Should Pakistan start a Virtual University?

This argument may be over but amen to SR #75

Zahra #124: ``Somehow, I have some doubts. If they were that enlightened, you won`t be complaining about their wives here``

Since you do not know the people I am talking about, you have two choices: you can take my word for it. Or you can disregard my word, in which case, you should also disregard everything else I have written.

There are actually quite a few Pakistanis guys who are more than willing to support the wives in their education and careers. I would say amongst the professional Pakistanis I have come across ( not only amongst my close friends) in the US, this group is in the majority. However, their wives have to take some initiative on their own first, before they ask for support from their husbands.

``Personally, I do not care what these wives do. Excuse my indifference. I am far more interested in the well-being of women back home.``

The only way, ``women back home`` will have the chance to progress is if well-off women here and in Pakistan take some initiative and end up as role models in influential positions. Until that happens, apart from the lives of the one odd women back home who gets a scholarship, nothing major is going to change.

``Majority of women, who come to the US after their medicine or engineering, will pursue their careers unless they are married to Pagal Ulloos[Mad Owls]!``

This is true. But how many Pakistani women in the USA have degrees in medicine and engineering. An overwhelming majority seems to come here after completing their B.A., etc. Until this overwhelming majority decides to join the mainstream, the doctors and engineers will not be able to do too much on their own. There just aren`t enough of them.

And an owl is generally regarded as oneof the most intelligent birds in America. It is only in Pakistan, that the owl is considered stupid.

``If your comment was a criticism towards the guest speakers who were invited, I am sorry I was not in the loop at all. And I think you should not hammer on that any more.``

Actually, my comment was not a criticism regarding the speakers. The speakers did a pretty good job. My comment was a criticism of the Pakistani women who did not show up to the function. And the fact that their aren`t any qualified Pakistani women available to speak. If I, a non-woman, could pay the money and take the time to show up for this function, then don`t you think many of the thousands of Pakistani well-off women in Silicon Valley could have shown up for this function. Who stopped them from showing up? Did their husbands tie them up or lock them in the bathroom? I have seen way too many of them line up, along with myself, to buy tickets to Junoon and Daler Mehndi concerts, when these singers visit Silicon Valley. Nothing wrong with that, but why don`t they show an equal interest on this side, as well.

They simple reason is that very few of them, despite having all the opportunity in the world, really care about technology, furthuring their abilities, getting into positions where they can help women in Pakistan, etc. The only ones who were present in the function were the ones from iopwe. However, to the best of my knowledge, this function was open to all men and women.

If out of the thousands of Pakistanis girls and women in Silicon Valley, all of whom are very well-off with well educated husbands, only ten (and seven out of these ten were themselves members of the organization that organized the function) bothered to attend this function, then don`t you think it is a pretty good indication that these women do not take interest. And until these well-off Pakistani women start taking interest as a huge group, I don`t think too much can be done for the not so well off Pakistani women. This, of course, does not mean that the few women who are making efforts should not be encouraged.

``I am no one to go and tell them what to do and how to do; I cannot impose my vision on someone and ask them to adopt that as theirs!``

I am not quite sure where you got the idea that I was requesting you to personally target these women. I was just pointing out the problem. Since you do represent an organization that is trying to solve these problems, and you had yourself requested my opinion (I did not volunteer it), hence I gave it to you, and pointed out an area which I felt needed to be highlighted.

gymno #72

(I do not shorten it to Paki because that is an offensive term usually associated with Paki-bashing.)

And calling Telugu`s `golti`, is not being offensive?

SN

well, well well - I knew gynosophist was good at writing things and may be on occasion is good at reading as well. But in this case he has not read anything and is quick at the draw - becareful you will shoot yourself and be missing those toes.

Read what I said - I said IT is a never never land even for India. Today it is IT tomorrow (as the Indians saying) it knowledge economy. If you cannot read think it time you went for a long walk Mr Plodder and took come course on reading comprehension.

Now lets see what you have to say about what I wrote.

If not take a blessed hike.

AS regards who am I - nationality does it matter. I am a baluchi with a nationality that is none of your business.

As far as I am concerned even you are a paindoo (a simpleton) - I do not use it in a pejorative sense unlike it appears you seem to be implying.

I am an uneducated baluchi who has had the good fortune of escaping from the mess that the elite (paindoos) in pakistan have created with my senses and faculties intact. I have missed the brainwashing of the curriculum, the people and the rest.

Now gymnosophist, an adrogynous name if I ever saw one, who the effing hell are you? What is your nationality, etc etc etc etc.

Now after the personal stuff - care to address some of the issues raised MR. For if you or many here cannot - I cannot forsee a future where pakistan can match India doings. It will forever keep trying to match it and believe its propaganda on the knowledge economy, IT etc - a never never land living where peter forever fighst the pirates and the crocodiles.

gymno,

[...I guess you now have even less of a leg to stand on when you defend the Golti Programmer...]

i was not defending anyone, golti or otherwise. i merely questioned the circumstances under which your story took place. your original post did not give any details about those. had it done so, i would not have bothered.

Nameles in his reply #52 talks specifics of Indian software companies` prowess and generalizes it to all Indian companies and by extension to Indians.

And in reply #62 claims he is not Indian and calls Pakistanis `paindoos`. (I do not shorten it to Paki because that is an offensive term usually associated with Paki-bashing.) He then goes on to extol the virtues of the educational system of India and how Pakistan cannot ever make it in IT -- another generalization.

But if I talk of a couple of specific cases and ask if I should generalize it to all Indians, he wants to talk about Virtual Universities.

And of course he hasn`t identified upto this point exactly what knowledge the Indians are going to be spreading in their knowledge-based industry.

Everybody generally tells you to wake up and smell the coffee. I merely ask you not to believe that your own sh *t doesn`t stink.

So, Mr. Nameless, what nationality are you? I remember an Indian who used to say his nationality was `Sindhi` while living in India and holding an Indian passport. Are you one of those? Or, even better, a Kashmiri? A Bodo, perhaps? It would be interesting to know.

gymno
Your predicament has been obvious for quite a while and I feel for you. I would recommend Diane Fienstein as the person for your money, literally and figuratively.

WHo cares whether gymnosophist sacked some programmer or not, or whether he paid the guy or not. whether some person can hack it or not....

{hhhhm it is an interesting question that last one - can anyone really hack it }

The question still remains - why a virtual university in a country where basic school education appears to be minimal? teaching someone how to use a computer is different from educating them through a virtual university.

With a virtual university there are a number of issues one needs to consider - e.g

(1) What would the reach of the university be

both in terms of (a) students and (b) courses of study available?

(2) How would the study material be delivered?

(3) How would you control the delivery and content

of the courses?

(4) How would you assess the outcomes of the

courses?

(5) Would the course be purely modular where by

the enrolled can take one course and forget

about the rest (aka credit based)? How would

string the modules/credits to gether to form a

coherent whole?

(6) Would the credits be transferable? (if they

are you would need a far greater degree of

uniformty across the institutions of the

country - which is sadly lacking right now.

(7) far more fundemental is - whether it is really

needed given the current rate of FS`s in the

country. CAn the existing institutions be

expanded to provide the extra palces? What can

be done to make these institutions more

uniform?

These and many more questions need to answered. Just by saying we want to do it and waving hands you will get it and there is no genie around who will do it for you.

gymnosophist #67

You are over dramatizing your situation. I have also been in this industry for many years. I have seen all nationalities abusing the software business. Please do not single out Indian programmers for that.

I was in New York with a team, working for top wall street firm. Got lot of resistance from resident chinese programmer. Our job was to clean up the programs created by him in last four years which he deliberately kept totally uncommented and undocumented. Finally when I could convince him that I am not trying to take his job that he came clear and told me that he wants us all make money and live like a ``big happy family``.

I am with best rated American consulting firm and majority of my colleagues are americans. These top rated consultants were arguing about use cases last week at a client location. Different suggestions were that use cases are flow chart/ interaction diagram/a two page text. This is when we charge $2500 per day.

these people routinely hide information from each other and from client.

I do not want to argue for the behaviour of your indian programmer. But let us not generalize that.

However, I will agree with you that routine software jobs do not need any skills and can be performed by any nationality.

