Software Development Models and Weddings

June 23, 2010

In comments, BJ says that he has a fair idea of why I think TamBrahm weddings are like ERP implementations, and asks me to confirm his suspicions with a post on this. I don’t know if he is zinking what I am zinking, but here goes.

As someone who had only seen Arya Samaji weddings (and also one sardar wedding) up until the age of 21, I was utterly flabbergasted the first time I saw a TamBrahm wedding. The whole point of Arya Samaj was that if you were going to involve yourself with religion, you should bloody well understand what you’re getting into. So if you don’t speak Sanskrit, the priest must translate everything, and give a proper explanation while he’s doing so.

In contrast, at TamBrahm weddings (and any religious ceremony for that matter – we did a bhoomi poojan at the Kanchipuram factory with local priests), the involvement of the concerned parties is minimal. They just sit around while the priests chant stuff they don’t understand.

This makes TamBrahm weddings very much like the common, or garden-variety ERP implementation. The ERP consultants are parallel to the priests. Because nobody can understand them, you have to take their word for it that they’re experts and know what’s going on. Then, there is a long and painful period in which the priests/ ERP consultants do lots of stuff that looks impressive, but nobody actually knows if it’s accomplishing anything. Finally, they collect their fees, and leave the company/ happy couple to sort things out on their own.

Extending the analogy, Punjabi Arya Samaji weddings are like installing Windows. You’re given the opportunity to read the whole end-user license agreement and cancel if you’re not happy with it. But everyone is so excited about the bling and cool new features that they skip reading it, or just nod along to whatever the shastri says and install it. After the honeymoon period, you suddenly realise that this thing is taking up far more resources than you’d anticipated.

North Indian Sanatan Dharmi weddings are like the Apple App Store. Everything looks incredibly cool and blingy, but the license agreement is completely opaque and nobody has any clue what they’re getting into.

Living in is like installing and running Linux without a GUI and only with a console. And that too by compiling the source with gcc and not from some cool Ubuntu disc or Red Hat Package manager. It seems hardcore and revolutionary, but when you get down to the specifics, is really just a lot of housework without any bling.

The analogy has now gone far enough. That’s it for the post.

6 Comments | Arbit Fundaes, Business, Religion, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

Notes From My Bombay Trip

June 21, 2010
  • My Jet Airways Citbank Card finally came of some use and I used miles accumulated since 2007 to get myself a return ticket to Bombay where I attended the NiTyaGu wedding. Regrettably, Airport Development Fees and Congestion Charges cannot be paid for by miles.
  • When introducting Konnect, Jet Airways seems to have forgotten to make provision for it in the frequent flier program. It takes as many miles to redeem a full-service ticket as a Konnect ticket. Naturally I booked full-service tickets.
  • Having a full fare ticket allowed me to finally enter the Jet Airways lounge at Chennai. Alas, the lounge has no wifi, is slightly dirty, and while I was there had not only hyperactive kids but a Malaysian couple who fought over the guy tying his shoe instead of listening to the girl. The guy then made the girl cry. Am I the only person who notices these bizarre domestic disputes?
  • Having a full-fare ticket also meant I got to watch 30 Rock on the inflight entertainment system (Nishit D and PGK, please note). Also, two episodes of Sarabhai v/s Sarabhai.
  • Apropos of inflight entertainment systems, now that K Maran has taken over Spice Jet and is going to rename it Sun Airways, will it start offering Sun TV as inflight entertainment? If this is too expensive for a low cost carrier, will it just play Kalaignar’s poetry on the PA system? Will Azhagiri now buy Go Air in retaliation? These are burning questions.
  • Bloomberg UTV has hoardings up all over Mumbai claiming to be blunt, and sharp. It is clearly the Schroedinger’s cat of Indian broadcasting. That means that if anybody actually watches it, it will collapse.
  • Speaking of hoardings, I did not see a single hoarding or OOH banner that referred to the football world cup while in Bombay. I fear its obsession with Indian celebrities is now crowding out everything else.
  • The banana lassi at Theobroma is awesome.
  • Theobroma is now offering to courier its brownies anywhere in India. Unfortunately payment can be made only at Mumbai. This makes it useful as a gifting option where the gifter is in Mumbai, but is pretty useless if you’re in Kanchipuram and want to order. This week I shall call the Colaba outlet and ask if they’ll take payment by EFT.
  • Kodhi made me (and others) watch the 90210 season two finale. This led to consequences that are too scandalous to discuss outside a W-File. Unfortunately, I am not going to start writing the next W-File until at least July.
  • The grub at the Rajdhani in Oberoi Mall was seriously good. In fact, the khichdi, kadi, and jalebis were themselves worth the price of the whole thali.
  • I met PGK at the reception. Like Sreesanth, he is a personable young man. Unlike Sreesanth, he is not Mallu.
  • TamBrahm weddings are like ERP implementations.
  • Sambhar in Chembur continues to rock.
  • My Jet Airways Citibank Card also came in useful at Mumbai airport, where I got complimentary access to the lounge, which didn’t even care what my ticket was. Unfortunately, the lounge is only marginally less noisy than the public seating area, so I shifted there. Oh sigh.
  • A lounge that banned children would be quite excellent. To fend of accusations of elitism and child-hatred from mommybloggers, it could accomplish this by serving alcohol and barring entry to anybody less than 18 years old. I am still not sure how it could get rid of other annoying guests, like the ones who loudlly discuss compensation schemes on their blackberries. Tchah.
  • The wifi in Mumbai airport was down and didn’t start working until it was almost boarding time. I will have to add the appropriate tags to this post later, when I get home. Also, the wifi is only free for ten minutes. Oh sigh.

