August 2013: Interesting Articles & Links

* The Hidden Diary Series -- http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/travel/the-hidden-diary/article5071536.ece

* Venu, MK (2013) -- India of 2013 is not the India of 1991 -- http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/the-india-of-2013-is-not-the-india-of-1991/article5069783.ece
- The U.S. Federal Reserve balance sheet was roughly $890 billion in 2007. It has ballooned to a little over $3 trillion today simply by printing more dollars. Such massive liquidity injection by printing dollars in such a short period is probably unprecedented in American history.
- cheap, finance capital flowing in from the West is a double-edged weapon. If not used judiciously to enhance productivity in the domestic economy, such finance will tend to become an external debt trap. This lesson is as important for the government as it is for the Indian capitalist class which has shown a tendency to use cheap finance and scarce resources such as spectrum, coal, land and iron ore to play stock market games in collusion with the political class.

* Wahi, Namita on LARR Bill - http://india-seminar.com/2013/642/642_namita_wahi.htm

* Krishna - Ladies Man -- http://www.firstpost.com/living/the-ladies-man-and-original-feminist-lord-krishna-1066519.html

* Difficult Languages -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/08/economist-explains-19?fscr=scn/tw/te/ee/languagedifficult

* Photographing Nature - Karen Bass - Skywatching in Altiplano, on the Bolivia-Chile border -- http://www.ted.com/talks/karen_bass_unseen_footage_untamed_nature.html

* Plain talk for Entrepreneurs --  http://www.fabricegrinda.com/entrepreneurship/absolute-must-read-for-all-entrepreneurs/
- http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-starting-and-running-your-business/
- SaaS - Software as a Service
- Schwag - promotional items given to employees - http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-starting-and-running-your-business/
- DBAs - "doing business as"
- 80) I have too much competition. What should I do? --- Competition is good. It shows you have a decent business model. Now simply outperform them.

* Four steps to bounce back - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rajesh-setty/4-steps-to-bounce-back_b_3817847.html

* Five things that keep Japanese people chained to their jobs -- http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/08/26/five-things-that-keep-japanese-people-chained-to-their-jobs/

* IE Editorial on Food Secirity Bill (27Aug13) -- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/entitlement-follies/1160377/

* The Golden Emperor Moth -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loepa_katinka

* Gupta, Anil (2013) - http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/1880125/column-why-should-start-ups-suffer-so-much-in-decade-of-innovation

* Golden Rice - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/sunday-review/golden-rice-lifesaver.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

* Jagannathan, R (2013) -- http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-tharoors-defence-of-upa-nomics-is-more-a-self-goal-978519.html

* Puri, Aditya (2013): ALL THIS HAND-WRINGING, IE 23Aug13 -- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/all-this-handwringing/1158808/0
- The consensus among economists is that the CAD this fiscal is unlikely to breach 4 per cent (about $75 billion), compared to 4.8 per cent of the GDP ($88 billion) last fiscal.
- The CAD is not about oil and gold alone. In 2012-13, while the aggregate CAD was 4.8 per cent, the CAD excluding gold and oil was 3.8 per cent. In an import bill of about $500 billion, about $280 billion was non-gold and non-oil. We imported about $30 billion of electronic items alone in 2012-13. Any strategy to compress the deficit will have to involve reducing this component of imports.
- Our oil import bill is approximately $170 billion.
- Coal imports are the single biggest item on our balance of payments after oil and gold. The rise in coal imports is the direct result of the inability to mine domestic reserves because of environmental regulation, judicial action and the prohibition on allocating blocks to private miners. From $9 billion in 2009-10, coal imports jumped to $16 billion in 2012-13.

* Jehadi Video - Ambush - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQrtkm8h9WA&feature=youtu.be

* Oldest Trees on the Planet - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/old-tree-gallery/11/

* Internet & Productivity -- http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21583615-internet-has-not-yet-produced-hoped-productivity-miracle-net-gains-and?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/netgainsandlosses
- http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315


* Badminton Champs and the House of Golden Teardrops -- http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2013/08/16/a-sweet-factory-becomes-assembly-line-for-badminton-gold/?mod=e2tw

* http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/15/estonia-ussr-shadow-internet-titan

