Analysis

The Cascading Effects of the Arab Spring

India always prided itself on its vibrant democracy. It was large and noisy, but it worked. Today, there is concern over India’s overall economic slowdown. From ambitions of double digit GDP growth rates, the slide has been swift.

Yet in the broader scheme of things, a slowing economy seems to pale in comparison to the larger crisis at hand – that of a Parliament that is completely unable to function in the way these sacred institutions were set up to be. A democracy encourages openness and permits dissent, but perennial disarray and disruption is sacrilegious.

So as the nation interminably and unproductively quarrels about ‘India’s tryst with destiny’, the more important question is how should some semblance of order be restored in Parliament?

During the course of the year, sections of Corporate India together with the common man raised its voice over many misgivings of the government. The government of the day gave a hearing and remedial action, though in small measure, was initiated. Many concerned with the prospects of Corporate India said stem the slowdown, increase investments, bring in new reforms.

No one objected till then. But when the Government began to act, what have we, but chaos and adjournments over a decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail.

There are 32 bills in this winter session of Parliament for consideration and passing, many of which are of far greater consequence and importance for the country than FDI in retail. The protests on FDI in retail are misconceived and unfortunate, but hope to salvage this situation should not be lost.

FDI in retail has not been a sudden decision taken by the government. On the contrary, the idea has been toyed with for over 14 years. Detailed discussions with various stakeholders have been held, experts consulted and studies commissioned based on international experiences of organised retailing.

Modernisation of retail trade is an essential part of India’s growth story. It is well known, from experiences of countries such as China, Indonesia and several others, that modern retail trade and traditional traders can, and do, prosper side by side, raising employment along the supply chain, improving farm incomes, reducing spoilage and delivering affordable products to consumers.

Opposing investment in modern retail for the sake of it is only defending vested interests to the detriment of the vast majority. The farmers, the consumers and the common people must raise their voices against this false drama of apprehension against investment and modernising trade in agriculture and consumer goods.

For example, in a district which grows the largest amount of potatoes in the country, more than 50% rots in the fields due to inadequate cold storage facility and supply chain, to utter distress of the farmers and at the cost to the end consumers. There are thousands of similar events every year across the country.

What is intriguing and bewildering is that the false alarm of FDI is continuing to be used after so many years, as a bogey in modern times against foreigners and foreign investment. It is completely deluded to argue that kirana shops will be wiped out with the onslaught of FDI in retail. What does hurt the kirana shops are them having to down their shutters to support bandhs.

It is important to articulate the economics of FDI in retail. It is illusory to believe that the market will be flooded with FDI. Retailing is not an easy business – margins are thin, large parcels of real estate are not easily available and the supply chain logistics ranging from warehousing, cold storage to transportation pose a major challenge. More importantly, the central government’s role in retail FDI is minimal.

The greater onus lies with the state governments as a maze of laws ranging from Shops and Establishments Act to the APMC Act, amongst several others falls within the state’s domain. Progressive states that wish to attract FDI in retail will encourage investments and vice versa.

Either way, the fruits of organised retailing will not happen overnight, but will take several years.

To conclude, this is a call to the saner sections of Corporate India to come out and strongly support progressive measures and reforms with the same spirit and gusto with which we take the liberties to criticise policies or issues we do not appreciate.

It's a well-worn cliché to speak of the end of an era when someone well known has passed away.

Today, however, it does feel like something has changed forever in the world of tech.

The brilliance and clarity of vision, the courage of conviction, the fiery intolerance for imperfection. I really don't see another individual impacting technology in anywhere near the same way, in our era, as Steven Paul Jobs did.

He wasn't just the guy who made the world's coolest gadgets. Oh, well, that too. I don't know of any other company for whose products buyers queue up for three days, ahead of launch.

Steve Jobs created markets and product categories. He changed how we consume information and entertainment. He redefined leadership.

I can't think of another person whom I have been so proud to have merely met, once, for a few minutes, or sat through as many as two of his "oh, and one more thing" launches. When he pulled that first iPod out of his jeans pocket, we all stood up, and I didn't even notice when my new notebook slid from my lap and cracked its display. It was a small price to pay to be a part of a piece of history, to experience the famous Jobs near-field distortion.

