India rising - Part II

Children at the brink of starvation Orissa

Here is another set of arguments I present to explain why I am feeling what I am feeling. I apologize to those who saw me as an hopelessly unpatriotic pessimist through my last post. I'm neither unpatriotic nor a pessimist. But I see some either a pulp patriotism or a devious motive in these claims. Just when we were talking about India's economic and social prospects, Outlook's recent cover story screams India Smiling. They say this because our economy is poised for a 10 pc growth and sensex touched 10k.

When, during NDA regime, the economy touched 8 pc for the first time and the Sensex was roaring and infrastructure projects were picking up like never before, the goverment unleashed an ad campaign that claimed India Shining. Everybody, especially the intellectuals, Outlook included, ridiculed this campaign by showcasing the hunger deaths, farmer suicides, gujarat pogram and human rights violations. None of these have stopped. Farmers are still hanging themselves, a part of Orissa is still eating mango shells and terrorists are still at large. Suddenly, Outlook realised that all these don't matter and what's important is only your captial markets and the GDP.

I'm not buying either of these stories. To me, India is neither shining nor smiling. A part of India, surely is getting relatively affluent but it is not translating into any sociological evolution. I have already discussed about why I do not consider that affluence translating into any knowledge growth.

What disturbs me is as a society, we are not growing. We are not a disciplined lot. We violate law at will, give and take bribe freely, cheat each other, don't stand in a queue and cross the signal when it's red.

Since our education system is still very primitive, our kids grow lapping up useless piece of knowledge. We do not focus on value-based education and there's no service learning. We are only fed patriotism through those meaningless Manoj Kumar type 'Mere Desh Ki Darti' or a contemporary 'Maa Tuje Salam', which do not instill any real pride for your nation. We are quite casual at ridiculing our countrymen, politicians or sportsmen as if they belong to a different society.

Rural women protesting the dam at the banks of Narmada

We violate human rights, uproot millions of faceless people and pollute our rivers. Our holy river, Ganges is declared absolutely unfit for even bathing and washing clothes. The river is facing enormous environmental onslaught on both religious and non-religious grounds for years and nothing is being done about it. The other big river Narmada is being destroyed in the name of development now. We produce and consume plastic as if there is no tomorrow and there is absolutely no control or monitoring agency for this. The Pollution Control Boards of our states are yet another government agencies that are quite pathetic and they can't even put together an awareness camp in a village without squabbling or bribery.

The focus given to IT in itself is a death knell on many rural economies. All the governments have a clear sign hanging outside their doors. 'Our Priority Goes To The Cities'. People are leaving their villages in hoards and moving towards cities. The cities have neither the space nor infrastructure to face this exodus. The cliche that the rich get richer and poor get poorer is becoming an everyday reality with rural areas going further backward every passing week. Those who doubt that, I request you to visit places such as Bellary, Hospet and Gulbarga. These are the districts in Karnataka, whose capital is touted to be India's Silicon Valley. These districts don't even have a covered town bus stand. Even India's Silicon Valley is choking and gasping for air while the politicians squabble and blame each other for the failure of the official machinery.

We are still spending significantly on our army, most part of which gets eaten up on the sidelines. Despite the CBMs (Confidence Building Measures), our neighbours are still hostile as Pakistan still holds up a piece of our land sends terrorists to India as if kids go on a higher education. China still has considerable portion of Arunachal Pradesh, and refugees pour in from Bangaladesh and settle in Assam and West Bengal. The Congress party tries various means to bring them into our voters list, so that they can get the minority votes and win in Assam. Supreme Court is strugglling hard to spoil their party.

Every second day, one or more of our politicians seem to get caught on video taking a bribe or sexually harassing some tribal woman. At least they get caught. But the beaureacracy neither gets caught or pushed around so openly by the media. The members of parliament and assembly are being traded openly in public and we are only too happy to watch as if they are a soap.

Our universities are not research institutions but mere administrative blocks dishing out coloured, sealed papers. We've got one IIT and we are too happy to notice that the number of IITs are way too low for a 200 million youth looking for a meagre life.

With our art stolen by the elite, the mainstream potboilers have caught our imagination and we are too busy dancing to the tunes of either Govinda or SRK's tunes, depending on which part of the country we are from.

This, I do not think is any sign of us rising. I'm again sorry if I sounded quite pessimistic and negative in these paragraphs. All these listed here are our own problems and a perfect tally happens only when you list both income and expenses. Here, the expense scale seem to weigh quite heavily on our back. And I would be quite happy even if we speak about these issues at the same enthusiasm and energy as we discuss Sensex figures and BPO dollar inflows.

That, would be a positive step towards rising.

This is not a sacrifice Madam!

