Growing pains dim India’s outsourcing edge
Tue Sep 18, 2007 11:45am IST
By Sumeet Chatterjee
BANGALORE (Reuters) – Indian outsourcing companies are shifting some of their operations to China, the Philippines, Vietnam and Kenya in a bid to stay competitive as higher wages, expensive property prices and a rising rupee eat into profits.
Back-office services companies thrive on doing jobs such as taking customer calls, payroll management and accounting at a fraction of the cost for big multinational firms or governments.
But costs in India are climbing on the back of a robust economy that has lured skilled workers to other sectors, forcing companies to look elsewhere to stay in business.
“If I was only in India, probably I would have been worried to death,” said Partha Sarkar, chief executive of HTMT Global Solutions Ltd.
The Bangalore-based back-office services provider used to generate all its revenue from India by providing services to its clients in the United States. But India now accounts for little over half the total, and rapid expansion in the Philippines and Mauritius has helped it offset the impact of a stronger rupee. It plans to enter China and Vietnam soon.
The company sees its 2008 revenue jumping to $150 million from $97 million in the last fiscal year.
“Three years back, I was completely exposed to rupee-dollar,” Sarkar said. “Now it doesn’t worry me. I have diversified my currency and country risk.”
In July, Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest software services exporter, said it would buy three of Royal Philips Electronics’ back-office services units in Thailand, Poland and India to expand market presence.
The back-office services unit of the third-largest software exporter Wipro Ltd plans to set up two facilities in China to tap growing business opportunities there, its chief executive T.K. Kurien said.
India’s English-speaking workforce, a big factor in winning call-centre jobs, faces competition from countries like Kenya.
“When compared to India, we are better off in terms of salary and cost per seat, and we have a large pool of Kenyans with clear accents,” said Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary in Kenya’s Information Ministry.
India’s share in the global back-office services pie will drop to 50 percent in the next 3-5 years from about 60 percent now, according to U.S.-based Tholons Inc, which offers management consultancy for offshoring.
SKILLS SHORTAGE
India produces about 2.5 million graduates every year, versus 400,000 in the Philippines, but only about 15 percent are suitable for employment in the outsourcing sector.
U.S.-based outsourcer 24/7 Customer, which has multiple facilities in Asia’s third-largest economy, interviews 5,000 candidates a month in India, but is able to recruit only about 250, Chief Marketing Officer V. Bharathwaj said.
This is pushing up wages rapidly as financial firms from Citigroup and HSBC to Standard Chartered Bank employ thousands at their back-office hubs in India.
Starting wages at 15,000 rupees ($366) a month are still about one-fifth of what their U.S. counterparts earn, but they are rising 10-15 percent a year.
Cost per employee for a back-office firm in Bangalore is almost similar to Manila, but is 20 percent lower in Guangzhou in China and 35 percent cheaper in Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, said Avinash Vashistha, chief executive of Tholons.
Analysts say that while Vietnam does not have a vast pool of English-speaking manpower, it is a prime destination for non-voice back-office services such as legal and medical transcription, claims processing, and finance and accounting.
Adding to the squeeze is the rupee, Asia’s best performing currency this year, which climbed to a nine-year high of 40.20 against the dollar, up 10 percent since end-2006, while the Philippine peso has gained more than 5 percent.
First Global Securities last month downgraded India’s IT services sector to “underperform”, citing the rupee and wage inflation. Every 1 percent rise in the rupee impacts the services firms’ margins by 30-50 basis points, analysts say.
“Everything is hitting us adversely,” said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies. “Wages are going up, real estate costs are escalating and on top of that you have the dollar exchange rate going bad.”
India’s back-office services industry, which earned $8.4 billion in exports in the year to March, is also being lured by tax breaks, infrastructure improvements and investment perks offered by China and the Philippines, he said.
The industry is also anxiously watching for any ripple effect from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, with some smaller firms feeling the pinch as U.S. companies trim spending on services.
However, Infosys’ outsourcing unit sees an opportunity here, reckoning that the need to cut costs would be even more prevalent in an economic downturn, potentially boosting business.
(Additional reporting by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura in NAIROBI and Rosemarie Francisco in MANILA)
© Reuters 2006.
