Ricky Ponting was known to be a cricketer, but I assume since he has been so pathetic lately, he has taken up being a clairvoyant as well. In the sunday edition of The Times of India, he mentioned that a third final wont be necessary, little did I realize that he meant India was to win.
Wonderful...
Its such a pleasure to see the likes of Ricky Ponting, Mathew Hayden, Andrew Symonds etc, eat humble pie...
Chak De India!!!
This weekend was the Big Willy Weekend. With my family, I watched 3 Will Smith movies on the trot.
The movies being:
The three movies touch upon three different views of life and all three are different genres of movie.
Its wonderful to see Will Smith portray three different characters with such finesse.
The first I saw, Hitch, portrays him as a date doctor, helping people (mostly men) with their problems in approaching the opposite sex. And how some idiot thinks that Will Smiths character is there to help him with his "Wham Bham, Thank You M'am" approach to life. In the idiots own words, "Get In, Get Off, Get Out". But in fact Will Smiths character is out there to help people who are genuinely interested in the opposite sex. The Bollywood rip off, "Partner" is a cheap imitation.
The next one I saw, I Am Legend, shows him as Dr. Robert Neville. An acclaimed scientist working on a cure for the virus that has already killed a 90% of Earths population, and converted a large percent of the surviving populace into bloodthirsty mutants. Some of the moments in that movie, especially the ones that convey his loneliness in view of the death of his canine friend are depicted wonderfully.
And last but not the least, The Pursuit Of Happyness, that shows him as a loving father who succeeds in achieving his goals despite all odds. This is one hell of a movie. You almost want to go and help him looking at him struggling through his life.
All the movies so different and so entertaining, and yet I never felt heavy after watching them. Compare that to a usual SRK melodrama, boy oh boy, I am waiting to get myself admitted to hospital to check out on the status of my health. I am not a SRK baiter, but I just cant seem to digest his last offering Om Shanti Om. If not for the songs, except Dard-E-Disco, the movie is a total sucker.
Never mind, It felt wonderful watching these three movies. Hope, Will Smith keeps acting in such wonderful movies.
I recently watched Taare Zameen Par, the directorial debut by Aamir Khan. I am at loss of words to speak about the movie. Brilliant would be an understatement. The way the story has been handled speaks volumes about Aamir's caliber as a director. The movie doesn't indulge in any over the top melodramatic display of emotions. The emotions are portrayed subtly, with every character well defined. All the actors have delivered terrific performances.
There are moments in the first half where I felt that Darsheel's character has something in common with Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon series. Overall a wonderful movie. I completely enjoyed it. Compared to another movie I had seen, Om Shanti Om, this in my opinion is miles ahead in its execution, story and direction.
Beating the Australians at Perth, their fortress is a sweet victory. No doubt the Aussie's had their share of bad decisions this test match, but so did the Indian team at Sydney. It was wonderful to see Ricky Ponting eat humble pie.
I guess the best thing would be to win the Adelaide test match. That would round up the entire series and the Australian team, though they might have record books to boast about their second 16 consecutive test victories, deep down in their hearts, they would know they had already been beaten at Sydney.
Ishant Sharma was a revelation. My claim would be, he is the find of the tour. He had Ponting dancing all around the crease. seeing Gilchrist's furniture being disturbed by Sehwag was another beautiful sight. The part where Irfan Pathan asked for some more noise after collecting Stuart Clarke's wicket was a bold statement of his confidence.
We now go to Adelaide with heads held high.
CHAK DE INDIA!!! :D :D :D
Well, this piece certainly seems to be a little late in the offering. Its almost like beating a dead horse, but I was quite busy when the horse was alive.
The horse in question is the second test match which was played at Sydney.
I never have seen such a disappointing game of cricket. The standard of umpiring was the worst I have ever seen. And to see the Australian captain talk about honesty and integrity was utterly comical. Ricky Ponting is turning out to be the finest cheat in the history of cricket, not to mention that he has a suitable protege in Michael Clarke.
Of course our batsmen should have shown more character by at least staying put for the last three overs, but that doesn't absolve the Aussie's of the way they played and the way that the umpires gave out the wonderful decisions.
The only way to sum it up was in the way captain Anil Kumble put it across, "There was only one team playing in the spirit of the game". And the reply by Ricky Ponting was at the best a cheap childish reply.
To see the way Glenn McGrath came to the support of his team mates was another sad affair, especially when the whole world know that he had an incident where he spat on Brian Lara. Then we have the match referee Mike Procter who being an epitome of fairness has imposed a ban on Harbhajan. And this guy is the same match referee who banned a ex-captain of the Pakistan cricket team, the stupid Rashid Latif for claiming a false wicket. By the same yardstick, shouldn't Ricky Ponting, Michael Clarke, Adam Gilchrist etc be banned for the false wickets they claimed? Quite simply the true racist here is Mike Procter, who is not qualified even to judge over a dispute between two kids squabbling over a piece of candy, is now deciding as serious an allegation as racism.
