Indian companies hiring engineers in China

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This is fascinating: Indian outsourcing companies, caught short-staffed by surging sales, are subcontracting some of the work to China.

“We need a deep reservoir of talent as well as an alternative low-cost center like India as we continue to grow,” said Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, who has talked of his company’s scaling up to become the Wal-Mart of outsourcing. “And only China can match up.”… China has some 200,000 information technology workers–compared with India’s 850,000–in 6,000 local companies… More than 50,000 Chinese software programmers are being added to this pool annually.

… even with wages rising in India, China’s information technology workers are more expensive “because a combination of English-language and technical skills is at a premium,” Nilekani of Infosys said.

So a country which couldn’t defeat its neighbor on the battlefield is employing it instead. And it’s all thanks to unwanted colonization by an empire which left behind its language. It’s not only the law of unintended consequences, it’s also slick jujitsu.

Desi mayor voted to ban ‘Midnight’s Children’

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Dr. Mohammed Ali Chaudry was elected mayor of Basking Ridge / Bernards Township, New Jersey last year. He may be the first Pakistani-American mayor in the U.S., an achievement we should be proud of.

Sahiwal born Dr. Chaudhry left Pakistan in 1963 to study at London School of Economics, and…  came to United States in 1967 and earned a Ph. D. in Economics from Tufts University…

However, Chaudry also voted to ban Midnight’s Children in local schools while on the local board of education, possibly driven by antipathy dating back to The Satanic Verses. One desi voter who couldn’t read the book in his high school English class was so incensed that he cast a write-in vote (via liberal blog DailyKos) this morning for Salman Rushdie, who, to the best of my knowledge, is not running for Township Commissioner in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

As soon as I saw his name on the ballot last week, I flipped out… My 11th grade English teacher wanted to teach the book Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie in the year’s curriculum. However, this Chaudry guy tried to ban it! He was relentless!… my whole family went with my teacher to contest the banning of Midnight’s Children… that was 10 years ago… My sister and I (as well as my mom and dad…) agreed to write in “Salman Rushdie” as Township Commissioner… I’d pay generously to see the steam rising from Mr. Chaudry’s head.

Chaudry is probably also the first mayor to use an instant messaging video feed to attend a city council meeting from Pakistan:

“I had a friend who had a cable modem in Lahore and a camera set up so the Council could see my picture on the screen and I could see the Council. A landmark, I was very pleased with that. The beauty of this was it did not cost the Council a single penny.”

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Keeping it in the family

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Do you miss your brother or sister so much that you are not willing to put up with the 13 year waiting period to sponsor them over to the U.S.? Then marry them. From OnlyPunjab.com:

In a ludicrous move to outwit US immigration laws, an Indian American from Punjab ‘married’ his own sister while his wife ‘married’ his brother so that they could circumvent the 13-year waiting period necessary for siblings.

Paramjit Singh Taggar, 44, and his wife Harbans Kaur Hothi, 51, were found guilty of conspiracy, fraud and misuse of visas by a US district court in San Francisco, California.

I wouldn’t want to be there when they have to explain it all to the kids.

DesiPr0n

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The latest market to fall prey to the vicious outsourcing demon – Desi pornstars get on top : HTTabloid.com

‘Be Indian, Buy Indian’ when it comes to porn. A newfound lust for the dark-skinned woman is fuelling a demand for desi pornstars not only within the country, but also abroad. …popular titles include Mr and Mrs Bollywood, Private Fantasies, Delhi Babes, Saree Strippers, Agni Pushpam, Yamni and Ratree Milan. Even films made years ago are staging a comeback. Looking Eyes, originally shot in Malyalam some ten years back, has now been dubbed in Hindi due to incessant demand. …Interestingly, desi porn seems to have found a dedicated following in the West as well. “To be honest, European girls look more like fresh ham, while the women from India are far sexier,” insists an NRI who watches porn regularly.

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Did the Indian Airforce spot Bin Laden?

