Just curious, but is your surname "Pillaallamarri" by any chance? If I'm not wrong, you share the name of your surname with that of a rather famous banyan tree ("Pillala marri maanu", one of the world's largest, I'm told) somewhere in the Deccan countryside.:-)
... which means even an otherwise insignificant party with a small number of seats in parliament can exert and awfully strong influence on the government.
You've just explained the Telangana Rashtra Samiti's business plan!:-)
Although this government has lived out its full 5 year term
An interesting trivia bit here, but technically speaking, no government since Independence has ever completed a full five-year term. Every incumbent government has traditionally called for snap polls before the completion of its term (mostly by weeks, but often by months; politicians count in years, not days or months). This government is, of course, unique in that they probably called for elections earlier than the average.
this level of instability deters investors because they don't know when a new government will come in and change policy.
There was a study sometime back which showed that the level of investment didn't taper off during any election.
Investors' paranoia isn't the problem here; the problem is really a lack of policy. There are many who think that the Balance of Payments crisis in 1991 could have been averted had there been a "proper" government in place during and after the Gulf War. (The same for the insurgency in Punjab.)
I would guess that the coalitions would allow for more fluidity in politics than 2 (or a few) strong parties.
Yes, I suppose you could say there's more political intrigue out here than the US (or SA).
Sorry if I sound rather cynical, but the fact is, while there is a fair amount of coverage of ethnicities, and dare I say, religions, there just isn't enough political coverage of all viewpoints. I consider myself to be mostly left-of-center on economic issues, and right-of-center on political issues, and as such, I find my political ideas woefully under-represented.
Unlike most other Indians though, I don't quite think the problem is politicians per se; there are many politicians who, IMHO, adequately could represent me in the Indian Parliament. Unfortunately, they are rather thinly spread across all parties. Which puts Indian polity in a rather unique situation; you would often find both good and bad performers in the same party and, as recent events have shown, even in the same government. The system, as it exists, just doesn't give me, an individual voter, enough power to punish the laggards and reward the performers; voting for a party, it seems, is not equivalent to voting for an economic or social policy.
I must mention a trivia bit here that is interesting in terms of evolutionary biology; I don't know if these elections would reflect this trend, but Indian voters, as a whole, seemed to have developed their own punishing system for the last 5 or so elections. You see, except for one single state government (I guess you could raise that number to four now), no incumbent government has ever been voted in again on election. It's almost as if a billion people have decided en masse that the best way to save the nation is, to use a cricketing metaphor, to rotate the strike every five years. Now, if you assume all politicians are worthless and that they need to be punished, then I suppose it's a fantastic system; but that, obviously, isn't how things work in real life. India needs fresh ideas, critical thinking and leadership to take it forward into the 21st century; India needs to cut short the rot that's growing within it.
Unfortunately, as big and impressive the election mechanism might be, I don't see it promoting the kind of leadership it really needs. And therein lies the rub.
The last general elections in 1999 in India threw up a logistical problem. One particular constituency had, well, 400 candidates.
Nalgonda, (Andhra Pradesh), 1996. 437 candidates, if I remember correctly. The constituents were protesting the fact that waters from River Krishna were still not released to the region. They had to make special ballot boxes and papers for that one; the ballot papers were the size of a regular-size tabloid and the ballot boxes were made of wood, if I'm not wrong (as opposed to the regulation green-painted metal boxes).
I should know; I belong to the area.:-) (not registered under Nalgonda, but still close enough)
I'd love it if you could say that to this friend of mine (actually brother of friend) who graduated from GATech with a BS(CS) degree and is now earning $$$ by driving cabs in NYC.:-)
A typical CS college grad makes 7-9k Baht / month.
God that is LOW even by *Indian* standards. In India, freshies typically get Rs 12k a month (about 12k Baht)
And oh, bang on about the food part, even if I didn't quite get the joke:-|. I had a very interesting conversation with a hawker centre owner the other day (I live in Singapore); turns out, the guy owns three Mercs and earns about five times what I earn in a month.:-)
There seems to be one real deficiency with the plans of WiPro etc. - they are merely supplying services to companies who are actually building products. Where are the innovations? The products that US technology companies generate?