Since the umpires are also human, we are factoring a huge error in matches by not deciding to use technology. Those who are opposing technology by saying that it removes the human element are just sore losers, who are resisting change. They probably want to get away with false decisions for as long as possible.
Its high time the ICC (Incompetent/Idiotic/Idiosyncratic/Impotent Cricket Council) did something about the falling standards of this beautiful game.
Following is a dialogue from one of my favorite movies "V for Vendetta". Just love the free flow of words. And hats off to the actor, Hugo Weaving, for the way he has portrayed the character V.
"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [slashes a V into a Norsefire poster] The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. [giggles] Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you, and you may call me V."
Couple of days back, one of my colleagues asked me, "Do you know why they teach us history in school??". I replied promptly, "Of course, so that we do not repeat the mistakes made in history!!!". The discussion went on, after all we needed something to discuss, to take our mind of the just about ok food we were eating for lunch. The topic went on, with both of us putting across some or the other anecdotes, details of which I would put across, some other day.
When I was sleeping later that night, I was again struck by that question.
Indeed, if we look around us, we don't really seem to have learnt our history well enough. Or maybe, we think that we are intelligent enough, to not repeat the mistakes and end up overlooking the steps that we take, which result in us repeating mistakes from history. I don't have the patience or the energy to fill up this space with different events. But if every one of us ponders over their past, they would see a lot of mistakes they have repeated.
No wonder there goes a saying that "History repeats itself!!!"
What a load of crap!!!
Farah Khan could have done better!!! The only promising part about the movie is "Deepika Padukone".
The movie is a useless rehash of the countless reincarnation movies available in Bollywood. Though it has a stark resemblance to the classic "Karz".
I am not gonna waste my time and effort in writing about this movie. Agreed I njoyed some parts of the movie, the songs etc. But after half time the movie goes into a downward spiral. The nuisance value just increases!!!
An interesting aspect I want to share is this. The title song "Om Shanti Om" which has lots of stars coming in for a guest appearance was quite good. And in this song, I almost blacked out SRK. From my perspective He just dint exist in any frame of the song. I was just too busy looking at the other actors/actresses. Ditto for the song, Dard-e-Disco. Wasn't looking at SRK at all, was looking at the other dancers. Almost all the songs, that's precisely what I was doing!!!
Catch it on a DVD later sometime, when you have absolutely nothing to do....
Times rated it as 3.5/5 I say 2.5 would suffice!!!
This is a forward I received in my mail box today!!!
I do not know who has written it.
But its worth reading... :)The Lord surveyed the Ram Setu and said "Hanuman, how diligently andHanuman with all humility spoke "Jai Sri Ram, it is all because of your
grace. We just scribbled your name on the bricks and threw them in the
sea and they held. No steel from TISCO or cement from Ambuja or ACC was
ever used. But Lord, why rake up the old issue now."
Hanuman humbly bowed down and said "Why not we go down and present our case"
Ram said "Times have changed since we were down there. They will ask us"Lord can't understand these historians. Over the years you have given
darshan once every hundred years to saints like Surdas, Tulsidas, Saint
Thyagaraja, Jayadeva, Bhadrachala Ramdas and even Sant Tukaram and still
they disbelieve your existence and say Ramayana is a myth. The only
option, I see, is to re-enact Ramayana on earth and set the government
records straight once for all."
Lord smiled "It isn't that easy today. Ravan is apprehensive that he may
look like a saint in front of Karunanidhi. I also spoke to his mama
Mareecha, who appeared as a golden deer to tempt Sita maiyya when I was
in the forest and he said that he won't take a chance of stepping on
earth as long as Salman Khan is around."
Do you remember the days when we dint have so many news channels? We had the one and only one Doordarshan news. This was available in both Hindi and English. As for the international news, we had good old Pranoy Roy hosting "The world this week" on Fridays.
But now, I hate to even accidentally land on any news channel while surfing. Practically every news channel is dishing out some trash or the other. I somehow feel that these media personnel are so full of themselves these days, that they can go any length to get that coveted big story. One of the worst lines "You saw it first on ... TV". It doesn't matter what has happened, whether my neighbors cat farted, whether its a natural calamity, whether its a terrorist attack, no matter what it is, the most important thing is, "You saw it first on ... TV". What's with these media folks???
