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[1] From: Dolphy D'souza <personnelpeople@vsnl.net> Date: Sat Feb 4, 2006 Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] Urgent appeal from Christian groups Thank you Ammu, Best Regards, dOLPHY From: "Women's Centre" <womcentr@bom7.vsnl.net.in> To: <indiathinkersnet@yahoogroups.com> Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] Urgent appeal from Christian groups ---------------- [2] From: "Aditya Mishra" <hindu.skeptic@gmail.com> Date: Sat Feb 4, 2006 Subject: pinstriped Indian Europe's fear of pinstriped Indian - Print Version - International Herald Tribune Europe's fear of pinstriped Indian By Anand Giridharadas International Herald Tribune FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2006 MUMBAI, India Polish plumber, step aside. The new archetype of the threat to Europe is the Indian in pinstripes. Or so it seemed this week, as French political and corporate elites shaped Mittal Steel's hostile bid of E18.6 billion, or $22.5 billion, for its European rival Arcelor into nothing less than a corporate clash of civilizations. The specter of a European industrial icon being taken over by an Indian company provoked a swift, united front among politicians and business leaders that is rarely seen on other issues that arise in the European Union. "French people have been worried about globalization," said S?©bastien Montigny, head of business development for France at Infosys, the Indian outsourcer. "First, we were talking about the European Community and the plumber from Poland. Then China. Now, India is emerging as a new, big important economy that France has to deal with." Arcelor's chief executive, Guy Doll?©, issued a rain of fiery comments after Lakshmi Mittal, the Indian-born billionaire, issued his surprise offer for the company on Jan. 27. Mittal Steel, an empire spanning five continents, was a "company of Indians," Doll?© said, and a "group of less-than-average" businesses that would pay for Arcelor "in monkey money" - a common French colloquial expression that means that something is worthless. European steel, Doll?© added, was like "perfume," and Mittal's steel like "eau de cologne." Government officials expressed their concern in a different way. France, Luxembourg and Spain - where Arcelor has factories - banded together to raise the specter of an irreconcilable clash of business cultures and the prospect of job cuts among Arcelor's tens of thousands of European workers. The arguments sounded familiar: The pristine West was at risk of being sullied by the cheap, shoddy East. But Lakshmi Mittal, the chairman and chief executive of Mittal Steel, is no Polish plumber. He is an entrepreneur who came from a village with no electricity to build the world's largest steel company. He is now the world's third-richest man, behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. In 2004, Mittal's wealth, buoyed by China's demand for steel, expanded at the rate of $36,000 a minute. And far from being a familiar threat, Mittal represents a challenge to Europe that is profoundly new: the emerging market not as a font of cheap talent, but as a springboard for new business models and new multinationals seeking to beat or buy Western companies. "This action from Mittal toward Arcelor will crystallize the fact that India will be a major player in the next century, and French people have realized this through this event," said Montigny, the Infosys executive. The leftist, pro-worker French newspaper Lib?©ration published an article on Thursday chiding politicians for not foreseeing the globalization of companies from emerging countries. The problem is "that Lakshmi Mittal is Indian, and that India was more reassuring when it was not a new emerging power, equipped with multinationals on the march," said the article, written by Jo?«l Ruet, an India scholar and researcher affiliated with the London School of Economics and L'?‰cole des Mines in Paris. Strictly speaking, Mittal Steel is not an Indian company. Lakshmi Mittal lives in London and the company is formally based there and in the Netherlands. Mittal Steel has no operations in India, although there are plans to build them soon. But apart from his Indian heritage, Mittal is associated with emerging markets because of the nature of his business model. From the beginning, it focused on turning around steel plants in the developing world and running them at bargain-basement costs. Mittal perfected that model in places like Mexico, Kazakhstan and Trinidad before applying it to advanced economies like that of the United States, where he recently completed his acquisition of International Steel. Europe's reaction to Mittal's bid for Arcelor has created some tension between India and Europe. The Indian ambassador to the European Union, Dipak Chatterjee, said Thursday that he was "disappointed" at the European response. "Very unpleasant comments have been made, not in good taste," he said by telephone from Brussels. As it looked increasingly likely that European governments could do little to stop Mittal, all sides toned down their rhetoric. The French finance minister, Thierry Breton, repeated earlier statements that shareholders would ultimately decide the fate of Mittal Steel's bid, and called it "a European company." Doll?