Chinese Rise and Big Bite

China is growing with such speed that it creates some world record every other week. With 1.4 billion people it uses more mobile phones than any other country. It has more high speed rail links. It has more internet users and it has now overtaken US as the biggest energy consumer. Although china admitted that fact with lot of reluctance but apparently every energy report showed that for last many months. It's worlds largest importer of minerals. Last year it dislodged Germany from the pole position of highest exporter.

This week, China surpassed japan and came right behind US as the second largest economy. It was hardly a surprise as everyone expected that to happen. Chinese media didn't covered the news as a front page item. In fact China emphasized on areas of improvement and continued commitment to make further economic breakthroughs. Even in japan, media didn't give much coverage to this. But it would be interesting to talk about what would be the implications of the rise of dragon- On the world and on India specifically.

China has shown a remarkable progress and it's rise can be an inspiration and a strong blow to those capitalist who say that communism cannot deliver. It's definitely an important milestone. F or almost 43 years japan remained the 2^nd largest economy. Now many economist are predicting that the dragon may soon fly above US, maybe within a decade. China's rise may prove to be a huge benefit for Africa, Latin america , Russia and ofcourse Asia. China has significant stakes in africa and latin america. These areas have long been the places for conflict and have not seen much economic and social development.

The rise will have effect on chinese people as well. As trade is growing, chinese people are interacting more with outside world and are appreciating the democratic governance system which provides much more freedom and security. It would be tough for Chinese Communist Party to handle this new situation. But I think chinese people also acknowledge the fact that communism worked wonders for their country. The west is yet to acknowledge china as a responsible super power, especially with it's policies to support renegade governments and initiating nuclear and weapons proliferation. Some might say that western approbation is not required. But you cannot expect china to rise on it's own.

This week as china moved to number two position on world's top economies list, one of india's biggest business delegation was concluding a visit to shanghai. This delegation's main objective was to persuade chinese government to lift non-tariff barriers to trade and create an environment more conducive to the expansion of indian enterprises in china. Dragon's rise will have significant effects in india. And the course of these effects will be decided by the very nature and perception of indian and chinese people about each other. Most of the people in both the countries are suspicious about the indo-china relations. But it's time that we shed the negativity and try to explore the opportunities we might have in a big consumer market like china. China has build itself as a strong export based economy. But now it has started to look inwards , to accommodate and satisfy domestic needs . Chinese people have comparatively high purchasing power and it could hardly be better timing. Labour costs, power and maintenance costs are almost one-third of the costs in india. You can be granted funds on as low as 6% annual interest rate. That is just not possible in india. In India the funds are scarce and the interest rates are relatively higher and don't forget about huge power and maintenance bills. Chinese people are making money and that money is going to create new markets and strengthen emerging markets. China is gradually opening it's shores for outside business houses and entrepreneurs. China would definitely be a difficult market so an early entry can provide good opportunity to understand and market the products and services in china. Trust me, the timing is just fine. We as indians can shed the negativity and can think of china as a huge potential market. Remember , improved and deeper trade ties will also effect the geo-political truce between these two nations.

Let's talk about few opportunities here:

• China is the workshop of the world and it has started to acknowledge the side effects of that. The zealous and unidirectional focus on manufacturing sector has created huge environmental problems. It has polluted its rivers, denuded forests and caused severe air pollution. By 2020, china is expected to generate 400 million tonnes of waste, which is surprisingly close to the total amount of waste generated by the planet in 1997. There's ample opportunity for waste management programs and re-cycling industry. And as you can think that the cost would be delightfully low.

• I's tourism and hospitality industry is opening up and there' s huge opportunity for indian companies to help them provide superior and quality tourism service.

• Service sector is the best sector which can make deeper holes in China. Indian industry is a customer centric, service oriented industry. Out service maturity level is much higher than chinese. Setting up an IT and services base will enable companies to target far east and tougher markets like Japan and Korea.

• Education and skill Development is another industry which can make inroads in china. Chinese education system have been unchanged for a very long time and it's far from being a global education system. India can help it to devise, administer and manage a truly global education system.

• There are others fields like Finance, Biotechnology, R&D which are looking promising and needs to be explored.

