I have to “agree with Srijith”:http://www.srijith.net/trinetre/archives/2003/06/22/index.shtml#000272 when he says “Finding Nemo”:http://findingnemo.com is a great movie. It is brilliant, witty and has the great Pixar animation and a good story that kept me engrossed all through. It also has very memorable characters, the turtles riding the EAC are my favs (so are the seagulls in Australia, who keep saying “Mate”, the school of fish which gives directions, Dory, Nigel) Also the film does not have Keanu Reeves.
Author: जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ
Consequences of Globalization
Niraj made a post, “The Developing World Like Globalization”:http://www.nirajweb.net/mt/niraj/archives/001603.html few days back citing the Pew Global Attitude Survey explaining why globalization is popular among poor nations. The Economist has an article which tells the same. The lesson learned is that:
bq. “Liberty’s great advance:”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=312143 The countries that have succeeded in raising living standards rapidly, over long periods, have followed many varieties of economic policy and have lived under many different forms of government. What they have had in common, though, has been a policy of opening their economies to trade and to foreign capital. Countries that have opened their borders in this way have seen their incomes per head grow rapidly?much more rapidly than either the existing rich countries or those that have not globalised, either by choice or through lack of opportunity.
The article has a graph which shows that more globalized countries have a higher annual rate of GDP growth. Swaminathan S Iyer has an article in Times of India which tells how foreign capital is now transforming India into a global auto power.
bq. “Unanticipated consequences of FDI:”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=312131 But only after the biggest multinationals entered India did they seriously look at and help upgrade India?s tiny ancillary companies, which were (and in many cases still are) too small and unknown to meet global demand. MNCs will nurture your small and medium companies, and convert them into giant exporters. Ford, for instance, is using small and medium companies that most readers have never heard of, such as Cooper Tire, Visteon, and Synergy Dooray. A medium company called Motherson Sumi has won a huge export order of $125 million for dashboard components.
Global Auto Power is a strong word to use for a country which has only “0.1 percent”:https://varnam.org/archives/000127.html of the 1 Trillion dollar auto parts market. But there are many positive signs in terms of employment which would not have been possible otherwise. The lessons is that “attract FDI and you will create exports, often in unexpected areas”.
Blog Mela 19: Announcement
The 19th Bharteeya Blog Mela will be hosted here on July 2.
Directions for nominating entries for the Mela
* Email jk @ sulekha. com
* Drop it in as a comment to this post
* Please send your nominations to me latest by July 1, 7 pm PST.
* The entries have to be dated between June 25 – July 1.
The Rules
* Posts must either be made by Indians or must focus on India or Indians.
* Send in permalinks to the individual blog entries only, not just the URL. If
the permalink is not working, send me the title and date of the blog entry.
* You can nominate your own posts or someone else’s.
* You can submit any type of posts except personal journal entries.
For more on the Blog Mela, here’s “gyan”:http://www.ashoo.org/blog/archives/cat_blogs_bloggers_and_blogging.html#000037 from a founder’s blog. Also check “what I wrote”:https://varnam.org/archives/000018.html long time ago. The earlier melas are archived “here”:http://www.realwomenonline.com/index.php?topic=mela.
Texas, India, Rivers
The Supreme Court of India has directed the GOI to complete all the river links, 30 of them by the year 2012. The feasibility study of 6 of them have been completed. Now “Texas wants to partner India on interlinking rivers”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=312122. The project will cost 5.6 trillion rupees. One NRI Sockalingam ‘Sam’ Kannappan has been actively involved
bq. “NRIs keen on river linking project:”:http://www.rediff.com/us/2003/jun/25us2.htm Realising that the phenomenal cost (estimated at an astronomical Rs 560,000 crore or Rs 5.6 trillion) would probably put off most political parties from investing in it, Kannappan urged the Bush administration to support India when it sought World Bank aid for the project. He also pledged to use his technical expertise to ensure that the proposal report would be acceptable to the World Bank.
