Displacing farmers out of their farmland is the neo-liberal economic growth model - prescribed by World-Bank so that India can throw away its agrarian economy and embrace the new world order.

Here is a discussion on globalization by the leading economist in this area - Dr. Jagdish Bhagwati. What do you think of it?

It is being rumored that Infosys may buy CapGemini. Although CapGemini has a total Sales of USD 10.35 billion and Infosys sales are USD 3.1 billion, but its profits and market value are half that of the Indian company.

Some say it is too big a fish to swallow, while the past experience of Indian acquisitions show that it may be brought about. One thing that most Indian companies are not losing sight of is that this is a time when they command fantastic Market Capitalizations, despite lower sales. These times may not last long! The sooner they acquire some big fish and become a global player, the better it will be for them!

Finally.. the Indian mangoes are here.. in the US!! For all of us Indians who have had to put up with those useless, tasteless American mangoes from Krogers.. and who somehow had taken a distinct liking for the Mexican mangoes sold at Fiesta.. this will be a boon!! (post tip: Tripti)

The first consignment of Indian mangoes in 18 years, was ready for export to the United States where the fruit has been given clearance by regulators, an official statement said on Thursday.

A first shipment of 150 boxes of various mango varieties was likely to be dispatched on Friday. US authorities gave India's Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology the green light for the shipment on Wednesday, India's Commerce Ministry said in a statement.

The US had banned Indian mangoes on the grounds that the production method did not conform to US norms.

The ban was lifted after a recent meeting between Indian Commerce and Industries Minister Kamal Nath and US trade representative Susan Schwab. The two agreed that the mangoes would be passed through a radiation test according to US requirements.

In return, India agreed to allow the US sell Harley Davidson motorbikes in India, vehicles previously banned for failing to meet Indian emission standards.

Like I said the Tatas are on a tear! Here is more proof of that! To support their power needs in India they are buying stakes in two of largest coal mines in the world! This is precisely the reason why the power generation and distribution should be in the hands of the private sector. Which SEB or PSU power plant would have thought this up?

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Tata Motors is on a tear! It is not only thinking of world's cleanest car but also world's cheapest car to be sold under its name! And both the projects are ambitious... but as we have seen the Tatas do things.. they usually get their stuff right...

What do you think?

Tata Motors is developing a car it aims to sell for about $2,500--the cheapest, by far, ever made.

There is a lot riding on its small wheels. If the yet-to-be-named car is a success when it goes on sale next year, it would herald the emergence of Tata Motors on the global auto scene, mark the advent of India as a global center for small-car production and represent a victory for those who advocate making cheap goods for potential customers at the "bottom of the pyramid" in emerging markets.

Jalianwala Bagh Massacre was perpetrated by the British against Indians in Amritsar. According to private sources, over 1000 were shot in cold blood! Every one was aghast at the murders.

Today we are free. Sadly, last week India had its yet another "Jalianwala Bagh" moment. This time the perpetrator was the our own Government. At least 14 people were killed and 70 injured in Nandigram, about 150 km southwest of Kolkata, on Wednesday in police firing.

This is the same Government that beats its chest about it being the "champion" of the poor and against commercial interests! Why did they do it for? To beat back a protest against industrialization in West Bengal! These sick and dastardly idiotic communists in India should be put in a long camp - tough one - to teach them that India is NOT communist China.. but democratic India!! And there is a goddamn difference between the two!

Is the world's biggest company and greatest steel barron.. after the second biggest steel company in the world? Well, it seems that Mittal is not content to just stand still and keep looking at the steel market even after becoming the king.. he wants to rule ruthlessly and as the only king!! All the best to him!

India-born steel tycoon L N Mittal is planning a hostile takeover bid for South Korea's POSCO, even as the Korean giant is looking to build up its defence against any such move by raising friendly shareholding in the company, media reports said.