Collective memory and prosecution
While reassessing the revolutionary days of the 1970s in Italy, some of the prominent activists of the era observed in 1983:
“The public destruction of the collective memory of the movement is conducted by manipulating the individual memories of the witnesses. Even when they tell the truth, they abolish the real motivations and contexts of what they describe, establishing hypothetical links, effects without causes, interpreted according to theorems constructed by the prosecution.”
Do You Remember Revolution? by Lucio Castellano, Arrigo Cavallina, Giustino Cortiana, Mario Dalmaviva, Luciano Ferrari Bravo, Chicco Funaro, Antonio Negri, Paolo Pozzi, Franco Tommei, Emilio Vesce, and Paolo Virno. Republished in English in Paolo Virno and Michael Hardt (ed.) Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics .University of Minnesota Press (October 1996)
Isn’t this true that we are taught to think about every popular movement in terms of “theorems constructed by the prosecution”? Movements are reduced to leaders… to particular events that suit the present hegemonies… leaders are reduced to objects – of hatred or reverence… Education (in classroom or outside, everywhere) is essentially prosecution!
Untouchability and Indian capitalism
Below is an interesting story published by The Observer. It shows how stratification specific to a society is reproduced and even intensified under capitalism, with competition being generalised. Caste, race and all other hierarchical identities of yesteryears are transformed into competitive identities, as well as inducing market segmentation – the upper caste/race seeks to maintain its supremacy utilising every brutal means, while the lower caste/race tries to assert itself. A schematic radical would call this situation semi-feudal, as it seems to him/her an aberration to “pure” idealised capitalism. Is there anything like that? But who can argue with the convinced ones – ever afraid of dropping the coloured glasses that their fathers lent them? This forces him/her to go in all kinds of ‘bourgeois democratic’ alliances – in order to sweep away the “vestiges” of “pre-capitalism”, before removing capitalism and the capitalists. So much for his/her utopianism and idea-lism.
India’s untouchable millionaire
Entrepreneur who escaped the rigid caste system warns that it is becoming more divisive as India grows richer
Amelia Gentleman in Agra
Sunday May 6, 2007
The ObserverAs a child, Hari Pippal slept alongside his six sisters and eight brothers on a stretch of pavement. As a teenager, he pedalled a bicycle rickshaw to help feed the family. Now the owner of a large, profitable private hospital, a shoe factory, a motorbike dealership and a successful restaurant, Hari Pippal has become a symbol of the enormous possibilities available in new India to anyone with entrepreneurial flair.
The fact that this self-made millionaire has risen to the top despite being a Dalit (an untouchable) has prompted some to promote his achievements as proof that, as India races towards economic transformation, a more egalitarian society is emerging. Magazines feature him as a Dalit success story. Pippal, however, is uneasy with his status as poster boy for a casteless modern India. He believes his triumphs have come in spite of his caste and warns that, as India becomes richer, caste divisions are becoming ever more pronounced. At the headquarters of his business empire, he said: ‘As a rule India’s economic boom is only enjoyed by high-caste people. This is a great tragedy for India, because so much talent is being excluded. I feel real despair.’
The Hindu concept of untouchability was abolished in 1950, but the challenge of eradicating prejudices dating back thousands of years has defeated successive governments. Last week in Delhi the issue of caste-related inequalities divided politicians as they argued over the merits of extending affirmative action programmes in universities for backward castes. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has compared the caste system to apartheid South Africa. ‘Untouchability is not just social discrimination; it is a blot on humanity,’ he said.
Pippal believes that the government needs to force the blossoming corporate sector to introduce positive discrimination schemes of the kind which have existed in the public sector for decades.
‘The government believes the scheduled caste [the official term for Dalits] is coming up, that the caste system is disappearing. That is wrong. The gap between the scheduled castes and the higher castes is increasing,’ Pippal said. ‘Lower castes are still very poor. Without money it’s hard to take advantage of the new opportunities, so they stay poor and everyone else gets richer.’
