Where paradoxes reign supreme, By Shashi Tharoor, The Times of India

It has become a cliché to speak of India as a land of paradoxes. The old joke about our country is that anything you say about India, the opposite is also true. We like to think of ourselves as an ancient civilisation but we are also a young republic; our IT experts stride confidently into the 21st century but much of our population seems to live in each of the other 20 centuries. Quite often the opposites co-exist quite cheerfully.

One of my favourite images of India is from the last Kumbha mela, of a naked sadhu, with matted hair, ash-smeared forehead and scraggly beard, for all the world a picture of timeless other-worldliness, chatting away on a cellphone. I even suggested it to the publishers of my newest book of essays on India as a perfect cover image, but they assured me it was so well-known that it had become a cliché in itself.

And yet, clichés are clichés because they are true, and the paradoxes of India say something painfully real about our society.

How does one come to terms with a country whose population is still nearly 40% illiterate but which has educated the world’s second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers, many of whom are making a flourishing living in Silicon Valley? How does one explain a land where peasant organisations and suspicious officials once attempted to close down Kentucky Fried Chicken as a threat to the nation, where a former prime minister bitterly criticised the sale of Pepsi-Cola since 250 million of our countrymen and women don’t have access to clean drinking water, and which yet invents more sophisticated software for the world’s computer manufacturers than any other country on the planet? A place where bullock carts are still an indispensable mode of transportation for millions, but whose rocket and satellite programmes are amongst the most advanced on earth?

The paradoxes go well beyond the nature of our entry into the 21st century. Our teeming cities overflow while two out of three Indians still scratch a living from the soil. We have been recognised, for all practical purposes, as a leading nuclear power, but 600 million Indians still have no access to electricity and there are daily power cuts even in the nation’s capital.

Ours is a culture which elevated non-violence to an effective moral principle, but whose freedom was born in blood and whose independence still soaks in it. We are the world’s leading manufacturers of generic medication for illnesses such as AIDS, but we have three million of our own citizens without access to AIDS medication, another two million with TB, and tens of millions with no health centre or clinic within 10 kilometres of their places of residence.

Bollywood makes four times as many movies as Hollywood, but 150 million Indians cannot see them, because they are blind. India holds the world record for the number of cellphones sold (8.5 million last month), but also for the number of farmer suicides (4000 in the Vidarbha district of Maharashtra alone last year).

This month, in mid-November, the prestigious Forbes magazine list of the world’s top billionaires made room for 10 new Indian names. The four richest Indians in the world are collectively worth a staggering $180 billion, greater than the GDP of a majority of member states of the United Nations. Indian papers have reported with undisguised glee that these four (Lakshmi Mittal, the two Ambani brothers, and DLF chief K P Singh) are worth more than the 40 richest Chinese combined.

We seem to find less space in our papers to note that though we have more dollar billionaires than in any country in Asia - even more than Japan, which has been richer longer - we also have 260 million people living below the poverty line. And it’s not the World Bank’s poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day - in other words, a line that’s been drawn just this side of the funeral pyre.

Last month, the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex crossed 20,000, just 20 months after it had first hit 10,000; but on the same day, some 25,000 landless people marched to Parliament, clamouring for land reform and justice. We have trained world-class scientists and engineers, but 400 million of our compatriots are illiterate, and we also have more children who have not seen the inside of a school than any other country in the world does.

We have a great demographic advantage in 540 million young people under 25 (which means we should have a dynamic, youthful and productive workforce for the next 40 years when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing) but we also have 60 million child labourers, and 72% of the children in our government schools drop out by the eighth standard. We celebrate India’s IT triumphs, but information technology has employed a grand total of 1 million people in the last five years, while 10 million are entering the workforce each year and we don’t have jobs for them.

Many of our urban youth rightly say with confidence that their future will be better than their parents’ past, but there are Maoist insurgencies violently disturbing the peace in 165 of India’s 602 districts, and these are largely made up of unemployed young men.

So yes, we are a land of paradoxes, and amongst those paradoxes is that so many of us speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ our people. And yet, India is more than the sum of its contradictions. It may be a country rife with despair and disrepair, but it nonetheless moved a Mughal Emperor to declaim, ‘‘if on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this...’’ We just have a lot more to do before it can be anything like paradise for the vast majority of our fellow citizens

India 2007 - Forbes article

Sneak Peek 2007
Ruth David On India
12.31.06, 6:00 AM ET


The Big Trend
An India story that's not just about information technology and the
services industry. Companies in sectors like retail, telecom,
manufacturing and pharmaceuticals will expand globally while
consolidating India operations. Cross-border mergers and acquisitions
will continue, with the average deal size increasing in value. In
India, the number of people working for foreign firms is bound to
increase, but there will also be a rise in the number of Westerners
working for Indian firms as they set up bases outside their country.

The Unconventional Wisdom

Despite political pressures within India's ruling coalition and
disagreements with state governments, reforms in the power and
infrastructure sectors will make sustainable progress. Indians may
have resigned themselves to problems like interrupted power supply and
bad roads. But state governments will realize that if they want to
retain foreign and domestic investments, they need to fix these
bottlenecks.

The Misplaced Assumption
That India is unstoppable, the market will continue to boom, real
estate will stay at inflated levels and India will soon reach the high
quarterly growth rates of 10% politicians and economists are
predicting. Despite the economy's growth spurt in the recent years,
the anticipated demand far exceeds potential supply. Skyrocketing
wages won't help solve the shortage of skilled labor. And that's not
all--infrastructure is not equipped to deal with the onslaught of
foreign and domestic investment. India may get a bit too hot to handle
in 2007.

The Watch List

Manufacturers and alternative energy companies -- Manufacturing will
continue to show its recent sustainable strength. As India struggles
to meet it growing energy needs from renewable, nonpolluting sources,
there will be a push toward wind energy and bio fuels, like ethanol
from sugarcane. Accord on the India-U.S. nuclear deal will result in
large investments in building nuclear plants and a land grab by
American and European multinationals for lucrative energy contracts.

The Bold Prediction

The Indian government will allow foreign universities to enter India,
setting in motion a revolution in education and helping the country
meet the growing demand for an educated workforce. Only 50 million of
India's 1.2 billion people have degrees past high school. As global
companies head to these shores in search of talent, there's an urgent
need to increase that number. Foreign institutions will ease the
pressure on crowded Indian schools as well as give graduates a chance
to specialize in a wide range of fields.

Many Young Indians Are Fat; More Are Famished - NYT article

The New York Times
December 31, 2006
Many Young Indians Are Fat; More Are Famished
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

NEW DELHI, Dec. 30 — Presenting a confounding portrait of child health in India, new research commissioned by the government finds that despite the economic advances of recent years India’s share of malnourished children remains among the worst in the world.

Paradox being pervasive in this country, the new data on child malnutrition comes even as public health officials confront what they call alarming levels of childhood obesity.

In short, while new money and new foods transform the eating habits of some of India’s youngest citizens, gnawing destitution continues to plague millions of others. Taken together, it is a picture of plenty and want, each producing its own set of afflictions.

