Focus on Higher Education to leverage Demographic Advantage

The global marketplace and indeed the world economy is changing rapidly and these changes are impacting the way we do business, earn a living and grow within India as well. About 51% of India’s population is less than 25 years old. While this gives India a large demographic advantage, states in India need to focus on education to ensure that an educated and appropriately trained/skilled workforce is ready to tap the opportunities of the time.

However, increased government spending on education since 2007 notwithstanding, 142 million children in India are denied primary and secondary education and a third of the nation’s population cannot read. Clearly, with the Indian economy growing rapidly, fuelled by the rise of knowledge-intensive and hi-tech sectors like ICT, automotives , pharmaceuticals and others, states must ensure quality education to enable Indians reap the benefits of economic growth.

In order to understand which states in India are prioritising education, we considered four indicators — higher secondary school enrolment , government revenue expenditure on education , number of universities and women’s literacy rates. These indicators serve as good pointers to the condition of education in a state and impact on economic growth.

Small states target education as the recipe for growth; need more focus

The hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh will benefit from high per capita school enrolment figures, which are much higher than the national average of approximately 3,230 students per lakh people, even as their GDP growth rates are above the national average. Meghalaya, Tripura, Haryana, Goa and Delhi are other states with healthy GDP growth as well as school enrolment figures. These, except for Haryana, are also among the top 10 states in terms of per capita revenue on education, arts and culture. This indicates that education is a clear priority in these states.

Women’s literacy is another dimension and the one widely seen to have a big impact on economic growth. Many small states fare well in this regard. Kerala clearly stands out with exemplary female literacy rate (87.72%). The state also shows healthy school enrolment figures, good government expenditure and adequate infrastructure.

The fact that these states are small — both in geographical area and population — requires them to pay attention to the quality of their human resources if they have to attract investment and successfully harness their natural endowments . For instance, both Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have focused on creating industrial zones. The success of these industrial zones depends on the availability of employable talent locally, besides power, cost of land, logistics and government incentives.

From a competitiveness perspective, these states would need to align skills imparted by the institutions in the state with the skills to be required by the industry in the future. States, therefore, need to make a realistic projection of labour that would be required by the industries the state is promoting as well as by those industries that already exist, and then focus on developing institutions that can train people who can be placed in these industries. This is the key to enable people to avail of the opportunities within their home state, instead of being forced to migrate to other states or metros for employment.

Large states daunted by task of educating masses despite adequate infrastructure

Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are the only two large states with good higher enrolment figures for higher secondary school. Other large states such as West Bengal and Karnataka, that have healthy GDP growth, and even Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, that have substantially higher GDP growth than the national average, show poor per capita higher secondary school enrolment. Madhya Pradesh scores low on both counts. Large states, with the exception of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and West Bengal, are also at the bottom of the list when it comes to female literacy.

Educating a large population is a challenge for big states. If we look at the figures for government expenditure, this is evident. Large states do not figure among the top 10 spenders per lakh population. Yet, West Bengal spends more on education, arts and culture than Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra that show good enrolment figures . Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh spend the least per capita on education.

Ironically, these large states have the best infrastructure in the country. Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of universities (29), followed by Maharashtra (27), Tamil Nadu (22), Andhra Pradesh (20), Madhya Pradesh (19), Bihar (17), Karnataka (16) and West Bengal (14). However, the quality of education imparted by these institutions is a matter of concern. States such as Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh are neither able to adequately fund their educational institutions, nor retain quality faculty.

Inadequate employment opportunities for graduates further strengthen the cycle of out-migration , leaving such states bereft of their knowledge workers and lowering the motivation for profit-making corporations to invest in these locations. This has, however, been changing in specific cities where centres of learning, corporate will and attractive location factors are fuelling clusters of industry in specific verticals. Bangalore in Karnataka has emerged as a hub for the IT industry and so has Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh has world-class institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Indian Institute of Management at Lucknow and the Banaras Hindu University at Varanasi, but has been unable to develop industries around these to harness the resident knowledge from these places and employ the graduates. The standards of statelevel universities that attract local students must also be simultaneously raised while local employment opportunities are created.

Low-performing states need urgent intervention to progress

Some of the small and mid-sized states that do not fare so well need specific intervention. Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Gujarat and Nagaland have poor higher secondary school enrolments despite moderate and high GDP growth. Jharkhand , Punjab and Assam have low GDP growth rates and low school enrolment. Other than Nagaland , Punjab and Gujarat, these are also the states with low female literacy.

Rajasthan is on the cusp of both GDP growth and school enrolment. However, Rajasthan has surprisingly high government expenditure on education, showing that the state has prioritised education and is determined to cross over into a better performer in the next decade. States such as Chhattisgarh and Jharkand, which do not have a single university yet, need to urgently create the right infrastructure to raise their human capacity and attract investment.

Long-term benefits on the horizon

States need to focus on the benefits that education provides in the long term. A literate population results in controlled population growth rates over time. High-quality workforce will allow states to boost economic growth by focusing on more sophisticated and value-added industries and services instead of merely continuing to invite investment in basic manufacturing and service activities.

The increased productivity that a trained workforce can deliver results in enhanced prosperity and better distribution of wealth, which are the ultimate goals of governments and private sector corporations alike.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/policy/focus-on-higher-education-to-leverage-dmographic-advantage/articleshow/7160372.cms

Is Gold a Hedge Against Inflation?

Gold’s price behavior is a reflection of a built-in perception of uncertainty and nervousness regarding all currencies and the current global socio-economic state. From a low of $250 in 1999 to the current price of about $1400 per troy ounce, gold is the only perceived store of value that investors have come to accept. The inverse correlation to the dollar that has somewhat held true for quite a while — gold and dollar values move opposite of each other — has been lost as of late, and the metal has risen on days when the greenback lost against all other currencies.

From a supply and demand perspective, consumption by the precious metal major market – retail jewelry — has declined, according to the World Gold Council, an organization funded by the world’s leading gold mining companies. Total gold demand in the second quarter of 2010 rose by 36%, largely reflecting strong gold investment demand compared to the second quarter of 2009. In Dollar terms, demand increased 77% to $40.4 billion. However, global jewelry demand declined 5% from one year ago despite China’s increase of 5%. In India, the largest retail market in the world, had a decline of 2%. The key driver behind the spike in price is due to investment demand with an astonishing 118% increase from last year, with the largest growth coming from the Exchange Traded Funds segment, which registered 414% growth. It is starting to look like oil between 2007 and 2008, but when many thought that oil was high at $100, it proceed to shoot up to $150, before it fell.

Why gold and not something else? Rarity, acceptability, usability, portability, and liquidity. But isn’t gold a hedge against inflation? Never was and will never be. It’s a hedge against instability, and a consensus exists that gold, for lack of a different asset, is the asset to hold due to the uncertainty that surrounds the markets, which are affected by the constant flux of less than clear economic policies at home and abroad. Positive consumer sentiment in conjunction with easy credit, cause inflation, and if inflation was the issue, the value of hard assets, such as land and housing, would be rising – and that is not the case.

I know about the guy that goes on TV and shows a shrinking dollar and then adds the dramatic clink-clink sound of security to the message. Oh, and he has been in gold for 10 years, except that ten years ago he forgot to mention it, when prices were a lot more accessible. But doesn’t your dollar buy you more house than it did in 2007? And by the way, the unscientific milk index has dropped from around 4$ a gallon in 2008 to the latest special of 99 cents for the same jug. Meanwhile, the price of gold is still rising, completely oblivious that inflation is not around – but global instability is.