Regards

Ref concerned #: 67

You ask {so you tell a guy that his contract would be terminated in two months time and he leaves you even before that! and what exactly is unethical/wrong/surprising in that? did he give a two weeks notice?}

My Indian programmer kept proclaiming how everything was on track in the project and left without any notice when I was away at a conference. I acted as his reference and gave him a very good reference when his potential next employers called, so it was not like I destroyed his income potential when the contract would come to its end. One would expect in such a situation that he would wrap up the project properly and complete his responsibilities. That did not happen. So you could say there was a lack of ethical behavior.

The SOB had the gall to call me back two weeks later to ask if he could come back full-time. That was because he found the other company too hard to handle.

Mr. Golti Programmer found to his chagrin that I had not signed his timesheet for two months and so was not going to be paid. So he came in during the weekends to finish the project to the level where Ali would at least have clean compiles to work with.

There are enough stories I know about these guys jumping ship that would make a manager`s hair curl. Another golti left on a Friday evening supposedly to visit a friend in Detroit (his room-mate had taken a two-bedroom apartment on a six-month lease to share with this guy just the previous week), disappeared into the thin air, and 2 weeks later called to see if his final paycheck had been received in the mail! Of course his company withheld the guy`s paycheck in retaliation.

You ask {and mr ali rescued you/project simply because of the goodness of his heart or there were other reasons, such as a desire to stay employed?}

As a manager paying a salary for value received, I don`t worry about people`s motivation, only their ethics or lack thereof.

I guess you now have even less of a leg to stand on when you defend the Golti Programmer.

gymno,

so you tell a guy that his contract would be terminated in two months time and he leaves you even before that! and what exactly is unethical/wrong/surprising in that? did he give a two weeks notice? and mr ali rescued you/project simply because of the goodness of his heart or there were other reasons, such as a desire to stay employed?

rgds

The ability of Indians to cut code is accepted everywhere in he world today. That doesn`t mean they are the only ones who can cut code. After all, while companies such as Netscape employ overeducated Indians by the boatload, the guy who walked off with a couple of hundred million dollars is Marc Andreesen. Thus most Indians are satisfied with the crumbs they get here because that is all they can get. The exceptions are those who start companies and are successful and then get written up in Fortune magazine.

But that doesn`t mean that other nationalities can`t cut code or become successful. If anyone wants to stereotype people based on their ethnicity, one could say that Tandon was successful in the disk drive business because he was a Punjabi. And at that time (some 20 years back), there weren`t any other major Indian success stories to talk about. So if today you find Indians succeeding in the hi-tech industry (and not just as engineers and software developers; a quick look through a Silicon Valley directory will show them as CFOs of several companies -- but then you can attribute THAT also to ethnicity as quite a few are South Indian Brahmins, a favorite ethnic group, I understand, of Dhirubhai Ambani of Reliance Industries for his companies` finance positions) don`t assume that it is somehow inherent in Indian genes to succeed. If so, that gene hadn`t manifested itself for the first 40 years of Indian independence.

The average Indian who comes to the US comes from a lower middle-class family and has a desperate need to succeed. On the other hand, the Iranians who used to come to the US were from very rich families. While there might have been no desperate need for them to improve their financial positions, you will find quite a few of them are successful enterpreneurs; I of course attribute it to their history as rug merchants (much to the dismay of those who have to be politically correct ALL the time). The same thing goes for people from a bunch of other countries.

There is no bar to Pakistanis succeeding in the software industry. I remember Crescent as a Pakistani body shop from some 15 years back. There is no doubt that there is a huge quantity advantage for India today. The quality, as measured by CMM certfication, comes from the efforts of the Indian software companies, not due to the excellence of the educational institutions because the vast majority of Indians do graduate from the equivalent of Podunk University. So if you want to talk about succeeding in IT, it comes from an analytical mind, the ability to understand and write in strange and artificial languages; not because an Indian`s brain is pre-wired for Java. Nothing prevents a Pakistan, a Sri Lanka or a Philippines from emulating India. When talking to a Pakistani programmer who worked for me, I had a glimpse of some of the nice programming work they are doing for the Armed Forces. Of course, they are not going to trumpet that because the nature of the work is confidential but at least it was obvious that they are not primitive the way some of us believe them to be.

Let us at least agree that Pakistan is in many ways similar to Bihar and UP. They may have a long way to go just like Bihar and UP have but Pakistan also started rather low on the education ladder. While we might all bemoan their single-minded fixation on Kashmir, at least they have shown they can plan and execute their military plans well. So be grateful they are not showing such determination yet in other fields.

By the way, that Pakistani programmer replaced an Indian who left me in the lurch when he was told his contract was going to be terminated in 2 months` time. The SOB never finished anything and Ali rescued me and my project. So, talk about work ethics! Should I generalize it to all Indians?

To: Umairr, gymno..., & the rest

`` body shoppers & body sellers of India``, from the Far East Economic Review, dated 7/20/00.

OVERVIEW

Building the New India

India has long lost its top talent to better jobs

overseas. Now the brains are returning to lead the

charge into the New Economy. For gutsy investors,

opportunities abound

By Henny Sender/BOMBAY

Issue cover-dated July 20, 2000

AFTER MORE THAN a decade working outside

India, Piyush Gupta returned to his homeland two

months ago, exchanging the security and prestige of an

international assignment with the Citibank unit of

Citigroup for the uncertainties and turbulence of a local

dotcom.

His return says much about how India is changing--and

more importantly about how the world is changing in a

way that benefits India. ``Indian companies couldn`t

make it in the industrial age,`` says Gupta, CEO of

go4i.com. ``But the knowledge economy plays to India`s

strength. India is evolving up the value-added chain in

the New Economy.``

There have always been two Indias, or at least two

types of Indians. There are those who live by their

muscle, a group that has always encompassed the vast

majority of India`s 1 billion-plus population. And there

are those who are fortunate enough to make their way

on the basis of their intellectual power. For the second

group, that generally has meant taking advantage of

opportunities outside India. Today, Indians hold top

posts at some of the most formidable organizations in

the world--institutions such as Citibank itself and

Lucent Technologies` awesome Bell Labs.

But now, for the first time, the brains of India are

returning and powering New Economy companies back

home. They are also transforming other parts of the

economy, taking traditional, low value-added

companies such as copycat pharmaceutical firms and

pushing them up the value-added curve.

As this new sliver of globalized India grows, the

increasing income of these professionals and the people

they employ is giving rise to a surge in domestic

demand for everything from Honda cars to Pepsi soft

drinks. Indians working in India--even in the most

globalized firms in the most globalized industries such as

finance--used to be paid a fraction of what their

counterparts in other countries earned. But as

competition for top talent heats up, they are swiftly

climbing the pay ladder.

Both foreign multinationals and local companies, even in

relative backwaters like Calcutta that are far from the

feverish centres of the New Economy such as

Bangalore, are offering salaries to top managers

equivalent to those paid in New York or Silicon Valley.

Gupta got a taste of the wage explosion as he searched

for employees for his start-up. In the several weeks

between the time he poached his first employee from a

pharmaceutical company to the time he went after his

second, he found salary expectations had shot up 30%.

The implications of this rapidly growing group of

well-off consumers are widespread. Their presence and

spending create economic opportunities for

entrepreneurs further down the food chain. And the

spreading wealth makes India a more attractive place

for multinationals to ply their goods--and even produce

them. The ripple effects are not endless or exhaustive,

but they are substantial. ``This is a new age which we

couldn`t have imagined even two years ago,`` says

Nanoo Pamnani, the Bombay-based head of Citibank`s

India operations.

Neither the new optimism nor the vast potential of

Indian companies, however, completely outweigh the

dangers of investing in India. The Bombay stockmarket

is volatile, even by the dizzying standards of Asia,

especially now that the technology, media and telecoms

industries account for 42% of Morgan Stanley Capital

International`s India index. When the Nasdaq market

dropped in March and then fell more violently in April,

the Bombay Stock Exchange plunged even further,

losing 25% of its market capitalization in weeks (and

taking the market to the level it was at six years ago).

``Appealing valuations, nerve-racking volatility`` is how

Ridham Desai, head of research for JM Morgan

Stanley in Bombay, describes the Indian market after

the violent fall.

Many macroeconomic indicators also remain dismal.

Foreign direct investment is declining despite all the

anecdotal evidence of South Korean computer makers,

Chinese television builders and American car

companies piling into the economy. Nonoil imports and

capital spending both remain subdued. That means

timing the Indian market requires great skill. But the

changes under way have convinced most analysts that

it`s only a matter of time before both the market and its

listed companies come of age.