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Debkafile, which according to the Times of India is “a website believed to be run by people close to the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad,” claims that the Indian Airforce spotted Bin Laden by airplane or satellite between October 17th and 19th in the North-Eastern corner of Pakistan bordering India and China.

Bin Laden was actually spotted in the flesh just a few days ago – according to DEBKAfileÂ’s counter terror sources. Between October 17 and October 19, an Indian air force reconnaissance plane picked him up in the Tibet-Laddakh region close to the North-Eastern corner of Pakistan bordering India and China. Additional surveillance aircraft were called in and identified the al Qaeda leader on the move with a 10-vehicle convoy of black Japanese minivans. Four of the vehicles turned up again on October 22 heading east towards the Chinese border. Our sources maintain that the rumored sightings of bin Laden on the Lingzi Thang Plain on the Tibetan border in June may have been true then but are now outdated. In any case, he was not at the time in Pakistani Waziristan or the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The agents hunting the al Qaeda leader are working on the premise that he has decided to wait out the winter months in one of two regions: Hunza province in the Northern Frontier tip of Indian Kashmir or Little Pamir, where fanatical Tajik tribes have never allowed any Kabul government – whether Taliban or led by Karzai – to secure a foothold. Little Pamir is wedged between Tajikistan

I don’t think anyone knows for sure if this is true or not but Foxnews ran the story as well (at least according to the Times of India, although I am unable to locate the story on Fox):

The Fox Channel too made similar claims late Sunday night.

However, sources in the Indian military have dismissed the news saying they had “no such” high-level exchanges with US agencies and there was no such evidence on bin Laden.

It is well known that Indian intelligence agencies are extremely upset with US agencies that sourced all possible information from them after 9/11 while denying them any access to American information including those regarding terrorism against India.

Kerry’s campaign promises

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Most voters are wary of campaign promises. Perhaps the most famous broken campaign pledge in recent history was the senior Bush’s “Read my lips. No new taxes.” It might be a good idea to make note of the campaign promises being made right now as well, to see if any of them come to pass. From IACFPA:

“John Kerry and John Edwards will not tolerate threats, violence or discrimination against the Muslim-American community,” he said in a press statement, adding that top Democratic Party leaders “recognize the many contributions that Muslim Americans have made to our nation,” assuring them that Kerry would favor immigration laws.

“They will offer a reform bill in the first 100 days of a Kerry-Edwards administration that allows immigrants to earn legalization, encourages family reunification, and strengthens our border protections,” Khan maintained in what is sure to become a “Kerry-watch” in a post-election scenario.

What else do they pledge to do?

Currently, most Muslim Americans and civil rights advocates have opposed the Patriot Act. “Both the leaders support efforts, such as the bipartisan-sponsored Security and Freedom Ensured (SAFE) Act, to amend the Patriot Act to set reasonable limits on access to library, medical, and other records containing the sensitive, personal details of the lives of law-abiding Americans and on the conduct of so-called “sneak and peek” searches, Khan insisted, pointing to Kerry’s former job as a prosecutor. Kerry, he said, knows that “racial profiling is nothing more than ineffective law enforcement and must be prohibited.” He and John Edwards, Khan said, “support End Racial Profiling Act, which would ban racial profiling and require federal, state, and local law enforcement to take steps to end and prevent racial profiling,” and that both are working to strengthen hate crime laws. Both, he noted, “have led the fight for the Workplace Religious Freedom Act which will ensure that no American is forced to choose between the job they need and the faith that sustains them.”

World’s biggest steel company will be desi-owned

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London-based billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and his son Aditya are planning a $17.8B acquisition of an Ohio company which will make Mittal Steel the world’s biggest:

Last week, in a complicated $17.8 billion deal, Indian entrepreneur Lakshmi Mittal said he would merge his existing steel assets — the privately-held LNM Holdings and the publicly-traded Ispat International — with the U.S.-based International Steel Group (ISG). The deal, which must still gain regulatory approval, would create the world’s biggest steel company, Mittal Steel, to be based in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and help Mittal pursue his modest goal of making Mittal as synonymous with steel as Ford is with the motor car. The new company could produce up to 10% of the world’s steel…

Mittal made his $6.8B fortune in steel mills all over the world, including Calcutta, Romania, Mexico and Kazakhstan. Ironically, Mittal no longer owns any steel mills in India itself.

