IT or a time to get LIT?

re:#23 by shammi
Gujjus in particular are very clannish. Those in US seem to think that money is all they are here for. The doctor i worked for in Chicago (before i left him in disgust) was a Gujju whose skills in neonatology were iffy but he had acquired franchises in Donot shops and was treating medicine as some kind of business. I would have admired him if he had also excelled in his profession. This profession needs a lot of dedication. This guy was woefully out of touch with the latest things in his field. I left him for greener pastures. But i also learn a bitter lesson in the process. I am not much impressed by the business acumen of Gujjus or Sindhis anymore.
Besides, Gujjus (and i suspect Sindhis) are so clannish that they think of themselves as Gujjus first and Indians last. We know of so many prosperous Gujjus but how many of them have set up charitable institutions for Indians in India that benefit whole of India and not just their own people. Not one i think.
Sridhar

re:#9 by Romair
``This is why people cannot figure out how so many South Indians can run companies, when many of them can barely speak two words with confidence``
Intel was found by a south indian. He regularly addresses convocations in universities as a chief guest and is often consulted in matters related to IT by GOI.
South Indians by and large are not as gregarious as say Punjabees or other north indians. This is my personal observation as a south indian who has lived in the north all my life. That does not mean they lack the skills to be CEOs of a company. May be the ones you have met have given you that impression. The Pakis i have met have all been dull headed and awful looking and goes against the general impression that Pakis (or north indians for that matter) are good looking. People live in sterotypes. You are probably one of them.
Sridhar
PS: Shankar is an idiot! But then he is making all the right noises and sucking upto Paki a$$.

re:#10 by Star Buck
I would take more time to respond to you later. You do not seem to understand the kind of power IT has unleashed on the Indian masses. IT is no panacea but it can be used to disseminate information like nothing before. Andhra, TN and other states have been gearing up to this prospect for sometime now. This has nothing to do with caste. You are a moron if you think so. TN is teaching IT in class rooms. IT has truely been a leveller as far as caste equations are concerned. Anyone can go and enrol in an intitution (most are private) and learn the skills.
Have you heard of something called Simputer that was recently released by IIM-Bangalore scientiists? This does not even cost $200 and is being marketed in rural areas. This will increase access to computer in rural areas manifold. Have you heard of an innovative program called Tele-medicine? This is being spearheaded by Apollo group of hospitals and involves giving medical advice to people in far off areas thr` computer aided tools by doctors sitting in a hospital in a city. The list is endless. This is a mass revolution and i, sitting in US, feel excited about all this.
Sridhar

re:#15 by arjun_m
The biggest company founded by Pakis in 1947, called Pakistan, is sinking today. It has become a loss-making entity and is being kept afloat by foreign money. Its CEO is a short, pot-bellied, arrogant, devious guy who has taken over the (mis)management of the whole company, with all shareholders looking on helplessly. Shareholders cannot sack their CEO and are allowed to vote only if they abide by certain rules and promise that they will keep electing the same CEO!
This CEOs management skills are so good that he is actually taking his company in the reverse direction! While the whole world is entering the 21st century, his company is still in the 20th century and will soon be entering the 19th century, Inshallah. Now, that is quite an achievement. Romair is right. Paksitanis` skills as executives of any company cannot be questioned.
Sridhar

re:#22 by Rdesikan
Our Chowk General is good at generalising. That is why he is called a General. It is a pity he has not heard of P.T Usha, the only Indian (and yes, a south Indian) who came close to winning a medal in olympics. There are more sports schools in Kerala today than anywhere else in the subcontinent. Pity the chowk general does not know this.
sridhar

AWESOME...very moving. Motivational. Has anything changed?

