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Records the wanderings of a wordsmith
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Thursday, November 13, 2003
Oops.. I just realized I have not posted anything here for close to three months. I had a lot of exciting experiences during this period and will list at least a few of them. Soon. Please await my posting in a day or two.
Some of the probables are:
1: My trip to Andhra tribal village for the vegetable oil story.
2: My Kochi visit to cover Mata Amritanandamayi's birthday bash that cost 27 crore rupees by some estimates. (The Ashram did not reveal where the money came from.)
Revisit in a couple of days..
posted by S. Srinivasan at 9:26 AM
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Another story of poor, humble India showing the way for the world in technology adoption. When even the U.S is yet to fully embrace electronic voting, India is planning to hold the next general elections, due in 2004, fully electronically.
With 35 crore illiterate people that is some achievement.
The simple, but very user-friendly electronic voting machine designed by the Electronic Corporation of India Limited, was first used in 1998 in three state assembly elections and in the general elections the next year. The experiment was a great success.
Spurred by that, the Election Commission is procuring the final lot of 2.90 lakh units of the machine to enter the era of paperless ballot as far as central and state elections are concerned.
With this purchase, it will have 9 lakh units of the machine to be used in almost as many polling booths across the country.
In the next stage, local elections, for which the state chief electoral officers are in charge, will also be held electronically.
There might be some people who will sourly miss those "good old days" of ballot paper snatching and repeat voting. Isn't it a wonder that their opposition to new technology has been brushed aside by the society in favour of fair and efficient polling?
But then, India is changing.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 10:27 AM
Monday, August 25, 2003
Monsanto, the controversial seed company, must be licking its wounds in India. The company has been eager to locate new markets for its genetically modified crops outside the U.S and has faced stiff resistance from Europe, due to concerns of their impact on health.
India is potentially a big market for Monsanto, particularly its BT cotton, because the country's has the largest acreage in the world under this cash crop. However, it has faced stiff resistance here too.
Activists say BT cotton seeds are environmentally hazardous, could contaminate native varieties and take away farming from small farmers to big corporations. A losing proposition for countries like India.
And farmers seem to have taken this message, according to the company's own admission. Monsanto sites "hostile environment" in India as the reason for its failure to meet sales target, that too by a big margin, in this season.
The company's Indian partners sold only 230,000 packets of BT cotton seeds as against a target of 700,000 seeds.
This failure follows the rejection by the Indian government of the application from Monsanto and its partners to sell the seeds in North India.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 1:57 AM
Saturday, August 02, 2003
In the thread of discussions about the Simputer on e-groups, the Indian-made cheap handheld computer that has smart card ability, one of my posting and a reply to that are worth noting. My posting was in response to remarks by one of the members that the poor market success of Linux-based devices is probably due to the monopoly of Microsoft...
I said....
"Thanks for the thought provoking posting.
The problem for the Simputer is not Microsoft's power, but the hesitation of big business to back innovation.. People want to follow, not lead.
I know several corporate CEOs singing in praise of the Simputer and then running away when they are asked to introduce the product through their companies/invest in its development..
This is because they are risk-averse and they want to take the beaten track.. Once Simputer becomes very profitable, they will come back and start claiming they are great supporters of the product..
I think it is the individual, at the retail level, who has the courage to support the product and will help Simputer survive.. The founders have now made a good decision to take the product directly to individuals, at attractive prices.
If they do it properly and with sound marketing, it should be a success. Then you will see the big boys, venture capital funds, hardware companies and dealers making a beeline for the device..
It has been India's bane always.. There have been so many good technology innovations which were given a burial because the corporate world/government won't back them. The Simputer is no different."
Srinivasan
REPLY FROM MR. NARAYANAN NARASIMHA, General Manager, Bharat Electronics
"Mr.Srinivasan, I liked your observation on yahoogroup site.
We at Bharat Electronics are silently establishing the Simputer manufacture and we expect to launch the product in August 2003 for the Indian market in large numbers.
The response so far has been overwhelming even without publicity and with our professional marketing which follows the launch we expect to meet all expectations like from you.