* Baker, Nicholson (2013): A FOURTH STATE OF MATTER: Annals of Technology, The New Yorker, Jul 8-Jul 15, 2013
- Retina Display (made in Korea by LG Display), offered, beginning in 2010, a liquid-crystal image that, at three hundred and twenty-six pixels per diagonal inch, looked almost as good as a glossy printed page in an art magazine.
- Liquid crystals, David Dunmur and Tim Sluckin explain, are a fourth state of matter. They're sometimes pearlescent, and they shimmer, on account of peculiarities of their rotational viscosity. They're so-called "non-Newtonian fluids," because they don't obey the formulas in elementary physics textbooks.
- Otto Lehmann, a scientist from Karlsruhe, Germany - work on LC resulted, in 1909, in a bunch of new terms grew up to describe different classes of liquid crystals, including "smectic," meaning soapy, from the Greek smegma (yes, I know), and "nematic," or threadlike, as in those long, thin intestinal nematodes that are parasitic in dogs.
- RCA ...By the mid-seventies, the company had dismantled its research program, not wanting, in the end--so legend has it--to threaten the revenues that flowed from its tube-television patents. Japanese companies--Seiko, Hitachi, Sharp, and others--licensed RCA's liquid-crystal innovations and took over further development.
- Mid 1990s (?) -- Sony was now in RCA's position: it didn't want to give up the money that poured, seemingly endlessly, from its sales of Trinitron tubes.
- South Korea saw a chance to leap ahead of everyone else. Japanese liquid-crystal technologists, called "weekend warriors" (I learned the phrase from Robert Chen's fine book, "Liquid Crystal Displays"), began shuttling to Korea, helping LG and Samsung design and outfit their billion-dollar flat-screen factories. Korea became the center of the liquid-crystal universe.
- Merck's liquid-crystal raw materials--called "singles", brand --are unthinkably pure and extremely expensive. They're produced in Darmstadt, just as they were a hundred years ago, and shipped to Merck's large Korean subsidiary in Seoul, where Korean engineers mix and mingle the singles in accordance with requirements coming from LG and Samsung.

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/10-reasons-why-economics-is-an-art-not-a-science/2013/08/08/7c501020-ffb5-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html

* Realistic Paintings - http://www.boredpanda.com/hyper-realistic-art/

* http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/08/build_a_career_worth_having.html

* How did Estonia become a leader in technology? The Economist - AAK-Mumbai, 30Jul13  http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/economist-explains-21?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709
- The joys of shedding shedding “legacy thinking”.

* DataStories - http://datastories.in/blog/2013/08/03/meanwhile-heres-what-happened-to-the-public-distribution-of-food/

* Gladwell, Malcom (2013): THE GIFT OF DOUBT -- http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2013/06/24/130624crbo_books_gladwell?currentPage=all
- - Albert O. Hirschman's Hiding Hand Principle - "People don’t seek out challenges, he went on. They are apt to take on and plunge into new tasks because of the erroneously presumed absence of a challenge — because the task looks easier and more manageable than it will turn out to be.”

* Rajivlochan, Meeta (2013):  A CASE FOR FEWER HEROES, IE 6Aug13
- State govt efforts to upgrade instnl and decion-making structures - Maharashtra- law to regulate transfers of all officials...Let us strengthen our institutions so that quotidian acts lose their heroic patina.

* Hooda, Bhupender (2013): MYTHS ABOUT UPA'S SOCIAL SPENDING, IE 6Aug13
- Sweden - high welfare, high tax - Sweden 46%; France 42.9%
- Govt spending - social protection to GDP: Japan 19.2%; Thailand 3.6%; Singapore 3.5%; India 1.7%
- Upper class benefits more from fuel subsidy (IMF study) - top 20% capture 6x more from fuel subsidy than the poorest 20%
- India - food+fuel+fertilizer subsidies make 96% of all subsidies -- between 2003-2013 subsidy bill increased by 421% mainly because there was a 923% increase in petroleum subsidy
- During 2004-10, people dependent on agriculture fell from 24.9 cr to 22.9 cr but rural consumption increased by 25%

* Mishra, Neelkanth (2013): THE HIDDEN GROWTH, IE 6 Aug13
- Economic census 2005 - India had 42m enterprises with average 2.4 employees!

* Low light photos -- http://www.learningthelight.com/2010/04/27/how-to-take-sharp-photos-in-low-light-without-a-flash/

* Why India has a Sand Mafia -- http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/08/06/why-india-has-a-sand-mafia/

* Reconstructing Solali - Acid attack victim -- http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/X1vWl8wQVglJ0WKkusMauI/True-Stories--Reconstructing-Sonali.html

* Falana Singh -- http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/falana-singh-bathinda-parkash-singh-badal-punjab/1/297974.html

* Sengupta, Shombit (2013): EIFFEL BRAND WORTH IS GBP 435 BILLION, IE, 4AUg13
- Tourist inflows in 2012 - India 6.5m; Eiffel tower, Paris 8m!
- Every summer, more or less the entire population of Paris empties out...replaced by 83m TOurists to France - USA 67m
- Eiffel Tower - 1050ft, erected 1889 for 20 yrs - construction cost 6.5m francs but the grant covered only 1.6m, hence the 20yr fee income
- Parisian intellectuals made a huge hue and cry against the erection

* Ripley, Amanda (2013): THE $4 MILION TEACHER, WSJ, 3Aug13 -- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html
- Kim Ki-hoon runs a "Hagwon" (tuition centre) in Seoul and ears $4m/yr
- South Koreans spend $17b/yr on private tuition's -- US kids $15b/yr on video games
- It is about as close to a pure meritocracy as it can be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers are free agents. They don't need to be certified. They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers.
- In South Korea, if parents aren't engaged, that is considered a failure of the educators, not the family.
- Interestingly, the hagwon teachers rated best of all when it came to treating all students fairly, regardless of the students' academic performance.