Dear Ms. Sonia

First off, I would like to congratulate on the euphoria you have managed to create on your resignation from the MP and Chairperson of National Advisory Council. You have successfully managed to create this for the second time. Some media houses called it 'springing a surprise', some called it 'sacrifice' and some even drew cartoon with a halo around your head. It is indeed a good show. Everybody must be thrilled at this performance.

Alas, not me. And I hope several millions in India who know what actually happened. I know that your first act of renouncing the Prime Ministership was also not an act of sacrifice either. It was merely an act of saving your face. When the questions of your citizenship and some intricate details were raised during the national debates, the President requested you to furnish certain documents that made you uncomfortable. Fearing that -I don't know what- those documents may leak to the press and embarass you, you have decided to 'gracefully' withdraw the claim to the chair. Lo, the media called you Saint Sonia and the cries of a few citizens were drowned in the loud euphoria created by the thousands.

This time too, the same happened, but with less credibility though. The Congress cadre completey missed the point when they worked on ousting Jaya Bacchan from the Rajya Sabha. Your intense desire to avenge the Bacchans blinded the cadre's forsight and the ax fell on Mrs. Bacchan. Later when the spotlight fell on you, because you too hold an office of Profit, the trouble started. In the past few months, your government has been quite casual in fiddling with the constitution and the same happened. What you did in Jharkand and Bihar attracted strong wrath from the Supreme Court to the extent that President openly regretted having signed to dismiss the Bihar assembly.

So the top-brass of the Congress began to brainstorm and decided to bring in an ordinance to make it possible for a member of Parliament to hold another office. But later, the legal opinion suggested that this ordinance will only be applicable to the appointments made from date the bill is passed and hence will not save you. The ordinance was then changed to giving the Parliamentary Affairs Ministry the power of 'deciding' which is the 'office of profit' and which isn't. This caused enormous stir in the Parliament and led to Mr. Ravindra, a member to take this issue to the President. Fearing again that President, once bitten on Bihar, may resort to legal means, which will force you to resign, you have decided to take the call.

This in my dictionary, is not defined as sacrifice. It is defined as a face-saving exercise. At best, it can be called a smart proactive move.

When you renounced the Prime Ministership, I have not thanked you because you were never meant to take the seat anyway. Now, I have a word of advise. Please do not play around with our constitution again. Your government has been bitten thrice on this. And do not rely much on the media worshipping you. Thankfully, since very few people in our country read, the personalities the media has projected in the past have magnificently lost the elections.

And finally, don't take that halo drawn above your head seriously. You know it doesn't belong there.

India Rising - Part I



A few people asked me who is Tom Friedman. I wanted to answer that question and when this link was sent to me as junk forward, I thought I will write what is in my mind.

There seems to be a general gung-ho about India's economic prospects. Post Bangalore, every wannabe-metro is laying ring roads and building IT-corridors. The beaming NASSCOMM cheif announces that the BPO industry will require a million or two more employees in the next two years and how inadequate our colleges are to meet this demand. Magazines sport cover stories on health services becoming the third big thing. The finance minister is in a hurry to push 10% envelope and even Laloo wants to consider buying a laptop because some magazine called him the CEO of Railways.

And Thomas Friedman is the New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer-winning author who has penned a book titled The World is Flat, which to a great extent deals with India's rise to economic power club with specific focus on, what else, IT and BPO.

If some of you really believe that, I'm sorry to spoil your party. To me, India is neither rising nor shining. At least not yet. Our swanky IT corridors and buzzling BPO centers and a few whites choosing India for their slip-disc surgery or Naturopathy don't mean much when you look at the big picture.

The big picture firstly, is the tag called 'outsourcing'. I consider that only as a glorified housemaid's job. You don't want to spend your time or your wife's time on dishwashing, sweeping, swabbing and dusting. You hire a maid whom you can pay pittance and she will do the dirty job so that you can focus on more valuable things. Your maid is quite thankful to you because you are providing bread and butter to her family. But she rarely raises to your level of lifestyle. Or you don't foresee her lifestyle raising to any level in the near future. I often consider our 'outsourcing' industry to the level of a housemaid.

Let me explain. Having been in the so-called software services, ITES or BPO for some years, I know what goes on. We borrow processes, work-flow techniques and best practices from our clients who are mostly from US. We often hear from our clients about the lack of ATD among us. ATD is Attention-to-Details. Some of our clients even monitor the process from onsite and want to know day by day status so that they can foresee any risks and avoid or manage them. Some clients go to the extent of providing us even the file-names of the modules we are supposed to work on.

And we do the dirty work here. Thomas Friedman, in his book explains this clearly. He thought he was addressing the American public's concern about the hoards of jobs going to India and China. He assures them confidently. 'Don't worry folks. The types of jobs going to India are only low-end administrative and software services jobs. This is a good opportunity so that you (the Americans) can focus on more value-added skill sets'.

