A Tale of the Poor Rich India : P Chidambaram @ HBS

Speaking in Harvard Business School's Spangler Auditorium before a filled-to-overflowing audience comprising students and faculty from across the University, including HBS, Harvard Law School, and the Kennedy School of Government, Chidambaram told a tale of two Indias - a country rich in natural and human resources but unable to take full advantage of them because of the prevalence of poverty (a third of the population of 1.1 billion people lives on an income of less than a dollar a day), inadequate schools and health care, and interest groups that favor the status quo rather than progress.

The full story at
http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/mahindra.html

Greatbong reviews Nandigram

As usual, a compelling piece by GreatBong.....but also a very grim statement of what our own state has become......how Nandigram represents a real statement of political opportunism and how the equally evil two parties are using the people of Bengal, yet again.......a must read for any Bangali and "open mind for a different view" post...

http://greatbong.net/2007/11/21/the-killing-fields-of-bengal/

TATA TEA scores with this ad

Laughing my head off!!!

Last time I laughed my head off, it was when Bappi Lahiri sued someone for plagiarism!!! Now, the best was yet to come. Seems like T-series has sued Google (Youtube) for the same. It's a funny world out there!!!
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/T-Series_drags_YouTubecom_to_court/rssarticleshow/2543708.cmshttp://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet_/T-Series_drags_YouTubecom_to_court/rssarticleshow/2543708.cms

Heil Hitler; Heil the Taliban; Heil Bush; Heil Modi; Heil the CPM;

Thankfully, Vladimir Ilyich did not have to see this! Well done CPM, now you are truly red!

Google's latest Buzz : OpenSocial

With Social Networking capturing more and more mindshare of the web 2.0 universe, Google has played its own stroke. They are coming up with OpenSocial, a Platform where most of the social networking vendors will come together and converge. Let's see if this ambitious convergence really bites of from MySpace/Facebook pie.

Here's the BW report - http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/oct2007/tc20071031_631820_page_2.htm

Here's a fundoo blog post - http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/details-revealed-google-opensocial-to-be-common-apis-for-building-social-apps/

The First Indian-American Congressman

A portrait of Dalip Singh Saund, the first Indian-American Congressman, will be unveiled in the US Congress at an official ceremony next month.

The unveiling ceremony honouring Saund, who was also the first Asian in Congress when he won a seat in 1956 by representing California, will be held on November 7.

Born on September 20, 1899, to a Sikh family in Chhajulwadi, Punjab, he came to the US in 1920 to attend the University of California at Berkeley.

In 1924 he graduated having earned MA and PhD degrees in mathematics.

He thereafter remained in the US, becoming a successful farmer.

However, life was not easy for an Indian in the 1920s. Anti-immigrant sentiment was running rampant across the country, as reflected in the passage of laws such as the Quota Immigration Act of 1921, the Cable Act of 1922 and the
National Origins Act of 1924.

In 1923 the Supreme Court had issued an opinion that Indians while designated as Caucasians were ineligible for citizenship because they were not "white".

Subject to prejudice and discrimination, prohibited from owning the land he farmed, his American wife having been stripped of her citizenship for marrying an "alien" man, Saund, however, did not waver in his pursuit of the American dream.

He became a founding member and the first president of the India Association of America.

The primary task of the association was to secure citizenship rights for Indians.

Building a national organisation, establishing an effective lobby on Capitol Hill, the association was able to convince Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce of Connecticut and Congressman Emanual Cellar of New York to introduce legislation granting naturalisation rights to Indians and Filipinos.

The act was signed into law by President Truman in 1946.

In 1956 Saund was elected to the US House of Representatives. He served for three Congresses.

In May 1962, he suffered a severe stroke, which left him unable to speak at all or walk without assistance, thus ending his Congressional career. He returned to California and died on April 22, 1973, in Hollywood.

The portrait unveiling is part of a programme to enhance the fine arts collection of the House and to include important members of the House.

The other US representatives to be honoured under the programme are James Madison of Virginia (1789-1797); John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts (1831 -1848); Abraham Lincoln of Illinois (1847-1849); Jeannette Rankin of Montana (1917-1919; 1941-1943), the first woman elected to the US Congress; Joseph Rainey of South Carolina (1869 -1879), the first African American elected to the US Congress; and Romulado Pacheco of California (1877-1883), the first Hispanic-American elected to the US Congress.

No surcharge on credit card payments: Banks

If nothing else, this would make consumers think twice before flashing their credit cards. For some years now, it has been observed that certain merchant establishments-especially budget jewellery, electronics and grey market outlets-ask customers to shell out about 2% extra for purchases with credit cards.

Why this extra charge? After all, credit cards only add to footfalls and are ultimately good for business.
This is how it works. A banker elucidates that merchant establishments must pay a certain fee for using a point-of-sale terminal (swipe machine) to the bank that installs it (the acquiring bank). Evidently, some pass on this charge to consumers.

All card-issuing banks TOI spoke to, and the Credit Card Holders' Association of India specified that merchant establishments cannot do so. Says a senior banker, "In the US, there is a law that the type of payment should not have any impact on the price... Unfortunately, in India, merchant establishments fall outside the purview of banking regulations."

A Mumbai consumer was recently asked to pay 2% more for cosmetics worth Rs 1,575. She chose to use cash instead. Last week, a Mumbai banker himself paid Rs 120 extra for a cellphone purchase because he didn't have enough cash on him. Says Sachin Khandelwal, head, cards group at ICICI Bank, "Typically, there is a fee a merchant agrees to pay for a terminal... If a merchant tries to recover it from customers, they must walk out." Khandelwal also advises consumers to report such cases to credit card-issuing banks.

"We may then blacklist them (the outlets) and remove our terminals." An official at another card-issuing bank adds, "It is a bad practice. If someone charges 2% above MRP, you should report it to a consumer forum, irrespective of the value."

This 2% rule, however, is relaxed for railway tickets and at some petrol pumps, says G V Giddappa, general secretary at Credit Card Holders' Association. In case a petrol pump has a tieup with a card, the amount is charged back into the card, a banker adds.