© on Friday said Arcelor remained "completely determined in our opposition to Mittal Steel's offer," but for the first time he said he would not exclude discussions with Mittal. Europe's reaction reflects the escalating challenge mounted by emerging economies like China and India, to which the West originally turned for inexpensive labor, whether in China's factories or on India's software campuses. But while the rise of China is widely associated with factory job losses in the West or with threats to national security - as when the Chinese oil company Cnooc tried to purchase the U.S. oil giant Unocal - India has more or less escaped such perceptions. Now, the Mittal bid may give rise to a new image of India, and of emerging markets more generally, as a profound and sophisticated threat. European concerns partly reflect the unknowns of how Mittal Steel will apply its low-cost model to Arcelor's plants. Steel industry analysts say that Mittal Steel is far leaner than Arcelor and is likely to trim, but Mittal has denied that there will be any plant closings or layoffs. Europe is also wary of the ascendancy of business models invented outside the West - whose inventors claim that they can operate Western companies better than Westerners do. In interviews, several India-based expatriate workers for European multinationals all argued that it was this deeper, high-end threat that worried Europe. "This threat is stronger than the threat of" outsourcing, said Antoine Zenone, a vice president at the French cement maker Lafarge and the company's lone French expatriate in India. "We're no longer talking about keeping companies within the borders, but rather about preventing companies from coming in." J?©r??me Rouch, a Frenchman and manager of Natexis Pramex International in India, said, "We don't realize that with 60 million people, compared with India and China, which is 2.3 billion, we are nothing. We keep moaning. We are cowering." IHT ---------------------------- [3] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Sat Feb 4, 2006 Subject: US Military Leaders Blast Political Cartoon [The cartoon is available at <http://www.ucomics.com/tomtoles/2006/01/29/>;] Military leaders blast newspaper for cartoon depicting wounded soldier By Robert Burns ASSOCIATED PRESS ------------------------ [4] From: rkurian@bgl.vsnl.net.in Cc: indiathinkersnet@yahoogroups.com Date: Sat Feb 4, 2006 Subject: World "lukewarm" to India's role... BBC NEWS World 'lukewarm to India's role' India fails to evoke any strong feelings from other countries in the world, a new poll for the BBC suggests. The survey for the BBC World Service asked how 39,435 people in 33 nations across the globe saw various countries. On an average, 41% of the people polled did not say whether India had a positive or negative influence. The poll found Iran having a negative influence in the world, while Japan is most widely seen to have a positive influence. Interestingly, Indians themselves are the most tepid or modest in their self-estimates. BBC World Service Poll The survey by the international polling firm GlobeScan and the University of Maryland took place between October 2005 and January 2006. Mixed response The results on India's influence in the world are mixed, with most deciding not to answer one way or another. On average, 35% of the people polled said India had a positive influence, while 24% believed it has a negative influence. "Many more countries (22) countries gave it [India] a net positive rating (6), but nearly all of these are plurality positions (20 positive, 5 negative)," the poll said. Two countries, Iran and Afghanistan, overwhelmingly voted to say India had a positive influence in the world. In Iran, 71% had a positive view of India. In Afghanistan, 59% believed the same. The only country with widespread negative view about India's influence is the Philippines with 57% voting "mainly negative". Interestingly, Sri Lanka is upbeat about its big neighbour - 49% had a positive view, while only 4% were negative. India's nuclear-armed neighbour Pakistan was not in the list of countries polled. The poll found European countries divided about India. Great Britain and Russia turned up most positive with over 47% having a positive view of India in the two countries. France and Finland viewed India most negatively - both being 44% negative and 27% positive. The US leans slightly positive towards India -39% had a positive view, while 35% thought negatively. The poll found that Indians themselves were the "most tepid or modest in their self-estimates". While in most countries a large majority give their country a positive rating, the picture is different in India. Only 47% of Indians had a positive view of their country. Only 10% had a negative view. A total of 1452 people above 18 years of age were polled in India. The margin of error in polling ranged from 2.5% to 4%. