Reimagining India

McKinsey is come out with a book Reimagining India - a great collection of essays, that explore the subject of unlocking the potential.

In a series of interviews it has published - the one with Eric Schmidt is worth listening to....

India's Second Class Citizens

The rape case has been in the news many weeks before this article by Business Week was printed. This is disheartening to read. And I wish, desire, hope that India the Nation and its citizens work hard (both in the country and abroad) to evolve the culture. Two sentences stand out:

India needs to modernize its police and its judiciary. There are barely 11 judges for every million people. In New Delhi the police are so mistrusted by women that traffic cops are barred from stopping single female drivers past 11 p.m. unless a female police officer is present. Yet there’s a shortage of policewomen.

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The case has led to national introspection. “India thinks it can be a superpower and a developed country, but we have these problems rotting out the core,” says Sunita Thakur, a counselor with Jagori, a nonprofit that promotes women’s empowerment. “How can we change? These values have been deeply ingrained over thousands of years.”

The national introspection needs to gain strength, and then go beyond thinking into real action and change.





Business Week: India's Educated Women Face a Conservative Backlash

Rishikesh: A place to find enlightment

Last week I picked up the Nat Geo Traveller, October 2012 issue specially for reading the article: "Here Comes the Sun". But it wasn't the title of the article - but the tag line on the cover - "A Yoga Skeptic in India". I am a bit into Yoga - actually the meditation kind - Pranayama. So I was intrigued and picked up the issue.

The article was fantastic - very well written and insightful. A Must Read! A few quotes from the well-written article:

Reading the line below had me break into a smile  - "spirituality mall". It is unfortunate that even though I have lived in New Delhi for the first half of my life - I have never visited Rishikesh. Ok I may have been there when I was very young but no memories from the trip.

Rishikesh is a shopping mall for spirituality straddling the Ganges northeast of New Delhi.

Yep Yoga is not about breaking a sweat. And a teacher is a must, IMHO. Yoga is a way of life, and it is most certainly not about difficult and challenging poses.

There are no New Age tunes pumping through hidden speakers, no distracting yoga outfits, no blinding heat, no incense, and no attitude. Just students and a teacher.

On driving on the wrong side of the road?

STAY LEFT, STAY LEFT quickly becomes my mantra as I wind past candy-striped buses and overstuffed rickshaws belching black clouds. Left-side driving is easy to adapt to—until you forget.

And Peter sums it up well:

I ask Jagdish if he does yoga.
“Yes, every day. Work is my yoga. My job keeps my body flowing.”

Yet Madhav, I realize, is the walking example of that knowing soul I aspired to be. Nothing, no matter the urgency or size, derails him. He doesn’t live in a cave, nor did he guide me through a single pretzel contortion. Yet he taught me, almost daily, not necessarily how to walk the “yogi path” but how to understand it better and, most important, to realize that my mind needs as much stretching as my annoying back.

Here is the original: Here Comes the Sun by Peter McBride
Enjoy!

Indians sailed to Australia four millennia ago

Indians may have sailed to Australia about 4000 years before Captain Arthur Philip discovered it in 1788. The evidence is genetics-based - specifically what are known as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs.

Dr. Irina Pugach of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig, and her colleagues, discovered that there is a pattern of SNPs that is not found in people from New Guinea or the Philippines. But it is found in some Indians—particularly in Dravidian speakers from the southern part of the subcontinent. Combining the SNP data with the Y-Chromosome data they calculated that the Indians arrived in Australia about 141 generations ago - roughly around 2217BC!

Two surprising things about this - it implies that these sailors had access to seaworthy ships, not just boats. And secondly an interesting conflict - Dravidians herald from the southern part of the Indian sub-continent and the civilization that was well known during this time is the Indus Valley but it is was in the north west part of the subcontinent.

The research also indicates that this arrival of Indians resulted in three shifts in the Australian life:

Tools: Aboriginal culture, which had hitherto depended on the large and relatively crude stone tools of the palaeolithic, suddenly started using the smaller and finer ones of the neolithic.

Gastronomic: Removal of toxins from Cycad nuts - Cycad nuts are still familiar food in Kerala, India/

Dingo: This may explain the arrival of Dingo to Australia - they have resemblance to certain breeds found in India.

Source: The Economist, An Antipodean Raj

India & Corruption: Politicians Stealing Food

There is no end to the different corruption schemes in India - Bloomberg covers how politicians are "stealing" food, and making money of it. This are the kind of things that are shameful. Bloomberg reports that investigations of massive food scams have gone on for years, but there have been no convictions.