The senior banker asks, "Railways can save on the fee, but merchant establishments can't. How fair is that?" Ultimately, though, it is the consumer who gets inconvenienced and ends up paying more. Bankers say it is mostly shops with "wafer-thin" margins who charge extra to avoid additional "discount". Also, grey market shops and certain jewellery showrooms discourage card use to avoid taxes, they add. The charge works as a deterrent.
Consequently, cash purchases mean more unaccounted transactions.

Most times, shops are upfront about such a charge. However, in case a shop fails to inform the consumer or the consumer notices the charge on the payment slip, most banks do not reverse the charge. As a bank official says,
"The overcharging has been done by the merchant and not the bank."

Serpico

It's amazing........It's incredible...but I feel like a criminal 'cause 
I don't take money.

We loved Frank Serpico....and we loved Al Pacino playing him.....its so amazing to
see a man who dared to take on an entire police department for his integrity...and
he existed in real life......


and here he is!!! Check out Frank Serpico's blog! Oh, how I love the internet!!!

This is what I call marketing!!!

Check out this site!! http://www.airtel.com/

Now, this is what I call marketing!! When u gotta get them, get their traffic first! :)

Do a 1991 on cricket

Not unlike other unrepentant fans of Indian cricket, I have been feeling pretty low ever since our ignominious exit from the World Cup. Although we managed to defeat England recently, there is something rotten with our cricket and it lies in the monopoly of our cricket board (BCCI). I am no cricket expert but I do know something about how organisations work and the damage that monopolies cause.

BCCI is reminiscent of our ugly days of the Licence Raj, when you could choose any TV channel as long it was Doordarshan and fly any airline as long as it was Indian Airlines; you could queue up and wait forever for a telephone, a gas connection or an Ambassador car. Our lives changed after 1991 because economic reforms brought competition. Waiting lines disappeared, prices came down, quality went up, and service improved. If there is one lesson we have learned as a nation, it is that competition can transform the lives of citizens, producers, and even regulators.

Some areas have not experienced reform, however. One of these is electric power; another is cricket. Like the old department of telecom (DoT), our cricket board is both a player and an umpire. It is the only buyer of cricket talent, the only supplier of matches, the monopoly controller of cricket infrastructure and the sole regulator.

Despite its tall talk, BCCI has not bothered to nurture talent. If it had there would be a hundred Kanga Leagues in a hundred Indian towns. BCCI is mainly focused on 11 players for the national team. That is why no one watches Ranji Trophy matches. Hence, the market for cricket players remains tiny, not unlike the market for telephones before the reforms. Just as DoT was politicised — you needed a political connection to get a phone — so is the BCCI, whose corrupt and dysfunctional state associations are run mostly by politicians. With Indian agriculture in deep trouble, why is the honourable minister of agriculture — who is head of BCCI — worrying about 11 men in whites? No wonder that a nation of a billion people cannot produce a decent cricket team.

Things are about to change, however. A new venture, the Indian Cricket League (ICL), will soon begin playing cricket with six local teams, and this will grow to 16 in three years. When 176 players play cricket on television night after night, millions of viewers will judge them, and talent will no longer remain hidden. After that rishwat and sifarish will not get you selected by the state cricket association. ICL could become a nursery for talent like the professional sports leagues in America and Europe, and India might even field a world beating cricket team soon. BCCI will, of course, fight tooth and claw to defend its monopoly, but it will fail in the end. For Subhash Chandra, the man behind ICL, knows how to break monopolies. It was his Zee Television that broke the Doordarshan's monopoly in the 1990's.

India was a sick economy in 1991. It took the medicine of competition and went on to become the second fastest growing economy in the world. The same could happen to Indian cricket. Competition is like a school in which companies learn to improve. Competition created excellent companies like Infosys, Airtel, Jet Airways, and ICICI Bank. Indian Cricket League could also become a world class brand and international players will vie to play in it. So BCCI, stop playing spoilsport! Become a regulator and a selector of the national team, and leave all the rest to the private clubs. Let's do a 1991 on Indian cricket.

The Cell heats up!!

A sneak-peak into the hush-hush gPhone -

Getting Inside Google's gPhone



Google's gPhone Draws a Crowd

V for Vendetta

Interesting slideshow -

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/01/0111_revenge/index_01.htm

Hirak Rajar Deshe

Chandril delivers a true masterpiece in theatrical style - http://www.anandabazar.com/26rabipro.htm

We're Sixty!!

Well. we've our share of problems, and we've got population explosion, zero-ethics politicians, corruption and what not (don't expect me to complete this list in near future!). But, with all that, we're 60....and we roar in many fronts! Vande Mataram!



And salute to those who gave their lives to make us free.......let the sacrifices of those live forever in our minds....

English Verbatim

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazu-e-qaatil mein hai

Karta nahin kyun doosra kuch baat-cheet
Dekhta hun main jise woh chup teri mehfil mein hai
Aye shaheed-e-mulk-o-millat main tere oopar nisaar
Ab teri himmat ka charcha ghair ki mehfil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Waqt aanay dey bata denge tujhe aye aasman
Hum abhi se kya batayen kya hamare dil mein hai
Khainch kar layee hai sab ko qatl hone ki ummeed
Aashiqon ka aaj jumghat koocha-e-qaatil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Hai liye hathiyaar dushman taak mein baitha udhar
Aur hum taiyyaar hain seena liye apna idhar
Khoon se khelenge holi gar vatan muskhil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Haath jin mein ho junoon katt te nahi talvaar se
Sar jo uth jaate hain voh jhukte nahi lalkaar se
Aur bhadkega jo shola-sa humaare dil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Hum to ghar se nikle hi the baandhkar sar pe kafan
Jaan hatheli par liye lo bhar chale hain ye qadam
Zindagi to apni mehmaan maut ki mehfil mein hai
Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai

Yuun khadaa maqtal mein qaatil kah rahaa hai baar baar
Kya tamannaa-e-shahaadat bhi kisee ke dil mein hai
Dil mein tuufaanon ki toli aur nason mein inqilaab
Hosh dushman ke udaa denge humein roko na aaj
Duur reh paaye jo humse dam kahaan manzil mein hai

Wo jism bhi kya jism hai jismein na ho khoon-e-junoon
Toofaanon se kya lade jo kashti-e-saahil mein hai

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamaare dil mein hai.
Dekhna hai zor kitna baazuay qaatil mein hai.