Unfortunately, the rapid rise in the value of the commodity has attracted less than scrupulous operators, that rely on misinformation to trick the public into buying their inventory of extremely over priced gold coins, and many unsuspecting individuals are being taken to the cleaners. Whether the value of gold will rise to the stratosphere is an unknown, and I wouldn’t bet on a price level of any kind. Thus far, the price appears poised for further gains, but once the economic future of the major global players is well-defined – whether it is a positive or negative outcome – gold prices will subside because certainty will clear the air, even if sovereign default is the end result. Ultimately it’s only a commodity.

Lastly, gold cannot be money because the supply cannot grow at will to keep up with population and productivity. Only its value can change — up and down — relative to currencies, and the mining market supply coupled with demand from investment, industrial, and retail markets will determine the valuation. Shouldn’t platinum be money? The higher value of about $350 over gold, would translate into lower storage costs for Central Banks and everyone else. How about rhodium at $2,300 per ounce, a member of the platinum family?

The first gold coin used as money was the ‘florin’, minted by the Republic of Florence in the 13th Century, now modern Tuscany in Italy. Yet gold had been around for a little while longer. Gold was also used as money in Rome way before then, but since the mines were in North Africa, the metal lost its appeal as currency due to supply issues, and silver was used instead. In addition, gold is impractical to use as money because an extremely small one gram coin, if in existence, would be something less than 1/16 inch in diameter, and would be worth over $40 at today’s price. Do I have to buy 20 loaves of bread at a time? Let me pay you with this tiny golden speck.

Gold offers opportunities as an investment, much like other commodities, just not for the reasons that are commonly given. And silver has outperformed gold over the last 10 years.

Author: Carlos X. Alexandre
http://seekingalpha.com/article/236312-is-gold-a-hedge-against-inflation-not-really?source=feed

So said Nehru to Eisenhower

Indo-Pak issues, including Kashmir, can be sorted out only through direct contact between the two countries and not through outside mediation, wrote Jawaharlal Nehru in his 1958 missive to the US President

IN HIS letter dated May 14, 1958, US President Dwight Eisenhower had expressed concern over the economic problems of India and Pakistan “during the last few years” and “admired the resolute manner in which both the countries have tackled the complex difficulties facing them”. However, he found it a “source of real concern” that the “effective economic development of both countries is being hindered by the continued existence of unresolved political and economic issues” and that both the countries were “devoting increasing amounts to their defence budgets at the expense of development”. Emphasising his deep personal concern with this problem, he considered it necessary for both the countries to find “mutually acceptable solutions of the major outstanding issues” and for this purpose, he added, he would be “glad to designate a special representative to visit India” if India agreed to it. Excerpts from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s reply to the US President dated June 7, 1958, are reproduced below:

Dear Mr President,
Ambassador (Ellsworth) Bunker handed over to me on the May 16 your personal letter of May 14. I am grateful to you for your personal interest and concern in matters affecting us.

I had a long talk with Ambassador Bunker on the subject of your letter and pointed out to him the various aspects of the problems and the difficulties we had to face. I have no doubt that the Ambassador has communicated to you what I said to him on both these occasions.

I need not, therefore, write at any length now. But I am taking the liberty of enclosing a copy of the report of a speech I made in our Parliament on April 9, 1958. This deals with Indo-Pak relations and I attempted to give in it our approach to all the problems that had arisen between them. It deals, in particular, with the basic difficulty we have faced throughout these years in our dealings with Pakistan. There is also reference in it to the report that Dr (Frank) Graham made to the Security Council after his recent visit to India.

This speech will, I hope, make it clear to you how anxious we have been ever since Independence to have normal and friendly relations with Pakistan. We had hoped that the old conflicts and the policy of hatred and violence, pursued by the old Muslim League, which indeed had led to the Partition, would cease. It was obviously to the advantage of both countries to live in peace and friendship with each other and to devote themselves to their social and economic development which was so urgently needed to give a social content to our freedom and independence. Unfortunately for us and for Pakistan, our hopes were not realised and the Pakistan government continued to pursue that old policy of hatred and violence. Every government that comes to power in Pakistan bases itself on this policy of hatred against India. It is this basic fact that has to be recognised. In our opinion, the settlement we so ardently desire cannot come if this policy of hatred continues.

Military pacts and military aid have made Pakistan think in terms of coercing India. No self-respecting country can submit to this, much more so when that country is an aggrieved party and the other country continues to profit by its aggression. Unfortunately, the encouragement that Pakistan has received in the Security Council and elsewhere has led it to continue its policy of aggressive intransigence.

I realise fully that whatever the rights and wrongs may be in regard to these disputes, it is highly desirable to settle them and turn the course of events in the direction of peace and cooperation. I entirely agree with you, Mr President, that we should make every effort to this end. The question that arises is how best this can be done, because a wrong step may well lead to further difficulties. We have experience of trying to explore various avenues and making proposals for discussion, which found no response from Pakistan and led to further confusion. Indeed, we were made to suffer for every step that we took in the hope of facilitating a settlement. Despite all this, it is our desire that our two countries should resolve their differences and develop friendly relations with each other. To this end, we shall continue to work, but in doing so, we cannot submit to what we consider basically wrong, for any such submission would not solve any problem and would only aggravate our conflicts.

We have always been of the view that a settlement of our various issues with Pakistan can only be arrived at satisfactorily by direct contacts between the two countries. If third parties intervene, even though that intervention proceeds from goodwill, the position becomes entirely different. The aggressor country and the country against whom aggression has taken place are put on the same level, both pleading before that third party. It is this difficulty that has faced me in considering the proposal that you have made. Ambassador Bunker has told me that it is not intended that any person should act as a judge or umpire. Nevertheless, by whatever name the third person might be called, his intervention would tend to be regarded as of that kind and might well add to the present difficulties. Any visit of such a person could not be kept secret and the result would be greater public excitement.

Kashmir, canal waters and other matters in issue between India and Pakistan are the result, and not the basic cause, of Pakistan’s hostility to India. The atmosphere between the two countries has been worsened further by the incitement by Pakistan of subversion and sabotage in Kashmir and by speeches by Pakistan’s leaders advocating holy war against India. The Pakistani authorities have been responsible for frequent border incidents; early this week, seven of our border police were shot down in cold blood while negotiating under the white flag with their Pakistan counterparts along the border.

I have ventured to point out frankly the difficulties that face us. At the same time, I appreciate greatly your concern and I am anxious to explore all possibilities which might lead to happier results. I do not think, for the reasons I have given above, that a visit by a special representative, as suggested by you, would be helpful. May I again express my gratitude to you, Mr President, for your personal approach to these matters which concern us intimately. I know that you and your country mean well by us and we are happy that there has been a growing understanding between our countries.