NEW ACCESS TO CAPITAL

Gupta`s go4i.com highlights some of the factors

working in India`s favour. The portal was founded by

the influential Birla family, which runs The Hindustan

Times, one of the country`s main daily newspapers. The

start-up received $11 million in seed capital from Chase

Capital Partners, the private-equity arm of Chase

Manhattan Bank. Indeed, Chase is so optimistic about

the New Economy in India that it has made Bombay,

not Hong Kong or Singapore, its centre for Asian

technology investments.

And that`s part of the story as well. Money used to be

both a major constraint and a competitive disadvantage

for Indian companies. At about 27%, Indian savings

rates are low by Asian standards. That low savings rate

and the government`s voracious appetite for funds has

led to a combined state and federal fiscal deficit

approaching 9% of GDP and interest rates much higher

than those elsewhere in the region. But that was

yesterday`s drawback. Now, as equity investors

discover the Subcontinent, Indian companies have

access to another source of capital.

Nobody better understands just how dramatically

circumstances have changed than Ajit Balakrishnan,

one of India`s few and foremost serial entrepreneurs. At

the end of June, Balakrishnan`s rediff.com listed on

America`s Nasdaq market, becoming the first Indian

portal to do so. The initial public offering was 19 times

oversubscribed and the stock price rose 61%, to

$19.31, on the first day of trading. The timing of the

listing was especially noteworthy, coming when

dotcoms were universally out of favour with investors.

``The advent of all this capital is a wonderful thing. It has

unleashed an energy here which is unbelievable,`` says

Balakrishnan in his Bombay office. ``In the past, there

was no risk capital. There was no way to bring

innovation to fruition.``

When Rediff was founded in 1995, Balakrishnan

funded the company himself using profits from an

advertising business he had built up earlier. He later

raised $20 million from offshore investors including

Draper International, Intel, Citicorp, General Electric

and Warburg Pincus. The capital that Balakrishnan and

other entrepreneurs have raised is smart money.

``Investors like Bill Draper gave us a road map for how

a company evolves,`` he says. ``The capital we got gave

us both connections and insight.``

These top-flight investors are drawn to companies like

Rediff because they stand up to international

comparisons in a number of areas. These include

costs--the ``burn rate`` at which Indian companies spend

their backers` money is lower than elsewhere--as well

as product quality and the size of the potential market.

Rediff, for example, offers an English-language site in

addition to sites in Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil and Telugu, all

major local languages. That means it already competes

with Yahoo! and other international giants.

By the time Rediff listed, the combination of

Balakrishnan`s vision and his investors` experience had

created a world-class company. The company now has

a market capitalization of $600 million, despite the fact

that India has just 1 million Internet users. China, by

comparison, has 10 million Internet users.

Rediff is about content. But most companies that are

powering the New Economy are more about

technology. Many analysts expected them to be a

passing phenomenon, so-called body shops tuning up

Old Economy companies fearful of the millennium bug.

Instead they have upgraded themselves into

software-services companies that are increasingly

getting the crucial assignments that used to be kept

in-house. ``They can do the mission-critical tasks on a

timely basis,`` says Ajay Kapur, regional strategist for

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in Hong Kong.

ATTRACTING FOREIGN INVESTORS

The magnetic pull of India`s software industry is

attracting more than just foreign investors. Some of the

world`s most impressive technology powerhouses, such

as Lucent Technologies, are now also on the ground in

Bangalore. And they are seeing results. The work that

Indians at Texas Instruments` Bangalore centre

pioneered on integrated circuits and software design

was the basis for several patents that TI applied for

back in the United States. Would-be competitors are

now flocking to Bangalore to learn the secret. ``Fifteen

out of the twenty companies which have received the

highest international recognition for software are

Indian,`` points out Lu Ke, head of the Bangalore

research efforts of Huawei Technologies, a Chinese

telecoms equipment maker based in Shenzhen, near

Hong Kong. ``The software-management process is so

good in India. We can improve so much if we study

why Indian software is so good.``

The changes aren`t just confined to the New Economy.

The traditional business families of India, urged on by

the cruel realities of the market, are also transforming

their Old Economy behemoths at a speed that makes

most of the tycoons of Southeast Asia seem

somnambulant by comparison. Two of India`s leading

families, the Tatas (with 80 group companies in

everything from steel to telecoms) and the Birlas (with a

conglomerate ranging from cement to financial

services), used to be arch rivals. Now they are working

together in select areas to take advantage of new

opportunities and inviting foreigners with strategic

knowledge to join them. ``If you aren`t forward-looking,

the market is penalizing you,`` says Desai of JM Morgan

Stanley in Bombay. ``That means no market cap and no

capital to restructure.``

Although the Indian government isn`t known for

business-friendly attitudes, it`s hard to see how it can

derail the promise of India. At this point, it can only

slow the growth or feed it. The Indian miracle is partly

built on the country`s fiercely competitive technical and

management institutes, which produce about 10,000

graduates a year. But that meets only about one-tenth

of current demand for hi-tech workers. The government

needs to upgrade and expand its other engineering

facilities and push forward in deregulating key areas of

the economy. Had it been speedier about deregulating

telecoms, for example, the nation`s Internet industry

would be more advanced than it is today.

``There is no comparison between a Shanghai and a

Bangalore in terms of infrastructure,`` says Narayana

Murthy, CEO of Infosys Technologies, a top

software-services firm that listed on Nasdaq in March

last year. ``But we can`t wait for the government. We

have found solutions despite the government. We`ve

shown we can succeed in spite of the environment.``

No firm in India has a better shot at future success than

giant Reliance Industries. As one of the world`s

largest and most competitive petrochemical and refinery

operations, Reliance accounts for 3% of the country`s

GDP, according to company data. It has started

implementing plans to automate its entire procurement

process and is considering how best to position itself in

a virtual chemicals marketplace. Moreover, Reliance

has announced a new telecoms strategy and has a $15

billion market capitalization to help finance its ambitions.

Reliance holds the right to provide booming Gujarat

state with basic telecoms services and has cellular rights

for a vast expanse of north and eastern India.

Perhaps voicing the hopes of the new professionals

returning to and being developed in India, Reliance

Chairman Dhirubhai Ambani told his company`s annual

general meeting in mid-June: ``We believe there is a

one-time opportunity for the Indian economy to

leapfrog from its current inadequate infrastructure to a

super, world-class digital infrastructure.`` Making that

leap and landing on its feet will take all the talent and

brainpower India can muster.

------The End.

The jist of the logic being, it is not just body selling. What started off as BS, fueled a host of industrial and infrastructure developments that could have a far-reaching implications. Remember the coming of the old wheel! The world has never, TG, been the same again.

Now, go back to your drawing boards to rationalise your professional, political, religious, WE, envies, biases and jealousies.

PS: Sorry,the paste job seems to have run into a formatting problem.

arios,

Kant..............

What`s the deal with all these self gratifying statistics?

There are enough statistics posted here by arrogant Indians to fill a whole new book.

Shall we call it

``We Are The Champions of Numbers?``

pathetic

There can be no better message than the line``Live and let live``. As a sensible Indian I am with you Ferozk, another sensible Pakistani.

Cheers

gymnosophist

A few misconceptions need to be cleared -

(1)I am not Indian.

(2)Body shopping sure thats what may be Indians are doing - but still you need good intelligent bodies to shop. Hey where do the bodies for this activity come from In Pakistan. the law of numbers and ability and training come into the picture.

(3) There are many good colleges in India producing far more than is required by India and substantially more than pakistan can dream of producing in the near future.

(4) The problem with you is that you need to take logic 101 course. Look at it this way - India said IT gaint and started reeling of figures and suddenly you have the paindoos from back home sitting up and saying hey this is the reason we got buggered in Kargil - see amreeka wants the Indian stuff - if they can why not us. And suddenly all the claim of TNT etc vanish - we are all of the same pool and hey they do it we do it too. So now the paindoos run after something which

is just a mirage. Now the Indians are talking of leading edge knowledge economy and sure they might even succeed at it in the future (in 10 years time - who knows - you are not a clairvoyant are you now). Suddenly after running af the IT mirage the paindoos in 10 years time when they get their arse kicked once again will start saying hey these Indians have again got the support of amreeka since they are providing the knowledge and bingo they go chasing after this

as I said - living in a never never land where realities get distorted and peter pans are forver young fighting the dreaded pirate and crocodiles in the swamps.