The Poem ( Devnagari version)

सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है
देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ुए कातिल में है

करता नहीं क्यूँ दूसरा कुछ बातचीत,
देखता हूँ मैं जिसे वो चुप तेरी महफ़िल में है
ए शहीद-ए-मुल्क-ओ-मिल्लत मैं तेरे ऊपर निसार,
अब तेरी हिम्मत का चरचा गैर की महफ़िल में है
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

वक्त आने दे बता देंगे तुझे ए आसमान,
हम अभी से क्या बतायें क्या हमारे दिल में है
खैंच कर लायी है सब को कत्ल होने की उम्मीद,
आशिकों का आज जमघट कूच-ए-कातिल में है
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

है लिये हथियार दुशमन ताक में बैठा उधर,
और हम तैय्यार हैं सीना लिये अपना इधर.
खून से खेलेंगे होली गर वतन मुश्किल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हाथ जिन में हो जुनून कटते नही तलवार से,
सर जो उठ जाते हैं वो झुकते नहीं ललकार से.
और भड़केगा जो शोला-सा हमारे दिल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

हम तो घर से निकले ही थे बाँधकर सर पे कफ़न,
जान हथेली पर लिये लो बढ चले हैं ये कदम.
जिन्दगी तो अपनी मेहमान मौत की महफ़िल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है

यूँ खड़ा मौकतल में कातिल कह रहा है बार-बार,
क्या तमन्ना-ए-शहादत भी किसि के दिल में है.
दिल में तूफ़ानों कि टोली और नसों में इन्कलाब,
होश दुश्मन के उड़ा देंगे हमें रोको ना आज.
दूर रह पाये जो हमसे दम कहाँ मंज़िल में है,

वो जिस्म भी क्या जिस्म है जिसमें ना हो खून-ए-जुनून
तूफ़ानों से क्या लड़े जो कश्ती-ए-साहिल में है,
सरफ़रोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है
देखना है ज़ोर कितना बाज़ुए कातिल में है

The Poem (Urdu Version)

سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے
دیکھنا ہے زور کتنا بازوئے قاتل میں ہے

کرتا نہیں کیوں دوسرا کچھ بات چیت
دیکھتا ھوں میں جسے وہ چپ تیری محفل میں ہے
اے شہید ملک و ملت میں تیرے اوپر نثار
اب تیری ہمت کا چرچہ غیر کی محفل میں ہے
سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

وقت آنے دے بتا دیں گے تجہے اے آسمان
ہم ابھی سے کیا بتائیں کیا ہمارے دل میں ہے
کھینج کر لائی ہے سب کو قتل ہونے کی امید
عاشقوں کا آج جمگھٹ کوچئہ قاتل میں ہے
سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

ہے لئے ہتھیار دشمن تاک میں بیٹھا ادھر
اور ہم تیار ھیں سینہ لئے اپنا ادھر
خون سے کھیلیں گے ہولی گر وطن مشکل میں ہے
سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

ہاتھ جن میں ہو جنون کٹتے نہیں تلوار سے
سر جو اٹھ جاتے ہیں وہ جھکتے نہیں للکا ر سے
اور بھڑکے گا جو شعلہ سا ہمارے دل میں ہے
سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

ہم جو گھر سے نکلے ہی تھے باندہ کے سر پہ کفن
جان ہتھیلی پر لئے لو، لے چلے ہیں یہ قدم
زندگی تو اپنی مہمان موت کی محفل میں ہے
سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے

یوں کھڑا مقتل میں قاتل کہہ رہا ہے بار بار
کیا تمناِ شہادت بھی کِسی کے دِل میں ہے
دل میں طوفانوں کی تولی اور نسوں میں انقلاب
ھوش دشمن کے اڑا دیں گے ھمیں روکو نہ آج
دور رہ پائے جو ہم سے دم کہاں منزل میں ہے

وہ جِسم بھی کیا جِسم ہے جس میں نہ ہو خونِ جنون
طوفانوں سے کیا لڑے جو کشتیِ ساحل میں ہے

سرفروشی کی تمنا اب ہمارے دل میں ہے
دیکھنا ہے زور کتنا بازوئے قاتل میں ہے

The Urdu Script was used as a base from here and then modified and amended.

English Translation

The desire for struggle is in our hearts
We shall now see what strength there is in the boughs of the enemy

Why do you remain silent thus?
Whoever I see, is gathered quiet so...
O martyr of country, of nation, I submit myself to thee
For yet even the enemy speaks of thy courage
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

When the time comes, we shall show thee, O heaven
For why should we tell thee now, what lurks in our hearts?
We have been dragged to service, by the hope of blood, of vengeance
Yea, by our love for nation divine, we go to the streets of the enemy
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Armed does the enemy sit, ready to open fire
Ready too are we, our bosoms thrust out to him
With blood we shall play Holi , if our nation need us
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

No sword can sever hands that have the heat of battle within,
No threat can bow heads that have risen so...
Yea, for in our insides has risen a flame,
and the desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Set we out from our homes, our heads shrouded with cloth,
Taking our lives in our hands, do we march so...
In our assembly of death, life is now but a guest
The desire for struggle is in our hearts...

Stands the enemy in the gallows thus, asking,
Does anyone wish to bear testimony?...
With a host of storms in our heart, and with revolution in our breath,
We shall knock the enemy cold, and no one shall stop us...

What is that body that does not have hot blood in it,
How can a person conquer a Typhoon while sitting in a boat near the shore.

The desire for struggle is in our hearts,
We shall now see what strength there is in the boughs of the enemy.

Introduction to service-oriented architecture: What is SOA?

Service-oriented architecture is a technical concept – but non-technical readers can benefit by understanding the basic, underlying concepts. This overview of service-oriented architecture is appropriate for both business and technical staff. The following is an excerpt from SOA for the business developer: Concepts, BPEL, and SCA, by Ben Margolis; copyright 2007. It is reprinted here with permission from MC Press. Still want to learn more? Read the full chapter, "Introduction to service-oriented architecture: What is SOA?"