(From The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 42)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments--analysis/So-said-Nehru-to-Eisenhower/articleshow/6862680.cms

Expats take rural road for new ventures - Archana Rai BANGALORE

HIGH on the Uttarakhand mountains, a group of networking engineers are hunched over Google Maps on their computer monitors. They are looking for an appropriate site to position a rural internet broadband system that will pipe banking services to customers in the state’s Tehri Garhwal region.
“This is very difficult terrain and we had to make site visits, rent land for solar powered relays on the top of some mountains and hire local labour to weld small masts and carry them to the relay sites,” says Jim Forster, an American entrepreneur, who is building low-cost broadband connectivity in the hills of northern India. Forster is a former Cisco professional who came to India in 2006 as a networking engineer. During one of his trips to Dharamshala, he met a non-profit initiative called Air Jaldi, and became a quick convert to the idea of rural broadband. Two years later, he quit Cisco and returned to India leading the move to turn Air Jaldi into a for-profit business that has just launched a commercial broadband service for consumers in areas such as the Kangra Valley in Himachal Pradesh, Mussoorie and Uttarakhand.
“Rural does not imply poor; rural people have motor bikes, cars, trucks. If we can supply good, affordable internet access then they will also have some number of PC’s,” says Forster who has invested several hundreds of thousand dollars into the venture that is now being launched as airjaldi.net. “We are looking for additional angel investment of up to $500,000 to $1 million by the end of the year,” he added.
Elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, DripTech, a start-up founded by Stanford graduate, Peter Frykman tested a drip irrigation system across 15 farms over five months. Following the pilot, the company has started marketing the product in China where there is a potential market of 300 million customers, according to Frykman. DripTech has raised over $ 1 million from angel investors to get the product off the ground. “We needed $50,000 to fund 6 months of operations and our initial pilot study in India, which I raised from a successful entrepreneur, Scott Petry,” says Frykman who travels to India every eight to ten weeks.

Opportunity across sectors
LISTED amongst the Most Intriguing Product Start-ups by Business Week, DripTech has notched up sales of 200 irrigation systems in China since its launch this year. “It can be challenging for certain people to accept that foreigners could gain expertise and insight into the needs of rural farmers in India,” says Frykman who believes his biggest challenge will be in building a distributed local manufacturing system that will make it possible to reduce costs.
Forster and Frykman are a new brand entrants into India’s burgeoning entrepreneurial landscape. Lured by the country’s economic boom, a number of expatriate entrepreneurs are flocking to India to set up new businesses ranging from rural broadband, solar lighting and drip irrigation systems to incubators that nurture very small enterprises and consulting firms. These professionals are tapping into segments that offer an inherent “India” advantage - untapped rural markets and a talented workforce. “Overseas entrepreneurs are looking for a warmer climate to try out new things as the economic climate in the US has not yet recovered and the buzz about India as an entrepreneurial destination is pretty good,” says Rishikesha T Krishnan, professor of corporate strategy and Jamuna Raghavan chair professor of entrepreneurship, IIM-Bangalore. “China and India are seen as the next big opportunity and while China and to some extent Brazil are not open economies, India is seen as a place that supports good entrepreneurship,” he added.
A unique combination of factors has helped support this perception of India. Skilled human capital with colleges such as the Indian Institutes of Technology and Management and technology companies with combined revenues in excess of $10 billion; A strong flow of capital and a well developed legal system; the opportunity to try out new challenges and take them to other emerging markets.
In contrast, physical infrastructure is poor specifically in sectors such as lighting and power, healthcare, roads, irrigation and rural data communication, all of which offer opportunities for skilled entrepreneurs to build on. Industry watchers estimate that nearly 90 % of Indians live within 40km of fiber optics, owned or operated by telecom companies, including BSNL, Airtel and Reliance Communications, but large numbers do not have access to broadband communication at speeds of 256kbps. “The fiber backbone supports pretty good internet access at very low prices in all the tier 1, 2, and even tier 3 cities but all of those technologies have issues in the rural areas,” says Forster, who finds progressive licensing policies for internet service providers, a huge boost in building a rural broadband business.
Sam Goldman, founder of D.Light , a start-up that has raised venture capital from a clutch of investors such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Nexus Venture, is cracking a similar challenge like Forster. “India and Indians are entrepreneurial and there is hunger for new business but there isn’t a mature distribution system to serve rural markets,” says Goldman who grew up in India and completed his high school here. But it wasn’t until he graduated from Stanford, did a stint with the Peace Corps in Africa that the idea of building a business for social good took concrete shape. He came to India in 2008 and started a company that would offer affordable lighting solutions to rural and low income consumers. It helped that the idea got picked up by the Draper Fisher Jurvetson-Cisco Business Plan competition.
“There is a definitely mature ecosystem for young start-ups here with almost all investor such as DFJ and Acumen having an office here,” says Goldman who has since leaned on investor networks to build his team of 80 people of whom 35 are in India. The rest are spread across East Africa, Hong Kong and China where D.Light also sells its products. “India is a highly competitive market and it took us nearly three years to get the right product and price mix here,” says Goldman who feels building products for India has made it easier to enter other emerging markets.
Fighting for a share of the solar pie is another expat entrepreneur, John Howard a former consultant at McKinsey & Co who quit his post at the firm’s Seattle Office for the rough and tumble of business in rural India. Earlier this year, his firm Duron Energy, started sales of solar powered plug and play devices for lighting and battery recharges in villages across Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh with sale of few thousand units until now. Howard, a graduate from the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, discovered that he wanted to sell affordable power solutions to Indian villagers during a fun-trip to the country some four years ago, and launched his company Duron Energy in 2008. The start-up was incubated by Bill Gross, founder of Idealabs and a Caltech graduate himself and has received investments from Solgenix LLC and David Gelbaum’s Quercus Trust, a family trust .
“Our big breakthrough has been in tying up financing for customers with banks such as Kashi Gomti Grameen Bank,” says Howard who has in place a system where customers can pay as little as 100 a month for a solar light priced at 6,000. “We are actually displacing the 100 a family pays for kerosene every month,” says Howard.
It is innovation of this sort that will be needed to take-off in the Indian market according to IIM-B’s Krishnan who reckons long term staying power and constant innovation will be the twin tests for expat entrepreneurs in India. In fact, staying power is something that Freeman Murray lists as his calling card as he builds a technology incubator for very young start-ups in Bangalore. Upstart.in set up by him in partnership with Satish Dharmaraj, a VC from Silicon Valley-based Red Point Ventures, supports half-a-dozen tech start-ups in the city.
Murray, who worked with tech major Sun Microsystems in the early 90’s before he quit to set up his own company with a friend Pavni Diwanji, found a profitable exit from it in 2000. “After that I got into angel investing,” he says and found himself in India looking for interesting ideas in areas such as voice over internet and IPTV.
He began by investing in start-ups that topped the iAccelerator Business Plan Competition run by the Indian Institute of Ahmedabad putting in about 5 lakh in 10 companies. upstart.in now has a corpus of $ 100,000. “I am looking to raise more capital to support very early stage technology and in the meantime I am providing physical space that mimics hightech incubators in the US that young companies can use,” says Murray who has set up Jaaga, an open format structure that provides internet communications and defined work areas for entrepreneurs looking for an ecosystem in which to build new tech businesses. As the Indian economy expands there will clearly be more such expats who will dive into the world of Indian business. “I remember an early Cisco customer talking about how they would “get one million people on the broadband internet, and at the time, I was amazed at their vision and audacity. Now one million customers in the US is nothing, but I believe we could get 1-10 million people in rural India online, that would be a great accomplishment,” says Forster.

Rural India in the Vortex of change

Rural India in the Vortex of change

Why Indian Managers Succeed Overseas? - R Gopalkrishnan

A famous person said that the measure of a society is how it converts its pain and suffering into something meaningful and useful. India has done that through the remarkable success of its overseas managers.