This is the Indian season for acquisitions... when the Tatas could.. Mittal could.. Ranbaxy is awaiting.. then why not Reliance? So, Reliance does after the second biggest retailer in the world behind Walmart!! Reliance guys do think BIG!!

Reliance Industries is looking to buy a stake in France's Carrefour in a move that would catapult India's largest private sector group into the ranks of the world's top retailers.

Reliance was looking at the possibility of buying the 13 per cent stake held by the Halley family, Carrefour's largest shareholder, although talks had not yet been initiated, a person familiar with the situation said.

Americans are coming to India.. and not for tourism alone. Some are moving for jobs! This trend is seen to be growing over the next few years and the jobs are aplenty in India and hard to come by for some traditional areas.

Indian outsourcing has inspired comments from Jay Leno and a man who is much funnier, George Bush. It has unleashed debates and even suicides.

But for sometime now, Americans have been outsourcing themselves to India for survival. It is tough and sometimes a shocking experience.

But they are also discovering that though India churns out lakhs of graduates every year, there are jobs that Americans are unexpectedly better at.

Joining the Indian workforce from his comfy home in Virginia, Ed Cohen, 46, jumped on to the bandwagon eight months ago, as senior vice-president at Satyam Computer Services' School of Leadership.

Cohen brought his entire family to Hyderabad where they have built a warm, happy home for themselves. Even their dog came along.

Seeing a camel for the first time, Cohen says their dog, "freaked out". Cohen has been trying to speak to Indians in Hindi only, to be answered in English.

Cohen and the other Americans who come to India see a promising monetary opportunity. Indian companies are paying Rs 20-30 lakh per year to middle-management Americans.

When one year's salary will purchase a nice two-bedroom home in Bangalore, it seems like a lot to an American who would need four year's pay to purchase one in the States. There are also others who see an opportunity for career advancement.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) has said in its May 2006 Newsline report that the visibly large body of young Indians, "is not directly employable and needs to be transformed into 'suitable' offshore talent before it can be used by the country's technology industries."

According to technology and market research company Forrester Research, "There are problems finding experienced development leaders, program managers, and domain experts."

They say that there is a feeding frenzy in India as companies scramble to find senior staff to keep the more complex projects on track.

"We know that Indians working in the US are being offered their US pay if they return to India." This situation, coupled with job erosion and career plateauing in the States, has spurred a rush of working Americans to India.

Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of Head Hunters India, says he does not have to advertise in America. With 30 emails a month from Americans soliciting the company for work in India, his company's presence is known through word-of-mouth.

Shahnaz Hussain, the Herbal queen, who herself has had to battle with look-alike brands and stuff, is doing it to Starbucks now! She is starting a coffee chain called Starstrucks! Starbucks does not like it but what the heck... it is good for her publicity!

Starbucks Corp. is opposing Indian entrepreneur Shahnaz Husain's plans to start a chain of coffee shops called Starstrucks, the Mint business paper reported.

The U.S. coffee shop chain has told India's Controller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademark that the name is deceptively similar to its own name, the paper said.

Husain, an herbal beauty specialist who has a range of skincare and haircare products and salons named after her, is not willing to give up the name, the paper said.

"Why should I give it up? Hundreds of others are deceptively similar. What to do? They have opposed and we will fight," Husain, called the Herbal Queen, told Mint.

Husain plans to open 25 stores in a year. The shops will have a glamour theme, with posters of movie stars, the paper said.

"My concept's totally different," she said.

Ok.. this is as crazy as it can possibly get! Tatas buy Corus - the Brit Steel major for .. $11.x billion. The Brits - led by their Indian Born CEO - strike back with Vodafone buying Hutch for .... $11.x billion!! Hmm interesting! When Friedman twisted Nilekani's quote to call the world Flat.. he wasn't joking! Stakes are getting more equitable than most of us realize! In just 3 years Indian billionaires have risen from just 2 to 28! The same can happen to a Thailand or Zambia if the educated class takes off.