* Bhalla, Surjit S (2013): POVERTY OF THOUGHT, IE 3Aug13
- How can we justify expanding PDS to 67% of the population when our own Planning Commission tells us that only 22% of the population is poor!

* Sudarshan, Anant (2013): DUEL OF THE LITERATI, IE 3Aug13
- Bhagawati vs. Sen - fact is that their argument cannot have one right answer. Economic growth (increasing size of the pie), and redistribution (everyone getting something) are both objectives of the government.
- Paul Krugman vs. Harvard economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff (suggested that high debt is linked to low growth)
- Jeffrey Sachs vs. Daron Acemogu & James Robinson (book - Why Nations Fail - 'main reason for poverty is the nature of institutions and government systems)
- Richard Dawkins vs. Edward O.Wilson (book - The Social COnquest of Earth - what drives evolution? group survival or individual survival probablities?)
- Ramachandra Guha vs. Farrukh Dhondy (William Darylmple and his view of history)

* Virmani, Arvind andd Charan Singh (2013): A MISNOMER CALLED FOOD SECURITY, IE 1Aug13
- FSB inspired by National Family Health Survey 2005-6 and the Global Hunger Index (IFPRI) but "hungry" means different things to different people.

* Venkateshwaran, Sandhya (2013): SILENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, IE, 1Aug13 --- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/silence-of-the-middle-class/1149418/0
- how often has India witnessed middle class protests against the death of poor children or for their right to education; how often have the middle classes raised their voice against the displacement of the tribal community or slum dwellers due to the construction of factories and malls; how often do they protest against the lack of accountability and quality in the public health system?

* Rukmini -- BARRIERS TO ENTRY, Caravan - http://www.caravanmagazine.in/perspectives/barriers-entry

* Narayanan, Dinesh (2013): Indians cannot be a Jugaad economy for ever, Forbes, 19Aug13 --- http://forbesindia.com/article/independence-special-2013/india-cant-be-a-jugaad-economy-forever/35895/1
- The Confederation of Indian Industry has presented a list of 62 stalled infrastructure projects—each worth Rs 1,000 crore or more—to the Project Management Group in the Cabinet Secretariat for fast tracking. Of these, 35 are power projects and 11 are for construction of roads and highways. Most of these projects are stuck because of lack of environment approvals, state level clearances or inability to acquire land.

* Hadoop - http://strata.oreilly.com/2011/01/what-is-hadoop.html

* Rao, Jaitirth (2013): From Nehru's Temples to just Temples, FE, http://m.financialexpress.com/news/column-from-nehru-s-temples-to-just-temples/1156900/
- n 1924, during the reign of Nallamudi (IV) Krishnaraja Wodeyar, an engineer named Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya designed and supervised the construction of a dam over the divine Kaveri river. In the process, the ancient village of Kannambadi was submerged...along with its Venugopala temple, a 700-year-old Hoysala structure.
- In 1946, Sir Louis Dane, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, laid the foundation stone of a dam across the river Sutlej (its ancient Sanskrit name was Sutadhari) in a village named Bhakra. The construction of the dam started in 1948. The Bhakra dam submerged the ancient town of Bilaspur, where there were many temples and sites, traditionally associated with Maharishi Vyas, the author of the Mahabharata.

* Conference Dogma Rules -- http://www.conferencemanager.dk/EuropeINNOVA2012-Copenhagen/ten-conference-dogma-rules.html

* Sushi Technology -- http://nz.sports.yahoo.com/news/sushi-round-japan-tradition-served-053528115.html

* Desai, Megnad (2013): GETTING NOWHERE FAST, FE, 5Aug13 -- http://www.financialexpress.com/news/getting-nowhere-fast/1151155
- In liberalising manufacturing all attention is paid to land shortage but then when it comes to the crunch, the political system cannot make up its mind about leaving land purchase and sale to private parties with a strong regulatory authority.
- India has made its cheap labour expensive by saddling itself with scores of laws, which interfere with manufacturing and make the creation of large units uneconomical.
- So 90% of the labour force in the informal sector has no rights and has to work in small manufacturing units as contract labour or rot in the countryside in low-paid rural jobs or suffer NREGA.
-  Public money appears to the politicians and, hence, to all who work in the public sector as limitless and costless. This is why schemes come pouring out of the NAC and UPA to spend even more money. If you cannot solve a problem, spend money to smother it.
Thus neglect to invest in railways except to benefit the railway minister’s province. If accidents happen pay compensation but do not improve safety. If mid-day meals sicken the children or kill them, pay money to their families. The same story goes for rape victims. The money mantra is the cure all and the money is public money, so why cure a problem.