Three quick responses:
a) Not sure about Wipro, but India's other great big body-shop, Infosys, does have a product aimed at banks. It's a different matter that it makes more money out of services than its flagship product (and I use the term 'flagship' in a very loose sense), mainly because that's where the money has always been in the IT industry; as Bruce Perens pointed out in one of his articles, less than 10% of software developed is ever retail software.
That is to say, Indian companies do make products, but they rarely are successful because of (b).
b) Product (arguably) = Technical knowhow + marketing + lots of other stuff.
Indian IT companies, arguably, are good only in the first element; in any case, marketing for IT products is known to be notoriously difficult. As an (Indian) IT CEO once remarked to me, even a company as well established as Microsoft found it necessary to spend close to a billion dollars to market its flagship product, Windows XP. Now, marketing $$$ might not be everything, but it certainly tells you how much effort IT companies would need to sell retail IT products. That, with a local market that still is very nascent, would mean that the only place where Indian IT companies can grow is in services, and that too for international customers.
c) The longer story, of course, is that the American Innovation System is much more effective than India's. American universities have a close relationship with governmental agencies and with corporate America to produce products. India just doesn't have those linkages.
So yes, you're right in saying that there's a lot that Indian IT companies can't do which American IT companies can.
From my own experience of shopping around for coders, the rates the Indians charge have SHOT UP in the last year or two.
The trend these days in India is to have a so-called "Monthly/ Annual Variable Component" in income statements. That way, if the economy/industry in India tanks, so will the salaries.
IT companies will, of course, show the same profit levels as before.
After you've taken a breath and had that glass of water, consider the following:- an India-based test site for a certain global pharma giant has become the most efficient (not 'successful', 'efficient') testing site in all of their worldwide testing centers. Reason:- the doctor in question had decided to track all his cases through a database he designed himself for his needs. End result: the workflows were considerably more streamlined, and documented, than even those happening in the US.
That, however, is not what I found interesting. What I really found interesting in this case was that it was the (American) FDA that was overseeing the drug trials here, to the extent that they were carefully monitoring even translations of official documents into the patients' (and the said doctor's) mother tongue. I mean, let's put it this way:- somehow, you don't quite expect that an official from an American governmental agency would be able to hold forth a conversation discussing English to Telugu translations, and actually correct a native speaker on a minor unintentional mis-translation.
Globalisation at work people, of businesses, work processes and, let's face it, cultures.
(PS:- Incidentally, a bit of trivia here, but the FDA is not the only American governmental agency to embrace Telugu, if you will; the CIA, apparently, sits on many of the Unicode Telugu committees.)
My point is, in terms of access to decision makers (and perhaps, influencing them to act in their favour), Microsoft is miles ahead to even the apparently predatory Walmart.
I mean, and I'm saying this based on first-hand knowledge, a certain MS staffer had access to governmental figures on employment that wasn't released to the public for fear of a backlash. Think about it:- sg's an economy that is only deceptively open; while it does have higher FDI figures than, say, India, there are many sectors that are completely closed to even local private investment. That is to say, sg's one of those places which have a clear this-is-local-and-this-is-international policy, which is more than what you can say for most of the countries in the region. And yet, MS doesn't just continue grabbing *all* governmental contracts, it, a multinational company, is also so cozy enough with the powers-that-be, that it gets to know classified information on the sg'ean economy. How many MNC's can pull such stunts off? Walmart obviously hasn't; heck, it's stuck at the zeroeth step itself.
Let's face it:- when you talk about other predatory companies, be it Walmart, Exxon-Mobil, Coca Cola, anything, there's at least some resistance, some sort of opposition at all levels in the international spectrum. Microsoft, so far, has had a free rein in whichever country it goes to. Bill Gates is welcomed, not just as any other investor, but as a virtual head of state. Make no mistake, my friend:- I'm not saying MS is powerful, I'm saying Microsoft is power. Waaay more power than other corporation in recent history.