Ref wholly-precious-you #: 48

[just don’t let them see you eating…we don’t want them to think all of us have bottomless pits for stomachs ;).. ]

Or be thought to be a ``starving Indian`` ;)

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Ref Layman #: 46

[I read this guy`s article earlier and think this Moran deserves a swift kick in the butt. India is nobody`s card to play. This `Moron` is mistaking India with UK, Saudi, Pakistan and other countries in America`s `Card Game`.]

Ha, ha, ha, ha! Delusions of grandeur, I see.

Just remember one thing: if there is an Indo-Pak war tomorrow, the US would be passing real-time information on India`s troop deployment collected from its overhead satellites to Pakistan. It would get there faster than reports from your front-line commanders would get to Vajpayee.

The US can make India the equal of Pakistan anytime it chooses. Until you have a military that can threaten immeasurable harm to the US, you will get no respect from the US and you are just a card to play in the game of geopolitics.

anNy

“and to think i need the passport to travel to a youth forum to REPRESENT pakistan.”

….that sounds interesting….where’re you going?….just don’t let them see you eating…we don’t want them to think all of us have bottomless pits for stomachs ;)..

Shakir,

Like yourself, i have recently moved to Pakistan...about a ten months ago... fortunately or unfortunately i sometimes work very closely with MOST... I have so far worked on two govt. funded projects. The organization i work for is also partially govt. funded and helps gop implement some of its IT projects / policies.

So, tell us a bit more about the state bank of pak project.... what is it all about.. the specs...which of the local software compaines are capable of doing the job? and why do you think they were overlooked?

I would appreciate your response.

Kind regards

cutandpaste #45:

`Why we should play the India card` by Michael Moran.

I read this guy`s article earlier and think this Moran deserves a swift kick in the butt. India is nobody`s card to play. This `Moron` is mistaking India with UK, Saudi, Pakistan and other countries in America`s `Card Game`.

Software programmers at work at Planet Asia, an Indian software company, in Bangalore, India. Cisco, IBM and Microsoft are just a few companies to have made recent investments in India`s high tech industry.



Why we should play the India card



An opportunity squandered



By Michael Moran

MSNBC

NEW YORK — They are the two most populous nations in the world, both struggling to get the heavy hand of the state out of their fast-growing economies, both also, incidentally, aiming nuclear missiles at one another. These two Asian giants also are both desperately wooing American private sector investment, especially in burgeoning high tech sectors. One, India, is a democracy. The other, China, is a communist dictatorship. Guess which one American corporations prefer?



CHINA AND its storied market of 1 billion-plus consumers has been the dream of American multinationals since Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit. Yet like Nixon’s visit, which sought to recruit China in a tacit alliance against the Soviet Union, there’s an ulterior motive for today’s U.S.-China trade relationship: the idea that market reform and dollars ultimately will break the Communist party’s monopoly on power.

For this and a few lesser reasons, the U.S. “engages” China to the tune of $40 billion in direct investment in the year 2000. Meanwhile, India, a democratic nation that regards China as a potential enemy, received a paltry $3.5 billion in direct investment from U.S. corporations, according to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. To put that into perspective, that’s roughly what American companies invested in Denmark last year. Nothing against our Danish friends, but there’s something rotten here.



Chinese workers assemble a Buick at Shanghai General Motors, one of the centerpiece investments of U.S. industry in China.





Those who followed the recent too and fro over the EP-3 spy plane that China’s clumsy Air Force accidentally brought down know all too well the dilemmas facing American presidents with regard to China. Sure, presidents talk tough about human rights abuses, trade preferences or our ability to veto loans at the World Bank or IMF. But the fact is, American companies now have so much invested in China’s economy that no president — and especially no Republican president — can discount the interests of the China lobby. In effect, a threat against Beijing risks a charge against future revenues for thousands of America’s largest corporations — among them, Boeing, General Motors, General Electric, Microsoft and AOL-Time-Warner.

But what if President Bush, instead of threatening to take action against China, instead took steps to make investments in India more attractive? Indeed — let’s blue sky this — what if Bush sent an envoy to India proposing to quadruple in a matter of three years the amount of direct foreign investment India receives in exchange for further liberalizations in India’s economic system?