3 Comments | Arbit Fundaes, Infrastructure, Personal | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

Victorian Ladies and Financial Ninjitsu

May 30, 2010

Samtaben’s post has led to a massive comment discssion about financial independence for women. Oddly enough, I had recently been reflecting on financial independence and financial awareness among the women characters of late 1700s to early 1900s literature (English, that is). They are personal finance ninjas!

These women couldn’t inherit much property, and they couldn’t work either. This lack of financial independence led to acute financial awareness. They know how much their net worth is (and also how much the net worth of an eligible bachelor is). In Pride and Prejudice, we’re told Bingley’s annual income a mere fourteen paragraphs into the book. By contrast, The Diary of Bridget Jones doesn’t mention income or net worth at all in hard figures – it’s only alluded to in descriptions of where Bridget’s parents live, Mark Darcy’s job, and so forth. And then the rest of Pride and Prejudice goes on to talk about various quirks of inheritance, the income of various men, and so on and so forth. (And yes, there will be a blogpost or column at some point about how the book is about Goldman Sachs). In Vanity Fair, Becky Sharp knows exactly how indebted she is and how long she can keep her creditors at bay.And so on up to Saki in the early twentieth century, where there are so many female characters who talk about the interest rates on various bonds.

Then the Edwardian era starts, and we get PG Wodehouse and people start marrying for love instead of money. Money problems are now resolved by unleashing entrepreneurship – health farms, onion soup bars, buying rubber estates in Malaya – with the seed capital arranged through stealing diamond necklaces, holding pigs to ransom or simple blackmail. But there’s a sudden crashing of financial awareness – none of the characters is bothered about how much something yields. There’s a blissful unconcern for the mechanics of finance. Then again, there’s blissful unconcern for pretty much everything in Wodehouse, so perhaps I should go and reread Somerset Maugham and make sure this is the case throughout the era.

The Gift of the Magi (to be fair, it’s American) is written in 1906 and is a sort of turning point of financial awareness. Della knows that she’s broke, but has no idea of how much her hair is worth until she goes to get it appraised. On the other hand, she’s sort of financially independent – she doesn’t work, but she does run the household accounts herself. (Incidentally, I can’t read that story without rolling my eyes at that couple and the poor communication in their relationship. Here is xkcd’s much funnier take on the story.)

The odd thing is that while the women in Victorian literature is hyper-aware of what investments yield, my own relatives are not quite as keyed in. My (alive) grandma is paranoid about her cashflow and how she handles her accounts, but is clueless about investments. My aunts are better off in that they know about investments, but stick to fixed deposits and (sigh!) property. Actually, I now recall that this is not strictly true. In my childhood, my bua would not give me presents for my birthday as she didn’t know what I wanted, and she didn’t give me cash as she was afraid I would blow it all on riotous living. So she gave me US-64 units, and the Unit Trust of India blew it all on riotous living. But that is a separate matter. She was aware of mutual funds, is the point. However, she was the exception – my mum and other aunts usually stay away from financial securities, and park their money in the nearest available fixed deposit. Any shares were bought by the menfolk on behalf of the ladies, with the ladies usually not even aware of what they owned or what they were getting.