"The Force is strong with him", an elderly, pony-tailed journo sitting next to me said, perhaps to console me.

There's so much about Steve Jobs that marks him out from the many tech visionaries that dot Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. His never-say-die reinvention of himself and the companies he started, repeatedly turning adversity into advantage, described most famously in his Stanford address. His candor about shamelessly stealing the best ideas he came across, and then turning them into life-changing gadgets. His violent intolerance for "good enough", making life hell for his design and execution teams, but turning out extraordinary products.

Can you think of another person who would have had the vision to take his company into uncharted waters like a mobile phone with no keypad, which no market research had showed any demand for, and then change the world with that? Or who'd have the courage to bet upon and live with one, just one, model to take on the world's phone vendors... and then to edge them out, with the world's most brilliant, and most profitable smart phone? Or have the vision and execution to back great design with the amazing apps and accessories ecosystem that led to the re-invention of the tablet?

This is a eulogy from a non-fanboy, and indeed something of an Apple critic. Though my first computer was an Apple IIc and my home is today dotted with iPads and iPods, I am no fan of Apple's closed-garden approach, its secrecy and indeed its arrogance, or its historical lack of interest in India.

I know that all of these largely derive from Steve Jobs, despite his old ties with India, which famously made a big impression on him as he backpacked through it (or when he went for his meals to a Hare Krishna temple in California).

But we lived with all that that, and still bought Apple products. The secrecy and arrogance were an inseparable, even necessary part of the picture of Steve Jobs and Apple, especially if you go by results: stunning, life-changing lifestyle devices.

With every chapter that ends, there is a new beginning.

Of course the world, and Apple, will produce more outstanding, life-changing products. But yes, something has changed in the world of tech today, leaving (for Star Wars fans) not just a disturbance, but also a major discontinuity, in the Force.

Prasanto Kumar Roy, 43, is a noted technology journalist and analyst. He is Chief Editor of Cybermedia's infotech and telecom publications and CIOL.com, a tech portal. An alumnus of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, he is deeply interested in mobile technology, and is a keen evangelist and writer on green tech. He travels widely and lectures on technology and media issues.

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(Excerpts from an address delivered by Mr Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries Limited, at the Valedictory Session of the 83rd FICCI Annual General Meeting in New Delhi on March 1, 2011.)

On the surface, my topic, "Shaping the Future of India", is a quest. On a more profound level, it is a dream. It reflects an irrepressible ambition. To take India, Indian enterprises and the Indian economy to the top of the global ladder. I am sure that many of you share a similar aspiration.

One sixth of humanity lives in India. Every Indian wants to live a better life. In this age of rising aspirations and instant communication, there can be no peace if a billion plus people are discontented, deprived, unhappy and therefore, angry.

Consequently, India needs to follow a unique developmental model to achieve equitable economic success. Not only for her own sake, but also for the benefit of the whole world.

The future is always unknown. It is a world we have no glimpse of. But when we reach there, we are constantly amazed at our own dual thinking of the yesteryears.

Those of us who were born in the second half of the last century are extremely privileged. This period has seen extraordinary economic and technological growth. A period where science fiction has become a reality.

But with all these privileges, comes great responsibility. Responsibility for the future generations and the future of the planet. Our civilization has been advanced through centuries by influences like the traveling trader and the roving explorer.

Similarly, armed conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises have also been factors in the spread of culture.

But these were all secondary to the trading relationships. Relationships which were accelerated by the rapidly developing art and science of industry, commerce and trade.

And that is why it is so important for all of us to get business right. Business in itself is the policy setter. Business is the ideology of the New World order. We now have to see business in the wider context of human progress- both material and social.

Business will have to act as trustees for shareholders. It will have to care for the society by the virtue of the license given to it by the society. Businesses should be measured on social returns together with financial returns.

The primary responsibility of business then is the betterment of society- always!

PURPOSE OF BUSINESS

Growth, governance, empowerment, transparency, compliance are all equally relevant and applicable to businesses - not just to Government.