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a way of organizing software so that companies can respond quickly to the changing requirements of the marketplace. The technology is based on services, which are customized units of software that run in a network.

A service:

• handles a business process such as calculating an insurance quote or distributing email, or handles a relatively technical task such as accessing a database, or provides business data and the technical details needed to construct a graphical interface
• can access another service and, with the appropriate runtime technology, can access a traditional program and respond to different kinds of requesters — for example, to Web applications
• is relatively independent of other software so that changes to a requester require few or no changes to the service, while changes to the internal logic of a service require few or no changes to the requester

The relative independence of the service and other software is called loose coupling. The flexibility offered by loose coupling protects your company from excessive costs when business or technical requirements change.

A service can handle interactions within your company, as well as between your company and its suppliers, partners, and customers. The location of service requesters can extend worldwide, depending on security issues and on the runtime software used to access a particular service.

In most cases, the requesting code has no details on the service location. Like the requester, the service can be almost anywhere. The location is set when the network is configured, and changes to the location are sometimes possible at network run time.

SOA implies a style of development, with concern for the business as a whole and with an increased focus on modularity and reuse. SOA isn't only for new code, though. Migration of existing applications is especially appropriate in the following cases:

• The applications are monolithic, combining the logic of user interface, business processing, and data access, with update of one kind of logic requiring your company to test multiple kinds of behavior.
• The applications are hard to understand — first, because the logic is monolithic, but second, because logic was repeatedly patched rather than rewritten as requirements changed. Updates take extra time as developers try to decipher the logic, and as the complexity grows, additional errors accompany updates.
• The application inventory has duplicate logic. Requests for change are unnecessarily disruptive, requiring changes in several places.

From the point of view of a business developer, a change to SOA is a change in emphasis, and many aspects of the job are unaffected. Consider the task of function invocation, for example. When you invoke a function, you aren't concerned with the internal logic of the invoked code or with how the function receives arguments or returns a value. Similarly, when you code a service request, you care only about the syntax for requesting the service. At best, service requests are as easy as function invocations.

Service-oriented architecture and open standards

In many industries, companies adhere to standards that allow for greater prosperity than would be possible if each company followed its own proprietary rules. Standards in housing construction, for example, ensure that manufacturers of pipes can benefit from economies of scale in pursuit of a larger market than would be available in the absence of industry-wide standards.

The primary benefit of SOA standards is that they make services interoperable, which means that services can communicate with one another, even if each implementation is written in a different computer language or is accessed by way of a different transport protocol (software that oversees the runtime transmission of data).

Standards also ensure that an SOA runtime product can support Quality of Service features, as described in Chapter 2.

SOA standards are open in the sense that any software manufacturer has the right to use those standards when developing an SOA-related product. In addition, the process of creating and revising the standards is based on a political process that is more or less democratic. Any interested party has the right to participate in all meetings that lead to decisions about a standard.

Each company that works on an open standard seeks a text that matches the company's marketplace strengths. The competition among those companies is one reason for the long delay in making a standard final.

Several major organizations oversee development of open standards for SOA:

• Open Grid Forum
• Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
• Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I)
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Later chapters give you practical insight into standards that are in effect or under consideration, and Appendix A describes several others.

Open standards are distinct from open source, which is source code that you can learn from and use in your own projects, with certain legal restrictions. Opensource implementations of Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO), for example, are being developed in the Tuscany incubator project of the Apache Software Foundation. For details and code, see the following Web sites: http://incubator.apache.org/tuscany and http://www.apache.org.

Structure of a service-oriented application

A service-oriented application is an application composed largely of services. Often, the invoked services are in a hierarchy, as Figure 1.1 illustrates.

The topmost level contains one or more integration services, each of which controls a flow of activities such as processing an applicant's request for insurance coverage. Each integration service invokes one or more business services.

The second level is composed of services that each fulfill a relatively low-level business task. For example, an integration service might invoke such business services to verify the details provided by an insurance-policy applicant. If the business services return values that are judged to mean "issue a policy," the integration service invokes yet another business service, which calculates a quote and returns the quote to the software (for example, a Web application) that invoked the service-oriented application.

The third level consists of data-access services, each of which handles the relatively technical task of reading from and writing to data-storage areas such as databases and message queues. A data-access service is most often invoked from the business layer.

Great complexity is possible. Some integration services, for example, provide different operations to different requesters, and some invoke other integration services and are said to be composed of those services. Many applications, however, fulfill the three-level model described here.

Data as a Service

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QUESTION POSED ON: 24 July 2007 What is data-as-a-service? What are the benefits of data-as-a-service?

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EXPERT RESPONSE The concept of data-as-a-service (DaaS) basically advocates the view that -- with the emergence of service-oriented architecture (SOA), which includes standardized processes for accessing data "where it lives" -- the actual platform on which the data resides doesn't matter. With data-as-a-service, any business process can access data wherever it resides. Data-as-a-service began with the notion that data quality could happen in a centralized place, cleansing and enriching data and offering it to different systems, applications or users, irrespective of where they were in the organization or on the network. This has now been replaced with master data management (MDM) and customer data integration (CDI) solutions, accompanying a master data "hub" on which the golden record of the customer (or product, or asset, etc.) resides, and is available as a service (e.g., "Get Customer") to any application that has the services to access it. Many people hear data-as-a-service and think "outsourcing." While outsourced data is possible, we don't recommend it. We think companies should manage and own their own data assets--again, the platform matters less and can thus be outsourced if the business processes and data are solid. We see architecture groups enabling de-facto master data hubs and offering them as a service to ensure the sanctioned "single version of the truth" is available to everyone.

Responsibilities of the information architect

Acknowledgment : http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/expert/KnowledgebaseAnswer/0,289625,sid91_gci1267010_tax302190,00.html?track=NL-520&ad=600164&asrc=EM_USC_1978746&uid=5505931

QUESTION POSED ON: 03 August 2007
What are the typical responsibilities of an information architect? The aim is to have the information architect form part of the business intelligence team, and that this person will also have insights to our IT strategy.