I fully subscribe to what Friedman says about Americans going up the value ladder. Because what predominantly happens in India is these low-end BPO and software services jobs only. There are, however, instances of research centres being set up where some mission-critical and high-end jobs take place. But they are far and few. There's this article in Outlook on SAP setting up a research centre in Bangalore. Number? 130 employees. I don't know what 'research' happens over there, so I can't comment about it. But what happens in the famed Microsoft development centre? They develop a few DLLs (device drivers) for the forthcoming Windows system and they are jubilent. Probably Microsoft will be able to reap the returns of their investment by selling Windows to a few state governments in India. Get the certification exams developed by Indian vendors and whatever the money you spent is recovered quickly because there are thousands in India seeking these certifications.

We do not develop organisational processes, methodologies, or best practices. India still doesn't have a single world-class software emerging from its shores. The key, to me, does not lie in our fat Forex reserves. It lies in our knowledge repository. We haven't begun building it yet. We don't have knowledge workers. We only boast of skill sets.

Should we sleep with him?



Post Iran-vote and the President's visit, the much debated topic among the so-called intellectuals is this: What kind of relationship are we going to have with United States of America?

I thank Vinod Mehta for putting this idea in perspective. Because our politicos and policy makers are quite confused as to how to deal with this nation. Thanks to the banal politics of the left and the undefined gung-ho's of the corporate, fuelled by the misplaced optimism of Thomas Friedman, we don't know which stand to take. Some feel that we should sleep with US unconditionlly and some, driven by Leftist policies and brainwashed by left-oriented media houses like The Hindu, feel that we should treat US cautiously. The likes of Arundati Roy feel that we should shun them at any cost. Bush is a bad guy and we need to snap even the tiniest ties we may have with them.

While the Arundati school sounds quite romantic, it is at best ludicrous. If your foreign policy is to be decided based on which country invaded the other or intended invading, you'll end up being friends with countries like Switzerland, Fiji, Peru, etc. And I'm not sure if Peru went to war with someone. Vinod Mehta who is a less romantic than Roy, professes that US and us should be sleeping partners with left being the referee. Even Arundati Roy will make a better referee than Prakash Karat.

Back to the main point. I strongly feel that we should not be sleeping partners with US. Neither be mudslingers. We should be honourable friends who share common interests and give and take. We have a lot to give. If you look at it seriously, India is the only pure and stable democratic country in Asia. Even Japan has some form of Monarchy, however weak it is. America will want to strenghten India so that we can act as a stabilising force in this continent. And they need our market, our services, our software, our expertise in fighting terror. And we need their money, technology and military assistance. We should honourably give and take like how friends do.

That's -I believe- has what Manmohan Singh has precisely done. On a lot of aspects, I have problems with this government. But I'm happy that Dr. Singh could pull off such a favourable deal with Bush. We also should remember that good-realtions with US was initiated by Vajpayee and is being carried out by this government, which is a good news.

As I often mention during my interactions with friends, a country's foreign policies are not decided on moral grounds but on what's good for their economy, security and sovergnity. Association with not just US but any other country should be approached through this view only.

Finally, a word about Clinton. Because one of the comments to my earlier posts did mention about him. The Indo-US relations were not very good during Clinton tenure. Clinton twisted our arms on CTBT and denied various goodies when we refused to sign it. He also slapped huge sanctions on us when we went Nuke. His visit to India did nothing to either countries except some nice photo-ops in the Taj backdrop. And it was Bush who shoved the CTBT aside, released the sanctions and offered to be friendly with us despite we being the only country in the world to have condemned Iraq in their parliament.

Slippery when left - Part II

President of Iran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

This post is about Left's stand on Iran. And the world's stand on Iran. I have to state that certain ideas mentioned in this post are not mine but I endorse them completely. I read an article recently on Iran that provided a very good argument to support my stand. Here I go.

Left is completely opposed to India voting against Iran. Essentially they are against anything the US does and since this vote is mooted by US, they are against the voting. Their arguments: a) It is like intervening on another nation's liberties. b) Iran's stand is that they are doing only civil nuclear research c) We need to be friendly with Iran for the gas pipe deal and voting against them might impact the pipe plan d) If India could go nuclear why should we be agitated when Iran wants to go nuke?

