First there was Indra, then Vikram, then Sanjay and now there’s Ajay: the new President and COO of Mastercard. Ajay Banga will be the number two man at the number two piece of plastic;”the heir apparent to Chief Executive Robert Selander.”

Banga comes to Mastercard from Citibank, where he had been in charge of their Asia-Pacific business and had been considered by the board for CEO before they turned to Pandit (one of the 20 worst CEOs EVAH!). Given that Citibank shares are down 85%, Banga must feel like he dodged a bullet by ending up at a smaller ($5 billion vs. $50 billion in revenues) but profitable company. While business is much harder for credit card companies than it used to be, Mastercard is just a middleman collecting fees by processing transactions and so it less likely to be affected than the banks and investors who hold now questionable credit card debt.

I’m also quite chuffed to see that a man in a turban and beard can phase through the corporate glass ceiling, especially in banking. In that respect, I think it helped that Banga’s career has been mainly international. In the US, minority executives and white executives follow different tracks (HBS study), but 14 years ago Banga was Marketing Director for Pepsi in India where he would not have been an outsider.

I saw my very first episode of Mad Men last night (while working on this post) and I found myself unable to empathise with the characters because I couldn’t relate to any of them. That was a world that I and most of my white friends (who are non-WASPs) would have been excluded from instantly, no matter what our credentials. Nor was this permeating predjudice limited to the 1950s: I heard Dershowitz recall that he couldn’t get a job at a top law firm in the mid-60s after clerking for the Supreme Court because he was Jewish!

So here’s to Ajay Banga and the others who will come after him, because a crack in the glass ceiling … is priceless.

If you want royal treatment at nightclubs in Argentina, maybe you should consider investing in a turban!

While playing golf in Buenos Aires recently, R. Viswanathan, the Indian ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, had an interesting experience: the Argentinian players asked him where they could buy a turban and how to wear it. When the ambassador probed the reason for their interest, they pointed to a home within the country club complex and said:

‘Here lives an Indian maharaja. He looks handsome with his turban. When he goes to the night clubs, he gets premium service and gets it free because they think he is a maharaja.’

When Viswanathan tried to explain that turbans do not equal maharaja status, the Argentinians asked him to shut up and not reveal this secret at the night clubs.

Turns out the “maharaja” they were speaking of is Simmarpal Singh, the “peanut prince of Argentina,” an employee of Olam, a 5.6 - billion dollar NRI company and a leading global supply chain manager of agricultural products and food ingredients!

Singh cultivates 12,000 hectares of peanut farms and another 5000 hectares of soya and corn in Rio Cuarto area in Cordoba province, about one thousand kms from Buenos Aires. His target is to take his company Olam among Argentina´s top three peanut players in the next few years. When he came to Argentina in 2005, his company was 28th in ranking in peanuts and he has already made it as sixth this year.

Viswanathan’s story, which profiles Singh’s work, ran in various Indian papers, including the Hindustan Times Punjab and The Asian Age, this past week. It examines the farming industry in Argentina and its potential to assist agriculture in India which is going to face shortage of land and water in coming years. Read it in full here.

The advertising campaign for BritAsian sausage company “Mr. Singh’s Bangras” (a pun on bangers and bhangra) recently won a major award. The concept behind the ads is simple enough to describe in pictures:

That’s right - they used edible ink to print the casing in “henna patterns” and create the first ever “branded sausage.” I’m waiting for the UK government to start printing health warnings directly on foodstuffs that are bad for your heart such as “eating this weiner will make yours a little limper.”

I really hope Daljit Singh, the company proprietor, is married already because he has just earned the enmity of every desi bride around the world. If this campaign gets widespread airplay, what do you think most people will think of when they see a chubby brown hennaed calf peeking out from underneath a red lehnga?

You can see the video version directly on the company website.

On my way to the East Village last night, I stopped by a store which is arguably ground zero for shameless Orientalism in NYC, East-West books.

This store is exactly as over the top and ridiculous as the name suggests. It’s the kind of place where one (White) salesman was dressed in a very handsome lime colored Chinese silk jacket while another (white again) had 3 sandalwood malas on one arm, several around his neck, and at least one on the other arm. Their list of books and other offerings is very left coast, the sort of thing I encountered regularly when I lived in the Bay Arya, but rarely see in skeptical, ironic NYC.

Soon after I entered, in the CD rack, I found Jaya Lakshmi’s “Jewel of Hari.” I love the blurb that introduces the album: Yoga! Mantras! Flamenco! Veils! It’s nearly a perfect listing of New Age clichés, it has everything except Zen, Native Americans and gnostic wisdom.

I’m a life-long Democrat, but one aspect of the Democratic party message that has at times bothered me in recent years is the tendency towards protectionism. It was one of the things (among many) that annoyed me about John Kerry’s campaign, and I was somewhat relieved that Obama wielded this axe a bit more lightly during his campaign, at least after Iowa (notice how most of that talk about NAFTA disappeared too?).

During a bad recession with spiralling unemployment, of course, any earlier caution we might have seen from politicians regarding protectionism is going to be in danger. Congressional politicians from both parties are increasingly turning to populist language to ensure their own political survival. And the easiest group to pick on politically in recent years, by both Republicans and Democrats, has been immigrants, since they can’t vote anyway.

As many readers may already be aware, the recent American economic stimulus bill contained explicit language concerning foreign workers in the U.S.:

Monday was the debut of the long awaited Tata Nano, India’s answer to the Model T. Initial reviews are favorable, with reviewers impressed by how normal a car the Nano seems to be, given its small size, engine and cost (via anatha):

Even the green crowd seems accepting of the new vehicle. While Greenpeace protestors picketed the announcement of the car, Ratan Tata claims that the Nano is less poluting than many two wheel vehicles on the market and even UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Yvo de Boer said,

“I am not concerned about it (the Tata Nano) because people in India have the same aspirational rights to own cars as people elsewhere in the world.” [link]

In addition, the Nano already gets 70mpg, and there are discussions of an electric model in the future.

So it’s a lot of car for the money and it’s green. What I don’t understand is the business side of the equation. Can Tata make money on this car? And if not, will the Nano and Tata motors survive?

Because today is both Purim and Holi, here’s an amazing “Bollywood” video made by an Israeli arms company to promote Indian sales which they showed on large screens at a recent government sponsored military trade fair in India. What’s the connection to these holidays? Watch the clip and you’ll come away convinced that the people who made it were both drunk and stoned:

Every element of the promotional film is just plain wrong. The sari-clad, “Indian” dancers look all too ashkenaz and zaftig. The unshaven, hawk-nosed, leather-clad leading man appears to be a refugee from You Don’t Mess With the Zohan. Then of course, there’s the implication that the Indian military is somehow like a helpless woman who “need(s) to feel safe and sheltered.” [link]

The whole thing is amazingly crappy from start to finish, not mention the annoying chorus of “Dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga, dinga dinga dee.” I don’t get why they couldn’t have hired a real Bolly composer, choreographer and item girls. It wouldn’t have cost them much.

Despite the cheapness of the video, this isn’t some small time company, and they’re not newcomers to the Indian market. It was Rafael Advanced Defense Systems’ Barak SAM missile that was at the heart of the 2000 bribery scandal exposed by Tehelka. Two years ago, they signed a $330 million dollar deal to codevelop the Barak II, and just 6 months ago they became part of India’s biggest defense joint venture with a foreign company.

So why was this video, intended “to help build familiarity between India and Israel and Rafael” [link] both so cheap and so dreadful? My only guess is that they learned from the 2000 arms deal that while symbolic gestures are good, the only thing that really matters are gifts of cold hard cash.

This month, IBM announced Project Match, a program to help laid off workers move overseas with their outsourced jobs … provided of course, that that they’re willing to accept local wages:

“IBM has established Project Match to help you locate potential job opportunities in growth markets where your skills are in demand. Should you accept a position in one of these countries, IBM offers financial assistance to offset moving costs, provides immigration support, such as visa assistance, and other support to help ease the transition of an international move.” [link]

I can see it now, America’s best and brightest leave their homes and everything familiar to them to move overseas and start a new life, one fraught with cultural confusion. A new generation is born in India, one plagued by confusion and self-doubt.

Novelist Juniper L. Harry depicts the lives of these American Indians with a series of stories about Boston Brahmins in Bengal. In her most famous book, the protagonist Tolstoy Thudpucker struggles to figure out where he truly belongs, whether in India or America. His classmates cruelly mock him for his name and for not having an unfamiliar cultural background. Everybody in India is different, they say. But not poor Tolstoy, he’s got no culture of his own:

“What’s your language? American English? That’s like what we speak, but with an accent, right? What do they eat in America? Pepperoni Pizza? What’s that - like Chicken Tikka Pizza but with dried out slices of dead pig on top? Sounds bland and gross! How come we can breakdance better than you? Don’t you even have a dance of your own to teach us?”

Tolstoy suffers through a series of happy marriages and confusing name changes until he attains enlightenment by transcending worldly duality and learning to dance. The Bollywood version of his tale wins plaudits from reviewers across India, none more so than the bloggers over at the IBCA blog Boston Chai Party.

With apologies to Nabokov Ninnington.

By now, most people have probably heard about the huge Satyam scandal, where the company’s founder and chairman, Ramalinga Raju, has taken responsibility for massive fraud in reporting the company’s earnings, profits, and cash balance. Satyam, one of India’s largest consulting and IT companies, has admitted it claimed $1 billion in assets that simply did not exist for just one three month period in 2008. The company is now facing the abyss, as its share prices are evaporating, and clients are starting to defect to rivals (including IBM and Accenture). Satyam currently employs 53,000 people.

As background, Reuters has an informative story on the status of Ramalinga Raju as a symbol of Hyderabad as a new IT hub (“Cyberabad”) and the whole, now deeply tarnished “India Shining” mythology.

And that’s not all. Two American legal firms are filing lawsuits against Satyam, claiming fraud. Distressingly, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, the accounting firm that signed off on Satyam’s accounting practices for years, never detected the fraud.

What went wrong? Salil Tripathi has a provocative Op-Ed at the Wall Street Journal, where he addresses the aspects of Indian business culture that enabled this to happen. For Tripathi, one of the key factors in Satyam’s case is the clan-like structure of Satyam’s upper management and Board of Directors, which are heavily populated by relatives and close friends of the chairman:

Late last week we received our usual dose of hate mail. It read as follows:

Question: Why aren’t you guys covering this emerging economic crisis?. Each time I eagerly come on this site to check out the latest blog, I get disappointed to see it’s about fluff…

This is a huge enough story that I know you can find some ways of relating it to the Indian or Indian-American diaspora.

Even hate-mailers need love from time to time so I thought I would oblige with a bit of an omnibus economic meltdown post that was shaded with a tinge of brown. First up, wanna-be gangsta Sudhir Venkatesh wonders, “with Wall Street tanking, who will think of the prostitutes?”

There are some people who might just benefit from the current turmoil in the financial markets. One probably won’t surprise: lawyers. The other might: sex workers…

I came across these women when I began studying New York’s sex industry at the end of the 1990s. Mayor Rudy Giuliani, in an effort to clean up Manhattan’s neighborhoods, forced sex off the streets of Times Square and other Midtown neighborhoods. In the process, his administration created a new economic sector. I’ve been following the lives of more than 300 sex workers—in New York and Chicago, in high and low ends of the income spectrum since 1999…

One thing I’ve learned is that economic downturns can be boom times for high-end sex workers. Sex workers of the past waited on street corners, outside bars, and around parks, and their transactions were fleeting and usually for a few dollars. Today’s high-end sex workers see themselves as therapists, part of a vast metropolitan wellness industry that includes private chefs and yoga teachers. Many have regular clients who visit them several times per month, paying them not only for sex but also for comfort and affirmation.

That’s probably not all Jean did for her clients. But, as I reported in Slate a few months ago, about 40 percent of high-end sex transactions do not involve a sexual service. It’s not difficult to imagine that a man’s need for positive reinforcement is amplified when a pink slip lands on his desk.[Link]

And speaking of pink slips landing on desks, along with doctors, lawyers, and engineers, the hottest desi profession in the U.S. right now is what I like to generically term: “finance guy/girl.” Many of these finance guys/girls can’t really describe to you what it is they do without using the words “hedge, asset, or capital,” and by that time you are already half asleep. In truth, they may not even know what they really do (but the little bastards make three times my salary with one third the education ). In all seriousness though, I think a disproportionate number of our community in the “white collar end” of this turmoil is an example of how the current credit crisis will affect South Asian Americans (but please stay away from the prostitutes!). What about the blue collar South Asian American?

Riffing off of Sugi’s post concerning Naan Fromage in France, and I just learned [via Camille] that the Italian dairy industry in Lombardy that produces Parmigian cheese relies on desis for 90% of their work force. That’s right, we can do more than just paneer. No more Amul for you, baby, from now on it’s only the finest Italian cheeses. We are milkmen to the world!

The first immigrants came 20 years ago to (according to the documentary clip) work as animal handlers in the circus, now the town of Novellara has 600 Sikh immigrants and the second largest Gurdwara in Europe. The Po Valley has 60,000 desis working there and couldn’t function without them. Here’s the news clip:

My favorite part is when the guy explains that he likes to hire Indians because they are patient, methodical, and extremely reliable, with a natural gift for working with animals. Clearly he’s never been to India.

p.s. can I use the fact that Sikhs run the dairies of Parma as credentials for a government sinecure?

Related news: African Lumberjacks in Canada

Things in the Houston area are only partly starting to get back to normal in the wake of Ike’s destruction. Still only about 50% of the people here have their power back (I was luckily in the top 35%) and tensions are running high, especially as you get closer towards Galveston. Taz tipped me off yesterday that some nearby gas stations (specifically the ones with a small co-located convenience store) have been hiring Black Panther party members to secure the premises and prevent potential looting:

The Black Panther Party says it deployed 17 of its members to area gasoline station convenience stores to protect them from theft in the hours before and after Hurricane Ike makes landfall.

Owners asked the group to provide private security for their property, said Major Kenyha Shabazz, chairman of Peoples Party No. 3, the Houston affiliate of the Black Panther Party.

“These are the places that service our communities with food, water and fuel,” Shabazz said. “We don’t want these places torn up.”… [Link]

As you can imagine, many of these gas station/convenience stores are desi owned. I find this to be a rather interesting (and perhaps symbiotic) relationship. A party once thought of as extremist in the 60s is now being hired by South Asian business owners (not necessarily known for racial integration into the communities in which they reside). In return, the Panthers are given a new legitimacy and may even help improve race relations since the areas they are protecting also include large hispanic populations.

Once these owners and the community residents the Panthers sought to defend might have seen each other as adversaries, partners in a relationship filled with racial tension. The Panthers’ defense of these corner stores is a nice reminder of how times have changed to the benefit of the whole community.

“We hired these Black Panther people to take care of our two stores, one here on Dowling and the other one on Elgin,” said Nabi Chowdhury, manager of a Mobil station on Dowling Street.

“We have confidence in them because for a long time we have known them, and their attitude and everything, we like,” Chowdhury said. [Link]

Taz suggested I go conduct some interviews at one of these gas stations. However, I don’t want to get shot as a potential looter (I kind of have the avaricious eyes of one).

I saw it myself and then a few of you blew up the tip line (thanks, Taara), my twitter and my skypager; on Sunday, the Grey Lady featured an article about Vogue India’s…interesting choice of models, for one of their recent editorial shoots. The “creative” (and by creative, I mean not at all) direction the magazine (which I still can’t procure in DC) stumbled through raised your threaded-eyebrows as well as some of your hackles, and rightly so.

Giving impoverished people $10,000 bags, Burberry bumbershoots and Fendi bibs for their children reeks of an appalling level of arrogance, an utterly clueless infatuation with “edginess”, and a heartless disregard for those for whom India does not yet shine. But let me tell you how I really feel, as I fisk the NYT article freely:

NEW DELHI — An old woman missing her upper front teeth holds a child in rumpled clothes — who is wearing a Fendi bib (retail price, about $100).

A family of three squeezes onto a motorbike for their daily commute, the mother riding without a helmet and sidesaddle in the traditional Indian way — except that she has a Hermès Birkin bag (usually more than $10,000, if you can find one) prominently displayed on her wrist.

Elsewhere, a toothless barefoot man holds a Burberry umbrella (about $200).

Welcome to the new India — at least as Vogue sees it.

Way to keep it classy, VI. Also, just so you know, the text on that picture says, “Baby’s Day Out: It’s never too early to start living in style.”

…instead of having the humility and decency to remove it. He must really like the taste of toe jam (or not have anyone around who can administer the Heimlich). To each their ignorant own (thanks, anonymous tipster).

Who is Dan Cox, you are surely muttering? He’s the writer and producer of a documentary on the Governator, but no one here at the bunker cares about that— what’s more mutinous is his eyebrow-raising post over at Mediabistro’s “Fishbowl LA” blog, which one of you was sharp enough to catch and release our way. The title of his post is “Spielberg wants Bollywood”, and its relevant text is below:

Steven Spielberg, ever the iconoclast, is just saying NO to the studios these days. As has been reported over and over, he’s doing a deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group.

The India contingent is putting up a billion bucks to give Spielberg carte blanche (or however that translates to Indian) to make and distribute whatever he wants.

Regardless, Speilberg’s looking and the majors are all considering (but not relying on, ho ho) his Reliance cash, but invariably it’s likely that Spielberg will be back in bed with Universal, where all of his filmic links have been in the past, whether DreamWorks SKG or Amblin.

The India Reliance deal is supposed to be completed this week. We’ll see if Spielberg starts wearing a Sari or has a red dot implanted on his forehead. [link to stupidity]

Classy. Now I’m no big-shot, one documentary-creatin’ Hollywood insider, but I do understand “American” words loud and clear; I mean…the American language surely exists, because such a successful person would only conjure a tongue called “Indian” if it were true, no? He wouldn’t be THAT lazy or willfully ignorant? Oh, wait…

I’m not going to back down from anything I posted.There was nothing negative intentionally spoken or implied about Indian or Pakistani of Hindi or Bengalese culture. There was simply an amusing look at why and how Steven Spielberg is more interested in $1 billion from an Indian contingent than he is in finding it on Wall Street or from the studios or from his backyard. [link to stupidity]

THAT is from a comment he posted, in response to outraged readers who called him out for his inexcusable kundi-holery. He says his piece was “simply an amusing look at…”, I say “you know exactly what you were doing and for that, YOU SUCK”. Tomato, thekkalikya.