This seems to be the case everywhere. For some stupid TRP ratings, the media streams painful images repeatedly. The case I am referring to being the tapes of the Virginia Tech student who went on that inhuman massacre. Then there was Anna Nicole Smiths death and the subsequent custody battle that her boyfriend was battling out against some lawyer for her child. One news channel was almost dedicated to covering her. For Gods sake, she was a drug addict and an adult movie actress. By providing her a non stop obituary, the media is doing nothing but glorifying her acts and her life!!! Is this right??? How does the impressionable teenage mind react to this kind of news? Is the media aware of the repercussions of its news hunt? Who cares, the TRP's and the increasing bottom lines due to the increase in advertising are more important.
The media which is supposed to be the watch dog, has gradually become a monster out on hunt. Preying upon anything and everything which would give them something to talk about.
Another example, Adnan from Mumbai, the financial capital of India, was murdered by a bunch of idiotic guys. The reason, they had kidnapped him and asked for ransom, but due to incessant media coverage the kidnappers got scared, they killed Adnan. If the media had not been so ruthless in its coverage, maybe the Police could have got him back safe.
I wish the media regulates itself. There is no point in bringing a legislation to regulate the media.
Individuals, once they join an organization have an ambition that they want to reach the top echelons of the organization they belong to. Well, yes, baring a few exceptions, who are content with what they do and do not want to rise into the upper echelons, the so called corridors of power. They are the blessed ones. Truth has dawned upon them, that in this game, the prince is but a pauper!!!
Most of us think that once we get the designation of a supervisor, we are all set to arrive in the big bad corporate world.
Just then, we hear a big bell DINGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We still report to another person, who happens to be our supervisor. Hence, the arrival of "The Person" into the arena gets delayed by some period. Thus begins the quest for ascent into the next level of the hierarchy. The concerned individual thinks that the moment he/she goes to the next level, this bigger, meaner, smarter individual would redefine the way things work. Uh oh, did we hear the big bell again???
The answer is yes. Unfortunately, more often than not, the individual meets another bigger, meaner, smarter person awaiting the new jackass!!!
For those who go on to the top positions of an organization, they end up being answerable to the share holders. One of these share holders could in fact be an employee of the same organization.
My take being that this cycle has no end!!! No body is truly king!!!!
Of course there are exceptions, royalty for that matter is such a parasitic institution.
The Presidential elections are around the corner. The electoral college is going to put its "supposed" intelligence to test. Well, not really... the fate of the fabulous Rashtrapati Bhavan has been decided.
Its going to be the wonderful Pratibha Patil. The one lady who believes in ghosts and spooks, and has spooked out a co-operative bank, and also has been accused of shielding her brother from accusations of murder.
WOW!!! Feels so wonderful, that the countries highest office is being occupied by such a luminary. Wonder if we could have some exorcists to keep her company, in case she starts doing a Whoopi Goldberg (from the 1990 movie Ghost). Now that this has struck me, it would indeed be wonderful.
It would be welcome experience if the spirits of Dr. Radhakrishnan S. , Dr. Rajendra Prasad, or Indira Gandhi etc, could come down and possess her!!!
I am just not able to comprehend why they would want this lady as the President of India? If its really a matter of showing that women are really empowered in today's India, wouldn't Dr. Kiran Bedi be a wonderful choice? Perhaps, Dr. Kiran Bedi would have been a choice of the intelligentsia. But the current sequence of events indicates that the electoral college does not have any. Maybe it has few.
So given an option I wonder if we still would have Pratibha Patil as our President. Apart from our honorary electoral college,( yeah right, honorary!!), we have a celebrity who is also vouching for her.
I used to think Preity Zinta was a sensible lady, but I guess sometimes sensibilities do take a backseat...
This is what she said...
'' I support the candidature of Ms Patil. It has nothing to do with politics. It is for the first time that a woman has got the chance to adorn the highest seat of power and I think our country is ready for it''.
As I said, she just blurted out in the spur of the moment, I would like to believe that. If not then she needs to keep her mouth shut and stop thinking. This is the trouble when people who are not supposed to think start thinking!!!
What you would be reading now is my take on the Individuals who change jobs. Changing it frequently or not is immaterial, or maybe it is not. But I leave it up to the reader to decide about it.
What causes a motivated employee to call it a day and move on to "supposedly" greener pastures? Well, as a common phrase goes, Its not the last straw which breaks the camels back, but the ones before that.
This is not a rehash of the countless emails that one gets being in a typical IT organization. Rather, this is a reflection of my thoughts on what is happening around me.
An employee, after slogging it out, and gaining the trust of the client and getting in more projects expects that he would be given a better remuneration or be suitable awarded. However, the amount he would get would be just about a tad bit more than the folks who did not put in similar effort. Or he would end up getting peanuts for whatever efforts he has put in. This kick starts the thinking process, which questions the intelligence of putting hours of hard work. Then there are the usual pot shots that the supervisor/manager would indulge in. Comparison is a wonderful way, by which they either belittle or destroy an individual. But giving the devil its dues, it is helpful in some cases.