Walmart is one of the greatest "corporate villains" - according to many US activists.

BEAT THE BIGGIES ON EMOTION / CONNECTION!!

It pinches on giving full compensation to its workers and also pulverizes the many small businesses in the small towns and cities of the US (and the rest of the world.. soon in India too!) Can someone compete against Walmart? Apparently you can.. but the way to do it is with focus and correct strategy.

According to my knowledge .. only two entities have successfully and spectacularly competed against Walmart - NetFlix and Target! While Walmart had to close its online/in-shop video/movie rental because it could not take on Netflix's highly efficient supply chain process, Target consistently does better in terms of the higher income consumers - a niche, which btw, is increasing given the good run of the economy recently!! Here is some great advice distilled by Tom Peters!

Tata Steel has finally won the battle for Corus Group (CGA) for roughly $12 billion.. a battle that one hopes does not prove Pyrhhic in the end! Even with a bid of USD 8 bn the S&P had placed the Tata Steel on watch!

The reaction of the Indian market has not been very good either - the Reserve Bank hiked the Repo rate.

But one thing is certain - Tata Steel is now the fifth largest Steel manufacturer. With Arcelor Mittal and Tata-Corus, the Steel capacity is dominantly in the hands of the Indians!. The main consumers of the Steel - on the other hand - are the Chinese! So it is going to be an interesting battle of Business Interests between Indians and Chinese!

I had mentioned the book "The Coming China Wars" in an earlier post. Here is an interesting report on the site of the author of the book.

Total Number of Chinese Billionaires is 15 and Indian Billionaires is 35!

The study was called China Price Project. You can view the report here: China Price Report. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the 8 major drivers of the advantage that Chinese manufacturers have.

According to the report, the price advantage broken down by the drivers are:

• Lower labor costs account: 39%
• Industrial network clustering: 16%
• Catalytic Foreign Direct Investment: 3%
• Export subsides: 17%
• Undervalued currency: 11%
• Counterfeiting and piracy: 9%
• Lax environmental and worker health and safety regulatory regimes: 5%.

This is a very significant finding in many ways. There is a significant chunk of price advantage that stems from bad business practices! I remember 4 or 5 years back, the Non-performing loans of the Chinese National Banks were close to 40%! If at all, they must have gone up. That means these moneys were borrowed by businesses never to be returned back!

TCS is going great as is Infosys! It seems that now that the Indian trio of Wipro, Infy, and TCS have their business model tuned up correctly, they are set to expand at a jet speed ahead!

TCS is now looking at 10 deals of $50 mn each! That is $500 mn just from 10 deals in the next FY! It took Indian companies YEARS to reach the $1 bn mark.. and there was enough celebration on that milestones.. now that seems like just a half yearly target by today's standards!

Tata Consultancy Services has delivered a stellar set of numbers this quarter (Q3). The company posted a net profit of Rs 1104.7 crore (Rs 11.04 billion) versus Rs 991.5 crore (Rs 9.91 billion) in the previous quarter, increased by 11.41%.

Look at this scenario.. and imagine the economic effect of this scenario! Can you imagine if the rising and the growing societies of Asia united just as European societies have? How powerful would that block be!

A direct drive from anywhere in India to Vietnam. A train line from Delhi to Hanoi. Countries sharing energy resources -- not just petroleum products, think foreign help during an electricity grid failure. Trade, financial bonding, cooperation in education, information-technology.

This is what the Indian PM Dr. Manmohan Singh is in Philippines for!

If you still needed any confirmation of the strength of Indian telecom market - here it is. Over the next 3-5 years, Cisco will move 20% - ONE-FIFTH - of its top brass to India!! Now, that is a MAJOR shift in any company. A lot of companies make the shift but this seems unprecedented!

And what prompts this shift?

- Great Market for Mobiles and a growing Internet usage
- Cheap talent that can help Cisco compete with Juniper and Huawei technologies.
- Good technical talent - not just cheap!

