Archive for February, 2007
Shortly after I moved to India, reading about the country on various websites has become one of my hobbies. One of articles that I read was about India’s Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, and I was pretty impressed when I learned about his background and career. The following is a rough outline of his background and career.
- First Class Honours degree in Economics, University of Cambridge, (1957)
- Punjab University, Chandigarh, India
- Senior Lecturer, Economics (1957-1959)
- Professor of International Trade (1969-1971)
- Reader (1959-1963)
- Professor (1963-1965)
- D. Phil in Economics, Nuffield College at Oxford University, (1962)
- Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
- Honorary Professor (1996)
- Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat, New York
- 1966 : Economic Affairs Officer 1966
- Economic Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India (1971-1972)
- Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, India, (1972-1976)
- Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1976)
- Director, Reserve Bank of India (1976-1980)
- Director, Industrial Development Bank of India (1976-1980)
… a bunch of high government posts.
(He also formerly served in the International Monetary Fund.)
Source
Punjabi is his native tongue and he is an educated Indian person who spent much time in north India, so I’m 99% certain that he speaks Hindi also. He obviously speaks English, so he speaks three languages at the very least.
Looking at this, I’d say that he is the kind of person who would be going after Nobel Prize if he were in academia. If he were in the corporate world, he would be running one of the top 10 companies in the world as CEO. He lead India’s Economic Reform in 1991 and I was getting the impression that India has made great progress economically and politically since the reform took place.
However, I recently learned that his Economic Reform didn’t exactly make everyone happy. I was talking with a friend of mine, who is an Indian person, a couple of days ago, and Dr. Manmohan Singh actually destroyed his business many years ago. To be clear, my friend was not doing anything illegal or shady; Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Economic Reform was so radical in many ways that it actually destroyed so many businesses.
Generally speaking, I do not have high opinions about politicians, but when I learned about Dr. Manmohan Singh’s career background, I was impressed; however, maybe he is just one of many politicians after all. I don’t want to jump right into that conclusion without learning more about Dr. Manmohan Singh, but I am being lead to believe that politicians are after all politicians no matter where you find them in the world. They are power-hungry and corrupt; it’s not exaggeration to say that they love money, young girls (and young boys), drugs, alcohol, fame and power more than any gangsters and celebrities.
India, Politics (India) | 27.02.2007 7:20 | No Comments
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a substandard service provided by an Indian bank; the bank basically did whatever it could do to delay my remittance so that it could hold my money for a period of time and utilize it to run its business. The service was a substandard, but I wouldn’t call it evil or criminal. However, unfortunately, I just experienced a terrible service provided by a different Indian company. To be perfectly fair, probably the vast majority of those who work for the company are good people; however, the service that the company provided to me was terrible. It can potentially be considered to be “criminal” because the company essentially attempted to steal my money. Now, I do not say that all Indian companies provide terrible services all the time; on the contrary, I find that they provide very good services in many instances. However, I have never experienced the kind of substandard service that I am about to describe here; it is an example of how terrible Indian companies’ services can be sometimes.
I use Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services to get my phone and internet connections. I received a bill about a month ago; it has the invoice date Jan. 27th and I paid for it on Feb. 3rd; however, Airtel simply disconnected the phone and the internet on Feb. 27th, 2007 claiming that I had not made the payment. It was clearly an Airtel’s mistake; Airtel just misplaced my payment, its record or both. I don’t know how it can happen, but it happened; I had to spend a lot of time and effort to get my services back. It was very unreasonable and I have to call it a “harassment”.
While I use services and I pay for these services, I get some help from my friend/my company’s director to use these services because using services can become tricky to foreigners (i.e., non-Indians); he is an Indian person and he can take care of various problems if they arise (and they did). So, from here on, I describe what happened as an event that “we”, he and I, experienced rather than just “I” alone experienced.
We received our statement for Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services a couple of days after Jan. 27th, 2007. We went to Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center at E-62. Vikas Marg, Laxmi Nagar, Delhi. We made the payment of Rs. 1,243 in cash. However, the collection center was unable to give us a receipt for the payment because the collection center was out of papers. Airtel is a major Telco in India, so I don’t know how something like than can happen, but it happened. A receptionist at the collection center informed us that she would take care of what needed to be taken care of so that the payment record would be made properly. She also wrote down a note on our statement for Airtel Broadband & Telephone Services, stamped and signed so that we would have a written record (Who knew that we would actually have to use it later?).
We assumed that the receptionist at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center would take care of what needed to be taken care of; however, we found that the phone service was disconnected in the morning of Feb. 27th. We immediately contacted Airtel customer support, but they were unable to resolve the problem. Airtel eventually asked us to go to Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center to take care of the problem on our own because Airtel was unable to resolve it on its side. We already spent a lot of time speaking to Airtel customer support representatives at this point.
