दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

I read today this passage in Sunday Times of India.

An antique collector has a currency note of Indonesia. Ganesh the widely worshipped Hindu deity shares space with the former Indonesian president, KI Hadjar Dewantara, in the country’s national currency, the rupiah. Dated 1998, and valued at 20,000 rupiah (Rs 102), As per the collector, “There are many more such notes with Lord Ganesha issued in this Islamic country every year.”

I am not surprised at all, as I have been to Jakarta to visit a Mitshubishi car manufacturing plant. En route to the factory, I was just looking at the signboards on the roadside. Quite a significant numbers of them were with Sanskrit names. Muslims there never protest about that.

And then I read another news item. The government has asked all the schools to make their students sing the national song- ‘Vande Mataram’ as part of its centenary celebrations on September 7. Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband has asked Muslims to keep their children away from schools on September 7 to avoid any controversy with regard to singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ in educational institutions on that day.

Some Muslim leaders and clerics say it was ”against the tenets of the Shariat”. All-India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) is opposed to making singing of ‘Vande Mataram’ mandatory in schools, colleges and madrassas; and supports the advice by Darul-Uloom of Deoband to Muslims. Why are the friends of the community so rigid about it? Why can’t they learn from Indonesia? Are the Indonesians lesser Muslims?

‘Vande Mataram’- the song was composed in 1875 by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and adopted as the national song at the Benaras session of the All India Congress Committee on September 7, 1905. Until 1930s there was no objection in using the song or ‘Vande Mataram’ as slogan. It integrated wholly with the people and agitators of the freedom movement. And then a controversy broke out. Some minority leaders felt it glorified Hindu deities, idol worship and had a regional bias. However, on October 28, 1937 a committee comprising Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose observed that the first two stanzas had no religious allusions. It is these two stanzas that is basically the national song.

Naturally a question comes to our mind. What is more important for any good citizen of the country- nation or religion? We were taught in our school days, ‘Janani Janambhumisch Swaragdapi Gariyashi’. Why should Indians be preached any ideologies that divide them? What is wrong if as a Hindu I sing the prayer in praise of Allah or Christ? I really get so much of pleasure and satisfaction too, when I see Yamuna bowing her head whenever she sees any religious place, be it a mandir, mosque, gurudwaara, or church. Why can’t all religions preach this and also that the nation is above everything? We are Indians. It is the duty of every Indian to sing our national song with our heads high.

Read some more if you are interested on the topic:
Song sung blue by Barkha Dutt
Losing the song for the words by Abhishek Singhvi
The Lessons of Vande Mataram by Vir Sanghvi
Song sung blue by Asif Jalal
How bhadralok was he? by By Indrajit Hazra
Latest News
Deoband washes hands off fatwa
Row narrows to V-word

Benjamin Paul Kaila with a dalit root in Andhra Pradesh is a successful IT professional in Los Angeles. He is paying back to the society he came from. Kaila, 45, co-ordinates an annual scholarship scheme for deserving Dalit students in his home state. What a grand exemplary gesture even without much media glare! Half the scholarships are reserved for girl students and it is ensured that the Mala and Madiga sub-castes are equally represented. A Hyderabad-based organisation Devdas Adidela, and activist P.V.V. Rao is helping Kaila in his endeavour.

As a child in a Dalit settlement in a village in Guntur district, Kaila would walk four miles to attend classes in a Telugu-medium school. Living without electricity, water or sanitation, he eventually obtained a postgraduate diploma in computer science and worked in the IT industry in Hyderabad and Mumbai for a few years.

Why can’t others in US or back home who have gone to be member of creamy layer emulate Kaila’s example and help the students of their community who are not able to continue their studies because of finance?

I read this story in ‘Outlook’ and started thinking. Why can’t all the political leaders particularly dalit ones- Mayawati, Ram Vilash, and many others go out on a yatra all over the country, address the deprived class, and pass on the message that they must send all their kids to schools under ‘Sarv Shiksha Aviyan’? Do all the people at the bottom of the pyramid know that education is available free with midday meal and in many cases with dress and other assistance? Do all the students of deprived class know that finance is not a constraint if they do well in studies? How many of them know that banks are ready to finance the study if they perform well?

I don’t think if any one today does perform well in schools and collages and wishes to continue his higher studies the finance is constraint. Every now and then we get some media news about the type of help the people in society are eager to provide to the deserving needy students. But I strongly feel that the message has not reached to all parents and the students in our country. I wish someone the government starts a campaign on line of polio plus so that none remains poorly educated in the country.