Consider the statistics from Delhi, one of the country’s most prosperous states and the seat of the capital. A recent study conducted by the Delhi Diabetes Research Center among schoolchildren ages 10 to 16 found nearly one in five to be either overweight or clinically obese.

At the same time, preliminary figures from the latest National Family Health Survey showed one in three children under the age of 3 to be clinically underweight, the most reliable measure of malnutrition.

Most vexing, especially for the government, is that the preliminary findings of the national survey, conducted in 2005-6, suggest that India’s share of malnourished children seems to have declined only modestly since the last national survey seven years ago.

In Delhi, for instance, the share of underweight children dipped to 33 percent from 35 percent in that period. In perhaps the most damning indictment of the public health system, the share of Delhi children who were fully immunized actually fell to 63 percent from a level of 70 percent.

During that period, the Indian economy soared.

“I just want to assure you, government is very aware,” Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission said at a meeting of children’s rights advocates this month. “We must really judge our success in terms of these indicators, not in terms of growth.”

Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said bluntly at the same gathering, “Our failure here is very extraordinary.”

The rampant malnutrition occurs even though India has long had a surplus of food grains, and one of the largest child health and nutrition programs in the world. Public health experts say social practice and government neglect are more to blame.

Deprivation starts with mothers: poor women, who are likely to be malnourished to begin with, tend to get insufficient food and rest during pregnancy. They give birth to underweight babies and often cannot produce enough breast milk.

Millions of families, including their babies, survive on little more than rice, wheat and lentils. Poor sanitation, irregular immunization and a lack of access to primary health care can make already fragile children even more prone to falling ill and losing more weight.

The child nutrition program, which is supposed to provide food rations and health counseling to mothers and children, has a checkered record, delivering high-quality meals in some places but dogged elsewhere by charges of corruption and mismanagement.

A government panel this year recommended sweeping changes to the program, including serving cooked food to children and delivering rations at home for pregnant women and babies.

In a rare rebuke, the Supreme Court of India this month ordered the government to expand swiftly the number of nutrition programs in the country. The programs now serve around 46 million children, at least on paper.

The repercussions of child malnutrition, particularly in a country where 40 percent of the people are younger than 18, are obvious and far-reaching. It stunts mental and physical development and makes children additionally susceptible to illness.

The World Bank this year put a price on malnutrition, saying that India lost up to $2.5 billion annually because of reduced productivity.

The government has so far released data from the latest National Family Health Survey for 22 of the country’s 29 states, and it reveals, like most everything else here, a mixed picture. In India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh in the north, 47 percent of children younger than 3 are clinically underweight. In central Madhya Pradesh, home to many of India’s indigenous tribes, the portion is a staggering 60 percent. In southern Tamil Nadu, the share has steadily dipped over the past decade to 33 percent.

Because not all state information is released, no official figure is available yet on the latest nationwide malnutrition figure.

An independent analysis by Jean Dreze, an economist and advocate for the expansion of the national child nutrition program, estimated that the national malnutrition rate was 42 percent, based on the population-weighted average of the 22 states where figures are available.

That represents a slight decline from seven years ago when nearly 47 percent of children nationwide were found to be underweight.

One morning in a destitute rural district called Barabanki about 300 miles northwest of here, a dozen small children, most of them barefoot, some of them barely clothed, lined up for help at a program known as Integrated Child Development Services.

On this morning, every child received a scoop of dry cereal, a bland mixture of wheat, sugar and soy that is called panjiri in Hindi.

Some brought a plastic bag to hold their gift. Others made a bowl with the dirty end of whatever they wore. They sat on the ground and shoveled the food into their mouths.

Mothers in this village said the dry ration cereal sometimes made their children sick. No cooked food was available at this center. The center was also supposed to dispense vitamin-fortified oil to the villagers, but they said it rarely came.

Child health workers assigned to the centers in Barabanki were infrequent visitors. One parent said she had not seen a health worker in her village in months, since the last distribution of polio vaccine. Immunization rates in this state are among the lowest anywhere in India. Fewer than one in four children are fully immunized, according to the latest health survey.

An independent survey by Mr. Dreze and his team across six states in India concluded that, like the centers in Barabanki, most of the feeding programs had neither kitchens nor toilets. A third of them were described as being in “poor” or “very poor” shape.

The best ones, the survey found, like those in southern Tamil Nadu state, served a variety of hot, freshly cooked food. Stubborn social divides in some parts of India meant that low-caste children or those from Muslim families were not served at all.

Around the corner from one center in Barabanki, at the home of a toddler named Asma, who is almost 3, was a typical portrait of want.

Asma’s mother, Alia Bano, said she had never had enough breast milk to feed Asma, the youngest of six children. She barely had money to buy milk, and with it, she made a pot of milky tea for the family each morning.

The family’s daily meals consisted of lentils, with rice or whole wheat bread, and sometimes a vegetable. Fruit was too expensive. Asma’s mother could not recall when she last bought meat or eggs. The family lived off the earnings of Asma’s father, a day laborer. They owned no land.

Asma waddled with a distended belly, a hallmark of malnutrition. Her mother said she frequently suffered from diarrhea and fever.

A portrait of India’s afflictions of plenty is almost equally commonplace.

Here in the nation’s capital, on a Saturday afternoon several months ago a teenager named Mansi Arya sat in a nutritionist’s clinic, recalling just how much she had eaten during her last round of school examinations.

She would come home from class, persuade her mother to fry spiced bread known as parathas or open a packet of namkeen, the deep-fried spicy snacks that are the Indian equivalent of potato chips. She would plunk down with her books and study until dinner, eat and return to the books.

At school, the canteen served all manner of hot fried delicacies, all of which Mansi ate with abandon. At birthday parties, there was the usual array of junk food and cakes. That year, when she was in the 10th grade, Mansi said she had gained close to 22 pounds.

For nearly five months, with the help of nutrition counseling, Mansi dropped pounds. She gave up junk food. Her mother kept fruit on the dinner table. Her parents bought her a treadmill. The family gave up eating white bread and switched to healthful grains.

Then, a few months ago, she entered the crunch of college entrance exams, the most serious in an Indian youngster’s life.

Mansi confessed last week that her discipline had melted in the face of stress. She said she craves chocolates and spiced potato cutlets. She said she couldn’t remember when she was last on that treadmill.

“With this tight schedule and so much of stress, I don’t like all that diet food,” she said. “I feel hungry when I eat that diet food, and I can’t study when I’m hungry.”

A continuing study among Delhi teenagers by Anoop Misra, a doctor at the privately run Fortis Hospital here, found that the ranks of the obese had jumped sharply in the last two years alone, from 16 percent to nearly 29 percent.

Mansi, now 16, swears she will get back on the diet after her exams next March. She says she wants to look good when she starts college next year.

Indian Scientists Return Home As Economy Moves a Step Up - WSJ article

Indian Scientists Return Home As Economy Moves a Step Up
Original Research Replaces Rote Work, Allowing Firms To Lure Talent From U.S.

