اخبار 1

India is an outlier in terms of economic development. Traditional economic theory suggests that in the beginning all economies are dominated by agriculture. As the economy develops, manufacturing becomes the predominant sector. Further up in the stage of development comes services. The linear development is the model for all countries, including China. The one exception is India. India has never been a manufacturing economy and has leapfrogged to becoming a service economy. A full 55% of India's economy is the service sector. This is all fine, but for one problem. Where are the jobs for the teeming millions of Indians going to come from ? You need a big manufacturing base to absorb the youth coming into the job market every year. India has to create 12 m new jobs every year. Hence the Make in India need. India actually has a huge competitive advantage now - it is actually cheaper as a manufacturing destination than China. China has become expensive, but retains its predominan...

As the year draws to a close it is customary to review the year gone by. What do you think was the most significant event of 2014 ? Some would say Ukraine. A few might vote for Ebola. Still others might say ISIS. What about the missing Malaysian Airlines plane ? Others might say the Indian elections. Many in my part of the world might even say Lingaa :) In my opinion however, the most significant happening of 2014 was the steep fall in the price of oil. In June 2014, Brent crude stood at $110 a barrel. Today it is at $ 60. This has profound ramifications on both the economics and politics of the world. Because of the world's dependence on oil as the primary source of energy, there has been a massive transfer of wealth over the last decade or two from the poor to the rich. Most of the world's nations are oil importers. A few, blessed by sheer geographical luck are oil exporters. Wealth has gushed from the former to the latter for years now. With the step decline in the price of...

One of the pleasures of life is to start the day with a strong cup of coffee in one hand and The Hindu on the other. But the dangers of such a practice was brought out today - scalding by spilling the hot stuff on a sensitive part of your anatomy, the coffee turning utterly bitter in the mouth, etc etc. For right in the front page was the news that caused me to convulse uncontrollably. Her Majesty the Queen , had sent her first tweet ! This blogger's vehement opposition to that abominable medium and  contempt for "twits" is well know. He is well ware that 99.99999% of the world are in the opposite camp. But he consoled himself that a few dignified men and women of great stature, like Her Majesty (and himself !) had better taste and sense. Now he is somewhat perturbed that he may be the only dignified man standing. Her Majesty's first tweet is a perfect example of the inanity of Twitter. She tweeted - "It is a pleasure to open the Information Age exhibition toda...

Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella got himself into a pickle yesterday. He was asked at a women's forum what women should do to get paid more. He replied "It’s not really about asking for the raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raises as you go along,” he said, adding that such patience was “good karma”. In this politically correct world, he was, of course, asking for trouble. He has been pilloried and the only sensible PR thing to do is to grovel and apologise. Women are paid less than men, in some places (although I challenge anybody to prove this in the IT industry. I know this industry intimately. No sensible company pays women differently from men for the same job. There are less than 50% women in the IT industry, and a lot less in senior echelons,  but that is due to a whole host of other reasons, not unequal pay). I have no desire to incur the wrath of the politically correct. So I am not going to debate whether Nadella should g...

Nauru is a strange country. It's a trivia nut's delight. It is the only country in the world without an official capital. It is the second smallest state in terms of population after the Vatican. Its 10,000 odd people are the fattest in the world. It is an island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from anywhere. But this post is not to extoll the Robinson Crusoeish place as some sort of a paradise - it is instead about the strangeness of its economy. Nauru is , to put it mildly, plain broke. Bankrupt with a capital B. But in the 1970s and 1980s it was the richest country in the world in terms of per capita income ! How did the richest country in the world go bust in 30 years. It is a strange story indeed. Nauru's prosperity came from the most unlikeliest of sources - bird poo.  Over millions of years, seabirds crapped all over the island. The poo accumulated and accumulated and became guam. When Nauru became independant in 1968, it found itself si...

Remember Psy and the megahit video Gangnam style ?  Yeah, I know, two years is the equivalent of a full Jurassic Age in pop music circles, but still ..... While you were trying to prance about like a horse, did you wonder what Gangnam style really meant ?? Gangnam is actually a suburb in Seoul, inhabited by the mighty and wealthy. The song was a parody of the lifestyles of those mighty men and women. Today Gangnam district came back into the news, with a property deal that raised my eyebrows so much that they vanished into my hairline (such as it is !). A 79,000 sq metre plot was up for sale. Thirteen bidders emerged, including two of Korea's biggest corporations , Hyundai and Samsung. Hyundai won it ; apparently they want to build their corporate headquarters there. The price tag ? A cool $ 10 bn. If you do the math , that is $126,000 per sq mtr. Or if you are an Indian, preferring ancient British metrics, Rs 7.6 lakhs per sq ft !!! What sort of a crazy world do we live in where ...

Which is India's most admired company ?  The results of Fortune's 2014 survey released recently, reveals a surprising name at the top. It is ITC. For those unfamiliar with Indian business, ITC is primarily a cigarette company. In the good old days, it stood for Imperial Tobacco Company. Today it runs its cigarette business quietly. It has diversified into a conglomerate - Hotels and Consumer Goods being the most visible elements of its business. It does a lot of good work, especially in the agricultural sector. Its work with farmers in various parts of the country is legendary. Its has a great management team and wonderful strengths. It has been there for decades and has been a proven success over a long period of time. Growth in revenues and market capitalisation over the years has been outstanding. Yet, and yet, there must be some feeling of unease of it being the most admired company. It sells cigarettes and still makes most of its money from cigarettes. Is that right ? ITC ...