To me, the purpose of business is growth, welfare and enrichment of the nation at large. By creating jobs and generating wealth. And for that, businesses need to constantly innovate and expand-or else it will stagnate and wither away.

The last two decades have shown that the Indian entrepreneurs are not just as good, but in many respects better than their peers in the world. And, this fact has been recognized widely in the world. The entire country is proud of that.

THE TWO INDIAS

The subject of Governance, Growth and Empowerment is understood differently by different people of India. This is because there are two narratives of India in this context. Two clear and different story lines each arousing separate sets of emotions.

One narrative lauds the Indian Success Story. It romanticizes our democratic traditions. It exults in the successes of the service sector and the emerging class of global leaders and entrepreneurs.

It sings praises about our young and vibrant demography. It glorifies the large pool of skilled and educated English speaking working class. This is the narrative about "India Rising" or "India Emerging".

However, along with it runs another narrative, like a counterpoint. The accent here is on the element of "miracle" in India's recent successes. The focus shifts to weak governance lost amidst a maze of regulation. This narrative imagines the growth engine as a heartless mechanical monster that scatters millions behind. Not even allowing them the privilege of being spectators to this miracle of growth.

In despair, it positions India amongst the Least Developing Countries in terms of Human Development Index and social indicators. I find it fascinating that both these narratives, by themselves, represent two complete self-contained narratives.

So difficult to argue against. Both grounded in bits of realism. Both describing India amazingly and accurately. Each is emboldened by its own set of numbers, statistics and hard headed analysis.

THE FIRST INDIA

The first narrative describes a view of India from the stratosphere. Capturing its remarkable transition through statistics. From a $ 300 billion economy in 1990, India's economy has crossed $ 1.3 trillion. A fourfold growth in 20 years.

On purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, the rise of the Indian GDP reflects an even more remarkable 500% growth. The next 40 years could see even more explosive growth. Several estimates are projecting that our GDP would range between $ 30 to 40 trillion by 2050.

In the coming years, India would become the fastest growing economy in the world. And then, somewhere along this ballistic trajectory, we would have become the 3rd largest real economy in the world.

The world stands fascinated as more numbers enumerate the emergence of an Indian market. A market in which rich households have increased from less than one million, 10 years ago, to nearly four million at present. Add to that another 25 million or more middle-income houses and the market size exceeds the population of most major economies of the world.

India boasts of saving rates of over 25%. Less than 1% of our population uses credit cards for transactions. Consumer loans are at just about 10% of total loan disbursals. All these represent an under leveraged consumer class, offering tremendous opportunities for volumes and value.

THE SECOND INDIA

Let me come to the counterpoint to this narrative. India's share of world GDP has risen from 2.8% in 1990 to 5% now. But at the same time its population base has expanded by over 40%.

The growth is not just spread over a far larger base but has also not been symmetric across all sections and regions of the country. In spite of all the numbers, we are far from realizing the true potential of this nation as an economic force.

The Great Indian Story then veers to another set of facts and figures. It reflects our dismal physical infrastructure. Our miniscule per capita energy consumption. The non-existent distribution. And problems of last mile access.

These collectively feature in our per capita GDP of just over $1000. This is lower than that of some of our neighbours, and a third of China's. Despite the growth in GDP numbers, we house 40% of the world's poor.

This is the story of millions of Indians whose sustenance depends on family members employed in the informal, unorganized or agricultural sectors. Most of them reside in either urban slums or villages. They have limited or no access to sanitation, energy, water, health cover and "relevant" education. It is also the story of the ones left behind.

The service sector tells a similar story. The IT and ITES sectors' successes are oases in a desert. They offer employment to just over 15 million of our work force. That is actually the number of jobs India will need to create every year for the next ten years to absorb the 200 million youth.

Much of this job creation would have to be through green field industrialization. Through infrastructure creation and through the rejuvenation of agriculture. It would have to be through the upgrading of the rural economy which can engage people in productive employment.

The India story is unsustainable without discovering policies and practical means of including these millions in the mainstream of our progress.

Social schemes and welfare programmes represent important signals. They are safety nets that are eventually palliatives, but not the cure.