Here is some related reading:
* “River Linking”:https://varnam.org/archives/000074.html
* “River Linking – II”:https://varnam.org/archives/000120.html
* “Some facts on river linking”:https://varnam.org/archives/000128.html
Inspiring People
For 15 years, V Subramanian and Dr R Madhavan has been riding tricycle carts in the morning carrying tree saplings, finding streets in Chennai which did not have trees and planting them. Read their inspiring story at “How green is my Chennai”:http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/27mad.htm
Book Review: The Lexus And The Olive Tree
If you want to understand the post-Cold War world, you have to start by understanding the new system that has succeeded it — globalization. That is the premise of the book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385499345/jksobservat-20/102-6833280-6166532 by the New York Times foregin affairs columnist “Thomas L. Friedman”:http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One, “Seeing the System” explains the system of globalization and how much it differs from the system that preceeded it—Cold War. He explains that the driving force behind globalization is free market capitalism. The more you open your economy to market forces, free trade and competition, the more efficient and flourishing your economy will be. He mentions three important forces that are reposnsible for creating and sustaining globalization, which are, the “democratization of technology, information and finance”:https://varnam.org/archives/000117.html. To be successful in this economy, you have to decentralize and give more responsibilities to people so that they can react faster to changes.
Continue reading “Book Review: The Lexus And The Olive Tree”
Criminals
Shanti has this news about an Indian graduate student in Boston, Bhalerao, who was tortured and stabbed because some morons thought he was from Iraq. She is right when she says:
bq. “Horrible!:”:http://www.madhoo.com/archives/002522.php#002522 Whether this attack was intended towards a Muslim or a Hindu or anybody, I think it was extremely cruel and horrible. I hope they lock the perpetrators up and throw away the key. Such people are not fit to live amongst other human beings.
and now police have arrested the criminal involved
bq. “Man arrested in attack on pizza driver:”:http://www.globe.com/dailyglobe2/175/metro/Not_guilty_plea_in_DSS_worker_s_killing+.shtml Police arrested a 20-year-old man early yesterday after he and several others allegedly kidnapped and stabbed a pizza delivery man, police said. Christopher Pereira, of New Bedford, was charged with kidnapping, assault with intent to murder, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, armed robbery, and larceny of a motor vehicle. Saurabh Bhalerao, 24, an employee at Sanducci’s Pizza, was in fair condition at Rhode Island Hospital last night.
Instapundit on outsourcing
Glen Reynolds, aka “InstaPundit”:http://www.instapundit.com has a column up at TechCentral where he looks at the movement of labor from United States to Third World countries (which I prefer to call developing nations). He wonders why liberals are opposed to this
bq. “Outsourcing and Elections:”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/techwrapper.jsp?PID=1051-250&CID=1051-062503A It’s true that corporations do this in order to maintain profits — but they usually are pressed to do that by downward pressure on prices, brought about by competition, which means that they’re not earning a windfall out of the deal, and the savings are passed on to consumers, another group that liberals are supposed to like. So it’s odd that opposition to outsourcing would attract interest from “liberal” groups, though it clearly has.
He mentions India as one of the countries where most of the Tech jobs are vanishing. Today “Oracle has big plans for India”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=311943. But it is not just the tech jobs that are moving to India. Soon it will be the place where “cartoons”:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=35363 are made, and where your next “auto part”:https://varnam.org/archives/000127.html comes from.
Some facts on river linking
In the article “Waiting For ‘Godaganga'”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=311699 B. G. Varghese has some interesting facts
* The Sardar Sarovar and Indira Gandhi Canal have been transporting water for many years now
* 110 years back the water of Periyar river was diverted to irrigate dry lands in Tamil Nadu
* Per capita availability of water in India has declined from 5,177 to 1,869 cubic metres since 1951 and will be down to 1,140 cubic metres by 2050.
While presenting the case for river linking he righty says that this alone will not solve the water problem.
bq. The other components in the Hariyali package include rainwater and rooftop harvesting, watershed management, afforestation, groundwater recharge, the desilting of ponds, tanks, beels, jheels and other water bodies, wasteland reclamation and the proper maintenance of canals, drainage systems and embankments
Asia, an attractive investment
There are various conspiracy theories regarding globalization, with the most popular one being that it is run by the White House. This is regularly repeated in various article in mainstream Indian media. But according to Thomas Friedman in his book “The Lexus and the Olive Tree”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385499345/jksobservat-20/102-6833280-6166532, the investment decisions are made by global investors who are looking for countries which can give better returns on their investment. So if United States does not give good returns on investment, then the global investor will move his money to any country which does.
bq. “Investors Flock to Cheap Asian Stocks:”:http://www.sulekha.com/redirectnh.asp?cid=311826 Foreign funds have been flowing into regional stock markets, with Taiwan in particular a favored destination and tech stocks among the most sought after assets. Of the five markets Nomura tracks, Thailand was the second most popular market, with stocks worth US$384 million bought by foreign investors since the start of the year. But in the last month more money has poured into Taiwan and South Korea. Within the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan, fund managers were most positive on Taiwan stocks over the next 12 months, followed by India, South Korea, China and Indonesia. But they were underweighting Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and especially Australia.