By PETER WONACOTT
December 14, 2006; Page A1

PUNE, India -- For more than 20 years, Rashmi Barbhaiya lived a comfortable life in New Jersey as a researcher for drug maker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., commuting from his five-acre suburban estate in a blue Mercedes.

Now, in a move that hints at a big shift in the global pharmaceutical business, Dr. Barbhaiya is back home in India. He's still trying to discover new drugs, but he's doing so with an all-Indian-born research team at a company he founded in this center of Indian high technology.


As big drug companies shut down some research facilities in the U.S. and other rich countries, labs in India and China are increasingly picking up the slack. Eli Lilly & Co., Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline PLC all have outsourced chemistry work to Indian firms, and Novartis AG announced last month that it is building a research center in China with at least 400 scientists. Meanwhile, Bayer AG said last month it is closing a major research facility in the U.S.

Merck & Co., which shuttered research labs in England and Japan at the end of last year, has a new outsourcing partner: Dr. Barbhaiya. His company, Advinus Therapeutics Ltd., agreed with Merck last month on a deal under which the Indian researchers will help Merck discover new drugs for metabolic disorders such as diabetes.

India was long a virtual pariah state among Western pharmaceutical companies because it let domestic companies sell copies of foreign drugs so long as they tweaked the manufacturing process. But in early 2005 the Indian government promised to heed the World Trade Organization's patent principles. The new Indian laws have encouraged U.S. and European companies both to sell their products in India and form research tie-ups.

The return of people such as Dr. Barbhaiya is an important indicator of progress in the Indian economy, which has averaged growth of 8% over the past three years. The country is beginning to lure back top-notch scientists and engineers who once saw opportunity only in the U.S. or Europe. A growing number of Indian companies are putting emphasis on original research and innovation, rather than performing rote tasks for companies in the West.


Outsourcing giant Wipro Ltd. says it has designed an entire chip for an American computer gaming company and car-navigation gear for a European parts supplier. Wipro says it does the work for a fraction of what its customers would spend if they did it themselves.

Pawan Goenka, a former research engineer at General Motors Corp., came back to India in the early 1990s and now is president of the automotive group at local vehicle maker Mahindra & Mahindra. He estimates the company spent $120 million designing a sport-utility vehicle, or one-fourth the budget for a similar vehicle in the U.S. Recently, Dr. Goenka brought in a new research chief from Ford Motor Co. to work on hybrid vehicles.

India's high-tech companies still face challenges. A shortage of funds afflicts all but a handful of elite universities. For Indians living abroad, that has dimmed the appeal of an academic post back home and deprived the country of a chance to deepen its talent pool. Infrastructure remains creaky, although luxury apartments, fitness centers and specialty coffee shops have sprung up around Indian business parks to smooth the transition for returnees accustomed to the West.

Indian companies such as Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. have long competed internationally in generic drugs, drawing on their skill in copying foreign products learned under India's old patent regime. Now Indian companies are increasingly conducting clinical trials, performing contract chemistry work and, as Dr. Barbhaiya's journey shows, carrying out original research aimed at discovering new drugs.

As a boy growing up in Ahmadabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Dr. Barbhaiya couldn't bring himself to accompany his father, a cardiologist, to work because he couldn't stand the smell of hospitals. He went into pharmacology instead, earning a doctorate at the University of London and landing a job at Bristol-Myers after postdoctoral stints in the U.S.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Barbhaiya helped Bristol-Myers select and test promising drugs for AIDS, depression and cancer. He worked on the AIDS drug Videx, introduced in 1991.


In 2001, Ranbaxy made him an offer to become head of research. The company, India's biggest producer of generic drugs, was stepping up efforts to discover its own products. At 49, Dr. Barbhaiya took early retirement from Bristol-Myers and headed home. Among his first hires was a former colleague at Bristol-Myers, Kasim Mookhtiar, who became Ranbaxy's head of drug discovery.

One of Dr. Barbhaiya's passions is discovering drugs for diseases that are prominent in poorer countries but rarely get attention from Western drug makers. He recalls a dinner after the Videx success in which his father urged him to set his sights on diseases prevalent in India. "He said at best he could help 20 patients in a day, while what I did could help thousands," recalls Dr. Barbhaiya, a burly man with steel-grey hair. "I had tears in my eyes."

Dr. Barbhaiya steered Ranbaxy into a pact in 2003 to develop an antimalaria drug with the Geneva-based Medicines for Malaria Venture. The drug is now in midstage clinical trials.

However, the two former Bristol-Myers scientists, who had never worked in India's pharmaceutical industry, bristled over the difficulties of doing original research. Dr. Mookhtiar complains that it could take up to six months to procure a key chemical from the U.S., as an order wended its way through Ranbaxy's purchasing department as well as U.S. and Indian customs. He says he could email a similar request at Bristol-Myers and receive the chemical within 24 hours.

While the delay was partly the fault of governments, Ranbaxy's bureaucracy reflected an "old-fashioned" penny-pinching mentality that was suitable for a generics business, where margins are tight, but not for innovative research, Dr. Mookhtiar says.

Dr. Mookhtiar also says Ranbaxy researchers were too focused on adapting drugs already on the market instead of trying to anticipate what would be useful 10 to 15 years down the road. Drug discovery requires a "long-term thinker and a long-term planner," he says. "I have to have a deep knowledge of what's in the pipeline." In 2004, Dr. Barbhaiya left Ranbaxy and Dr. Mookhtiar soon followed.


Ranbaxy's chief executive, Malvinder Mohan Singh, denies the company is slowed by bureaucracy and says its scientists continue to do innovative research. Mr. Singh says Ranbaxy has the biggest research and development budget among Indian drug companies, amounting to 9% of sales, or about $110 million last year.

Although no Indian company on its own has yet delivered a new patented drug to the global market, several have drugs in midstage human trials. Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Ltd., another major generics company that has embarked on its own research, says it plans to begin final-stage trials of a diabetes drug soon.

Looking to run his own show, Dr. Barbhaiya found a backer in the Tata Group, a prominent family-owned conglomerate. The Tata family was looking for someone to turn a small agrochemical laboratory in Bangalore into a center for clinical research. Indian firms are doing a brisk business carrying out human trials of drugs for Western companies that want to take advantage of the large Indian population and low costs.

Dr. Barbhaiya agreed to run the Bangalore facility, but he also wanted funding for a modern drug discovery lab. The result was Advinus Therapeutics, a company whose new-drug research would be powered by Indian scientists returning from the U.S. and other countries. (The name Advinus is shorthand for "Advantage India U.S.," says Dr. Barbhaiya.) In August, Tata Chairman Ratan Tata inaugurated Advinus's $12 million drug-discovery center in Pune, a city surrounded by green hills two hours southeast of Mumbai.

Dr. Barbhaiya chose to place his new venture in one of the hot spots of new Indian industry. Once a sleepy "pensioner's paradise," Pune has become a center for technology and bioscience companies that attract returnees. Billboards for new fitness centers and soon-to-be-built luxury apartments with names like Omega Paradise and Whistling Palms reflect the rising living standards of the returnees. Their new Hondas and Toyotas share beat-up roads with farmers on bicycles. Scientists at Advinus say that while they earn a bit less than they would at U.S. drug companies, India's cost of living is cheaper, and there's also the appeal of helping the country push into new economic and scientific frontiers.