All through the successes of the last two decades, the health and education sectors are in crying need of radical reforms.

We must embrace: Standards, Technology, Disciplined delivery systems and Modern regulatory systems

HEALTH

Our health outlay today is at 1% of the GDP. It will need to go up at least 5 times if we are to keep our young healthy. Health spending in India is already getting skewed. Given our demographics, the accent cannot be limited to sustaining the diseases of the affluent and managing the old.

Our demographic dividend, the youth and the young, are largely unprotected and uncared for. We will need to radically transform healthcare delivery to all our people.

We have the opportunity to build a standards-led, market- determined but government-supported and regulated, health care delivery system that is one of the most efficient in the world. We must build a healthcare system that is responsive and affordable. A healthcare system that can be a model for the entire world.

EDUCATION

Now let us take a look at our education sector. At a modest $ 1000 per year per person for higher education, India represents a $ 200 billion demand by 2020.

We have grossly under-performed both in expanding access and improving the quality of education. In a fast moving world, we have not managed to make our education system contemporary. A system which will not just address the "future of our children' but also the "children of our future".

These children need to be taught to think freely and boldly. To make mistakes and learn fast. To believe that every mind is innovative and has the capacity of making a big impact.

We need to create the necessary education infrastructure and an environment of learning and innovation that will steer us through. We should create universities as academic centres of excellence which will feature in the top 100 in the world.

Achieving this will be one of the cornerstones of a New India that we will need to build. The Right to Education Bill and the Innovation University Bill are great steps in this direction.

The Finance Minister in the budget yesterday made greater allocations towards education and skills development. This is a real concrete step in building a strong India.

In their point and counterpoint that the two narratives together make - lie a harmony that loudly and clearly sings of the Great Indian Opportunity. The Opportunity to seize the day and invest in our people.

Let us look at two more sectors- Agriculture and Manufacturing. It was heartening to hear our Finance Minister recognize the two narratives and spot specific opportunities in these two sectors.

FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

India has about 13 percent of the world's arable land. It has a wide range of agro climatic conditions. But Indian agriculture is still languishing in the low end of the agronomy value chain.

It is a victim of the low-investment, low-yield, inefficient water use and shocking levels of waste of farm produce. This situation must change.

Indian agriculture will require the use of modern farming methods and plant biotechnology. It will require new water-saving micro-irrigation practices. I refuse to accept that the Indian farmer is deficient in any way, when compared to others. In fact, he is very hard working. He has convincingly demonstrated the ability to adopt and practice modern farming technologies.

India can produce value added food, medicinal plants, aromatic oils and biomaterials for the global markets. In the next ten years there is an opportunity to add $ 500 billion year on year in this sector.

This is true empowerment. This is real power in the hands of our people. For that, businesses will have to get more involved in rural India. They need to understand the nuances and the challenges of rural India.

India has to transform its agriculture into a productive enterprise to propel itself into becoming a global economic power. This requires a united effort by farmers, scientists and businessmen similar to our freedom movement.

We are encouraged by the steps taken by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in yesterday's budget. We warmly welcome his addressing systemic issues around high food inflation by focusing on farm productivity and investments in cold chain storage and warehousing. He needs to be commended for thinking of a longer-term solution, apart from being true to the resolve of creating a new India in her rural hinterlands.

MANUFACTURING

Now let's turn to manufacturing. India is richly endowed with natural resources and human capital. There is a significant opportunity for consolidating these advantages initially and later progressing to value added products.

There are industries that are shifting from unidimensional manufacturing to developing complex engineered systems. These industries can leverage on the information technology skill sets in India. Manufacturing will be redefined by technology.

The Indian manufacturing industry has to carefully target the export markets. It needs to focus on scale, technology and customer needs. It needs to improve efficiency across the supply chain.

Development of export market necessitates a synergistic partnership between industry, government and labour. It requires a commitment to the consumers - to assure them the best quality at affordable prices.

The Finance Minister in the budget presentation yesterday clearly articulated his intent of increasing the share of manufacturing from one-sixth to a quarter of GDP in ten years. His faith in the manufacturing sector to create sustainable jobs gives us renewed strength.