Pippal became conscious of his status on the first day at school. His teachers would mutter in his direction: ‘You people are ill-educated, badly dressed and don’t know how to behave’. Consigned to do the jobs no one else wants – latrine-cleaners and roadsweepers – Dalits have traditionally been forbidden from touching the food or water of upper castes. Pippal, 56, remembers how teachers would never ask him to bring them water or invite him to eat with them, as they did other higher-caste pupils.
‘I responded by deciding I had to be better than the others – cleverer, better dressed, better behaved, more successful,’ he said. But the snubs and subtle insults have lasted a lifetime. His surname identifies him as a Dalit, so when he opened his first company he called it ‘People’s Export’ – which sounded about the same, but did not have the same negative connotations.
When he opened his hospital in 2004, it was difficult to recruit high-caste doctors, many of whom would not contemplate working under him. Because the hospital, a few kilometres from the Taj Mahal, swiftly gained a reputation, attitudes changed and he now employs 25 upper-caste doctors. Even now, several of the Dalit doctors avoid revealing their surname, relying on initials so that they don’t alarm higher-caste patients.
When the oldest of his five sons said that he was engaged to a girl from a higher caste, Pippal was happy that his son had found someone he loved. Her parents, too, made no objection to the match, but a few days later about 100 people from her community arrived at Pippal’s flat, threatening to kill the girl’s parents if the marriage went ahead. ‘I told my son that he would destroy their whole family if he persisted in the marriage, and he understood,’ Pippal said. The son recently married a Dalit doctor from his father’s hospital. ‘Now I believe my children should marry within their caste. It’s better that way.’
India has a number of Dalit role models who have battled their way to the top. This year KG Balakrishnan was sworn in as chief justice of India, the first Dalit to hold the post. Narendra Jadhav, the chief economist of India’s central bank, is a Dalit. Yet the social mobility which usually accompanies rapid economic growth has barely touched this 150 million-strong community, the bulk of whom remain deprived and oppressed. Dalits die sooner and are more likely to be malnourished, unemployed and murdered than others.
Pippal knows how exceptional his life has been when he meets his contemporaries from primary school. ‘All of my school friends of my caste are still sitting on a pavement making shoes,’ he said. ‘They are angry with the system, but what can they do?’
Eroding India’s “competitive advantage”?
Business Standard on May 03 had an interesting article (posted below) about the erosion of India’s comparative advantage in IT – cheap labour seems not so cheap now. Even if labour is still cheaper than the ‘advanced’ countries’, but then productivity is far lower. Solutions are suggested – off to KPO. Also, “Some feel there is nothing to worry as India is rapidly creating huge economies of scale in IT offshoring, which offset the inflationary pressures of salary increases”. This bubbly boom and bust of BPO – how much does it affect the country’s overall economy – the P(roductive) F(orces)/P(roduction) R(elations)?
BPO`s diminishing competitiveness
THE HUMAN FACTOR
Shyamal Majumdar / Mumbai May 03, 2007The cost-arbitrage benefit may erode if the meagre productivity of IT staff is factored in.
In a survey released yesterday, CLSA Asia Pacific says 40 per cent of India’s information technology employees expect their salaries to rise by 20 per cent annually over the next 10 years. Two-thirds expect at least a 15 per cent growth. While this indicates continued all-round prosperity for IT employees — for example, the IT professionals spend $1 billion annually just on eating out and almost half in the 28-35 age group had an international vacation last year — how does the zooming salary bill impact the competitiveness of India’s outsourcing industry?
The jury is still out on this. Some feel there is nothing to worry as India is rapidly creating huge economies of scale in IT offshoring, which offset the inflationary pressures of salary increases. Many outsourcing companies are implementing large team sizes and long-term projects to help maintain utilisation levels at above 75 per cent.
But there are quite a few other analyst firms which feel by 2010, India may become too costly to provide low-end services at competitive costs. For example, Evalueserve, a leading provider of knowledge process outsourcing services, says Indian salaries have increased at an average of 14 per cent a year. If this trend continues, the cost-arbitrage benefit would get reduced from the present 40 per cent to 25 per cent by 2010.
Or, listen to The Conference Board. The world’s pre-eminent business membership and research organisation has been a longtime supporter of outsourcing and offshoring American jobs to cheap overseas labour markets. It said in a report in 2005 that potentially massive savings in wage and benefit costs will continue to drive the global offshoring movement.