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EXPERT RESPONSE
Historically, information architects were responsible for the design and usability of Web sites and other software applications. More recently, we are beginning to think of information architects as the coordinators of information flow through the enterprise. This view encompasses much more than the user experience of a particular application. This information architect is responsible for modeling all applications across the enterprise and the logical data flows between them. In this sense, the information architect is an integral part of the business intelligence (BI) team, but their focus includes more than the BI and data warehouse components alone. I agree that this person should have insight into the IT strategy. In fact, the information architect should be partly, if not entirely, responsible for it. Information architecture, these days, spans disciplines of data warehousing, business intelligence, master data management, enterprise information integration (EII) and others.

I would list the following as the high level responsibilities for the information architect:

1. Responsible for expressing the enterprise vision for the applications and the data flows between them
2. Responsible for modeling and maintaining the enterprise data models
3. Responsible for extending the data models to the application architecture
4. Responsible for coordinating the integration and service-oriented architecture (SOA) between applications

Web 2.0 goes Desi!!!

Here I would put the list of some Indian sites which have joined the Web 2.0 bandwagon and are seemingly doing a fairly good job. Keep an eye on this space -

http://www.watblog.com/
http://youmint.com/ - Social NW with free SMS!!
http://funpiper.com/
http://www.watconsult.com/
http://www.watjob.com/
http://yaari.com/- Another Social NW with free SMS!!

Potter-onomics!!

It’s easy to disregard the old cliché that truth is stranger than fiction. But then consider Harry Potter. The story of how the franchise was built makes the schools of wizardry; epic battles and a menagerie of fantastic creatures seem commonplace by comparison.

The transformation of brand Harry Potter is rich in fairytale archetypes, a change that evokes The Ugly Duckling with a dash of Cinderella thrown in. There’s something genuinely magical about the way it’s morphed from an unknown solitary book a bare decade ago to an industry that is today estimated to be worth roughly $6 billion.

And in the tradition of the best fairy tales, almost no one saw the change coming. Marketing gurus, social scientists, bookstore owners, even the publishers, had little inkling of how successful Potter would be. Especially since it started unobtrusively enough, reading like Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series with some magical elements grafted in.

Marian Salzman, chief marketing officer, JWT, and one of the world’s most clued-in trendspotters admits, “I did not expect Harry Potter to reinvent books — since books were supposedly off-trend when Potter was released. I feel Potter buzz is a decade-old but perhaps it’s more recent than that.” Pottermania took even globetrotting marketing guru and author Martin Lindstrom by surprise: “No one expected this. Several publishers turned Harry Potter down.

I heard about the potential success when the manuscript was at auction in New York. As the price climbed I realised this was about to be a great success... and it was.” One of India’s first champions of Potter, R Sriram, consultant and former CEO of Crossword, recalls having encountered Potter at a book fair in London.

Only the first two books were out at the time, and in spite of acknowledging Rowling as a very promising author, Bloomsbury was not going overboard with promotions.

Crossword ordered 250 copies of the first books, and according to Sriram, they weren’t particularly fast moving. Just a few years later, people would be queuing up as early as 5 am to pick the latest instalments. Sriram says, “Little did we know that Rowling would compete on an equal footing with Amitabh Bachchan or Shahrukh Khan.” Especially since Rowling did not fit the profile of an author likely to rake in billions. Salzman admits, “Rowling was also off-trend. She wasn’t Candace Bushnell spinning her sexcapes for singletons but rather an unknown who sprang from the anonymity of the talented and impoverished.” It wasn’t until the imminent release of Book Four that Pottermania got the world well and truly in its grip. It was bolstered by an all-too-rare announcement from the author that one of the characters in the book was going to be murdered. Ever since, each book has delivered an impressive bodycount, driven by Rowling’s Sibyl-like proclamations. The announcement that two of the central characters won’t live to see the end of Book Seven has set off a virtual parallel industry analysing previous books for clues to the latest. It’s likely the franchise will have ended with a bang, an initial opening that will be unprecedented in publishing history. Far from putting people off, the increasingly grim tenor is one of the main reasons for its growth. For instance, unlike most previous books targeted at children, Potter and his friends haven’t spent their entire lives stuck in a sanitised pre-pubescent limbo. Sriram says, “The publishers have managed to track the target audience. As they age and grow, the books have grown with them. It’s evolved just ahead of the market and effectively enlarged it with every passing year.” Lindstrom praises the flawless release strategy, likening it to the hype campaign surrounding iPhone. “It plays on magic. Harry Potter is released at a minute past midnight, not at 9:00am like everyone else.”

Potter is a favourite with parents for having dragged a generation obsessed with Playstations and violent TV shows back to reading. And while Sriram believes the so-called decline in reading was exaggerated, he admits Potter has brought a new generation of kids to book stores. An audience that bides their time between books, moving on to other fantasy writers like Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer and Jonathan Stroud: “It’s obviously not just Bloomsbury but other publishers who’ve realised there was a phenomenon in the making. A rising tide lifts all ships.” Possibly the largest reason for Potter’s success, though, is its ability to draw in adults as well. The older target audience gets hooked, according to Lindstrom, since “Grownups are no longer all skilled readers. Many have become simple readers which is exactly why simple books hold appeal.” While kids pester parents to buy and then read the books, parents in turn have found them enjoyable enough to support the franchise. Salzman recalls there being no evidence of a generation gap by 2003 when it came to Harry Potter — it was either embraced or hated, but invariably inspired passion. It managed to move from being a niche franchise to a mass favourite: “Harry Potter is about and for everyone. The leap to mass is something that only masses can engineer. I see many comparisons between Harry Potter and everything else that has sprung from the cultural zeitgeist and stuck these last few years. In fashion, the comparison has to be H+M, chock full of accessibility and style.” John Gerzema, global chief strategy officer, Y&R does a quick analysis using the Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) study to find brands similar to Harry Potter: “iPod, iTunes, Mini Cooper, Pringles, Wii, Playstation, Sirius Satellite Radio and Universal Studios — innovative pioneers that are cool, trendy, intelligent, and fun as well.” Besides Potter’s good wholesome entertainment plank, at least a part of the target audience is rooting for Rowling. Though no longer the underdog of the publishing world, it’s felt the less obvious reasons for the franchise’s success have a lot to do with the author herself. Says Lindstrom, “Mystique surrounds her; a lady who rarely speaks with the press and prefers to conduct meetings with kids only. There’s the fact that she wrote the ending of the last book 12 years ago and locked it in a safe! The fact that people were trying to break into her house to secure a preview of the ending.