Indians are rightly jubilant with the overseas success of their compatriots, for example, when Nitin Nohria was appointed Dean of Harvard Business School (HBS); or earlier, when Subra Suresh became Dean of MIT or when Arun Sarin and Vikram Pandit rose to the top of their companies. The positive emotion often has a trace of India Rising.

The achievers are humble about their success. Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen nonchalantly says, “It is not a big deal, because America is an egalitarian and meritocratic environment.” HBS’ Nitin Nohria gives credit to IIT. Pepsico’s Indra Nooyi modestly says, “I am a mother first and then a CEO.”

Do India-born managers possess something distinctive? Do they achieve more success abroad than other immigrants? It is tempting to think so and, indeed, there are many views. One view is that Indian managers are no different from similarly-educated managers from elsewhere. Another is that Indians have always done well overseas, but media coverage has brought visibility and celebration.

A third view is reflected in a recent book, The India way: How India’s top business leaders are revolutionalizing management, in which Wharton professors Peter Cappelli, Harbir Singh, Jitendra Singh and Michael Useem identify four distinctive Indian practices: holistic engagement with employees, improvisation and adaptability, creative value propositions and broad mission and purpose.

Whichever may be correct, the upbringing of India-born managers quite unintentionally prepares them for a good chance of success overseas. As author Sanjaya Baru wrote in March this year in Careers 360, “Stories of extreme hardship, braving impossible odds and innumerable sacrifices, abound in the lives of nearly 90% of the students in the country.

But among them, some perform exceptionally well. Their academic laurels are so brilliant, that at times their CV looks intimidating. And each one acknowledges that it’s the right education that made them what they are today.” India-born managers are products of four unique circumstances.

Competitive education: IIT/IIM effect
Thanks to subsidies, higher education is accessible to middle-class people. When viewed with the cultural propensity to acquire degrees, this fact results in an avalanche of several thousand applying for every college seat. Higher education is crushingly competitive. Bright Indian children who do not get into IIT effortlessly secure admission into an Ivy League College! In the US, this has repositioned IIT as a genius factory, and IIT alumni promote this assiduously.

The graduates of India’s institutions have been psychologically autoclaved through high-pressure competition. They emerge with insatiate ambition that vastly exceeds their intellectual or financial resources. This stretch between resource and unreasonable ambition is significant: recall the late Prof C KPrahalad, “It is essential for top management to set out an aspiration that creates, by design, a chasm between ambition and resources.” The Indian system creates in many graduates a chasm between aspiration and resource, but quite unintentionally.

Accelerated learning
Life for the student is a struggle in India compared to elsewhere: commuting in chaotic cities, inadequate privacy and lebensraum to study at home, facilities for sports and libraries, and a crushing burden of exams. Almost every student has faced early setbacks: inadequate marks in exams, a lost college admission or a limited job choice. Chance plays too important a role in the Indian student’s life, making it quite stressful, hence youngsters just have to learn to face setbacks early on. They learn to be persistent and to fight with a never-say-die attitude.

Research indicates that extraordinary setbacks accelerate personal learning. Duke Corporate Education board member Judy Rosenblum wrote in 2009 in the Financial Times, “In order for people to develop as professionals, they need to be immersed in problems. A problem provides the opportunity to grapple with and test one’s ability to adapt.”

Although family and peer pressure are high, they also provide the required support to handle the stress. Fortunately, the influence of parents is prolonged and significant. Sir Winston Churchill told the English people, “Never give in, never, never, never, never” for the war years. The Indian student practices this all through life. Success is not just about being ambitious, it is about overcoming adversity.

Hard work plus creativity
It is not that other nationalities are lazy. It is just that overcoming shortcomings of infrastructure requires Indians to expend energy that could otherwise have been productively deployed. The educated youngster is forced to develop the traits of hard work like east Asians who naturally derive it from their Confucian ethos.

But there is a difference: the Indian has a low aptitude for repetitive tasks. The Indian will try to do the repetitive task differently and creatively: in short, he works hard and creatively, a brilliant combination. The serious student works and sweats as if on an academic treadmill and business executives do the same in their workplace.

Indians’ propensity for hard work was grudgingly acknowledged by Abraham Pinkusewitz while explaining how the Gujaratis managed to capture 70% of the diamond trade in the Antwerp market, “Indians succeed because business is all they have in their lives. If needed, they will work 24 hours per day.”

Young Indians have also to adapt to challenges arising from diversity, which is quite different from, for example, the Chinese: learning several Indian languages, adapting to school systems while transferring with parents, and coping with variable teaching quality.

Howard Gardner, Harvard academic on Cognition and Education, points out, “The only reliable way to determining whether understanding has truly been achieved is to pose a new question or puzzle on in which individuals have not been coached and to see how they fare.” Indian students are wired to work very hard, with passion and creatively.

Thinking in English
Where else in the world would a temple be constructed for Goddess English? On October 25, 2010, the birthday of Babington Macaulay, such a temple will be inaugurated in Uttar Pradesh. English is being installed as a deity there so that those who pray to her can be blessed with progress.

Uniquely, Indian managers think in English, the test being that they use English to express fine points. Many don’t comprehend the nuances of a vernacular paper. The manager’s professional education has almost certainly been in English, case studies have been Anglo-American, language proficiency has played an important role in success and socialisation, and the language of business is English. As a result, the Indian manager abroad is quite analytical, linear-thinking , and articulate in his intellectual skills. She hits the ground running in any overseas employment.

Unintended consequence
These four circumstances produce a sufficient number of highly-competitive , creative and competent students! Followed by a career in a relatively-orderly work environment with process-orientation in the west, the career manager goes Boom, Boom. She becomes productive early on because of lower frictional losses and obstacles.

Many, many Indians are successful abroad, not just the few that the media write about. I know from my Unilever experience that Indians are prized as much in India as in Peru, Poland and the Philippines.

These facts about the Indian manager ignore the harsh reality that many do not make it through the obstacle race. This has unfortunate social consequences. But for those that do, the probability of success abroad improves a lot. A concurrent trend is that foreign business leaders are joining Indian companies: Carl-Peter Forster in Tata Motors, Marten Pieters at Vodafone Essar, Wolfgang Prock-Schauer at Jet Airways and Raymond Bickson at Indian Hotels.

In short, Indian managers are rapidly globalising, and that must be a good thing for the future.

(The author is executive director at Tata Sons. Views are personal.)

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Why-Indian-managers-succeed-overseas/articleshow/6018548.cms

Shale Gas transforms Geopolitics, Energy

For decades, India has kowtowed to Gulf countries, notably Iran. With large shale gas deposits and new technology to extract it, India can afford to act tough, says Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar.

