Back from a blogging break and I see that Anna, Sajit, newcomer Apul & the other mutineers have been doing a fabulous job keeping SM interesting & sparkling with life.

It almost hurts to post about a subject as dry as the Indian tax code but hopefully there are other econo-geeks out there who might find this succinct article pretty interesting – Project Syndicate

India illustrates the importance of a well-designed tax system. In Bangalore, high-tech companies have built world-class campuses replete with manicured lawns and high-speed data communication networks. Outside these campuses, however, lie open sewers, uncollected garbage, and roads in acute disrepair. Whereas technology companies instantaneously transmit terabytes of data to remote continents, local transport proceeds at an almost medieval pace. …India’s financial difficulties stem from a badly designed and administered tax system. Rates and rules for personal and corporate income taxes appear reasonable by international standards. Nonetheless, India’s government collects income taxes amounting to only about 3.7% of GDP, about half that in South Korea and the other Asian tigers.

Why? Insane levels of corruption… read on for the details.

The New York Times is running an interesting series entitled “the Next Wave on what they call, “the transplanted New Yorker.” Profiling the stories of 10 different transplants, obviously one had to be brown.

The brown portrait was written by photographer Sanjna Singh, who writes about the voyage she made one summer from her home on the Upper East Side to the man-made India in the Jackson Heights section of Queens. Sanjna’s portrait is interesting as it contrasts the modernity, if you can call it that, of Indians living in India to the self-made constraints of tradition that many immigrants from South Asia bring with them into the diaspora. Sanjna, who immigrated to New York from New Delhi about eight years ago, labels her reaction to this phenomenon aptly, as “being in the grip of a bizarre reverse culture-shock.”

She notes later,

“here in New York, I didn’t think of myself as an immigrant, because for me, the door leading back to Delhi seemed wide open, and I could return anytime I chose. Yet as I entered my eighth year in America, I was forced to recognize that this open door grew more illusory with each passing year. As I drifted further from my own country, I started to feel the need to grant space to my Indian self, right here, in New York.”

Click here to read the full profile, and click here to see all the profiles.

It’s our favorite scheme by a racist diamond magnate to civilize the natives by re-educating them in jolly old England! Three desis are Rhodes Scholars this year:

Mylavarapu is an ex-debater. Word.

Although technology drives history (fire, metal, stirrups, guns, electricity, airplanes, computers…), technologists are usually excluded. I’m not bitter, really.

I didn’t realize this but apparently even the U.N. has a union. Specifically the U.N. Staff Union. Yahoo News is reporting that the UN staff are preparing to cast a historic no-confidence vote against Nobel Prize winner and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan.

UN staff are expected to make an unprecedented vote of no confidence in Secretary-General Kofi Annan, union sources say, after a series of scandals tainted his term in charge of the world body. The UN staff union, in what officials said was the first vote of its kind in the almost 60-year history of the United Nations, was set to approve a resolution withdrawing support for Annan and senior UN management. Annan has been in the line of fire over a series of scandals including controversy about a UN aid program that investigators say allowed deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to embezzle billions of dollars.

Okay, but this kind of news will eventually be found all over the mainstream press. Why are we reporting it? Well apparently the oil for food scandal wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Staffers said the trigger for the no-confidence measure was an announcement this week that Annan had pardoned the UN’s top oversight official, who was facing allegations of favouritism and sexual harassment.

The union had requested a formal probe into the official, Dileep Nair, after employees accused him of harassing staff and violating UN rules on the hiring and promotion of workers.

Dileep Nair is an official from Singapore who denies any wrongdoing of course. The U.N. workers aren’t buying it though, and haven’t forgotten previous things they were upset about. Continue reading →

That is thankfully not the name of a new Hollywood movie. Prince Charles it seems has taken exception to the Blair government’s praise of the Indian and Chinese education systems. Specifically, Gordon Brown who is Blair’s Finance Minister, said last week:

“Within a decade, five million US and European jobs could be outsourced. And all the time China and India are upgrading their [IT] and science skills. They are producing 125,000 computer science graduates a year, and the UK [is producing] only 5,000,” Brown said.