In a nut shell, these behavioral patterns displayed by supervisors/managers, serves only one purpose, i.e. to increase the probability of an individual leaving the organization, and add to the attrition rate of the organization.
I am aware that in the long run, money cannot be the only motivating factor. After spending few years in an organization, an individual would want vertical movement as well. But this is not true for everyone. Some folks might just be content with a good raise every year or every appraisal cycle, commensurate with their performance. This of course doesn't happen. The entire process, almost always, if not every time is skewed in favor of the so called favorites. The reasons why certain individuals are favorites and certain are not, are obscure to a normal individual.
Once the affected individual leaves the organization, the "HR" goes on a wild goose chase to get the right individual. The entire exercise of getting the right candidate would have been avoided, if the person who quit, was not forced to do so. The reasons are varied, and personal reasons for quitting, cannot be avoided. But individuals who quit because of work related reasons, by individuals, I mean, good resources who quit because of work related reasons, should raise the alarm bells. It should be reason enough for the organization for a process of introspection.
Phew, that takes some load of me...
This is an incident that a occurred few months back. Before I start, a little information about what the premise is.
In Bangalore there was a move to replace all the analog autorichshaw meters with digital meters. These were "supposed" to be "tamper proof".
Well, fine Wednesday morning, after I was in office for almost the entire tuesday night, I go out hunting for an auto. I am waving at almost every auto to stop.
Few stop, and say they need Rs.100 for traveling 6 km. The standard fare being Rs 5/Km. It now stands at Rs. 6/Km.
Finally, after waiting for a good half hour, I get one guy. He just asks me Rs. 10 over and above, what the meter(digital) would display. In a firm and angry tone, I told him, nothing at all. Only what the meter displays. The response, left me stunned.
"क्या साब, दस रुपया एक्स्ट्रा देदो ना साब, येह मीटर दिगिटल हैं साब, इसको मैं
चेध कर बढ़ा भी नही सकता, देदो ना साब"
For those who don't know Hindi, this guy was asking me to pay him extra coz he was forced into being honest, as the digital meter dint give him an opportunity to tamper around, as he would have with an analog meter.
Finally I did make it home safe and sound, without giving any extra money.
naaaaaaaaa, I had to give him some extra amount, since the guy dint have a change.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Another snippet.
This was when my wife, was my girlfriend. She was going to her examination hall in an auto.
This auto guy was "a complete cartoon". In his own words, he had a degree in MRA,
Masters in Rickshaw Administration.
Yes, I know, late for a review about this movie. But nevertheless, my opinions about the movie I just saw.
The movie, well not historically accurate, but yes some what close to it. An exaggeration to make it even more spectacular. Visually spectacular, a definite yes.
Visually I would say this movie is amazingly shot. But the violence is sometimes quite over the top. Haven't seen many movies before this which show the entire sequence of a person being beheaded. The action sequences are just awesome. I have seen the behind the scenes footage of this movie and I would say its definitely a lot of hard work. The movie has been made as close as possible to the comic strip its been derived from. The training that the warriors had to go through is so strenuous. Overall I would say its definitely worth watching. Though you might wanna avoid making accurate references to actual historical events. Just enjoy it as a visually spectacular and excessively violent movie.
Though, this does make me wonder, if this simple story of 300 warriors who stop the raging Persian army can be made so visually spectacular, the treatment of our own mythologies of Mahabharata and The Ramayana and many others could be made so much more wonderful.
Wish some major Hollywood studio decides on doing this.
I.S.T also known as Indian Standard Time. Well this is defined as UTC + 5.30 (UTC a.k.a Coordinated Universal Time, a.k.a GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)).
A brief description of time is
IST) is the time observed throughout India, with a time offset of UTC+5:30. India does not observe daylight saving time, (DST) or other seasonal adjustments, although DST was used briefly during the Sino–Indian War of 1962 and the Indo–Pakistani Wars of 1965 and 1971.[1] In military and aviation time, IST is designated E* ("Echo-Star").[2] Indian Standard Time is calculated on the basis of 82.5° E longitude, which is just west of the town of Mirzapur, near Allahabad in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The longitude difference between Mirzapur and the United Kingdom's Royal Observatory at Greenwich translates to an exact time difference of 5 hours 30 minutes. Local time is calculated from a clock tower at the Allahabad Observatory () though the official time-keeping devices are entrusted to the National Physical Laboratory, in New Delhi.
The above is an extract from wikipedia.
Now coming back to my blog... Over the world, IST is not understood as above, but as (GMT+5.30) + increments to it as per own convenience.
Imagine, you have something important to be done say @10:30 a.m. and this task is dependent on some other person, who though he/she might be competent, has a tendency to miss timings.
So what happens is that you end up missing the deadline. period.
I can go on about different scenarios which folks miss the timings, but this wont change the situation overnight.