But wait! THERE ARE MORE CRINGE-INDUCING WORDS WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

Now, maybe it wasn’t all that amusing.Maybe I come off as a club-footed xenophobe. [link to stupidity]

Remove two “maybes” from that quote and lo! It’s suddenly, magically accurate.

But hello India, what I wrote also wasn’t a diatribe about the sub-continent.

I’m fully aware that a sari is a female garment as well as the fact that a red dot on the forehead is not there to be made fun of. It may have cultural or religious relevance. But what should be made fun of is the fact that Spielberg is taking his money from whichever provider that he can find, whether his head is adorned with pink polka dots. [link to stupidity]

Oh, honey…I’m so sorry to break this news, but…India ain’t reading you. India (unlike me) has better things to do with her time, than read you. Also, if you are fully aware of who wears saris and what red dots might signify, then Dan, you have no excuse for what you wrote.

Given the interest in Vikram Pandit taking the helm at Citi almost a year ago, I thought Mutineers might also be interested in the news of another DBD CEO appointed to save a troubled American company.

Motorola’s 70 Million Dollar Man

Shares in the [Motorola] have fallen by more than 60 per cent since October 2006, when investors began to become disillusioned with the company’s falling sales. Its global market share has fallen to 9.5 per cent from 24 per cent two years ago, taking it from second to third place behind Nokia and Samsung.

The ailing handset division has been a drag on Motorola’s overall fortunes and several strategic options have been explored to save the group. The current front runner option is to bring in a new CEO for the group and spin out handsets as a separate company. On Monday, Motorola announced that Sanjay Jha would be tapped to lead this massive turnaround.

Due to my work in wireless systems & Sanjay’s former role as COO of Qualcomm, I’ve spent a lot of time within his sphere of influence (although I’ve never met the guy personally). Jha rose to the COO from the VLSI engineering ranks at Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) - the dominant business unit at the company and the one responsible for the bulk of QCOM’s $3B / year in profit.

InfoUSA, the Omaha, Nebraska, based data-processing and marketing monolith owned by Vinod Gupta faces the prospect of being delisted from the NASDAQ because the company has not filed its annual reports for the 2007 fiscal year, and again for the period ending March 31.

The company’s failure to file is due to ongoing litigation involving its shareholders, which has been stayed until June 30. In 2005, shareholder hedge funds Dolphin Limited Partnership and Dolphin Financial Partners filed suit in a Delaware court alleging that InfoUSA founder and CEO Vinod Gupta had spent corporate funds on personal expenses. link

That discreetly worded phrase, “personal expenses,” refers to the extreeeemly questionable corporate-funded generosity dear Vinod showered on his pals, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Among the allegations:

• Mr. Gupta’s spending on the Clintons is part of a pattern of improper company expenditures for things like luxury cars, jets and houses, as well as a yacht that is notable for being one of the few to have an all-female crew. link

• InfoUSA made $2.1 million in quarterly payments to Mr. Clinton from July 2003 to April 2005, and in October 2005 entered into a new three-year agreement to pay him $1.2 million. It also gave him an option to buy 100,000 shares of infoUSA stock, with no expiration date. link

• InfoUSA paid $18,480 in January 2004 to fly Mrs. Clinton “and her four-person entourage” to New York from New Mexico, where she had made a campaign appearance and attended a book signing. Campaign finance records show that her committee, Friends of Hillary, made a reimbursement of $2,127 for that flight. link

• InfoUSA has spent nearly $900,000 since 2001 flying the Clintons to domestic and international locations and political events…InfoUSA paid for use of a jet plane, the 80-foot yacht American Princess, condos in Hawaii and California and a University of Nebraska-Lincoln stadium box. link

Outsourcing to India is nearly limitless in potential, both boosters and opponents alike claim. As evidence, they point to the proliferation of services that are currently being performed in India. No longer limited to programmers and call centers, outsourcing has grown to encompass BPO, medical transcription, tax return preparation, and concierge services. The latest frontier is the legal profession

In the past three years, the legal outsourcing industry here has grown about 60 percent annually. According to a report by research firm ValueNotes, the industry will employ about 24,000 people and earn revenue of $640 million by 2010. Indian workers who once helped with legal transcription now offer services that include research, litigation support, document discovery and review, drafting of contracts and patent writing. The industry offers an attractive career path for many of the 300,000 Indians who enroll in law schools every year. [Link]

This perspective is based on a vision of India as having a nearly limitless pool of cheap labor, which isn’t true. While there are a lot of Indians, those actually qualified to hold these jobs are fewer in number and competition for these workers is increasing:

Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields… The complaints come at a time when the Indian information technology sector, which includes companies that run call centers and do other outsourced work like medical transcription and claims processing, is facing a dearth of skilled labor… India faces a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees in the information technology sector by 2010… [Link]

And wages in India for the most qualified workers has increased to the point where there are little to no cost savings for companies:

India’s software-and-service association puts wage inflation in its industry at 10% to 15% a year. Some tech executives say it’s closer to 50%. In the U.S., wage inflation in the software sector is under 3%, according to Moody’s Economy.com…while most Indian technology workers’ wages remain low — an average $5,000 a year for a new engineer with little experience — the experienced engineers Silicon Valley companies covet can now cost $60,000 to $100,000 a year. “For the top-level talent, there’s an equalization,” [Link]

Cool kid alert: Teen entrepreneur Anshul Samar, age 14. This fiesty entrepreneurial spirit will be one of the key speakers at tomorrow’s Second Annual Teens in Tech Conference, sponsored by Sun, Microsoft, HP, and others.

Anshul is the founder and CEO of Alchemist Empire, Inc. He has created a fantasy role-playing chemistry board game, Elementeo: “Our aim is to combine fun, excitement, education, and chemistry, all in one grand concoction! We don’t want to create a fantasy wizard world or create a boring education textbook world, but combine the two where fun and learning come together without clashing!” [more]

MSN recently featured Anshul in “Whiz Kids: 10 Overachievers Under 21” (thanks to newstab posters garbanzobean and anmdavadi). How did he get started? In in his own words:

Entrepreneurship is cool, and so is chemistry! Both have lots of actions, reactions, explosions, experimentation, and most importantly, the joy and excitement of creating something new! Creating a company has been on my mind for a long time, but it was only in the 5th grade when the idea of a chemistry based card game struck me. I must have created and thrown away dozens of prototypes to get just the right concoction of education and fun. … Elementeo is a game where you create compounds, combat elements, and conquer chemistry… A game of battle, chemical reactions, and powerful scientists… And a game that kids, teenagers, college students, teachers, scientists, parents, and grandparents can all play and have fun.

The excitement Anshul has poured into his maiden entrepreneurial voyage (the game will be released this month!) is evident at his company’s homepage which is very much written in his voice … and in this video from Mark Coker of VentureBeat, taken at the 2007 TieCon conference in Silicon Valley.

Here’s to his motto of “Create, Combat, Conquer!”

Those who know me well often joke that I’d make a good spokesperson for a Google ad. I can’t help it if Google has changed my life (and I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels that way). The google desktop app has saved my writing life more times than I care to mention, and google calendar is the means by which my husband and I can always convince each other to attend otherwise resisted events (“Oh, you couldn’t make it? I had no idea. Your google calendar said you were free!”)

So, of course, my curiosity piqued when I recently read about Siva Vaidhyanathan’s recent book deal with the University of California Press.

Per Publisher’s Weekly:

THE GOOGLIZATION OF EVERYTHING: How one company is transforming culture, commerce and community - and why we should worry, showing how Google is taking on governments, organizations and entire industries - and the implications of Google knowing more about us than we know about it.

(The book began as an open book experiment sponsored by the Institute for the Future of the Book, where Vaidhyanathan is a fellow, and was subsequently picked up for publication.)

Vaidhyanathan is a rising cultural historian and media scholar whose two previous books Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System have met with wide praise.

He is approaching the book as both a fan and as a critic, he says at his website: “I am in awe of all that Google has done and all it hopes to do. I am also wary of its ambition and power.”

Representatives from 14 African nations were in New Delhi for the first-ever India-Africa summit, which just ended today. (The India-Africa Summit follows closely on the heels of the China-Africa summit of November 2006.)

Attendees signed off on the Delhi Declaration and the Africa-India Framework for Cooperation, pledging cooperation in the areas of energy, terrorism, climate change and UN Reforms. An informal and equally important outcome: India is looking to play a far more prominent role in Africa’s economic development than China in coming years.

My uncle Gobind is a retired World Bank developmental economist who has served as economic adviser to the government of Ghana. I asked him to share his thoughts on this historic summit.

“While India is less prominent than China in Africa today, both in trade and investments and aid,” he said, “it is more respected than China because of its image, its democracy, its presence in education, industry— especially pharmaceuticals and railways, and IT. There is growing interest in Africa in India, but it is not yet a hot issue, except for mining companies and the new private oil companies like Reliance. India is currently big in Sudan, DRC, Nigeria, Zambia and S. Africa. But it’s increasing its presence everywhere.”

The Emerging Economy report, released yesterday, underlined the role of Indian corporations in driving new technology usage in Africa. From the Earth Times [full story link]:

Chinese corporations have made significant investments in Africa over the past decade. For example, China’s Civil Engineering Construction Corporation is building the $8.3 billion railroad linking Lagos and Kano. However, the Report also points out that Indian entrepreneurs have long enjoyed trading relations in Africa, particularly along the continent’s east coast, running from Kenya down to the tip of South Africa. In the early part of the 20th century Indian engineering and consumer brands were considered as reliable as those coming from Europe. Bilateral trade between India and Africa increased from less than US$ 1 billion in 1991 to over US$ 9 billion in 2005. Today, the Government of India is aiming to achieve a trade turnover of US$ 500 billion by 2010.

My grandfather might be one of those Indian entrepreneurs referred to above. In the 1930s, Dada came to West Africa as apprentice to an Indian trading company. He ended up placing his roots down in Ghana where he opened a chain of movie theatres and imported movies from India and China for a rural audience.

Remember this cringe-worthy Superbowl ad about the stereotypical desi salesman who is about to be fired by his cranky white boss? [Update - changed from the Panda ad to the Ramesh ad, thanks VV]

It was written by the CEO of InfoUSA himself, Vin Gupta. The ad was not just offensive, it was a total waste of money:

The panda ad ranked 45th out of 55 ads shown during the Super Bowl. The other Salesgenie ad, with a salesman who thinks he is going to get fired, ranked 50th. [Link]

Gupta doesn’t seem to mind spending money though, as long as it gets him visibility. Gupta is an FOB, a Friend of Bill that is (although he is also a DBD). Gupta is generous to Bill not just with his own personal money, but also with the company’s resources as well:

Gupta’s Clinton connection came into the spotlight last year, when angry shareholders of InfoUSA filed a lawsuit in a Delaware court; claiming that the CEO had wasted millions of dollars of the publicly-traded company to get into Clinton’s good books.

They seem to have good cause. The plaintiffs have alleged that Gupta misused the company jet to fly the Clintons to vacations. Gupta is believed to have paid Bill Clinton $2 million for vaguely-defined ‘consulting services’. In addition, he is alleged to have spent close to a million dollars to fly Bill Clinton around the world for his Presidential Foundation work; and to fly Hillary to campaign events. [Link]

After the Clintons left the White House, Gupta hired Bill Clinton as a consultant. It’s one of two continuing business relationships he has had since leaving office, and it has been worth $3.3 million, in addition to the options on 100,000 shares of stock. [Link]

But here the story shifts, and becomes stranger.

Dear ING Direct,

I blog this with a heavy heart.

Earlier today, mastervk submitted a link to a news story which caught my attention; it dealt with gender inequality and speaking out against a regressive advertising campaign in India. Duly noted, I thought, rather sure I was going to blog about it later. I saw the excerpt for this story a few more times throughout the day, but apparently I was not really understanding it, for if I had, the disappointment I suddenly feel would have flattened me earlier.

I didn’t realize they were talking about you.

You, ING, you are the one behind this?

In the commercial, the birth of a girl is followed by what the Delhi government considers as a derogatory statement: Hai To Pyaari Lekin Bojh Hai Bhari (Though loveable, she’s still a burden). “It sends out wrong message,” said education secretary Rina Ray. She has written to National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and Delhi Commission for Women(DCW) asking them to ensure the advertisement is withdrawn and also a public apology is issued by the insurance firm on all channels.

Ray is unhappy with the overall gender bias in the ad, particularly the scene which depicts fathers being weighed down by the financial costs involved in bringing up their daughters and funding their studies so much so that the ground beneath their feet caves in. Ray quotes a hospital scene from the commercial in her letter which depicts girls as a burden.

Ray said: “This is unfair. Parents spend money for a boy’s education too. Then why single out girls, especially when the country is positively debating women empowerment.”

The DCW has written to the insurance company asking them to stop airing the advertisement. “Promoting such biased views on the girl child may have a demoralising impact on women,” said Barkha Singh, DCW chairperson.

The TOIlet paper concludes with this paragraph:

Bollywood must be reeling from the disrespect paid to it by its smaller cousin in California. It’s not bad enough that the Hindi version of Spiderman 3 broke box office records in India, outgrossing domestic productions with a clear ripoff of Indian cinema complete with Tobey Maguire’s Bollystyle costumes, dancing, and hair acting. But to make matters worse, Disney has been muscling in on Bolly’s home turf, the absurd movie musical.

In an audacious move akin to bringing coals to Newcastle, Disney released High School Musical (1) with songs and dialogue dubbed into Hindi in 2006. The new release involved a few subtle changes that revealed how well Disney understands Indian film audiences:

Consider “Bop to the Top,” the title of a song from the first movie. In India, one of Disney’s most important foreign markets, the phrase was changed to “Pa Pa Pa Paye Yeh Dil,” which the company said roughly translates to “the heart is full of happiness” in Hindi. A Hindi translator contacted by The New York Times said: “It’s sort of like a Duran Duran song. The words sound sexy but mean nothing…” [Link]

The dubbed version of HSM did well enough that now Disney is releasing the sequel, High School Musical 2, with an entirely Indian cast. It’s just one of many versions of HSM2 with local casts - you can see them displayed in this medley of different adaptations of HSM2 from around the world.

Below is the climatic song in the all-desi HSM2, Aaja Nachle, the replacement for “All for One” in the American version of HSM2:

The song is a hit worldwide:

According to Nielsen Media Research, more than 1.5 million children age 6 to 11 watched “Aaja Nachle.” Even in a foreign language, children “can feel what they’re saying,” Ms. Sweeney said. [Link]

The Indian film industry is taking Disney’s blatant neo-imperialism very seriously, and is launching a counter-strike. They have announced that SRK will star in a completely naturalistic biopic of Dalip Singh Saund’s life to be released for American markets, saying that anything Miramax can do, they can do better.

Via Manish’s News Tab at Ultrabrown, a blog post by John Elliott (“Riding the Elephant”) at Fortune. Is it just me, or is there a certain contradiction in the following paragraphs?

India has unsophisticated investors. I’m talking about stock market investors of course following the stock market crash, with Mumbai’s key Sensex index plummeting 19% from an all time and over-priced high of above 21,000 on January 8 to under 17,000 by Tuesday. Such a remark, judging from past Riding the Elephant experience, will generate a furious tirade of comments, especially from readers based in the United States who are always anxious to protect India’s reputation.

But how else can you explain a market which swings from such extremes. Last week it mobilized bids totaling an astronomic $180 billion for the $2.9 billion initial public offering launched by Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power (which has yet to produce a revenue stream). On Monday and Tuesday, it crashed, seemingly ignoring the country’s strong economic fundamentals. As Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s finance minister, pointed out when he tried to calm nerves during the slide, the fundamentals are strong. The economy, he pointed out, is growing at around 9%, and the prime minister’s economic advisory council is forecasting 8.5% for 2008-09.

It’s not just Indian retail investors, but foreign funds (many of them based in the United States) that have been rushing herd-like into Mumbai in recent months - and then rushed out on in the past days. This afternoon I spoke to a leading Mumbai banker who has close links with the United States. “If anyone thought that having strong foreign institutional involvement in the Indian market would bring stability, it is clear that that assumption was misplaced,” he said (anonymously because of his links). He complained about a “lack of conviction and analysis” by foreign funds which “on Tuesday told me they were ‘getting the hell out of India’ and today are saying ‘buy.’” (link)

Who is John Elliott referring to when he talks about “India’s Investors”? His title and first sentence suggest he means local Indian investors. But the main focus of his post, starting in the third paragraph, is actually on foreign investors, who have added to the instability of the Indian markets with panic selling. Read the rest of his post — who do you think he is really talking about?

In our new and improved news tab, I saw a story posted by Chachaji about how Mukesh Ambani was now, at least temporarily, the richest man in the world!

Not actually the richest man in the world, but he is in the top five.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani today became the richest person in the world, surpassing American software czar Bill Gates, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and famous investment guru Warren Buffett, courtesy the bull run in the stock market.

Following a strong share price rally today in his three group companies…the net worth of Mukesh Ambani rose to 63.2 billion dollars (Rs 2,49,108 crore). In comparison, the net worth of both Gates and Slim is estimated to be slightly lower at around 62.29 billion dollars each, with Slim leading among the two by a narrow margin. [Link]

If this was true, I thought, it was a meteoric rise. In 2006 he was ranked 56th richest in the world according to Forbes, in March of 2007 he was still only number 14. That got Rajni the monkey fact checker curious, so she poked around further.

It turns out that Ambani isn’t the really richest man in the world, although he may be in the top 5 along with Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Lakshmi Mittal:

Reliance Industries moved swiftly on Tuesday to deny a report that company chief Mukesh Ambani has become the world’s richest man thanks to a surge in stock market. An agency report putting his wealth at $63.2 billion hailed his rise as another triumph for the nation’s booming economy. But Reliance said Ambani was not quite so rich after all, with a net worth of somewhere in the region of $50 billion. [Link]

This is still a huge increase, seeing as he was worth only $20 billion in March, but it doesn’t put him at the top of the heap either.

