|
India - News
Editorial
Opinion
Overview
Infrastructure
Demographics
Entertainment
Site
Map
Search site
Subscribe
Karmayogi
|
|
31 October 2006 -
News Updates
India thinks big - TIME/ Fortune/ New York Times
Small loans aid big picture - Chicago Tribune
Visiting India, seeing the world - Seattle Times
India
Thinks Big
23 October 2006,
TIME
magazine/ Forbes magazine (US)/ New York Times, By Simon Robinson,
Jennifer Alsever and Alex Perry
When Ratan Tata, chairman of Indian
conglomerate Tata Group, spoke to TIME earlier this year, he urged his
countrymen to dream big.
India, he
said, should "be bold. It must look at the future ... It must look big, and
look out." Last week he showed just what he meant: Tata Steel, part of his
sprawling $22 billion empire, made an $8 billion bid for the Anglo-Dutch
steel manufacturer Corus. The deal, accepted by Corus' board last Friday,
creates the world's fifth-largest steel company and is the largest Indian
takeover of a foreign company ever.
Cashed up thanks to rising profits at home,
Indian firms are on a shopping spree and increasingly looking abroad. In the
past year, the Tata Group has snapped up everything from American telecom
firm Tyco Global to venerable British teamaker Tetley. Other Indian
companies have bought foreign pharmaceutical firms, auto-parts makers and
aluminum suppliers. Last week a consortium led by
India's
Videocon Industries agreed to buy South Korean appliance maker Daewoo
Electronics for $700 million. "Indian companies have become competitive, and
they realize that," says Gurcharan Das, former CEO of Procter & Gamble India
and author of the best-selling India Unbound. "The level of corporate
governance has improved, the capital markets are a lot more sophisticated.
The rest of the world now trusts us."
Obstacles to doing business in
India can be
considerable, but they haven't stopped some multinational manufacturers from
setting up shop in
India.
The companies that have done so include ABB, Honeywell and Siemens in
electrical and electronic products; Cummins, DaimlerChrysler and Toyota
Motor in auto components and engineering; and
Degussa
as well as Rohm and Hass in specialty chemicals. Moreover, it is no accident
that these particular companies have chosen India. All operate in
skill-intensive industries requiring advanced technical expertise--areas in
which
India
is likely to become a primary sourcing and manufacturing base. In addition
to auto components and assembly, they include fabricated metal products,
machinery, pharmaceuticals and telecom equipment. Already, just over half of
all offshore manufacturing by
U.S.
companies involves skill-intensive sectors, and that figure could rise to
70% by 2015.
Indeed, McKinsey research supports the view
that the next wave of global outsourcing in manufacturing will take place in
just these kinds of industries in places like
India. With
high-skill sectors accounting for almost 40% of the manufacturing output of
India, it is in a good position to absorb some of that increase. For one
thing, the country offers abundant engineering and technical talent: every
year, it produces 400,000 graduate engineers, second only to China's
490,000. Companies might also be attracted to India by the increasing
availability of reliable suppliers, the chance to escape unrelenting price
pressures at home, and the size of the domestic market. LG, for example,
plans to make handsets in India to take advantage of its rapidly growing
demand for mobile telephones.
A growing
number of Americans are taking that path, traveling to India for cosmetic,
orthopedic and heart surgeries and other medical and dental treatments that
cost 20 to 80 percent less than at home. In India, hospitals are sprouting
that offer foreigners fine dining, marble bathrooms and manicured lawns. The
hospitals promote the fact that they have credentialed physicians and a
one-to-one ratio of nurses and patients. A coronary artery bypass, said
GlobalChoice Healthcare, could cost $75,536 in the United States but $11,438
in India; a $50,000 spinal surgery here in US might be $9,000 in India,
included a five-day hospital stay, airfare, hotel and sightseeing at spots
like the Taj Mahal.
And yet by one important measure foreign direct
investment
India
still lags Asia's other emerging giant,
China.
India is expected to receive only about 10% of the more than $80 billion
that will pour into China this year. No matter.
India's
companies appear to have decided that if the world won't come to India,
they'll go to the world.