But the same organisation is now questioning the economic benefits of outsourcing. In a study in October last year, the Conference Board said the competitive advantage of low-wage countries is often exaggerated once the meagre productivity of their workers is factored in. The study said the comparative cost advantages of taking your business to low-wage countries such as China or India are often not the bargain they seem when wages are adjusted for low productivity. The manufacturing sector in India and China only pays between 2 per cent and 3 per cent of the US compensation level on average.
But labour productivity in these countries is also far below the US level at 12 per cent to 13 per cent.Though the productivity levels at present exceed compensation levels by a considerable margin — unit labour costs in China and India are on average 20 per cent lower than that in the US — The Conference Board warns that the one critical lesson for businesses that benefit from one-time labour cost benefits when investing in low wage countries is that productivity gains from new technology and innovation have to keep pace with often fast rising wages of skilled and semi-skilled workers. Or the cost advantage begins to erode.
The worry is real. For example, according to Deloitte research, the top 10 per cent of the IT workforce in India has been receiving an average salary rise of more than 40 per cent. In contrast, most IT employees in the US received a salary rise of five per cent or less. Though salaries in the US are still, on an average, nearly 10 times higher than those in India, the gap is sure to diminish over time. One reason for the fast-rising wages is the limited “employable” pool.
The Indian education system is not churning out enough computer science and electronics graduates. For instance, though India’s 272 universities and nearly 14,000 colleges churn out over 25 million graduates, only about 300,000 enter the workforce as engineers. And, out of that, maybe just 30 per cent are suitable for the software and IT services industry.
One way out of the diminishing competitiveness could be to go up the value chain — from voice-based services to knowledge process outsourcing. According to an Evalueserve study, the global KPO market is expected to grow at a cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 per cent. Compare this with the prediction for the low-end outsourcing services market. This is expected to have a CAGR of 26 per cent.The high-end KPO opportunities are immense for Indian firms.
For instance, look at some of the figures pertaining to intellectual property research. Drafting and filing of patent applications in the US is quite expensive. A typical application costs about $10,000 to $15,000 to draft and file with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Cost savings from offshoring even a portion of the patent drafting process can easily save up to 50 per cent of the cost for the end client, according to Evalueserve.
One Millionaire and Millions Poor
The Communist Party of India’s MP and veteran trade union leader Gurudas Dasgupta was at his best in the Lok Sabha on April 26, 2007, where he lambasted his party-supported government on its track record over labour issues. He in fact, asked his comrades to review their support to this “blind-to-facts” government. However, it seems he still views the anti-labour attitude as a problem of the government’s eyes being “blind to facts” or being “closed”, not a systemic symptom related to the ‘class capacity’ of the State and the government.
Following is an excerpt from his speech published in Business Standard:
Madam, we have a unique coinage — facilitator. Government is the facilitator of economic growth. Since it is the facilitator of economic growth, its eyes are blind to facts. In order to open the door for foreign capital, eyes are closed. This is the economic background of your ministry. Madam, it is being understood deliberately — I do not say by the Ministry of Labour but the Ministry of Finance — that the trade union movement is a roadblock and all the labour laws are obstacles.
Madam, what is the situation? Honourable Labour Minister must be confronted with facts. The economic figures are like this. Productivity has increased in the country. Output per unit has increased in the country. Untaxed dividend has increased in the country. You understand untaxed dividends. You never touch the dividend. Mr. Chidambaram had no political will to touch the dividend because he is friendly to investors, I do not say he is friendly to the corporates. Therefore, dividend is untaxed. There has been growth of not only millionaires but billionaires in the country.
Madam, please do not laugh at me if I say that it is easy to become a millionaire in India, but it is difficult to reduce poverty in India.
The Congress party came to power, defeating the BJP on the promise that it will do something better. Are they doing better? May I call Shri Chidambaram, Mr Failure?
Therefore, the point is that the leaders of the government are speaking of production and productivity. On how many occasions did our respected ministers including the prime minister attend the meetings of the CII and speak of production and productivity? Do they speak of violation of labour (laws)? Have we ever heard the prime minister speaking in this House about violation of labour law? Violation of labour law is not the agenda. The agenda is to clear the deck for more investment.