* Srivastava, Mehul (2011): Why India Is Rethinking Its Labor Laws --http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_04/b4212013616117.htm
- Companies must keep 6 attendance logs and 10 separate accounts for overtime wages, and file 5 types of annual returns. There are at least 11 definitions of the word "wage."
- The success of the Software Technologies Parks of India Act—and of special economic zones in China—has spurred the revival of a 45-year-old plan that creates special enclaves with more infrastructure and fewer labor laws.

* Basu, Kaushik (2006): Why India's labour laws are a problem -- BBC -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4984256.stm
- In India there are 45 laws at the national level and close to four times that at the level of state governments that monitor the functioning of labour markets.
- Industrial Disputes Act, 1947:  Formal sector employing more than 100 workers cannot fire workers
- Data from the Ministry of Labour reveal that in the year 2000 there were 533,038 disputes pending in India's labour courts; and of these 28,864 had been pending for over 10 years.
- no worker can be made to work beyond 75 hours of overtime a quarter.
- a report by McKinsey, the consulting firm, estimated that if India overhauled its labor laws, its manufacturing exports could grow from $40 billion in 2002 to $300 billion by 2015.

* Tokyo - Largest zoomable photo - http://io9.com/the-largest-photo-ever-taken-of-tokyo-is-zoomable-and-975127382

* Gifts for the photographer :) -- http://photo.net/gift-guides/birthday-2013/

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Fortunate Accidents

"Annals of science", it seems, "is littered with blunder, mishap and blind alley made good". The Independent came up with a few interesting examples:

• Upsalite - newly synthesised magnesium carbonate material - MgCO3 - unrivaled capacity to absorb water - potential uses - domestic humidity controls, pharma factories, electronics to oil-spill clean-ups - discovered accidentally when a reaction was left bubbling over a long weekend.
• Penicillin - Alexander Flemings Staphylococcus cultures were invaded by mould.
• Pacemaker - Wilson Greatbatch fitted the wrong resistor to his heart-recording machine
• Aspartame (artifricial sweetener) - A scientist researching coal tar failed to wash his hands before he ate!
• Post-It - brainchild of a failed glue-inventor

Where can I find a more comprehensive list of such 'happy blunders'?

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LINKS

* Chance Breakthroughs - 'The Independent', London

From Carrot Juice to LCDs

In all likelihood you are reading this piece on a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) screen. And, like me, you too would be amazed to know that LCDs have their origins in....carrot juice!

Few of us would spare a thought for something so ubiquitous as LCDs. They are everywhere - from digital wristwatches, to mobile phones and television sets. For something so common, it is difficult to imagine that it took nearly a century for the idea of liquid crystals to turn into products that are so indispensable today.  It also offers lessons on how companies and nations turn weakness into a strength, and vice versa.

Liquid crystals were first discovered by Otto Lehman, a scientist from Karlsruhe, Germany, way back in 1888. Lehman's scientist friend, working in Prague, knowing his craze for crystals of all kinds, told him about some unusual properties of cholesterol extracted from carrots. On closer examination he discovered that this carrot juice extract could refract light like a solid piece of glass, and yet be poured out like any other liquid!

Lehman went on to discover other organic liquids which could twist light in two different directions ("birefringent" properties), published a book in 1904 and managed to persuade a company called Merck, to manufacuture it. From pre-war Germany, the study of liquid crystals expanded to France, England and then to USA, where a company called Radio Corp. America (RCA) had it within its grasp the ability to make the first LCDs on a commercial level. However, RCA let the opportunity pass - it didn't want LCDs to eat into its booming, cathode-tube TV business.

So, in the mid-1970s, RCA licensed the technology to a slew of Japanese companies - Hitachi, Seiko, Sharp, etc.. With their usual zeal for automation and fastidiousness, the Japanese managed to move the technology from labs to the production lines. Then, the leader of the pack, Sony, repeated RCA's mistake.

Hoping to save its best-selling Trinitron TV-tubes, Sony, decided to go slow on the LCDs. From here on, the Korean companies - LG and Samsung - took over, and haven't looked back since.

Today, even through the Korean companies have become undisputed leaders in LCD production & sales, the most critical link in the chain is imported from Germany. Merck, the company that the carrot-juice researcher, Otto Lehman, first approached in 1904, continues to be the world leader in the manufacture of the mother liquid crystals (called Singles / "Licristal").

So Otto Lehman took a closer look at carrot juice extract, and persuaded a homegrown company to start manufacturing liquid crystals in 1904. A century later, the same German company continues to stand its ground as the the display technology got honed in France, UK, USA, and Japan before finally reaching the South Koreans run their massive LCD production facilities at Paju.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* "Soap, Science, and Flat-Screen TVs: A History of Liquid Crystals" -- David Dunmur and Tim Sluckin

* Baker, Nicholson (2013): A FOURTH STATE OF MATTER: Annals of Technology, The New Yorker, Jul 8-Jul 15, 2013

* How LCD works -- http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd.htm

What makes Estonia different?

