दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

As back in India Indo-US Nuclear Deal had made big news, I was amazed not to find any coverage in US media. Ultimately, I found ‘Business Week to carry a report, ‘Wall Street Threatens India Nuclear Pact’.

However, in a recent special report, ‘The new champions’ in Economists, Indian companies got its glorious share as ‘companies that are worth investing in, and that are even starting to take on and beat the best of the developed world’s multinationals.

Antoine van Agtmael’s book “The Emerging Markets Century” includes Infosys, an Indian software giant; and Ranbaxy along with Haier, a Chinese white-goods firm; Cemex, a Mexican cement company; and Embraer, a Brazilian aircraft-maker.

“Globality”, a new book on the latest phase of globalization by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) includes the Tata Group, an Indian conglomerate that spans cars and steel, software and tea along with Goodbaby, which has an 80% share of the market for baby buggies in China and a 28% share in America.

Tata has operations in 85 countries, and has been making a series of high-profile acquisitions that are fundamentally transforming the company set up in 1868. In 2000 it bought London-based Tetley, an iconic tea company. In 2007, after a fierce bidding war with CSN, a Brazilian steel firm, it paid $12 billion for Corus, a European steel company. In March this year it paid Ford $2.3 billion for two legendary car businesses, Jaguar and Land Rover. Short-term market pressure may have forced Ford to sell two firms that it had done good work restructuring, says Alan Rosling, Tata’s (British) chief strategist: “Tata will reap the benefit of all Ford’s hard work.”

Another reason to be optimistic about Tata’s growing global reach is its Indian origin, which makes it more sensitive to cultural differences than many of its peers in developed countries, claims Mr Rosling. And in its strategy, the firm has benchmarked itself against some of the world’s best companies. It has borrowed ideas from firms such as Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Mitsubishi, a Japanese conglomerate, and GE, says Mr Rosling.

Tata Consulting Services, along with Indian counterparts such as Infosys and Wipro, has built up a large organization for outsourcing business processes, serving companies around the world. Increasingly, it has moved into higher-value businesses, as have its Indian peers.

In January it unveiled its long-awaited Nano, a new “people’s car” that will be sold for just $2,500. This was “not just the result of using cheap Indian engineers”, says Mr Rosling. Nor is it about accepting lower standards on safety or environmental emissions. The company used state-of-the-art virtual design technology and global teams to drive genuine innovation. Mr Tata saw the Nano as a safer alternative for Indian families currently travelling by motorcycle, but consumers in developed countries are already talking of it as a possible second car for use in towns because, being small, it is easy to park. Still, the Nano will probably sell best in other emerging markets.

Unfortunately Mamta can’t understand or applaud these champions.

It was also interesting to go through the entry,’ Is Innovation India’s Next Big Thing?‘ by Marianne Kolbasuk McGee on Wipro.

Wipro is currently “the largest third-party R&D services company in the world,” according to an interview this week with InformationWeek and “R&D is the next big thing in India.”

Many NRIs are doing great work for the improvement that has global impacts through from USA. One of them is Vinod Khosla,who is one of the clean-tech industry’s most vocal cheerleaders, and most of today’s clean technologies fall short of his 1-billion-car test. .

What Indian companies are doing gets noted and recognized with respect in the developed world all around the globe. And that is the only hope for India. Even with all the undoing of Indian hardheaded politicians such as Mamta Devi by delaying Nanos, and inaction of Man Mohan government to sort out the issues of land acquisition for industry in last 4+ years, India may move ahead to the league of powerful economies of the world.

Valleycare Medical Center, Pleasanton 7.58 AM Thursday September 2008,
Krish arrives. It is a great day for the family and us. Emma gets a brother. Anand and Shannon get a son.

Let the Almighty give Krish a very long life with sound health and mind. Let Mother Earth makes him strong and kind. Let Goddess of Wealth make him rich and compassionate. Let the Goddess of Learning make him learned and humble. Let all the Gods and Goddesses bestow on Krish their kindness and affection.

As grandparents, who have come here so far to welcome him, we give of our blessings in tons and request our acquaintances, relations, and friends to bless the new born.

My happiest moment today was the divine happiness on the face of one year plus Emma when she saw Krish for the first time. At this age, she tried to take Krish in her lap. God has given us everything in life. We can’t but just obliged to HIM.

‘Sarve Bhavantoo Sukhinah.’