When the price rise is taking place, workers are not being given Dearness Allowance. Is it social justice? I would give two examples how DA is being flouted. There was a strike in West Bengal by 2.5 lakh jute workers. After prolonged two months strike they had been able to get DA up to 200 points when the DA was due to 320 points, and this was despite the attempt of the West Bengal government. The private sector just did not give the DA. What is the remedy?
I am giving a second example. Today, a strike is on at Hindustan Motors of the Birlas. What is their demand? For six years Birlas have not given any DA to the workers. The government of West Bengal is trying to help them. Last night, the meeting broke up and the management bluntly said that it would not give the DA. What is the remedy?
Trade union movement is considered to be a criminal offence. Let me give you a example. Maharashtra is under Congress rule. There was a strike in a transport company. Only a few days back, 30,000 people were retrenched in a single day. Is it a respect for democracy? Is it a respect for trade unionism? Is it a respect for human rights?
(Excerpts from CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta’s speech in the Lok Sabha on April 26 over the Demands for Grants relating to the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Sumitra Mahajan was in the Chair)
Corporate Philanthropy?
Why are corporate lords big philanthropists? Just now I read an article on “corporate responsibility in India”, where the author says:
The notion of corporate responsibility in India has traditionally been tied up with philanthropy and community development…“Philanthropy has been important in India since the middle of the 19th century, largely due to a strong heritage of community influence and paternalism among traders-turned-entrepreneurs,” say authors Atul Sood and Bimal Arora in “Political Economy of Corporate Responsibility in India”, a 2006 paper for the UN Research Institute for Social Development.
Philanthropy has now taken the form of foundations within companies that follow the Gandhian ideology of “giving back to society”. Such giving is the sole manifestation of corporate responsibility for many firms.
Why this desperation to “giving back to society”? Definitely, “Philanthropy” is a pre-capitalist element that capitalism has inherited – it transforms class division based on exploitation into an ideologico-ethical hierarchy. However, it additionally helps in suppressing the starkness of the fallacy that characterises capitalist ethics, which Duncan Foley calls Adam’s Fallacy –
The specific fallacy is Smith’s claim that the pursuit of self-interest, which has to be balanced against regard for others in other human interactions, can be trusted to lead to good outcomes both for oneself and others in the context of competitive market interactions.
Of course, the political economy of Aid is also there which is literally buying off the oppressed (meaning their ‘representative’) to normalise/naturalise capitalism and its exploitative nature – politically, economically, culturally, morally… Normalising Corporate Misanthropy is the Responsibility of Philanthropy. Distrust is inbuilt in philanthropic action – “give back” something or they will “take away” everything.
How true was Blake:
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody poor;
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we.
On the logic of imperialism – US & India
To say that the US invasion of Iraq “was not all about oil” is nothing novel. The triviality of “all about oil” argument is perhaps most clearly shown in the works of Marxists like Cyrus Bina. When neoliberal economic journalists like Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar criticise this argument, they ultimately circularly reiterate the same argument – not all about oil, but still all about oil. So he in one of his recent gems published on 10 March 2007 starts with saying:
“Many Indians, including respected foreign policy analysts, believe that the US invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003 simply to grab his oilfields. “Its all about oil,” they said. Well, it’s now four years since the invasion. Yet, we see no sign of the US grabbing Iraq’s oilfields”.
And ends by:
“The US still has a strong interest… in seeing that oil production in the Persian Gulf is not disrupted or monopolised by any military power. This was one reason why the US forced Saddam out of Kuwait, which he had invaded and occupied in 1990. The US Navy has for decades patrolled the sea lanes to ensure security for oil tankers. So, oil matters. But it is somewhat ridiculous to think that oil alone matters. The US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, but it was not “all about oil.”
That’s just “one reason”, but in Aiyar’s write-up it is the only “one reason”.
Definitely, we cannot ask him to comprehend the dialectics of abstract and concrete, essence and appearance etc – the complex relationship between economy and polity, where we cannot reduce any to the other. Also, we cannot expect him to avoid the circularity of bourgeois economics.