Across the street from Advinus's lab is the corporate campus of an icon of the new India: Infosys Ltd. The software-outsourcing company is finishing construction of a large domed building that is supposed to resemble a computer mouse.

The changes in India are evident in Advinus's fledgling corporate culture. Dr. Barbhaiya has tried to cultivate a relaxed atmosphere among Advinus researchers, in contrast to the clear hierarchy at Indian generic-drug makers.

The lab is run by the jocular Dr. Mookhtiar. As a graduate student at Florida State University, he once greeted his adviser amid a cloud of liquid nitrogen wearing Dracula teeth and small pieces of red-streaked plastic foam stuck to his eyes -- a prank designed to show how overwork had made him slightly deranged, he says. The adviser wasn't amused. Dr. Mookhtiar recalls being told to grow up.

The heart of the Advinus lab is a big coffee machine surrounded by lab tables. In the mornings, scientists gather around the conference table to bat around ideas.

"Sometimes I'm sitting in a meeting and for a moment I think I'm at Pfizer," says Koushik Das Sarma, 36, who worked at the New York-based drug maker after research stints at Purdue and Duke universities. Dr. Sarma and several other returnee scientists at Advinus say they long hoped to come back to India but didn't want to leave the front lines of research.

Dr. Mookhtiar says his team has selected 11 established drug "targets" -- biological processes that, if disrupted with a drug, might treat disease. The 11 targets are in obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, he says. Because the targets are well-known among specialists, some companies are ahead in designing drugs to hit them, but the Advinus scientists hope their drugs will work better or have fewer side effects. Because they have just gotten started, none of their compounds have been tested in humans yet.

Dr. Mookhtiar says he dived into research on obesity because he was intrigued by why some people became fat and stayed fat. "I just smell french fries and gain two pounds," says Dr. Mookhtiar, patting his belly. "Why is that?"

Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com1

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116604308874849298.html

Indian Passport Law Reflects Global Trend WSJ article

Pledging Allegiances:
Indian Passport Law Reflects Global Trend
By BARRY NEWMAN
December 15, 2006; Page B1

HOBOKEN, N.J. -- Sudhir Parikh is about to become a citizen of India. Again.

Dr. Parikh, a 59-year-old allergist, arrived in the U.S. 32 years ago and became an American citizen in 1986. By Indian law, his citizenship of India lapsed the instant he took the oath. But this year India had a change of heart about its fallen-away citizens. With some hesitancy, it has become the biggest and latest addition to a lengthening list of countries that allow their citizens to be citizens of other countries at the same time.

"Economically speaking, it's profitable, and emotionally it feels good," Dr. Parikh said between patients at his storefront office here, one of 25 practices he owns in the New York area. As a citizen, the doctor will be able to invest in India's high-return economy almost as if he lived there -- and India, of course, will benefit from getting his money. Dr. Parikh and his wife, also a doctor, and their two American-born children had no qualms about filling out a form on an Indian-government Web site and paying $275 for their new status.

"I'm as connected to India," he says, "as I am to the U.S."

In an ever-more global world, dual citizenship has become commonplace. In 1996, for example, seven of 17 Latin American countries allowed some form of it; by 2003, 15 did. India's change in policy means every major country whose nationals migrate to the U.S. now allows dual citizenship except for China, South Korea and Cuba. Although the U.S. just last week announced a new naturalization test redesigned with questions to lend a deeper meaning to the act of becoming a citizen, it, too, allows its citizens to hold passports of other countries.

Dr. Parikh's commitment to two countries may be as hard for some native-born Americans to countenance as bigamy. In the U.S. and Europe as well, immigration-policy struggles are colored by questions about terrorists and the loyalties of undocumented dishwashers alike. To some social conservatives, dual citizenship is a blow to patriotism. Stanley Renshon, a political scientist at New York's City University and author of a new book, "The 50% American," calls it "the civic equivalent of a one-night stand."

But globalists see it instead as a ticket to unimpeded labor mobility and a check on the power of nationalism. "I can understand why the dilution of national identity is lamented, but it's irreversible," says Peter Spiro, a professor of international law at Temple University. Dual citizenship, he says, has spread at "an explosive pace" because governments are "playing it as a mechanism for keeping an economic hook on their diasporas."

The trick is to sink the hook deeper than the first immigrant generation. That's why India has offered its new citizen status to foreign-born children and grandchildren, as well. Dr. Parikh plans to use his new rights to buy or build a medical college in India to teach young Indian-Americans who can't get into U.S. medical schools.

"Our children will have the social and emotional bonding very important for any culture to continue," he says.

Of the 20 million ethnic Indians abroad, 14 million are citizens of other nations, either because they were born there or immigrated and naturalized. Until now, because of security worries dating back to India's 1947 independence and partition from Pakistan, these people were denied Indian passports, and have needed visas to visit their ancestral homeland. If they stayed longer than six months, they had to register with the police. Most intrusively, they were forbidden from owning real estate.

It wasn't the friendliest way for India's government to stay in touch with its diaspora or to tap its substantial wealth. Indians abroad send more money home -- $22 billion in 2004 -- than any other national group, including the overseas Chinese. But India wants more, especially in the form of direct investments.

So last January, it invented a hybrid species of national affiliation: Overseas Citizenship of India. It's available now to anyone who was an Indian citizen post-1950, and to their children and grandchildren wherever they were born. The new status continues to shield overseas citizens against double taxation, while granting visaless entry for life, unlimited stays with no police reports, and the freedom to buy any property but farmland -- not to mention, cheap rates officially reserved for citizens at hotels.

What it doesn't grant is the vote -- the result of a compromise between India's economic promoters and some of its politicians who worry about Hindu and Muslim extremists tipping elections from abroad. Nevertheless, Krishnan Varma, consular minister at India's embassy in Washington, says that applications for Indian citizenship from around the world so far number "well into the hundreds of thousands."

Not everyone is in a rush. Statistics don't show how many of the two million Indians in the U.S. have naturalized here, but some who have taken U.S. citizenship are standing pat. Sunil Wadhwani, 53, immigrated 30 years ago and founded iGate, a Pittsburgh outsourcing firm that employs thousands of Indians in India. "But I made a commitment to the U.S.," Mr. Wadhwani says. "I'm not going to divide my loyalties."

People who become naturalized U.S. citizens still swear to renounce "fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty." But the oath is as outdated as its language; the U.S. makes no attempt to enforce it. The reasons, never officially stated, run from the acknowledgment that many potential citizens would be unwilling to renounce their home countries to the economic and political benefits of having a cadre of citizens who can freely live and work overseas.

People born in the U.S. can take a second citizenship if they qualify elsewhere. While it's impossible to know exactly how many Americans have an extra passport in their pockets, Prof. Renshon of City University puts the number of U.S. citizens who either hold or are entitled to hold a second passport at upward of 40 million. On the basis of ancestry, several countries -- notably Ireland, Italy and Israel -- positively encourage Americans to sign up. The U.S. doesn't expect to be informed. In fact, renunciation of U.S. citizenship requires an explicit declaration; otherwise, it is almost impossible to lose.