Wim Elfrink, Cisco's (CSCO) chief globalization officer, is at the vanguard of a new initiative. This January, Elfrink will relocate from his San Jose (Calif.) headquarters to Bangalore, India. In a major display of commitment to the Indian market, Cisco plans to have at least 20% of its top executives working in India in the next three to five years, according to Elfrink.

The telecom market in India is exploding! The analytic criteria that are used for analysis in the developed economies do not mean a thing in the emerging markets. Here is the "Fisherman Legend" that illustrates the irrelevance of the analytical techniques for developed economies in a place like India

A Mumbai fisherman used to sell his catch by going from house to house, visiting a circle of regular customers. Now, as he's approaching shore, the fisherman calls his customers from his cell phone to see if they would like seafood for dinner. The cost of a cell phone amounts to a huge proportion of the fisherman's income, analogous to what an American might spend on a car. But it's worth it, because it boosts his income by letting him spend more time fishing and less time touring the neighborhood.

McKinsey Quarterly came out with a great article "Ten Trends to watch in 2006" (free registration required to read the article), where they discussed a lot of trends from the Macroeconomic level ro Business and Social and Environmental standpoints. These are true even today!!

They made some interesting projections like - Battlefield for Talent will shift - meaning that with 33 million university educated young professionals, the developing economies have more than twice the number of developed countries. So, the future organization is not to only think of material sourcing but also talent sourcing as a major part of its business strategy!

China's Forex Reserves have reached a record $1 trillion mark! That gives it a big clout in the world economy. At the rate at which it is growing every year, if it could be extrapolated in the future and nothing wrong was to happen, then China will surpass US in its contribution to the World's GDP growth by 2025! That is a significant milestone.

There are caveats however. The Chinese growth is very strongly linked to State control. The private entrepreneurs are strong but they have not contributed as much as they should have. More importantly most of the growth is export driven and not so much fueled by local consumers.

The prediction from MorganStanley analysis report:

In his analysis for Morgan Stanley, Mr. Roach extrapolated plausible growth rates into the future for China, India, Europe, Japan, and the US. This is merely a simulation, not a formal forecast, but the results are telling: In its contribution to world GDP growth, China would surpass the US by 2025. That would be up from about 35 percent of the US contribution in 2005, and 60 percent in 2015. India's contribution would surpass Japan's by 2025, but remain far behind China and the US.

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

Dear Group Members,

I want to share my article with you. This is about the link between Mind and Social / Environmental-Issues. The fast-paced, consumerist lifestyle of Industrial Society is causing exponential rise in psychological problems besides destroying the environment. All issues are interlinked. Our Minds cannot be peaceful when attention-spans are down to nanoseconds, microseconds and milliseconds. Our Minds cannot be peaceful if we destroy Nature.

Thank you,
Sushil Yadav

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment.

Paul McDougall suggests that the employment is growing in the US IT sector as well as the Indian IT sector! This runs contrary to what the patriotic and xenophobic pundits like Lou Dobbs have been ranting about all along! So how come this is happening?

IT employment in the United States is growing even as more businesses outsource tech work overseas. Hudson, a professional staffing firm, reports in their July survey that hiring and pay in the tech sector is up, as is worker confidence. At the same time, India's revenues from outsourcing are climbing--up 32% in the second quarter, according to an Indian trade group.

So you thought nothing of the good old Mahindra & Mahindra. right? Well, it seems like M&M may be able to kick the back side of Deere & Co. - the most venerable name in tractors in the US!! Here is one such case from Businessweek's latest article:

But rather than buy an American-made John Deere or New Holland, brands he grew up with, Lucenberg chose a shiny red Mahindra 5500 made by India's Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. "I have been around equipment all my life," says Lucenberg, who also used the tractor to earn extra money clearing destroyed homes along the Gulf Coast. But for $27,000, complete with a front loader, the 54-hp Mahindra "is by far the best for the money. It has more power and heavier steel," Lucenberg says. "When you lock it into four-wheel drive, you can move 3,000 pounds like nothing. That thing's an animal." The local dealership in nearby Saucier, Miss. (population 1,300), figures it has sold 300 Mahindras in the past four months.