Honestly though, to me this is all arcane like counting angels on the head of a pin. Once you’re wealthier than Midas, it doesn’t matter to me how much you have. My question is, when will Ambani and Mittal become philanthropists at the level of Buffett and Gates?

Related posts: Today’s Carnegies?, Forbes names India’s richest, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and …

Via Venkig (on our spiffy new News Tab), I see that the Indian car company Mahindra & Mahindra will soon be selling a line of SUVs and pickup trucks in the U.S. Though Mahindra is already well-established in the U.S. as a seller of tractors, there’s a fair amount of skepticism as to whether the company can break into what is already a pretty crowded market:

Mahindra & Mahindra, a conglomerate based in Mumbai, intends to find out. In spring, 2009, the company plans to launch two- and four-door pickups and a sport-utility vehicle in the U.S. This trio of diesel-powered trucks will compete against a big pack of aggressively promoted offerings from General Motors, Ford, Dodge, Nissan, and Toyota. All of these manufacturers have been warring over a domestic pickup market that is shrinking and a SUV market that’s overcrowded.

Skepticism abounds. Trucks in the U.S. are sold with imagery of waving flags, macho companionship, and brawny workers showing off feats of towing strength to the sound of John Mellencamp anthems. Buyers tend to be loyal, practical traditionalists. (link)

The reasons Mahindra trucks might have a chance are 1) they’re aiming pretty low initially, and will come in with a small number of trucks and a modest marketing budget; and 2) gas mileage:

But at a time of soaring gas prices, Mahindra’s vehicles are going to have one big thing in their favor: superior fuel economy. Despite diesel’s historic brown image, it is emerging as a green technology. New low-sulfur fuel, federally mandated in 2006, can produce mileage figures that nearly equal those of more fashionable hybrids. Mahindra estimates that its compact SUV, the Scorpio, and pickups, one of which will be called the Appalachian, will get about 30 miles per gallon in the city and as much as 37 on the highway. That compares with 30 city/34 highway for the $27,000 Ford Escape SUV hybrid and 21 city/27 highway for the gas-powered $23,000 Toyota RAV4. (link)

A cheap SUV that gets 30 miles per gallon city? Sign me up! That appeals to me economically as well as environmentally. (I’m now an official member of the rather absurd class of people who want an SUV for practical reasons — try stuffing a jogger stroller into the trunk of a mid-size sedan — but is ambivalent about actually buying one because of the low gas mileage.)

What do you think, does Mahindra have a shot at selling pickup trucks and SUVs in the American market? Would you consider buying a “Mahindra Appalachian”?

(For readers in India, does anyone have a Mahindra Scorpio? How is it?)

Renu Khator is about to become President of the University of Houston [Hat tip: Ruchira Paul]. While this isn’t an issue I’ve followed closely, I suspect that there are few desi, or even asian university presidents in America. Given that female presidents of major (co-educational) academic institutions is a fairly new thing (Harvard just appointed its first), this is a major step forward, even if it is only in Houston .

Khator held the number 2 job at University of South Florida for four years, during which time she turned down offers from 3 different universities. She was the only candidate at University of Houston, basically because she’s a stud:

Khator recruited top faculty and more students from diverse backgrounds while raising millions from government and private sources. During her four years as provost, South Florida’s sponsored research grew by 22 percent, from $255 million to $310 million. She also took the lead reeling in the university’s largest donation ever, a gift worth $34.5 million from a Tampa couple. [Link]

I’m not surprised that she rose through the ranks at major public universities. Private universities are very conservative places because they’re run by wealthy, moneyed alums and their administrators have to get along with them. This results in nepotistic admission policies at elite private universities that try to regenerate the last generation of elites by giving less qualified students from the right families a hand up:

Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America’s highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions’ minimum admissions standards… White students who failed to make the grade on all counts [GPA, SATs, recommendations, and extracurricular activities] were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race… Leaders at many selective colleges … instruct their admissions offices to reward those who financially support their institutions, because keeping donors happy is the only way they can keep the place afloat. [Link]

Hopefully under Khator’s guidance, University of Houston will cultivate the next generation of elites, a more meritocratic one.

As loathe as I am to admit it, jobs in finance look very sexy on paper. Managing a small business involves running to OfficeMax, the post office, or the bank – nothing that will grab one’s attention. There are no million dollar deals, or headlines in the newspaper announcing the bonus levels of other office managers. During a lunch break, I’ll come across a story about some new merger, or read those stories about the year-end bonuses that will exceed my salary by several degrees. Being a good capitalist, I understand the role that a vibrant financial sector plays in a modern market – allocating capital efficiently, allowing entrepreneurs a new source of investment funds, and rewarding investors who are taking risks with their money.

What I’ve always wondered though, is how prominent should finance be in a nation’s economic profile? You can even go down to the city level – how much role should Wall Street play in New York’s local economy? What role do the futures exchanges play in Chicago today, and what role will they play 20 years from now? For a developing nation like India, how prominent a role can financial firms play? Should the rules governing their behavior be different than in a developed country?

Religion and politics in India make for a combustible combination, but a recent article in The Wall Street Journal on Azim Premi entitled Secular Engineer: How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India raises the matter of religion and economic advancement. The article profiles Premji, and gives a brief history of Wipro – transforming it from a seller of vegetable oil to the IT powerhouse of today.

A couple of things about the article rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it was the mention of religion in the title. Does anyone know of the religious background of billionaires from China, Japan, or Western nations? Only recently did I find out the owner of the Marriott hotel chain is a Mormon.

The article repeats one of the standard explanations of why Indian Muslims are under-performing their neighbors – that after partition, the best and brightest Muslims left for Pakistan. If that is the case, then Pakistan should be further along the development path than India, and there should be a number of world-beating Pakistani (or Bangladeshi) companies. Such is not the case – while both nations certainly have wealthy families, they are more likely to have garnered that wealth through methods usually seen in many developing nations – graft, monopolized markets, government favors, feudal relationships, etc.

Not that you care, but I almost named this post A Salmagundi of NPR. However, I’m smitten with the way some Desis say “potpourri”, so I couldn’t resist the allure of that word. Oh, how do they say it? Like so: pottu-puri

None of these stories feels substantial enough to merit their own post; what does feel significant is perking up FOUR times during Morning Edition, because there are four different sepia-colored stories! That’s almost a fifth of the program! Here is what I (and undoubtedly fellow NPR-phile-Abhi, as well) heard:

1) Moray Eels are toothy!

Scientists in California have reported that Moray eels have a set of teeth within a second set of jaws, called the pharyngeal jaws, that help them capture their prey.

Once the Moray eel secures its prey with its first set of jaws, the pharyngeal jaws reach up from its throat, grabbing and pulling the prey down through its esophagus.

One of you already has an itchy-trigger-comment finger, I know it, so stop it— the brown angle is a-comin’…

Rita Mehta is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California Davis who studies the evolution of diversity in eel feeding behavior.

Like, whoa. Not only is there a female scientist to celebrate, this has to do with my alma mater as well! w00t Davis! We study Moray Eels!

“What we discovered is that the pharyngeal jaws of Moray’s have the greatest mobility of any pharyngeal jaws ever documented,” Mehta says.

We’re heading into an election year in the U.S., which means facts are largely going to be irrelevant to most public discussions of issues for the next fourteen months. Instead, we’ll be treated to spin, counterspin, and more spin. The big Indian software & services companies realize this, and the Times reports that they’ve decided to hire lobbyists to counterspin the inevitable protectionist rhetoric (the original spin, as it were) that “outsourcing is costing America jobs.”

The economic impact of outsourcing is complicated, far too complicated to be given justice in a 30 second ad or crowd-pleasing stump speech. While it’s hard to argue that no jobs have been lost to outsourcing, there’s no reliable number on how many jobs are actually being lost (it’s certainly nowhere near 3.3 million, as was predicted earlier). There’s also some evidence that “insourcing” creates far more jobs than outsourcing takes away (the U.S. remains a net exporter of business services, for instance). And yes, some Indian companies are now opening up decent-sized offices in the U.S., and hiring American workers. (As you’ll recall, this came up back in June, with the infamous Obama campaign memo on Hillary Clinton’s purported connections to India.) See the conservative Heritage Foundation for more; and see this article at IHT for why it may not matter anyway.

The lobbyists quoted in the Times article are even adding some new arguments and approaches to their arsenal:

But the core of the Indian vendors’ new strategy appears to be removing themselves from the limelight. Outsourcing is not about us, goes the new pitch to lawmakers, it benefits Americans, including ones in your district.

The Washington lobbyist who asked not to be identified said that a focus of the campaign was to collect data on Indian companies’ investments in the United States and then to lobby members of Congress from districts where those investments have created jobs.

For example, a lawmaker from Washington State might be told something like this: Indian outsourcing companies may funnel some Seattle-area technology jobs to India, but with the affluence that creates in India, more and more Indians are flying. That has made India a huge buyer of Boeing aircraft and thus a creator of jobs in the Seattle area, where Boeing does much of its manufacturing.(link)

I don’t know — the tradeoff described here seems awfully indirect, and I’m not sure a politican could really sell the rising Indian middle class as a positive to an American middle class that’s currently dealing with economic uncertainty. Readers, do you buy the argument above? Can people think of other instances where the trade-off works this way? What about cases where it doesn’t?

This print advertisement by Intel has been causing quite a stir of late [via Huffington Post]. It seems to convey the idea that owning an Intel chip will help you tackle the same amount of work as you could with a ship of slaves (while making you feel powerful):

I almost fell out of my seat when I saw Intel’s new advertising campaign. It shows six bowing African American athletes before a chino-clad, oxford-shirted white manager with the slug: “Maximize the power of your employees.” This ad reminds me of a slave-ship, and it’s hard to imagine the same imagery did not come to mind for the savvy ad exec that created it…

Intel is not just promoting insensitive images, it’s also leading a signature drive for a California ballot measure that would eliminate class action lawsuits over civil rights issues. Intel’s board of directors have been sent 25,000 faxes calling upon the company to withdraw that pending ballot measure. [Link]

This morning’s Los Angeles Times had an article examining the way in which Hillary Clinton often straddles the fence on the outsourcing issue by cleverly playing to both Indian Americans and to big labor (two of her big money supporters):

To many labor unions and high-tech workers, the Indian giant Tata Consultancy Services is a serious threat — a company that has helped move U.S. jobs to India while sending thousands of foreign workers on temporary visas to the United States.

So when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) came to this struggling city to announce some good news, her choice of partners was something of a surprise.

Joining Tata Consultancy’s chief executive at a downtown hotel, Clinton announced that the company would open a software development office in Buffalo and form a research partnership with a local university. Tata told a newspaper that it might hire as many as 200 people.

The 2003 announcement had clear benefits for the senator and the company: Tata received good press, and Clinton burnished her credentials as a champion for New York’s depressed upstate region. [Link]

In this arrangement, both sides appear to win. Buffalo gets new jobs and a big Indian business becomes more credible in its future dealings with the U.S. My impression is that most Indian Americans (especially second-gen) don’t care much about the outsourcing issue purely on its merits either way. There are a lot more important things to debate. What is much more important to Indian Americans is the skill with which the candidate handles the issue. The slightest hint of xenophobic or protectionist speech in an attempt to assuage big labor (or xenophobes) pisses off the South Asian voter. Obama’s campaign figured that out the hard way earlier this year. In truth, Obama and Clinton both want desi money but they have to pocket it by staying just far enough away that they don’t come off as curry lovers. For example, earlier this month wealthy IITers held their annual alumni conference in Santa Clara. IIT + Silicon Valley = $$$. Destitute John McCain would have been there in a heart beat if invited. Clinton however, appeared by videocon. This way she could appeal to Indian Americans and get their money without pissing off big labor by actually being in a room full of foreign educated Indians. That’s some skill. The true test for Clinton (and the other Dems) lies ahead. Big labor is getting smart about her game and is begining to raise a ruckus:

… in Buffalo, the fruits of the Tata deal have been hard to find. The company, which called the arrangement Clinton’s “brainchild,” says “about 10” employees work here. Tata says most of the new employees were hired from around Buffalo. It declines to say whether any of the new jobs are held by foreigners, who make up 90% of Tata’s 10,000-employee workforce in the United States.

As for the research deal with the state university that Clinton announced, school administrators say that three attempts to win government grants with Tata for health-oriented research were unsuccessful and that no projects are imminent.

The Tata deal underscores Clinton’s bind as she attempts to lead a Democratic Party that is turning away from the free-trade policies of her husband’s administration in the 1990s and is becoming more skeptical of trade deals and temporary-worker visas. [Link]

I’ve been watching with a mixture of excitement and unease this past year as the Rupee has edged up on the Dollar; earlier this spring, the Rupee/Dollar ratio reached close to 40:1 (right now it’s dropped back to about 41:1). Now, I understand this could have all sorts of implications for the Indian economy, some good (it’s a sign of a strong economy) and some bad (it could discourage foreign investment) — but I’d better leave it to the economists in the house to sort out “what it all means.”

What I’m interested in today is an entirely different kind of Rupee inflation, specifically the repurposing of Indian Rupee coins in eastern India. BBC reports that 1 Rupee, 2 Rupee, and 5 Rupee coins are being melted down and turned into razors, at which point they are smuggled into Bangladesh:

Police in Calcutta say that the recent arrest of a grocer highlights the extent of the problem. They seized what they said was a huge coin-melting unit which he was operating in a run-down shack.

The grocer confessed to melting down tens of thousands of Indian coins into razor blades which were then smuggled into Bangladesh, police said.

“Our one rupee coin is in fact worth 35 rupees, because we make five to seven blades out of them,” the grocer allegedly told the police. “Bangladeshi smugglers take delivery of the blades at regular intervals.”(link)

The problem is worst in West Bengal and Assam, which border Bangladesh. The BBC article describes some of the details of the problem — touts who buy coins operate with impunity right in front of the Reserve Bank where new coins are issued. And the coin depletion problem persists, even though the Mint has now reduced the metal content of the coins. (You can see a nice group of diagrams describing the constitution of the coins at the RBI website. 1 Rupee coins are made from stainless steel, while 2 and 5 Rupee coins are made of a copper-nickel alloy.)

Normally the metal in coins is worth less than the cost of melting them down and turning them into something else; it has to be that way, for the system to work. But apparently that’s no longer the case in eastern India. Indeed, unless the market in razor blades made from Rupee coins becomes saturated, causing the price of razors to drop, I can’t see how or why the current black market in coins should lose steam.

I always find it a little suspect when people try to do novelty airlines, maybe because I’m one of those paranoid people who, even after years of flying and hundreds of flights, still routinely thinks “We’re all going to die!” at least two or three times on any given flight. Thus, I will never fly the now-grounded “Hooters Air,” even if it does come back. (Guys, keep your eyes on the… cockpit? please?)

Kingfisher Airlines might end up as a better bet, but as might be proper in an airline that emerged out of a beer company, if I do ever fly with them I’ll still probably feel compelled to smell the pilot’s breath before I take my seat. Apparently, Kingfisher Airlines, one of India’s newer domestic carriers, has signed a deal with Airbus to buy several jumbo and superjumbo planes, with an eye to entering the international market. The move is part of a general boom in international travel to India (which has been up by about 40% this year alone).

The New York Times article about the event spends as much time talking about the lifestyle of Kingfisher’s flamboyant CEO Vijay Mallya, as it does considering the economic viability of the venture (they do note that Kingfisher Airlines has yet to turn a profit as a domestic carrier in India):

Mr. Mallya personally is the sort of unfettered corporate czar that many American boardrooms have not seen in at least half a century. He surrounds himself with a close group of longtime advisers, wears copious diamonds, holds business meetings at his house until 5 in the morning, winks at female journalists and flaunts the “good times” corporate motif in most aspects of his life.

At home, a Mercedes, a Ferrari and a Bentley are parked in his driveway. His ornate living room is filled with silver gilded furniture and art objects like a marble statue of a nymph-like woman, as well as a Picasso sketch. His CD collection includes dance, lounge and party music.

A group of largely silent young women clad in white deliver drinks, answer phones and clean up ashtrays. (link)

Kya baat hai. Vijay Mallya seems to be a mix of new-school Indian self-confidence and ambition (this is a huge endeavour), and a kind of old-school, “ladies’ man” absurdity that seems to have come out of some 70s Bollywood movie. Even the attractive female flight attendants are a big part of the company’s marketing campaign, which seems like an obvious Vijay Mallya touch (see this article).

In general, I have to say that Kingfisher’s “keep the good times rolling” marketing campaign simply isn’t appealing to me. From an airline I really want the boring things — professionalism, competence, and yeah, safety — not so much “party time.”

But is he perhaps appealing to a real demographic, one that’s a bit less stodgy and paranoid than me? Are people really going to fly Kingfisher “Good Times” Airlines to go to and from the Desh?

[UPDATE: Obama has now distanced himself from this memo. See Anna’s post from 6/18/07 for more details]

Today’s New York Times has a story (thanks, anonymous tipster) about the Clintons’ recent financial disclosures, and their decision to liquidate all their stock holdings. Fine; makes sense.

But what’s really remarkable about this story is the questionable anonymous memo issued by the Obama campaign in response to the Clinton disclosures. The memo amounts attempts to smear Clinton as being too friendly to India, and is laced with xenophobic sentiments and insinuations.It starts with the title of the memo itself: “HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA.”

And it goes downhill from there. Obama’s campaign memo (read the whole thing) accuses the Clintons of a number of things:

• They start out by stating that the Clintons own stock in an Indian company called “Easy Bill,” which is actually just a company that allows Indians to automate their bill payments. This is not a BPO type company, but a service for Indians within India, so one wonders why is this even included.

• They then go after the Clintons for accepting speaking fees from Cisco (this is Bill) and campaign donations from Cisco employees (Hillary). Cisco may be more guilty than many software companies of dumping its U.S. based workforce in favor of cheaper Indian engineers in the early 2000s, but it’s nevertheless the case that U.S. high tech job market is in pretty good shape again overall — outsourcing hasn’t created the apocalypse that was feared. So this accusation is a little bit strange: I doubt that many Americans outside of Silicon Valley actively think of Cisco as an evil outsourcer.