THE Indian government remains asleep to the revolutionary potential of shale gas, which promises to revolutionise both the world energy scene and global geopolitics. Russia, Iran and Opec are going to be greatly weakened, while the US, Europe and China will be greatly strengthened. India can be a major beneficiary.
First, shale is a common sedimentary rock found in most countries, so shale gas can hugely reduce the dependence of most countries (including India) on imported energy. Second, the geopolitical clout of major gas exporters — Russia, Iran, Algeria, Bolivia — will fall dramatically. Third, some countries may start converting their transport fleets into gas-based ones, hitting the demand for and prices of petrol and diesel. Fourth, converting gas into oil will become economic.
Shale has long been known to contain natural gas, but this was not worth extracting with conventional technology. Now a new technology, ‘fracking', plus horizontal drilling, have greatly increased shale gas productivity, so extraction is now viable at $3-4/mmbtu. The new technology has been pioneered in the US so successfully that the US has overtaken Russia as the world's biggest gas producer. US gas reserves have increased from 30 years consumption to 100 years consumption. Port terminals to import LNG (liquefied natural gas) into the US will instead export LNG to Japan.
The US dream of energy independence remains fanciful, but its dependence can indeed fall dramatically. Historically, the price of gas was linked to that of oil: gas cost one-sixth to oneseventh the price of oil. That equation has been smashed in the US, where oil costs $72/barrel but gas costs one-eighteenth as much ($4/mmbtu).
Poland and Ukraine, totally dependent on Russian gas, are rushing to find shale gas and free themselves from Moscow. Georgia, another Russian dependent, also seeks energy freedom. Russia has an iron grip on its ‘near abroad', countries that used to be part of the USSR. But that grip will loosen dramatically if shale gas is found in large quantities in Eastern Europe.
Many Western European countries are rushing to acquire shale gas technology. Exxon Mobil is the front-runner in European exploration, but Shell is following suit. This dismays Algeria, a major supplier to Western Europe, which wants to create a gas cartel like Opec. The chances of this are zero. Indeed, LNG facilities created in the Persian Gulf to supply the US are becoming redundant, so supplies will have to be dumped on Europe and Asia. India must take advantage of this.
Gazprom, the Russian gas monopolist, admits that it has been forced to delink 15% of its supplies from the price of oil, and instead accept links to spot gas prices at trading hubs like Louisiana's Henry Hub, which sets the US benchmark price. Holland has a gas hub at Zeebrugge and Britain at National Balancing Point, and a new hub is coming up in Germany. At these hubs the spot price is determined by the interaction of multiple buyers and sellers, replacing the old prices linked to oil. The Financial Timesreports that half the gas contracts in Western Europe are now linked to spot prices.
PETROCHINA estimates that China may have 45,000 billion cubic metres of shale gas, more than Russia's proven conventional gas reserves. China used to be an oil exporter but in recent decades has become a major importer of oil and LNG. Chinese demand helped push oil to $150/barrel in 2008. In the next 10 years, shale gas may significantly reduce China's import demand. World oil prices may keep rising for another five years, but could plateau or fall after that. China is also exploiting its coal-bed methane reserves of 170 billion cubic metres.
Gas can readily substitute fuel oil in industry and power generation, and kerosene in cooking. But the bulk of oil consumption is in transport. Compressed natural gas (CNG) is powering buses and three-wheelers in Delhi and other cities. However, setting up CNG facilities across countries and converting vehicles to run on CNG remains a major challenge. It may never happen in the US. Authoritarian China, however, will surely push through such a change. This may be phased over a decade or more, but the price impact will start showing up earlier.
India has large shale deposits, with good prospects in the Gangetic plain, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat. Tamil Nadu, Andhra and the north-east. India must get cracking on seismic surveys followed by allotment of exploratory blocks. Companies should be able to acquire blocks any time based on a predetermined revenue-sharing formula. Mukesh Ambani will probably be the first to start exploration, but others will follow quickly, including Anil Ambani (who is already in unconventional gas through coal-bed methane).
Large shale gas discoveries should embolden India to convert transport fleets in all cities from petrol and diesel to CNG. That will reduce not only energy dependence but pollution too.
Reliance has considered converting some KG gas into oil. Now that gas has become cheap relative to oil, it should go ahead. Other refiners — Essar, IOC, BPCL and HPCL — should consider this option too.
For decades India has kowtowed to Gulf countries, notably Iran. It can now afford to act much tougher. Iran supported Pakistan in Indo-Pak wars, and blasted India for Pokharan-II, and demanded that India sign the NPT. Iran nationalised the Rostam and Raksh oilfields in which the ONGC had a stake. It reneged on a contract to supply cheap LNG top India after Ahmedinejad came to power. Despite this India has been deferential to this potentially powerful energy supplier.
That must now change. India must tell all Gulf producers that it will pay gas prices linked not to oil but to the Henry Hub price. The best starting point is not Iran but Qatar, which has just completed a gigantic expansion to become the world's largest LNG supplier. This is now in surplus. Qatar wants $10/ mmbtu. India must offer just $4. Once Qatar gives way, so will other LNG exporters, including Australia.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/columnists/swaminathan-s-a-aiyar/Shale-gas-transforms-geopolitics-energy/articleshow/6001231.cms

Patient Revolution -- Chhattisgarh Health Care

A band of 60,000 voluntary healthcare workers were trained to counsel villagers and confront errant government doctors. The untold story of how they improved healthcare for 18 million people in the state, writes M Rajshekhar The word ‘Mitanin’ was derived from a Chhattisgarhi custom, where a ‘mitanin’ is a girl bonded ceremoniously in her childhood to another girl as a lifelong friend

IT IS quite common for tractors in rural India to haul all kinds of unusual cargo. Even then, a late night emergency shuttle, from a small home in Narayanpaal village in the backward Bastar district of Chhattisgarh, to ferry a pregnant woman in the early throes of childbirth to the local primary health centre, is an uncommon sight. For Savitri Sahu, the woman who responded to the family’s late-night distress call and hailed the tractor, it was just another day at work. Now, Sahu didn’t just happen to be around. She was deliberately positioned there by the state under a voluntary healthcare worker program called Mitanin. Simply put, this is an institutionalised ‘good Samaritan’ program. Only the samaritans also double up as fierce activists. Mitanins like Sahu are trained by the government to respond to citizens’ demand and get healthcare from the state as a matter of right. The baby was born that very night. Yet another baby born in a clinic…one more small victory for the Chhattisgarh government. The state has managed to increase clinical births as opposed to the traditional home births from 10% to 38% since 2000. And, yet another statistic to prove that the Mitanin program is indeed taking the state’s healthcare services to the masses.
This birth was very different from typical deliveries in much of rural India. The family’s decision to take the mother to the hospital itself was a breakthrough. The doctor and support staff being present at that time of the night was another achievement. In fact, 500 of the 717 public health centres in Chhattisgarh now work 24X7. Next, the mother breast fed her baby within two hours of the birth to ensure that the baby gets colostrum, the first liquid that comes out as a mother begins breast feeding. Age-old custom in Chhattisgarh holds this as unhealthy, and also rules that mother and newborn should not be given water for the 24 hours after delivery. Mitanins like Sahu played an instrumental role in making all three happen.
For urban dwellers, even poorer ones, such births are hardly a miracle. But in the tribal-dominated Chhattisgarh, pockets of which have once seen almost one out of every five infants die, this birth is nothing short of a healthcare revolution. Infant mortality in the state is down from 95 per 1000 in 2000 to 44 per 1000 in 2009.
This revolution, which has impacted 18 million people in the state, has been possible only because both patients and doctors are now more responsive to health issues. The patient is willing to go to the health centre. And the doctor, unlike elsewhere, is actually available at the centre.