We are in USA at a time when the campaign for presidential election is at peak. A close observation helps me to firm up some views about this democracy and its people. A very clear uniqueness of American leadership is its emphasis on America as nation. In speeches of the presidential candidates or senators, one hears only about America and Americans. “This is a crucial moment in America’s history and that’s why we need to reverse the trend from 2004 when millions of young Americans opted out of voting on election and making history.” The campaign appears to be pretty negative. Both John McCain and Barack Obama are running negative ads and sniping at each other. But it addresses to American public not to any specific community or region. “We need a plan that gives hardworking Americans relief instead of using taxpayer dollars to reward CEOs on Wall Street… Well that might be true for the profits of a few CEOs, but it’s certainly not true for America’s….. That’s the America idea…I promise you – we will change America together.”

It is so different from how Indian leadership speaks. We keep on hearing ‘Marathi Manush’ ‘Gujarati Greatness’, or ‘Sonar Bangla’.

I keep on reading the books written by Americans, be it Tarun Khanna’s ‘Two Billion of Entrepreneurs‘ or Thomas Friedman’s latest ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded’. The theme rotates around what America can do to keep up its lead as superpower or largest economy with challenges from the emerging economies of China and India.

In every passage one reads, America and the concerns for America is the main theme. See this: “Yet beneath the gloom, economists and business leaders across the political spectrum are slowly coming to an agreement: Innovation is the best-and maybe the only-way the U.S. can get out of its economic hole. New products, services, and ways of doing business can create enough growth to enable Americans to prosper over the long run.”

I wish we Indians talk more about India and Bharat and identify everything with it rather than stick to the same old politically motivated attachment to the regions. The regionalism gets manifested when I talk with Indians working in US too. In the era of a bigger world where Indian business leader and CEO of Arcelor Mittal or Pepsico are setting role, Indians must shake off those regionalism at least in public statements and writings.

While going through Friedman’s ‘Hot, Flat, and Crowded’, I started pondering how’s India performing and preparing for the Energy Climate Era. There are certainly good news from different areas. I have at east one story to share. Latest ‘Economist’ has a report on the endeavours in India for bio-fuels.

D1-BP Fuel Crops, a joint venture between D1 Oils, a British bio-fuels firm, and BP, an energy giant, is promoting plantations of Jatropa in India. The black seeds of Jatropa yield a viscous oil that burns with a clear, clean flame. The oil can run a generator or a pump. Or it can be refined into bio-diesel that can fuel tractors, trucks or trains. Interestingly, Jatropa does not require good agricultural land nor require too much water rather regenerates dry and denuded soils, and create jobs for impoverished farmers. India accounts for about two-thirds of the world’s jatropha plantations, according to New Energy Finance, a research firm. By 2017 India aims to meet 20% of India’s diesel demand with fuel derived from plants rather than fossils.

Roshini International Bio Energy, a firm based in Hyderabad is working on ‘a more elegant rival in pongamia pinnata, or Indian birch’ for getting bio-fuel. Its seeds can yield about 30% of their weight in oil. The company has joined hands with the Andhra Pradesh government to plant the trees in three of Andhra Pradesh’s 23 districts an has an elaborate dream “to plant 1 billion trees on this planet.”

I have been interested in bio-fuels as it can make rural farmers self-sufficient for the fuel that they require for their farm equipment similar to the crop of mustard seeds that provides edible oil for their kitchen. I wish the Indian scientists carried on researches to make the bio-fuel plants more productive with better and faster yields, and the equipment manufacturers made the modifications to use the crude bio-fuels from the seeds without requiring sophisticated refining.

As reported, Indian Railways have a grand plan to run its diesel locomotives on bio-diesel from Jatropa grown in its own land. Wiith one of the largest producers of sugarcanes, ethanol can be another replacement for fossil fuels for India. If it can happen in Brazil, it can happen also in India.

There may be many skeptics about the potential of bio-fuels. However, the scientists of the country who can launch Chnadrayan and contribute in Big Bang experiment can also work and innovate ways to remove the hurdles of commercializing bio-diesel and ethanol that can easily save billions of petrodollars.