I was discussing this with Nilanjana Roy back when I was in Delhi last month, and she said that the financial ninjitsu was pretty common in Real Life India as well, because women would come into a marriage with nothing but their dowry. (I was a couple of beers down at this point, and they were the first beers of 2010, so I may not be repeating her words with great accuracy.) So this is weird. Is my family atypical in not having women who monitor their net worth madly, or is this an artifact of being Arya Samajis and so not putting dowry?

Beloved readers, put fundaes in the comments! What is your experience of financial awareness, and that of the women around you? Does it match Samtaben’s worries that women without financial independence have no financial awareness either? Does it match the Bronte sister’s characterisation of financially dependent women being acutely financially aware? Or are you in the happy position of being a financially aware and independent lady?

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Posted by Aadisht

Where is all the Rubber Going?

May 14, 2010

In the past year, the price of natural rubber has more than doubled. This, in what is supposedly a great recession. This is being blamed mostly on demand from China.

What the hell are the Chinese doing with all the rubber they’re buying? Auto sales are down globally, so making tires is pointless. So is mine output, so making conveyor belts is ruled out. Condoms just don’t use that much rubber. Neither do gasket rings and suchlike.

It’s possible that Chinese companies have decided in the face of all logic to build up stocks in the face of falling demand. But I’m worried that they’re putting the rubber to far more nefarious uses. Specifically, that they’re building giant armoured robots to more successfully persuade the United States to hand over the Pacific states when they default on their sovereign debt.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

5 Comments | Finance, Yellow Peril | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

Twenty First Century Land Purchases

April 26, 2010

This is pretty interesting. The state of New York is practically broke, but the city of New York is merely deeply indebted. To ease its fiscal crisis, the state of New York is transferring an island from joint administration to the sole administration of New York City:

After more than a year of negotiations, New York City has reached a deal to take control of Governors Island from the state, moving a prime 172-acre piece of waterfront real estate into the hands of a land-starved city and closer to an ambitious redevelopment, city and state officials announced on Sunday.

…

These agreements represent a reversal from 35 years ago, when a city on the verge of bankruptcy parted with a number of its assets and relied on the state to shore up its finances.

Raymond Horton, a professor at Columbia Business School who ran a commission that studied New York City’s finances during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, said that by taking over properties like Governors Island, Mr. Bloomberg achieved a milestone that had eluded many of his predecessors.

“What tips the balance here is the state’s fiscal crisis,” Mr. Horton said. “The state is in a dire situation. The city is much better managed at this moment. That makes possible something that was not when the two governments’ finances were in similar condition.”

(New York Times)

This is not something very novel though. Throughout the nineteenth century countries that were broke or defeated in war would sell their territories, or give them up against war reparations, or sign long or perpetual leases. Some notable examples are:

  • New York City itself! After the Dutch lost the Anglo-Dutch war, they allowed the British to keep New York in return for the island of Run in the East Indies, which at the time was the only place in the world where nutmeg used to grow. Talk about excessive discount rates.
  • The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which Cuba handed over to America as a perpetual lease back in 1903.
  • Hong Kong, which the Chinese empire leased to Great Britain for 99 years in 1900.
  • Alaska, which the Russians sold to America for 7.2 million dollars.
  • Almost a third of the continental United States, when the Thomas Jefferson administration paid Napoleon 15 million dollars in the Louisiana Purchase. They had offered him 10 million dollars just for New Orleans, but Napoleon had wars to fight and was desperate for cash, so he threw in pretty much the middle third of the United States. The extra 5 million dollars kept Napoleon’s armies going successfully until the Russian front in 1812, when famine decimated his army. On the other hand, Napoleon thought that by giving all that land to the US, he would make life even more difficult for Great Britain, which was hostile to America at that point of time. While Napoleon’s forces were being thulped at Moscow, America and Britain were actually fighting the War of 1812 which ended in a stalemate, so maybe this worked. Incidentally, the financing for the Louisiana Purchase was a fascinating piece of structuring.

Sadly Purchase, New York does not seem to fit this category.

Anyhow, it looks like the twenty-first century is going to see the return of grossly broke countries selling off their territory to keep up with the payments. The first inkling that it’s making a comeback came when two German MPs demanded that Greece sell off its islands (oh, and the Acropolis) if they wanted a bailout. It didn’t happen, but considering that Greece will probably default on its debt again soon, we may see this idea being taken up again. Portugal, Italy and Spain are also headed towards default, so we may soon witness the spectacle of Mediterranean beaches and slopes of Alpine mountains up for auction. It will be awesome.