Thanks for your comments and with regards"
N.N.Simha GM/EM/BEL
p.s. We are not yet open for publicity but thought I should respond to good observations on the product.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 1:11 AM
Friday, August 01, 2003
INFOSYS (SNAFU) TECHNOLOGIES:
Infosys, the company with style and attitude, listed its second lot of American Depositary Shares on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on July 31. As usual, they wanted to make an occasion out of it.. All programming kids danced feverishly to loud music compered by DJ Ivan.. Guys and Gals let their inhibition down and shook their hips to celebrate the event.
Inside the conference hall, journalists waited for the video conference from New York to start.. The top guys at the company were there to personally bless the trading.. and the scribes were looking at this huge screen in the hall for live feed from the Street..
Suddenly, a third-rate Hindi masala movie started playing on the big screen.. Worse, it was a rape scene.. A loud female voice, pleading to be left alone, filled the room..the villain was laughing away lustfully and a guffaw from the unexpecting audience filled the room.
It doubtless provided some comic relief to journalists who were upset about spending an evening on work and not with family.. But company officials went pink in the face with embarrassment..
It turned out that the control room guys had a VCD or cassette of that movie which they left in one of the players.. With the press of the (in)appropriate button by mistake led to the whole tamaashaa..
And when the video conference actually began, the equipment faltered and connection was lost.. Repeated attempts finally secured the connection but journalists had missed out on most of the proceedings..
At the end of it all, only the rape scene was the newsworthy event of the evening..
posted by S. Srinivasan at 4:26 AM
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Indian Railways's Web site for booking tickets has become the largest e-commerce site in Asia outside Japan. A daily turnover of 40 lakh rupees is not bad in a country, where only 1.5 percent of people have computers.
The site in the limelight is http://www.irctc.co.in
While fashionable business school theories are floundering in the Internet market, here is a humble Web site that is making a silent, slow but steady progress.
It would do Railways and the people a lot of good if the giant organization (world's largest employer with 1.6 million employees, second largest railway system with 7,100 stations, 62,800 kilometers, 430 millions of traffic and 4.8 billion passengers a year) minimizes the accident rate of its trains.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 10:02 AM
July had been a month of announcements.. Each morning a U.S firm was announcing investment and hiring plans in India, many of them in Bangalore. After reporting many of them, I almost grew tired of such announcements and let one or two pass me by.
But it is good news that jobs are plenty. At the same time, salaries are not sky high, which is also good in a way.. High salaries invariably lead to an unsustainable position from where companies fall faster in times of downturn. More jobs are lost if salaries had been unreasonably high previously.
The current trend in India's software industry is this. Companies are getting more business and more customers are turning India's way. But software billing rates are lower than what they used to be. This again is good for the same reason that moderate salaries are good. It is sustainable in the long run.
The outcry against outsourcing to India seems to be slowing a bit in the U.S. Good for them.
posted by S. Srinivasan at 9:58 AM
Thursday, June 19, 2003
The world spent the last month or so discussing India's technology outsourcing boom and the resultant job losses in the United States.. Every paper, television channel, Web site and discussion forum seemed to be discussing it with passion. For my part, I will add a few random thoughts to the global junk on outsourcing wisdom...
When Pepsi and Coke came to India, several local brands wound up and jobs were lost... Why did people not make a noise about job losses then? When jobs are lost in the U.S with American companies moving work to India, why do they raise a disproportionately stronger noise? Is it because the U.S is First World -- lives are important -- and India is Third World -- lives are not important?
After decades of lobbying with the world, including poor countries like India, to open up their markets to U.S goods and services, how can Uncle Sam complain when the tide reverses and other countries make money on its soil? I thought the U.S thought protectionism was a bad word...
Why should American companies move work to India, if it does not benefit them? The simple truth is that these companies are suffering from the impact of the economic downtrend there and are looking for ways to reduce costs and increase productivity...By moving some jobs and work to India, they can achieve this.. If they don't do it, who knows, more jobs might be lost in any case....
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