Soon after the collapse of the Berlin wall, the Soviet Union imploded in the early 1990s. In the chaos and power vacuum that followed, a number of Soviet 'satellites' dropped out. Among them were the three tiny Baltic states - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Even before the last Soviet troops had pulled out, all three became a part of the European Union in 1994. All three had access to new technology and markets, yet, two decades later, there is only one state in the former Soviet Union that emerged as a sturdy economy and a technology leader  - Estonia.

Estonia transformation is quite fascinating. This country, about the size of Haryana state (~44,000 sq.km), with a population of just 1.3 million, is now the most "wired" and among the best e-governed countries in the world. One of the best known Estonian products is something that is likely to be on your own toolbar - Skype.

How did Estonia achieve this transformation, in less than two decades?

By all accounts, at the center of the Estonian transformation were two men -- Toomas Hendrik Ilves and Linnar Viik. Not unlike the bullet-train revolution in Japan, this transformation too rested on a tech-savvy political head (Ilves) working closely with a techie with a vision (Viik).

Ilves came from the Estonian equivalent of an NRI family. It had fled the country as soon as USSR took over in the mid-1940s. As a result, Ilves did his schooling in Sweden, and then in USA. Having imbibed a good dose of the Scandinavian work-ethic and having seen the way computers were transforming America, a little nudge from CIA is perhaps all that was needed to take him to a leadership role back home.

However, unlike most US implants (think Karzai), Ilves seems to have been just the right person at the right place and the right time. Soon after he took over as the first president, his focus was on getting the  big picture right. Tariffs were abolished, prices freed, tax made ultra-simple, foreign players were brought in to take over many industries.

Then came in Linnar Viik with his Project Tiigrihüpe ("Tiger Leap"). WiFi hubs came up all over the country. All schools in Estonia were linked up with high-speed networks. Children were encouraged to learn programming when they were 5-6 year's old. in 2000 Viik helped Estonia become the first country in the world to adopt a system of e-governance, changing its cabinet meetings to paperless sessions using a web-based document system, with ministers able to take part from anywhere.

The Tiigrihüpe  logo said it all -- a cheerful, toothy tiger, cheerfully leaping through a boxy computer screen, into the world beyond.

Why is it that India's own 'tigers' are huddled in isolated sanctuaries across the country?


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REFERENCES & LINKS:

Economist (30 Jul 2013): HOW DID ESTONIA BECOME A LEADER IN TECHNOLOGY? --- http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/07/economist-explains-21?spc=scode&spv=xm&ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709

BBC (2013): HOW ESTONIA BECAME E-STONIA, 16May13 --- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22317297

The Guardian (2012): How tiny Estonia stepped out of USSR's shadow to become an internet titan, 15Apr12 -- http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/15/estonia-ussr-shadow-internet-titan
- Linnar Viik, a lecturer at the Estonian IT College, a government adviser and a man almost synonymous in Estonia with the rise of the web.
- Not bad for country where, two decades ago, half the population had no phone line.
- Why only Estonia? -- the country's ethnic Estonian majority feel Nordic, rather than Slavic or eastern European. In the early 90s, this meant they looked to tech-happy Scandinavia for both inspiration and investment.
- From the early days, government philosophy was not to hire programmers, but to use the services of private companies, which in turn increased the competitiveness of the Estonian IT sector
- Acta, the hugely controversial international agreement that opponents fear will curtail the rights of individual internet users.

* Linnar Viik - Estonia's Internet Guru -- http://www.eubusiness.com/europe/estonia/040420021538.qhs3vusx
- Blog - http://linnar.viik.ee/

Project Tiigrihüpe ("Tiger Leap") -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiigrih%C3%BCpe
- http://www.tiigrihype.ee/en

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonia

* Economist (1999): ESTONIA'S LAST CHALLENGE, 11Mar99 -- http://www.economist.com/node/319371?zid=307&ah=5e80419d1bc9821ebe173f4f0f060a07
- Estonia's first government of radical reformers (average age: around 35) took office in 1992, only to be ousted two years later
- The incoming reformers, by contrast, have their sights set on overhauling the machinery of government.

* Farivar, Cyrus (2011): THE INTERNET OF ELSEWHERE - The Emergent Effects of a Wired World, Rutgers University Press, 2011 --- http://www.worldcat.org/title/internet-of-elsewhere-the-emergent-effects-of-a-wired-world/oclc/643762511

* New Yorker (2013): Annals of Technology -- http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/07/08/130708fa_fact_baker

India - States - area-wise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories_of_India_by_area

A Special Zone

View NOIDA - Along the Expressway in a larger map

I visited the Noida Special Economic Zone (NSEZ) yesterday expecting to see something, well, special. 'Disappointed' may be a mild word to describe the experience.