The present rreality is so distorted for the paindoos that anything however ephimeral is clung onto as a saviour. They are caught in a vicious cycle from which they do seem to be able to get out of (rather not willing to). A visit to the land of Pakistan will tell this as much.

The elite are the paindoos here not the poor uneducated masses. For them the reality is there everyday to see. Welcome to the world of Moth smoke and the air-conditioned life (as was else where on Chowk).

There is more to life than Indian-Pakistani complexes...and still, the Freudian nationalistically inspired mud sling continues...

Ciao!

P.S. Has anyone out there heard of live and let live philosophy?

I do not know if the data on % of doctors is correct but here are some that I found on the net.

Some selected paras from the following:

http://www.tribuneindia.com/20000227/world.htm#1

Indian-Americans influencing US policy

``WASHINGTON, Feb 26 (UNI) — Indian-Americans, who now hold 40 per cent of high-tech jobs in Silicon Valley and the Washington area, are pouring money into political campaigns and helping change the shape of US relations with India, where President Bill Clinton will visit next month, reports The Washington Times.

The growing clout of Indian-Americans, who collectively earned $ 60 billion in California’s Silicon Valley last year, is partly responsible for a recent tilt in USA’s foreign policy away from cold war ally Pakistan and towards India, officials and analysts say.``

``

About 300,000 Indian-American’s work in high-technology firms in the Silicon Valley, where they earned $ 60 billion last year, Stanford University economist Rafiq Dossani told a forum at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday.

They were beginning to funnel their incomes, which averages $ 200,000 a year, into southern India’s high-technology boom, already surpassing its export industry as a sources of foreign cash, he said.

Nationwide, Indian-Americans’ income averaged $ 60,000, according to the 1990 census, higher than any other Asian immigrant group.``

Some other sites(can be searched using google):

http://www.project-impact.org/pi_commResources_statistics.htm

Using data from the US Census Bureau, we have collated some statistics about our community regarding population, socio-economic status, education, and business.



Population

Over 1.1 million Indians currently live in the US

34% of Indian immigrants in the US are now US citizens

75% of Indian Americans live on the East Coast

90% of Indian Americans live in urban communities

The number of Indians immigrants in the US is less than that in Nepal, Maylasia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and England





Socio-Economic Status

The median household income of Indian Americans is $48,320, the highest of any ethnic group and over 50% higher than that of a US-born households

The mean Indian American household income is $65,381, the highest of any ethnic group in the US. 89% of Indian American families are two-parent households

50% of Indian Americans own their own home. Less than 2% of Indian Americans under 65% receive public assistance





Education

65% of Indian immigrants have a Bachelor`s degree or higher, vs. 20% for US born individuals and higher than any other immigrant population

5% of all physicians in the US obtained their primary medical degree from India

59% of Indian American women are employed

43% of Indian Americans have are employed in managerial/professional jobs

More than 5,000 Indian Americans are faculty members at American universities





Business

Projections based on historical data indicate that the more than 150,000 Indian owned businesses in the US will generate over $54 million in revenue in 1997

Indian owned firms account for one half of one percent of all US companies

56% of Indian owned firms are in the service sector

12% of working South Asian American men and 7% of working South Asian American women are self employed

31% of all self-employed South Asian Americans are in the health sector

30% of all hotels and motels in the US are Indian owned





Sources: US Census Bureau, National Bureau of Economic Research, US Dept. of Commerce, Little India Data Service

Ref egalitarian_brahmin #57:

You say {As for some of the stats, keep checking out Washington Post, LA Times, et al and you`ll frequently come across such stats. Some of them can also be found in little India, an organization that sometimes surveys the achievements and stats of Indians overseas.}

Let me just take the stats about doctors. In 1976, JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) gave a number of 20% for ALL foreign medical graduates in this country. And there were times in the 1960s and early 1970s when doctors from around the world could come to the US on a green card because there was a blanket labor certification which said there was a shortage of doctors all over the US.

The law was changed in 1976 and the new law is that no FMG (Foreign Medical Graduate) could get an immigrant visa based on his qualifications. That means he gets his visa based on marrying a citizen or immigrant or because he chooses to serve in an underprivileged area. Simultaneously, the number of residency positions were reduced from 22,000 to nearly 16,000, matching the number of US medical graduates. There are now fewer residency positions available and there are more than enough US medical graduates available to fill them.

So, I don`t see how you could have 38% of all doctors in the US being of Indian origin. Even if there is a surge of medical school enrollment in the US by children of Indian immigrants, they are Indo-Americans at best.

Most statistics published in rags like India Abroad and India West can be ignored. Go to the guys who collect the statistics (such as JAMA where they discuss the National Intern Resident Matching Program) and you can get accurate information about the total number of FMGs.

It is unfortunate that this thread is not on the main board any longer, since this is developing into an interesting discussion. Maybe we should attempt to hijack one of the poetry threads on the main board, with IT related topics:-)

Zahra #115: ``You`ve hit on many issues and some of them are contradictory to your initial stance.``

Could you let me know the contradictions.

Shankar #116: ``Please dont misunderstand me (maybe I should have been been clearer).``

Don`t worry about misunderstandings. I did not think that you had refered to me in any kind of a derogatory manner. I was just attempting to answer your questions, and figure out why you felt that many Pakistanis consider Indians to be village-based. Also, I was attempting to clarify that my comparisons were between Indians and Pakistanis from comparable backgrounds.

``A few Pakistani bigots started putting down Indian Americans. Essentially they slammed Indians who come to America as low class, dirty, ugly, heeng smelling chuts.``

It has been my experience that when a replier (Pakistani or Indian) resorts to personal attacks towards an individual, it is a good indication that the replier has run out of information, but is unwilling to admit it. The replier has no leg to stand on, and is, at that point, resorting to his/her last line of defense, i.e. personal attacks. That is a good time to realize that such a person has nothing more to offer, and one should just ignore his/her comments. I get personally attacked by a lot of Indians, and quite a few Pakistanis as well. I generally ignore them, because, to me, its just a sign that these guys have basically lost the argument, but have too big of an ego to admit it.

So I would suggest you ignore the Pakistanis who make derogatory personal comments about Indians, also. Otherwise, you will either end up abandoning Chowk, or you will get so worked up that you will end up on your own psychiatrist`s chair :-) No website or interaction is important enough to even microscopically alter one`s emotional state. And do not worry about offending me. I am not easily offended, both intentionally or unintentionally. The fact that you and I are interacting should be enough of an indication that we have so far not offended each other.

dost-mittar #117: ``Could it be that we have here a case of what they call `pseudo correlation` in statistics, that is to say, you are confusing regional with national traits?``

This is probably quite accurate. I think the answer is something along these lines.

Most of the Pakistanis in the US IT industry actually tend to be from Karachi and not Punjab. I would guess there are more Pakistanis in Silicon Valley from Karachi, then from the rest of Pakistan combined (just an educated guess). I think 80% or so of the Pakistani IT companies are in Karachi. The culture of all of Pakistan is however greatly influenced by Punjab, due to its large population. So perhaps Pakistanis tend to socially slide towards a Punjab-centric society. While maybe Indians, as a whole, at least in IT, tend to slide towards a South-Indian centric society. I don`t know. Just a guess.

concerned #114: ``yaar, you really crack me up!

so what you are saying is that in your college, (which though not ivy league but has standards higher than those in your specialty, as you informed us a while back), companies rejected academically more capable indian guys who finished couple of semesters before you did (6-8 months before) and waited for smarter guys like you and other pakistanis to finish their courses!``

First of all, I find it interesting, perhaps an honor, that you follow my posts so closely. You can remember what I said in earlier ones, while I cannot remember anything you stated in your previous posts.

Just to clarify your minsunderstandings: Employers did not reject the Indians, nor the Pakistanis. Since we were graduate students, all of us were interviewing for jobs while we were studying. It is a always a good idea to do so, since the potential employers can then pay for the remaining tuition. So while we were students, I got hired before the Indian students, even though I was a semester or so behind them in academic work. All of them (apart from one or two who also were hired as students), got hired immediately after graduation, or within a few months after graduation.

I never stated that I was, ``smarter`` than any of the Indians. In fact, I attempted to indicate exactly the opposite.