Wherever you go, you see huge lot of people mostly young without any useful engagement. Perhaps this is the biggest visible difference one finds between India and the developed countries. India’s burgeoning labour force is already over 400 million and expected to rise above 650 million by 2020. So the importance of growth with maximum possible employment is obvious…and critical.

In last six to eight years, most of the big and medium size companies of the country have not increased its employment rather for increasing its productivity to competitive level, it has downsized or right sized whatever you may like to call. “Between 1995-96 and 2002-03, about one million jobs were lost in organised manufacturing (shown by employment data of Annual Survey of Industries, CSO). In the next three years, despite rapid industrial growth, employment did not increase. In fact, there was a marginal fall in employment by about one per cent.”

Other clear indicators of lack of employment growth are also there. In many industries, growth of sales in recent years never showed a significant increase in wages and salaries, indicating thereby that employment has not grown. Sales of tyres and tubes companies increased by 28 per cent between 2001-02 and 2004-05, but wages and salaries grew by only 9 per cent in this period. A similar pattern is observed for ball bearings, cement, polymers, dyes and pigments, and synthetic yarn, to name a few. In prime movers sector, for example, sales grew from Rs 10,044 crore in 2000-01 to Rs 17,537 crore in 2004-05, while the payment of wages and salaries came down from Rs 2,465 crore to Rs 2,060 crore in this period.

In a recent interview published in India Management Magazine, Ratan Tata confessed: ‘Tata steel brought down its manpower from 78,000 to 48,000, while Tata Motors could bring it down from 40,000 to 19,000.’ Even Maruti Motors cut down strength. With automation, productivity, and incentive, the production level increased. With the present labour laws, any company is very much scared to add manpower. Instead it goes for outsourcing many of the activities or employ casual or contract labour, or even invest in automation.

How can the company put in more manpower if needed without fear? With certain amount of flexibility in labor laws, it will be possible. Globally, trend today is for employing temporary workers. Even many in the younger generation workers in IT sector prefer to work as ‘temp’ and enjoy it better than a single employer. However, with huge number of unemployed mass in India, the system may not still be popular.
As the union representatives present, the changes in labour laws are not only for institutionalize ‘hire and fire’. Every workman must have certain rights particularly the right to present his justified grievances and get that sorted out, but the same workman can’t stand protected all the time for all the misdemeanours causing losses to the company on very unreasonable pretexts of the labour laws.

The irrational labour laws suit in “protecting” the 7 per cent of workers in the organised sector (including government), and this group gets the patronization of all sorts, particularly of politicians and trade unionists. They are hell bent for not allowing any reform in labour laws with the support of left parties and unionists. Perhaps Indian industry can’t create sufficient employment without the necessary changes in labour laws. It will try to solve this problem only through smaller but globally uneconomical units. SEZs may be a solution but who knows with increasing clout of leftists whether it will be possible to make labour laws flexible in these zones.

The new rural employment guarantee programme may be the voters’ scheme, but it can’t create sustainable employment and solve the unemployment in the country effectively. As Mr. Acharya, the economist, says, “The new rural employment guarantee programme is only a “make work” scheme (not real job creation), which suffers from serious design flaws. It’s better suited for conferring political patronage (and corruption) than job creation.”

Manufacturing must expand significantly to create jobs in villages, towns, suburb of metros, and SEZs. Manufacturing must go beyond handicrafts to cover all sectors that can be independently carried out by the entrepreneurial families with electricity, road, and telecommunication facilities easily available to all including those in rural areas.

Our industrial houses must take the lead in developing more and more entrepreneurial families. With big business houses such as Tata, Birla, and Reliance joining the retail sector in big way, can we hope that instead of following the easier way of importing all the cheaply manufactured goods from China and other countries on pattern of Wal-Mart, these houses will try to develop local manufacturing sources that can create a huge employment?

While the potential of increasing business in IT, ITeS, BPO, R&D can provide employment to properly educated categories on sustainable basis, if India can maintain its competitive advantages, it can be only the unprecedented growth in manufacturing and agriculture that can help creating the employment critical for the alleviation of poverty significantly.