• They find fault with Clinton’s relationship with the hotel tycoon Sant Singh Chatwal, whose family has been discussed many times here at SM. Chatwal has organized two big fundraisers for her, netting a total of $1 million in donations. Chatwal also started “Indian Americans for Hillary 2008,” which ought not to be an issue (doesn’t Obama have South Asians for Obama hosted on his campaign website?). The Obama campaign’s memo underlines Chatwal’s various legal difficulties, general financial shadiness, and pending court cases, to make it all look like some kind of shady back-room deal. This accusation seems strange to me, since the fundraisers are completely legit, even if Chatwal himself is in trouble.

• Finally, they quote Lou “Keep Em Out” Dobbs several times, as he mocked Hillary in 2004 for saying that “outsourcing cuts both ways” (as in, it creates some American jobs as well as sending others overseas). In fact, though her particular example of “10 new jobs in Buffalo” was a bit weak, Hillary was right about this: companies like TCS are opening up a number of U.S. offices, and more generally, the greater efficiency enabled by BPO helps keep American companies competitive on a global scale, and has, in my view, actually helped the U.S. economy. (All of Hillary’s quotes about “outsourcing cutting both ways” are from the 2004 campaign season, incidentally.)

So now the question is, how aware was Obama himself of the contents of this “anonymous” memo? If Obama doesn’t distance himself from the memo immediately, this macaca is going to be sending his moolah to “Hillary Clinton, D-Punjab.”

[UPDATE: Obama has now distanced himself from this memo. See Anna’s post from 6/18]

SM Reader 3rd Eye posted an interesting stat from my corner of the RealWorld on the News Tab -

Desi’s head up 4 of 12 2007 IPO’s from Mass State

In the past two months alone, four Massachusetts based companies with Indian chief executives have registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public: Starent Networks Corp, Netezza Corp, BladeLogic Inc and Virtusa Corp.

They represent a third of state companies that have filed for initial public offer (IPOs) this year.

Now Desi tech entrepreneurship is not only alive and well but also well-discussed here on the Mutiny. For a host of reasons, as the article notes, Desi’s have done an admirable job in Tech (and particularly, it appears, in MA 2007). Still, there’s an interesting angle revealed by the firms profiled here. The theme is probably quite familiar to Desi’s who live / breath the tech biz and less so to those outside of it —

Most of you have heard about the tainted pet food, right? A simple Google search yields more than 7,800 stories about the Chinese rice and wheat gluten that contained melamine to increase the apparent protein content of the food. While American pets may have died, the risk to humans posed by this, even if used as feed for chickens or fish, is pretty low.

Contrast that with the tainted cough syrup that has probably killed thousands children in the Third World. What? You haven’t heard about this? Of course not. It’s not as sexy a story. There are over 40 times as many stories about the tainted pet food in America than about tainted cough syrup overseas.

Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world … Researchers estimate that thousands have died… Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India. [Link]

The Bangladesh incident happened 15 years ago, yet this kind of mass poisoning continues to happen in different parts of the world, most recently in Panama:

In Bangladesh, investigators found poison in seven brands of fever medication in 1992, but only after countless children died. A Massachusetts laboratory detected the contamination after Dr. Michael L. Bennish, a pediatrician who works in developing countries, smuggled samples of the tainted syrup out of the country in a suitcase. Dr. Bennish … said that given the amount of medication distributed, deaths “must be in the thousands or tens of thousands…” [Link]

The bones of the story are the same in both cases. FDA issues recent warnings after a Chinese manufacturer cuts corners and substitutes a cheaper lethal ingredient for a more expensive one. With the cough syrup it was diethylene glycol for glycerine.

It’s no secret that Indian parents tend to meddle play more of an active role in their children’s lives than do American ones. Nor does this end when kids go away to University. Still, I was surprised to see how seriously even the IIT schools take their role “in loco parents” (which is Latin for “as crazy overbearing parents”).

The authorities in India’s premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay (Mumbai), have cut off internet access to students in hostels at night. They feel that 24-hour internet access is hampering students’ academic performance and overall personality development… “they preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates. Academics are of primary importance for us but we also want our students to have a well-rounded personality…” [Link]

Helloooo? Who are they kidding - it’s a geek factory and proud of it. If students wanted a well rounded personality, they wouldn’t be at IIT, they’d be out partying and enjoying the Bombay nightlife. Amazingly, they’re not even the first IIT to do this either, IIT Madras cuts off net access for a shorter period of time, from 1 AM to 5AM.

What’s it really about? Well, in part I think it’s about pr0n:

The dean of students affairs, Prakash Gopalan, said one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students’ computers to see that bad content dominated over good. “In the end, this is the Indian taxpayers’ money as well as the IIT’s network and we have an obligation to ensure that it is not misused,” he said. [Link]

And in part it’s about exerting authority and making students show up to lecture:

… they were beginning to see a drop in attendance during morning lectures … “In the morning the students would not be fresh and attentive” … “It is working well for us now,” he said, “From personal experience I can tell you that I have two morning lectures beginning at 0800 and attendance is always 95%…” [Link]

Quite frankly, it’s absurd. If you’re training engineers, you want them to be able to work all night on their projects, and they need the internet to do so. This is like saying that you’re turning off electricity at night so that students don’t stay up all night studying, or worse yet, reading trashy novels. If you want students to show up for morning lectures, make them worth attending, and make the exams depend on in-class material. Otherwise trust your students to act like adults.

My friend Ansour forwarded me this story from the LA Times on a group of Indian guest workers in the Gulf Coast. Signal International, a marine and fabrication company with shipyards in Texas and Mississippi, hired approximately 300 laborers from India as welders and pipe fitters in Mississippi under a guest worker program. In addition to decent wages, Signal allegedly promised good accommodations and steps to permanent US residency to its guest workers. But some of these workers have protested that Signal did not live up to any of its promises, and that they’ve been subjected to “slave” conditions.

Sabulal Vijayan of Kerala, for example, said that upon arriving to Mississippi, he discovered that the “good” accommodations promised by Signal were actually quite horrible:

“We were like pigs in a cage,” he said. His living quarters were cramped bunk houses where two dozen laborers shared two bathrooms.

It is too hard to live there, because somebody is sneezing, somebody is snoring, and somebody is making sound, and we cannot even go to bathroom without spending hours. There is only two bathrooms and four toilets. And we are struggling very well. And in the mess hall we are not getting good food even. And they are saying that this is Indian good. And when we make complain, the camp manager said to us that, “You are living in slums in India. It is better than that slums.”

The company cut the workers’ wages from $1,850 a week to $1,350 or $950, depending on the position, Vijayan said. When he and other workers complained, they were fired without notice.

“I cannot go back to India because I cannot pay my debt,” Vijayan said of the money he borrowed to pay recruiters. He was so distraught that he recently slashed his wrist in a suicide attempt. His left arm is still bandaged.

Behold: The lime pickle. Not the chili pickle, the mango pickle, the garlic pickle, the eggplant pickle, or any other kind of pickle. And certainly not that abomination, the “mixed pickle.” This here is lime pickle, the greatest and more exalted of all the pickles.

Man, me and lime pickle go back a long, long way. You see, in all my mixed-up, tri-continental, ruthlessly secular upbringing, desi food always held its rightful place. Now we lived in France, not a major center of desi culture either then or now, and this was before the globalization of so-called ethnic gourmet cuisine made the basic spices and ingredients available in all the world’s major cities. But we made do, and the key to our survival, desi food-wise, was the one line of prepared foods, spice mixes and achars on the market, which was inevitably Patak’s. So there was always a bottle of curry paste around — not to serve as the sole ingredient, of course, but to accelerate the process. And whether the curry was prepared from a paste or from scratch, there was always lime pickle on hand to give it the necessary je ne sais quoi.

To this day lime pickle is one of the essential condiments in my refrigerator — that and Dijon mustard (the proper smooth kind, not the grainy stuff), a combination that I guess pretty much encapsulates the flavors of my childhood. I find uses for lime pickle that other people don’t have — or so I think. Except I know that now, as I confess to you that I add lime pickle to my tuna fish salad, a whole bunch of you are going to reveal that you do the same.

Two Sundays ago, the PBS program, Religion and Ethics, decided to ask the question: “Why are Hinduism and Buddhism capturing the attention of business and management circles?”

The show profiled Professor Srikumar S. Rao, of the enormously popular Columbia University class Creativity and Personal Mastery, and Gautam Jain, of the Vedanta Cultural Foundation.

So the answer to the PBS question? The usual hodgepodge: happiness is elusive, the material world is illusory, one must not be possessed by one’s possessions… Since the 80s proved to business people that greed is not necessarily good, satisfying, or even lucrative in the long run, people are searching for another peg to hang a slogan upon.

I have a reflexive gag reaction to anything that smells of Deepak Chopra and the “pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow” school of thought. While Prof. Rao and Gautamji came across as sincere, thoughtful and genuine (at least in the 5 mins alloted to each), I wonder if, despite their best efforts to explode the If/Then model of happiness, their students listen selectively. After all, these are people willing to pay $1,000 over the cost of the class to listen to Prof. Rao. His website, Are You Ready to Succeed? opens with this passage:

Life is short. And uncertain. It is like a drop of water skittering around on a lotus leaf. You never know when it will drop off the edge and disappear. So each day is far too precious to waste. And each day that you are not radiantly alive and brimming with cheer is a day wasted.

Which, frankly, leaves me lost (lotus, skittering, radiant cheer -what?) and slightly thirsty.

Lavina Melwani, who seems to write three-quarters of the articles in the monthly Little India, has an informative piece on desis in the convenience store industry in the current issue. It’s the first focused treatment I’ve seen of the South Asian presence in that business that provides numbers, even if some are estimates, along with anecdotal information and personal stories. A few of the facts:

• According to trade associations, 50,000 to 70,000 of the 140,000 convenience stores in the United States are owned by South Asians. South Asian owned stores do an estimated $100bn annual business.

• Over 50 percent of US 7-Elevens are owned by South Asians.

• 60 percent of South Asian owned stores are independent properties, as opposed to chain franchises - a similar pattern to the motel business, where desis began with independent properties before gradually acquiring brand-name franchises.

In addition to the National Association of Convenience Stores, several desi trade groups have sprung up: the Asian American Convenience Store Association, the Asian American Retailers Association, and the National Alliance of Trade Associations, which is based in the Ismaili community. The AACSA held its second convention in December and a third is scheduled for late May in Florida.

The article profiles a number of desi convenience store owners. It is pretty much the basic immigrant hard-work-make-good story. The risks of the profession are alluded to in passing. One point that stands out is that the convenience store business isn’t just an intermediate stop on the way up to more lucrative or prestigious activities:

[A profiled c-store owner] says the strength of the industry is in its ability to withstand economic downturns. He recalls, “When my son graduated from the University of Texas in 2000 the computer industry was booming. The first job was very good, but then in 2003 he was laid off. So he joined me in the business. The convenience store business is recession proof, because everyone needs bread and beer and lottery tickets. I always felt safe in the convenience store industry.”

Apu from The Simpsons earns a mention, and it’s a positive one:

For long, the only South Asian on TV was Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the owner of the Quik-E-Mart in the TV show The Simpsons. He is known for having worked for 96 hours straight, taken so many bullets that bullets ricochet off the bullets already lodged in his body! He is savvy, brainy and a one-man dynamo of energy. And a Ph.D to boot.

The stereotype has a sliver of truth, as hard work, family solidarity and resourcefulness are at the root of South Asian success in the C-store business. Many owners have professional degrees and include some physicians.

As a side note, the convenience store industry has at least once tried to embrace Apu. Here’s a straight-faced press release from the NACS in 2003. It’s entertaining to see how they twist and turn to explain why Apu may be good for industry image (“Apu encapsulates a number of positive traits found in the convenience store industry”) while never referring to Apu’s ethnicity.

Recently, the NYT carried an article about Dunavant Enterprises, which is “the world’s largest privately owned cotton broker” and the grassroots impact it is having on the lives of African cotton farmers. Dunavant got into the business in Uganda by buying a local company and keeping the Ugandan-Indian management intact. Indians have a long history as cotton buyers in Uganda:

Dunavant is the largest buyer of cotton in Uganda … The country … was once one of the world’s most important producers of cotton; the industry was initially nurtured when Uganda was a British possession. There were no plantations, and the British imported Indians to run gins and to collect raw cotton from small African growers. Over time, Indian brokers assumed huge power and wealth in the cotton trade.

Uganda’s independence in the early 1960s left cotton farming undisturbed until Idi Amin came to power in the 1970s. He expelled immigrants from India and nationalized the cotton gins; a succession of civil wars destroyed production. By the late 1980s, Uganda was producing virtually no cotton. … In 1995, a new government privatized the cotton sector, selling off state assets piecemeal. Among the buyers were former Indian brokers who had once owned the gins. [Link]

Europeans thought cotton plants were made of little sheep!

There’s actually far more here than meets the eye. This is not just another Missippi Masala story, it’s a tale that goes back thousands of years, one of cotton and colonialism, globalization, and empires keeping the brown and black man down.

The use of Indians as middlemen is not so strange when you consider that cotton was first cultivated in India, several millenia ago:

Cotton cultivation in the Old World began from India, where cotton has been grown for more than 6,000 years, since the pre-Harappan period. … The famous Greek historian Herodotus also wrote about Indian cotton: “There are trees which grow wild there, the fruit of which is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The Indians make their clothes of this tree wool.” [Link]

This conflation between cotton and sheep continued in Europe for over 1,000 years:

During the late mediaeval period, cotton became known as an imported fibre in northern Europe, without any knowledge of what it came from other than that it was a plant; noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. [Link]

Even today, the German word for cotton is Baumwolle or “Tree Wool.”

Cotton played a critical role in the colonial period, when the British forcibly closed down the Indian textile industry to eliminate competition, and made India export raw cotton only and buy finished cloth from England. With the industrial revolution, textiles became one of the foundations for England’s dominance in world trade.

Like many desis, I love me some deals. I know I am playing into stereotypes here, especially because I am Gujarati, but come on EVERYONE likes good deals. The enjoyment for me isn’t just finding a good deal, but the whole process: it is the hunt, the chase, and the glory in opening the mail and finding that rebate check that you thought might not ever come. Suffice it to say, I spend a good percentage of my time on the internets perusing some favorite deal sites.

But while I like finding good deals, one of my pet peeves is really poor customer service and the feeling that I have been taken advantage of. So when I was visiting one of my new favorite deal/consumer rights blogs, The Consumerist, (part of the Gawker family of blogs) I was a bit dismayed to hear the tale of our desi brethren, Mahesh, who reported on his parent’s really poor experience on United Airlines.

Mahesh’s parents flew from Omaha, Nebraska to Colombo,Sri Lanka, but at LAX, United Airlines (UAL) refused to honor their tickets, saying that they had not “been approved, authorized and authenticated.” The family ended having to pay $2860 extra to complete their journey. Apparently, Sri Lankan Air Lines, a United code-share partner, could not find the reservation Mahesh’s parents made. Mahesh wrote three letters of complaint to UAL and so far his parents have only received two $300 coupons in return. When Mahesh scoffed at the sum, United wrote, “our policy does not permit us to respond with the generosity you had anticipated. (link)

It seems that instead of writing letters, which I am a big fan of, now when desis are wronged, we blog. So as a good South Asian, Mahesh has started his own blog detailing his battle with United Airlines’ Customer service at evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com. His story is really messed up and I hope the airlines eventually do the right thing and refund the extra three grand his recently operated-on parents had to hand over to get home.

Having shunned the blue temple I have decided to do my furniture shopping on-line where I am more in control of my experience and no blue arrows will show me the way. Per a friend’s recommendation I have been checking out the website Overstock.com. As many of you know, online shopping is now easier than ever. Not only can you read the (often fake) opinions of other buyers, but they also offer you several enlarged views of the item(s) in question. While shopping for a coffee and end table I came upon this find: Kishu End Table (India). “Oh, it’s from India,” I thought. Maybe I should help my peoples out. I decided to take a closer look at the enlarged pictures and this is what I found:

Product Description: Add a touch of India to your decor with the Kishu end table.

I mean, what the hell?!? Does seeing a picture of the man who supposedly made this table make me somehow more inclined to buy it? Do they similarly put up pictures of the 10-year-old Chinese kids who make most of the other products? I couldn’t find any other products where they pulled some exotification crap like this. Any yet strangely, I am now drawn to this table. Maybe a touch of India is what is called for in these mass produced times.

“The Wire meets academia” is how Slate describes Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, the fascinating new book by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. Here’s Emily Bazelon’s summary:

Venkatesh, who is now a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Columbia, spent 1995 to 2003 following the money in 10 square blocks of the Chicago ghetto. He finds an intricate underground web. In it are dealers and prostitutes—and also pastors who take their money, nannies who don’t report income, unlicensed cab drivers, off-the-books car mechanics, purveyors of home-cooked soul food, and homeless men paid to sleep outside stores. Venkatesh’s insight is that the neighborhood doesn’t divide between “decent” and “street”—almost everyone has a foot in both worlds.

Readers of Freakonomics will remember Venkatesh as the University of Chicago graduate student whose fieldwork in the ghetto led him to realize why, for instance, drug dealers still live with their mothers. But his really important previous credit is his first book, American Project (2000), which intricately described the life within, and the social and physical disintegration of, several large blocks of South Side housing projects. Like Mitchell Duneier’s Sidewalk (1999), which investigated the social and economic life of the brothers who sell used books and miscellany on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, Venkatesh’s projects are urban sociology of the most compelling type, and well written to boot.

Yesterday Sudhir was on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC [disclosure: I work for WNYC] and you can hear the conversation, punctuated by some interesting listener calls, here. But all y’all macacas might also enjoy taking a look at the prologue and first chapter of the book, which Harvard University Press makes available on its website. Here’s a quick excerpt from the prologue that points out, among other things, a desi angle:

The Times has a piece on a familiar theme: lots of people are getting college educations in India that aren’t especially useful.

India was once divided chiefly by caste. Today, new criteria are creating a different divide: skills. Those with marketable skills are sought by a new economy of call centers and software houses; those without are ensnared in old, drudgelike jobs.

