuticals would need to be very, very careful since any fatal negligence in that area can spell prolonged or even permanent doom for the rest of Indian companies in that field.

Feb

14

Celebrate this!

February 14, 2009 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

Behind the joy and happiness they bring, festivals in most cultures are really stimulus packages and bailouts for that culture’s business communities and economics, making people reach deep in their pockets and start spending sprees and keep those economies moving. As happy as I am that Indian economy is moving on this day thanks to the Valentine’s day shopping spree that will make the day for florists and paper-merchants and candy-vendors & chocolate-makers, I cannot help thinking what joy it would be for the west to bring in the fun & frolic of India into their economies by adopting a few desi festivities. And although the non-resident Indians (NRIs) do bring in the Indian flavor in the communities they live in, wouldn’t it be fun for the economies all over if Diwali and Dussera and Holi and Baisakhi and Pongal meant huge shopping seasons? So here are a few festive suggestions for the rest of the world to adopt. Feel free to suggest a few more :-

1. Diwali:
the festival of lights in late fall, India’s biggest and noisiest celebration, with a week-long joyride and school breaks most everywhere in India.

2. Bhai-dooj:
A day that commemorates love and affection for brothers & sisters. Although this is really part of the bigger Diwali festivities, I mention it here separately because there’s nothing like it anywhere else (I remember my maternal uncles would send 100 Rupee money-orders to my mom).

3. Durga-pooja and garba and Dussera:
Barely 4 weeks before Diwali, the devi-pooja kickstarts the Diwali shopping season. Songs all over towns & cities, and street dances, fun-frolic and food. The whole mid-to-late fall season is just a godsend for the business community. Many in the west are now familiar with what garba is, but experiencing the community dancing out in the open with thousands of other fellow human beings beats the new year’s in the Times Square (trust me, I have done both, many times over).

4. Holi:
the spring festival of colors, there’s nothing like it anywhere else, either. Darn it, holi is such fun, it’s a day when the entire country plays paintball and throws water balloons and wrestles in mud. I don’t know of any other culture where mud-throwing has made its way into economy, the way holi has done.

5. Shivaratri:
The only day when India becomes a marijuana nation. I bet you this could be a hit in California’s pot-growing counties and can turn the Talibanis into disciples of Shiva. An intoxicating day that can surely stimulate economies for wine-merchants, beer-brewers and poppy-farmers.

6. Baisakhi:
For those who have not experienced bhangra fever, it is nuclear energy on the dance floors. The west is ripe for a new dance, and I know bhangra is catching on. This would be one heck of a way to jumpstart the sleeping economy and get rid of their winter blues.

7. Pongal/Sankranti:
The idea of warming up to celebrations after a cold winter can become a way of life for the cooler climates. India trusts the sun more than it does the groundhogs, and who knows if that has resulted in shorter winters and longer summers. Still, Pongal is a huge deal for many in India and works its magic exactly a month before the Valentine’s day.

8. Ganesh festival:
There is just no equal to this fun-filled 10-day cultural fever that is a tribute to the elephant-headed God of wisdom who is also said to be a remover of obstacles. Lord Ganesh or Ganapati does remove economic obstacles for the idol-makers and the artists and the musicians. The last day’s parade in cities like Mumbai and Pune rivals the best of Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and would make believers out of anyone. Believers in economic recovery, I mean.

I want to leave the last two slots for your suggestions. Have fun, folks and have a happy Valentine’s day with your loved ones!

Feb

12

Infrastructure salvation and the returning NRI

February 12, 2009 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

An immigrant nation’s economy is reported to be tanking. Foreign workers are losing jobs fast. With the economy in free fall, cars once owned foreign workers are now seen abandoned at the airports, with notes of apology taped on the windscreen. With jobless people leaving in hoards, there are increasing housing vacancies fueling further real estate panic.

It’s happening in Dubai, of all the places, the place with most promise and potential than any other on the planet and the place where infrastructure public works project were not part of some future stimulus project but a day-to-day scene. The scene with foreign workers fleeing to the airports leaving their houses and cars and possessions behind, brings eerie memories of the post-internet-bubble commotion in North America, where thousands of Indian H-1B workers, many working for shady Indian consulting companies and technology body-shops, purchased one-way tickets to homeland and vanished without a trace.

That public works force returning home from middle east’s boomtowns, will be coming back with a wealth of knowledge and know-how, that is bound to go waste if not compiled, captured and documented properly. Typically in India, one would be looking to the government to seek a way to get such a thing done. But I see a huge opportunity for private entrepreneurs who are looking to build talented teams ready to take up infrastructure projects. Surely, all those man-years spent building hi-tech industrial projects using modern equipment, must mean something to a country like India that badly needs infrastructure upgrades in every corner of its geography.

So in spite of the global meltdown and even amidst the depressing and dire economic predictions, India’s economic reprieve will come from the fact that India hasn’t done much about its infrastructure so far. What has so far been a huge negative may surprisingly end up being India’s salvation. Unlike the west and the middle east where infrastructure initiatives fueled economies for decades, India’s century for infrastructural moxie may be about to begin.

Now if only there were a little less corruption and a little less politics and a little less cronyism and a little less greed. But then again, we do have a little less infrastructure. And that must count for something will all that homecoming talent and all this in-house expertise.

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