5 Things Happening in South Asia Unrelated to Cricket

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There’s been quite a raft of South Asia-related coverage in the New York Times this past week or so.

Perhaps most importantly, the Times finally gets to Musharraf’s ugly confrontation with Pakistan’s legal establishment. Perhaps what’s most striking in the current instance is the fact that Pakistan’s rioting lawyers are only now getting the message that Mushie may not be good for business.

In business news, New York’s Citigroup offices are going to see a major round of layoffs soon, while the company’s Indian back office is going to continue to grow. A few thousand formerly well-paid bankers have suddenly grown quite enthusiastic about Lou Dobbs’ brand of anti-outsourcing populism, and are suddenly pining for John Kerry.

Third, unrelated to outsourcing, it seems the Indian publishing industry has been doing quite well in the past couple of years, even as conventional publishing in the U.S. has struggled. There is an editorial in the Hindustan Times by Peter Gordan to that effect, but more importantly, see the article in the Business Standard from a couple of weeks ago on the subject. Apparently blogs have been part of the growth of the industry:

What has given the industry the much-needed charge and brought about these changes? Says Pramod Kapoor, publisher, Roli Books, “The reading habits of people are seeing a lot of change and there is more thirst for gaining knowledge.” Kapoor feels a lot of the credit for this should be given to the media as well as the Internet boom.
“People on blogs talk about books and there is more awareness about the titles released. The media too has played its role by giving more space to the publishing industry.” Literary festivals too have helped interest in books and authors grow. (link)

This is good news. Societies with vibrant book publishing are generally ones with bright futures. (Yes, I am saying something upbeat about India. Someone must have put something in my Kool-Aid.)

As for the positive role played by blogs, I am sure that Manish’s exhaustive coverage of the effect of Shakira’s abdominal muscles on the Mumbai stock exchange must be the culprit. Fourth, speaking of publishing, Amitava Kumar has published a novel (only available in India at present), called Home Products. He has a nice personal account of how he wrote it at The Hindu (which seems to me to be India’s best paper when it comes to giving a serious place to books and literature). Amitava also happily talks intelligent smack with Jai Arjun Singh in an interview on Jabberwock.

And lastly, the film Gandhi is finally out on DVD, and Reihan Salam has a nice piece in Slate where he looks over the highs and lows of the classic 1982 philum. My favorite line might be this:

For my family and thousands like it, Gandhi was a landmark event that announced, in a strange way, our arrival on the cultural scene. Apart from tiny figures fleeing some massive cyclone, South Asians were vanishingly rare on American television in those dark days. Gandhi was pretty much the only game in town when it came to big-screen brown man rabble-rousing.

Isn’t it funny how, 25 years later, people still stay stuff like this every time a major desi-related project is in the works? In place of Gandhi, insert [Bride and Prejudice], [The Namesake], [Monsoon Wedding], [Bend it like Beckham], [Panjabi MC & Jay Z], [Russel Peters], [Naveen Andrews], etc.

In short: Yes! We have finally arrived! (Ok, when are we actually getting there?)

27 thoughts on “5 Things Happening in South Asia Unrelated to Cricket”

  2. NYT also had rather large travel piece on foreigners’ first trips to India, with a nice focus on Agra and Delhi.

  4. Societies with vibrant book publishing are generally ones with bright futures.

    amardeep, big fan of your book review. when are you gonna recommend another another one boss?

    enjoyed ‘the gurkhas’ very much.

  5. And lastly, the film Gandhi is finally out on DVD

    I got it from Amazon on Friday. It has some very interesting add-ons on Disc 2. In business news, New York’s Citigroup offices are going to see a major round of layoffs soon,

    That is just the beginning of the grand flight. HP and IBM are leading the way…Shell has s started too in Bangalore…..start learning Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Urdu – everyone. In 5 years, standard medical testing will outsourced too (it has already begun).

    Carnegie Melon, and other Uni. has going into strategic alliances with some non-IIT Unis. too. Lucknow Uni. is one of them.

  6. Kush, yes, that too. I didn’t link to it because I think we covered some of that ground in an earlier post at SM some months ago. It will be interesting if the Indian govt. relaxes the rules for foreign universities operating on Indian soil — as I recall, Yale walked away from India last year because the government was making it too difficult. As someone in education, I’m definitely keenly watching how that goes…

    And ak, I forgot about that one. But I have to wonder — is there anything really new in it? I guess the news there is: Indian tourism is slowly changing from a hippie thing (“roughing it, spiritual exploration”) to a respectable yuppie thing (“convenience and fun in 10 days!”). It will be good if the number of tourists starts bumping up.

    Shlok, thanks for jogging me on that. Publishers have actually been sending me some review books to look at lately (like “Planet India”), but I’ve been so busy with my academic writing I haven’t had time to crack them open. (BTW I did sort of recommend “The Book of Nanak” a couple of weeks ago.)