It did not start that way though. When I was stopped by security guards at the main gate for an id proof and the 'Plot number', the special-ness quotient went a few notches higher. Beyond those gates of black polished granite, I imagined a neat, world class industrial park, packed with enterprises that were busy producing and exporting things destined for the global markets.

Inside NSEZ, I just wanted to go to the telephone office (BSNL) to return a dysfunctional modem. So the guards directed me to a less special Gate-II. "Here a Rs.10 pass",  the guards there said, "Roam around as much as you like till midnight!".

Once inside, it did not take long for me to realize that even though there was a lot of area to roam around, there was nothing much to see. Wide and poorly maintained roads, shabby gardens, nondescript buildings and stray dogs lolling about in open garbage heaps. At the BSNL office, the guard was asleep on a wooden bed; a dusty, discarded microwave transmitter lay near the stairwell. Most of the office rooms were empty.

As my luck would have it, the only BSNL employee in the building was right one to take back my modem. He tried his best to dissuade me. "The speeds will improve! I guarantee!". When I insisted on withdrawing the broadband connection, he changed tack and conceded that the government enterprise had been neglecting the 'last mile'. Optic fibers had been laid till the exchanges but due to internal tussles and vested interests there were just not enough staff to service customers in Noida.

Outside the BSNL office, driving around a bit more, I realized that there was an extra-special zone within this 300 acre area, considered to be outside 'customs jurisdiction of India'. All the swanky new buildings were clustered close to the main gate.  Most of these were software companies like TechMahindra, iGate and Mosaic ITES. The service sector was obviously the flavor of the season. All the rest seemed well past their glory years.

The glory years' must have ended with the tax breaks. In India, the Special Economic Zones were first created in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the hope of repeating China's success with SEZs. Noida's NSEZ came up in 1985 and was one of the seven established by the central government. It was also the only one which was both landlocked and the only one located in North India. Companies that invested here were beyond the reach of India's convoluted labor laws and they enjoyed tax-breaks for 15-20 years.

How are the SEZs doing? My superficial view of NSEZ may have quite uninspiring, but, on the whole, they seems to be rocking. In 2004-05 they contributed 10% of India exports. Five year's later, in 2009 this share went up to 20% of total exports. 

Yet, there was no doubt that NSEZ could be managed much more efficiently. If only the government would create an incentive structure to reward professionalism, all the way from the level of the guards and BSNL employees, to the bureaucrats sipping chai in their air-conditioned offices!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

SEZ 

- http://www.nsez.gov.in/nsezwebsite/SezDevloper.aspx

- Google Maps -- https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=202036517216705407893.0004b11f9c0b2060cbba5&msa=0&ll=28.538815,77.398531&spn=0.002757,0.004823

- The Special Economic Zones Act, 2005, was passed by Parliament in May, 2005 which received Presidential assent on the 23rd of June, 2005. After extensive consultations, the SEZ Act, 2005, supported by SEZ Rules, came into effect on 10th February, 2006

- List of operational SEZs -- http://sezindia.nic.in/writereaddata/pdf/ListofoperationalSEZs.pdf

- 172 SEZs under the SEZA 2005: 19 established before this Act; Noida SEZ (2003) is among the seven established by the central govt.

- Noida SEZ came up in 1985, then came Vizag SEZ in 1989. The next set came only ten years' later (Kandla, SEEPZ Mumbai, Kochi and Surat in 2000)

- share of SEZ units / Export Oriented Units (EOUs) in the national exports has gone up from 10 percent in 2004-05 to about 22 percent in 2008-09. 

- Under the scheme, a SEZ Unit can be set up in any of the seven Government SEZs (erstwhile Export Processing Zones) while EOUs can be set up outside SEZ across the country as per territorial jurisdiction of concerned Development Commissioner.

* NSEZ - Noida -- http://www.nsez.gov.in/nsezwebsite/AboutUs.aspx

- NSEZ the only Central Government SEZ in the northern India, headed by the Development Commissioner, was set up in 1985 in Noida Phase-II on a 310 acre plot of land. 

- Government of India has so far invested a sum of Rs. 1177 million on its development. NSEZ provides excellent infrastructure, supportive services and sector specific facilities for the thrust areas of exports like gem and jewellery and electronics software. 

- This is the only land locked SEZ , contrary to other zones which are situated in Port Towns and hence emphasis of type of units to be set up are those with high value and low volume.

- jewellery and software development units -- These two sectors have contributed more than 30 per cent of the export turn over during the year 2008-09.

- jurisdiction of Noida Special Economic Zone is spread over EOUs in nine states namely Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Union Territory of Chandigarh.