China has well established manufacturing sector and has a very pro-active supply chain system feeding it. Indian companies need to plug into this supply chain and reap the benefit. And the first thing india can do is to push for lowering non tariff barriers. Entrepreneurs can study detailed and comprehensive reports about chinese business environment through trade organizations like CII and FICCI .In any case, it is impossible for india to bypass china. Indian entrepreneurs will have to come up with new ideas and techniques to reap the benefits of this potential market. No doubt it would be difficult, but it's also an opportunity. 

TweetDeck: What a Delight!!

I just started using TweetDeck and i have only one thing to say...Brilliant! I am kinda late on this application but spent almost 2 hours dissecting it and integrating it with my  debian interface. So now iam quite comfortable with it. Well , tweetdeck covers the majority of marketspace as far as twitter related apps are concerned.It can be used on almost any platform including Windows, Mac, Linux even ipad and iphone.

As you can see the interface is really clean and columns can be arranged to show different tweets, re-tweets and recommendations.The most thoughtful feature i think is you can actually group people and follow their tweets. The deck is esentially a adobe AIR application and can be synced with linkedin, facebook and myspace.

Quite cool!! Will definitely recommend it for everyone who wants to simplify twitter.

(I can think of few people like Nikita..and ya ramit also)

Google Image Search: Re-Vamped

By now every one must have noticed that google overhauled it's image search pages. The results are more like arranged in tile like format which expands on mouse action. This is significant improvement. It's good to see that google is concentrating on commonly used features. So far , i found google to be pretty busy with lesser known features like adwords, pagerank and labs.

Keep up the good work...

"America! You are depressed!"

I really thought a lot before publishing this post. And i hate to post this. But you know, some things are so intolerable and shameful that you hardly keep it to yourself. Democrat senator of new york Charles E Schumar is spitting out criticism on companies that outsource high end tech jobs to indians. He thinks that companies like infosys are "chop shops " where used cars are dismantled and parts sold seperately. The comments were made during the disccusion of border security meeting.

This senator needs to know that his america doesnot produce enough skilled people to do these high end tech jobs.Mr Senator, you need to tell your kids that boozing and fuckin around is fine but not sufficient to build nation. Mr senator you also need to know that america is technologically dependent on these "chop shops". Should we give you a demo- Let's make 15 august an absolute holiday. Shut down all support, maintanence and operations supporting american lines. What do you think will happen? It would not be less than an information blackout in US. Someone tell him how many engineers are working in american organisation like Microsoft and IBM. This senator is a complete jackass and puts a big question mark on american people's judgmental ability. The senator shows the current picture of american people- Low IQ, Arrogant fool, Selfish giant and a Shining Gasbag.This senator represents the class of american people who are afraid of hard times, competition, co-existence, mutual support and politeness. His statements are really sad and shows that he is frustrated and lacks the ability to analyse the facts, judge the right path and act accordingly.American people like him are bringing down the image and popularity of  this pioneering nation.

I hate to say this but america is definately a racist country. White americans still hate black americans. British don't like you, French hates you, Russians make you uncomfortable, Arabs wants to kill you, Chinese say "mind your own business", iranians say "Go fuck yourself", Pakis are making fool of you..and the list goes on. Mr Senator, it seems india is the only friend you have got. Those who have not seen racists in 21st century america can actually see Obama's presidential campaign movie. America as a country is very greedy, self centric, arrogant and impolite.

America needs to change it's self perception. Come down to earth , ol man!. Be modest and humble.Regain the respect of other people. Don't blame others for your own mistakes.You went through recession because american people created sub prime mortgage crisis, because you spend billions on war- not because indians snatched your jobs. you need to stop fighting and arguing with others. You are america, but the world is still big for you ol' man!Take responsibility of your own actions.

The world is an imperfect place but the people who are knowledgeable and are from advanced civilisation can come together to make it little more perfect. I still see america as an often right, often wrong country but the time asks for bigger changes in american mindset and thinking.

Crooks, Currency and Commonwealth Games

Hello...

I am returning to maverick's zone after a long time. I was bit busy with OptSEO and so far things are going steady with it. Within last few months lot of things happened and really wanted to write about those.So will try to cover some of those in this post.