I do not know what is it that makes folks insensitive about the value of the time of another person.
Is it because of the चलता है attitude inculcated in us since time immemorial?
I DO NOT KNOW!! BUT IT SURE DOES SUCK!!!
Now that I have your attention, lets replace "A Girl" with a bottle of whiskey.
Aha...I never realized, that I am replacing one intoxicant with another!!!. And of course, lets drop the pizza place, not that when two guys are drunk to the hilt, they bother whether they are in a pizza place or a strip joint or dipping their head in the rest room(YUCK!!!)
Now to disclose the identity of the two guys. No!!! I am not doing that, for fear of my own well being and of course a humble request from them as well.
The whiskey was Canadian Mist.
I have seen what liquor can do to ppl. Not that I hadn't seen drunken folks before, but I had never been witness to a man drinking and going berserk.
I witnessed a sort of de-evolution. Here was a man, going back to his primeval times, the whiskey had triggered the mutant gene in him. Behold!!! for he had become an APE!!!!
He was banging down chairs on the floor like some gorilla playing with a log of wood, he was jumping around the whole room. The mention of members of the opposite sex elicited an amazing response. It was similar to that of a full grown gorilla with over charged testosterone. This was a full blown display of the awakened basic instinct which was lying dormant in him.
I wish I could capture in film, these moments of whatever you might think of it as.
I am sure many folks out there have plenty of bizzare tales about ppl drunk as though there is no tomorrow.
But this sure was a first for me.
And it pretty much strengthens my resolve to never take up drinking.
When foreigners say Bangalore is India's version of Silicon Valley, the high-tech office park called Electronics City is what they're often thinking of. But however much Californians might hate traffic-clogged Route 101, the main drag though the Valley, it has nothing on Hosur Road. This potholed, four-lane stretch of gritty pavement -- the primary access to Electronics City -- is pure chaos. Cars, trucks, buses, motorcycles, taxis, rickshaws, cows, donkeys, and dogs jostle for every inch of the roadway as horns blare and brakes squeal. Drivers run red lights and jam their vehicles into any available space, paying no mind to pedestrians clustered desperately on median strips like shipwrecked sailors.
Pass through the six-foot-high concrete walls into Electronics City, though, and the loudest sounds you hear are the chirping of birds and the whirr of electric carts that whisk visitors from one steel-and-glass building to the next. Young men and women stroll the manicured pathways that wend their way through the leafy 80-acre spread or coast quietly on bicycles along the smooth asphalt roads.
With virtually no mass transit in Bangalore, Indian technology firm Infosys Technologies Ltd. spends $5 million a year on buses, minivans, and taxis to transport its 18,000 employees to and from Electronics City. And traffic jams mean workers can spend upwards of four hours commuting each day. "India has underinvested in infrastructure for 60 years, and we're behind what we need by 10 to 12 years," says T.V. Mohandas Pai, director of human resources for Infosys.
India's high-tech services industry has set the country's economic flywheel spinning. Growth is running at 9%-plus this year. The likes of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT - News), Vodafone (NYSE:VOD - News), and Citigroup (NYSE:C - News) are placing multibillion-dollar bets on the country, lured by its 300 million-strong middle class. In spite of a recent drop, the Bombay stock exchange's benchmark Sensex index is still up more than 40% since June. Real estate has shot through the roof, with some prices doubling in the past year.
But this economic boom is being built on the shakiest of foundations. Highways, modern bridges, world-class airports, reliable power, and clean water are in desperately short supply. And what's already there is literally crumbling under the weight of progress. In December, a bridge in eastern India collapsed, killing 34 passengers in a train rumbling underneath. Economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as $6 billion a year, says Gajendra Haldea, an adviser to the federal Planning Commission.
For all its importance, the tech services sector employs just 1.6 million people, and it doesn't rely on good roads and bridges to get its work done. India needs manufacturing to boom if it is to boost exports and create jobs for the 10 million young people who enter the workforce each year. Suddenly, good infrastructure matters a lot more. Yet industry is hobbled by overcrowded highways where speeds average just 20 miles per hour. Some ports rely on armies of laborers to unload cargo from trucks and lug it onto ships. Across the state of Maharashtra, major cities lose power one day a week to relieve pressure on the grid. In Pune, a city of 4.5 million, it's lights out every Thursday -- forcing factories to maintain expensive backup generators. Government officials were shocked last year when Intel Corp. (NasdaqGS:INTC - News) chose Vietnam over India as the site for a new chip assembly plant. Although Intel declined to comment, industry insiders say the reason was largely the lack of reliable power and water in India.
Add up this litany of woes and you understand why India's exports total less than 1% of global trade, compared with 7% for China. Says Infosys Chairman N.R. Narayana Murthy: "If our infrastructure gets delayed, our economic development, job creation, and foreign investment get delayed. Our economic agenda gets delayed -- if not derailed."