* Chapter VI: Special Fiscal Provisions for SEZs -- exemption from any duty of customs and excise

> Customs Act, 1962 or the Custom Tariff Act, 1975

> Central Excise Act, 1944 or the Central Excise Tariff Act, 1985 

> service tax under Chapter-V of the Finance Act, 1994

> securities transaction tax leviable under section 98 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2004 

> Central Sales Tax Act, 1956 (fos goods other than newspapers!)

> Income-tax Act, 1961 (subject to a few modifications in Sch-II)

- deemed to be a territory outside the customs territory of India for the purposes of undertaking the authorized operations, so as to encourage - 

(a) generation of additional economic activity 

(b) promotion of exports of goods and services; 

(c) promotion of investment from domestic and foreign 

sources; 

(d) creation of employment opportunities; 

(e) development of infrastructure facilities; 

Skilling You Softly

By all accounts, India is sitting right now on a "once in a life-time" opportunity. For the next twenty years it will have the largest working-age population in the world. Most of them would be moving out of agriculture to seek jobs in construction, manufacturing or services.

The economists have a fancy term for this phenomenon - "demographic dividend". What this simply means is that the country stands to gain (dividends) if this transition takes place smoothly. That is, if farm-workers are able to learn new skills; If they are able to find better paying jobs, then we will all become prosperous and live happily ever after.

The problem with "if" is that it continues to remain in the realm of possibility unless we do something about it. So what has government of India done so far? A National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) has been set up; Targets have been set for various ministries, to ensure that millions of jobs are created, at least on paper.

NSDC works with about 85 private-sector partners to provide skill-based training in 21 sectors, across the country. Most of this 'skilling' is for youngsters moving into the manufacturing sector.

However, as Megnad Desai pointed out recently (FE 5 Aug), merely liberalizing manufacturing will not help. The devil lies in the details and in this case, the details of the labor laws. "India has made its cheap labor expensive by saddling itself with scores of laws, which interfere with manufacturing and make the creation of large units uneconomical. So 90% of the labour force in the informal sector has no rights and has to work in small manufacturing units as contract labour or rot in the countryside in low-paid rural jobs or suffer NREGA".

We have tied ourselves in knots with so many labor-related laws that entrepreneurs are just not willing to expand capacity and create new jobs. In India there we have 45 laws at the national level and close to 200 the level of state governments that monitor the functioning of labour markets. Under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, firms employing more than 100 workers cannot fire workers without the government's permission!

So it is hardly surprising that as per the Economic Census 2005, India had 42 million enterprises with an average of less than three employees! In contrast, thanks to our labor laws, even today, we have less than a million registered companies (2012).

So now is a good time to wonder: Which is worse - to be unskilled and jobless or to be skilled and jobless?

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LINKS

* Mishra, Neelkanth (2013): THE HIDDEN GROWTH, IE 6 Aug 2013 --- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-hidden-growth/1151479/

* Desai, Megnad (2013): GETTING NOWHERE FAST, FE, 5Aug13 -- http://www.financialexpress.com/news/getting-nowhere-fast/1151155
- India has made its cheap labour expensive by saddling itself with scores of laws, which interfere with manufacturing and make the creation of large units uneconomical.
- So 90% of the labour force in the informal sector has no rights and has to work in small manufacturing units as contract labour or rot in the countryside in low-paid rural jobs or suffer NREGA.
-  Public money appears to the politicians and, hence, to all who work in the public sector as limitless and costless. This is why schemes come pouring out of the NAC and UPA to spend even more money. If you cannot solve a problem, spend money to smother it.

* National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) -- http://www.nsdcindia.org/faq/about-nsdc.aspx#ac

* Srivastava, Mehul (2011): Why India Is Rethinking Its Labor Laws --http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_04/b4212013616117.htm
- Companies must keep 6 attendance logs and 10 separate accounts for overtime wages, and file 5 types of annual returns. There are at least 11 definitions of the word "wage."
- The success of the Software Technologies Parks of India Act—and of special economic zones in China—has spurred the revival of a 45-year-old plan that creates special enclaves with more infrastructure and fewer labor laws.

* Basu, Kaushik (2006): Why India's labour laws are a problem -- BBC -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4984256.stm
- In India there are 45 laws at the national level and close to four times that at the level of state governments that monitor the functioning of labour markets.
- Industrial Disputes Act, 1947:  Formal sector employing more than 100 workers cannot fire workers
- Data from the Ministry of Labour reveal that in the year 2000 there were 533,038 disputes pending in India's labour courts; and of these 28,864 had been pending for over 10 years.
* Tokyo - largest zoomable photo - http://io9.com/the-largest-photo-ever-taken-of-tokyo-is-zoomable-and-975127382

- no worker can be made to work beyond 75 hours of overtime a quarter.
- a report by McKinsey, the consulting firm, estimated that if India overhauled its labor laws, its manufacturing exports could grow from $40 billion in 2002 to $300 billion by 2015.