And the credit for making patients and doctors more responsive goes to Mitanins like Sahu. — there are 60,000 of them in the state. The word Mitanin was derived from a Chhattisgarhi custom, where a ‘mitanin’ is a girl bonded ceremoniously in her childhood to another girl as a lifelong friend.
Each Mitanin has been trained by the government to perform two roles. First, work with villagers to bring about a behaviourial change and train them in preventive health practices. Second, play an activist role in helping villagers demand healthcare as nothing less than a fundamental right.
For example, feedback passed by the Mitanins back to the trainers has helped crack down on errant doctors. In fact, some criticise Mitanins for taking the activism a bit too far. Sahu says she and other Mitanins make it a point to be present when the PDS shop is giving out rations to ensure that all households get their full 35 kgs. Some bureaucrats are complaining, but this could also be seen as evidence that the Mitanin approach is working.
There is a reason the nation should take note of Chhatisgarh’s healthcare army. At a time when debate is raging on whether the Indian state can deliver social services well, the Mitanin programme illustrates that, with a little reform, the state can indeed deliver.
This is why two successive chief ministers have ignored political differences to back the Mitanin program. Former Congress chief minister Ajit Jogi started it 18 months before the state election of 2003. When he saw that the initial pilots were working, he wanted it steamrolled all across the state. But Jogi lost and the BJP’s Raman Singh took over. Worried that the BJP might discontinue what was a Congress programme, Shukla and T Sunderaraman, who had joined to head the SHRC, sought and got an appointment with the new CM to build a case to continue the program. Raman Singh interrupted the session mid way to say that Mitanin was working extremely well in the villages. He knew that it was doing a lot of good work. The program has since got his full backing.
ALOK Shukla remembers how horrifying the numbers were. Ninety five out of every 1000 children born in Chhattisgarh were dying — the second highest in all India. This was in 2000, when Shukla was the state’s health secretary. He has since become India’s deputy election commissioner. Sitting in his office at Nirvachan Sadan, he recalls that diarrhoea, malaria, leprosy and tuberculosis were huge problems. Ten of its 16 districts did not have a district hospital. The state had 146 blocks but just 114 community health centers (there should be one in each block). Its 3,818 health sub-centres, each with one auxillary nurse and midwife had to cover 18 million people across 54,000 hamlets.
Worse, the existing infrastructure was not fully used. For one, the clinics rarely had doctors or medical supplies. Two, as one of the villagers in Sarguja, a district in northern Chhattisgarh, said: “Villagers were apprehensive of the hospital. We did not know where to go, whom to talk to.” Three in Chhattisgarh, much of the state’s population lives in scattered forested habitations. Health workers found it hard to reach the villages, and villagers found it difficult to access the health centres.
These, says Shukla, are the larger realities of public health delivery. The treatment of diseases takes precedence over pre vention of diseases. And there is a strong urban bias: the availability of doctors, health infrastructure drop as one moves from cities to villages.
Now, community health workers are not a new concept. But, till Mitanin came along most such initiatives flopped.
In the first approach, doctors moved from cities to the hinterland to create an alternative to the public health system. They set up hospitals and trained locals to offer simple healthcare in their villages. These models, like the one started by Raj and Mabelle Arole in Jamkhed, Maharashtra, delivered very good results. For instance, between 1972 and 1992, the Aroles brought infant mortality down from 176/1000 to 20/1000. But such models, built around the charisma of their founders, have struggled to scale up. After all these years, Jamkhed covers only 60 villages directly, and 300 indirectly. Chhattisgargh has 20,000 villages.
Then, the health bureaucracy has been running its own CHW experiments to extend curative healthcare by grooming locals into quasi-paramedics and by getting them to bring more complicated cases to clinics. For instance, Madhya Pradesh’s Jan Swasthya Rakshak programme, launched in the nineties, trained local men at primary health centres for six months. The programme bombed. Most of the training was curative, creating an incentive for the men to make money from patients. They rapidly became quacks.
Mitanin chose a middle path. It was decided that only women could be Mitanins. They would be chosen at a hamlet level. Since hamlets are more homogenous than villages, this would reduce the likelihood of the Mitanin not entering the house of an upper/lower caste. To ensure local elite didn’t capture these positions, the women would not be paid for their work — having one woman per hamlet (about 40-60 households) also ensured the workload would not eat into her livelihood. To emphasise the public health role of the Mitanin, curative would play second fiddle to preventive and promotive healthcare. And the Mitanin would be selected by the community, not the health bureaucracy.
It was also decided to keep the Mitanin program out of the purview of the health department. A technical support group called SHRC, State Health Resource Centre, was set up instead. This accentuated the activist aspect
of the Mitanin and enabled her to challenge the government healthcare machinery. There was another reason for this. The Mitanin initiative called for skills the health department lacked — mobilising communities before choosing mitanins, collaborating with civil society groups for training, etc.
In May 2002, the first Mitanin pilot began in 14 of Chhattisgarh’s 146 blocks. This was scaled up to 40 more blocks in July 2003. By June 2004, there was a Mitanin in every one of Chhattisgarh’s all 54,000 hamlets.
This pursuit of scale has resulted in heated debates. For instance, in the programme’s emphasis on scaling up, purists feel the CHW model has been diluted. Arole, the co-founder of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project, Jamkhed, feels Mitanin has struggled to find enough good trainers, and that the women have not been monitored regularly. “At Jamkhed,” he said, “women speak most freely in the evenings and the evaluators spend a night in the village. On the other hand, at Mitanin, the trainers visit once every two weeks and most of the time goes into collecting data.”
SUNDARARAMAN joined SHRC in October 2002, with a unique set of qualifications: he was a doctor, he had helped scale up the total literacy mission, and was known for his attention to details, all useful skills for someone who had to train lots of women about healthcare. “As one scales up,” he says, “there is a loss of motivated leadership. There is greater transmission loss in training. Also lost is the tradition of working with the local community.”
“So, what are the priniciples for reducing transmission loss? You have high voltage at the starting point, a clear channel for transmission, step-up boosters at different points, and you have to measure transmission at different points,” he adds.
He did two things. First, he reconceptualised some aspects of the programme. For instance, the women would be trained every four months for as long as the programme ran (the Jan Swasthya Rakshaks had been trained only for the first six months). To ensure trainers and managers did not forget the ground realities, it was decided that only people living at a block level would be hired to supervise the Mitanins, and that trainers would double as field coordinators. Second, he laid down elaborate, standardised processes for everything — selection, training, on-the-job support, skill development, motivation, supply of drugs, monitoring learning outcomes, the spirit of the programme.
On the whole, SHRC was the high-voltage starting point, churning out training programmes, monitoring implementation, etc. The adherence to processes reduced transmission loss. The multiple trainings were the step-up boosters. A set of process indicators (visits to newborns, number of village meetings held, etc) were used to measure transmission. (Sundararaman moved to Delhi to head the National Health Systems Resource Centre, a technical body advising the National Rural Health Mission, in 2007.)
Take training. SHRC had created books on child health, maternal health, etc. Trainers had to go through these line by line with the Mitanins. Says Sundararaman. “You are not allowed to give a speech on the book even if you can give a better speech. Whatever happens, the minimum gets conveyed.”
Or take the spirit of the programme. That was communicated through songs and kalajathas (skits) — an idea that came from their use by people movements to build and retain a sense of mutual solidarity. The songs, written in workshops by Chhattisgarhi folk singers and writers, paint a popular image of the Mitanin in the local idiom — ‘Sukh mein sabei saath, dukh mein Mitan’.
ONCE training began, Mitanins were told to refer patients to the government clinics. In the early days, villagers who went there found the clinics locked. The Mitanins reported these failed trips to trainers who passed the information on to block medical officers. Slowly, the doctors began coming on time. Similarly, the Mitanins also gradually forced the ANMs to adhere to their prescribed work schedules.
It is hard to quantify the precise contribution of Mitanin to indices like child mortality — there are too many other variables around poverty and disease at work. But the dramatic improvements in childcare practices and improvements in healthcare delivery by the state can be traced back to Mitanin’s emphasis on preventive care and activism.
That said, the rate of improvement in health indices is slowing. This suggests that the low-hanging improvement have been made. The question is whether a health programme can improve the state’s health numbers on its own. Says Arole, “Health is also about ensuring nutrition, clean water, a healthy local environment and education. We need to have a good implementation of all these programmes.” Mitanin on its own is not a panacea.