Many of these arguments are quite naive. Iran's nuclear research is not another nations liberties. We should remember that Iran has a history of atrocities against their own people, their neighbours and others. Rushdie had to go underground for almost a decade because of hundreds of Iranians going in the hunt. Their own revolution curtailed the liberties of sunni minorities and other communities. Their economy took a tumble dive when they went for a war with Iraq. Quite recently Iran's premiere swaggered that Iran will help wipe Israel out of world map. Such a threat of Hitlerish nature cannot be ignored by others. Additionally, we should consider that Iran has acquired its preliminary nuke technology from the infamous Abdul Qadir Khan, the disgraced scientist from Pakistan. So the relationship Iran and Pakistan has in this nuke transfer is of immense concern to us.

Under these circumstances, it is difficult to believe that Iran is only doing research for civilian purposes. When you want to wipe out a nation of the world map, won't you be tempted to stash away a bowlful of uraniam aside? Just in case? And who can possibly lay their hands on that bowl?

And I don't understand why the gas pipe deal should suffer because we are voting. Does it mean that Iran can blackmail us with the gas pipe carrot? So can the US with various sops and the amount of sops US can offer us will be much more? Is left intending to say that it's okay to yield to Iran's blackmail but it's cowardly to yield to America's conditions? To me, I'd rather not want that gas pipe if I can get much better benefits elsewhere.

Some people ask why should India oppose Iran's nuclear aspirations when we ourselves went nuke against world's intentions. It's because we announced to the world of our intentions when we refused to sign CTBT. We lost a bagful of goodies from UN because we refused to ink. But Iran signed CTBT and due to which enjoyed a lot of economic benefits denied to us. In sports terms it's called foul.

And I particularly consider left's stand on this ironic because the CPI and CPM went around screaming foul when Pokhran II happened. Lakshmi Pundit, the candidate propped by left against Abdul Kalam said that it will be a national insult if we tell the world that the man responsible for our nuclear capability is becoming our president. It is as if our nuclear capability is something to be embarassed about. If India's nuclear aspirations are bad, are Iran's intentions noble and not to be opposed?

And it might help to know that even countries like France and Russia, who have much closer tie-ups with Iran are voting. And China who doesn't have to yield to US pressures is voting. Cuba, Siria and Nigeria are not voting. Do you want our country's name to be in this list?

Note: Ideas for paragraph four and five are borrowed from Cho Ramasamy, editor of Thuglak, a political magazine in Tamil

Slippery when left - Part I

A tad too late to write about Bush's visit. He has come and gone and inked the deals and the protestors have folded up their placards and gone home. But I couldn't help it because I was too busy honeymooning to worry about the world affairs. Now that I'm back in office and my wife back in Bangalore, I thought I'll spend a while worrying about the world. Here I go.

The screaming headlines of protests against the American President George Bush Jr. visit were too glaring even in the cozy comforts of my honeymoon. Then I wonder how it would have been for those who were in the thick of affairs. So what has he done after all? He has invaded Iraq, hasn't he? I can't falter him on having invaded Afghanistan because I'm greately relieved that Kabul is out of the hands of the barbaric Taliban. I'm too tempted to say the same about Iraq too. But then, Saddam is not Mulla Omar. At least we all know his face and his deeds. Left has been overwhelming in their support for Saddam. So he invaded Kuwait, didn't he? We were more than happy welcoming erstwhile premiers of Soviet Union. They invaded, plundered, destroyed the cultures and economies of countless countries around them. For that matter, the current plight of Afghanistan should be majorly attributed to Soviet Union and not America. At best they can share the blame 50-50. So where were the black flags when those leaders visited us? And where was Arundati Roy when the Chinese premier came calling? She didn't write eloquent about them because they invaded their neighbour called India and are still holding some considerable portion of Indian land! Pakistan president didn't receive black flags for Kargil, Saudi Royal for human rights records and sponsoring terror.

But George Bush receives reams of anger and kilometers of black cloth and Pakistani presidents visit becomes a 'Confidence Building Measure' and Chinese Premieres visit is touted as a 'glimmering hope'.

I do not understand this conflict. Also, if Iraq and Iran are the only issues, I do not want to mix that up with Bush's current visit. My views on Iraq war are quite personal and out of scope of this post. And I intend writing on Iran and left's stand on this in Part II. In general, I would like to approach Bush with a simple idea. I neither love or deplore him. He is the president of one of the technologically most superior nations in the world and I want those technologies. He is willing to give some of them to me on certain conditions. I understand those conditions because nobody gives anything for free anywhere. I'm willing to weigh those conditions and would like to draw a balance and strike a deal with him. Such a relationship is going to benefit my country economically and technologically. Making enemies with Bush doesn't make sense and I don't believe he has done something so atrocious that other countries haven't done. And to me, as an Indian, my country's foreign policies should be decided based on my selfish needs and not on any misplaced moral grounds. Considering that I would like to offer a warm invite to President Bush.

Welcome to India. I hope you had a nice stay. I hear you skipped poultry. Try our chicken tikka next time.