A company like Walmart, for example, has far more power and is more monopolistic than Microsoft ever was.
While other posters have already pointed out the fundamental distinction between monopoly and your examples of market domination, allow me to say this:- out here in Singapore, Wallmart, like other American retail chains, has been busy trying to enter the retail space, but for a variety of reasons (legal, diplomatic and economic), hasn't been able to.
Microsoft salesmen, on the other hand, have direct access to the highest echelons of the government.
And it seems that few/.-tters will ever understand Darwinian evolution in the first place. I challenge you, sir, to explain MS' actions in Darwinian terms. Survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily equate to survival of the biggest.
... as also to Switzerland, Germany, Japan and a whole lot of other places. What makes you think they are "moving" to (only) India, and not "expanding" to the world?
That's also why PR for damage control after something went wrong is wasted money from the start. It always breaks down.
Really depends on what the stated objectives are. If the objective is 'supress the story', then yeah, I suppose it's a lost cause once a story breaks. OTOH, if the objective is 'okay we screwed up, but don't let them quote us out of context and make it worse than it really is', then it's an entirely different matter.
The lesser of sciences tend to have the strongest dogma's. And this PR/MBA stuff is certainly a disgrace to science to be ranked with it.
Having a feeling I missed something here (no sarcasm intended; a fair question), but since when did PR become a science? It has, and always will be, an art; which is of course one reason why the industry is so tilted out here. You really can't teach PR; you don't have rules in the business, only guidelines.
(Of course, no idea how things are like out there in the US; was referring to the industry in Asia)
I understand that all MS salesguys actually have to take a week-long "course" on OSS solutions, and "pass" (ie at least B+) a test on the materials covered in the course, before they're allowed to handle potential clients. The idea, apparently, is that any MS employee should at least be able to hold an OSS fan in conversation.
I wouldnt be surprised if there are MS folk routinely scanning through this very thread, for instance, even if they aren't actively participating in it.
Indeed. There are many language pages which don't display the old news tab itself, although it'll be interesting to see how the world's languages would, for instance, translate 'Froogle' to.
would a Flemish Dutch speaker recognise the accent of a Dutch speaker from Amsterdam when mangled through an English phrase?
I can answer the question in terms of Indian English. As an Indian who speaks English but not as a "mother" tongue, I've always been able to recognise the respective mother tongues of other Indians through English; that is, not that difficult to differentiate between English as spoken by a native Tamil speaker, and that spoken by, say, a native Hindi speaker (even if I don't necessarily speak either language).
I guess this where the whole question of how native we're in English comes into play.
The fact that all four of the Clay Mathematics Institute Research Fellows this year are not native Americans indicates the truth of the AeA's comment on math teaching in American schools.
... and the fact that at least one of them shares his first name with me, and is only a year older than me indicates the extent to which I under-performed in college.
:-|
Actually, it probably doesn't, but heck, I'm having mixed feelings about this particular piece of news:- should I feel proud that another Akshay has scored high in the mathematics pecking order? Or should I feel stupid for not being that particular Akshay? Choices, choices, choices....
I think the key factor here that most posters are missing is that Opera is no longer a desktop-only product; the most stunning advances they've made, in fact, are for smart-phones. Opera's Symbian browser currently is the only browser in the market that allows you to browse *normal* webpages through a handheld device.
I believe this has more to do with their upcoming packages in high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, than it has to do with Opera for desktops.
Exactly why is Europe a continent but India is merely a 'sub continent' despite being much larger and a much more distinct geographical area? [...] India would have been considered a continent if they had not already reached the magic number of seven.
Then again, may be not. You have to remember that no Indian was allowed to even walk on (this street called) The Mall in Shimla until the 1920's, just as denizens of (French-ruled) Pondicherry's "Ville Noire" weren't allowed to enter "Ville Blanche" until, I don't know, the '30's or so. Those 19th century civilised folk sure needed to differentiate their homes from ours.