The fiscal situation of the PIGS countries now is of course tiny compared to the fiscal situation of the United States a few years down the line. With the demographic bulge of the Baby Boom coming into Medicare and Social Security payout ages, the chances of the United States defaulting on its debt are beginning to look likely. The USA too may have to start selling its territory. Fortunately, it has a lot of empty territory to sell. Especially Michigan, which is rapidly depopulating.

The only thing is that selling something only works if there’s a buyer. That would involve either handing the territory over to whoever was holding the US debt and furious about the default, or someone with a shitload of cash.

The major holder of US debt is… the US government. Right, the major holder of US debt that is in a position to demand payments pronto is Japan, followed by China. Out of these, China is in a better position to throw its weight around.

Naturally, the prospect of China occupying Idaho or Nevada may not thrill the Americans, and they would be under pressure to sell to someone with a shitload of cash instead. Extrapolating from current trends, that would be… Apple. Steve Jobs has always been megalomaniac enough to want to own a country, but until now, it never looked like he actually would.

iDaho, iOwa, and iLlinois are on their way. We’re doomed.

2 Comments | Finance, Public Policy and Politics, Yellow Peril | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

The SEBI-IRDA Fight

April 26, 2010

As a free market fundamentalist, it is embarrassing for me to admit that a regulator is doing a good job where the market has failed. However I am so pleased about how SEBI has taken on IRDA that I shall suppress my instincts and praise a regulator to the skies. Since this will mean unleashing my inner financial regulation geek, I shall do this in an easy question and answer format, so that even Nilu can understand what I am talking about.

Shortly before everyone’s attention was occupied by Shashi-Lalit-Sunanda and Sania-Shoaib, the SEBI had released an order barring insurers from issuing ULIPs. This got the insurers and the IRDA into a tizzy. Personally, I think this was awesome.

Wait, what does that even mean?

The SEBI (Security and Exchanges Board of India) is the semi-independent regulator of everything to do with financial markets in India. It sets the rules under which stock markets, commodity exchanges, and mutual funds operate. Technically, it regulates debt securities as well; but as Percy Mistry and Ajay Shah keep lamenting, India has no debt market to speak of.

A ULIP, or Unit Linked Insurance Product is a life insurance policy that doesn’t just give you life insurance cover but invests part of your premium payments into securities. It (claims to) therefore work as a savings and investment plan as well as a life insurance policy.

A ULIP is also pure evil. It is to consumer finance what the Chili’s Smokehouse Bacon Triple Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno ranch dressing is to food. Actually, it’s worse, because the burger at least tastes decent. Compared to a normal life insurance policy, a ULIP gives you far less cover for the same premium – sometimes ten to twenty times less. As for the promise of investment, they deduct so much money for “administrative charges” that you might not even make the money you put in for six years at a time. There are other issues with ULIPs that make them terrible products, but that would make the post too long. If you’re interested, Deepak Shenoy has a post about how awful they are. Unfortunately, because the sales commissions on ULIPs are so high – that’s where the “administrative charges” go – insurance salespeople will keep trying to pitch you a ULIP unless you know what you’re looking for and actively demand traditional life insurance plans.

This year, the SEBI decided that enough was enough, and told insurance companies to stop coming up with new ULIPs unless SEBI approved them first.

It’s supposed to do that, right?

Ah, that’s the interesting bit. See, insurance companies are actually not regulated by SEBI, but by IRDA – the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. IRDA was very pissed off that SEBI is encroaching on its turf.

SEBI’s position was that since the investment portion of ULIP premiums is going into mutual funds run by the ULIPs, it needs to approve the mutual funds first. Specifically, it wanted to bring the administrative charges of ULIP funds into line with those that apply to regular mutual funds (it did a big overhaul of how mutual funds could deduct loads and charges last year).

So the situation was that two semi-independent regulators under the Ministry of Finance were fighting over who was in charge. Ajay Shah has a blogpost about how this is the outcome of not having overall financial regulators. I am far ruder than Ajay Shah, so I will make I-told-you-so noises about how this is what happens when the Finance Ministry doesn’t implement the Percy Mistry report – the one that, you know, it asked Percy Mistry to write.

What happened next?

There was a media circus about Sania Mirza and Shoaib Akhtar getting married.

No, no, I mean about the SEBI-IRDA smackdown.