We stopped at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center upon Airtel’s request. We only found out that the receptionist who received the payment or any other person at the collection center did not do what needed to be taken care of; Airtel did not have a proper record of our payment. We even spoke to the manager at the Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center, but they only posted the record of the payment which we made a month ago. We finally received a receipt for the payment also.
From here on, I describe what happened as an event that only “I” experienced. My friend/my company’s directory and I parted at this point because we had things to do and we assumed that the problem was over.
I assumed that this, stopping at Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center, demanding a receipt and what have you, finally took care of the problem, but there was yet another unpleasant surprise. I checked the phone and the internet connections after I came back from Laxmi Nagar Airtel collection center to my office, and I only found that both the phone and the internet were still disconnected. At this point, I contacted Airtel customer support once again over the phone.
There was still more mismanagement of Airtel to be observed to my great unpleasant surprise. I spoke to a customer support representative and I explained the situation and demanded to connect the phone and the internet as soon as possible; I also requested to speak to his manager because this was an urgent matter and I needed to speak to a person who has more power and authority to get the problem resolved immediately. He told me that he’d transfer me to the manager, but he just hanged up. I could not simply wait until the problem gets resolved magically, so I called Airtel customer support again, speak to a representative and requested to speak to his manager. Amazingly, the second customer support representative also hanged up on me after he told me (or lied to me) that he would transfer me to his manager. I called Airtel customer support for the third time, and I was cursing this time; I demanded to get the phone and the internet connections back at least; this third customer representative told me that Airtel just connected my services back. I dislike cursing very much, but this actually made some difference in this particular instance.
I assumed that I had the phone connected and the internet connected at this point. Stunningly, I only got my phone connected; the internet was still disconnected. I contacted the internet customer support representative assigned to us to get the connection back.
The internet customer support representative assigned to us is actually a pretty reliable person, and he resolved many problems for me in the past; however, interestingly, he did not show up after two and a half hours. When I called him, he told me that he would come to my office in an hour, so I expected that I would need to wait for an hour, but I did not expect that I would need to wait for over two hours. I got the connection back eventually and I no longer needed his assistance, so I just called him and told him that he would no longer need to come to my office.
I want to emphasize that the vast majority of Indian people are good people and the vast majority of those working for Airtel are (probably) good people; however, what happened was just crazy. I used different phone services, cell phone services and internet services over the years; it is true that some (US) companies provided me substandard services. But no company pretended that it did not receive my money after I actually made a payment. Many Americans accuse Telcos and cable companies of stealing from customers; I don’t disagree with them. However, I know that they don’t steal money outright; Airtel did. Airtel essentially attempted to steal my money outright. It didn’t happen not because Airtel stopped doing evil but my friend/my company’s director and I fought hard.
Written by J. Watanabe
India, Business (India) | 27.02.2007 6:03 | 1 Comment
Beyond Konspiracy has had only one blogger to date, but I am currently discussing the possibility of collaborating with a couple of other bloggers; they might potentially be contributing here on Beyond Konspiracy and making some blog entries. I will keep posting the latest events and happenings on this.
Beyond Konspiracy | 26.02.2007 11:29 | No Comments
I tried to provide a copywriting service as a part of my IT consulting business this month, and I learned a few things about copywriting. I wrote about it in this blog and I received a few comments; those comments educated me a bit also. I chatted about this with a couple of people recently, and this turned out to be a pretty educational experience.
I happened to be finishing up John Grisham’s “The Client” last night, and I noticed something that I never really noticed before as a result of this whole event. I noticed that he writes a bunch of short sentences. Since I can read so many pages continuously when I read his novels, I was thinking that his writing really flows and that he writes long sentences; that just wasn’t the case. John Grisham is a novelist, not exactly a copywriter, so I can’t really say that what works for his novels also work great for copywriting, but his writing definitely gave a different idea of copywriting from ideas that I had before. Lining up a bunch of sentences can flow; it can also become a great copy(That’s what I’m guessing anyway …).
Casual Observation | 26.02.2007 4:08 | No Comments
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s plane, which encountered a mechanical problem after leaving Australia to return to the United States, landed safely in Singapore on Sunday.
“This was the pre-planned, scheduled fuel stop,” said Cheney’s spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride. “We were not diverted,” she added, following a comment by Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard that Cheney’s plane had been diverted to Singapore because of the mechanical problem.
McBride said there had been an issue with the electricity on the plane. Because of that, “a call was placed back to Sydney with the status,” she said, adding the electrical problem did not cut off Cheney’s ability to communicate with the rest of the world.