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It is seven days that we are in USA. These seven days had also shook the stock markets all over the world. USA is in turmoil. While the campaign for the election of the new president on November 4 is on peak with all news channels covering every bit of what the candidates say and do plus something more that makes it spicy, the Washington DC is under fire with the financial collapses that never happened in the history of US. The 158-year-old Lehman Brothers failed and Merrill was sold to Bank of America. The government provided an $85 billion bailout for AIG. And, the officials have proposed to purchase the troubled mortgage assets of financial firms, a move that could cost $900 billions or more. Wall Street is suffering the worst financial storm since the Great Depression. I along with many have a question. Why was Lehman not bailed out, when the government did help sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase and the effective nationalization of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

When Man Mohan government decided to waive off the loans amounting to Rs 60,000 or more of farmers, many considered that as one for vote bank and as a disincentive to the honest farmers who had paid back. When the government still goes on granting huge amount to support sick and loosing PSUs such as HMT and HEC, I get critical. I think all waivers and financial supports must go with some condition so that the same condition doesn’t get created again. The beneficiaries must start working hard and don’t take this benevolence as their rights.

How should I feel, when US is bailing out its mega private companies for their misdeeds through taxpayers money amounting in trillion? Will the executives at the top who amass a lot of asset through different perks, huge salaries and remunerations be asked to part with some? Will they continue to draw the same even after the survival fund from the government? Where were the regulators who would have blown the whistle in time to avoid the present situation? Why the discrimination?
All Americans and perhaps the people, particularly investors world over are worried, as what happens in USA affects the rest of the world too either immediately or on long term. Russia’s stock markets had been among the hardest hit by recent financial turmoil. European and Asian markets can’t remain insulted.

Unfortunately, I hardly understand this capitalism. How can you go on living on credit without building the capability and intention to payback? How long the banking system keep on deceiving itself by loaning 100% for buying the houses and cars to the people with no capability to pay back?

It is unfortunate that many countries are following the American models and its people try to copy all that happens in USA. Will they be ready to face similar collapses too?
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$700 Billion Bailout-Revival Counteraction

Few days before we left India, Anand had informed that Friedman’s new book is waiting for me. Perhaps both, Anand and Rajesh, are his fans. I did also join them after my last visit to US in 2005, when I went through his book ‘The World is Flat’. The ‘World is Flat’ had many success stories about the rise of India’s IT/ITeS sector. Along with CK Prahalad, Friedman became the second most visible celebrity in India.

I like his style of narration, simple and forthright. His new book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’ deals with the issues of global warming and the role he wishes US to play. As one review rightly said, “On the issues related to the future of our economy and the heady questions around America’s rank and influence as a global power–there are few authors more knowledgeable or passionate than Thomas Friedman. Hot, Flat, and Crowded challenges US to lead the green revolution.”

Making America the world’s greenest country is not a selfless act of charity or naïve moral indulgence, but now a core national security and economic interest. Friedman emphasizes on what David Rothkopf, an energy expert and visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment has said, “Green is not simply a new form of generating electric power. It is a new form generating national power-period.” It is not just about lighting up our house; it is about lighting up our future. Friedman wants to choose between two America: an America that is addicted to oil and thereby fueling the worst autocracies of the world, or a green America that is building scalable alternative to crude oil and thereby freeing ourselves from the grip of countries who have drawn a bull’s eye on our back and whose values we oppose?

The hot, flat, and crowded world is dramatically intensifying five key problems- the growing demand for scarcer energy supplies and natural resources, a massive transfer of wealth to oil-rich countries and their petro-dictators, disruptive climate change, energy poverty, which is sharply dividing the world into electricity haves and electricity have-nots, and rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss, as plants and animals go extinct at record rates.

Friedman propounds ushering of an’Energy-Climate–Era’ that can save the world and ‘how we move forward’.

But interesting and informative are his prescriptions: ‘205 Easy Ways to Save the Earth’. I quote just one set to avoid doubling of CO2 by mid-century that quantitatively must target at avoiding the emission of 200 billion tons of carbon between now and then:

· Double fuel efficiency from 30 miles per gallon to 60 miles per gallon.

· Drive the cars only 5,000 miles per year rather than 10,000, at 30 miles per gallon.

· Raise efficiency at large coal-fired plants from 40 to 60 percent and replace with natural gas powered facilities.

· Install carbon capture and sequestration*

– At large coal-fired plants, so that the CO2 can be separated and stored underground.

– At new coal plants that would produce hydrogen for hydrogen-powered vehicles.

– At coal gasification plants.