``and these indian guys, nerds as they were, went begging for jobs while the pakistanis graduated.``

Is there any particular reason, why are you refering to Indians as nerds? In my replies, I never used this term.

Very very few IT graduates in the US go begging for jobs. Almost all of the ones with me in college were hired immediately after graduation. However, only a few of them were hired in full-time positions before graduation. Most were hired as part-time interns, before graduation.

``can you give us some details? for starters, which college did you attend? when did you graduate and what was your major? which company did you join right after college?``

No I cannot. Because it is none of your business. For all you, know I could be a twelve year old kid sitting in Islamabad who has fabricated all this information. And I am not going to spend the time in clarifying this, nor give you the right to doubt my integrity. Either believe what I am saying about myself at face value, or do not believe it. That is up to you. It doesn`t make any difference to me.

I hope the above answers your questions. I mentioned two areas in which I felt Indians excelled (programming and entrepreneurship) in comparsion to Pakistanis, and one area (people-related areas) in which I felt Pakistanis excelled in comparison to Indians. You could have concentrated on either of these three years, yet you have chosen to narrow in on the one in which I showed Pakistanis is favorable light. If it makes you feel any better you can completely ignore what I stated in my previous replies, and consider Indians to be superior, in every area, to Pakistanis and to the rest of the world. I will not lose any sleep over it.

shankar #112: It is quite obvious that one cannot compare a person who has made it to the USA from a village in Pakistan to someone who has made it to the USA from Bombay or Banglore. And vice-versa. When I made a comparison between the areas in which Indians and Pakistanis and Americans were successful in the USA in IT, I was attempting to do so amongst people from equal backgrounds, i.e. comparing a Pakistani guy from Lahore with an Indian guy from Bombay, and an Indian guy from a village with a Pakistani guy from a village.

If we assume that Pakistanis and Indians enjoy an equal standard of living in Pakistan and India respectively, then one would have to assume that there are quite a few Pakistani success stories in the US (perhaps proportionately equal) which fall into the category of, ``low class, unsophisticated, heeng smelling chuts,`` as well. And a proportionately equal no. of Indians who come from big urban centers. So I am basing my comparisons on people who had comparative backgrounds in India and Pakisan, i.e. village educated Indians with village educated Pakistanis with village educated Americans. And the same for urban educated Pakistanis, Indians, and Americans.

And based on my experience of hiring and interviewing many candidates for start-up software companies, as well as my work experience, though not based on any scientific study, I have reached the following order of merit:

Software Programming: 1) Indians 2) Pakistanis 3) Americans

Entreprenuership: 1) Indians 2) Americans/Pakistanis (tied)

Management/People related jobs 1) Americans 2) Pakistanis 3) Indians

I don`t know how scientifically accurate this maybe, however I have read similar articles in magazines like Fortune. And I have experienced it too often personally to not be convinced of it. I don`t know the reasons behind this. Maybe the average Pakistani IT graduate does not like programming (I know Americans don`t). Maybe the average Indian graduate thinks moving up the management ranks is a waste of time, and immediately jumps to entrepreneurship. Or maybe there are certain factors in their respective societies and educational systems (Indian, Pakistani, American) that strengthen one aspect of their personalities an weaken other aspects. Or maybe my analysis is completely off the mark. Again I am comparing the villagers to the villagers and the urbanites with the urbanites.

Amongst my graduating class, most of the Indians were from major urban cities (you seemed to have assumed, for some reason, that they were from villages). Considering the fact that at the time of my graduation, IT had not even touched Pakistan, and was already well into India, in terms of IT urbanness, us Pakistani students were villagers in comparison to the Indians. I don`t think any of the Indians were any more intelligent than I. Yet all of them finished their degrees exactly on schedule, while most of us Pakistanis were a couple of semesters late. Almost all the Indians received equal or higher grades than I did. One could say they were technically more sound than I, and will probably write more papers and books than me. Yet I got a job before they did. And I have moved up management ranks faster than them. Yet, they probably will, if they already haven`t, start IT companies well before me. The American students in our group will probably avoid the engineering dept of companies, all together. They will start companies slower than Indians, but will move up the management ranks faster than Indians or Pakistanis. I don`t know why, but I have noticed this trend way too often.

On a side psycho-analytical note: When I mentioned that Pakistanis tended to be more confident in social dealings than Indians, you automatically assumed two things:

1) ``Pakistanis self confidently & arrogantly dissmissing Indians as low class, unsophisticated, heeng smelling chuts.`` I didn`t mention this anywhere. I just stated that Pakistanis could be self-confident to the point of being arrogant (with no reference to Indians). 2) Pakistanis in the US tend to be urbanites, while Indians tend to be villagers. Although, I never stated that either.

Is this an individual view, or is this view consciously or sub-consciously held by Indians regarding how Pakistanis view them? Or am I misreading your comments. Looking forward to your expert opinion.

Ref nameless #: 52

You say {Indian software expertise and production is like that. It is not visible but is there - like in the development of software algs for routing (air, land, electronic), security (electronic), banking (take a look at the operations of the big banks around the world) all these guys do not go to the local super market like and buy the windows software. That kind of activity is for the juveniles.}

Well, in the last century, a lot of Indians went to Sri Lanka to pick tea and to Malaya to tap the rubber trees. Does that make Sri Lankan tea or the Malaysian rubber Indian? You are sending IT labor overseas to work on somebody else`s products. Some of the time, the project is done in India to lower the cost even further. However, the intellectual property right belongs to whom? If a bunch of Indians work at Cisco, as they do, developing routing algorithms, can they re-sell it to Bay Networks or to 3Com? If they work at Oracle developing data synchronization among mirrored databases, can they sell the algorithm to Sybase? The answer is ``No``.

Today, the expatriate Indians work at desks in airconditioned offices. In the last century, they were laboring under the sun harvesting sugarcane in Fiji or the Caribbean. Last century`s Indian laborers were hired because they were cheaper and more plentiful than white workers. Is it any different today? In the last century, the emigrant labor force left their home countries (India, China, Japan) to escape famine, pestilence and lack of work. Their wages in Malaya, Sri Lanka or Fiji was better than having no jobs in their hometowns. Today`s IT persons can say that they have jobs in their home countries but that is only because this particular type of job can be exported. If not, the economic motive for migration will be even higher. Exactly how many Indian software professionals are employed within India for India-specific projects? Will India be able to absorb the 100,000+ engineers it produces annually if the rest of the world cuts off IT projects? All you can say is Indian IT professionals add value to an international product in the economic sense. So did the rubber tappers and the sugarcane cutters.

You say {Take TCS - it gets more that 90% of its revenue of Rs2100 crore (0.5B dollars) from export of consultancy services.}

What consultancy services? Are you providing management consulting on factory automation and plant floor layout? Are you providing management advice on sales and marketing strategies? No; you are sending code cutters and calling them software consultants. They are consultants in the sense that they are not in-house employees. But they are not consultants in the sense an Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young, or Price Waterhouse Coopers management consultant is, who generally derive less than 20% of their consultancy revenues (with the exception of Andersen) from IT services and even then they don`t cut code.

You say {And almost 30 % of this is from direct software and IT, a large proportion from other activities (again within this is hidden items like CAD/CAM/CIM/automation etc which is not accounted as IT services but is verry software oreinted), and for the past few years it is a major purveyor of IT Security and has some pretty big corporate names as its clients. Now this is not a hall mark of quantity but quality.}

You are still talking about body shopping.

You say {TCS products are not available over the counter. You need more than the few dollars in your bank account to get it.}

There are no products. TCS sends bodies to cut custom code. In many instances, it is also nothing but re-engineering and re-hosting from mainframes to Unix boxes.

You said {Another key point every one is missing - is that India apart from claiming to into IT in a big way is now marketing itself as a knowledge provider for the world.}

Providing knowledge on what? Aircraft design? Missile production? Submarine manufacturing? CT and MRI scanner engineering? Let us get into somewhat lower complexity items. TV manufacturing? Refrigerator design? Scooter making? Gas-sipping as opposed to gas-guzzling auto engines? Hybrid auto engines?

No. You send out warm bodies who can cut code when somebody gives you a whole lot of specs.

When you tell me that Indian guys are creating algorithms on network routing for Cisco, I will point out 1966 (yes, before you were born) PhD theses laying out adaptive optimal algorithms for computer networks. If you talk about banking, remember that SWIFT has been settling international inter-bank transactions for 40 years now.