  7. Amardeep,

    I think the model for India it seems will be different from American Unis. in China, Middle East, etc. Instead of satellite campuses, it will mostly be strategic alliances. Did you read this.

    I am on a campus wide India initiative committee. It seems to be the buzz right now.

    I hear the toughest summer internship @ Sloan is to Infosys, and obviously to Chinese companies.

  8. Charles Prince, Citi’s CEO, made the strategic mistake of holding onto both the investment banking and the retail banking arms of Citi within one large organization. There was a definite loss of focus on the ibanking side of the business, and last year, when Goldman and the other ibanks pulled in billions of dollars of business from M&A, Citi performed very poorly due to this lack of focus. As the economy weakens and there is a ‘flight to safety’, Citi will lose out both on the retail side and the corporate banking side of the business. Meanwhile Citi’s large rebranding exercise, they changed names from Citigroup to Citi, and sold the Red Umbrella back to Travelers, is distracting a company that should tighten its belt and take some serious steps towards getting back on track. Shifting a few jobs to India is a stop-gap measure. Citi shareholders are tired of these patchworky superficial steps. Fundamental structural and strategic changes are required before Citi can get back on track. And Citi needs to get moving before the economy slows down further.

  9. good analysis ddia. i think sandy weil’s vision of a financial supermarket has met the end of the line, as the synergies don’t justify the clash of cultures. i think a flight to safety, however, would help Citi at least in comparison to their more focused peers (like goldman or even worse blacktone and kkr, once they become public) b/c citi’s diversity of revenue would insulate them more. if nothing else, sandy understood this, and he bought salomon bros when they almost bankrupted themselves by living or dying on their arbitrage unit. (sandy disbanded arbitrage…which had a lot of indians).

    sandy overpayed for salomon b/c he was hustled by the shrewder warren buffet (who was looking for a way out of a risky investment that was sucking up his $$) and tantalized by prestigious brand names. that he payed like a billion of sollie but no longer uses it name and replaced all its top officers with smith barney people shows that brands have their limits.

    brands still mean a lot in retail banking (people like names like citibank) and retail inv banking (like smith barney, b/c it’s based on trust) and even corporate investment banking (for reasons i’ve never gathered) but some of the more high growth areas (private equity, hedge funds, arbitrage, venture capital) don’t need names, as upstart banks like blackstone, kleiner perkins, Fortress Investment Group, aqr capital, carlyle, etc pay their partners significantly more than their counterparts in the buldge bracket ibanks.

    so indians, who are already over represented in at least VC and arbitrage should realize that the barrier to entry is very low in this industry, and brands come and go, and perhaps it time for some upstart banks/funds in india to compete with dinosaurs like citi.

  10. Thanks Manju. I see your point about Citi’s retail business helping them weather bad economic conditions. But the margins on retail are indeed quite poor – which is maybe why he is moving jobs to India in an effort to cut costs aggressively.

    Also, while corporate banking does rely on brand value, but it relies far more on creativity and focussed risk taking. That is where Citi lost out. Also, as anyone familiar with Citi’s terrible work environment will let you know, the trading and investment banking side of it was among the worst places to work among the bulge bracket firms.

    I like your idea of upstart investment banks in India giving Citi challenge on the ground in India. I am sure there are a few — ICICI and HDFC in retail, ICICI in investment banking, Kotak Securities in retail investment management etc. — only time will tell how these perform against Citi.

    Also, the brokerage investment of Sandy Weil’s came in at a bad time when online brokerages were taking off. You are right in mentioning that Warren Buffet offloaded it onto him. The old codger from Omaha knows when to get out of a market of lemons!

  11. I have the Gandhi DVD for nearly a year now (10 months), bought it from ‘Land Mark’ at the new “Downtown Mall” in Chennai last June.

  12. I have the Gandhi DVD for nearly a year now (10 months), bought it from ‘Land Mark’ at the new “Downtown Mall” in Chennai last June.

    Yes, you are correct. The original Attenborough’s Gandhi DVD has been out for ever. Last Friday, a special 25th anniversary, wide screen two disc special edition was released.

    They have done similar re-releases for number of movies from time to time.

  13. There are 2 India articles right now in NYT’s most-emailed list. Sure getting a lot of coverage.

    I just got back from a Globalization conference where we spent 2 weeks in Beijing and Bangalore, visiting several tech factories and companies. I must say, the best moment was to travel all the way from the US and be totally awed by Infosys’ mind-blowing campus.

  14. Amardeep — thank you for the respite from the cricket…..

    which seems to me to be India’s best paper when it comes to giving a serious place to books and literature

    or to anything else? 😉

    On this:

    Perhaps what’s most striking in the current instance is the fact that Pakistan’s rioting lawyers are only now getting the message that Mushie may not be good for business.