The infrastructure deficit is so critical that it could prevent India from achieving the prosperity that finally seems to be within its grasp. Without reliable power and water and a modern transportation network, the chasm between India's moneyed elite and its 800 million poor will continue to widen, potentially destabilizing the country. Jagdish N. Bhagwati, a professor at Columbia University, figures gross domestic product growth would run two percentage points higher if the country had decent roads, railways, and power. "We're bursting at the seams," says Kamal Nath, India's Commerce & Industry Minister. Without better infrastructure, "we can't continue with the growth rates we have had."
The problems are even contributing to overheating in the economy. Inflation spiked in the first week of February to a two-year high of 6.7%, due in part to bottlenecks caused by the country's lousy transport network. Up to 40% of farm produce is lost because it rots in the fields or spoils en route to consumers, which contributes to rising prices for staples such as lentils and onions.
India today is about where China was a decade ago. Back then, China's economy was shifting into overdrive, but its roads and power grid weren't up to the task. So Beijing launched a massive upgrade initiative, building more than 25,000 miles of expressways that now crisscross the country and are as good as the best roads in the U.S. or Europe. India, by contrast, has just 3,700 miles of such highways. It's no wonder that when foreign companies weigh putting new plants in China vs. India to produce global exports, China more often wins out.
China's lead in infrastructure is likely to grow, too. Beijing plows about 9% of its GDP into public works, compared with New Delhi's 4%. And because of its authoritarian government, China gets faster results. "If you have to build a road in China, just a handful of people need to make a decision," says Daniel Vasella, chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Novartis (NYSE:NVS - News). "If you want to build a road in India, it'll take 10 years of discussion before you get a decision."
Blame it partly on India's revolving-door democracy. Political parties typically hold power for just one five-year term before disgruntled voters, swayed by populist promises from the opposition, kick them out of office. In elections last year in the state of Tamil Nadu, for instance, a new government was voted in after it pledged to give free color TVs to poor families. "In a sanely organized society you can get a lot done. Not here," says Jayaprakash Narayan, head of Lok Satta, or People Power, a national reform party.
Then there's "leakage" -- India's euphemism for rampant corruption. Nearly all sectors of officialdom are riddled with graft, from neighborhood cops to district bureaucrats to state ministers. Indian truckers pay about $5 billion a year in bribes, according to the watchdog group Transparency International. Corruption delays infrastructure projects and raises costs for those that move ahead.
Fortunately, after decades of underinvestment and political inertia, India's political leadership has awakened to the magnitude of the infrastructure crisis. A handful of major projects have been completed; others are moving forward. Work on the Golden Quadrilateral -- a $12 billion initiative spanning more than 3,000 miles of four- and six-lane expressways connecting Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai -- is due to be completed this year. The first phase of a new subway in New Delhi finished in late 2005 on budget and ahead of schedule. And new airports are under construction in Bangalore and Hyderabad, with more planned elsewhere. "We have to improve the quality of our infrastructure," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told a gathering of tech industry leaders in Mumbai on Feb. 9. "It's a priority of our government."
Singh, in fact, is promising a Marshall Plan-scale effort. The government estimates public and private organizations will chip in $330 billion to $500 billion over the next five years for highways, power generation, ports, and airports. In addition, leading conglomerates have pledged to overhaul the retailing sector. That will require infrastructure upgrades along the entire food distribution chain, from farm fields to store shelves.
Envisioning a brand-new India is the easy part; paying for it is another matter. By necessity, since the country's public debt stands at 82% of GDP, the 11th-worst ranking in the world, much of the money for these new projects will have to come from private sources. Yet India captured only $8 billion in foreign direct investment last year, compared with China's $63 billion. "Having grandiose plans isn't enough," says Yale University economics professor T.N. Srinivasan.
Just about every foreign company operating in India has a horror story of the hardships of doing business there. Nokia Corp. (NYSE:NOK - News) saw thousands of its cellular phones ruined last October when a shipment from its factory in Chennai was soaked by rain because there was no room to warehouse the crates of handsets at the local airport. Japan's Maruti Suzuki says trucking its cars 900 miles from its factory in Gurgaon to the port in Mumbai can take up to 10 days. That's partly due to delays at the three state borders along the way, where drivers are stalled as officials check their papers. But it's also because big rigs are barred from India's congested cities during the day, when they might bring dense traffic to a standstill. Once at the port, the Japanese company's autos can wait weeks for the next outbound ship because there's not enough dock space for cargo carriers to load and unload.
India's summer monsoons wreak havoc, too. Even relatively light rains can choke sewers, flood streets, and paralyze a city, while downpours are devastating. Two years ago, Florida-based contract manufacturer Jabil Circuit Inc. saw shipments of computers and networking gear from its plant near Mumbai delayed for five days after an epic storm. "In our business, five days is a really long time," says William D. Muir Jr., who oversees Jabil's Asian operations.