INDIA'S RIGHT TO WIN

I strongly believe that India has earned its Right to Win. This Right has come to us through a painful yet fascinating past. Through a present that is full of energy, enterprise and hope.

The solutions that we will have to deploy to meet the future challenges in India will have to be fundamentally different.

In fact, these are not just normal challenges. In my mind, these are Grand Challenges that require Grander Solutions.

Mere policy reforms to incrementally affect the status quo will be meaningless to grab this opportunity. We will need disruptive policies, like the one which changed the future of India in 1991. The disruptive industrial policy that allowed India to compete with the rest of the world. Thus removing the shackles and freeing up India and the Indian minds.

Such disruptive policies will have to be in sync with the businesses of the future that we all have to passionately drive. We will have to harness the creative capabilities of the billion plus innovative minds. Most of these are young minds- full of energy and aspirations.

We will have to find new and radically different development models. Models that leverage the power of high technology to achieve this bold vision. We will have to rely on our "Soft Power" to show us the way. Soft power of a nation is anchored around plurality, tolerance, culture and heritage. It is these soft powers that will help India emerge as a super power by conquering the hearts!

I believe we have the ability as well as the means to convert the adversities into opportunities. Seen in this light, every issue thrown up by the second narrative can and does represent an opportunity for the first.

Let us dedicate ourselves to make the first narrative, the only Indian narrative! Let us create self-sustaining, exponentially growing and widely caring enterprises that create ubiquitous wealth.

We will have to create real assets that stand the test of time and continually generate value for every citizen of the country. We will have to move from a model of Corporate Social Responsibility to a model of Continuous Social Business- through enterprise and entrepreneurship.

For that, we will have to create world class institutions with a soul. We will have to craft newer revolutions- faster and more impacting. Because that is what we need- that is what India needs! Let us then work together to imagine an India where the stories told by the numbers can indeed translate into a story of people. A story of transformation and growth into the future and beyond.

Because, even as these two narratives seem to be poles apart, for me they unfailingly describe the same.A Great Nation, which is a Work in Progress. An Experiment on an unprecedented scale. So unprecedented and so huge that it cannot afford to fail.

The two narratives describe our trajectory of hope, expectations and aspirations. For me, this duality in perceiving India is neither irresolvable nor in conflict with what we experience as a nation. For me it only denotes the complexity. Of all the stakeholders navigating together to combat all adversities and remove the social frailties that wait to ambush us.

I believe that the cure lies in thinking of a Convergent Future for the two Divergent Indias. Yes, the nation is at the crossroads.

India needs a bold new vision and a feasible action plan in shaping its future to be a global economic superpower. A vision and an action plan that is regenerative. That revives, renews and revs up the country.

For that, we will have to find creative and sustainable ways to connect the two Indias. We will have to create new partnership models that have a sole intention of "People First".

These partnerships will have to be built on the foundations of trust and compassion. Partnerships that leverage the power of a billion plus Indian minds. People of the First India will have to hold hands of those of the Second India.

The two India's will have to connect seamlessly to achieve our vision of One India. One India that is truly and holistically developed. One India that is built on the strong foundations of the ability and industry of its citizens. One India that exemplifies the true spirit of its people living towards a common goal of higher existence.

One India that we all will proudly call- "Our India"!

(Mr Mukesh D Ambani is the Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries Limited. He is a chemical engineer from the University Institute of Chemical Technology, University of Mumbai, and has pursued MBA from Stanford University in the United States. The elder son of Mr Dhirubhai Ambani, founder-chairman of Reliance, he joined the company in 1981. He initiated Reliance's backward integration from textiles into polyester fibres, petrochemicals, petroleum refining and going upstream into oil and gas exploration and production.

Mr Ambani is a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade and Industry, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, and a member of the Indo-US CEOs Forum, the International Advisory Board of Citigroup, Advisory Council for the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, the McKinsey Knowledge Council and the Advisory Council of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.)

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Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) form the backbone of any economy, even the most developed ones. Studies indicate that over 90 per cent of the companies in the United States have less than 50 employees and more than 50 per cent of exports from the US are done by companies with less than 20 employees.