The fact that people are trying to ban her books as they are supposed to attract the devil!” In the initial days, Rowling was personally involved with branding. Sriram recalls the author sending Crossword a hand-written letter thanking everybody who celebrated Harry Potter’s birthday, one of the many promotional exercises that the store hosted. He says a tad ruefully, “Post that, it was impossible to get anything personalised from her.” But if there was any danger of the franchise falling off the map with Rowling withdrawing from the public eye, the films kicked in to keep even the older books alive. In fact, more than the popularity of Book Four, it was the film version of The Philosopher’s Stone that brought in many first-time readers. Says Sriram: “The combination of film and book has been killer. They feed into each other. It was a niche following before, the films made it broad based.” The movies may have lagged behind the plot, but have resulted in a huge push for the back catalogue. The books and films have taken centrestage “getting out of review pages and straight to page 1” says Sriram, resulting in huge free publicity. The rumours and revelations around each book have resulted in an almost incessant buzz on the internet. Lindstrom says, “Word of mouth has been Harry Potter’s main driver.” The jury is out on whether Potter can take other brands along for the ride, though. Rowling has been fiercely protective, actively avoiding a Star Wars-like situation where a much-beloved series was diluted by a spate of irrelevant tie-ins. The brand has primarily been experienced through books and the movie. Salzman says that apart from Time Warner, Potter is less of a brand showcase and more a brand in its own right.

Lindstrom is among those who think the brand has spread itself too thin: “It benefited LEGO, in the beginning and Time Warner over time. But no one over the entire period. The franchise was given to far too many and the price was far too high.” According to Gerzema, though, the brand shows signs of decline: “Harry is not for everyone, but is recognised as a mover/shaker.” An area of concern is that Knowledge (a parameter on BAV) is significantly higher than Esteem — indicating that people know more about the brand than they like it, a definite sign of a wear-out effect. Gerzema believes, “It could signal they are looking for other options for entertainment. Esteem has been growing slowly, so it’s not that Harry wore out his welcome, but to say he’s overexposed, is probably an understatement.” However, for Sanjay Luthra, managing director, Mattel Toys India, Potter still works his magic — to a far greater extent than other more well established franchises: “Harry Potter’s core target audience is kids between seven and 16 (seven to 12 for movies, and 10 to 16 for books). Unlike with Superman or Spiderman, where the TG is young children, Harry Potter isn’t a very big property. But as kids grow older, they grow out of Superman and Spiderman and start taking to Harry Potter.” Even the entertainment options are more in the area of card games like Harry Potter Uno, which cuts across older TGs. Launched in India on July 1, the response has been “phenomenal”, with a week 1 off-take of 42%, as opposed to the average of 25% that follows most new properties. While the average monthly off-take is 50%, Luthra adds that Mattel India expects Harry Potter Uno to have a figure close to 80%-85%: “Kids stay with Harry Potter much longer — for anywhere between eight to 10 years. They get into Potter through movies at the age of six or seven, and then graduate onto the books by the age of 10 or 12, and stay loyal fans till 15-16. A burst of activity around Superman will sustain interest for three to five months, but a Harry Potter activity lasts much longer.” To cap it all, there’s the all too finite lifespan of the franchise. Even casual fans are aware that Potter is going to have only seven books worth of adventures, crunching the commitment required from a reader. All the speculation, drama, suspense and intrigue are around a finite set of facts. Salzman says, “It is time for the run to end and seven years is a terrific tenure for a fad or for a trend at a stage where speed isn’t even fast enough. I think the brand will have a greater value if it’s not extended for now and if history and nostalgia drive its valuation in the next few years.”

Microsoft, Digg in advertising pact

Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it reached an agreement to be the exclusive provider of display and contextual advertising on Digg.com, a popular Web site that lets readers recommend online articles to others.

The three-year agreement between Microsoft and Digg, which has more than 17 million visitors a month, provides a boost to the world's largest software maker's efforts to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing online advertising market.

The two companies said they would also work together on future technology and advertising initiatives.

Digg challenges the long-held journalistic assumption that editors know best what people want to read and allows readers to "digg," or vote for a story to push up its rankings.

Microsoft has a similar advertising agreement with another hot Web property, social-networking site Facebook.com.

Shares of Microsoft fell 14 cents to $30.66 (14.93 pounds) in afternoon Nasdaq trading.

Money for Nothing...........

Have a look at this

Salary & Govt. Concessions for a Member of Parliament (MP)

Monthly Salary : 12,000

Expense for Constitution per month : 10,000

Office expenditure per month : 14,000

Traveling concession (Rs. 8 per km) : 48,000 ( eg.For a visit from kerala to Delhi & return: 6000 km)

Daily DA TA during parliament meets : 500/day

Charge for 1 class (A/C) in train : Free (For any number of times)
(All over India )

Charge for Business Class in flights : Free for 40 trips / year (With wife or P.A.)

Rent for MP hostel at Delhi : Free

Electricity costs at home : Free up to 50,000 units

Local phone call charge : Free up to 1 ,70,000 calls.

TOTAL expense for a MP [having no qualification] per year : 32,00,000 [i.e. 2.66 lakh/month]

TOTAL expense for 5 years : 1,60,00,000

For 534 MPs, the expense for 5 years :
8,54,40,00,000 (nearly 855 crores)

This is how all our tax money is been swallowed and price hike on our regular commodities.......

And this is the present condition of our country:

855 crores could make their life livable !!
Think of the great democracy we have.............
PLEASE FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ALL OF UR FRIENDS.

Bill @ Harvard

BillG finally graduates and delivers a speech @ Harvard commencement.



The speech is

President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree."