Add twice today’s current nuclear capacity and increase wind power forty fold and solar power 700 fold to displace all coal-fired power.

Drive 2 billion cars on ethanol.

Halt all cutting and burning of forests

Adapt conservation tillage, which emits much less CO2 from the land. Conservation tillage uses half as many tractors to cultivate a field as conventional tillage, translating to lower fuel consumption. In total, savings have been estimated between $40 and $75 per acre per year.

Cut electricity use in houses, offices, and stores by 25%, and cut carbon emission by the same amount.
*Carbon Capture and Sequestration: is an option to reduce heat-trapping greenhouse gases. CCS requires capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and other industrial facilities, transporting it to suitable locations, injecting it into deep underground geological formations, and monitoring its behavior.

While going through Hot, Flat and Crowded at every moment I felt India must go by all Friedman talks about in the book as roadmap to renew America. The government, India Inc, researchers and the society at large must get into the business so that India becomes one of the leading countries to save mother earth for the posterity and get economically benefited in turn. With many institutions and celebrities such as RK Pachauri, it appears that India is alive to the problem and the opportunity from the global warming. “Fighting climate change is the largest economic opportunity of the next century.”

I wish all Indians who matter must read Hot, Flat and Crowded.

Mamta mayn’t realize but she is helping many of the automakers world over who got amazed and somewhat scared after the showcasing of Nano at auto shows from Delhi to Detroit and the great applauses it received. Tata Motors and so the country had an opportunity to get into the group of automating countries with its own product with global appeal. Tata Motors did a wonderful job of getting the construction work started fast and was almost readying to get into the market commercially by October 2008. And then came a female monster that surrounded the horizon of Singur and forced Tata Motors to stop the construction and commissioning work at Rs 15,000-crore plant.

The Singur has by now become a known name all over the world for wrong reasons. Be it Knowledge Wharton, New York Times, Washington Post, Business Week, Economist, all covered this impasse that has created a nightmare for the government as well as the people of West Bengal in particular. The subject has become one of the favourite hot topics for media to write. While Knowledge Wharton debates ‘West Bengal’s Nano Impasse: A Roadblock for Tata – and for Investment, New York Times generalizes with a headline ‘India Grapples With How to Convert Its Farmland Into Factories‘. Business Week that had storied ‘Tata’s Nano: An Ingenious Coup‘, and called for ‘Learning from Tata’s Nano‘ reports ‘Why Indian Farmers Are Fighting Tata’s Nano’. Economist also covers ‘Nano war‘ with interest. ‘Nano, Singur, and Mamta’ is still keeping many media persons busy and at toe for ‘what next’. Many a times, these reports appear to be pretty biased to me, but with a free press, India can’t help the damage it causes.

Tata Motors and its vendors that were constructing the integrated manufacturing facilities in Singur to produce the cheapest car of the world has suffered the immense loss, not only in money terms but also in the delay to put Nano in the market. Unfortunately neither Mamta has the width or depth of the statesmanship to understand the damage she has already caused to the country nor the people of West Bengal and the government have the moral strength and perhaps the will to win over Mamta.

It is not that Tatas and engineers can’t launch Nano in market from its other facilities, but they must be cursing Mamta for the mental agony of this unexpected challenge to get into launch from another facility of Tata Motors. And the Devils must be laughing. It has certainly delayed the planned scale of production of Nano.

Car manufacturing particularly a new model is a difficult task. It’s not a software creation. It needs getting huge number of machinery and equipment from all the best sources in the world. It requires a lot of tryout exercises and initial runs for debugging the manufacturing processes to meet the tact time and quality output. It requires on-the-job training specific to the model. It is unfortunate that hardly few in the opposition and even in the government at the center understand it.
One can hardly expect the people at large to understand this. However, why should Mamta and her henchmen appreciate the trouble till they can keep the crowd intact with emotional exploitations? And even if they wish to withdraw the agitation, there will emerge some other groups in Singur, be it leftists or Naxalites to carry on some or the other so-called democratic protest making the lives of employees miserable and its own purpose served.

And unfortunately after spending the whole life in automobile industry, I can’t detach myself from Nano and Singur even when I am having the best days of my life here in this wonderful home of Shannon-Anand in pollution-free pleasing Pleasanton, California with sweet Emma and beautiful surrounding along with good food without any input from me unlike that in Noida.