The personal advantages of having an extra passport can be substantial. An American with an EU passport, for instance, can live permanently in any of 25 European countries (expanding to 27 on Jan. 1) without jumping through the usual immigration hoops. However, for citizens of some countries -- Turkey and South Korea are two -- taking a second passport in another country might stir up issues of double taxation, and could affect retirement, inheritance and property rights. Such worries often dissuade permanent residents of the U.S. from naturalizing here.

India's new policy has helped soothe fears. Some Indians who were loathe to give up property rights back home are seizing on India's rules to naturalize in the U.S. now. For the first time, they will enjoy the benefits of citizenship, including a vote in U.S. elections and immunity from deportation. Sudha Acharya, 67 years old, has lived in the U.S. for 37 years and has only just decided to apply for citizenship. "It's good to know that having a U.S. passport will not cause problems," says Ms. Acharya, who runs a social-service agency in New York.

Recently Dr. Parikh helped put on a meeting for Indian-Americans from Gujarat at Royal Albert's Palace, a combination motel and wedding hall near New Jersey's Perth Amboy that looks like a Moghul fortress. Vayalar Ravi, India's minister for overseas Indian affairs, told 2,000 guests in the ballroom: "India's development is your opportunity. Stand up and say, 'I am an Indian. I'm proud to be an Indian!"'

Downstairs, in the restaurant, Dr. Parikh's daughter, Purvi, was eating dinner. At 24, she had just finished her second year of medical school -- at St. George's University in Grenada -- and was getting set to apply for her Indian citizenship online.

"I completely see myself as American, and Indian, also. I'm two people," she says. "But having that piece of paper -- it's psychological. People like that sense of belonging. I guess that's why they join clubs."

Write to Barry Newman at barry.newman@wsj.com1

Role of Western values in contemporary Indian society

Role of Western values in contemporary Indian society

A talk delivered at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute
of Management on October 02, 2002 by
Narayana N. R. Murthy
Chairman of the Board, Infosys Technologies Limited, Bangalore, India

Ladies and gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to be here at the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management. Lal Bahadur Shastri was a man of strong values and he epitomized simple living. He was a freedom fighter and innovative administrator who contributed to nation building in full measure. It is indeed a matter of pride for me to be chosen for the Lal Bahadur Shastri Award for Public Administration and Management Sciences. I thank the jury for this honor.

When I got the invitation to speak here, I decided to speak on an important topic on which I have pondered for years - the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society. Coming from a company that is built on strong values, the topic is close to my heart. Moreover, an organization is representative of society, and some of the lessons that I have learnt are applicable in the national context. In fact, values drive progress and define quality of life in society.

The word community joins two Latin words com (together) and unus (one). A community, then, is both one and many. It is a unified multitude and not a mere group of people. As it is said in the Vedas: Man can live individually, but can survive only collectively. Hence, the challenge is to form a progressive community by balancing the interests of the individual and that of the society. To meet this, we need to develop a value system where people accept modest sacrifices for the common good.

What is a value system? It is the protocol for behavior that enhances the trust, confidence and commitment of members of the community. It goes beyond the domain of legality - it is about decent and desirable behavior. Further, it includes putting the community interests ahead of your own. Thus, our collective survival and progress is predicated on sound values. There are two pillars of the cultural value system - loyalty to family and loyalty to community. One should not be in isolation to the other, because, successful societies are those which combine both harmoniously. It is in this context that I will discuss the role of Western values in contemporary Indian society.

Some of you here might say that most of what I am going to discuss are actually Indian values in old ages, and not Western values. I live in the present, not in the bygone era. Therefore, I have seen these values practiced primarily in the West and not in India. Hence, the title of the topic. I am happy as long as we practice these values - whether we call it Western or old Indian values.

As an Indian, I am proud to be part of a culture, which has deep-rooted family values. We have tremendous loyalty to the family. For instance, parents make enormous sacrifices for their children. They support them until they can stand on their own feet. On the other side, children consider it their duty to take care of aged parents. We believe: Mathru devo bhava - mother is God, and pithru devo bhava - father is God. Further, brothers and sisters sacrifice for each other. In fact, the eldest brother or sister is respected by all the other siblings. As for marriage, it is held to be a sacred union -husband and wife are bonded, most often, for life. In joint families, the entire family works towards the welfare of the family. There is so much love and affection in our family life. This is the essence of Indian values and one of our key strengths. Our families act as a critical support mechanism for us. In fact, the credit to the success of Infosys goes, as much to the founders as to their families, for supporting them through the tough times.

Unfortunately, our attitude towards family life is not reflected in our attitude towards community behavior. From littering the streets to corruption to breaking of contractual obligations, we are apathetic to the common good. In the West - the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand - individuals understand that they have to be responsible towards their community. The primary difference between the West and us is that, there, people have a much better societal orientation. They care more for the society than we do. Further, they generally sacrifice more for the society than us. Quality of life is enhanced because of this. This is where we need to learn from the West.

I will talk about some of the lessons that we, Indians, can learn from the
West.

In the West, there is respect for the public good. For instance, parks free of litter, clean streets, public toilets free of graffiti - all these are instances of care for the public good. On the contrary, in India, we keep our houses clean and water our gardens everyday - but, when we go to a park, we do not think twice before littering the place.

Corruption, as we see in India, is another example of putting the interest of oneself, and at best that of one's family, above that of the society. Society is relatively corruption free in the West. For instance, it is very difficult to bribe a police officer into avoiding a speeding ticket. This is because of the individual’s responsible behavior towards the community as a whole. On the contrary, in India, corruption, tax evasion, cheating and bribery have eaten into our vitals. For instance, contractors bribe officials, and construct low-quality roads and bridges. The result is that society loses in the form of substandard defence equipment and infrastructure, and low-quality recruitment, just to name a few impediments. Unfortunately, this behavior is condoned by almost everyone.

Apathy in solving community matters has held us back from making progress, which is otherwise within our reach. We see serious problems around us but do not try to solve them. We behave as if the problems do not exist or is somebody else’s. On the other hand, in the West, people solve societal problems proactively.

There are several examples of our apathetic attitude. For instance, all of us are aware of the problem of drought in India. More than 40 years ago, Dr. K. L. Rao - an irrigation expert, suggested creation of a water grid connecting all the rivers in North and South India, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, nothing has been done about this. The story of power shortage in Bangalore is another instance. In 1983, it was decided to build a thermal power plant to meet Bangalore's power requirements. Unfortunately, we have still not started it. Further, the Milan subway in Bombay is in a deplorable state for the last 40 years, and no action has been taken. To quote another example, considering the constant travel required in the software industry; five years ago, I had suggested a 240-page passport. This would eliminate frequent visits to the passport office. In fact, we are ready to pay for it. However, I am yet to hear from the Ministry of External Affairs on this. We, Indians, would do well to remember Thomas Hunter's words: Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes it.