Nice article on Indian influence in this new issue of Times mag

You may not be aware of it, living in the United States, but your world is increasingly being shaped by India.

Even if you've never been to India, eaten its food or watched its movies, there is a good chance you interact with it every day of your life.

It might be the place on the other end of that call you call you make if your luggage is lost on a connecting flight, or the guys to whom your company has outsourced its data processing. Every night, young radiologists in Bangalore read CT scans e-mailed to them by emergency-room doctors in the U.S.

Few Americans are surprised today to learn that their dentist or lawyer is of Indian origin, and the centrality of Indian brainpower to California's high-tech industry has long been documented.

In ways big and small, Indians are changing the world, and may become even more influential in the decades ahead.

That's because India -- the second most populous nation in the world, and projected to be by 2015 the most populous -- is itself being transformed. In the tradition of writers citing Asia's "tiger" economies and the Chinese "dragon," now comes the elephant.

India's economy is growing more than 8 percent a year, and the country is modernizing so fast that old friends are bewildered by the changes that occur between visits.

Yet another company making India its outsourcing hub for Managed Services in Telecom this time. Nokia is moving its managed services work to India.

Global telecommunications giant Nokia on Monday announced shifting the hub of its global telecom network management services business to India from its home base in Finland.

"The managed services will be led globally from India from July this year. Asish Chowdhary, currently the head of networks in India, will transition as new global head of managed services from India by the end of this year," Rajeev Suri, Senior Vice Pesident, Asia Pacific (Networks) at Nokia said.

Hyundai is thinking BIG about India. Going to make it a hub for smaller cars.. I guess with a reason. That's the only country where those small cars will be bought ... and bought in large numbers.. and if these cars work in India.. they would work anywhere!!

The investment it is talking is huge from a annual perspective of just one company. In fact, Hyundai has just invested in a $1 billion plant in Alabama in the US too. This company is thinking big in all regions. That is the greatest thing about the Koreans! From Hyundai to Samsung they are after the Japanese monopolies.

Is the unbelieveable finally about to happen? The plunge of the dollar and the world economy in a spin? Maybe.. who knows!?

The US dollar is plunging in world currency markets - and bringing down share prices in its wake.

But why is the dollar under pressure - and what would be the consequences for the US economy if it continues to fall?

Behind the problems of the dollar lies the huge and growing US trade deficit, and the large Federal budget deficit.

A fall in the greenback could hit Asian countries whose governments hold huge foreign currency reserves in dollars. For many years financial markets have worried about the growing size of the US trade deficit - the difference between the amount the US imports from the rest of the world, and the amount it can sell to the rest of the world.

A 1% growth in the World Services Exports is a very impressive performance! The trick will be to keep it that way!

A robust growth in merchandise exports in 2005 has resulted in India’s share in world exports to inch up to 0.9% from 0.8% in 2004. In services, India’s performance has been more impressive with its share in world services exports increasing to 2.8% in 2005 from 1.9% in 2004.

India’s world ranking as a merchandise exporter has gone up one slot in 2005 to 29 from 30 in 2004. As a service exporter, India is now ranked 10th in the world compared to the 16th position occupied in 2004.

OK, guys here we are talking of jobs that are creme-de-la-creme in the US!! Lawyers are well paid and part of their job is to do good research. So, is the future of US law grads to be in just doing litigation in courts? Thinking of it.. what stops an Indian law grad to even advise the US clients - if he has passed the CA bar exam? He surely can over the internet!! Important Story!

High-end legal services are likely to lead the next wave of offshoring with about 35,000 lawyers' jobs likely to move from US to countries like India by 2010.