Read more on this story …
I shouldn’t say this, but I kind of wish that his plane just disappeared in the middle of Pacific.
Politics | 25.02.2007 4:47 | 1 Comment
Indian people generally assume that they speak and write in British English, but there are inherent differences between Indian (British) English and British English. It actually takes a little while for one to recognize this, but Indian (British) English is a distinct version of English.
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a businessman in UK. He runs an internet business and he creates a number of content websites to run advertisement on; his business generates a handsome income from this. He started taking on a new project several weeks ago, and he plans to set up close to one hundred websites over time. Given the size of the project, it will cost him a fair amount of money to pay for copywriters to create the content for these websites. He knew that I have some contacts in India as I operate in India (my US company has a whole subsidiary in India) and he and I assumed that Indian people speak and write in British English. He apparently spent a fair amount of time looking for copywriters on the internet, and I also worked with a couple of people to get ready to become copywriters; I tried to provide a copywriting service to him. After we spent a couple of weeks respectively, we came to conclude that there are inherent differences between Indian (British) English and British English and that it is actually a big challenge for one to train Indian people to become copywriters if their writing needs to read just like native British English speakers (or writers).
This businessman in UK read Indian copywriters’ profiles, picked ones who had good profiles and chatted online to find out more about them. Though a fair number of Indian copywriters write well, he found that their writing looks funny. I actually went farther, sat with a couple of Indian people and spent time together to go over this particular copywriting work. I found that Indian English’s spellings and grammar are compatible with British English, and it was exactly what I was looking for. However, I also found a couple of subtle differences between Indian English and British English. Since I was trained in American English, it was not easy to observe Indian English’s whole language structure and British English’s whole language structure, compare the two and find differences, but I did find clear differences. For example, Indian people used words found in British English yet British people do not commonly use. Brinjal is a very popular vegetable in India and Indian people call it “brinjal”; the word is an English word, and it should probably be considered to be a British English word (Brinjal is called “eggplant” in American English). However, British people actually call the same vegetable “aubergine.” There is nothing incorrect about using the word “brinjal”, but if a sentence uses the word “brinjal” instead of “aubergine”, it does not exactly sound British.
This businessman in UK continued looking for Indian copywriters; he found competent copywriters, but he could not find (Indian) copywriters who write like British. While I knew that he was having a difficulty finding Indian copywriters, I found one Indian copywriter who, I can honestly say, is one of the best in India; he has a Master’s degree and he spends a fair amount of time reading publications in English everyday. He has solid language skills in English. I asked him to create a sample for us and I sent it to the man in UK, and he and I had a chat online to discuss about the potential future collaboration with regard to this work. I was fairly confident about my Indian copywriter’s language skills, but the man in UK decided to not use his service or any other Indian copywriter’s service. He actually read articles written about Indian English and he learned that Indian English is actually a distinct version of English, although its spellings and grammar are compatible with British English. He shared the knowledge with me, and there was not much I could say after that. While I am not a linguistics scholar, I personally observed that Indian English has its own flavor. Also I imagine how difficult it would be for me to write just like British people; it would be very difficult and I guessed that it would take a lot of training for me to do that. My guess is that all Indian copywriters need a lot of training also if they are required to write like British people. At this point, we basically decided that my Indian copywriter is not going to provide his service to the man in UK. I have to admit that I felt a bit disappointed, but it was a logical decision not only for the man in UK but also for me and my contractor.
There are actually a number of publications on the subject of differences between British English and Indian (British) English, so I do not repeat scholastic aspects of the subject; I am here to tell my personal experience. I find that a fair number of Indian people have very solid language skills in English. Also given the fact that the today’s education system in India puts so much emphasis on English, it is fair to guess that Indian people, in particular, those who are educated, are going to have much stronger language skills in English. However, the fact remains that there are inherent differences between Indian (British) English and British English. One takes some training to become a good copywriter, but one Indian person takes even more training to become a good copywriter for British if he/she is required to write just like British people.
Written by J. Watanabe
India, Business (India), Business (US and International) | 24.02.2007 9:15 | 11 Comments
Sydney, Feb 24 (DPA) The United States could resort to force if diplomacy failed and Iran looked set to acquire nuclear weapons, US Vice President Dick Cheney said here Saturday.
‘All options are still on the table,’ Cheney said during a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Cheney said every effort would be made to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions through diplomatic means.
‘But I have made the point, and the president (Bush) has made the point, that all options are still on the table,’ Cheney said after an hour-long meeting with Howard in his Sydney office.