Companies often have no choice but to make the best of a bad situation. Cisco Systems Inc. (NasdaqGS:CSCO - News), the American networking equipment giant, has had a research and development office in India since 1999 and already has 2,000 engineers in the country. To supply the country's fast-growing telecommunications industry, Cisco decided last year to try its hand at making some parts locally. In December it contracted with another company to build Internet phones in the southeastern city of Chennai. Although Cisco says the quality of the workmanship is up to snuff, it has to fly parts in because the ports are so slow -- and getting them to the factory right when they're needed is proving nettlesome. "We believe in manufacturing in India, but we don't believe in logistics in India -- yet," says Wim Elfrink, Cisco's chief globalization officer. Elfrink adds that unless the Chennai operation demonstrates it can run as efficiently as Cisco setups elsewhere, it won't go into full production as planned this summer.
Even the world's largest maker of infrastructure equipment is constrained by India's feeble underpinnings. General Electric Co. (NYSE:GE - News) last year sold $1.2 billion worth of gear such as power generators and locomotives in India, more than double what it billed in 2005. To meet that surging demand, it is scrambling to find a location where it can manufacture locomotives in partnership with India Railways. But when GE dispatched three employees to survey a potential site the railway favored in the northern state of Bihar, the trio returned discouraged. It took five hours to drive the 50 miles from the airport to the site, and when they got there they found...nothing. "No roads, no power, no schools, no water, no hospitals, no housing," says Pratyush Kumar, president of GE Infrastructure in India. "We'd have to create everything from scratch," including many miles of railroad tracks to get the locomotives out to the main lines.
But there is a silver lining for GE and other international giants: India's infrastructure deficit could yield huge opportunities. American executives who traveled to India last November on the largest U.S. trade mission ever were tantalized by the possibilities. Jennifer Thompson, director of international planning at Oshkosh Truck Corp. (NYSE:OSK - News), viewed construction projects where swarms of workers carried wet concrete in buckets to be poured. That told her there's great potential in India for selling Oshkosh's mixer trucks. "There are infrastructure challenges, but we see a lot of opportunities to help them meet those challenges," she says.
That explains why so many multinationals are flocking to India. Take hotel construction: In a country with only 25,000 tourist-class hotel rooms (compared with more than 140,000 in Las Vegas alone), companies including Hilton (NYSE:HLT - News), Wyndham (NYSE:WYN - News), and Ramada have plans for 75,000 rooms on their drawing boards. Or consider telecom. Because of deregulation and ferocious demand, India boasts the fastest growth in cell-phone service anywhere, with companies adding some 6 million new customers a month. No wonder Britain's Vodafone Group PLC (NYSE:VOD - News) just ponied up $11 billion for a controlling interest in Hutchison Essar, India's No. 4 mobile carrier. U.S. private equity outfits also want in on the action. On Feb. 15, Blackstone Group and Citigroup announced they are teaming up with the Indian government and the Infrastructure Development Finance Corp. to set up a $5 billion fund for infrastructure investments in India.
But while the laws of supply and demand would argue that India's infrastructure gap can be filled, that logic ignores the corrosive effect of the country's politics. To gain the favor of voters, Indian politicians have long subsidized electricity and water for farmers, a policy that has discouraged private investment in those areas. That's what wrecked the now-infamous Dabhol Power plant. In the late 1990s, Enron, GE, and Bechtel spent a total of $2.8 billion building a huge complex near Mumbai capable of producing more than 2,000 megawatts of electricity. But a government power authority set prices so low that it was uneconomical for Dabhol to operate, and the whole deal fell apart. (The plant, taken over by an Indian organization, now runs only fitfully.) A 2001 law was supposed to create a framework to support private investment in power generation. But according to American construction company executives, it's not working well. "Everybody knows what needs to be done, but they h ave great difficulty doing it," says one of the Americans. "If the party in opposition offers subsidized power, the party in power has to give subsidized power to get reelected."
Politicians who refuse to play the game pay a steep price. N. Chandrababu Naidu, the former chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, transformed the state capital of Hyderabad from a backwater into a high-tech destination by building new roads, widening others, and aggressively carving out land for factories and office parks. Google (NasdaqGS:GOOG - News), IBM (NYSE:IBM - News), Microsoft (NasdaqGS:MSFT - News), and Motorola (NYSE:MOT - News) have all built R&D facilities there.
His reward? Voters tossed him out of office two years ago. During his decade in power, Naidu didn't do enough for rural areas, and his challenger promised to channel state funds into irrigation projects and electricity subsidies. "Naidu thought economics were more important than politics. He was wrong," says V.S. Rao, director of the Birla Institute of Technology & Science in Hyderabad. Naidu, 56, is plotting a comeback in elections two years hence. This time, he's preaching a new gospel. "You can't just target growth," says a chastened Naidu. "You have to create policies that make the wealth trickle down to the common man."