What could be the reason for all this? We were ruled by foreigners for over thousand years. Thus, we have always believed that public issues belonged to some foreign ruler and that we have no role in solving them. Moreover, we have lost the will to proactively solve our own problems. Thus, we have got used to just executing someone else's orders. Borrowing Aristotle's words: We are what we repeatedly do. Thus, having done this over the years, the decision-makers in our society are not trained for solving problems. Our decision-makers look to somebody else to take decisions. Unfortunately, there is nobody to look up to, and this is the tragedy.

Our intellectual arrogance has also not helped our society. I have traveled extensively, and in my experience, have not come across another society where people are as contemptuous of better societies as we are, with as little progress as we have achieved.

Remember that arrogance breeds hypocrisy. No other society gloats so much about the past as we do, with as little current accomplishment. Friends, this is not a new phenomenon, but at least a thousand years old. For instance, Al Barouni, the famous Arabic logician and traveler of the 10th century, who spent about 30 years in India from 997 AD to around 1027 AD, referred to this trait of Indians. According to him, during his visit, most Indian pundits considered it below their dignity even to hold arguments with him. In fact, on a few occasions when a pundit was willing to listen to him, and found his arguments to be very sound, he invariably asked Barouni: which Indian pundit taught these smart things!

The most important attribute of a progressive society is respect for others who have accomplished more than they themselves have, and learn from them. Contrary to this, our leaders make us believe that other societies do not know anything! At the same time, everyday, in the newspapers, you will find numerous claims from our leaders that ours is the greatest nation. These people would do well to remember Thomas Carlyle's words: The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none. If we have to progress, we have to change this attitude, listen to people who have performed better than us, learn from them and perform better than them. Infosys is a good example of such an attitude. We
continue to rationalize our failures. No other society has mastered this art as well as we have. Obviously, this is an excuse to justify our incompetence, corruption, and apathy. This attitude has to change. As Sir Josiah Stamp has said: It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

Another interesting attribute, which we Indians can learn from the West, is their accountability. Irrespective of your position, in the West, you are held accountable for what you do. However, in India, the more important you are, the less answerable you are. For instance, a senior politician once declared that he forgot to file his tax returns for 10 consecutive years and he got away with it. To quote another instance, there are over 100 loss making public sector units (central) in India. Nevertheless, I have not seen action taken for bad performance against top managers in these organizations.

Dignity of labor is an integral part of the Western value system. In the West, each person is proud about his or her labor that raises honest sweat. On the other hand, in India, we tend to overlook the significance of those who are not in professional jobs. We have a mindset that reveres only supposedly intellectual work. For instance, I have seen many engineers, fresh from college, who only want to do cutting-edge work and not work that is of relevance to business and the country. However, be it an organization or society, there are different people performing different roles. For success, all these people are required to discharge their duties. This includes everyone from the CEO
to the person who serves tea - every role is important. Hence, we need a mindset that reveres everyone who puts in honest work. Indians become intimate even without being friendly. They ask favors of strangers without any hesitation. For instance, the other day, while I was traveling from Bangalore to Mantralaya, I met a fellow traveler on the train. Hardly 5 minutes into the conversation, he requested me to speak to his MD about removing him from the bottom 10% list in his company, earmarked for disciplinary action. I was reminded of what Rudyard Kipling once said: A westerner can be friendly without being intimate while an easterner tends to be intimate without being friendly.

Yet another lesson to be learnt from the West, is about their professionalism in dealings. The common good being more important than personal equations, people do not let personal relations interfere with their professional dealings. For instance, they don't hesitate to chastise a colleague, even if he is a personal friend, for incompetent work. In India, I have seen that we tend to view even work interactions from a personal perspective. Further, we are the most thin-skinned society in the world - we see insults where none is meant. This may be because we were not free for most of the last thousand years. Further, we seem to extend this lack of professionalism to our sense of punctuality. We do not seem to respect the other person's time. The Indian Standard Time somehow seems to be always running late.Moreover, deadlines are typically not met. How many public projects are completed on time? The disheartening aspect is that we have accepted this as the norm rather than the exception.

In the West, they show professionalism by embracing meritocracy. Meritocracy by definition means that we cannot let personal prejudices affect our evaluation of an individual's performance. As we increasingly start to benchmark ourselves with global standards, we have to embrace meritocracy. In the West, right from a very young age, parents teach their children to be independent in thinking. Thus, they grow up to be strong, confident individuals. In India, we still suffer from feudal thinking. I have seen people, who are otherwise bright, refusing to show independence and preferring to be told what to do by their boss. We need to overcome this attitude if we have to succeed globally.

The Western value system teaches respect to contractual obligation. In the West, contractual obligations are seldom dishonored. This is important - enforceability of legal rights and contracts is the most important factor in the enhancement of credibility of our people and nation. In India, we consider our marriage vows as sacred. We are willing to sacrifice in order to respect our marriage vows. However, we do not extend this to the public domain. For instance, India had an unfavorable contract with Enron. Instead of punishing the people responsible for negotiating this, we reneged on the contract - this
was much before we came to know about the illegal activities at Enron. To quote another instance, I had given recommendations to several students for the national scholarship for higher studies in US universities. Most of them did not return to India even though contractually they were obliged to spend five years after their degree in India. In fact, according to a professor at a reputed US university, the maximum default rate for student loans is among Indians - all of these students pass out in flying colors and land lucrative jobs, yet they refuse to pay back their loans. Thus, their action has made it difficult for the students after them, from India, to obtain loans. We have to change this attitude.

Further, we Indians do not display intellectual honesty. For example, our political leaders use mobile phones to tell journalists on the other side that they do not believe in technology! If we want our youngsters to progress, such hypocrisy must be stopped.

We are all aware of our rights as citizens. Nevertheless, we often fail to acknowledge the duty that accompanies every right. To borrow Dwight Eisenhower's words: People that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both. Our duty is towards the community as a whole, as much as it is towards our families. We have to remember that fundamental social problems grow out of a lack of commitment to the common good. To quote Henry Beecher: Culture is that which helps us to work for the betterment of all. Hence, friends, I do believe that we can make our society even better by assimilating these Western values into our own culture - we will be stronger for it.

Most of our behavior comes from greed, lack of self-confidence, lack of confidence in the nation, and lack of respect for the society. To borrow Gandhi's words: There is enough in this world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. Let us work towards a society where we would do unto others what we would have others do unto us. Let us all be responsible citizens who make our country a great place to live. In the words of Churchill: Responsibility is the price of greatness. We have to extend our family values beyond the boundaries of our home.

Finally, let us work towards maximum welfare of the maximum people - Samasta janaanaam sukhino bhavantu. Thus, let us - people of this generation, conduct ourselves as great citizens rather than just good people so that we can serve as good examples for our younger generation.

Thank you.

A Diwali primer on the pursuit of wealth and happiness

A Diwali primer on the pursuit of wealth and happiness*
Saturday October 21, 2006
Jaithirth Rao http://www.indianexpress.com/story/15032.html


The myth perpetrated by Max Mueller and other orientalists that we are a spiritual people as opposed to those in the materialist West has in turn been internalised by us. While the West is supposed to focus on the twin pillars of consumption and investment, we are doomed to retreat into forests wearing rough clothes of tree-bark and constantly engaging in wild-eyed penance. We actually seriously believe this tosh! Diwali or Deepavali is the
best argument to negate this point of view.