You said {Nahh! pakistan ought to wake up and smell the coffee. break the chains of feudalism and `mai-baap ism` make every one sweat for their rupee. Read the letters to the editor of todays Frontier Post about Bonda Gujjar}

Well, what is the difference between Bonda Gujjar and your average immigrant IT worker in the US? You are all thumping your chest that India has been getting 45% of the 115,000 H-1 visas for the last few years. That is about 50,000 temporary employees every year. And the number of green cards is limited by law to 20,000 per year per country. And that includes dependents such as spouse and children. So, the average Indian IT professional comes here at age 23, goes home in a couple of years to get married and a couple of years has a kid. Right there, you have got 3 green cards for one IT professional. Your annual figure of 50,000 IT professionals suddenly turn into a demand for 150,000 green cards. While the limit is 20,000. You have to wait 7.5 years and the maximum limit on H-1 status is 6 years. Also, the guys who came in last year ahead of you are waiting for 7.5 years so you really have to wait 15 years. I guess you get the picture here because you can figure that for every year of H-1 visa holders ahead of you, you have to wait an additional 7.5 years.

I am only amazed that these guys are trusted to develop logic for programs while they have shown zero ability to think their way through a situation.

correction reply 54:

``what the Indian contributors are trying to defend Indian programmers when no one is attacking them.``

should read

why the Indian contributors are trying to defend Indian programmers when no one is attacking them.

For some strange reason, some Indians on this thread seem to be trying to explain to everyone that Indian programmers are not cheap labor. I am not quite sure how this came into this discussion. I personally do not think Indian programmers are cheap. I also do not think they are expensive. They cost about as much programmers of any other origin. A very good IT consultant of Indian origin living in the US will charge as much as good IT consultant of American origin (or Bulgarian origin, etc.), i.e. between $200 - $350 per hour. Similarly a very good IT consultant of Indian origin living in India or Pakistan or any other third world country will charge the same as an American or Pakistani IT consultant living in a third world country, i.e. perhaps between $30 - $100 per hour.

This does not mean that the Indian (or Pakistani) consultant is cheap labor. It just means that the IT market in a third world country is much cheaper than in a first world country. It has nothing to do with the individual. My own salary increased four fold when I took a flight from Karachi to the USA. I was doing the exact same IT work in Pakistan that I was doing in the US, but got paid a hell of a lot more here. So I do not understand what all the fuss is about, and what the Indian contributors are trying to defend Indian programmers when no one is attacking them.

The arguments of Egalitarian_Brahmin (an oxymoron, if there ever was one) are getting more and more shrill. To say that intelligence is NOT evenly distributed (and somehow implying that Indians got a greater share of it when God was ladling it out during creation and He knew to stop exactly at the Wagah/Attock border knowing that in millions of years the people on the western side would no longer be Indians but Pakistanis) has no scientific basis. The last one to try this crap was William Shockley, and the fact that he won the Nobel Prize in Physics didn`t prevent him from being lambasted by the well-informed. Of course, Shockley advanced the thesis that blacks were inferior to whites. He attempted to soften his statement by saying that perhaps whites weren`t the smartest but it may be the Orientals.

What are the Japanese good at? They have continually re-created their country to adapt themselves to their environment. Thus, a war-like society that was at war for centuries (either within Japan itself or with Korea, Russia and China) has suddenly become the most peace-loving nation on earth. Was there one dissenting voice in 1945 after Japan`s defeat in WWII? The entire country got out of the military uniform but they haven`t changed the idea of marching to a tune; it is just that the tune had changed - it is now a pacifist anthem.

If you take their manufacturing prowess, they learnt a whole lot from the Americans - except that they continually refined their manufacturing processes to shave off the last penny from costs and continually improved quality. Are Indians incapable of manufacturing anything? It almost looks like that and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy as every engineering graduate goes off into being a code cutting drone. There will be no mechanical engineers to run your production lines because they are all in cubicle-land in San Jose writing the next e-commerce application. If they are so smart, how come there is not one world-class packaged software from India, marketed by Indian companies, and bought eagerly by the dumber Americans? After all, they buy their cars from Germany and Japan, their TVs from Taiwan and Korea, their Sony Discmans from China, and their PCs from Taiwan. So where is the Indian equivalent of Oracle, SAP, MicroSoft, or Novell? How about even second-tier vendors such as Ingress or Informix? You guys don`t compete even at that level. As one of my Indo-American friends put it, Indians are great workers once they get out of India. (He should know; he runs an IT company with a coding center in Hyderabad. He happens to be born and brought up entirely in the USA.)

What India has is an abundance of engineering graduates, a goodly number of whom have bought their ways into capitation-fee-based private institutions with dubious credentials. With the enormous demand in the coding industry, these people are able to get a job in India, get some training in real-life projects, get sent to the US, and start behaving as if they are God`s gift to the software industry. If indeed they are, God must have something against the software industry.

The fact is that most Americans, with the abundance of wealth, have become risk-averse. Thus a Vice President of IS decides that the best way to get a project done, get credit if the project succeeds and have a convenient scapegoat if the project fails, is to hire a consultant. Once the US companies such as Arthur Andersen, EDS or Perot Systems have their fill, Indian companies are allowed to come to the trough to feed. But by this time, the high-priced jobs are gone. (If you don`t believe me, get that magazine Silicon India and look at the revenues and number of employees for the Indian companies. The average rate is $50 an hour. Right now, I will show you guys billing $200 an hour at Arthur Andersen.)

Indian companies are not cheap the way they used to be billing off-shore jobs at $15/hour like they used to 10 years back. But I can still get $25/hour for off-shore rates in India and get quality work done. So, India DOES compete on price. Yes, Indian software companies are getting CMM certifications by the boatloads but this is like Indian guys loading up on degrees at US universities. You guys still are at the low end of the software industry and any amount of talk about intelligence being bounded by the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean ain`t cutting it, not with me at least, and not with Umairr either.

And you need to stop throwing around some of those statistics. Where on earth did you get 38% of all doctors in the US being Indians? Most likely, that will be for ONE hospital in Harlem where no white would take a job. The unrestricted immigration of doctors stopped in 1976 and the number of residencies and internships has been whittled away till it is equal to the number of American medical school graduates. Thus, the numbers have been declining for foreign medical graduates of all countries. Once every so often, JAMA publishes statistics and somebody like Assad_K should be able to get current information to straighten you out.

So, Mr. Egalitarian_Brahmin, tell me why, if there can be intelligence differences among nations, there can be none amongst castes and you have now become egalitarian within India but not in the world community?

ummair and others -

India doesnot have a software product which you can buy of the self from any super market. But donot kid yourselves about its ability. The key issue to remember is that it is key indicator is not the software which you can buy of the shelf but something far more intrinsic than that. It is not visible.

Just as the current ecommerce hungama is going on and is visible - the numbers are mind boggling etc - there is another side to it the b2b commerce which far exceeds the visible ecommerce. Indian software expertise and production is like that. It is not visible but is there - like in the development of software algs for routing (air, land, electronic), security (electronic), banking (take a look at the operations of the big banks around the world) all these guys do not go to the local super market like and buy the windows software. That kind of activity is for the juveniles.

For every satyam which is visible there is another which is far more crucial and not visible. Take TCS - it gets more that 90% of its revenue of Rs2100 crore (0.5B dollars) from export of consultancy services. And almost 30 % of this is from direct software and IT, a large proportion from other activities (again within this is hidden items like CAD/CAM/CIM/automation etc which is not accounted as IT services but is verry software oreinted), and for the past few years it is a major purveyor of IT Security and has some pretty big corporate names as its clients. Now this is not a hall mark of quantity but quality. TCS products are not available over the counter. You need more than the few dollars in your bank account to get it.

Again companies like TCS doesnot advertise their sucesses but they are everywhere.

Another key point every one is missing - is that India apart from claiming to into IT in a big way is now marketing itself as a knowledge provider for the world. Now that is something which is more difficult to beat by pakistan - it will take years of man effort to reach a similar level (read Hoodbhoy`s articles here on chowk and elsewhere).

The world is moving forward at a terrific speed, and ppakistan is trapped in a never never land alwyas trying to play catch up. the virtual university scenario is along these lines. The virtual university concept is for the elite by the elte and of the elite. It has got no foundation whatsoever. Its only rational is to project itself(pakistan) as doing something in IT or as the newspaper say `something is computers` {a phrase which betrays a complete lack of understanding of the whole new technology}.