The likelihood of a “perfect” deal — or even a public, binding one — is slim. But such a dialogue would serve the interests of three major players in this game — the U.S. and Indian governments, and the U.S. multinationals. And, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt China to realize that there is nothing inevitable about the flow of American dollars into its economy.



A NO-BRAINER



A pictorial history of China since the revolution.

For some time now, the idea that the United States should play “the India card” has been the foreign policy version of a no-brainer. Putting it this way, of course, is fairly offensive to India - a nation noted for taking deep and lasting umbrage when its national pride is tweaked. Fortunately, there is a lot more than puffed up Kissingereque power politics behind the idea of closer Indo-American relations. Even a short list of these reasons is tremendously compelling:

Both the United States and India feel threatened by China’s growing power;

Both point with alarm (India, understandably, with somewhat more alarm) to the deep and efficient assistance China provided to turn Pakistan into a nuclear-armed state;

Both have been targeted by Osama bin Laden’s band of zealots and regard the Taliban and other forms of extreme Islamic militancy as a menace to Asian and global stability;

Both have placed their faith in future economic growth in the global economy, and more specifically, the high-tech sector.

The most important reason of all — that both are enormous, dynamic, multi-ethnic democracies — is largely irrelevant to American multinational corporations, which make their own decisions about whose market to target and whose cheap labor to exploit. But the U.S. government is not completely powerless in this vein to create incentives that encourage investment in Country A rather than Country B. For instance, American tax credits can be set aside for such investments, much as they have been for firms willing to set up shop in places like Northern Ireland, Haiti or Bosnia. In this way, the U.S. has tried to harness the economic muscle of corporate America to bolster its peace diplomacy. It’s high time that power is harnessed for strategic purposes in Asia.



OUTDATED THINKING

Why has happened already? The answer is complex, but certainly part of the problem is the lingering effects of Cold War thinking on America’s foreign policy establishment. The United States has a long history of focusing too closely on the Indian-Pakistani conflict and not giving enough weight to India’s larger, more strategic rivalry with China.



The Cold War’s intellectual straight-jacket - (India was “theirs,” Pakistan “ours’) - fed this problem and it helped turn the desperately poor, newly independent Indian democracy, which had understandable socialist leanings, into a leading critic of the United States. India wound up as a founding member of the “non-aligned” movement, but in practice, became a MiG-flying, anti-capitalist client of the Soviet Union.



SLOW TURNING

After 1991, things began to change, but not quickly enough. As the Soviet Union was breathing its last, India realized it needed to join the world economy. With one eye on the rapid reforms underway in its regional rival, China, India unleashed capitalism and, not coincidentally, its economy has grown as a clip of about 6 percent ever since.

A glacially slow courtship dance between Washington and New Delhi began soon afterward. The Indian decision to test and deploy nuclear weapons in 1998 — again, a decision that has as much to do with China as Pakistan — brought American sanctions that again chilled relations. But sanctions have been lifted and, last year, President Clinton’s trip to India marked a new high water mark. Indeed, improved ties with India may turn out to be the most important foreign policy achievement of Clinton’s administration. Suddenly, the U.S. is more active in seeking to mediate between India and Pakistan, and has not recently chided India for failing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A new dialogue between the two militaries also is developing.

Still, both sides remain wary. Indian leaders must wean their population off of decades of anti-American slogans. American Cold Warriors — some suddenly influential again — still tilt toward Pakistan, citing its useful location next to the troublesome Afghans and the oil of Central Asia, yet overlooking its collaboration with China and North Korea on missiles and nuclear weapons, its support for exceedingly violent terrorist groups in Kashmir and elsewhere and its alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The overthrow of Pakistan’s democratic government last year by the Army general who now calls himself president, Pervez Musharraf, should have been the last straw.