Just Grass

The sight of grass often reminds me of a few lines in Max Erhman's famous poem, Desiderata:

"Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. 
Neither be cynical about love; 
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass"

I am not very sure if love is "perennial" but that is certainly an apt word to describe grass. Even during the worst North Indian summers', when every bit of exposed earth has been reduced to bone-dry, crusty soil, the grass is still there just below the surface, holding out against the dust storms with its seemingly dead roots.

The tables turn with the arrival of the monsoons. Suddenly, seeds that swirled with the dust, strike roots and settle down. Tiny shoots that appear on wet, brown soil, and turn rapidly into lush green carpets.

A closer look at these carpets reveal amazing micro-ecosystems. Even in the smallest patches, there is a wide variety of grasses, each at its own height level and each with its own type of stalked flowers to toss spores into greater distances.

Yesterday, I found six distinct varieties of grass in a five-foot patch. What are they called?

L > R  (work-in-progress!)

1. Smooth Brome
2.
3. Crowfoot Grass
4. Indian Crowfoot Grass
5.
6.

---------------------------------------------------
LINKS

Flowers of India - Grasses - http://www.flowersofindia.net/catalog/grass.html

Yamuna Biodiversity Park -- https://dda.org.in/greens/biodiv/yamuna-biodiversity-park.html

India's Middle Class: Beyond Self-Interest

"How do you engage the middle class on broader issues of society, issues that do beyond its own self interests?"

This is a question Sandhya Venkateshwaran articulated in a recent op-ed. She framed this question in the context of two recent events:

In December 2012, when a middle-class student was brutally gang-raped in New Delhi, the city witnessed spontaneous protests and angry demands for accountability. In sharp contrast, when over 20 school-children died after consuming a government-sponsored mid-day meal in rural Bihar, the incident was "greeted by an eerie silence".

So her question is -- - how often has India witnessed middle class protests against the death of poor children or for their right to education; how often have the middle classes raised their voice against the displacement of the tribal community or slum dwellers due to the construction of factories and malls; how often do they protest against the lack of accountability and quality in the public health system?

These questions, somehow, seem like a case of barking up the wrong tree. There have been numerous cases where individuals from the middle classes have given voice, and provided leadership to the poor, who had neither. Yet, have there been instances - anywhere in the world -  where affluent classes have risen in mass protests against inequality and injustices in their own society? I doubt it.

Surat, a city of diamond merchants, was hit by the plague in 1994. Even then, the middle class continued to see the filth and squalor of the city as somebody else's problem - until business came to a standstill, and many of them got quarantined in airports across the world. Once the problems of those outside their gated communities intruded into their homes, change followed.

A bureaucrat named S.R Rao was then able to push through reforms (1995-2002) that increased sanitation coverage to 97% of the city; extended drinking water supply from 60% to 95%;and increased daily garbage clearance from 40% to 98%. So it was hardly surprising when Malaria cases plummeted from 22,000 in 1994 to 496 in 1997, and to zero by 2002.

Public protests may provide good fodder for TV debates and newspaper bylines. They may even lead to enactment of new laws (which nobody implements anyway). But the middle class is unlikely to go beyond tokenism until their comfort zones are clearly encroached.

-------------------------------------------
LINKS

Venkateshwaran, Sandhya (2013): SILENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, IE, 1Aug13 --- http://www.indianexpress.com/news/silence-of-the-middle-class/1149418/0

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/midday-meal-tragedy-bihar-to-issue-stringent-instructions/article4927726.ece

Pallliparambil, Godshen R (): THE SURAT PLAGUE AND ITS AFTERMATH -- http://entomology.montana.edu/historybug/YersiniaEssays/Godshen.htm

Labor Chowk

View NOIDA - Along the Expressway in a larger mapView NOIDA - Along the Expressway in a larger map

Next to the Police Station in Sector 49 is a major crossing where Dadri Road meets Jain Road. At first sight it looks like traffic crossing like any other in Noida where new, wide roads cut through swathes of farming land, leaving in its wake numbered sectors, construction sites, shops and temporary markets.

Look again, as a I did today morning, and you would find on one street-side hundreds of laborers, waiting to be hired. This is where the crossing gets its name -- "Labor Chowk".

Its a motley crowd on the pavement. Skilled laborers - especially construction workers and painters- position themselves with their equipment in hand: leveling scales, brushes, and shovels; the women sit around in their colorful saris while other unskilled laborers just wait with a sharp eye on the road. The moment a prospective employer is sighted, there is a scramble to be spotted and hired.

The terms of engagement are quite clear: Rs.300/day from 9AM to 5PM, with a one hour break in between, for lunch. Despite a clear excess of supply, it is good to see that nobody is desperate to undercut these terms.

Where do these daily wagers come from? What are their numbers in Noida?  Do they all move back to their villages during the harvesting seasons?