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=ETNEW&BaseHref=ETM/2010/06/01&PageLabel=14&EntityId=Ar01400&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

The Hindu - "Panel sees male dominance behind banking crisis"

Macho culture has been blamed for the banking collapse, leading to the argument that boards need more women to prevent reckless decision-making.

There is a view that the banking crisis that sent Western economies tumbling two years ago may not have happened at all, or would have been less severe, if there had been more women at the top in the banking sector — the argument being that women are more cautious and risk averse and, therefore, more likely than men to challenge the sort of practices that caused the crisis.

Until now, this theory had been pushed mostly by women campaigners while men tended to snigger. But now even men seem to agree. A male-dominated parliamentary committee (13 men and one woman — an ironic comment on Westminster's own attitude to gender diversity) has blamed a macho culture and “potentially dangerous group think” for the collapse of several leading British banks arguing that boards need more women to prevent reckless decision-making.

In a report, highlighting the acute dearth of women at the top in Britain's financial sector, the Treasury Select Committee says that the prevailing male-driven high-risk mindset is not conducive to good “corporate governance”.

“Diversity at the top is one way to challenge potentially dangerous ‘group think',” it says citing some eye-popping statistics to underline deep-seated sexism in the City, London's famous global financial hub.

The committee found that gender-based wage disparity was the worst in the financial sector with full-time women workers earning 55 per cent less than their full-time male colleagues. The pay gap for bonuses and performance related pay was even higher at 80 per cent.

The MPs were scathing about the huge under-representation of women at the board level, especially in the FTSE-listed companies, with women executive directors accounting for only between one to two per cent in the 300-odd top firms. They noted that the number of women on FTSE-100 bank boards actually declined from 13 per cent in 2004 to nine per cent in 2009.

Testifying before the committee, Minister for Women and Equality Harriet Harman accused financial institutions of operating on the basis of an “old boy's network”.

“Too many British boardrooms are still no-go areas for women,” she said prompting the panel to warn City bosses that if they failed to act voluntarily to make boardrooms more diverse and inclusive the government might be forced to step in.

“We believe the lack of diversity on the boards of many, if not most, of our major financial institutions may have made effective challenge and scrutiny of executive decisions less effective,” it said implicitly acknowledging the view that if there had been more women in positions that offered them a chance to “challenge” and “scrutinise” decisions taken by their male colleagues the crisis may have been averted.

However, its chairman John McFall, a senior Labour MP, sought to soften the blow saying: “We are not saying that had women been in charge, the crisis wouldn't have happened, but we are highlighting the fact that women are poorly represented in the financial sector, particularly at senior level.”

Women's groups such as Women for Boards and the City Women's Network believe that positive discrimination, including women's quotas, are the only way to break the male monopoly of boardrooms.

“The City is a bastion of power, traditional male power, and they want to keep women out,” Sasha Roskoff of the women's rights group Object told one newspaper.

Sexist City
The City has always been notoriously sexist and it is reflected in the high number of sex-discrimination cases brought by women against their employers. Most top banks and financial institutions are said to be reluctant to hire women except as tokenism; and those who manage to sneak in anyway face humiliation on daily basis, according to anecdotal evidence. A former investment banker, who left her job in disgust, says that obscene comments, pornographic screen-savers and lewd gestures are common and when women complain they are advised to “learn to manage”.

“Over and over again I wasn't taken seriously,” she said in a newspaper interview claiming that her male colleagues refused to work with her and she was repeatedly overlooked for promotion. During a recruitment drive at one bank, a senior executive was reportedly heard saying that he wanted a “slim blonde”.

And it is not just the City where sexism is rife. Here is what Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, has to say about British Parliament: “We supposedly have ‘The Mother of all Parliaments', and yet we're 69th in the world for the percentage of women we have as part of that Parliament. Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates have more women in their parliaments. If we keep accruing women to Parliament at the same rate we are doing now, it would take 200 years to have equal representation. That's the same amount of time it would take a snail to walk the Great Wall of China.”

And, as we head for the press, the BBC is embroiled in another of those seasonal controversies about “sexism” at the Beebs after the editor of its flagship Today programme, Ceri Thomas, said that he did not have many women presenters on his staff because it was an “incredibly difficult place to work” for which they were not suited.

“The skill set that you need to work on the Today programme and the hide that you need, the thickness of it, is something else,” he said sparking a furious reaction from his female colleagues and listeners who pointed out that his remarks confirmed that the BBC was still largely male and middle-class — not to mention, of course, white and an Old Boys' network.

Oof!

http://www.thehindu.com/2010/04/07/stories/2010040754091100.htm

Goans dig deep to stay afloat

As lawmakers in mineral-rich Goa hotly debate the uncontrolled mining in the state's rural landscape, residents of a village near Panaji have changed their occupation from farmers to truck owners or mine workers to survive and thrive in the new scenario.

Tucked in the hillocks, the village, Soliem in North Goa's Sattari taluka, is home to 300-odd members of the `Gawade' community. This population from the economically weaker section had tilled their lands since ages.

"The offers (from mining firms) were tempting so we could not resist them. Anyway, farming had become an unviable proportion for us," Rama Gawade, in his 50s, said.

Soliem is amongst the many locales which have changed their profile from agro (mainly paddy) to mining economy. The village, surrounded by mines, is rich in iron ore, which is exported to several countries, including China.

Walk through the village, and cluster of houses and the noise of trucks attract your attention.

"The villagers are no longer farmers. Earlier almost all were dependent on farming to eke out their living. Now, they are truck owners or work on the mines," Ankush Gaonkar, the local sarpanch (village head), said.

"The village houses three mines. We have heard that permission for three more mining leases is pending with the government. At such a pace, entire village will have to be shifted," Sham Sakhalkar, a local, said.

The road connecting the village to the nearest town is dotted with heaps of mining rejects, many of which have turned into mini hillocks. The cashew plantation is disappearing and the paddy fields are getting barren with no one to till them.

It was not an easy task for the mining firms to percolate into the lives of the Gawda community listed among the `other backward classes'.

"There were initial protests. Around 100-odd people were detained when they resisted the truck moment in their village," Hanumant Parab, an anti-mining activist, said.

But nothing happened after that as the protests died down soon and it was business as usual, he said.

The mining biggies, including Sesa Goa, Chowgules and Keny Mines, have set their plants in and around Soliem with hundreds of trucks ferrying the ore from here to barges, which is later shifted to bigger ships.

Even though Soliem residents have given up their green lands to the mining firms, the people residing downstream Chirewal locality raised a banner of protest as the silt started accumulating in their betel-nut farms.

Memorandums were submitted to the Agriculture...

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/goansdigdeeptostayafloat/598642/

Mouse moves @ Snail Speed

Internet penetration is inching along. What is needed is a big policy push for broadband, say industry watchers..