Oh. Pranab Mukherjee told them to take it to the courts and get it sorted out over there. Professor Jayanth Varma was absolutely delighted about this, because past history shows that courts resolve disputes much faster than bureaucracy does. The BJP was much less delighted about this, and Arun Jaitley demanded to know why it was being taken to the courts and not being resolved by the Finance Minister himself. But now that they’ve got phone wiretaps to stall parliament over, we probably won’t hear anything about that again. It’s certainly disappeared from Google News search results.

Whatever happens next will happen in court now. But SEBI has a decent case.

Hee hee. You’re actually supporting a regulator.

Oddly enough, yes. Then again, I’m pretty gleeful about IRDA being pwned. So it evens out. I should also point out that IRDA represents a lot of what is wrong with regulation, both Indian and in general. It’s far more concerned about the welfare of insurance companies than insurance consumers, and about a month ago was actually running newspaper ads about the benefits of ULIPs. IRDA, not SEBI, should have cracked down on insurance companies about excessive charges and transparency.

On a less dogmatic and free market fundamentalist note, I like regulators who are heavily involved with creating the start conditions and rules of their market, and then creating a set of rules so good that the market can run by itself with minimal interference. I dislike the other extreme of regulation, where the regulator keeps getting involved with every little thing the market players do – think of a cricket match where the umpire doesn’t just call no balls and wides, but tells the bowler how to do the run up before every ball. Over the past few years, SEBI has been moving to the space where it only addresses the rules. The RBI and IRDA are still very much in the micromanaging space.

So I think this particular spat is very exciting in that it will provide an impetus to move to the regulatory model I like.

Confession: I bought a ULIP myself six years ago. In my defence, I was a filthy undergrad at the time and knew no better. I exited it this March. Fortunately stock prices are so high right now (unreasonably so, in my opinion) that I was able to get back all the money I’d put in and then some. My mum had also bought a ULIP a couple of years after me, and that still hadn’t broken even the last time we’d checked.

4 Comments | Finance, Public Policy and Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

You Don’t Fuck With Surtr’s Own Country

April 24, 2010

Last year, when Iceland’s Landsbanki collapsed, Great Britain invoked the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act to freeze all Icesave accounts opened by British depositors. Thus, while the British government was happy to bail out Northern Rock, it decided to give Iceland the shaft.

Perfidious Albion’s treachery was not to go unpunished for long! Six months later, Eyjafjallajokull erupted; and shut down European airspace. In what seems like divine justice, the United Kingdom was worst affected. British airports opened after six days of being shut down, well after continental Europe and Ireland.

If it is in fact divine justice, the divinity responsible is probably Surtr, the Norse fire-demon who is inspired by Icelandic volcanic activity. But even if you wish to stick with a rationalist view that does not rely on gods, demons or others, the English made a terrible mistake when they decided to screw Iceland, a country that is legendarily badass, as we can see in the old Icelandic sagas.

The Saga of Cormac the Skald, for instance, has this description of what Cormac did when someone showed insufficient politeness when offering him a black pudding:

Now, in the autumn, Narfi’s work it was to slaughter the sheep. Once, when Cormac came to Tunga, he saw Steingerd in the kitchen. Narfi stood by the kettle, and when they had finished the boiling, he took up a black-pudding and thrust it under Cormac’s nose, crying:

“Cormac, how would ye relish one?
Kettle-worms I call them.”

…

And in the evening when Cormac made ready to go home he saw Narfi, and bethought him of those churlish words. “I think, Narfi,” said he, “I am more like to knock thee down, than thou to rule my coming and going.” And with that struck him an axe- hammer-blow…

That’s right, he hit Narfi with an axe-hammer-blow for dissing a sausage. When vengeance is involved, things get even worse, as we see in Egil’s Saga:

Kveldulf had in his hand a battle-axe; but when he got on board, he bade his men go along the outer way by the gunwale and cut the tent from its forks, while he himself rushed aft to the stern-castle. And it is said that he then had a fit of shape-strength, as had also several of his comrades. They slew all that came in their way, the same did Skallagrim where he boarded the ship; nor did father and son stay hands till the ship was cleared. When Kveldulf came aft to the stern-castle, he brandished high his battle-axe, and smote Hallvard right through helm and head, so that the axe sank in even to the shaft; then he snatched it back towards him so forcibly that he whirled Hallvard aloft, and slung him overboard. Skallagrim cleared the forecastle, slaying Sigtrygg. Many men plunged into the sea; but Skallagrim’s men took one of the boats, and rowed after and slew all that were swimming.