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's most successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn't worry about getting up in the morning. That's how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success.

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world's first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We're not quite ready, come see us in a month," which was a good thing, because we hadn't written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.

But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.

But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world's inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you've had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren't being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving."

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: "How could the world let these children die?"

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.

If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.

I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: "Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don't … care." I completely disagree.

I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn't care, but because we didn't know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.

The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.

To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.

Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent."

The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.

We don't read much about these deaths. The media covers what's new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don't know how to help. And so we look away.

If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks "How can I help?," then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it's something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.

Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.

You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.

But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person's life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I've ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn't bear it.

What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can't we generate even more excitement for saving lives?

You can't get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that's why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.

Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: "I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation."

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.

The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.

The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.

At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don't. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don't have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.

Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for?

There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?

Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?

Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?

Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.

My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.

Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Good luck.

Ethics and its decreasing importance in today's India

MEN AND IDEAS

Public ethics

GURCHARAN DAS

My wife and i have been feeling pretty down recently since perhaps the most popular president in Indian history is about to be dethroned in unseemly backroom horse-trading. We have tried to console ourselves, saying that politics is competitive by nature and what else can you expect from political parties who are only ruled by self-interest. What finally lifted our spirits, however, was the news that our niece had landed a good job. She called to say that she had signed a lease for a lovely room at an ‘unbelievably low’ rent. But after two weeks she was in tears. She had arrived bag and baggage at her ‘new home’ to find that the villainous landlord had given away her room on a much higher rent. She blamed her plight on the ‘greed of capitalism’.
I told her that the landlord is not at fault for wanting more rent; he is guilty of breaking an agreement. She could go to court but it would take a lifetime to get justice. What had failed my niece was governance not capitalism. If our courts enforced contracts speedily, the landlord would not have dared. People behave more morally in the capitalist countries of the West because the rule of law allows one to be good. On the other hand, millions of workers in the government of India do not work because they have the ‘socialist’ guarantee of a lifetime job. Their moral failure, it seems to me, is far greater than the landlord’s.
My niece’s room hunting woes soon got submerged by murky reports that had the potential of gravely damaging the highest office in the land. Indeed, what should we make of the news that the frontrunner for the President, Pratibha Patil, had started a cooperative bank whose licence was cancelled by the Reserve Bank four years ago? The bank, it seems, gave Pratibha’s relatives ‘illegal loans’ that exceeded the bank’s share capital. It also gave a loan to Pratibha’s own sugar mill which was never repaid. The bank waived these loans, and this drove the bank into liquidation. The government liquidator of the bank, PD Nigam, said this week, “The fact that relatives of the founder chairperson (Pratibha Patil) were among those indiscriminately granted loans and that some illegal loan waivers were done has come up in our audit.” Six of the top 10 defaulters in Pratibha’s bank were linked to her relatives.
If these facts are true, then it is a serious moral lapse. If allegations against Pratibha Patil are just ‘mudslinging’ as the prime minister says, then the charges will not stick. However, if she does become President and the charges turn out to be true, then the citizens of India will punish the UPA government in the only way that they can, and that is by throwing it out at the next elections. In the meantime, severe harm would have been done in diminishing the President’s office as well as the Indian nation.
Whether it is presidential or capitalist ethics, the starting point is the recognition that both democratic politics and capitalism are based on competition and this is what keeps people honest in the long term. Both democracy and capitalism are decentralised systems where no single person is in charge. Adam Smith wrote more than 200 years ago that when millions of self-interested individuals act in their own interest in the marketplace, an ‘invisible hand’ promotes the common good of society. However, institutions are not perfect and the examples of my niece’s landlord and the UPA presidential candidate teach us that ethics matter profoundly in our democratic capitalist system.

Walmart, CPM and the truth

Swaminomics Article in today's TOI - takes on the Wal-mart global business model and how that is unfit for India, Why Walmart in dependent on Bharti and why is CPM opposing Wal-mart.

Wal-Mart is the world’s biggest multinational. Yet, its business model, which has conquered the US, is totally unsuited to Indian conditions.
Historically, MNCs have had high profit margins arising from quasi-monopolies in technology and finance, and political influence translating into protectionism. In the US, trade unions fought for a bigger share of the surpluses, and obtained the highest wages in the world. In effect, MNCs and the trade unions shared monopoly profits garnered at consumer expense.
Wal-Mart has defied this model. Far from seeking high margins, it has relentlessly cut prices and kept profit margins so low that competitors give up. Its profit margin is just 3% of sales. Prices at Wal-Mart can be half or less than at major department stores. Wal-Mart quality is often poor, though that is improving.
So, unlike historical Numero Unos, Wal-Mart has risen by cutting instead of raising prices, by reducing instead of increasing profit margins, by catering to the masses rather than the well-heeled, and by using the cheapest rather than the most expensive workers. Pankaj Ghemawat of Harvard University estimates that Wal-Mart’s lower prices benefit US consumers directly by $18 billion a year. Besides, Wal-Mart obliges rivals to cut prices. The net benefit, according to consulting firm Global Insight, is a whopping $263 billion. This dwarfs anti-poverty programmes. The greatest beneficiaries of Wal-Mart are the poor.
Wal-Mart aims at scale economies of every sort. By buying massively, it pays least to suppliers. It has massive stores with acres of parking space to accommodate hordes who drive in. This strategy needs cheap land, so Wal-Mart stores are typically in urban peripheries, small towns and rural areas. Petrol is cheap in the US, so Americans happily drive an hour or more to a Wal-Mart store 30-40 miles away.
Conditions are totally different abroad, so Wal-Mart has often failed in other countries. Ghemawat says that the further Wal-Mart goes from the US the worse is its performance. It shut down in Germany after losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and sold out in Korea too. It now accepts the need to adapt to local conditions, but adaptation erodes the power of its US model.
Land prices have skyrocketed in India, so a US-style superstore would have to be situated miles outside a big city. I simply cannot see wellheeled Indians driving for hours to a big store on the outskirts of Delhi
or Mumbai. Unlike in the US, the poor and lower middle-class in India do not have cars or cheap petrol to facilitate long-distance shopping.
So, small shopkeepers will easily compete. They typically evade sales tax. Many pay low rents because of rent control. They are located close to consumers, and provide home delivery at no extra cost. Some even provide credit. Even if Wal-Mart is cheaper, many consumers will opt for the convenience of local shopkeepers.
To succeed in India, the Wal-Mart model needs major surgery. It can procure imported goods cheaper than anyone else. But its Indian partner, Bharti, knows the local market much better. On balance, Wal-Mart needs Bharti more than the other way round.
Given Wal-Mart’s limitations, why is the CPM so opposed to its entry? The party says it is worried that small shopkeepers will suffer. Yet, it seems hilarious that a party sworn to protect the poor from the bourgeoisie should suddenly pose as a defender of the bourgeoisie, and oppose lower prices for the poor.
What’s happening? Well, ideology obliges the CPM to oppose the biggest MNC. More important, the Left is outraged by the company’s anti-union policies. To keep prices low, Wal-Mart seeks only nonunionised labour, and has closed stores rather than accept unions. Some critics claim that Wal-Mart pays less than the minimum wage. In fact, it pays around $10 per hour, fractionally less than the average for all US retailers. Critics think Wal-Mart should pay much more than small companies, and offer higher health and other benefits — that is what Numero Unos have done in the past. But Wal-Mart says it is dedicated to the philosophy of everyday low prices, and gives priority to the consumer over the worker.
In theory, the Left represents the poor. In practice, it represents the labour aristocracy — the big trade unions. These unions provide CPM with cadres that are invaluable for fighting elections. The poor do not provide any such assistance. So, the CPM will always favour unions over the poor. This explains why it is so outraged by Wal-Mart.
Note that Wal-Mart has been welcomed in China, where it has supplemented rather than supplanted small shopkeepers. In the coming year, Wal-Mart will set up 20 new stores and remodel 65 existing ones in China. In keeping with the need to adapt to local conditions, Wal-Mart has even accepted unionisation in China.
The lesson is clear. The CPM should welcome Wal-Mart into India. Once it is here, India’s labour laws will oblige it to accept a trade union. The CPM should seek to control that union. What a communist victory that will be!