Snail's pace — there could not be a better phrase to refer to the growth of Internet penetration in India. The former Information Technology minister, Dayananidhi Maran's target of 40 million Internet subscribers by 2010 set five years ago appears a dream. “We are no way near the target,” says an industry observer.

India has at present only 14 million Internet subscribers (not counting users accessing the Internet through mobile phone). In other words, the country added just 7 million subscribers in the last five years. “While we are adding nearly 10 million mobile connections a month, after ten years, we have just about 14 million Internet subscribers,” says an official of a leading Internet Service Provider (ISP).

For a country lauded as an information technology super power, we have a poor level of Internet penetration — just about 2 per cent of the population, for PCs at home connected to the Net, says Raju Vegesna, CEO, Sify Ltd, a Chennai-based ISP.

Consider the Internet penetration of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries of which India is a part. China, with a population of 1.33 billion, has over 20 per cent penetration. Brazil, with 191 million has 26 per cent penetration and Russia with a population of 143 million has 20 per cent penetration. And, more significantly, all of them have a penetration growth rate that is higher than India's. “We do not have free and open competition for Internet services by ISPs as well as telecom companies. This has resulted in the rapid decline of ISPs,” says Vegesna. Telecom policies are oriented towards large telecom companies as evident in the pricing of spectrum for WiMax services, which have also been conveniently clubbed with spectrum for mobile use, he adds.

Broadband push, globally
Broadband penetration is today accepted as a measure of the ability to compete economically and is known to accelerate growth. A recent World Bank study shows that for every 10 per cent growth in broadband penetration, the economy grows by 1.3 per cent. A study by the Boston Consulting Group and Telenor shows that for every 10 per cent growth in broadband penetration, GDP can grow by 1.55 to 2 per cent. Developed countries have initiated concerted efforts to accelerate growth in broadband penetration and download speeds, Vegesna says.

The US President, Barack Obama, has provided $7.2 billion to build high-speed access to homes and businesses in the US. Australia recently announced its National Broadband Initiative under the leadership of a Minister for Broadband whereby the country will spend A$47 billion to enable 100 mbps connectivity to every family and business in Australia, he says.

The Indian government has failed to make policy amendment keep pace with technology advancement. For fast proliferation of the Internet, the year 2004 was announced as ‘Broadband Year' but there has been no result; as against the target of 20 million by 2010 “we are still struggling to cross even 8 million,” feels Rajesh Chharia, Founder, Director and CEO of C J Online Pvt Ltd, a Ghaziabad-based ISP.

New applications such as Internet Telephony, Internet Protocol TV have been developed. But despite regulators' recommendation on allowing these applications to ISPs, policy makers have not taken a decision for the last two years. “We have to understand the Indian situation where 22 official languages are present and the Internet needs content in one's own language while application does not need any such thing and also the application can make rates much lower compared with existing voice rates,” he says.

Even as the government has liberalised the mobile sector, it should allow ISP application on broadband to private ISPs to increase Internet penetration, says Chharia, who is also president of the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), which has 44 members. Poor Internet penetration is affecting all, including government service provider and consumers, he says.

Unbundle local loop
The total Internet users are 81 million, including those using cyber cafes against a total population of 1.1 billion people. The number of subscribers is at around 14 million. The low Internet penetration is because the government does not allow Unbundling of Local Loop — ISPs cannot utilise the huge last mile copper in the form of telephone lines that are already available to customer homes to provide broadband, says S.P. Srihari, Director and Chief Financial Officer, Zylog Systems Ltd, a Chennai-based ISP.

The government does not exempt duties on equipment procured by ISPs and is not allocating 700MHz spectrum for Broadband Wireless Access. Further, the government imposes a spectrum reserve fee of Rs 1,250 crore for WiMax spectrum auction. Most ISPs tend to restrict themselves to the dense urban areas due to the pressure to achieve return on investment, given the high cost of entry and operations, he says.

Ambivalence
Col H.S Bedi, CMD, Tulip Telecom, an ISP, says for a knowledge-based society to grow quickly and for various economic opportunities to become a reality, the spread of the Internet and broadband is now being given top priority.

India, however, has embraced the Internet with a degree of ambivalence. There is tremendous enthusiasm among the retail users and an estimated 60 per cent of users regularly access the Internet through cyber cafes. However, when it comes to high-speed broadband access, there is reluctance, and the rate of adoption has been slow.

India has an Internet penetration rate of only 3.5 per cent. But relatively small percentages in India are big numbers, compared with the rest of the world. With 40.7 million total users, the country already has the ninth most Internet users in the world and by 2012 will have the fourth most users.

Forrester Research predicts that by 2013, India will be ranked third in the list of countries with the most number of Internet users, surpassed only by China and the US. The report states that the number of people online around the world will grow more than 45 per cent to 2.2 billion users over the next five years, with Asian countries driving the growth.

Internet penetration is low in India due to two main reasons. First, more than 70 per cent of India's population resides in rural areas and has limited access to PCs. The socio-economic conditions and lack of education have led to a strong urban-rural divide, and, in turn, slow penetration of the Internet in India. Second, there has been a lack of infrastructure and availability of the Internet in the rural parts. Given the geographical diversity of India, last-mile connectivity has always been a challenge for telecom operators, says Col Bedi.

Neglect of rural areas
Amrita Choudhury, Director, Cyber Cafe Association of India, says the low Internet penetration can be attributed to these factors: high cost of PC and Internet bandwidth, low penetration and poor connectivity of the Internet in rural areas where more than 70 per cent of the country resides, lack of content in vernacular language (as only 140 million understand English out of whom only 80 million are English-literate), and most importantly, lack of people-oriented services such as VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

Cyber cafés — through 1,80,000 Cyber Cafes, 50,000 CSCs and 11,000 e-Commerce Service Retailers in India — are the only solution, wherein the user is provided assisted service and pays only for actual usage. However the rules and regulations governing them have been discouraging their growth, she says.

K.K. Raman, Executive Director, KPMG, too feels that lack of infrastructure, accessibility and awareness are some of the main reasons for the low Internet penetration. More services should be provided to consumers that could bring business opportunity for multiple players.

Broadband, a National Priority
Small and medium businesses (in addition to large enterprises) should be empowered with broadband connectivity. Every student at school and university should have the opportunity to access content online for which broadband should not be looked as a licensing or spectrum issue, but as a national priority, says Vegesna of Sify.

According to Srihari of Zylog, the Government should allow ‘unbundling of local loop' so that other ISPs can ride on the last mile copper network of BSNL/MTNL to offer their own ADSL services. The other steps include subsidising the rollout of broadband infrastructure with the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund and allocating 700 Mhz spectrum for Rural Broadband Wireless Access. The private sector will play a dominant role in increasing Internet penetration and bring in the required technology and infrastructure. The government will help by subsidising the rollout with the help of the USO fund which has grown to over $5 billion now.

Private players should be given tax holidays to roll out in semi-urban to rural areas. Companies such as Zylog have created availability of broadband Internet access in over 52 towns of Tamil Nadu in the space of three months and at 1/10th the cost of WiMax or 1/100th the cost of 3G infrastructure, by using unlicensed spectrum, he claims.

For broadband to have reach across the country, service providers will have to look into various emerging technologies, mainly wireless.

All the available broadband technologies should be promoted by the Government. Some of the emerging technologies that are expected to make a huge impact in future are Wi-Fi, WiMax and 3G, says Col Bedi of Tulip Telecom.

raja@thehindu.co.in

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2010/03/22/stories/2010032250040100.htm