PS Read A leftist’s views: Real or virtual reality? by Sitaram Yechury

‘Business Week’ has published a special report on Asia’s young class of entrepreneurs that is ‘globally aware, extremely Internet savvy, and willing to pounce on a smart idea even if it means grueling hours and considerable financial risk early on in life’. BusinessWeek.com asked readers to nominate standout young entrepreneurs 25 or under. Indians are perhaps the maximum in percentage in the finalists. The slide show showcase their companies and entrepreneurial vision. Business Week expects it readers to cast their votes to get the final ranking. It will report the results in September.Young folks barely out of college are running serious enterprises they started with a modicum of capital. Some of our nominees were trying out business models before graduating from high school.

Indians include:

Sasikanth Chemalamudi, 23, is CEO: Habits http://www.habits.in Hyderabad, India:

A graduate with honors from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Pilani, Chemalamudi turned down an offer from outsourcing powerhouse Infosys to pursue his passion for entrepreneurship. He co-launched Habits, a creative learning resources company that encourages more creative thinking with the aid of educational materials such as musicals, plays, and interactive games. Habits is also involved with projects in rural India to encourage self-employment.

Rama Krishna Gaddipati, 24, is the Co-founder: Bridle Information & Technology Solutions. http://www.bridleit.com/index.htm Tenali, India

Bridle is a mobile applications and services outfit-and that is a good space to occupy given the explosive growth of mobile telephony in India. And Bridle co-founder Gaddipati (the 2001 winner of the Intel CyberFiesta national software development contest) may already have a hit on his hands. The service is called SchoolMATE, and it is a comprehensive student analysis system that allows parents to monitor their child’s progress at school. The service feeds information on conduct, examinations, and report cards to subscribers, and employs technology such as mobile text messaging, the Web, and e-mail. The company has gained about 70,000 subscribers in Hyderabad and Vishakapatnam in India.

Dinesh Goel, 24, is Director: Blue Ribbon Industrial. http://www.geetanjaliwoollens.com (int’l marketing site), Indore, India

A recent business school graduate from Thunderbird’s Garvin School of International Management, Goel took on a major operational role with his family-run, $10 million-a-year wool products business started by his father and uncle. It’s a tough business, and the price competition is fierce. Still, since signing on as a director and key executive in February, Goel has boosted production at the company’s two manufacturing facilities by 50%, and sales are improving. He is focusing on product innovation and also looking for retail tie-ups to get wool products directly to consumers faster.

Darshan Hiranandani,24, is Director & Chief Executive Officer: Hircon International, http://www.hircon-me.com Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Darshan started working for Hiranandani Group, India’s leading real-estate group and the family business, while attending high school and college in India. His deal-making synapses started firing early, however. When he was 17 he launched a go-kart track called Hakone and a family entertainment center in Bombay. He currently serves as president of the Bombay operations of Hiranandani Group. On top of that, he led the conglomerate’s expansion into Dubai, where he founded Hircon International. That company is involved in helping develop the “23 Marina” Project, which, when completed in 2008, will be the world’s tallest residential tower. In the first two years of operations, Hircon has generated more than $100 million in revenues. In Bombay, Hiranandani has projects under way that involve 300 million square feet of new developments

Vikas Kedia, 25, is Founder & Partner: MobiTrail, http://www.mobitrail.com Bombay, India

The next big platform shift in online gaming will be to mobile handsets, and Kedia thinks his company is positioned to capture that growth. This 25-year-old programmer based in Bombay is founder of MobiTrail, which develops and delivers games to mobile phone users. Its games and applications can run on networks using J2ME, Symbian, and BREW operating systems. The company is developing some hot games of its own and has such clients as Reliant Online Gaming in India and Hong Kong-based Mobile2win, as well as other international customers.

Atul Prakash Khekade, 24, is Co-Founder: Innovation Trip, http://www.innovationtrip.com, Bombay, India

Khekade launched his first business, a Web technology and software applications company, at 17, and has written a book on graphical user interfaces. Now the University of Mumbai-trained engineer and scholarship recipient is trying his hand at the business tourism market. Last year he co-founded Innovation Trip, which sets up U.S.-based workshop-and-trip combos for senior executives in the developing world interested in the latest best-business practices in the States.