WHO MAKES THE APPLE I-POD? IT'S NOT APPLE FOR STARTERS...

Who makes the Apple i pod? Here’s a hint: It is not Apple. The company outsources the entire manufacture of the device to a number of Asian enterprises, among them Asustek, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn.

But this list of companies isn’t a satisfactory answer either: They only do final assembly. What about the 451 parts that go into the iPod? Where are they made and by whom?

Three researchers at the University of California, Irvine — Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer and Jason Dedrick — applied some investigative cost accounting to this question, using a report from Portelligent Inc. that examined all the parts that went into the iPod.

Their study, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, offers a fascinating illustration of the complexity of the global economy, and how difficult it is to understand that complexity by using only conventional trade statistics.

The retail value of the 30-gigabyte video iPod that the authors examined was $299. The most expensive component in it was the hard drive, which was manufactured by Toshiba and costs about $73. The next most costly components were the display module (about $20), the video/multimedia processor chip ($8) and the controller chip ($5). They estimated that the final assembly, done in China, cost only about $4 a unit.

One approach to tracing supply chain geography might be to attribute the cost of each component to the country of origin of its maker. So $73 of the cost of the iPod would be attributed to Japan since Toshiba is a Japanese company, and the $13 cost of the two chips would be attributed to the United States, since the suppliers, Broadcom and PortalPlayer, are American companies, and so on.

But this method hides some of the most important details. Toshiba may be a Japanese company, but it makes most of its hard drives in the Philippines and China. So perhaps we should also allocate part of the cost of that hard drive to one of those countries. The same problem arises regarding the Broadcom chips, with most of them manufactured in Taiwan. So how can one distribute the costs of the iPod components across the countries where they are manufactured in a meaningful way?

To answer this question, let us look at the production process as a sequence of steps, each possibly performed by a different company operating in a different country. At each step, inputs like computer chips and a bare circuit board are converted into outputs like an assembled circuit board. The difference between the cost of the inputs and the value of the outputs is the “value added” at that step, which can then be attributed to the country where that value was added.

The profit margin on generic parts like nuts and bolts is very low, since these items are produced in intensely competitive industries and can be manufactured anywhere. Hence, they add little to the final value of the iPod. More specialized parts, like the hard drives and controller chips, have much higher value added.

According to the authors’ estimates, the $73 Toshiba hard drive in the iPod contains about $54 in parts and labor. So the value that Toshiba added to the hard drive was $19 plus its own direct labor costs. This $19 is attributed to Japan since Toshiba is a Japanese company.

Continuing in this way, the researchers examined the major components of the iPod and tried to calculate the value added at different stages of the production process and then assigned that value added to the country where the value was created. This isn’t an easy task, but even based on their initial examination, it is quite clear that the largest share of the value added in the iPod goes to enterprises in the United States, particularly for units sold here.

The researchers estimated that $163 of the iPod’s $299 retail value in the United States was captured by American companies and workers, breaking it down to $75 for distribution and retail costs, $80 to Apple, and $8 to various domestic component makers. Japan contributed about $26 to the value added (mostly via the Toshiba disk drive), while Korea contributed less than $1.

The unaccounted-for parts and labor costs involved in making the iPod came to about $110. The authors hope to assign those labor costs to the appropriate countries, but as the hard drive example illustrates, that’s not so easy to do.

This value added calculation illustrates the futility of summarizing such a complex manufacturing process by using conventional trade statistics. Even though Chinese workers contribute only about 1 percent of the value of the iPod, the export of a finished iPod to the United States directly contributes about $150 to our bilateral trade deficit with the Chinese.

Ultimately, there is no simple answer to who makes the iPod or where it is made. The iPod, like many other products, is made in several countries by dozens of companies, with each stage of production contributing a different amount to the final value.

The real value of the iPod doesn’t lie in its parts or even in putting those parts together. The bulk of the iPod’s value is in the conception and design of the iPod. That is why Apple gets $80 for each of these video iPods it sells, which is by far the largest piece of value added in the entire supply chain.

Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.

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