Unlike birthright, which determines caste, the skills in question are teachable: the ability to communicate crisply in clear English, to work with teams and deliver presentations, to use search engines like Google, to tear apart theories rather than memorize them. (link)

I know many readers will wince when the centrality of English is reinforced (especially by a western media outfit). And the idea that caste is now totally irrelevant seems far-fetched given the intensity of the current debate over reservations and the “creamy layer.” But Anand Giridharadas’s point isn’t so much the English language or the eradication of caste as methodology and ethos — and the fact that 17% of India’s college graduates are unemployed even as the top companies are desperate for talent. His examples of how to do it wrong are Hinduja College and Dahanukar College in Mumbai. In Giridharadas’s analysis, the problem at these colleges is the emphasis on things like obedience and punctuality, rote memorization, and the failure to inculcate the confidence amongst students to question authority.

It seems to me these are problems that could be fixed without overhauling the entire system. Leaving space for questions in a lecture is a start; guest-lecturers from industry might be another. If you agree with Girdharadas’s assessment of the problem, can you think of solutions that don’t involve waiting for the government to fix everything?

It seems that it is time to add another woman to my original list of 'Desi Women Under 30', and am honored to add my homegirl and fellow Bangladeshi-SoCal woman Sumaya Kazi (Thanks, Nirali!).

In its second annual search for the best young entrepreneurs, BusinessWeek.com selected Sumaya Kazi, a Bangladeshi American woman from California, as one of its "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25" for 2006. At 24, she is the youngest manager in her marketing department at Sun Microsystems and co-founder of online media publishing company The Cultural Connect.

Sumaya is one of two women in the Top 25, for the magazine's US, Europe and Asia lists combined.

Readers are encouraged to vote for their top entrepreneur -- the top five will be published in the business magazine's print edition. You can read about Sumaya and vote for her at BusinessWeek.com. [nirali]

The Cultural Connect, started last year as The Desi Connect, before they expanded to include other cultures. I've been following their movement since Sumaya first interviewed me for their inaugural issue of The Desi Connect last year. Since then it has grown tremendously with now over 30,000 subscribers and 30 staff members all under the age of 35.

Last summer, she realized [...] networking was a huge and untapped resource that could help solve two problems: the fact that she and other young Americans of south Asian descent rarely read or hear about themselves in the media, and that these successful young minorities could give back to their communities, if only they knew whom to call.

That's partly how Ms. Kazi and two others dreamed up The CulturalConnect, a free online magazine catering to people from four different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The magazine comes in four editions: "The DesiConnect" ("Desi" refers to a person with South Asian roots), "The MideastConnect," "The LatinConnect," and "The AsiaConnect." [cbs]

Being nominated for a the Top 25 under 25 for BusinessWeek.com is a big achievement. Other desis have made it to this year's nomination as well: Adnan Aziz (licking paper for flavor), Karen Goel and Avichal Garg (online SAT prep course), and Sudhin Shahani (digital media company). I may be a little biased due to my love for all things with desi in the title, as well as in my favoring young desi female breaking "ism" barriers, but my vote goes to Sumaya. Top five make it to the print edition and voting will only be open for a couple of weeks -- go place your vote today!

Harvard Business School Ain’t What It Used To Be….

BusinessWeek is currently featuring a story on the purported influx of Desi inspired ideas into cutting edge American capitalism. Paint me a cynic but the piece takes a simplistic view of 1) what really happens in business or 2) what’s really uniquely desi philosophy or 3) both. The result is a mass of ethnic feel-goodness but not enough of a structured explanation to satiate a, uh, cynic like myself.

Our no-doubt well-intentioned writer christens the movement “Karma Capitalism” -

You might also call it Karma Capitalism. For both organizations and individuals, it’s a gentler, more empathetic ethos that resonates in the post-tech-bubble, post-Enron zeitgeist….while it used to be hip in management circles to quote from the sixth century B.C. Chinese classic The Art of War, the trendy ancient Eastern text today is the more introspective Bhagavad Gita.

BizWeek quotes different folks who take stabs at identifying what “it” is -

…One key message is that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment. Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain. “The key point“The key point is to put purpose before self”,” says Ram Charan, a coach to CEOs such as General Electric Co.’s (GE ) Jeffrey R. Immelt, “is to put purpose before self. This is absolutely applicable to corporate leadership today.”

…”The best way to describe it is inclusive capitalism,” says Prahalad, a consultant and University of Michigan professor who ranked third in a recent Times of London poll about the world’s most influential business thinkers. “It’s the idea that corporations can simultaneously create value and social justice.”

Most of our readers don’t know this but Sepia Mutiny was founded and is run on many of the same principles that Sun Tzu laid out in his classic text, The Art of War. Here are some quotes taken from the walls of our blogging headquarters in North Dakota as an example of what I mean:

-All blogging is based on deception. Hence, when able to blog, we must seem unable; when writing a post, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the readers believe we are far away; when far away, we must make them believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the reader. Feign disorder, and crush them.

-Bring blogging material with you from home, but forage on the commenters… use the conquered commenter to augment one’s own strength.

-The clever blogger imposes his will on the commenter, but does not allow the commenter’s will to be imposed on him. [Link]

Many businesses also adopt Sun Tzu’s teachings which have become part of the fabric of corporate America. An article on our News tab recently informed us that things may soon begin to change. There is a new book of strategy being adopted by prominent business leaders. Business Week reports:

The ancient spiritual wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita seems at first like an odd choice for guiding today’s numbers-driven managers. Also known as Song of the Divine One, the work relates a conversation between the supreme deity Krishna and Arjuna, a warrior prince struggling with a moral crisis before a crucial battle. One key message is that enlightened leaders should master any impulses or emotions that cloud sound judgment. Good leaders are selfless, take initiative, and focus on their duty rather than obsessing over outcomes or financial gain. “The key point,” says Ram Charan, a coach to CEOs such as General Electric Co.’s (GE ) Jeffrey R. Immelt, “is to put purpose before self. This is absolutely applicable to corporate leadership today…”

There are also parallels between Indian philosophy and contemporary marketing theory, which has shifted away from manipulating consumers to collaborating with them. “Marketing has tended to use the language of conquest,” says Kellogg professor Mohanbir S. Sawhney, a Sikh who discusses the relevance of the Bhagavad Gita to business on his Web site. Now the focus is on using customer input to dream up new products, Sawhney says, which “requires a symbiotic relationship with those around us.” [Link]

As you may have heard, there’s this little company thingy called YouTube that’s gotten a little popular lately, and then there were all these big companies that got interested in getting some of that popularity for themselves, because, like, they thought that it could make them some money, and, like, open up glorious new ways of communicating. And then this other company called Google got interested, and… well, 1.65 billion dollars and a lunch at Denny’s later, you know the rest.

I saw a bit of that video — on YouTube, natch — where founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen get a little gloat on, calling the union of YouTube and Google that of “two kings.” But there’s long been rumored to be — OK, reported and confirmed — a Third Man behind the video site sensation, and of course, that man is desi.

At least from this New York Times profile, Jawed Karim, 27, sounds like a thoroughly nice guy and likeable nerd, and one with a knack for good ideas and an appetite for seeing them enacted. He was already an early participant in PayPal. But through his rise as an Internet multi-millionaire his chief focus has been academia.

Mr. Karim said he might keep a hand in entrepreneurship, and he dreams of having an impact on the way people use the Internet — something he has already done. Philanthropy may have some appeal, down the road. But mostly he just wants to be a professor. He said he simply hopes to follow in the footsteps of other Stanford academics who struck it rich in Silicon Valley and went back to teaching. …

David L. Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford, said Mr. Karim’s choice was unusual.

“I’m impressed that given his success in business he decided to do the master’s program here,” Mr. Dill said. “The tradition here has been in the other direction,” he said, pointing to the founders of Google and Yahoo, who left Stanford for the business world.

So it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, and here’s a round of Sepia congratulations to Jawed. (No word on whether he’s single.) Beyond that, I’m curious about what all you tech and media macacas out there think of the whole YouTube thing. Obviously, it’s viral as a mofo and pretty fun to surf around. But do folks consistently use it to post their own content? Is it just a library of pre-existing content that at some point will find an intellectual-property arrangement with original providers and a commercial business model? Or is it a harbinger of paradigmatic change?

It was a second line and a jazz funeral to mourn the Katrina-dead and celebrate the rebirth of this city. For two hours this afternoon, colleagues and I braved the hot sun and humidity to see … our well-dressed salesman of a mayor, Ray Nagin, his wife and Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré wave at us while a brass band and dancers slid past us on Poydras St.??! “Forget this, next they’ll start throwing beads,” I said while contemplating returning to work. That’s when the fire trucks inched towards us, and the Fire Marshall and his men and women somberly walked behind them, no waving, no music, no fanfare. Hot tears filled my eyes as I put away my camera and thanked them from the bottom of my heart and lungs. The EMS and NOFD were the most hardworking people during the flood, have worked tirelessly since then in a rebounding city threatened by drought and arson, and only recently got a paltry 10% raise.

The Louisiana Military and National Guard vehicles poured forth and the crowd erupted in applause. We are a thankful city, y’all, even with full awareness that such a presence here on the 29th of last year, and not five days later, would have saved many of the thousand dead.

My Katrina evacuation photos weren’t released until yesterday, the first time I was able to relive the gut-wrenching anxiety. Sifting through my pictures, I wondered how many came back that evacuated with us. Was it the last time a number of them saw New Orleans? What a way to close a life chapter. On the other hand, it isn’t simple even for those who remained and returned, especially for the middle-class and business owners whose livelihoods were either damaged by wind and flood or, a year later, may fail due to increasing insurance costs and a dwindling consumer base. With less than half of pre-Katrina New Orleans residents back home, over 70,000 of them living in 240-square foot FEMA trailers, and the rising cost of living, penny-pinching is the norm.

In the high and dry French Quarter, the tourist section is littered with t-shirt and novelty shops owned by families of South Asian descent. When friends show up in town for the first time and want to buy the obligatory Bourbon St. and Mardi Gras t-shirts, I walk them to Decatur St. and to a large store owned by a lovely Sindhi couple and their Oxbridge-educated daughter. On a recent visit, the lack of business was so appalling that I insisted on paying full price, ignoring the loud objections of Aunty and Uncle to the contrary. “Arre, bacchi, how can we take this much from you? It’s not right.” [A note to non-desis: haggling is in our blood and must be conducted, usually at the behest of the store-owner] It is now my personal responsibility to pay full price to Paul (Prakash), Jim (Jahangir), Simon, Kendra, Don and every single small business owner whose store I frequent in New Orleans. “Buy New Orleanian” is the new motto around these parts. But, how long will our activism alone keep these endeavours afloat?

Our ill Hindu points me to an article in today’s Beeb that addresses just this dilemma: South Asians Recall Katrina Disaster

By now, most readers probably know that Indra Nooyi is being promoted to the CEO of PepsiCo, a company with $38 billion in revenues. She’s been mentioned several times before on Sepia Mutiny, mainly in response to comments she made at a graduation ceremony at Columbia Business School last year. (There are several other posts on her as well.) And Manish had a solid post on her recent promotion this past Monday on Ultrabrown.

I draw two conclusions from her success. First, you can be a working mother and climb the corporate ladder while raising kids (Indra has two, who are I believe in their early/mid teens). Second, you can get ahead in the American corporate environment without sacrificing who you are culturally.

On the first point, there have been many recent stories about the difficulties facing powerful women. Maureen Dowd, for instance, recently published a book called Are Men Necessary?, where (among other things) she talked about the difficulty some women face in dating and/or marrying men who are less powerful or successful than they are. But a growing number of “power moms” are also flat-out powerful. And they do it without sacrificing their connection to their kids, as I think Indra Nooyi’s Nintendo policy proves:

She views PepsiCo as an extended family and everybody at the company is there to help in every way possible. Sometime ago, when Indra was traveling, her daughter would call the office to ask for permission to play Nintendo. The receptionist would know the routine and ask: “Have you finished your homework? Have you had your snack? OK, you can play Nintendo for half an hour”. She then left a voice message for Indra saying “I gave Tara permission to play Nintendo”. (link)

Have you had your snack? Ok, go play. Momma has to go acquire a multinational or two and pacify the Indian media regarding the recent pesticide allegations.

Secondly, you don’t have to sell yourself out and tell everyone your name is “Bob” if it’s really Balwinder. Nooyi’s story about getting her first job in the U.S. after completing her Master’s at Yale is illustrative:

Los Angeles Times reporter Claire Hoffman has a must-read article this weekend in that paper’s West magazine on Joe Francis, who may be the most repulsive individual in America. He is the founder of the “Girls Gone Wild” soft-porn franchise, advertisements for which have been polluting cable television for nearly ten years. Those who, like me, believe that this sort of barely-legal exploitation is a lot more dangerous than is hard-core porn will find here a cornucopia of material to bolster their view. The way that Francis and his crew prey on drunken 18-year-olds and induce them to debase themselves on camera (there’s even a $1,000 bonus for recruiters who get a girl to bare herself right after midnight on her 18th birthday) is vile beyond belief. What goes on in the crew bus is even worse. Francis clearly hates women: whenever he has to deal with a woman on a professional basis he becomes vulgar and threatening, as the reporter learned when he pinned her to a car and nearly twisted her arm off, and later when he called her a c**t and threatened to kill her. This is the kind of article that a paper runs only after its lawyers have pored over every comma. Even Defamer, the LA Gawker franchise, calls the piece “jaw-dropping.”

So what’s the desi angle? Well, the farther I read the more I got riled up that Francis’s company is called Mantra Entertainment. Now I’m a writer and I believe in playing with words, and I don’t think any word is ever absolutely off-limits. But come on, this is disgusting. Mantra?

A mantra is a religious syllable or poem, typically from the Sanskrit language. … They are primarily used as spiritual conduits, words or vibrations that instill one-pointed concentration in the devotee. … They are intended to deliver the mind from illusion and material inclinations.

I’m sorry, calling your porn and degradation company Mantra just ain’t right. After searching a little for other business misuses of common Indian spiritual terms, I found that mantra is by far the most-abused. Sure, there’s a Karma Digital Corporation, at least one Karma Entertainment, a Nirvana Corporation that builds real estate in Costa Rica, a Nirvana memorial park in Malaysia, a Juggernaut Entertainment (oh no, not again) in Chicago, the Ashram Galactica Grand Hotel at the annual Burning Man festival, and of course the sinister Dharma Corporation of the TV series Lost. But mantra is on a whole ‘nother level:

• Mantra Restaurant (Boston)
• Mantra Lounge (Milwaukee)
• Mantra Lounge (Seattle)
• Mantra Brand Consulting
• Mantra Vibes
• Mantra Recordings
• Mantra Lingua bilingual children’s books
• Mantra Resort, Spa, Casino (Punta del Este, Uruguay)

What is it about this word that has spawned so much commercial use? Am I over-reacting when it makes me feel queasy? And what other egregious (or amusing) uses of desi cultural terminology have you run across in the business world?

Time Magazine’s Asia edition has a cover article this week that details the life and travels of Marco Polo in the context of today’s emerging economies in China and India:

If history has taught us anything, it’s that Eastern and Western perceptions of one another are thoroughly unstable, an uneasy blend of fascination, fear and greed that lends itself to exaggeration. That all started with Polo (1254-1324), who left a detailed, and still controversial, account of his journeys and the years he spent in the service of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, a descendant of Genghis Khan. Polo’s Description of the World is the world’s first best-selling travelogue. He set off to the Orient from his native Venice with his father and uncle in 1271. For them it was a return journey; they had already been to what is now Beijing, where the Great Khan had given them a letter to the Pope, and asked them to return with learned men who could teach his people about Christianity. The route, as described by Marco Polo, took them through the Caucasus, Persia, Afghanistan, over the Pamirs and along the Silk Road to Cathay, as he called China. Hardship and danger were balanced by wonder, especially once he arrived at Kublai’s court, where he claimed to have become a court favorite who was sent off on diplomatic missions. He dictated his book, years later, long after his return to Italy, while in jail in Genoa in 1298. Some of the descriptions—from the miracle oil that cures skin trouble in the Caucasus to the giant griffin birds who pick up elephants and drop them into the Arabian Sea—earned him a reputation even in his day as a fairytale spinner rather than a credible witness. [Link]

Also in the issue is an article on western Big Pharma’s attempts to patent knowledge that Indians have been actively using for millenia:

It started with turmeric. An essential ingredient of most Indian curries, the spice was paid tribute by Marco Polo; he compared it favorably to saffron, and noted its importance in traditional medicines. Indeed, Indian doctors have long reached for the knobby yellow root to treat a variety of ailments from skin disease to stomachache and infection. So when two U.S.-based researchers were awarded a patent in 1995 on turmeric’s special wound-healing properties, a collective howl of outrage arose from the subcontinent. “Housewives have been using turmeric for centuries,” says V.K. Gupta, director of India’s National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources in New Delhi. “It’s outrageous that someone would try and patent it.” The patent was eventually revoked, after a decade-long battle in which the Indian government and private sector spent millions of dollars in legal and research fees to prove that turmeric’s qualities were well documented in ancient medical textbooks. Gupta scrolls through a list of some 5,000 applications currently pending approval by U.S. and European patent offices, jabbing a finger at the most egregious examples of what he considers to be outright theft. He estimates that at least half of those scientific “discoveries” are established remedies in India’s ancient plant-based medical system, called Ayurveda. To Gupta, each application is a jewel plundered from India’s vast trove of medicinal knowledge. “If this isn’t piracy, I don’t know what is,” he says. [Link]

Bernard Gordon at the Wall Street Journal criticizes India’s trade representative, Kamal Nath, in a recent Op-Ed:

Surprise, surprise, the WTO talks in Geneva are “suspended.” But in truth, hardly a surprise, since in May France’s agricultural minister said, “I would prefer that the negotiations fail rather than … raise questions about … agriculture.” At the G-8 summit this month President Jacques Chirac backed him up: “Only Europe has moved [and] gone to the extreme limits.”