Instead, as much as $14.5 billion in food was looted by corrupt politicians and their criminal syndicates over the past decade in Kishen’s home state of Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

All the different scams in India - this is democracy, capitalism gone awry ..... and one of these days may end up being catastrophic.

Here is the link: http://bloom.bg/SrK2aJ

India & Manufacturing

Economist in its recent print issue talked about the role of manufacturing in India, and how it is evolving. A few silent points (the bold & underline is my emphasis):

Manufacturing is still just 15% of output (see chart), far below Asian norms. India needs a big manufacturing base. No major country has grown rich without one and nothing else is likely to absorb the labour of the 250m youngsters set to reach working age in the next 15 years.

This is a major issue, and both the Politicians (when they get the time from their own bickering and profit racketeering) and Private companies need to address the infrastructure issue that would form the foundation for world-class manufacturing. The work environment is equally dangerous with rioting and killing of people at plants. 

Yet not all is farce and tragedy. Take Pune in west India, a booming industrial hub that has won the steely hearts of Germany’s car firms. Inside a $700m Volkswagen plant on the city’s outskirts, laser-wielding robots test car frames’ dimensions and a giant conveyor belt slips by, with sprung-wood surfaces to protect workers’ knees. It is “probably the cheapest factory we have worldwide”, says John Chacko, VW’s boss in India. In time it could become an export hub. Nearby, in the distance it takes a Polo to get to 60mph, is a plant owned by Mercedes-Benz.

With all the growth woes, and challenges, the manufacturing firms that are prospering are doing do on the basis of technology:

What is happening in Pune is more sophisticated than epic feats of metal-bashing. While VW’s plant is more labour-intensive than its German equivalent, it still relies more on computers than humans. Local firms, such as Bharat Forge, have been shedding unskilled labour, investing in technology and building brands and distribution overseas. “Indian firms that are technology-focused are extremely successful,” says Mr Kalyani. But “commodity manufacturing is unsuccessful. It is the opposite of China…We have archaic labour laws. Nobody in their right mind is going to set up a plant employing 10,000 people.” His ambition is to make his firm another Siemens or General Electric.

I just returned from a trip to India and yes I was in Delhi when the major power failures happened - yet I remain optimistic. With time the conditions will improve. As always I am long on India! 

Source: Manufacturing in India: The Masala Mittelstand

This Week In India...

Aamir Khan and his new phenomenal serial "Satyamev Jayate" has taken over the media, and the social network. I got to see the promotional trailer last month (Thanks to Twitter), and the show debuted May 6th. Facebook et. al are flooded with rave reviews.

Aamir strikes the right chord with 'Satyamev Jayate'
Tweets: Aamir's TV debut 'Satyamev Jayate' 

And the song on the debut show, cannot be described in words, listen and be awed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjBxPvdUEs

Economic Growth in India: Miracle Interrupted

Another book on India this time about the economic growth in India reviewed in an article titled  "Miracle, Interrupted" by the author Akash Kapur (India Becoming: A Portrait of Life in Modern India). A few choice excerpts from the article that hit the nail on the head:

The truth is that India’s prospects were never quite as bright as they were made out to be—nor are they quite as dire as they are held to be today. Instead, the recent swings in the Indian narrative are another reminder of the role of sentiment in investors’ perceptions and decisions. Nations, like markets, are subject to often irrational (and certainly ill-informed) cycles of boom and bust.

On corruption in India:

Corruption has been rampant for decades, though today’s scandals—such as the furor over the nation’s allocation of 2G telecom licenses—are shocking for their brazenness and the sheer sums of money involved. They are in many ways the fruit of India’s rapid prosperity and the brand of robber-baron capitalism it has bred.

And the summation is apt, and describes the paradox that is India very well:

This ambivalence—this messy, complex, and even self-contradictory reality—is what defines the modern Indian condition. It is not easily captured by even the most sophisticated narratives or concepts. It lacks the neatness of a model. There is only the country’s irreducible, and at times maddening, multiplicity. That makes interpretation hard. India is never as grim as it may appear, nor as glittering.

Holi Celebration

Like all Indian/Desi festival celebrations in the US, Holi is celebrated on weekends. This year chose to participate in the Holi organized by Sewa USA (a charitable organization)

I always wonder why end up attending, make no mistake I love Holi, but it takes second-seat to celebrating Diwali...

This time though I ended up taking a lot of pictures, going to sift through them and post them soon.

BTW before I headed out I had to take care to protect my Canon 20D and the lens using makeshift technique from the "gulal" (color, read more about Holi here), here is the picture of how I did it...