This festival is about multiple celebrations, all in the very real material economic world, not in some soporific maya-laden universe. We worship Lakshmi, a goddess mind you, not just a patriarchal ascetic male god! A goddess of prosperity, plenty, wealth and the celebration thereof, a goddess embedded in the earth itself, of this planet, representing the
bounties of the material world. The pursuit of artha, or economic well-being, is a very legitimate one for the denizen of this peninsula. The only injunction is that such pursuit of artha must go hand in hand with the pursuit of dharma, or righteous conduct. A modern interpretation of this would be to suggest that a business should pursue profits by selling high quality goods and services to its customers, not by selling shoddy or adulterated products. That would constitute the right combination of artha and dharma. A more contemporary view would be to suggest that the pursuit of market capitalization must not be at the cost of good corporate governance!

In fact they need to be intertwined. It is fascinating to note that one of the indulgences encouraged during Diwali is gambling. Our ancients knew that gambling is an authentic human need deeply etched into our unconscious. Nala and Yudhishtira may be considered foolish for indulging in excess, but not for the act of gambling itself. Both these characters have a Camus-like approach to the problem of the human predicament. Is living itself not a gamble? Are we not all gamblers each time we ride a bus or take a flight or merely step out? Playing cards late into the night also helps us understand that wealth is a means to an end and that wealth is not necessarily granted to the most deserving. There is an element of the throwing of the dice of fate in any explanation of the crossings of lines of profit and loss. A more fundamental question is whether in fact this dichotomy between the spiritual and the material is valid at all. It was Vivekananda who debunked the idea of selling spiritual solace to the starving poor.

We should apply the same logic to those who aspire for wealth. Earn it with dignity, spend it with a large heart, and don't feel guilty about having it or wanting to have it. Such a balanced approach is what Lakshmi and Krishna would urge on their devotees, not a choice between hedonist excesses or ascetic extremes. In this context I would like to examine the phenomenon of Diwali baksheesh, an important custom that helps bind neighbors together and serves a crucial function of voluntary wealth distribution in an atmosphere of good cheer. We give it to the postman because it is our dharma and because if we don't, our letters may get delivered to the apartment downstairs! We simultaneously ensure good service for ourselves, acknowledge the fact that our socialistic state pays postmen insufficiently and that it is right and proper to distribute largesse when we ourselves are in a mood to celebrate.


We give baksheesh to liftmen (a growing profession as we add ugly, tall buildings to our cityscapes with frenzy), to watchmen (who can barely protect themselves, let alone protect us), to dhobis (who may ruin our clothes more often if we ignore them), to domestic servants (who may otherwise revolt in the face of our consumerist indulgences, thus buying both social insurance and social goodwill). The puritanical British of 19th-century evangelical persuasion left us with a crazy foreign notion that baksheesh was about bribery, corruption and the innate moral chicanery of their "native" subjects. It is
high time we liberated ourselves from these racist, colonialist, imperialist, politically incorrect notions. Baksheesh, especially during the festive season, is the alchemical lubricant that holds our society together. And we as recipients (our employers call it 'bonus') or as givers are twice blessed for baksheesh has all the attributes of the quality of mercy that the Bard talked about. It blesseth both the giver and the receiver!

Noisy crackers are objected to by crackpot environmentalists who see pollution everywhere and deny that life on this planet is about joy and its pursuit. Varuna tells Bhrigu in the Taittriya Upanishad that the core of being human is not about the fact that we eat or that we breathe or that we think, but that we have the capacity for ananda. And what can give more ananda than a series of burning flower-pots followed by a series of red crackers going off and assaulting the ears. Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky will doubtless remain unimpressed. But P.G. Wodehouse and Walt Disney (infinitely more important and intelligent personages than Marx or Chomsky) would have agreed emphatically with Varuna and urged us to "go for it". When crackers accidentally burn down country houses, it tells you what country houses are really meant for!

Ananda needs to be pursued individually and collectively. Ananda is to be underpinned by prosperity that Lakshmi blesses us with. Ananda is to be shared and distributed especially to those who live around us and who have the capacity to help or harm us. Ananda in festive times should be characterized by staking our hopes on a roll of the die. Ananda propels us towards lights, especially in our power-cut-ridden, grimy, socialist cities. Ananda must be noisy, rejecting at least at this time the hushed tones of patronising kill-joys. Let us learn to celebrate with wholehearted vim and gusto our wonderful traditions of gambling, baksheesh, lights and deafening noise!

America ventures into India

America ventures into India
by Andrea Orr
Updated 06:29 PM EST, Oct-12-2006
The Deal.com


'India's Silicon Valley' is the common label for that country's burgeoning high-tech industry, but American venture capitalists often forget that investing in Bangalore is not the same as investing in San Jose, Calif.

During the Investing in India conference hosted by International Business Forum in San Francisco this week, venture capitalists described India as a market full of promising young Internet and wireless technologies that often lacks the physical infrastructure and the management expertise needed to turn a good concept into a sound business.

As a culture that has traditionally put a high premium on education but focused primarily on educating engineers, India now finds itself with a severe shortage of business-minded middle managers, they said.

Sumant Mandal, managing director of Clearstone Venture Partners, described it as a 'scarcity of middle management,' while Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Ajit Nazre said that Indian startups often had the wherewithal to write the code to make an Internet service work, but not the skills to package that service and sell it to consumers.

'A big problem for consumer-focused Internet companies is that they don't have good product managers,' Nazre said.

While U.S. investors needed to be mindful of this shortcoming, Nazre said it also presents an opportunity.

'Training is an area where a lot of investment can go,' he said. 'A company like Infosys [Technologies Ltd.] hires 25,000 people in a year and has to ask how does it train all of those people.

'That is just one company in one sector,' Nazre adds. 'Multiply that by all the companies in all the different industries that are hiring.'

The panelists pointed to several common mistakes made by U.S. venture capitalists, including: installing Western managers instead of nurturing those within the country; failing to educate Indian managers in the Western style of corporate democracy; and presuming young Indian managers can be gotten cheaply.

Mandal said salaries for talented middle managers in India are rising quickly and workers increasingly are expecting stock-option packages.

Despite the temptations of importing U.S. executives with M.B.As to India, VCs with experience in the country described that strategy as problematic, even if the person in question is an Indian citizen returning after a few years abroad. The business culture within India is evolving so rapidly, said Mandal, that he often preferred hiring novice workers within the country, who showed potential, to importing more experienced managers.

Foreign VCs too often view India's investment opportunities as analogous to those in Silicon Valley and overlook the diversity of opportunities in all industries, which include physical infrastructure, real estate, retail, textiles and automobiles, the panelists said.

Data from the Delhi research group Evalueserve Inc. shows that private equity investing in information technology has fallen as a percentage of overall deals — to 23.18% in the first half of 2006, from 49.1% in 2003 and 65.5% in 2000. The biggest increase was in the manufacturing sector, which comprised 10.3% of all investments in the first half of this year, up from just 1.8% in 2003.