Both were responding to America’s insistence that Europe do more to match its offer to cut farm subsidies — in order to break the logjam at the heart of the now-collapsed Doha Round. But Europe had a partner in its “my way or the highway” approach. India’s Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, presumably speaking for the developing nations, said more “flexibility” was needed, and then gave his definition of the word: “We can’t negotiate subsistence and livelihood … we should not even be asked to do that.”

Mr. Nath had walked out of earlier trade talks, arguing “there was no point” in continuing, which prompted the press at home to fault him for throwing a “temper tantrum.” Not a bad label in this case, since India in 2004 accounted for less than 1% of world trade. And speaking after the collapse, which Mr. Nath characterized as “between intensive care and the crematorium,” he sharply singled out the U.S. as the sole culprit: the “mind-set” of the Americans was “inverted … they’re thinking only of market access.” (link; subscription required)

(Note that he’s not inventing the phrase “temper tantrum,” only citing the Indian media’s use of the term approvingly.) Gordon goes on to try and poke holes in Nath’s criticism of the U.S. for the fact that the Doha round has gone aground. Gordon mentions that the Brazil representative was actually more critical of Europe than the U.S., and cites President Bush’s promise to reduce U.S. farm subsidies by 60% in keeping with the opening of U.S. markets.

While the intricacies of world trade agreements and the workings of the WTO are, admittedly, not my area of expertise, one does note that Kamal Nath actually has plenty of company in blaming the U.S. primarily for the collapse of the talks.

The big news from the business world today is that Disney is going to be establishing a couple of new children’s entertainment channels in India as a way to strengthen its foothold on the subcontinent. Forbes reports:

What? It could happen.

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied “Because that’s where the money is.” Andy Bird has a similar rationale for The Walt Disney Company’s move into India: “If you’re in the children’s business, you want to be in the place where there are more children than anywhere else in the world,” the president of Walt Disney International explained in a telephone interview from Mumbai.

Bird has just handled the $30.5 million acquisition of Hungama, a children’s television channel in the country that broadcasts in Hindi, and that joins the Disney Channel and Toon Disney on the subcontinent.

Part of the deal will see The Disney take a 14.9% stake in UTV Software Communications, an Indian conglomerate that owns film and television assets, including - until now — Hungama. It means the next step for Disney could be into India’s glitzy movie industry. “We are actively working in the film business and looking for Disney branded movies in the Bollywood market,” said the British-born Bird. [Link]

This moves seems like a good one for Disney for exactly the reason mentioned in the first paragraph above. The growing middle class has a lot of children and children love being exposed/corrupted by western culture (even wholesome western culture). Why not be part of the delivery device, especially given that the advertising dollars that follow could end up being quite lucrative?

Time Warner has already benefited from first-mover advantage among U.S. media companies in India, controlling half the market share for children’s TV with its Cartoon Network and Pogo Channels. But Bird is not worried. “The Walt Disney Company is looking at a broader perspective in growing in India,” he said. “We’re more focused on building up franchises and brands across different sectors than in what our competitors are doing…” [Link]

Personally I hope that the possibility of domestic “foreign” competition will make Bollywood movies watchable better. I have to believe that the scripts that Disney backs will be a little better than the usual stuff I am exposed to out of Bollywood (*Abhi tries to stifle laugh*). Before you point it out I realize that I am a Bollywood curmudgeon. Please don’t recommend any films to me.

Bollywood, the popular name for the Hindi language film industry, also beckons as Disney will now co-produce UTV’s films.

“We have access to an important film-making capital, which is exciting because Bollywood’s family values resonate with Disney’s,” said Andy Bird, president, Walt Disney International. [Link]

Public Radio’s Marketplace has a nice summary of this deal as well as its implications. It also mentions that India isn’t yet ready for a Disney World-Delhi. Phew!

It is comforting to note that in these times of terror, hard-headed businessmen still make their investment decisions undeterred by threat. My newest hero is that Titan of Industry, the Captain of Capitalism, Laxmi Mittal. It seems that the world’s richest Indian is increasing his investment in India-na:

Mittal Steel Co. plans to begin a $10 million expansion of research and development laboratories in East Chicago. The first phase, to start this week, would add 22,000 square feet to a laboratory. It is expected to be completed within a year. The company is based in the Netherlands, but its U.S. operations are run from Chicago. [Link]

This announcement came the day after it was revealed that India-na is the state in the union most densely populated with potential terrorist targets:

Indiana, with 8,591 potential terrorist targets, had 50 percent more listed sites than New York (5,687) and more than twice as many as California (3,212), ranking the state the most target-rich place in the nation. [Link]

That’s 11% of all targets on the National Asset Database. This is a state so hated by terrorists that even a rural popcorn factory with five employees is considered a target! Clearly Mittal is a man of steel, a hombre without fear, somebody who does not blanch even in the face of terrorists as confused as Christopher Columbus. Who needs Hanu-man, Indian Super-man, a brown Justice League, or any other Indian superheroes when we have a Mittal-man of our own ?

My whole life I have secretly admired the profession of the loan shark. You know the guy I am talking about right? The big knuckled, leather jacket wearing thug in the movies that walks softly, carries a BIG ASS stick, and every so often utters phrases like:

You’d piss your pants if you saw me come calling for my money

“B*tch, you better give me my money”

or

‘Da f*ck you mean you ain’t got my money yet? muthaf*cka you best be comin’ up wit’ my cash or else you know what I’m sayin?… [Link]

Admit it. Even the nice guys/gals among our SM readers have wondered at least once in their lives what it would be like to collect on debts as part of their daily routine, to have people scared out of their minds and start to stutter when you came a calling for yo’ money.

In truth, despite the fact that my wallet does have the words “bad ass motherf*cker” embroidered on it, I am a sweet and non-violent guy. I just don’t have the disposition to be a loan shark, nor do I own a gun with which I can pistol whip anyone…not even some annoying commenters. :)

What I can do however is help to change the world one loan at a time. Sitting behind my computer I can provide loans…without being a shark. There is a great new service that has been started by former Paypal employee Premal Shah and others, called Kiva. Kiva allows people like you and I to make loans directly to small business owners in the developing world. By loaning them money you will be helping them to take care of themselves and their family through sustainable means. If the working class entrepreneur that you lend money to succeeds, then it is likely that the economic impact of their business will propagate to some extent throughout their community. At the end of loan period it is likely that you will get your money re-paid in full without having to break anyone’s arm.

I have no idea how we managed to go even this long before this issue which plagues the Indian business community finally came to the forefront. All of us have known about this problem for a long time but have chosen to ignore it. No more:

What’s in a name?

A lot if you’re an Indian grocer, it seems.

Especially if you’re a Patel.

The surname — which is as common among people of Asian-Indian descent as Smith or Johnson is among Anglos - has sparked a brief but bitter dispute involving one of the largest vendors of specialty foods to the Indian community.

A suit filed by Patel Brothers, a Chicago-based food distributor with a chain of 27 stores, accuses an Iselin-based store of violating a trademark when it opened last month using the name “Patel Food Market.” A Patel Brothers grocery — Patel’s Cash & Carry — is across the street.

The case was settled last week, and both sides declined to comment. But the court papers offer a window into the fierce competition among Indian grocers, the importance of the Patel name, and the issue of whether companies can legally protect common names or words. [Link]

You guys got to suck it up and just read this whole article. It is filled with priceless gems like this one:

Swetal Patel filed an affidavit saying he hired two off-duty Woodbridge Township police officers to handle the expected heavy flow of traffic during the Memorial Day weekend. But the officers mistakenly reported to Patel Food Market, where they worked and were paid by the owner, the affidavit said. [Link]

The secret organization of illuminati known as the Priory of Sion (that you read about in The Da Vinci Code) is a hoax, of course. What isn’t a hoax however, is the shadowy and ultra-powerful Bilderberg Group who are meeting in Ottawa, Canada this weekend:

It’s like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists.

A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination…

It’s not the Freemasons.

Forget those fabled U.S. military men who tucked away UFOs in the Arizona desert.

These guys, you’ve probably never even heard of, and if you believe the camera-toting followers who attend all their meetings, they control the world.

They’re called the Bilderberg group.

They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies. [Link]

If you happened to be at the airport in Ottawa yesterday you may have noticed a bunch of limo drivers holding up a single letter. That would have been a sign that a Bilderberg attendee was near at hand:

Greeted at the airport by limousine drivers holding single-letter “B” signs, global luminaries such as Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands began arriving in Ottawa Thursday for the annual gathering of the ultra-secretive Bilderberg Group. [Link]

I have numerous jobs in addition to my writing, one of which involves working with new technology. I know it’s a stereotype to say that Indians are good with computers, but I welcome it in my case, mostly because it’s hilariously untrue. I’ve avoided technology as much as possible—I didn’t have an email address until 1996, and it’s still a crapshoot if my cell phone is working—despite coming from a family of technophiles. What they actually do to these computers, I have no idea, but despite being voted Most Likely to Spill Coke On the Keyboard Again, I find myself reasonably skilled at this new IT-oriented gig. Nature or nurture? Or dumb luck? Discuss.

But what about those who are not just computer illiterate, but actually unable to read or write? Microsoft has a plan: make computers that don’t depend on words. This March 2006 USA Today article talks about how a new breed of computers can help often-illiterate domestic servants:

Working with a local advocacy group, Microsoft has developed a prototype of a system that would connect illiterate domestic workers in India with families seeking their services. The system uses pictures, video and voice commands to tell women what jobs are available, how much the jobs pay and where they are.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before? For one thing:

they [the domestic workers] had trouble seeing why a computerized system for finding work was better than traditional word-of-mouth

Additionally, the computer’s images and pictures had to bridge language and cultural gaps, such as this one:

the women associated neighborhoods with landmarks rather than addresses, so an interactive map and verbal directions had to be tweaked to represent that.

Finally—the big hurdle: implementation. This CNET article discusses the difficulties poorer areas of India have getting computer literate. Apart from the most obvious issue of languages, there is problem of power:

To save power, the PCs run on car and truck batteries. Unfortunately, the batteries regularly need recharging and the public electrical power system can’t always handle the demand.

and crime:

Three weeks ago, the village transformer blew because too many people tapped into it illegally, a chronic problem here. The government refused to rebuild the transformer until the villagers promised to punish anyone who stole power.

and bad freakin’ luck:

The day after it was rebuilt, the transformer blew again.

In the latest issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria examines what many Americans have recently been wondering: “How Long Will America Lead the World?”

…Americans have replaced Britons atop the world, and we are now worried that history is happening to us. History has arrived in the form of “Three Billion New Capitalists,” as Clyde Prestowitz’s recent book puts it, people from countries like China, India and the former Soviet Union, which all once scorned the global market economy but are now enthusiastic and increasingly sophisticated participants in it. They are poorer, hungrier and in some cases well trained, and will inevitably compete with Americans and America for a slice of the pie. A Goldman Sachs study concludes that by 2045, China will be the largest economy in the world, replacing the United States.

It is not just writers like Prestowitz who are sounding alarms. Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, reflects on the growing competence and cost advantage of countries like China and even Mexico and says, “It’s unclear how many manufacturers will choose to keep their businesses in the United States.” Intel’s Andy Grove is more blunt. “America … [is going] down the tubes,” he says, “and the worst part is nobody knows it. They’re all in denial, patting themselves on the back, as the Titanic heads for the iceberg full speed ahead…” [Link]

I find many parallels between this and the long denied facts surrounding global warming. I saw Gore’s fantastic powerpoint presentation/movie two weekends ago and it struck me how slow to react people can be even when they know they are on the losing side of time. Zakaria goes on to point out the same thing that I mentioned in an earlier post and that Vinod tried to push back on a bit:

The national academies’ report points out that China and India combined graduate 950,000 engineers every year, compared with 70,000 in America; that for the cost of one chemist or engineer in the U.S. a company could hire five chemists in China or 11 engineers in India; that of the 120 $1 billion-plus chemical plants being built around the world one is in the United States and 50 are in China.

There are some who see the decline of science and technology as part of a larger cultural decay. A country that once adhered to a Puritan ethic of delayed gratification has become one that revels in instant pleasures. We’re losing interest in the basics—math, manufacturing, hard work, savings—and becoming a postindustrial society that specializes in consumption and leisure. “More people will graduate in the United States in 2006 with sports-exercise degrees than electrical-engineering degrees,” says Immelt. “So, if we want to be the massage capital of the world, we’re well on our way…” [Link]

We at the Mutiny don’t talk as much as we should about the desi presence in the central United States. If you’ve wandered through the heartland you know that desis are everywhere, principally thanks to the hotel business. And then of course there are the major cities like Houston, Dallas or Denver where I know we have plenty of readers.

Indian corporations are ahead of us in this regard, as witnessed by the following item from Alabama. Now, for a few years the Deep South has been a hub for foreign investment. There’s an enormous Nissan plant in Jackson, Miss., and a Hyundai plant in Montgomery, Ala., that have created thousands of jobs. Part of what draws these firms is the abundance of cheap skilled labor marooned by the manufacturing recession, as well as the anti-union laws. Still, anyone who’s spent time in the South knows that foreign investment has wrought some powerful economic and cultural changes.

But Indian firms? Well, ITC Infotech has just committed to open its third US location in Birmingham, where it hopes to ramp up to $100m in annual business. And Alabama authorities hope this will start a flood of Indian investment:

ITC is the first company to announce plans to locate in the state since the establishment of the Alabama-India Business Partnership, a group set up to stimulate economic activity and investment. More are expected follow.

Automotive parts maker Span Industries has indicated it wants to come to Birmingham, as has another Indian auto parts manufacturer and a biotechnology firm, said Anil Agarwal, president of AK-Global Solutions Inc. and founder of the Alabama India Business Partnership.

“In the next five to 10 years, we will be doing the same thing we are doing for the Indian companies as we are doing for the Japanese and Korean companies today,” Agarwal said…

I’m all in favor of this sort of investment. But one thing that always amuses me in these stories is the special type of boosterism that they breed, in which the investment origin and destination are touted as perfect partners because they match up so well culturally:

Not only does Birmingham offer a geographical hub on which to build a solid Southeastern presence, Agarwal says, but culturally the two communities share several common denominators.

For instance, Agarwal says, both Alabama and India have strong agricultural backgrounds that transitioned to a manufacturing base and only relatively recently have begun to shift into research in areas such as biomedical science and biotechnology.

“They also both have very traditional family values,” making India and Alabama compatible business partners, Agarwal says.

Meaning vaat exactly, Agarwal-saheb? I know some families down South that are anything but traditional. And those Baptist churches every twenty yards don’t leave much room for masjids and mandirs. What the regions really share is humidity, verandas, and big ol’ flying cockroaches. I trust Agarwal-uncle wasn’t trying to allude to something more sinister — Old times there are not forgotten — and instead look forward to a growing desi role in the cosmopolitan revitalization of the South.

Recently Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California spoke at the 2006 TiEcon conference in front of a large group representing the Indian American business and entrepreneurial community. The conference was held in Silicon Valley and dealt mostly with the intersection of California, business, and Indian Americans. A mash-up clip featuring the highlights of his talk are available on the internet. It is worth seeing (scroll down just a bit on the linked page) especially for the zinger that Schwarzenegger unleashes about a quarter way through the clip when he notices that all of his co-panelists are men. What’s up with that?

A big current international business story is the attempted takeover of Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based steel manufacturer, by London-based, desi-owned Mittal Steel, the voraciously successful family business of Lakshmi Mittal. Arcelor is itself the result of a merger of European steel firms, a logical consolidation in its day since steel is a sunset industry in Western Europe and many firms enjoyed protections of state ownership or subsidies that EU rules no longer permit. However, European politicians have retained a bit of a proprietary cultural interest, as it were, in firms like Arcelor, since even without state ownership they possess a sort of vestigial patriotic value as “national champions,” and they still employ a fair number of people, if far fewer than before, in depressed industrial areas.

Well, ever since Mittal made his first overtures to Arcelor shareholders (which Manish blogged here in January), followed by a formal takeover bid once he got permission from competitive authorities, Arcelor has done everything possible to wriggle away from its suitor. Fair enough – that’s what companies threatened by hostile takeovers do, especially when it becomes clear that their management don’t enter into the buyer’s plans for the future. But with investment analysts lining up in favor of the Mittal bid, there’s also been, of course, speculation that even though Mittal is a London-based, London-quoted firm, it may just be a little too brown for the comfort of the European industrial bourgeoisie.

All this could be dismissed as reading-ethnicity-into-everything, and to some extent probably is. (Though…) Still, it’s remarkable to see that this week the board of Arcelor found themselves rushing into the arms of what is known in business lingo as an, ahem, white knight, in the form of a Russian firm of the new-oligarch variety. The merger deal with Severstal is framed as a purchase by Arcelor… except that it is funded by an increase in Arcelor’s capital via investment by Alexei Mordachov, Severstal’s 38-year-old chairman. By funding Arcelor’s purchase of his firm, Mordachov takes a 32 percent interest in the merged firm, which would become the world’s largest steel producer, ahead of Mittal.

The London business writers are having a field day with this one. “The putrid stink of hypocrisy hangs in the air,” says The Observer’s Richard Wachman, noting that Arcelor, having criticized Mittal for non-transparency in past business dealings, has found its savior in the land where opaqueness and favoritism are essential components of business success. And The Independent’s business columnist Jeremy Warner cold lays down the card:

Is it cos I’s brown? The Arcelor board appears so appaled at the prospect of takeover by the Indian-born steel magnate, Lakshmi Mittal, that it will do almost anything to avoid his clutches - right down to surrendering control to the Kremlin. Okay, so I’m exaggerating to make the point, but only a little.