CHASING THE DREAM

Honest people can differ on whether American economic engagement of China will ever translate into democracy. What can’t be denied is that American dollars have become the primary fuel for China’s economic modernization, a fact that not only strengthens budding entrepreneurs and their spirit of individuality, but also China’s communist leadership (and by extension, the military hard-liners who export nuclear technology to Pakistan and plan for the coming showdown with America).





Taiwan: The breakaway island off the coast of China is the most sensitive issue in China-U.S. ties. Washington has had no diplomatic relations with Taipei since 1979, but remains the country’s biggest arms supplier. China claims the island and has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence or drags its feet on reunification talks.

Human rights: The United States is pushing for U.N. Commission on Human Rights censure of China for alleged repression of Tibetans, unregistered Christians, members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and pro-democracy activists.

Beijing has bitterly rejected U.S. assertions that China’s human rights record has worsened over the last year.

Missile defense: China is staunchly opposed to U.S. plans to build a National Missile Defense system that Washington says is necessary to ward off ballistic missiles from hostile states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Beijing fears such a system would negate its modest strategic arsenal.



World Trade Organization: China`s 15-year quest to join the WTO ended on Dec. 11, 2001, when it became a member of the international trading system. Its ascension to the world trade body prompted Washington to formally grant permanent trading relations to Beijing effective Jan. 1, 2002 — a move that helped to bridge Sino-U.S. rifts over the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and the mid-air collision of a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet in 2001.

Detentions: China has detained, charged and convicted several U.S.-affiliated Chinese academics for `spying` for rival Taiwan. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell managed to win freedom for three scholars, including one Chinese-born U.S. citizen, ahead of a visit to Beijing in July 2001. However, several other academics still remain behind bars.

Whatever one’s position on engagement, though, it would be foolish to overlook the opportunity costs of current American investment trends: the squandered chance to help Asia’s other major power — the democratic one — secure its own future.

The executives of the great American corporations cannot be expected to think this way. Indeed, the laws governing publicly traded corporations specifically require them to put the interests of their shareholders above such abstractions as American national interests or the future of democracy in Asia.

It is up to American government to create the proper incentive. Even if India’s economic reforms make it a slightly less attractive site for investment, it is still a nation with an educated, English-speaking middle class which now has as many members as the U.S. has people. If we’re going to chase dreams, why not chase one more in line with our own?



Michael Moran is senior producer, special reports at MSNBC and was the site’s international editor from 1997-2000.

anNy #41 Reminds me of the time I was assigned the pleasant task many years ago when I was a student to get two attractive female students from Iran registered at Panjab University. The clerk assured me that he could be bribed to make the process as time-consuming as I wanted. So: see this as a compliment that these people were prolonging the agony of getting a passport.

shakir69 #42 I can understand your frustration with the government. If it is any consolation (and of it is not), the government pays a very heavy price for the lack of procurement systems. That is, in Pakistan (as in many other developing countries) the government pays 10 percent, or sometimes even more (i.e. manifold), above the going market price for goods and services (if they do business with the government at all). In the US, on the other hand, the GSA prices (which is the price goods are sold to the government) are significantly LOWER than market prices. Now sit down on a chair (so you dont fall down when you get the result of this) and multiply this price difference with the huge volume of govenrment procurement. This is the amount the government, and therefore the nation, is paying for poor procurement practices and systems in countries in developing countries.

tahmad321 - the indians have done a phenominal job of their knowledge-based industries....we`re just in the embryonic stages. i`m still tickled over this SBP thing...as company policy we dont bid for government gigs as they`re predetermined and dont depend on any sort of merit. thinking about a slush fund so we can buy ppl out, but hey...

semipreciousme - hey tell me about bureaucracy. but it`s part of the game. the point of this article wasn`t to whine and complain; rather to illuminate the picture on the ground as opposed to the fantastic press releases we`re treated to every week.