He has been able to generate profits by using his scale to buy lower-cost raw materials and by importing modern management techniques into previously inefficient state-run mills.

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Anniversary of Indira Gandhi’s death

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Indians flocked to former PM Indira Gandhi’s bungalow in Delhi today on the 20th anniversary of her assassination (thanks, Sapna):

Indira Gandhi lived in the 1,300-sq-ft bungalow on the leafy and wide Safdarjung Road for nearly 20 years… “Till 1971, this must have been the smallest house of any prime minister in the world,” says the memorial’s curator Vijay Puri Goswami.

On display is Mrs Gandhi’s blood stained and bullet pocked sari, bringing back memories of her violent end. Two bodyguards pumped 16 bullets into her when she was crossing a leafy pathway from her residence to the office for an interview with Peter Ustinov. The grassy pathway has now been covered in marble and covered with crystal. A sheet of clear glass marks the place where she fell to her assassin’s bullets…

Visitors also flock to see her wedding sari, which was woven from yarn spun by her father Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India… There are gifts from international leaders: a silver and onyx lacquer plate from Ho Chi Minh, a crystal memento from Yasser Arafat.

India: always on the right side of history. A new report on the anti-Sikh riots has been pushed back by two months:

Some of those responsible for the violence had been, and still were, members of the governing Congress Party… Seven government-appointed commissions which had investigated the massacres were either whitewashes, or had met with official obstruction… Up to 1,000 people are thought to have died in riots which erupted across India in the days following her murder, as Hindus took their revenge on Sikhs who were blamed for the assassination.

Despite the tyranny of Gandhi’s rule, it’s a macabre memory for a ghoulish day.

An economist waxes poetic about Bollywood

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Economist Tyler Cowen goes Bollycrazy on a visit to Delhi:

If you don’t already know Indian movies you should… Don’t think that Lagaan (or Satyajit Ray, for that matter) is the real thing, or that Blockbuster will do you any good. Cut to the songs. The use of color, cinematography, and orchestration of scenes will blow your mind. Allow yourself to be mesmerized. Compare them to your dreams at night, not to other movies you know, and pretend it is the only air-conditioned place in town.

I would go much, much further. There are only a couple of quality Bollywood films out every year, you’ll kiss a lot of frogs along the way. But the good ones handle emotion in a way far superior to that of the best of American cinema. Hollywood movies are rife with scenes which ought to be laden with emotion, but the filmmakers invariably affect a detached tone. And it’s not purposely understated, stoic or ironic detachment; it’s incompetent writing, it’s wooden and absurd.

You’ll often see a mother sending her son off to war or certain death with a stiff ‘you must go now,’ cut, end of scene. There’s a fine line between avoiding schmaltz and copping out on emotion altogether. Mainstream American films often feel hollow, $100M in effects with atrocious writing, the blowdried-fake-tan-colored-contacts version of worship in the darkened temple of cinema. And so even fairly cerebral films with any emotional content at all (Sideways, Eternal Sunshine) seem like blazing, Oscar-worthy paragons of passion.

Is this just cultural? Probably, for the films explicitly pitched as Oscar bait; it reflects a culture with lower emotionality than desi culture. With mainstream films, in contrast, a major part of the problem is market consolidation. When you’re chasing high revenues, you inject high investment; when you’ve committed a lot of money, you target the broadest market; for the largest market, you talk only to the reptilian sub-brain with boobs and bombs. Finely-modulated emotions are too risky an investment.

Sorry, guys. I’ve already seen Bollywood.

Previous posts on Cowen’s India trip: 1, 2