Top of the page
Small
loans aid big picture
29 October 2006, Chicago Tribune
For Vikram Akula, banker to the poor, now comes the real test. For
the last eight years, Akula, who holds a doctorate from the
University of
Chicago, has toiled in relative obscurity, running a company that gives out
loans of $100 or less to villagers in his native India so they can buy a
fishing net or a water buffalo. But now Akula and the microfinance-lending
industry are in the headlines. In May, he was named to Time magazine's list
of 100 most influential people, joining the ranks of Bill Gates, Bill
Clinton and Bono. And this month Akula's inspiration, Bangladeshi economist
Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded, won the Nobel Peace Prize
for their pioneering effort to lift millions out of poverty.
All the attention, while gratifying to Akula and others involved,
is likely to draw more investors and philanthropists to the microlending
institutions. That will force the industry to become more efficient and
transparent. Akula, the 37-year-old founder of
SKS
Microfinance Pvt. Ltd., is experimenting with providing loans on
computer-chip-embedded smart cards, which its loan officers use to record
repayments electronically.
Akula's motives are not entirely altruistic. Unlike many
microlending organizations,
SKS
is a for-profit institution that promises returns to investors. He converted
SKS from a not-for-profit organization this year because he wanted better
access to commercial capital, said Akula, a one-time McKinsey & Co.
consultant. In March,
SKS raised $3.2 million from private investors,
which he leveraged to attract capital from some of the world's largest
banks.
Chicago
law firm Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw provided free legal services to SKS to
help the company raise private funds. Before speaking at the firm's pro-bono
luncheon this month, Akula shared his thoughts on the microfinance industry.
An edited transcript follows.
Q. How many clients does
SKS have?
A. We have given loans to 350,000 women in 11 states in India. We have
provided about $100 million in loans over the last eight years. The average
loan is $85. We charge 25 percent. While that seems high, informal money
lenders in India charge rates of 36 percent to 100 percent. It is the lowest
possible interest we can charge to cover our costs and provide a return to
our investors.
Q. Why do you only lend to women?
A. Social-development studies have demonstrated that women are much more
likely to reinvest income into the household for the benefit of the entire
family. We have found that one-third of the money goes into livestock,
one-third goes into trading vegetables and other grocery staples, and
one-third is for creating businesses in basket weaving and mat-making.
Q. Why is the son of a physician who grew up in upstate
New York so
interested in helping the poor?
A. I remember visiting India as a child and was so overwhelmed by the
poverty. We were attending a family wedding in Hyderbad, and I saw local
boys scraping off food from dinner plates. That memory has stuck with me.
Q. What did you study at the
University of
Chicago?
A. My dissertation focused on the impact of microfinance. I had spent three
years at microfinance institutions in India that were part of
non-governmental organizations. I saw the problem of raising capital. I also
thought the programs were well-intentioned but poorly managed. There was no
way these programs could scale up to help the millions that need help.
Top of
the page
Visiting
India, seeing the world An Out of India series
17/ 22/ 24/ 26/ 28/ 29/
31 October
2006,
Seattle
Times, By Carol Pucci
"People who haven't been to
India, truly
haven't seen the world," says Natasha Jaksich, of Renton, a veteran traveler
to
India.
As a first-time visitor to
India,
I agree. India is filled with mysteries that baffle the Western mind.
Where else in the world can you wake up to the
sounds of the Muslim call to prayer, chanting from a Hindu temple, church
bells and birds singing all at the same time? Where else will you find
women sitting on their porches sorting rice, shopping in the markets or
walking to the public tap to fill metal containers with water while dressed
in gorgeous saris in the brightest blues, greens, yellows and oranges you
can imagine? Where else could you find yourself driving in a three-wheeled
open-air taxi in four lanes of traffic logged with cars, cows, camels,
elephants, motorcycles and rickshaws; riding a camel into the desert;
walking barefoot on the marble floors of the Taj Mahal; floating along
tropical lagoons in a houseboat and hiking in the mountains, all in the same
three-week trip?
As fascinated as I was by
India, India
is hard travel hard on the body, hard on the psyche. Many times, India
tested my patience, but what travel experiences worth having don't? India is
full of myths when it comes to travel. Guidebook authors tend to romanticize
its beauty. Nonfiction authors go for the shock value, describing the worst
of what you're likely to encounter in one of the world's poorest countries.
The truth is that most travelers probably discover an India that's neither
overwhelming beautiful nor horrifically sad. I expected to be constantly
fending off beggars, but found that I was more bothered by aggressive
shopkeepers and touts selling their "guide" services than by the few people
who rapped on the car window or tugged at my arm asking for money.