But even when politicians say they're beefing up infrastructure, it rarely helps the poorest Indians. Agriculture is stagnant in part because of a lack of the most rudimentary of roads to get to and from fields. N. Tarupthurai, for instance, scratches out a living from a five-acre plot in Jinnuru, a village in northeastern Andhra Pradesh. But his fields are more than a mile from the nearest paved road, so each day the 40-year-old Tarupthurai must carry his tools, seeds, fertilizer, and crops down a dirt path on his back or on his bicycle. "I have asked for a road, and the government says it's under consideration," says the mustachioed, curly-haired farmer. Then he shrugs.
One reason little practical help makes it from the seats of power to India's impoverished villages is that so much money gets siphoned off along the way. With corrupt officials skimming at every step, many public works projects either go over budget or are never completed. "You figure that 25% of the cost goes to corruption," says Verghese Jacob, head of the Byrraju Foundation, which promotes rural development. "And then they do such a bad job that the road falls apart in one year and has to be patched over again," Jacob says as he jostles along in a car on a potholed byway outside Hyderabad.
None of the solutions to India's infrastructure challenges are simple, but business leaders, some enlightened government officials, and even ordinary citizens are chipping in to make things better. The most potent weapon India's reformers have against corruption is transparency. Last October a new right-to-information law went into effect requiring both central and state governments to divulge information about contracts, hiring, and expenditures to any citizen who requests it. The country is also putting to work its vaunted technology prowess to police the government. Officials in 200 districts are using software from Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. to help monitor a government program that offers every rural household a guarantee of 100 days of work per year. Most of this labor goes into public works. To minimize "leakage," the TCS software tracks every expenditure -- and makes all of the information available real-time on a Web site accessible to anyone.
Sometimes frustrated Indians take matters into their own hands. Tired of spending four-plus hours a day in traffic, Aruna Newton last fall helped organize something of a women's crusade to speed up infrastructure improvements. Nearly 15,000 volunteers now monitor key road projects and meet with state officials to press for action. They even enlisted the state chief minister's mother, who helped get his attention. "It's about the collective power of the people," says Newton, a 40-year-old vice-president for Infosys. "I just wish building a road was as easy as writing a software program."
Increasingly, companies trying to expand in India have the government as a willing partner rather than a roadblock. The state of Andhra Pradesh rolled out the red carpet last year for MAS Holdings Ltd. of Sri Lanka, South Asia's largest garment manufacturer. It promised subsidized electricity, new access roads, and even a deepwater port if the company would place a huge industrial park on the southern coast. Now MAS Holdings plans to build a cluster of factories that will eventually employ 30,000 production workers. And it chose India over China. "The government support was absolutely vital," says John Chiramel, India director for MAS Holdings. "If we can work together, there's no stopping growth in this country."
A key to getting massive projects off the drawing boards is forming public-private partnerships where the government and companies share costs, risks, and rewards. In 2005, India passed a groundbreaking law permitting officials to tap such partnerships for infrastructure initiatives. Developers ante up most of the money, collect tolls or other usage fees, and eventually hand the facilities back to the government.
The first project to take advantage of the new law is the $430 million international airport scheduled to open next year in Bangalore. The facility is designed to handle 11.5 million passengers per year -- nearly double the capacity of the overburdened existing airport. It will be owned by a private company, which will turn it over to the Karnataka state government after 60 years. Global engineering and equipment giant Siemens (NYSE:SI - News) is helping to build the facility, and Switzerland's Unique Ltd. will manage it. These companies are also equity investors. The state had to contribute just 18% of the cost. Without such an arrangement, Karnataka wouldn't be getting a new airport.
A lot of India's hopes rest on the airport deal's success. If it proves the viability of public-private partnerships, more such ventures could come pouring in. A visit to the site instills confidence. Project manager Sivaramakrishnan S. Iyer is a crusty veteran of mammoth infrastructure ventures throughout South Asia and the Mideast. Wearing a scuffed hardhat, with a two-day growth of white stubble on his face, he surveys the site from a 2.5-mile-long bed of crushed granite that will be the runway. Work goes on seven days a week, 18 hours a day. Iyer is intent on wrapping up on schedule in April, 2008. "We have the will to do it, and it will be done," he says.
Will the airport open on time? That's not within Iyer's control. Two government authorities are responsible for building the road that leads to the airport, and they're locked in a dispute over how to do it. Work hasn't started.
And so it goes in India. Unless the nation shakes off its legacy of bureaucracy, politics, and corruption, its ability to build adequate infrastructure will remain in doubt. So will its economic destiny.
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