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4676304.stm Published: 2006/02/03 07:59:26 GMT ------------------------ [5] From: "Ram Narayanan" <ramn_one@adelphia.net> Date: Sun Feb 5, 2006 Subject: Kiplinger's on why Indian companies' return on equity averages 18%, compared with just 8% for Chinese Dear Friends: The following article in a recent issue of the prestigious American personal finance and business forecasting organization's web-based 'Your Guide to Making Money Work', analyzes why India is a far more profitable market for overseas investors, as compared to China . EXCERPTS: ***For all of China's apparent strengths, India's stock market has performed far better. Lifted by a tsunami of foreign money, the Bombay index has surged 170% over the past 30 months. The Shanghai Stock Exchange hit an eight-year low in July and is off 51% from its June 2001 high -- a curious result amid a booming economy. ***Since the still-nominally Communist nation opened for business in 1978, China's gross domestic product has expanded by a staggering 9% a year, and international trade has grown at an annual rate of 15%. But foreign companies, not Chinese-listed enterprises, dominate exports. ***India excels in services, an area in which brainpower and fluency in English are more important than heavy capital spending. The strict labor laws, high taxes and bureaucratic red tape that strangle manufacturing barely touch India's new service industries. ***The two most dynamic sectors of the Chinese economy -- foreign-invested manufacturing and private enterprises, which are generally new and small -- are scarcely represented on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Instead, lumbering state-owned enterprises -- relics from the country's shrinking old economy, not its surging new one -- dominate the exchanges. Many of those companies are headed by bosses who have little idea of how to run investor-owned enterprises. A steady stream of news about accounting fraud, embezzlement and rampant inside trading -- even fabrication of shareholder meetings -- contributed to the collapse of both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges starting in 2001. ***Compared with China's young stock markets, the Bombay Stock Exchange is a grizzled veteran. Founded in 1875 under a banyan tree, it is Asia's oldest exchange. In recent years, the world-class National Stock Exchange has upstaged the BSE. Established in Bombay in 1994, the privately owned NSE employs computerized trading and paperless settlement systems. "The NSE is a fantastic exchange," says Ajit Dayal, chief executive officer of Quantum Advisors, a Bombay-based investing firm. ***Since April 2003, both exchanges have shot up in nearly straight lines. Why? Foreign investors, attracted by India's 7% annual economic growth and strong gains in corporate profits (30% in 2004 among the 100 biggest Indian companies), have poured money into Indian stocks. "Corporate performance has been phenomenal," says Atul Kumar, of Practical Financial Services, a local brokerage. ***With a longer tradition of private enterprise, Indian entrepreneurs tend to focus more on profitability than their Chinese counterparts do. "Indians have a much greater respect for capital," says Samir Mehta, chief investment officer of Hong Kong's Lloyd George Management. Mehta calculates that over a typical business cycle, return on equity (a measure of profitability) for Indian companies averages 18%, compared with just 8% for Chinese companies. ***Chinese stocks are risky, and even if you invest in mutual funds, be prepared for substantial volatility. ***India's economy is a great long-term story, but be aware that its white-hot stock market may be overdue for a correction. The Bombay index has soared 170% since April 2003, including a 20% jump in the first ten months of 2005. Still, Indian stocks don't appear hugely overpriced on a price-earnings basis. An index of 50 large Indian companies recently traded at 15 times the past year's earnings. ***Notable newcomer. During a recent visit, Andrew Foster observed a wave of entrepreneurship sweeping all across India. Even in Calcutta, that heart-rending symbol of poverty, he was impressed with the commitment to progress, including a construction boom in roads and housing developments. "The place had changed dramatically over the 20 months since I'd last visited," he says. Read on. Cheers, Ram Narayanan US-India Friendship http://www.usindiafriendship.net/ http://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/magazine/archives/2005/12/asian.html KIPLINGER'S PERSONAL FINANCE What's Driving the Asian Giants? For China, it's manufacturing. For India, it's services. For you, it means profits. By Andrew Tanzer |
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| << February03, 2006 - I[ndia Thinkers Net]HR bulletin,Arundhati,Gandhi murder etc |
February08, 2006 - [India Thinkers Net] on the nuke deal etc >> |
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