However the interesting aspect of his article is the details which he offers to prove his “not all about oil” argument – when he draws parallel between Indian and the US oil interests:
“Those familiar with India’s oil policy will find the Iraqi controversy over production sharing [contracts to foreign companies] mystifying, even comic. India has long signed production-sharing deals with private and foreign oil companies, and nobody regards this as a sellout.
The latest bidding round this year drew 32 domestic and 36 foreign bidders. In production-sharing deals, the foreign or private sector partner bears all exploration costs, but shares with the government any oil or gas that is found. The terms of production-sharing have varied in different rounds of bidding in India.
But typically the winning bidder whether Indian or foreign first gets enough oil to recover costs of production and exploration (called cost oil); then gets two to three times as much as profit oil; and then hands over most or all of the residual production to the government.
For instance, the government’s share in gas at Reliance’s Krishna-Godavari field starts at roughly 15% at the beginning and goes to 85% in later stages.
The most successful foreign explorer in India has been Cairn Energy, which hopes to produce 7.5 million tonnes a year from its fields in Rajasthan. British Gas has also experienced some success.
ONGC itself has entered into production-sharing contracts in no less than 15 countries, including Russia, Vietnam, Sudan, Venezuela, Canada, Brazil, Nigeria and Cuba.
Reliance Industries has also signed production-sharing deals in Yemen, Oman, East Timor and Colombia. Indeed, ONGC and Reliance have jointly signed a production-sharing deal in guess where? Northern Iraq. This is not Indian imperialism. Nor have these Indian oil companies encountered US resistance.
So, Indian foreign policy analysts who think the Iraq invasion was all about oil, need to brush up their knowledge of the oil business. They are living in the past.
There was indeed a time when the US used military power to back US oil companies. When Mossadegh in Iran nationalised oil companies, he was overthrown in a 1953 coup masterminded by Britain and the US. However, that was the last act in the history of oil imperialism.
This was shown when OPEC countries in 1974 nationalised all oilfields, converting oil multinationals from owners to just buyers of oil. Some US diplomats and politicians wanted military action to regain the fields. But the US Administration ruled that the days of oil imperialism were over, and it was time to deal with sovereign governents.
The US still has a strong interest as does India in seeing that oil production in the Persian Gulf is not disrupted or monopolised by any military power. This was one reason why the US forced Saddam out of Kuwait, which he had invaded and occupied in 1990. The US Navy has for decades patrolled the sea lanes to ensure security for oil tankers.
So, oil matters. But it is somewhat ridiculous to think that oil alone matters. The US invasion of Iraq was a terrible mistake, but it was not “all about oil.”
Here Aiyar has given some facts, ignored even by leftists suffering from third worldism. They are relevant for understanding the material base of India’s expansionist, even imperialist ambitions. Private (foreign and domestic) and State capitalist production sharing is nothing new. In recent years, India’s state oil companies like ONGC have been proactively involved in satisfying the energy requirements of India’s capitalist development by their overseas exploration and operation. Aiyar also tells us that now private capitalists like Reliance are increasingly being given space in this industry, where the State had been the pioneer.
However, for Aiyar, if “this is not Indian imperialism” then there is no US “oil imperialism”. But why do we presume that there is no Indian imperialism? In fact, let’s reverse the order of the argument – if all such facts have grounded US imperialist interests in the Middle East and elsewhere (even if not just for oil, but “oil matters”), then the parallel that Aiyar draws between India and the US must tempt us to probe India’s ambitions too, without precluding their possible imperialist nature. Definitely, the export of capital is not sufficient to make a state imperialist, but what makes it so is the state’s capacity and interest in defending that export through international political intervention, of which war is just a part, as Clausewitz taught us. Maybe if “Indian oil companies [in their outward expansion in the Middle East have not] encountered US resistance”, this is just another proof that India is a part of the imperialist coalition led by the US, or the US sees it as as an ally. This would give us a key to interpret the tremendous growth in the US-India-Israel relationship too.
Of course, in capitalism collaboration does not preclude competition – there will be moments when collaborating interests would clash too. But we should not presume that if collaboration between US and India is occurring, it is a patron-client relationship. Likewise, competition too is not liberation, India’s frequent amorous passes to Russia, China and others are not necessarily anti-imperialist or anti-US.