Not that I'm "fighting" for South Asia's "right" to be recognised as a continent, mind you; just saying that at least for continents, it's probably less of pointless rigour and more of, well, other factors.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know about you my friend, but the way I vote is a perfectly relevant issue for me.
That, sir, is the most informative post I've read in the entire thread. I'm in awe of you.
Just curious, but is your surname "Pillaallamarri" by any chance? If I'm not wrong, you share the name of your surname with that of a rather famous banyan tree ("Pillala marri maanu", one of the world's largest, I'm told) somewhere in the Deccan countryside. :-)
Investors' paranoia isn't the problem here; the problem is really a lack of policy. There are many who think that the Balance of Payments crisis in 1991 could have been averted had there been a "proper" government in place during and after the Gulf War. (The same for the insurgency in Punjab.)
Sorry if I sound rather cynical, but the fact is, while there is a fair amount of coverage of ethnicities, and dare I say, religions, there just isn't enough political coverage of all viewpoints. I consider myself to be mostly left-of-center on economic issues, and right-of-center on political issues, and as such, I find my political ideas woefully under-represented.
Unlike most other Indians though, I don't quite think the problem is politicians per se; there are many politicians who, IMHO, adequately could represent me in the Indian Parliament. Unfortunately, they are rather thinly spread across all parties. Which puts Indian polity in a rather unique situation; you would often find both good and bad performers in the same party and, as recent events have shown, even in the same government. The system, as it exists, just doesn't give me, an individual voter, enough power to punish the laggards and reward the performers; voting for a party, it seems, is not equivalent to voting for an economic or social policy.
I must mention a trivia bit here that is interesting in terms of evolutionary biology; I don't know if these elections would reflect this trend, but Indian voters, as a whole, seemed to have developed their own punishing system for the last 5 or so elections. You see, except for one single state government (I guess you could raise that number to four now), no incumbent government has ever been voted in again on election. It's almost as if a billion people have decided en masse that the best way to save the nation is, to use a cricketing metaphor, to rotate the strike every five years. Now, if you assume all politicians are worthless and that they need to be punished, then I suppose it's a fantastic system; but that, obviously, isn't how things work in real life. India needs fresh ideas, critical thinking and leadership to take it forward into the 21st century; India needs to cut short the rot that's growing within it.
Unfortunately, as big and impressive the election mechanism might be, I don't see it promoting the kind of leadership it really needs. And therein lies the rub.
Then again, most of the Deccan heartland in Telangana was always Communist (whether parliamentarially, ie, CPI/M, or militarily, ie, Naxals)
(* - Ahem, In-glish)
I should know; I belong to the area. :-) (not registered under Nalgonda, but still close enough)
I'd love it if you could say that to this friend of mine (actually brother of friend) who graduated from GATech with a BS(CS) degree and is now earning $$$ by driving cabs in NYC. :-)
And oh, bang on about the food part, even if I didn't quite get the joke :-|. I had a very interesting conversation with a hawker centre owner the other day (I live in Singapore); turns out, the guy owns three Mercs and earns about five times what I earn in a month. :-)
a) Not sure about Wipro, but India's other great big body-shop, Infosys, does have a product aimed at banks. It's a different matter that it makes more money out of services than its flagship product (and I use the term 'flagship' in a very loose sense), mainly because that's where the money has always been in the IT industry; as Bruce Perens pointed out in one of his articles, less than 10% of software developed is ever retail software.
That is to say, Indian companies do make products, but they rarely are successful because of (b).
b) Product (arguably) = Technical knowhow + marketing + lots of other stuff.
Indian IT companies, arguably, are good only in the first element; in any case, marketing for IT products is known to be notoriously difficult. As an (Indian) IT CEO once remarked to me, even a company as well established as Microsoft found it necessary to spend close to a billion dollars to market its flagship product, Windows XP. Now, marketing $$$ might not be everything, but it certainly tells you how much effort IT companies would need to sell retail IT products. That, with a local market that still is very nascent, would mean that the only place where Indian IT companies can grow is in services, and that too for international customers.
c) The longer story, of course, is that the American Innovation System is much more effective than India's. American universities have a close relationship with governmental agencies and with corporate America to produce products. India just doesn't have those linkages.
