Category Archives: economy

The Straight Dope FAQ on Indian Elections 2009

Or what news­pa­pers and media will not tell you about the 2009 Indian Par­lia­men­tary Elec­tion.
Will the new gov­ern­ment go in for reform?

Absolutely! Though there may be a slight dif­fer­ence between what every­one under­stands by reform and what the gov­ern­ment means by reform. From the government’s per­spec­tive reform means re-forming the gov­ern­ment. The party in power

India & China: Govt. & Politics

After his recent visit to China, the Indian Prime Min­is­ter, Dr. Man­mo­han Singh had a mes­sage for the Indian indus­try: Try to learn from the Chi­nese indus­tri­al­ists. It was widely broad­cast across all the Indian media. I do not know what he meant by that — Indian indus­try is as great or aspir­ing to be

Dubai: World’s Trade Center?

These images tell a story.

The Twin Tow­ers, a sym­bol of US cap­i­tal­is­tic super­power, have col­lapsed. The US is busy fight­ing the war against ter­ror.
In the mean­while, Burj Dubai, the tallest free stand­ing struc­ture in the world, just reached a soar­ing 574.5m (1,885 ft) with 154 com­pleted sto­ries. It is pre­dicted to be the tallest

Ratan Tata Speaks Out (123 Trilogy Part 2)

Please read an updated and expanded edi­tion of this post at The Great Indian Mutiny.
Echo­ing the sen­ti­ments and thoughts expressed by K. Sub­rah­manyam as I’d writ­ten ear­lier about, it is now the turn of Ratan Tata to speak out about the sig­nif­i­cance of the Indo-US nuclear deal and what may be the impli­ca­tions if we

Rising 1–2-3 or Falling 3–2-1? (123 Trilogy Part 1)

Update: Please read a revised and expanded edi­tion of this post at The Great Indian Mutiny.
Exactly 60 years after inde­pen­dence, India stands on a precipice. If it is ready to open its arms and join the world pow­ers, it can soar into the sky. If it acts afraid, and bows to China, it will plunge

High Cost Locust Alert!

While India may be an attrac­tive low-cost out­sourc­ing des­ti­na­tion, it is also an attrac­tive des­ti­na­tion for locusts!
The UN’s Food and Agri­cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion has warned of a locust threat in India and Pak­istan:
Recent heavy rain­fall in Pak­istan and west­ern India has cre­ated ‘unusu­ally favor­able breed­ing con­di­tions’ for locusts until Octo­ber along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan

India and China in the Offshoring Race

Inter­est­ing para­dox­i­cal news on this front today.
Around a month back, For­rester research came out with a report titled “China’s Dimin­ish­ing Off­shore Role”.
“When For­rester first looked at China’s off­shore and global deliv­ery model (GDM) role nearly two years ago, the coun­try was widely viewed as the key chal­lenger to India for off­shore supremacy. How­ever, our lat­est research

e-Literacy or Obliteracy

India’s Ker­ala state gov­ern­ment is count­ing on open-source soft­ware to boost its IT lit­er­acy rate.
“Ker­ala has always been a leader in lit­er­acy, and now we want to make Ker­ala a leader in e-literacy,” said Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter V. S. Achutanan­dan. “We believe that free and open-source soft­ware is an essen­tial com­po­nent in our drive to democ­ra­tize

Patenting Artificial Life

The first patent appli­ca­tion for an arti­fi­cial liv­ing organ­ism has recently been filed. Don’t believe me?
From the Econ­o­mist:
YOU have to hand it to Craig Ven­ter, he is not some­one who thinks small. The lat­est adven­ture of the man who was the first to sequence the genome of a liv­ing organ­ism (three weeks after his grant

Basket of Crabs: Socialist Economy

Received this in an email for­ward, and it’s quite enlight­en­ing!
Reminded me of the bas­ket of crab the­ory: if you have a bas­ket full of live crabs, you don’t need to cover the lid! You know why?
Well, the one crab that tries to climb up the wall of the bas­ket is pulled down by the rest