Nahh! pakistan ought to wake up and smell the coffee. break the chains of feudalism and `mai-baap ism` make every one sweat for their rupee. Read the letters to the editor of todays Frontier Post about Bonda Gujjar - well for every ones benefit it reproduce it here

The letter from today Frontier Post-

The story of Bonda Gujar

Khan Lala is a small landowner having 40 kanals of cultivable land where he grows tobacco, sugarcane and wheat. He lives in a small village

hamlet. Besides his own house there are two more mud houses where his two HAMSAYAS live. Of these two one by the name of MR.

BONDA has two buffaloes which are his only source of income.

Mr. Bonda gets up when the moazzan gives call for the Fajar prayers. After offering his prayers, he takes his breakfast, which consists of a cup

of tea and a loaf of bread. While he is away to mosque for prayers, his wife milks the buffaloes and makes tea for Mr. Bonda. After taking his

simple breakfast, he takes the milk and starts on foot to the small market, which is about 5 km away from his residence. On the way to the

market he gives some milk to the constables of the police post free of cost. After 1 hour he reaches the market where he delivers the milk to the

contractor who normally pays him in the first week of the month. He then starts his march back to the village. By the time he reaches home it`s

almost 9 am. Since Mr. Bonda does not have any piece of land where he can grow fodder for his cattle, he takes his sickle and goes to the

sugarcane/tobacco fields of Khan Lala where he cuts the wild grass to be used as fodder for the cattle. This green wild grass is then mixed with

the bhoosa and is then given to the cattle. By the time he is back home it is time for lunch which is prepared by his wife. After taking lunch he

takes a little rest and then goes to the local mosque for prayers. Since he does not pay any rent to Khan Lala for the mud house he lives in, he is

bound to work in Khan Lala`s fields in the evening without any remuneration, which is called ``beegar`` in the local dialect. After he is free from

the beegar, he takes out his buffaloes to the nearby water channel where they drink water. After having his dinner, which is normally taken

immediately after the Maghreb prayers, he sits with his children and wife for sometime. After Isha prayers, he goes to bed to have a sound

sleep.

This is the 24 hours routine of Mr. Bonda. In our country 70-80% are like Bonda who can hardly make both ends meet and on top of that if there

is a wheat shortage they go from pillar to post for a small bag of flour which takes half of their time.

Once Khan Lala asked Mr. Bonda about the photo of Quaid-e-Azam imprinted on different currency notes. He failed to recognise him saying

that he has never seen this man, how could he recognise him. In the last election, somebody asked him about whom he is going to vote for. His

simple answer was that he would ask ``Khan Lala``. When he was further questioned about why he should consult Khan Lala in every matter, he

explained that if he has some job with the police, its only Khan Lala who can get it done for him. Without Khan Lala he just cannot enter the

police station. If some one in his family needs hospitalisation, he approaches Khan Lala who accompanies him to the nearest hospital where he

knows all the doctors and paramedical staff and the patient is admitted easily. Bonda is afraid of the police and whenever he sees a police

mobile, he rushes to the nearby sugarcane fields to hide. He does not know the meaning of the word ``ideology`` or the manifesto of political

parties nor he knows who is who since he cannot read or write.

This is the story of Bonda Gujar. How can we expect democracy in a country where 80% of the people are BONDAS?

A.Q. KHAN,

Peshawar.

Here on Chowk educated paksitanis are talking about IT led growth, virtual university. The following is an indication of collective pakistan, the social institutions of pakistan, the allegedly educated of pakistan, think of education and excellence. Dont loose touch with the reality in pakistan, the institutions of pakistan, the values of the pak society as reflected in the following, from jang of today.

Merit scholarships

Adnan Agha

You may have heard about ban on Indian films, political rallies, etc but have you ever heard about ban on scholarships and freezing of ongoing payments of merit scholarships? I am a medical student and my scholarship stipend was due in April 1999 which was not given to me. There are many students who are wholly and solely dependent on these stipends. Non payment of scholarships is a cause of great financial hardship to hundreds of students.

The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, maintains that it does not have funds to pay these stipends. On the one hand the government wants the students to make a name for themselves and their country by excelling in their studies but on the other, it backs out from paying them any incentive or due share. Who will listen to our plea?

Lahore

rsihar #108: ``One cannot generalize from these observations unless similar observations are also shared by a large number of people.``

You are correct. I am only expressing my own opinion based on the experiences I have had. that is why I stated, ``My experience has been exactly the opposite,`` in my previous reply.

When I stated that I felt Pakistanis seem more self-confident in their personal dealings, I did not mean to imply they were more competent. I was implying that they are generally more extroverted and social. In terms of academics, in my experience, Indians seem to finish their academic programs quite a bit faster than Pakistanis, on the average. I was the last person to graduate from my class in graduate studies. There were a couple of Pakistanis and around eight or nine Indians in the group. All the Indians finished their academic program, with equal or higher grades than me, a couple of semesters before I did. However, I got a job before any of them did. In fact their was another Pakistani with me, and he got a job quite quickly also. Probably because both of us did quite a bit better than the Indian graduates in interviews.

But as you stated, it is mostly personal experience. I have however noticed this trend in Silicon Valley also. Indians tend to be better (or take more interest) at academic subjects like programming, while Pakistanis tend to be better (or take more interest) at people relating fields like tech support and management. Americans tend be completely in people relating fields, with only a minority concentrating on the academic related fields in IT.

One last thought:

In my last post I said ``you are good.`` Just to clarify that I meant good not better.

Sorry to butt into the debate, but I was just wondering what book Indians use to pull out numbers and statistics. Is it the World Almanac?

My God, do you have nothing better to do than pull out numbers and statistics to prove something to yourself about your country?

Yes you are good. Don`t push it.

Arrogance has been and will be the downfall of every success. Stay away from it.

egalatarian_brahmin #45: You seem to be seeing things in my reply that I never stated. I am not quite sure why. You seemed to have used the word, ``cheap`` a lot. I never used this word. I do not think Indian programmers are cheap. I do not know why you are trying to state that they are, ``not cheap.``

I still believe that Indian programmers are no better or worse than programmers from any other country. In my opinion, intelligence is distributed evenly throughout the world. The phrase, ``better or worse`` means as good as any one else, but no better. It does not mean, ``cheap.`` I think there are good and bad programmers in America, Pakistan, India, Europe, Timbuktu etc. No country has a monopoly on intelligence.

You are trying to defend Indian programmers against an attack that does not exist. Perhaps you feel in your own sub-conscious that you need to defend Indian programmers for some reason, even if no one attacks them.

I still stand by the fact that the main strength of the Indian IT industry is the number of professionals it is producing. You have pointed it out yourself by giving details on the number of certified Indian IT professionals in India. I have discussed this with a lot of Indians, and most seem to agree. I also stand by the fact that currently the Indian IT industry (this means the IT industry inside India, and not the Indian IT professionals in the US) is still based on off-shore contracts from the Western world. I believe this is where companies like InfoSys make their money. This again points to the number of IT professionals produced by India. There is nothing wrong with this. I don`t know why you feel there is something wrong with it.

``Well said Umairr! First get that forced satisfied and smug look off your face. ``

I do not get any satisfaction or dis-satisfaction from commenting on the situation of the Indian IT industry. Basically, because I do not live in India. And because there are plenty of other things I can rely on for, ``satisfaction and smugness.`` Please refrain from assuming that others have a pre-set agenda for their replies. That leads to a paranoic discussion, which is useless to everyone.

If Indians were ``cheap labor,`` why would they have the highest average income of any ethnic group in the US?

Zahra reply #103: Here are the answers to your question:

a)b)c) I don`t know

d) I do know. I cannot speak for everyone, but while I was in college, most of the guys around me were quite enlightened. Then again, I spent almost all my college years in Pakistan in military academies, so I cannot speak for the civilian college crowds. In the military, women (wives of other officers) are given quite a high status by everyone. And many of them were pursuing careers as teachers, doctors, etc. I have met the daughters of the older military officers, and most of them seem to be well-adjusted and have been given ample opportunity by their parents to pursue their education and, in many case, their careers.