    Lawyers everywhere tend to be a conservative bunch, by their nature — I’m actually struck that they are standing up so assertively for judicial independence at all. Maybe this was the straw the broke camel’s back, or however that cliche goes.

    p.s. — I’ve also struck by how little coverage there has been in the US of the recent events in Pakistan, and how everywhere in the world Bob Woolmer has garnered more attention. (Am I correct that your post is in fact the first mention on Sepia itself?) In fairness to the NYT, though, it’s not quite right to say that they’ve “finally” gotten around to covering this — they did run at least a couple of pieces by Salman Masood (one, two) pretty early on in the crisis, and I think there have been a couple more since then…. SAJA Forum has an interesting discussion of the role of the Pakistani blogosphere the last few weeks. And Dorf on Law (one, two) has been on it as well. 😉

  15. Found this in a related link at the original Slate article on Gandhi page – http://www.slate.com/id/2107063/entry/2107071/

    The poverty’s on a mind-blowing, overwhelming scale, and you feel so helpless. The money in your pocket right now, handed to any one person out there beyond the window, would be life-changing. But you can’t save a billion people and turn the fortunes of this massive country. (You’re not Gandhi, you know.)

  16. Hmm…

    As someone’s pointed out earlier, the Gandhi DVD has been out for quite a while (since 2001). As for the review, it’s pretty poorly written. “Wow, it’s not particularly subtle, but it manipulates my emotions so well!” The writer saves some big words for his final para but drops this as well:

    “Smart critics have exhaustively cataloged Gandhi’s other errors and elisions, and I could go on. But there’s something a little churlish about this.”

    Smart critic this guy isn’t, and dismissing good analysis for churlishness is pretty shallow.

    Aside from that, this part of the root post:

    “…the fact that Pakistan’s rioting lawyers are only now getting the message that Mushie may not be good for business.”

    …is quite wrong. Pakistan’s judiciary has been up in arms for quite some time now, with ebbs and peaks in their organizing and public actions. For instance:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3041461.stm

    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C04%5C07%5Cstory_7-4-2006_pg7_11

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2209219.stm

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4440739.stm

    http://www.urdutimes.com/englishnews/2006/en11/index.php?d=17-03-07

    and

    http://www.dawn.com/2002/04/26/nat34.htm

    Pakistan lawyers’ groups have been fighting Musharraf’s expansion of powers since the coup. The idea that their lawyers are “only now getting the message” is misleading and disregards the hard work of a lot of principled people under a pretty grim political environment for a long time now. Sorry for the bristle but something about the tone of that comment really set me off this morning.

  17. The photos of the lawyers of Pakistan are pretty damn striking. I am suprised there hasn’t been more US coverage, given the level of attnetion PK has gotten from US media in the past few years.

    Why the lack of US coverage of this latest PK crisis (which is slightly ‘cedar revolution’, if you replace hot Lebanese babes with bloodied young Desi attorneys)? Maybe if the story doesn’t fit in a “frame”, it doesn’t get covered. PK is about fundies, taliban, and dictators, not rioting lawyers in Reservoir Dogs suits.

    This echoes the old Sepiamutiny post about the lack of US blogger coverage of the recent terrorist attacks in Bombay. Some South Asian news just isn’t news in America.

  20. The other interesting thing that’s going on in PK is that, with all of this controversy, the new chief justice is Rana Bhagwandass, who is from the very small Hindu minority, like Danish Kaneria.

    Had to tie this to cricket somehow.

  22. “Why the lack of US coverage of this latest PK crisis (which is slightly ‘cedar revolution’, if you replace hot Lebanese babes with bloodied young Desi attorneys)? Maybe if the story doesn’t fit in a “frame”, it doesn’t get covered. PK is about fundies, taliban, and dictators, not rioting lawyers in Reservoir Dogs suits.”

    reading the bbc “have your say” on this topic, and some of the comments from westerners, it’s probably because their interest in musharaff really only stems from what he can do to help the west in their “war on terror”. unfortunately, the wishes of the pakistani people or domestic issues are secondary to them. if it looks like this dispute was going to lead to his downfall, then it would be a top priority. a “strong” musharaff at the expense of his own people is preferable to them.

  23. It isnt India which is arriving. It is India’s priveliged middle class. Ofcourse it is good for india that it’s culture is being celebrated (a little) in the West. But for too long that culture almost seemed to require certification by the west to be considered a culture. And meanwhile there are the teeming hungry millions out there who are not worried about culture but about their next meal. Am almost feeling like a party popper here, which is not something good.

  25. Indian media is covering the crisis in Pakistan quite extensively, This is the headline news in almost every news paper/Channel. Here is a good article about this crisis

  26. March 23rd was the 76th death annivesary of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru. Trust a paper-star crazy country to forget its real heroes.

  27. there should be some strict rules brought in the game of cricket as in the football or in some other games. players of two teams should be banned from exchanging dialogues or emotion in the ground. issue of green card or yellow card as per specifications can be brought in cricket to avoid unacceptable activities like harphajan incident.