10.11.2009

Politics & the Nation

• Very disturbing developments in Maharashtra Assembly
• By now all of you would have read about the story that a certain Samajwadi Party MLA was heckled / beaten for taking the oath in Hindi.
• Take a look at this ET editorial that beautifully sums up the idea of India while castigating this behaviour on the part of the MNS MLAs.
• The Maharashtra Assembly did well to suspend the MNS MLAs for a period of 4 years. We are surprised as to why it did not suspend them for the full 5 year term. That should have conveyed a strong message to the people who elected them in the first place. No people, party, religion or some such grouping within the country, should ever be allowed to challenge the idea of India.
• In the context of the statements emanating from China on the eve of the Dalailama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, it is well worth our effort to take a look at the dispute between India and China over Arunachal Pradesh
• Today's ET story did an excellent job of giving a backgrounder to the issue. Read on...
• In 1913-14, China, Tibet & Britain tried to hammer out the Simla Accord — a deal defining borders between Inner & Outer Tibet, and between Outer Tibet & British India. Henry McMahon, a British administrator, drew up 550 miles of the boundary demarcating British India and Outer Tibet. China walked out of the talks, rejecting the line between Inner and Outer Tibet, but the Accord nonetheless ceded Tawang and other Tibetan areas to the British Empire.
• Since then, China has declared the line invalid, citing the absence of its signature on the Simla Accord. After the collapse of Chinese power in Tibet, the McMahon line was, de facto, accepted as official, & Britain established administrations in the area. However, Tibet & later the People’s Republic of China claimed Tawang district after Indian independence. With China all set to take over Tibet, India declared the McMahon line the official boundary in 1950.
• The North East Frontier Agency was created in 1954. The Tibetan uprising was suppressed by China & its self-ruling government abolished in 1959. The Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, and maps published by the Tibetan government-inexile now show McMahon Line as the southern border of Tibet.
• During the 1962 war, China acquired large parts of NEFA but voluntarily withdrew back to the McMahon line. It was only in 1985 that China declared its ownership claims on the eastern tract roughly corresponding to Arunachal Pradesh.
• Until then, it was prepared to cede this land to India if it was given the cold western desert of Aksai Chin in Ladakh, of strategic importance to China. India rejects China’s claims over both, & post-1985 China has insisted that Arunachal Pradesh is theirs.

Finance & Economy

• India's per capita income to overtake that of the US and UK by July 2048!
• Read this prediction from Hans Rosling of Sweden's Karolinska Institute. Whether or not this turns out to be true cannot be known as many of us may not be alive then. Nor will he, because he is already 61 years old now. But it does make an interesting reading. Take a look.
• SEBI proposes sweeping changes in public offers
• THE Securities and Exchange Board of India on Monday proposed changes to the way public share offerings are done, spelt out guidelines for smaller companies to raise capital through share sales, and called for more disclosures from listed companies to prevent delayed shocks in the form of holes in the books of accounts.
• It is a development of far reaching consequences for the investors. Take a look at the full story.
• Want to get a feel of how hawala transactions happen?
• We are sure, you can't better a news story to do the job than this one.
• At one time or the other in your careers, you may have to tackle these hawala networks. This background should come in handy then.

• CK Prahalad on the inevitability for companies to recognize sustainable development.
• A very good interview that throws some light on the concept.
• Don't ask us who is this Prahalad; will you? He is the well-known management guru that has propounded the 'bottom of the pyramid' and 'core competence' concepts.

International

• How did the US dollar become strong/overvalued? What are the consequences of its strength?
• Its overvaluation began with the Mexican peso crisis of 1994, and was officially enshrined by the “strong dollar” policy adopted after the East-Asian financial crisis of 1997. That policy produced short-term consumption gains for America, which explains why it was popular with American politicians, but it has inflicted major longterm damage on the US economy and contributed to the current crisis.
• The over-valued dollar caused the US economy to haemorrhage spending on imports, jobs via off-shoring, and investment to countries with under-valued currencies. In today’s era of globalisation, marked by flexible and mobile production networks, exchange rates affect more than exports and imports. They also affect the location of production and investment.

Technology

• Bharti Airtel's great use of SMS technology
• Read this story. It is about how it has deployed a customized SMS platform for a lot many internal transactions. It is called me-tize.
• We think that it can start selling this application / platform to other corporates.

Language lessons

• deracinate: Verb
• Move (people) forcibly from their homeland into a new and foreign environment; Pull up by or as if by the roots
• eg: Some sections of the metropolitan elite tend to venerate as the secular Indian a deracinated Ram Robert Rehman who celebrates the festivals of all religions but has contempt for spirituality and for all Indian ‘dialects’ and the cultures encoded in them.
• stanching: Verb
• Stop the flow of a liquid
• eg: China’s currency policy means that dollar depreciation, rather than improving America’s trade balance and stanching its leakage of jobs and investment, may inadvertently spread these problems to the rest of the world.