Just last week the government agency e-Skills UK criticised the IT training industry for being unequal to the task of filling the UK technology skills gap.

Brown added that to “fail to confront or complacently side-step” global competition would cause the UK to be left behind.

In response,

Britain’s philosopher-Prince Charles has hit out at the Blair government’s envious warning refrain on the sheer volume and calibre of India’s academic successes, by accusing educationists of seeking to turn students into “better robots”.

Continue reading →

All we are sayyyyying…is give peas a chance:

A thousand Indian troops withdrew from the disputed territory of Kashmir yesterday in a goodwill gesture aimed at fostering a new peace in the province.

The move was timed to coincide with a visit to Kashmir by Dr Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, and is the latest in a series of confidence-building initiatives between India and Pakistan.

Through a bullet-proof screen in Srinagar, India’s PM stated that he “extended the hand of friendship” to Pakistan.

…Last month Pakistan’s president Gen Pervaiz Musharraf seized the initiative on Kashmir by floating a plan to divide and demilitarise the region, calling on both sides to take radical steps towards a settlement.

Initially India responded coolly, but has reciprocated in kind with a symbolic reduction in troop numbers.

via the telegraph

Voice of America features a news story about the community of Artesia, California known for its very visible Indian population, and their bid to post a highway sign designating Artesia with the nickname “Little India.” The full story can be viewed here and a transcript can be read here.

Artesia, California – population 16,000, was settled as a farming community by Portuguese immigrants in the 19th century. Today Artesia’s rural past is a faint memory, its main street paved, the shops along it owned for the most part by merchants from the Indian subcontinent. But plans to officially recognize the city’s altered social landscape have received unexpected resistance from many in the community.

What’s the resistance about? Well despite the Indian community’s overwhelming visibility, they only make up 5% of the actual population. That rubs some the wrong way. Says the leader of the local Portuguese Cultural Center:

“Artesia is composed of Hispanic, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Filipino, all sorts of diversity as you can see, including Indian. Now the Indian community does have quite a few shopping centers in Artesia, but it’s only a small percentage in the whole big picture of all the shopping centers.”

Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez is more reasonable:

“This sign is not about celebrating just one culture, one community. It’s about celebrating the vast diversity of this city. And it just happens to be that one of the richest destinations in California, Southern California, is here on Pioneer Boulevard – and it’s “Little India.”

The remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has decided to ban all tobacco products from Wednesday, a government notification says. Shops, hotels, restaurants and bars selling tobacco products have been ordered to dispose of existing stocks before 17 December. Those who violate the ban will be fined $210 and owners of shops and hotels will lose their business licenses.

Are you a tourist who desperately wants to go to Bhutan, but who can’t go a few days without a smoke? Don’t worry, you’re OK as long as you don’t sell your stash to the locals:

The tobacco ban will not apply to foreign tourists, diplomats or those working for NGOs. [However] Foreigners selling tobacco to locals will be severely punished. “If any foreigner is caught selling tobacco products to Bhutanese nationals, he will be charged with smuggling. Tobacco will be treated as contraband,” Karma Tshering of Bhutanese Customs told the BBC.

Now what puzzles me is why people at high altitudes are smoking at all? I mean, isn’t the air thin enough? Apparently, Sherpas in Nepal do so all the time, as they lead expedititions up the mountain. And I remember reading about cases where mountaineers would suck in oxygen from a tank, then inhale their cigarette (dangerous!), and then get more oxygen, etc. (like this: “Meanwhile, Finch had been staving off the effects of altitude with regular gasps of oxygen — between puffs on a cigarette!”). However, the best quote I found on the subject was:

“This is the fucking life, no ?” — Jean Afanassieff, first frenchman on Everest (on the summit of which he smoked a cigarette waiting for the others).