 The most disturbing of those was about Commonwealth Games(CWG). Games are barely 60 days far and it certainly looks like a nightmare and huge embarassment for india. Politician and bureacrats are busy passing the buck, indian media is making huge sensational drama out of it and indian people , as usual , are not bothered about it. i wish people were more aware about "Tax- payers money".I think it's high time that each government organisation gets an inbuilt but independent quality control department which can report directly to central vigilance, parliament or PMO. When i hear and read about these huge scams i wonder why everyone calls india so poor.There's lot of money but indians don't want to share it with their own countrymen. Rich people in delhi want to earn but don't want to pay tax, people in mumbai want to snatch everything, people in kolkata will die or kill for 25 paisa and people in chennai will not spend the money on anything. It's sure a land of variety but one thing is present in almost all indians- they are easily corruptible and they can infect others with this. Bofors scam saw italian job, bhopal tragedy saw american selfishness and commonwealth saw corruption crossing boundaries and touching the shores of england and australia. Last month Mr David Cameron said that there's no need to sent development fund to india as rich indians should be able to take care of their own countrymen. Instead, after a week he came in india to sell 50 hawk jet trainers and sign many trade agreements. I don't know what others are thinking about india- a cash pond maybe. Uh ..Indians are already called as cash cows in australia. So much for a third world country. I wonder what Mr Kalmadi is thinking ..or what is going through the mind of DDA officers. An apartment in paris maybe... with euro bills in swiss bank. Mighty dream ..isn't it? Mighty dreams calls for desperate attempts..like stealing money from own country..Country ??? Wait a minute...what the hell are you talking about?..It's globalization age. The world is the country. India is for poor . I want to have an apartment in paris and want my children to work in big investment firms in US. Indian dreams are apparently bigger than any other dream and you know what..it's growing.

But what would be more worthly- the rightous path or just the destination. What is worthy is a complex question and iam sure people like Mr Kalmadi skip that question every night before going to sleep. Mr Subroto Roy also shared some lime light when he got his “public appeal” printed in the daily copy of Times Of India. He actually asked media to stop the CWG scam coverage till the end of the game. According to him this issue can be handled after the games. Mr Roy..I think I should tell you that it's information age. You cannot contain information and do you really think that “later” word has much importance in this situation. You are basically asking for more time - for cover up maybe!

I think let the world know that our politicians and beauracrats are actually sophisticated crooks and are complete jackass. I think all the development funds from so called rich countries should be stopped. India is self sufficient. I think people should stop paying the extra tax in delhi, independent cost analysts and engineers should check all the documentations related to CWG obtained through RTI and let this scam be a trial by the people, through the people and for the people.

Uh..here you go..Another drama was hatched in bihar few weeks ago and just now it reached delhi. Mr Nitish Kumar is in delhi to ask for Rs 5000 Cr. Oh no..He is not putting up a request to host CW games in bihar. He is really touched by the drought situation in bihar. Now this is strange, I knew that bihar suffers from flood disasters. I thought that bihar has pretty well water sources and it gets good rain every season. So much rain that rivers Ganges and Damodar floods half of the bihar. Mr Nitish kumar certainly needs lessons in natural resource management- water management to be precise. But Mr kumar what will you do with Rs 5000cr? That's a lot of money.I think bihar will vote for next assembly within next few months. The election commision team is already there in patna..isn'it?So how are you planning to spend the money- Deposit 1000 cr in your swiss bank account, 2000 cr for your peers, goons , renegade ganglords, 500 cr to buy independent MPs and maybe spend some of the remaining on the relief work.Oh ...but you have relief in your mind..what about re-construction, rehabilitation. Hmmm..so you are already thinking about your next trip to delhi..How much will you ask next time? maybe Rs10000 Cr? But i wonder what happened to bihar's savings account...is it empty? Oh i forgot..Your state is one of the poorest provinces in the world..majority of the people don't fall under income tax slab and those who fall don't pay it...also Mr Lalu Yadav sweeped the savings account a decade ago. I understand Mr Nitish ...You do a tough job in Bihar!