I am quite familiar with the civilian Pakistani guys who study and work in Silcon Valley, however. I have hung around them for a long time now, and I have found almost all of them to be very enlightened. If they were any more enlightened they would turn into light bulbs. Most of them are self-made and very highly educated. They are far better husbands than their American colleagues. Nearly every single one of the ones I know personally would be more than happy if his wife were to study furthur and pursue careers (provided it didn`t effect the upbringing of the kids). Many have actually encouraged their wives along these lines, if for no other reason, then because the guys wanted to pursue IT entrepreneurship, and needed someone to support the family for a year or so.

It is the wives of these guys that I was refering to. Not women in Pakistan in general. I do not have much info on women in Pakistan, in general.

The wives of these guys have all the opportunities in the world. They have excellent supporting husbands, who would pay for their education. They have good standards of living. They have the basic BA from Pakistan. Yet hardly any (perhaps less than 10%) do anything to furthur their education. It has nothing to do with lack of confidence. They are quite confident in other more relaxing areas. They drive, they shop etc. etc. But they rarely make an attempt to pursue an education or a career (although I have to admit, this is slowly begining to change). If even 50% of them pursued something, your membership on iopwe would ten times what it is today.

It is basically tough to pursue an education and a career. That is why only determined people can do it, even though many others get the opportunity. I cannot think of any advantage your fellow members in iopwe had over these girls (who constitute the majority of the Pakistani female population in the US). However, why did the members of iopwe pursue careers, but these girls didn`t?

I am not suggesting that any Pakistani girl should be told how she should live her life. That is her own choice. A majority of Pakistani girls, in Pakistan, do fall into the category you have mentioned, i.e lack of opportunity, lack of role models (very important), lack of encouragement, lack of support, etc. However, the ones who have made it to the USA, and have all the opportunities of the world at their feet, and still do not attempt to become role models, then they have no right to complain about the condition of women in Pakistan. If I want to uplift the standard of living of the average Pakistani, should I attempt to put myself in the position where I can do something about it, or should I enjoy myself, and hope someone from Iran or India is going to do it?

I think very few women from the upper 5% (I am talking about the financial upper 5%, not necessarily about the girls who end up in medical an other colleges etc. Many of the girls who end up in these colleges do not actually belong to the upper financial 5%) of the Pakistani society attempt to become role models. Most of them are comfortable with their easy going lifestyles. Since most of them don`t pursue anything, no one ends up in a position to do anything for the remaining 95% of the women who actually do not have any opportunities. The only people who can change anything for these 95% are the upper 5%. The Pakistani men certainly aren`t going to do it. So while these 5% of the women may not be the cause of the problems for the women in Pakistan, very few of them, despite having the opportunity, have attempted to become the solution. In fact, the hardest working women in Pakistan are the poor women who work in the fields and as servants. Who gave them the ambition or the confidence, or self-worth? Necessity demanded it and they took on the challenge.

``that most of the Indians in the US are well aware of their self-worth. Specially, women``

My experience has been exactly the opposite. I think Pakistanis are more aware of their self-worth than Indians. Pakistanis generally are more self-confident, to the extent of being arrogant and violent, in demanour and public dealings than Indians. Amongst males, proportionately, Pakistanis seem to be as successful as Indians in the US.

The Paksitani women who make it to the US also have the same opportunities as the Indian women. It`s just a question of ambition and the ability to work hard. Indian women have a lot more ambition and drive than Pakistani women (not including you :)), on the average. I have interviewed Indian girls who could barely speak or look me in the eye while interviewing, yet they were determined to make a career, and were bent upon interviewing in one place after another. And I have, unfortunately, met way too many Pakistani girls/wives who had lifestyles that I envied, yet had never bothered to take a single class, or earn a single penny, or do any volunteer work, etc. Again, I am only talking about the ones in America.

``How many times you`ve convinced a chap to send his wife to school ? If yes, please share the info. If no, please enlighten why.``

Nearly every single one of my Pakistani colleagues here in the US would be more than happy if his wife furthured her education. Many of them would jump for joy. Many have tried to encourage their wives. Yet very few, probably less than 10%, of their wives attempt to pursue anything. The common factor amongst the ones who do pursue something is ambition and the will to do hard work, not anything else; not even their living standard in Pakistan.

``Lastly, I requested some information on the coffee parties.``

The coffee party circuit is hot and growing. When I went to the iopwe function, there were maybe eight or nine Pakistan women engineers present (this includes all the ones in the audience). In fact all the women guest speakers were Indian or Arab women. There wasn`t a single Pakistani female guest speaker; quite ironic, since the function was by an Organization of Pakistani Women. The number of very highly educated male Pakistanis in Silicon Valley must be well into the thousands. Are you suggesting that each and every one of those male Pakistanis has locked up his wife and is not allowing her to study, or pursue a career? Are their wives fighting against all odds to spend a single day at a community college, while the psychological effects of their Paksitani upbringing and their unenlightened cruel Pakistani husbands with MS and Ph.D degrees, are not allowing them to do so? Highly unlikely in most cases. So why were there only eight or nine Pakistani women professionals, from amongst the rich bustling Pakistani community of Silicon Valley, at the iopwe function? Because the rest didn`t take the trouble to furthur their education and were thus busy attending coffee parties.

Re: scout

Aadat ho gayi hai. Wouldn`t you agree sac?

Re: Ferozk

Glad you agree. Always relieved to see another sensible person in South Asia :)

This whole IT thing is great and should by no means be restrained. But the $$ earned from there needs to be poured into education and infrastructure else half the population will never benefit from it, even if the other half rides it`s IT skills to riches (which is what will happen in India in another 10 years if things don`t change). Polarization of wealth will continue.

RSaxena # 41

You said it! I completely agree with you and that goes double for South Asia; our people need access to clean safe drinking water and not to the internet or e-businesses!

What good is a PC when people are straving; can they eat a PC? The Infobahn is for a very limited socio-demographic group in South Asia, but it will have to wait for the rest of the teeming billions!

I agree with 100 percent! Infrastructure, infrastructure and more infrastructure is what South Asia needs!

Ciao!

re RSaxena:

Unlike people with a semblance of intelligence who fold their cards when they realize they are out of their league you continue to compound your problems with putting more and more appendages in your mouth. I hope you don`t choke.

later

-sac

re: Pankaj

You wrote:

``PC penetration is directly correlated with the demand for PCs in the market, which in turn depends upon the perceived utility of it by the people.``

That`s very true but as you yourself pointed out, demand doesn`t necessarily mean accessibility. The poor in India have demanded power, clean water, and better healthcare for decades but still have no access to any of these basic needs.

``I do not know about Pakistan, but India definitely has a sizeable middle class who can afford a PC.``

But the middle class aready has access to education! Our problem and need of the day is to find some way to educate the very poor. Who is going to supply them a PC, electricity in the villages, telecom connections, etc. etc?

I am a big proponent of technology but I think it has to be accompanied with investment in roads, power plants, water reservoirs, and schools in the villages. No amount of fibre optic capacity is going to fix those things.

RSaxena and sac,

Do you guys have to end every argument with an insult?

How immature and ill mannered! (irony)

Dear RSaxena

Your remark that PC penetration as a necessary condition for the success of distance learning seems to hold water. However I urge to see the situation in a different way. PC penetration is directly correlated with the demand for PCs in the market, which in turn depends upon the perceived utility of it by the people. Gradually when people start realising the benefit of a PC, along with the other uses, its educational utility the demand for PC is bound to go up. Of course two objections can be raised to such a theory, one for supply side to match with the increase in demand, it requires a vibrant industrial infrastructure; two, the purchasing power of a significant section of population should be sufficient enough to easily afford a PC.

I do not know about Pakistan, but India definitely has a sizeable middle class who can afford a PC. Also according to me it also has a relatively developed industrial sector capable of coping withthe increased demand. For example, when the bandwidth problem seemed to bottleneck Indian advance in ecomm and software sector, Reliance along with Satyam, MTNL have come forward to set up a huge fibre optical network to speed up data transmission. It is expected that the Reliance project will be over within 2 years.

Anyway but your point was valid, and it would be even more acceptable if you if present it impassionately.

Cheers

ANY effort, even experimental, needs to be
promoted for Pakistanis in the area of education.
They may well lose their future to the
ignorance that they have been forced to pursue
from the Zia period till today.

Ras

Re: sac-o-(fill in the blank)

So PC penetration has nothing to do with the potential success of virtual universities? Is it your abbu who`s going to deliver free PCs and hardware to villages in India and Pakistan? Is he going to build the telecomm infrastructure and install phone