Vishal Sampat, 24, Founder: Convonix, http://www.convonix.com, Bombay, India

Sampat caught the entrepreneurial bug early in life. While still in his teens, he launched his first venture, a streaming online music radio service featuring Indian tunes. His latest venture, launched in 2001, is Convonix. It is an Internet marketing firm with more than 35 employees that helps clients enhance their online traffic and get better placement in search engine results. The company has also developed its own Web analytics and campaign management programs

Divyank Turakhia, 24, Co-Founder, President & Director: Directi Group, http://www.directi.com, Bombay, India

Turakhia tried his hand at Internet consulting in high school at age 14 and, two years later, launched Directi Group with $600 borrowed from his parents. In the first month of operations, the business managed to generate enough revenues to return the borrowed amount and get the company rolling. Today, the company is debt-free, has more than 1 million customers for its array of domain name registration, Web hosting, and site building services, and employs more than 250 people. It is one of the fastest-growing domain registration companies in the world. When Turakhia isn’t running the show, he pursues hobbies such as sky diving, paragliding, and flying airplanes.

While the Indian contingent is pretty big 8 out of 25 in Asia, it is unfortunate that it lacks two features:
1. There is not even a single young female in the list of Indian entrepreneurs. Is it not a matter of shame?
2. There is hardly a representation of manufacturing sector in the types of business the younger entrepreneurs are looking for.
3. India still lacks spread in entrepreneurship to cover all gender, communities and castes.

I wish the Indians vote in number to make some of the Indian young entrepreneur won the challenge.

Last week was good indicator of how things are happening in Indian economy. The global ambitions of many companies are good signs of getting ahead steadily. Some business houses in this decade may become global giants. While all time big investments are being made, the order books are brimming. Rs 1 lac small car of Tata Motors will give a great boost to Indian manufacturing. It will certainly mean more employment.
High growth will be maintained: Govt
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 25: On the back of a high 9.3 per cent growth in the last quarter of 2005-06, government said high growth will be sustained this year with industry growing at 10.4 per cent in first quarter and inflation at less than five per cent now.

Satyam bags IT deal from biggest Oz airline
BANGALORE, AUGUST 25: India’s number-four software exporter, Satyam Computer Services Ltd., has won a software services deal from Qantas Airways Ltd. , a company source said on Friday.

Tatas to invest $25.8 bn
MUMBAI, AUGUST 24: Tata Group plans to invest Rs 1.20 trillion ($25.8 billion) in the next three to five years in telecommunications, steel, chemicals, power and other industries, a Group official said on Thursday.

Larsen & Toubro says order backlog $6.1 bn
MUMBAI, AUGUST 25: India’s top engineering and construction firm, Larsen & Toubro Ltd., had order backlog of 282.86 billion rupees ($6.1 billion) on July 31, its chairman said on Friday.

India sees upto $5 bn investment in SEZs
KUALA LUMPUR, AUGUST 24: India expects to attract between $4 billion and $5 billion of investments in its special economic zones by December 2007, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath said on Thursday.

Bosch India plans to add 1,000 employees every year
Bangalore, Aug. 24 Robert Bosch India plans to add 1,000 employees per annum to its workforce. The company’s headcount stands at 3,500 and will rise to 3,900 by year-end. Of the 3,500, 2,000 work in the automotive domain and 25 in the chip design and testing domain.

Rs 1 lakh Tata car to roll out from WB by ’08

Since last six months, we are almost under siege. An arrogant engineer turned builder with a rouge security man and an equally discourteous supervisor is building the house in the plot on our left side. I expect that safety rules and building practices must be more neighbour-friendly. The builder is local and he hardly cares for an old man like me. All my advices go dead on his deaf ears. Knowing very well my credential and IIT background, he avoids me, but still doesn’t do anything to keep me in at least humour. These days they are carrying out stone (marble) fixing as is usual in India, and trying to decorate the external with red tiles. Both sound and dust are unbearable for a normal living, but I can’t do anything.

Over and above that neighbourly problem I went for one more by calling Asian paints to get inside of my residence painted. For last 17 days, we are almost living an imprisoned life in our own house. How can I blame them? The boys are serious and do much better job than some local contractor would have done. Rubbing the walls allover to remove the dead layers naturally generates huge amount of filth, dust and dirt. While all the household things have been covered to the best, we live with our door closed mostly. And we must be inhaling huge lot of unhealthy and harmful fumes and other dangerous enough ingredients.

As if we were not content with so much of problems, we invited today one more. Our wall fixed almirah came out as Yamuna tried to close it. When I called the carpenter he declared it as totally gone. And you may imagine what we got when we asked it to be dismantled (see photographs). It is all because the builders in Noida do not carry out the anti-termite treatment before construction. I had spent some Rs. 8000 for an anti-termite treatment too as post construction work even though it spoiled my beautiful marble floor.