Indian expansionism’s ugly face – Hindu Fascism
For legitimising any imperialist and expansionist design, a State needs a particular ideology of “interests” that can mobilise opinion behind it within its territory, and also identify agencies outside which can justify its “cross-border” intervention. India with its rising economic interests beyond its territory has used all sorts of “identities” to create such diasporic homogeny under the garb of which it can operate. It is not very surprising that this expansionist tenor was firmly and vocally established by the Rightist forces. It can in fact be comfortably said that the rightists became a legitimate force in India only with the rise of neolliberalism, when Indian capital found Indianness, Hinduism etc to be effective in its “free” market consolidation and operation globally. One needs to cursorily go through the widely circulated weekly of Hindu fascists, Organiser and its chatterbox journalism to grasp the confident obscenity of Indian expansionism in its extreme. Recently it invented “The Western-Christian agenda in Kathmandu” and “the Christian leadership of the Maoists”, lamenting the threat to the “Hindu civilisation”:
“The bells are tolling, not just for the Nepalese monarchy, but also for the Hindu culture and civilisation of the nation.”
So embrace your khaki-nickers and oiled lathis to save monarchy, save Hinduism… while the Nepali resources – human and natural – are plundered by Indian interests in the name of “economics above politics”. Similarly, it was the leader of opposition, the instigator of the Babri Mosque demolition LK Advani who first petitioned the Indian government to “save Indians” in Uganda, where the Ugandan people are struggling against the Mehta group’s acquisition of Mabira forests.
Economic Astrology
The Economic Times has a news today – IMF warns India of US economic slowdown. Something to be panicked about! However there is nothing in the report that is specifically directed to India. The IMF Deputy Director Charles Collyn has warned that
“emerging economies, including India, face the risk of protectionist pressures arising from a slowdown in the US economy. IMF deputy director Charles Collyns said capital flows to emerging markets have been strong even as corrections in these markets are getting smaller.”
However,
“In its short-term outlook, the IMF has said notwithstanding recent volatility and the US slowdown, continued robust global growth still looks the most likely outcome. However, global policy makers and financial markets need to be ready for surprises.
This is the way astrologers cheat their clients – say things which are so general and obvious, even commonsensical idiocies and contradictory, that whatever happens, you are proven right and your business thrives. If some spices are still lacking then get mainstream newspapers to write the headings…
A Report: “LYING RELIGIOUSLY: The Hindu Students Council and the politics of deception”
Full Report: http://hsctruthout.stopfundinghate.org
from Prologue:
“The Hindu Students Council (HSC) is a North America based organization that publicly claims to provide a space to learn about Hindu heritage and culture and draws its membership primarily from the Indian American student community. HSC is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and is registered as a non-profit, tax-exempt organization. On its website (www.hscnet.org), HSC claims to have more than 75 chapters, most of them located on university campuses across the United States and Canada. The website also states that HSC was formed to assist Hindu students in their spiritual, emotional, and identity needs, including sorting out confusions and alienation arising from being brought up Hindu in a predominantly Judeo-Christian culture. Many Indian American youth join HSC chapter on their campus and participate in its activities because of HSC’s claim to be a cultural and spiritual organization providing an independent, apolitical space to learn about Hinduism through activities, such as celebration of Hindu festivals, discussion of sacred texts, religious rituals and community service (see http://www.hscnet.org/aboutus.php).
This report challenges the above claims of HSC and provides comprehensive evidence to the contrary. It documents the findings of an investigation into the history, organization, and political links of HSC and demonstrates that it is part of the Sangh Parivar (literally, the Sangh Family), the extended network of affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the creators of Hindutva. These findings sharply contradict the public face HSC presents in the U.S. as a spiritual and religious body. The information presented in this report locates and documents the origins and institutional links of HSC, and throws light on the concealed purpose behind the creation of such an organization. This report shows that HSC has deep-rooted connections – institutional, personal, and political – with the Sangh Parivar.”
[CSFH is a collective of academics and professionals who work on monitoring the fundraising activities of the Hindutva movement in the U.S. See http://stopfundinghate.org/resources/FAQ.htm for more details.]
Beyond Capital 