They didn’t kill everyone. They kept a couple of people alive to go back to the king with this song:

‘For a noble warrior slain
Vengeance now on king is ta’en:
Wolf and eagle tread as prey
Princes born to sovereign sway.
Hallvard’s body cloven through
Headlong in the billows flew;
Wounds of wight once swift to fare
Swooping vulture’s beak doth tear.’

You get the picture. The impression conveyed is that when the Bride told Sofie Fatale that she was allowing her to keep her wicked life, she was merely scratching the surface of threatening messages.

With heritage like this, volcanic eruptions are only the beginning. When the British treated the Icelanders like terrorists, perhaps they did not realise that this could become a self-fulfilling epithet. With their economy in shambles, the Icelanders may now turn to the way of their forefathers and return to setting out in longboats and go a-viking on the British coast. Taking the names of Thor and Tyr, their depredations shall make Brown and Darling pay. Lindisfarne!

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Posted by Aadisht

History Repeats Itself

April 23, 2010

The first time as labour, the second time as capital.

This is interesting. Back in the 19th century, when Southern Pacific and Central Pacific were building transcontinental railroads in the USA, they used Chinese labourers when they hit California. Here’s a very Web 1.0 page on the subject. Precis-ing it madly, the interesting bits are:

  • When Charles Crocker of the Central Pacific was asked how small and weak Chinamen would be up to the heavy physical labour of building railroads, he said “They built the Great Wall, didn’t they?”
  • Irish labourers were paid thirty dollars a month each and given free accommodation. The Chinese got a  dollar extra but no acco.
  • The railroad companies were excited about using Chinese labour because they did not practice slavery or peonage, but had a labour agency system. The Age of Gold, a book I read a few years ago, mentioned that the railroad owners were largely northerners and antislavery; and also that the question of granting statehood to California helped trigger the US Civil War.

The Wikipedia page on Chinese American History (badly needs cleanup) points out that things weren’t quite as rosy as that:

  • The labourers usually couldn’t afford passage to America and booked their ticket against future wages. Their wages were then withheld until the ticket was paid for. And you thought TDS was bad.
  • White labourers responded with fury and racism at this competition, and the Yellow Peril meme was born.

Eventually, the Chinese labourers also started working in fisheries and agriculture, and established a massive Chinatown in San Francisco.

Cut to today. China is now offering investment and technical expertise to build California’s high-speed rail line.

That New York Times article in the link has a full circle narrative, and saying that China is now bringing technology and money instead of labour; but given the way the Chinese operate, they’ll probably bring in the labour as well. (Alas, no citations to offer here except private emails about what’s going on at Mundra port and my own observation about the Huawei office in Mumbai)

The really interesting part is on Page 2 of the article:

China’s mostly state-controlled banks had few losses during the global financial crisis and are awash with cash now because of tight regulation and a fast-growing economy. The Chinese government is also becoming disenchanted with bonds and looking to diversify its $2.4 trillion in foreign reserves by investing in areas like natural resources and overseas rail projects.

“They’ve got a lot of capital, and they’re willing to provide a lot of capital” for a California high-speed rail system, Mr. Crane said.

I have a conspiracy theory that infrastructure is only the beginning, but more on that in a separate post.

4 Comments | Infrastructure, Links, Yellow Peril | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

Size Does Matter

December 12, 2009

For small or mid-sized companies in India, especially manufacturers, it’s impossible to avoid government interference. Whether it’s the town and country department, or the electricity board, or the state industry ministry, or the central ministry which is in charge, everyone will demand some sort of cut or speed money or the other. It is a chronic pain in the corporate arse.

On the other hand, as Sainath keeps pointing out, if you’re a huge company like Reliance, then the government bends over backwards to please you for fear that you won’t invest and generate employment. It gives you free land, builds a road to your factory or airport, gives you excise holidays and suchlike.

The implication is that at some specific turnover between 100 crore rupees and 5000 crore rupees, the government stops harassing you and you start harassing the government. The exact figure is something that needs to be researched, but for obvious reasons, I think it should be called the Yakov Smirnoff turnover.

1 Comment | Arbit Fundaes, Business, Public Policy and Politics | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

Ekla Cholbe Na

October 25, 2009

Tata Docomo’s advertising tagline is “Why walk alone when we can dance together?”

I think the Tata group is mocking Rabindranath Tagore and Ekla Cholo Re. This is to get back at the Bongs for what they did to Tata Motors at Singur.

2 Comments | Business, Racism | Permalink
Posted by Aadisht

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