Canaan Partners, which was an early investor in the U.S. online dating service Match.com LP eight years ago, recently sought a similar investment in India and discovered major differences in the culture as well as the physical infrastructure.

Canaan found the equivalent to an online dating site in India was an online matrimonial site, a high-tech version to the matchmakers who have long arranged marriages in the country.

But after it invested in the BharatMatrimony.com Pvt. Ltd. earlier this year, it realized that it had to do more just to get the average Indian in front of a computer terminal.

'The infrastructure is very simple,' said Deepak Kamra, a general partner at Canaan. 'A room with three cubicles with computer terminals.

'We realized that as much as the Indian people need education and wireless access, they need love and marriage first,' he added.

Are Indians the Model Immigrants? - BusinessWeek.com

SEPTEMBER 14, 2006


Viewpoint
By Vivek Wadhwa


Are Indians the Model Immigrants?
A BusinessWeek.com columnist and accomplished businessman, Wadhwa shares his views on why Indians are such a successful immigrant group


They have funny accents, occasionally dress in strange outfits, and some wear turbans and grow beards, yet Indians have been able to overcome stereotypes to become the U.S.'s most successful immigrant group. Not only are they leaving their mark in the field of technology, but also in real estate, journalism, literature, and entertainment. They run some of the most successful small businesses and lead a few of the largest corporations. Valuable lessons can be learned from their various successes.

According to the 2000 Census, the median household income of Indians was $70,708—far above the national median of $50,046. An Asian-American hospitality industry advocacy group says that Indians own 50% of all economy lodging and 37% of all hotels in the U.S. AnnaLee Saxenian, a dean and professor at University of California, Berkeley, estimates that in the late 1990s, close to 10% of technology startups in Silicon Valley were headed by Indians.

You'll find Indian physicians working in almost every hospital as well as running small-town practices. Indian journalists hold senior positions at major publications, and Indian faculty have gained senior appointments at most universities. Last month, Indra Nooyi, an Indian woman, was named CEO of PepsiCo (PEP ) (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/14/06, "PepsiCo Shakes It Up").

A MODEST EXPLANATION. Census data show that 81.8% of Indian immigrants arrived in the U.S. after 1980. They received no special treatment or support and faced the same discrimination and hardship that any immigrant group does. Yet, they learned to thrive in American society. Why are Indians such a model immigrant group?

In the absence of scientific research, I'll present my own reasons for why this group has achieved so much. As an Indian immigrant myself, I have had the chance to live the American dream. I started two successful technology companies and served on the boards of several others. To give back, I co-founded the Carolinas chapter of a networking group called The Indus Entrepreneurs and mentored dozens of entrepreneurs.

Last year, I joined Duke University as an executive-in-residence to share my business experience with students (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/14/05, "Degrees of Achievement") and research how the U.S. can maintain its global competitive advantage (see BusinessWeek.com, 7/10/06, "Engineering Gap? Fact and Fiction").

1. Education. The Census Bureau says that 63.9% of Indians over 25 hold at least a bachelor's degree, compared with the national average of 24.4%. Media reports routinely profile graduates from one Indian college—the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). This is a great school, but most successful Indians I know aren't IIT graduates. Neither are the doctors, journalists, motel owners, or the majority of technology executives. Their education comes from a broad range of colleges in India and the U.S. They believe that education is the best way to rise above poverty and hardship.

2. Upbringing. For my generation, what was most socially acceptable was to become a doctor, engineer, or businessperson. Therefore, the emphasis was on either learning science or math or becoming an entrepreneur.

3. Hard work. With India's competitive and rote-based education system, children are forced to spend the majority of their time on their schooling. For better or for worse, it's work, work, and more work for anyone with access to education.

4. Determination to overcome obstacles. In a land of over a billion people with a corrupt government, weak infrastructure, and limited opportunities, it takes a lot to simply survive, let alone get ahead. Indians learn to be resilient, battle endless obstacles, and make the most of what they have. In India, you're on your own and learn to work around the problems that the state and society create for you.

5. Entrepreneurial spirit. As corporate strategist C.K. Prahalad notes in his interview with BusinessWeek's Pete Engardio (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/23/06, "Business Prophet"), amidst the poverty, hustle, and bustle of overcrowded India is a "beehive of entrepreneurialism and creativity." After observing street markets, Prahalad says that "every individual is engaged in a business of some kind—whether it is selling single cloves of garlic, squeezing sugar cane juice for pennies a glass, or hauling TVs." This entrepreneurial sprit is something that most Indians grow up with.

6. Recognizing diversity. Indians hold many ethnic, racial, gender, and caste biases. But to succeed, they learn to overlook or adapt these biases when necessary. There are six major religions in India, and the Indian constitution recognizes 22 regional languages. Every region in the country has its own customs and character.

7. Humility. Talk to almost any immigrant, regardless of origin, and he will share stories about leaving social status behind in his home country and working his way up from the bottom of the ladder in his adopted land. It's a humbling process, but humility is an asset in entrepreneurship. You learn many valuable lessons when you start from scratch and work your way to success.

8. Family support/values. In the absence of a social safety net, the family takes on a very important role in Indian culture. Family members provide all kinds of support and guidance to those in need.

9. Financial management. Indians generally pride themselves on being fiscally conservative. Their businesses usually watch every penny and spend within their means.

10. Forming and leveraging networks. Indians immigrants found that one of the secrets to success was to learn from those who had paved the trails (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/6/05, "Ask for Help and Offer It").

Some examples: Successful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley formed an organization called The Indus Entrepreneurs to mentor other entrepreneurs and provide a forum for networking. TiE is reputed to have helped launch hundreds of startups, some of which achieved billions in market capitalization. This was a group I turned to when I needed help.

Top Indian journalists and academics created the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) to provide networking and assistance to newcomers. SAJA runs journalism conferences and workshops, and provides scholarships to aspiring South-Asian student journalists.

In the entertainment industry, fledgling filmmakers formed the South Asian American Films and Arts Association (SAAFA). Their mission is the promotion of South Asian cinematic and artistic endeavors, and mentoring newcomers.

11. Giving back. The most successful entrepreneurs I know believe in giving back to the community and society that has given them so much opportunity. TiE founders invested great effort to ensure that their organization was open, inclusive, and integrated with mainstream American society. Their No. 1 rule was that their charter members would give without taking. SAJA officers work for top publications and universities, yet they volunteer their evenings and weekends to run an organization to assist newcomers.

12. Integration and acceptance. The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which conducts worldwide public opinion surveys, has shown that Indians predominantly hold favorable opinions of the U.S. When Indians immigrate to the U.S, they usually come to share the American dream and work hard to integrate.

Indians have achieved more overall business success in less time in the U.S. than any other recent immigrant group. They have shown what can be achieved by integrating themselves into U.S. society and taking advantage of all the opportunities the country offers.



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Wadhwa, the founder of two software companies, is an Executive-in-Residence/Adjunct Professor at Duke University. He is also the co-founder of TiE Carolinas, a networking and mentoring group.