Cody’s, a landmark, 43-year-old indie bookstore in Berkeley, is closing July 10 due to declining sales (thanks, Saheli). It was attacked during the Satanic Verses fatwa in 1989:

Cody’s Books, Berkeley, California was firebombed about 4:30 a.m. when a pipe bomb was hurled through a back window just thirty seconds before a similar attack occurred at a nearby Waldenbooks store. One of the world’s finest general bookstores, Cody’s was bombed just fourteen days after Khomeini [issued a fatwa against Salman Rusdhie]… During the cleanup another bomb was found on the floor in the poetry section of the store. The owner of the store… stood across the street while the bomb squad worked with the bomb and as it exploded. [Link]

… the store announced that it would continue to sell Salman Rushdie’s controversial “Satanic Verses” — a decision that Ross called “our finest hour.” [Link]

Rushdie was pithy as ever:

“Rushdie came to the store once, a surprise visit when he was still in hiding,” Ross said. The author gave the bookstore 5-minutes notice to announce that he was in the store and would sign books. “There’s a hole above the information desk from the bombing. Someone scribbled ‘Salman Rushdie memorial hole.’ When Rushdie was here, he looked up and said, ‘Some people get statues, others get holes.’ ” [Link]

Cody’s blames the closure on competition from online textbook and academic bookstores and the general decline of Telegraph Ave., a street which rocks out with revolutionary flava but isn’t all that safe at night.

For years I have been telling friends that what the U.S. needs more than ANYTHING right now is an Indian fast-food chain. If I am going to be convinced by advertisers to slowly poison myself with grease then I would much rather do so

Puff puff…give

The Hot Breads chain has had great success in India, but the company is really hoping to put the hot in Hot Breads as it begins franchising in the United States.

“We have great plans of opening up Hot Breads here,” said M. Mahadevan, who first launched the Hot Bread chain in Chennai, India, in 1988. “We have a plan here for nice growth.”

With over 20 locations in India in cities such as Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi and Pondichery, two in Bangladesh, four in Nepal, one in Paris and about 40 in the Middle East, there is no reason to think Hot Breads won’t fly in the United States…

Hot Breads features bakery items such as croissants and pastries with an Indian twist. In India, Hot Breads is touted for its French baking traditions, but in the United States it is the connection with India, and its pastries filled with spicy vegetables and meat fillings, that have connected with the India American customers. [Link]

Now please don’t get me wrong. Looking at their menu you will see that this is just a baby step. The food they serve seems to be sort of an Indian-French hybrid. The Taj Mahal wasn’t built in a day however. If enough people eat this stuff then maybe an establishment like Kati Roll will decide to franchise as well. Just imagine a bouncer at every highway truck stop trying to fend off paneer lovers and keep the peace.

Mahadevan said that Hot Breads has scored as a brand that Indian Americans are familiar with from India. He added that it gives Indian Americans a sense of belonging here because they can visit a store, smell the curry and Desi coffee and be reminded of Hot Breads they have visited in India. [Link]

Singer-songwriter Shaheen Sheik, a friend from college, just signed with Times Music in Bombay and is on a promo tour here this week. (Watch her video.) Last night she sang on a TV show with a name that’s a paragon of ridiculously nontransitive branding, the Tuscan Verve Zoom Glam Awards. Other nights she slums with the plebeians. That’s usually when I get to see her.

A few of us went to see her first performance at a downtown Bombay club called Prive, which is around the corner from the Gateway of India. It’s decorated like a Southern strip club (black lacquer ceilings, gold bead curtains and lap dance seats), albeit one with floating roses. It was an odd venue for folk-pop ballads, but Shaheen sang four gorgeous melodies and encored with a cover of ‘In Your Eyes.’ Like most desis of a certain age, the duet guitarist provided by the label knew Pink Floyd, the Eagles and Led Zep but was baffled by Peter Gabriel.

There’s an interesting tradeoff when Indians in the diaspora come back to promote their wares (Apache Indian, Salman Rushdie…) On one hand, the potential market is huge with a built-in cultural interest. On the other, the middle class is limited in size, and you earn less per unit than in your home market after currency conversion.

Ballads at Prive

A large Indian software company is claiming it’s going to add an eye-popping 25,000 employees, almost half of Microsoft’s worldwide headcount, in the next 12 months.

Earlier Abhi posted about the booming hair trade at the main Venkateshwara temple in Tirupati. It turns out that the sale of devotees’ hair is only one of this massive temple’s revenue streams, which dwarf those of American megachurches. Other revenue streams include cash, gold and diamond donations, laddoo sales and e-hundi.

Tirupati

E-hundi? Yes, electronic donations. You can donate to the temple right from ATMs owned by Andhra Bank and State Bank of India. The lords work in mysterious ways, but especially at withdrawal time:

“Andhra Bank ATM cardholders can make payments into the `hundi’ of Lord Venkateswara of Tirumala, from any of the bank’s ATMs. All they have to do is insert their card, enter the amount to be credited to the hundi account and it would be done instantly. In future, the facility would be extended to make payments for railway reservations and other services…” [Link]

Tirupati is also the most visited temple in the world. It is estimated that more that 50,000 people visit the temple everyday; this makes it almost 19 million people in a year, almost double the estimated number of people visiting Vatican City… Tirupati is the second richest religious institution after the Vatican City… it usually takes anywhere from 2 to 40 hours, depending on the season, to get to the Sanctom sanctorum from the time one registers into the queue system. [Link - thanks, tef]

The temple staff alone amounts to a number of 18,000. [Link]

Hundi collections (cash donation by devotees) account for roughly one-third of the Tirupati trust’s income. It also earns substantial money from the sale of human hair (offered by devotees) and laddoos, apart from interest on bank deposits. [Link]

For added convenience, you can book religious pilgrimages at State Bank branches worldwide. Separation of temple and state, what?

The bank is in tie-up with the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams management on a package to get the various `sevas’ in Tirumala temple and cottages booked at any of the bank’s branches in the world. ’ `e-hundi’ is also part of the software, wherein a devotee can drop his offerings either in an ATM in the country or at the 52 overseas offices in 33 countries. [Link]

The bank was nationalised in 1955 with the Reserve Bank of India having a 60% stake. [Link]

Last night I saw an odd Indian tourism billboard in Times Square. It read, ‘Get to know yoga from its mother,’ and the visual style reminded me of old-skool ‘An Ideal Boy’ posters.

The blurb in an advertising publication says the ads aim for kitsch, but IMO they fall into the chasm between kitsch and cheese. The colors say ‘An Ideal Boy,’ the visual style is fun. But the elements don’t work together. The slogan is lame, its font evokes Dances With Wolves, and the tagline in ultra-serious Bodoni strip it of wit. Indian tourism needs to hire whoever’s penning the witty Citi ‘Live richly’ campaign. I hear Rushdie’s available.

Even the campaign description is off:

Prathap Suthan, national creative director, Grey Worldwide, explains why this campaign stands out: “The difference lies in the expression which, according to me, is very Indian. Where one normally uses photography for billboards, which is a Western expression, the style used to communicate in this ad is the kitsch look… Opting for the kitsch look is based on everyday observations from all over India. These images have been drawn from village folk art and common imagery seen across India, images that bring to mind the colours, uniqueness and diversity of India.” [Link]

Kitsch, like cool, shrivels in sunlight. Trying to explain it kills it. Reading about it in dorky ad pubs kills it. Nonchalant, off-radar irony is the point. Calling it ‘the kitsch look’ voids any street cred. It’s painful even to read. I’ve lost all my Williamsburg karma by writing this paragraph.

Chantal, book me for a fauxhawk. The three hundred dollar kind. Tell them I want highlights, I’m feeling verklempt.

According to the latest Forbes ranking, the global center of desi wealth is Bombay, not Silicon Valley (thanks, WGIIA). India is the only South Asian country with billionaire private citizens (though a Sri Lankan Tamil émigré to Malaysia made the list), and Bombay has the most.

Vinod Khosla fell below the cutoff, as did most desi American techies except Ram Shriram, an angel investor in Google who is now apparently the wealthiest desi in the U.S. So with India’s recent economic growth, Indians are making more money by staying home than emigrating, quite a reversal, even though most who emigrated were not born into ultra-wealthy families. And these figures are in dollars, not even adjusted for purchasing power in the desh.

I suspect the stats are off though. If you were to treat national wealth as personal wealth, as several South Asian ruling families do, I bet the stats would change.

Where the wild things are

The U.S. is still far and away the best place to generate wealth, and New York City alone has more billionaires than any country except Germany:

While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. [Link]

Indian billionaires have surpassed Japan’s in terms of total wealth:

A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15% to 793 with India taking the lead in Asia… India’s 23 billionaires have a combined net worth of $99bn, surpassing former Asian leader Japan’s 27 billionaires with their total worth of $67bn. [Link]

India, whose BSE SENSEX market was up 54% in the past 12 months, is home to 10 new billionaires, more than any other country besides the U.S. Notable newcomers include Tulsi Tanti, a former textile trader whose alternative energy company owns Asia’s largest windfarm; Vijay Mallya, the liquor tycoon behind Kingfisher beer; Kushal Pal Singh, India’s biggest real estate developer; and Anurag Dikshit (pronounced “dix-sit”), another online gaming mogul, who made his fortune when he and two Americans took their PartyGaming poker company public in London last June. [Link]

As Abhi posted earlier, there’s a big outcry in the U.S. over the sale of a British port operator to one based in Dubai. What few people have pointed out is that in the international edition of Monopoly, when you buy P&O, you get India for free:

Yet nowhere else has the deal for P.& O., as the company is known, drawn much anxiety… in other countries it will vastly increase the company’s reach. In India, for instance, Dubai will take control of about half the country’s container shipping operations, but there has been little public outcry there. [Link]

Through this deal the Gulf-based company will have in its kitty India’s three major container terminals… Mumbai… Chennai… and… Gujarat; apart from a share in… Vishakapatnam.

Also, with the development… by Dubai Ports in Kochi, a majority of the Indian container shipping is expected to be in the hands of the Gulf-State backed company… “Dubai Ports is going to rule the India container industry…” [Link]

The deal’s purported security risk would affect desi Canadians as well as Americans via Vancouver:

But what’s at stake, specifically, is the Centerm hub in Burrard Inlet, which handles about a quarter of the shipping containers passing through Canada’s third-largest city. Centerm is where P&O — and soon, Dubai Ports World — makes money by loading and unloading shipping containers…

Vancouver’s ability to safeguard against terrorism is crucial for the continent… In 1999, Algerian al-Qaeda member Ahmed Ressam cooked up a massive bomb in Vancouver… he had been hoping to… [set off] the bomb in… Los Angeles Airport. In 1985, Sikh terrorists placed deadly bombs aboard two Air-India jets at Vancouver’s airport. [Link]

Flat-earther Tom Friedman piles in for the free-marketers:“This is about keeping ‘a bunch of Arabs’ out of our country”

“I think it’s a shameful and has slightly racist overtones to it… This is about keeping ‘a bunch of Arabs’ out of our country, that’s what this is really about. And it’s a bad thing, not only because it doesn’t reflect our real values.”

Friedman points out that American companies like IBM, FedEx or UPS run around doing business in the Arab world. “What if they then turn around and say, ‘You’re not going to take ours, well, we’re not going to take yours…’ ”

“Both sides are guilty of it. When people ransack a Danish embassy in Damascus and the government allows it.. We have nativists in our country. They have nativists in their country that are going to always want to push these issues. Government’s job is to restrain that.” [Link]

Now that the the Amish are phone phreaking…

An Amish teenager will pay a fine and restitution to a neighbor for illegally tapping into his telephone line… The Amish traditionally shun telephones and other modern conveniences in their homes. [Link]

… and godless Chinese churn out Hindu idols…

Nowadays, factories in agnostic, communist China are producing Ganesh, Krishna and other Hindu idols out of plastic and porcelain at such low cost and high quality that Indians are lapping them up. India’s newfound love for mass-produced, “Made in China” images of their gods is driving many in the poorest sections of the nation’s traditional idol-making industry out of business, repeating a pattern seen in its toy-making industry. [Link]

… it was only a matter of time before India started writing software for that den of sin, Vegas (via Digg):

… software development for casinos will now happen in India — a country in which gambling is illegal. [Link]

Bally Systems, [the] world’s largest casino technology [company], is making India its largest… software… development centre… [its] development facility in Chennai will have 250 engineers by mid 2007, against 70 at present. [Link]

As I tried to catch some shut-eye at Chicago O’Hare yesterday, I kept hearing Indian music playing in the background and finally tracked down the source. This very slick ad for Indian tourism is running endlessly on CNN’s airport network. It’s part of the Incredible !ndia campaign, which used to be Incredibly L^me.

I agree with this critique:

Not bad but they need to do a few more urban-themed things… they all seem to focus on rural women spinning around with pots on their heads… There’s nothing wrong with pushing our history (indeed it is a big tourist draw), but by dropping in some stuff from modern India we can really change people’s perceptions. Remember, this is a bit like what Japan did with its Shinkanshens… India must be marketed as a nation where futurism runs alongside tradition. [Link]

The Turkey Welcomes You campaign shows off a modern subway system (watch clip), though it uses a lot of cheesy, Daler Mehndi-esque, gratuitous greenscreen.

Like two lumbering elephants at the start of the mating season, Wal-Mart and the Government of India are eyeing each other, a little hungrily, a little warily. The dance has begun, and though the ultimate outcome seems clear, the process to get there could be plenty circuitous. Here’s a Standard & Poor’s update, published this month on the Business Week website:

Wal-Mart stated on Feb. 2 that it has applied to create a separate entity in Bangalore devoted to “market research and business development in relationship to the retail industry in India.”

“I think that has been no secret that we think the market opportunity in India is really outstanding,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Beth Keck told the Associated Press on Feb. 2.

You don’t say. However, the government is playing hard-to-get:

The Indian government opened the doors of its retail market to 51% foreign direct investment (FDI) two weeks ago. But this most recent economic liberalization applies strictly to companies that sell goods through single-branded stores. The partial allowance permits a direct majority ownership interest by foreign entities, which, we think, is good news for many of the world’s marketers of top labels.

In S&P’s view, the widely anticipated FDI policy for limited retail investment, however, effectively slams the “Closed” sign on big-box chains and particularly Wal-Mart, feared by India’s Communist party as potentially putting mom-and-pop stores out of business by sheer virtue of its size. The retail behemoth rang up slightly more in retail sales for the year ending January, 2005, than the entire Asian subcontinent sold to its population of more than 1 billion …

But Wal-Mart won’t be easily dissuaded. Just ask the Mexicans:

Wal-Mart’s experience in emerging markets is the crux of its battle plan. Bentonville has been down this path of limited investment in retail before. Not too long ago, it battled anti-FDI sentiment in Mexico. In S&P’s view, Wal-Mart won that battle. It is now the biggest private employer in Mexico and operates more than 780 stores in that country.

On the positive side, all the eccentric uncles with the ear hair and the roving eye can soon get jobs as People Greeters. I can see it already. “Velcome to Val-Mart,” with a waggle and a smile…

A surging Indian business sector is shattering longstanding industry norms. In pharma, two Indian companies are in the bidding for a large German pharmaceutical (thanks, Sindhya):

The country’s largest pharmaceutical company, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, is believed to have put in a bid of €500 million (approximately Rs 2,800 crore) for Germany’s fourth largest generic company, Betapharm… This is €50 million more than the bid of €450 million made by Dr Reddy’s Laboratories…

Industry analysts said it was for the first time that two Indian companies had emerged front-runners for a high-value overseas pharmaceutical company. If the deal materialises, it would be the largest ever overseas acquisition by an Indian company in the pharmaceutical space. [Link]

In Bombay, a matrimonial site is rumored to have been funded by one of Silicon Valley’s toniest VCs, Kleiner Perkins (via Om):

InfoEdge, which owns which owns some of India’s hottest Internet properties including the largest job portal Naukri.com… and matrimonial site Jeevan Sathi has got funding from KPCB and Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures. InfoEdge did $10 million last year with profits of $1.8M. [Link]

A post on Secular-Right India points us at a fantastic WSJ OpEd tracing the origins and rise of Lakshmi Mittal’s steel empire. Predictably, the WSJ loves Mr. Mittal -

A takeover of Arcelor would take Mr. Mittal a long way toward realizing his vision of a dominant global steelmaker in an industry for decades characterized, and brought low, by fragmentation. To pull it off, Mr. Mittal needs to break an Old World taboo against takeovers, hostile or otherwise, involving a company dear to Continental protectionists’ heart. That this task falls to a man born in Rajasthan, and raised in Calcutta, is one of the more delicious gifts of globalization.

Alas, the sentiment isn’t quite universal. Despite swashbuckling his way through the developing world and transforming almost overnight one of the oldest, stodgiest industries in the world, 3rd Way advocates appear tougher to tame. They hit back with words which will strike some SM’ers as rather racially-tinged -

Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president, warned against giving into economic “laws of the jungle.” A former French finance minister referred to Mr. Mittal as “an Indian predator,” although his company is traded and based in Europe and he hasn’t lived in India for 30 years. Mr. Dollé, the Arcelor boss, said Rotterdam-based Mittal Steel is a “company full of Indians” that wants to buy his with “monnaie de singe.” The expression means “monopoly money”—Mittal’s offer is mostly shares—but the literal translation is “monkey money.” That double-entendre wasn’t lost on people.

This anecdote about Google cofounder Sergey Brin is part of a startup PR launch, but it’s interesting. I wonder what the dare was. ‘I cook, you eat’ doesn’t sound like a very interesting bet:

The victim

[Anand] Rajaraman and Harinarayan were co-founders of Junglee, an early Web database company… In 1994, Rajaraman proudly told Brin he’d acquired a new computer with the latest version of Microsoft Windows. Brin… went over to Rajaraman’s apartment and installed Linux… on his computer…

Brin even took on Rajaraman’s practice of eating vegetarian, a family tradition. One evening, Brin went over to Rajaraman’s apartment, baked a fish in his oven, and served it to him with some lemon. Rajaraman ate it. [Link]

Tamarind once served me the lamb version of the paneer dish I ordered, two large, flat white squares. I downed the whole thing thinking it was the worst paneer I’d ever had and didn’t catch on until I saw the bill. Gross.

By the way, your bagels contain an extract from human hair and chicken feathers, your milk contains cattle hormones and pus, your beer was clarified with fish extract, your miso soup may contain fish broth and your Kiwi Strawberry Snapple is colored with a dye from ground beetles. Perfect recycling. I see some aren’t taking this meatitude lying down. Bon appetit!