Can one imagine my agonies? But we are to live with all these and move ahead happily for a better tomorrow.

It was sometime in 50s. My two uncles were having their schooling at Birla Institution in Pilani. The companies of Birlas used to bear all expenses including food and dress, with perhaps a small pocket money too. My grandfather was working as teacher in the school of the jute mills of Birla. The company had the scheme for educating the wards of the employees. I knew many from the families of the lowly paid employees getting benefited by the scheme. Otherwise they would have found it difficult to educate their children in so good an educational institute in Pilani. I was reminded of these affirmativr actions of the big business houses in good old days, when I read about the voluntarily proposed affirmative actions that the companies under the umbrella of CII and FICII will be taking.

The present government adamancy or threat to introduce quota for OBC and SC/ST in private sector reminds us the nationalization drive of Indira Gandhi to get popular at the cost of the nation’s economy. Though organized sector hardly employ 2% of the total workforce, but still this reservation bogey of the government is to create a visible image of following the progressive and socially inclusive policies. Indian companies and its associations are unequivocally against legislation for reservation. And it presented a voluntary affirmative action plan for its members. Some salient features are:

 Give preference to scheduled caste and scheduled tribe candidates, if they possessed skills equal to that of a general category aspirant.

 Focus the action plan for affirmative actions on education, skill development, employability, entrepreneurship and social development:

1.Create 100 entrepreneurs from among SC/ STs every year.
2.Sponsor coaching for 10,000 students for entrance examinations in 10 universities and professional institutes that will be enhanced to 50,000 by 2009.
3.Institute 100 scholarships for study in premier institutes
4.Institute 5 scholarships for studies in overseas universities in year 1; to scale up to 50 in 5 years.
5.Individual companies will reserve seats and institute scholarships in schools run by affiliates

 Disclose in the balance sheets the number of SC/ST employees hired during the year.

Though all these steps are worthwhile, some other actions will be more beneficial for the employees in general and weaker section in particular:

1.The companies must go to adopt and start more and more trade schools. There must be sufficient number of good trade schools to accommodate all willing students who appear or pass class X.

While most of the bigger companies are doing something to educate and train their employees, but it’s main thrust is to make them useful for their own companies. The HR must also emphasize to create an atmosphere for the education for the next generation employees.

Read ‘Now, education loans to be hassle-free’

Perhaps Indian filmmakers have not explored sufficiently the industry’s potentials for getting into outsourcing business for entertainment sector from developed countries. Animation is one are in which India is doing quite some work. Indian entertainment industry has concentrated on domestic business primarily. However, because of presence of Indian diasporas, Indian films may be making good business in UK, US, and may be in Australia and Mauritius.

Bollywood films are more successful in the UK than its own productions. Nine Indian productions made into top ten and three scooped more than one million pounds at box office last year. 74 Indian films were released in the United Kingdom in 2005, compared to just 61 British productions.

Statistics- How Indians Entertain?

Some 900 movies in a year yielded a cumulative revenue of Rs 7,800 crore in 2005-06 (According too FICII report on entertainment industry) and were shown on estimated12,900 screens , just 328 in highly talked multiplexes.

12,500 single screens in India (1,629 in the US). India currently has 250 multiplexes (US has 1,523).

23 m people watch Indian movies daily (20.03 m in the US)

4 billion tickets of Indian movies sold annually (3 billion in the US). In 2004, the box office collection was $ 1.3 billion in Bollywood ($ 51 billion in Hollywood)

1,050 movies produced annually in India, compared to 250 in the US in 2005

7,000 homes have people meters, tracking TV-viewing habits of families in India (20,000 in the US).

300 television channels in India in 2005 compared to 112 in 2000

108 m homes with television sets in India. It’s the same as in the US. But while India has only 51 per cent TV penetration, the US has 100 per cent TV coverage

2 hrs spent by Indians everyday watching TV compared to 6 hours in the US

Rs 14,800 crore revenue from television in India in 2005

190 number of times the soap opera ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi’ has bagged the first position, according to TRP ratings, out of 258 weeks till July 26, 2006. Baa, one of the characters, is technically now 104 years old.

From ‘India Today’ Independence Day Issue

The industry has potential for employing huge number of educated and talented youngsters from various skills. And here with its traditions of fine and performing arts, India can become an outsourcing location for many countries.