I didn't have to pay $250 a night or stay in
five-star hotels to find comfortable rooms that met Western standards for
cleanliness. The family-owned hotels and home stays I booked were
immaculate, and my $73 a night hotel in Mumbai was as good as or better than
anything I've found anywhere.
Heritage hotels are palatial residences
of the maharajas, who were the Indian royal rulers who presided over 600
princely states prior to
India's
independence from Great Britain in 1947. They were allowed to retain their
titles and official residences, which the government helped them maintain.
Some are still private homes. Others have been have been turned into
Heritage hotels where tourists, willing to part with princely sums, can live
like kings for a few nights. For example, travelers give mostly high marks
to the 38-room Jai Mahal, a 16th-century palace and gardens in the "Pink
City" of Jaipur.
In Jaipur, when we happened upon a group of men
making milk and flour dumplings over a coal fire. "You try," one of them
says, handing us two sweet dumplings the size of small snowballs. "How
much?" I ask. When he answers, I know we've finally managed to veer off the
tourist path. "No money!" he insists. "No money!"
Every hotel in Jaisalmer sets up camel safaris
for its guests for anywhere from $20 to $35 a person, including food and
bottled water. The riding time is short a couple of hours in the
afternoon, a couple the next morning. Two hours on a camel is enough, most
people find, but some like it so much they go back for two or three days and
the chance to go into more remote parts of the desert.
A trip through the Kerala
I wouldn't have traded the amazing evening I
spent at a family-home stay my last night in Kerala. The food was so good,
and the local villagers so friendly, we could have stayed for several days.
But we had only one night as a home stay, and after breakfast and a walk the
next morning, Sam, the housekeeper knocked on our door. "Your houseboat has
arrived."
I'm not sure what I was expecting, but
certainly not the 90-foot-long floating hotel that pulled up to the dock.
The boat was built from bamboo and coconut wood, coconut palms and had
floors of polished teak. The bedrooms two of them were like staterooms
on a cruise ship, each furnished with twin beds, a Western-style bathroom
with a shower, a desk, wardrobe and ceiling fan. At the front of the boat
was a dining table and comfortable chairs in the shade for relaxing. In the
back was the galley. Storage batteries provided electricity, and there was a
holding tank for running water.
An overnight trip through the backwaters on a
houseboat is the highlight of a visit to
Central
Kerala. Each boat comes staffed with a captain, an assistant and a cook, and
from
noon one day to after breakfast the next, you've got their full
attention. The houseboats are reworked kettuvallams rice and spice barges
once used to transport harvests from the backwater islands to the mainland.
Today, about 400 houseboats, mostly new ones, travel the waterways around a
town called Alleppey, about an hour's drive from
Fort Kochi.
Gliding through the palm-fringed lagoon, past
stucco houses and men paddling wooden canoes, we felt a cool breeze and
stopped sweating for the first time in days. We were cruising idly again
past kids walking home from school and parents giving their babies evening
baths. Most of the villagers here are rice farmers, or work in town and
commute to the mainland on public ferries. There are no roads or cars, only
neatly swept paths of red clay that skirt the main waterway on two sides,
and Venice-like canals connected by little foot bridges. Everyone gets
around by walking or bicycling.
We docked for the night around
5:30 p.m., ate dinner, drank more beer, talked and went
to bed around
8 p.m.
There's not much to do on a houseboat, but that's the point. This was the
most relaxing time we had spent in
India
so far, and this being
India,
it wasn't dull.
Ten miles up the road and another 1,500 feet
higher are Kerala's tea estates around 30 in all and Munnar, an alpine
town filled with shops selling spices, cashews and flower oils. The scenery
is dramatic, with manicured tea plantations that look like giant green
carpet squares.
Before I
left, I asked myself if I'd come home wondering what took me so long to get
to India, or if I'd feel as through I'd never want to go back. Do I wonder
now what took me so long? Yes, and if you've been thinking about going,
don't hesitate. Would I go back? Absolutely.
Top of the page |
|
31 Oct '06
30 Oct '06
15 Oct '06
30 Sep '06
18 Sep '06
15 Sep '06
News Updates
31 Aug '06
15 Aug '06
31 Jul'06
15 Jul'06
30 Jun'06
26 Jun '06
15 Jun '06
31 May '06
15 May '06
30 Apr '06
15 Apr '06
31 Mar '06
15 Mar '06
28 Feb '06
31 Jan '06
15 Jan '06
|