So yes, you're right in saying that there's a lot that Indian IT companies can't do which American IT companies can.
IT companies will, of course, show the same profit levels as before.
After you've taken a breath and had that glass of water, consider the following:- an India-based test site for a certain global pharma giant has become the most efficient (not 'successful', 'efficient') testing site in all of their worldwide testing centers. Reason:- the doctor in question had decided to track all his cases through a database he designed himself for his needs. End result: the workflows were considerably more streamlined, and documented, than even those happening in the US.
That, however, is not what I found interesting. What I really found interesting in this case was that it was the (American) FDA that was overseeing the drug trials here, to the extent that they were carefully monitoring even translations of official documents into the patients' (and the said doctor's) mother tongue. I mean, let's put it this way:- somehow, you don't quite expect that an official from an American governmental agency would be able to hold forth a conversation discussing English to Telugu translations, and actually correct a native speaker on a minor unintentional mis-translation.
Globalisation at work people, of businesses, work processes and, let's face it, cultures.
(PS:- Incidentally, a bit of trivia here, but the FDA is not the only American governmental agency to embrace Telugu, if you will; the CIA, apparently, sits on many of the Unicode Telugu committees.)
I mean, and I'm saying this based on first-hand knowledge, a certain MS staffer had access to governmental figures on employment that wasn't released to the public for fear of a backlash. Think about it:- sg's an economy that is only deceptively open; while it does have higher FDI figures than, say, India, there are many sectors that are completely closed to even local private investment. That is to say, sg's one of those places which have a clear this-is-local-and-this-is-international policy, which is more than what you can say for most of the countries in the region. And yet, MS doesn't just continue grabbing *all* governmental contracts, it, a multinational company, is also so cozy enough with the powers-that-be, that it gets to know classified information on the sg'ean economy. How many MNC's can pull such stunts off? Walmart obviously hasn't; heck, it's stuck at the zeroeth step itself.
Let's face it:- when you talk about other predatory companies, be it Walmart, Exxon-Mobil, Coca Cola, anything, there's at least some resistance, some sort of opposition at all levels in the international spectrum. Microsoft, so far, has had a free rein in whichever country it goes to. Bill Gates is welcomed, not just as any other investor, but as a virtual head of state. Make no mistake, my friend:- I'm not saying MS is powerful, I'm saying Microsoft is power. Waaay more power than other corporation in recent history.
Microsoft salesmen, on the other hand, have direct access to the highest echelons of the government.
And it seems that few /.-tters will ever understand Darwinian evolution in the first place. I challenge you, sir, to explain MS' actions in Darwinian terms. Survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily equate to survival of the biggest.
Bloddy good link, gracias. This weekend should be fun! :-)
... as also to Switzerland, Germany, Japan and a whole lot of other places. What makes you think they are "moving" to (only) India, and not "expanding" to the world?
(Of course, no idea how things are like out there in the US; was referring to the industry in Asia)
I wouldnt be surprised if there are MS folk routinely scanning through this very thread, for instance, even if they aren't actively participating in it.
Any hints for Welsh?
I guess this where the whole question of how native we're in English comes into play.
:-|
Actually, it probably doesn't, but heck, I'm having mixed feelings about this particular piece of news:- should I feel proud that another Akshay has scored high in the mathematics pecking order? Or should I feel stupid for not being that particular Akshay? Choices, choices, choices....
I believe this has more to do with their upcoming packages in high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, than it has to do with Opera for desktops.
Then again, may be not. You have to remember that no Indian was allowed to even walk on (this street called) The Mall in Shimla until the 1920's, just as denizens of (French-ruled) Pondicherry's "Ville Noire" weren't allowed to enter "Ville Blanche" until, I don't know, the '30's or so. Those 19th century civilised folk sure needed to differentiate their homes from ours.
Not that I'm "fighting" for South Asia's "right" to be recognised as a continent, mind you; just saying that at least for continents, it's probably less of pointless rigour and more of, well, other factors.