What is it with desis and competitive eating? Lakshmi Mittal, the world’s third-richest man, launched a surprise bid today for his nearest steel industry rival:

While Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—numbers one and two on last year’s Forbes Billionaires list— engage in a genteel game of bridge, Lakshmi Mittal is ripping apart the world’s steel industry and reshaping it to his liking. This morning, his Mittal Steel… launched an audacious bid for Arcelor… Mittal Steel, the world’s first-largest steel maker, is seeking to pay 18.6 billion pounds ($22.7 billion) to buy the world’s second-largest producer. [Link]

By buying Arcelor, billionaire owner Lakshmi Mittal would control about 10 per cent of the global steel industry, more than three times as much as his closest rival. The purchase would be the biggest ever in the industry… creating a company with 320,000 employees and annual sales of more than $69 billion. Arcelor supplies steel to every second car in Europe… [Link]

… if successful, [the deal] would bring together the world’s number one and number two steelmakers and create the first producer capable of generating more than 100 tonnes of steel a day. [Link]

Mittal, who lives in London, floats Mittal Steel in the Netherlands and maintains Indian citizenship, has lost a couple of recent deals:

Mittal lost a relatively minor deal for a Czech steel mill to a Russian group, despite having the higher bid. And a foray outside steel into the world of oil ended in frustration when Mittal Steel’s joint bid with Indian oil company ONGC for PetroKazakhstan was topped by China National Petroleum Corp. [Link]

But his drive sounds very Roarkian:

He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. [Link]

Azim Premji and the Ambanis clock in at numbers 38 and 60 on the Forbes list.

Related posts: World’s biggest steel company will be desi-owned, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and…, Forbes names India’s richest, Midnight’s oil

Guess who this guy is? Hint: the photo was taken 24 years ago. Answer after the jump.

Yesterday I brought you the story of the competition between airlines in India to have the hottest stewardesses. Today, a blockbuster deal was announced that will put even more attractive, svelte bodies in the Indian sky. Well…at least they are more attractive to this Aerospace Engineer . Boeing announces:

At a signing ceremony held today at Air India’s headquarters, Boeing [NYSE: BA] Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Alan Mulally and Air India Chairman and Managing Director V. Thulasidas formally announced an order agreement for 68 airplanes. The order, placed with Boeing in December 2005, is valued at more than $11 billion at list prices and deliveries are scheduled to begin in November 2006.

Air India’s order consists of 23 777s, including eight 777-200LR (Longer Range) Worldliners and 15 777-300ERs (Extended Range), and 27 787-8 Dreamliners. Air India Express, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India, will receive 18 Next-Generation 737-800s.

Here is the sugar in the coffee:

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said the US aircraft maker had agreed to spend nearly two [billion U.S. dollars] on reciprocal deals.

‘Boeing has a counter-trade… amounting to (1.9 bln usd) over the next 10 years, which would mean that Boeing will buy from India a range of goods and services,’ Patel said.

The aircraft maker will also spend 75 mln usd on training pilots and another 100 mln in maintenance and repairs to the aircraft, he said. [Link]

So basically Boeing gets a huge contract from India, and in return outsources some of its production line there, which will result in a very positive economic impact. I hope some of you purchased Boeing stock before the closing bell. PRI’s Marketplace has a nice audio summary of the specifics.

Last month the BBC had an article about the stern warning issued by Air India to its cabin crews:

India’s state-owned airline Air India has threatened to ground its overweight cabin crew unless they shed their excess pounds over the next two months.

Some 10% of its 1,600-strong cabin crew are estimated to be overweight or suffering from obesity.

S Venkat, Air India’s general manager public relations, told the BBC that the airline would strictly implement the directive.

“We have a tolerance limit that cannot be exceeded,” he said.

Although the Air India Cabin Crew Association welcomed this decision, they didn’t say anything about the fact that the “tolerance limits” were different for men and women. Quite simply the airline wants hot stewardesses in order to compete in the always cut-throat airline business (see the Kingfisher Airlines picture on the right). Want more proof? Check out the BBC’s most recent report (quite humorous) from freezing cold Delhi:

Delhi can be mercilessly chilly during the opening weeks of January.

Central-heating devoid houses constructed to withstand the furnace-like temperatures of high summer seem more like well-upholstered cold rooms…

So imagine my surprise the other afternoon at finding my favourite outdoor swimming pool absolutely teeming with glamorous young people, in what looked, from a distance at least, like a cross between spring break in Cancun and a Mumbai movie premier.

Swimsuits, stilettos and Speedos abounded. [Link]

The New York Times today examines Playboy’s designs on India in greater detail. In order to penetrate the Indian market they must tread carefully. There definitely isn’t going to be any kissing on the first date but I’m sure the end goal will remain the same.

…there is another story behind Playboy’s discovery of India. The magazine once saw itself as America’s gateway to a sexual revolution. Now, with that revolution won and its societal impact fading, Playboy has a chance to renew itself as a magazine of high living in a country that celebrated sex in antiquity, then grew prudish, and is now loosening up again.

Ms. Hefner has said that an Indian version of the magazine “would be an extension of Playboy that would be focused around the lifestyle, pop culture, celebrity, fashion, sports and interview elements of Playboy.” But the magazine would not be “classic Playboy,” she warned. “It would not have nudity,” she said, “and I don’t think it would be called Playboy.”

In the U.S., Playboy Magazine’s fortunes have been declining for quite some time because their content isn’t considered “daring” enough anymore. Americans aren’t really shocked by anything on the pages of Playboy when compared to its raunchier competitors. If they want to find success with this magazine in India I would think that the name “Playboy,” and all the heritage the name carries, would help it compete with Maxim India and some of the filmi magazines which are already fairly risque. If there is no nudity then what can Playboy offer besides its brand name? Therefore, it makes no sense to me why they would name the magazine something else in India except to fool the censors.

Indian law prohibits the sale or possession of material that is “lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest” and that is without redeeming artistic, literary or religious merit. Soft-core pornographic magazines are available in India, but are taboo. They lurk behind other publications at newsstands, available only by whispered request. They also attract few lucrative advertisers.

“There would only be a few brands that would look at these magazines,” said Paulomi Dhawan, who runs advertising for Raymond, a leading Indian apparel maker. “We would probably be more in the business or news magazines or the male-oriented serious magazines.”

There is another problem: if you are 26, living with prying parents, where do you hide your stash?

‘Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a mouse…

All along, I thought desis were good at forming cliques. Actually, it turns out they’re good at click farming — hiring people to click ads on your own Web site to earn pay-per-click payments fraudulently.

The Jan. 2006 issue of Wired mentions this widely-disseminated ToI scare story from last year:

With her baby on her lap, Maya Sharma (name changed) gets down to work every evening from her eighth-floor flat at Vasant Vihar [in New Delhi]. Maya’s job is to click on online advertisements. She doesn’t care about the ads, but diligently keeps count — it’s $0.18 to $0.25 per click.

A growing number of housewives, college graduates, and even working professionals across metropolitan cities are rushing to click paid Internet ads to make $100 to $200 (up to Rs 9,000) per month… “It’s boring, but it is extra money for a couple of hours of clicking weblinks every day…” [Link]

Because search engines make their money whether the clicks are from legitimate customers or from scammers, they are only weakly incentivized to prevent the fraud. Those being ripped off: the small businesses who advertise.

Clicks are bought to boost number of hits for web ads or online advertisers who are not tracking user location. [Link]

Users are careful to avoid triggering anti-fraud algorithms by not clicking too often:

“I have no interest in what appears when clicking an ad. I care only whether to pause 60 seconds or 90 seconds, as money is credited if you stay online for a fixed time,” says another user. [Link]

Similarly, spammers are using image captcha farms in India — hiring people to enter the anti-spam picture codes which Web sites require to prove that you’re not a spammer.

Against this backdrop of outright theft, gold farming starts looking legitimate.

Related posts: Why isn’t gold farming big in India?, With a little help from my friends

Wired says a real-life Constant Gardener scenario has just begun playing out in India. New rules against generic knockoffs of Western drugs have emboldened pharmaceutical companies to use India’s poor as cheap drug testing guinea pigs (via Slashdot):

… multinational corporations are riding high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India’s educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia into the world’s largest clinical-testing petri dish… trials account for more than 40 percent of drug-development costs. The study also found that performing the studies in India can bring the price down by about 60 percent…

… in March, everything changed when India submitted to pressure from the World Trade Organization to stop the practice and implement rules that prohibit local companies from creating generic versions of patented drugs…. the number of studies conducted by multinational drug companies has sharply increased since March. [Link]

There are attractions other than low cost:

“Doctors are easier to recruit for trials because they don’t have to go through the same ethics procedures as their Western colleagues,” Ecks said. “And patients ask fewer questions about what is going on… ” Companies are attracted to India not only because of the huge patient pool and skilled workers, but also because many potential study volunteers are “treatment naïve,” meaning they have not been exposed to the wide array of biomedical drugs that most Western patients have… [Link]

Ethical shenanigans aren’t restricted to just Western pharmas:

In 2004, two India-based pharmaceutical companies, Shantha Biotech in Hyderabad and Biocon in Bangalore, came under scrutiny for conducting illegal clinical trials that led to eight deaths. Shantha Biotech failed to obtain proper consent from patients while testing a drug meant to treat heart attacks. Biocon tested a genetically modified form of insulin without the proper approval from the Drug Controller General of India or the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. [Link]

The saddest thing is that if the drugs work, the testers are unlikely to even have access to the drugs:

Since many pharmaceutical companies are developing the drugs for markets in industrialized nations, it is unlikely that India’s poor will have access to most of the new medicine. [Link]

When an Indian television station insists on titling a finance program “Oriental and Occidental,” it is time for me to expend no more energy on protesting such terms’ use as racial descriptives.

I had thought that having American Heritage Dictionary recognize “oriental” as problematic was a step forward, but I suppose I can count on the thick-brown-skinned folks at CNBC-TV18 to maintain the status quo. Nonetheless, I will complain that the subject of the show doesn’t even seem relevant to the name; what does foreign investment in India have to do with that old binary of “Oriental” versus “Occidental”? Particularly when some of the global market gurus include non-Occidentals like Ayaz Ebrahim, the Asia-Pacific CEO for Asia-based HSBC. The explorers of the exotic East, at least when it comes to the international flow of capital, no longer are solely Caucasians.

The prompt for an economics writing competition when I was an undergraduate was something like, “Free trade contributes to peace.” I don’t know if that is true, but I would think that genuinely free trade — in contrast to the protectionist economies of 18th and 19th century imperialism, against which Adam Smith wrote — might erase some of the old ways of Orientalist thinking.

Director M. Night Shyamalan went retro last week by slamming the idea of putting out new movies on DVD at the same time they’re released in theaters. Perhaps that’s to be expected from a director who works in old-fashioned, well-crafted films which pay homage to Hitchcock.

Film studios make a huge chunk of their profits on DVD sales and are chafing at having to duplicate marketing campaigns, one for the theaters and another four months later for the DVD. Customers are asking why they can’t buy a movie when and how they want. Directors like Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies and Videotape, Ocean’s Eleven, Traffic) and entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban are banding together to experiment with the new biz model:

Soderbergh… announced last spring that he planned to make six high-definition movies for simultaneous release in theaters, on DVD and on pay cable… “The film business in general is using a model that is outdated and, worse than that, inefficient.” [Link]

Manoj don’t play that:

“When I sit down next to you in a movie theater, we get to share each other’s point of view… That’s the magic in the movies… If this thing happens, you know the majority of your theaters are closing. It’s going to crush you guys… If I can’t make movies for theaters, I don’t want to make movies… I hope this is a very bad idea that goes away.” [Link]

Actually, what we share is the top of your big freakin’ head blocking the screen and the Goobers the kid behind me keeps throwing into my lap. Sure, opening night at a blockbuster is fun, but otherwise, not so much. The movies are great, it’s the moviegoers I could do without.

Many countries look at their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a measure of how strong their economy is and whether it’s expanding or contracting, but also to give an idea as to the standard of living in the country:

GDP is defined as the total value of final goods and services produced within a territory during a specified period (or, if not specified, annually, so that “the UK GDP” is the UK’s annual product). GDP differs from gross national product (GNP) in excluding inter-country income transfers, in effect attributing to a territory the product generated within it rather than the incomes received in it…

The most common approach to measuring and understanding GDP is the expenditure method:

GDP = consumption + investment + exports - imports… [Link]

Blah Bla Bla Blah Blah.  I’m not freakin’ Alan Greenspan and I’ve never taken an economics course in my life.  What else you got?  The New York Times reports on Bhutan’s economic indicator of choice.  It is a measure that in my opinion is ready for export.  The GNH, or Gross National Happiness:

What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.

Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.

But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.

In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan’s newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation’s priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Their economic theory isn’t that far out is it?  I am not naive enough to think that they’ll get the prize later this week and am not ready to declare that I am moving to Bhutan, but why not consider the merits of this idea?  Every economic statistic thrown at you about a given country might tell you that the population as a whole is becoming wealthier.  That doesn’t mean that the lives of individuals are any better in terms of quality or happiness does it?

Forbes magazine says audiophiles are apeshit over a cheap, $30 amp which sound as clear as high-end competitors. It’s the audiophile version of Two-Buck Chuck:

… the T-Amp was nothing to brag about, just a… battery-powered amplifier that hooks up to chintzy cardboard speakers. A firm called Sonic Impact Technologies introduced it to no acclaim in 2003. Then orders suddenly took off last fall, surging from a hundred to a thousand units a week…

… audiophiles were raving about the T-Amp on the Internet, claiming this tiny plastic wedge produced music as sweet-sounding as amplifiers costing thousands of dollars. The customer had “hooked it up to an $18,000 pair of speakers and a $6,000 CD player,” Bracke says. A reviewer on a Web site in Italy called the T-Amp the most amazing product in 25 years. And an online cottage industry had sprung up around the T-Amp, with companies such as Red Wine Audio, in Auburn, Massachusetts, stuffing the electronic guts of the plastic amps into sleek metal cases and selling them for up to $1,200… [Link]

The secret to this amp is an innovative audio chipset designed by an entrepreneur named Adya Tripathi. Is he the new Amar Bose?

Tripath’s founder, Adya Tripathi, figured out a way to make a digital amplifier that produces very little distortion. Tripathi, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and a veteran of National Semiconductor, Advanced Micro Devices and IBM, found that part of the trick involves pulsing on and off at far higher rates—millions of times per second… Tripath’s higher pulse rate creates more chances to offset signal distortion by applying feedback… The T-Amp uses Tripath’s lowest-end chip… which puts out 15 watts of power and costs $3… [Link]

Tripathi is from Benares:

The advance comes from a little chip produced by Tripath Technology Inc., a 150-employee company in Santa Clara, Calif. It was founded in 1995 by Adya S. Tripathi, a 48-year-old engineer from the holy city of Varanasi… Before taking the company public… Tripathi secured $50 million in funding from such high-tech heavyweights as Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Texas Instruments Inc. [Link]

This is when I expect a certain mutineer to roll into Adya uncle’s office as a long-lost relative and then bounce, saying goodbye to the sucka mutineers who fly economy

We’ve received a few tips (Thanks, Mytri and Brimful!) about an article entitled “A Flair for the Unconventional”, which ran in the New York Times on Sunday. Following your links, I expected to be slightly bored by something dealing with outsourcing or tech or consulting blah blah blah. I was prepared to let one of the staff entrepreneurs/business titans tackle it, so I could get back to writing a more ANNA-esque post. ;)

But when the page loaded, I was slightly startled to see a striking Brown woman whose picture sat atop a sidebar of “important details” about her: her title (Chief Executive of Rose International, an IT services company in the Midwest), her birth date, her nickname (Himanshu became “Sue”), even what she likes to do in her spare time (nature walks). The last bold, highlighted, impossible-to-miss bit of information contained…

her weight-control regimen?

Are you kidding me?

In a development that will not surprise anyone, mammoth retailer and purveyor o’ crap Wal-Mart is getting sued for ignoring the conditions of the factories from whence their ultra-cheap merch comes (via the BBC):

The class-action suit has been filed in Los Angeles on behalf of 15 workers in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua.

Each claim they were paid less than the minimum wage and not given overtime payments. Some say they were beaten.

Wal-Mart promised that the beatings were merely for morale and didn’t leave any marks. I keed, I keed. America’s superstore said it would investigate the claims, duh.

The lawsuit mentions the obvious; the evil yellow circle who zigs and zags about Wal-Mart’s commercials wantonly dicing and slicing numbers is to blame. If they’re going to sell merchandise for unbelievably low prices, they’ll make up for those sales somehow, somewhere— Gunga Din is the easy choice, it seems.

The superstore is predictably vague in its response:

“It’s really too early for us to be able to say anything about this particular complaint,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Beth Kath.

“It involves a number of companies and manufacturers and we’re just beginning our research to learn more.”

Research away.

With all the bad news about the weather, I thought I would try to lighten things up a bit. It turns out that some people really like the rain, and South Asian countries are creating a monsoon tourism industry around them:

The Indian tourist industry has created tours and activities aimed at rain-starved Arab visitors. Open-air discotheques are billed as “rain dance floors.” Tour operators peddle sight-seeing trips, or “rain walks,” as relaxing excursions for “introspection” and “family bonding.”

The Indian state of Goa first started marketing itself as a monsoon destination about five years ago. Resorts in India and northern Pakistan began seeing more Arabs eager to experience the novelty of rain. Posters went up in travel agencies in the Gulf nations of U.A.E., Qatar and Kuwait, beckoning residents to “Come Feel the Rain.” Goa, on India’s west coast, says it attracted 55,000 Arab visitors during last year’s monsoon season, nearly three times as many as two years earlier.

“We’ve seen steady growth in business from them, all of it during the monsoon months,” between June and early September, says Pamela Mascarenhas, deputy director of Goa’s state department of tourism. [cite]

This is very clever counter-cyclical business development. Usually resorts are only bustling during the dry season, and have to make enough money then to cover their expenses during the rainy season. Now they can use their capacity year round, thus increasing their earnings and dramatically cutting their exposure to risk.

As a child, my father would have loved to go on a vacation like the one described. He grew up in a very dry part of Punjab and was fascinated to discover that there were places in the world that got over 10 feet of rain a year. He instantly wanted to move to one of these places and was disappointed when my grandfather wasn’t ready to uproot the family and move to a tropical rainforest!