Read more on this story …
US to use force if diplomacy fails? What a joke. US is not trying diplomacy in the first place.
Politics | 24.02.2007 5:47 | No Comments
From now and then, someone like Josh Wolf emerges from nowhere and assures us that there is a future.
Josh Wolf, 24, has spent almost six months in jail. More time than any journalist in US history for protecting his sources. He was jailed on August 1st of last year when he refused to turn over video that he had shot of an anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco to a federal grand jury.
Read more on this story here …
Too many things are going wrong in US, and the country is still doing a great disfavor to the world. At the end of the day, a number of US troops are still in Iraq and killing and raping innocent civilians everyday; most Americans are apathetic about it. Furthermore, US still has such a political environment that an article sounding almost like propaganda gets published on the biggest newspaper in the country. However, there is still a soul who speaks sense and tries to make the world a better place with his pen and his intellect even when he gets locked in jail unjustly (and possibly illegally).
Politics | 23.02.2007 10:36 | No Comments
Quite a few people already wrote about this, but I need to bring this up in this blog also. New York Times published the article “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says” a couple of weeks ago. Publishing this article shows that New York Times essentially complies with the government policies; New York Times is not critical of the government at the fundamental level.
I personally believe that there are many more examples besides this. Thomas Friedman, one of the star columnists of New York Times is a great example. He criticizes the Bush administration on the surface; however, he fundamentally does not differ from the administration. For example, he criticizes the Bush administration’s Iraq strategy, but he keeps emphasizing that the administration did not execute the war correctly; the decision to go to the war itself was correct according to him.
Politics | 23.02.2007 10:26 | No Comments
If you are in one of developed countries and if you tell your friends that you are going to start a business, most of them would tell you to think twice. This is because most new businesses in developed countries would fail within the first three to five years, and this is supported by statistics. India has a very poor infrastructure and also its political and economical environment is not as stable as that in developed countries; therefore, your intuition tells you that even more new businesses would fail in India. However, the situation is quite the opposite; most of new businesses manage to survive in India. It is rather surprising, but if you look at various aspects of the business operation, you would logically conclude that new businesses in India are much more likely to survive than new businesses in developed countries.
One of characteristics of new businesses in India is that they start with very small capitals or none whatsoever. New businesses spend what they can spend to start; in other words, they have very little or no debt at the beginning. Since there is very little or no debt, new businesses have no obligation to make payments to any lenders; this dramatically increases their chances of survival. On the contrary, new businesses in developed countries often take huge debts to start. It is partly necessary but it is also partly a common practice, although new businesses do not necessarily follow the common practice. For example, it is very common for new businesses to heavily invest in new pieces of office furniture, while they are totally unnecessary in most cases.
As I look at individual businesses in India closely, I find that many businesses in India have very low operating costs. I see used computers everywhere. I see old furniture everywhere. Most offices do not spend a whole of money to make them look pretty. Most offices do not spend money for decorations. For example, a friend of mine (in India) runs a printing business; the business produces customized business cards, letterheads, envelops, calendars and booklets. Its office has no landline phone; it has no computer. The office only has bare necessities. This obviously keeps the business’ operation cost very low. On the other hand, many new businesses in developed countries keep their operating costs much higher than necessary. For example, a friend of mine in US used to run a business from his apartment; it was a small business, yet he had a number of equipments, each of which cost thousands of dollars. He had a couple of cell phones, a couple of laptops and a couple of desktop computers. The operating cost was a lot higher than necessary. (He went out of business and the high operation cost was one of reasons.)
Family structure in India is very strong, and this is quite helpful for new businesses. It is difficult for new businesses to find trustworthy people who can help them; it is even more difficult for them to find free help. Since family structure in India is very strong, they can get help from their family members in many cases. Family members help other family members’ new businesses for free even. This is not exactly the case in developed countries. Family structure is relatively weak, and it is very difficult to get help from family members.
While the political and economical environment in India is not as stable as that in developed countries, there is actually one political advantage. Rules and regulations in India are relaxed when it comes to providing protections and benefits to employees; also licensing costs and other regulatory compliance costs are very low. This makes the recurring cost very low, and this increases new businesses’ chances of survival. While many of developed countries offer very generous social programs, they also put heavy burdens on businesses such as the financial burden of providing protections and benefits to employees. This raises the recurring cost, and this makes new businesses to survive even more difficult.
While we cannot easily change laws, rules and regulations, we can lower our operating costs. We can also start new businesses using whatever money we have instead of borrowing heavily. We can definitely learn quite a few things by observing business practices in India.
Edit: This article was written by J. Watanabe
India, Business (India) | 20.02.2007 1:38 | No Comments