In India, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) constitute one of the most employment-intensive segments of the economy, contributing significantly to the manufacturing output and national exports.

It is estimated that this sector accounts for about 45 per cent of the manufacturing output and 40 per cent of the total exports of the country. There are several steps that the Government can take to encourage entrepreneurship and the growth of such ventures, especially by providing access to capital.

Globally, SMEs raise funds from "business angels" and then by seed or early stage venture funds before the general venture capital (VC) or private equity (PE) funds come in. Angel funds and venture capitalists are critical for the growth of MSMEs and the government needs to take some steps to enable the growth of both.

Business Angels in India are a new phenomenon and, therefore, need serious encouragement through the creation of an enabling policy environment that would also result in attracting more successful business people into becoming "Angel Investors".

Business Angels are successful CEOs or entrepreneurs who have "been there, done that" and the presence of such groups is critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem because in addition to the funds, they provide the SMEs with mentoring, advice, guidance and help in accessing markets and creating the right organizational structure.

Globally, Angels bring in risk capital, valuable advice, mentoring and provide access to their own powerful business networks. This often makes the difference between the success and failure of a SME.

So, for a thriving MSME sector we need to create a policy environment that would encourage the creation of more seed funds or early stage funds. This can be done by:

Getting higher equity participation to facilitate better debt-equity mix;

Encouraging MSMEs to go global and increase their exports;

Entering into foreign technical collaborations for improving competitiveness.

In the past few years, there have been some attempts by the Government to promote flow of angel or venture capital funds to the MSME sector through Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

Once the funds are set-up or for the funds already in existence, some broad policy issues need to be addressed, for channelizing risk capital to the MSME sector. Some of these issues are:

Change in bank lending norms for innovative start-up firms and introduction of new and innovative debt instruments that focus on the company’s assets such as receivables and IP (as against other pure physical ones or personal guarantees).

Provide access debt funds even without a 3-year operating history of a company.

Ensuring better cycle time for loan processing.

Allowing domestic angel or venture capital funds in a Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) structure with a tax-pass through status.

Availability of above structure to business angel groups (say a business angel group with at least 75 investor members).

Providing a tax write off for individuals, up to a limit (Rs. 5 crores per annum), investing in MSMEs, either through an early stage fund (corpus up to Rs. 500 crore) or through a business angel group or individually.

Providing the same tax write off for individuals / business angel groups investing in SMEs spawned by the government’s incubator system or coming out of the Incubators formed in the PPP model or IITs and other R&D Institutions.

The government could have a program on the lines of the highly successful Yozma scheme which was responsible for triggering off early stage funding in Israel, by using some public funds to create more early stage venture funds in the public private model. Similarly, some public funding could be used to help spawn more business angel groups in the country to complete the entrepreneurial ecosystem for nurturing SMEs.

Setting up of a separate SME Exchange or platform in an existing Stock Exchange to provide exit route to an angel or venture capital investor, along the lines of AIM, UK.

Allowing listing of angel/venture capital funds on the existing Stock Exchanges: This is critical as such funds invest in a seed stage company which is unlikely to be able to go public or be large enough to be acquired in 3 to 5 years. However, the typical portfolio of 15 or 20 investee companies of such a fund would collectively have the required valuation net worth and listing the fund would provide a return to the investors thus encourage more such funds to come up.

Besides this there are non-financial issues like liability of an individual Director on the Boards of angel or venture capital Fund which need to be addressed.

About the author:

Saurabh Srivastava is Founder of Indian Angel Network, a group of nearly 150 investors focused on funding early stage investments. He is Chairman of CA India. He has worked extensively in the US, UK, India and Singapore and has held senior executive positions with leading companies such as IBM and Unisys before becoming an entrepreneur and then a VC.

He founded one of India’s most successful and trend setting software companies, IIS Infotech Ltd.. IIS was publicly listed in India and post merger with Xansa, listed on the London Stock Exchange. He was Executive Chairman of Xansa India and served on the Xansa plc. board.

He has currently retired from both positions. He has since helped found several start- ups in the IT, Entertainment and many other fields. He is a co-founder and past Chairman of NASSCOM and past Chairman of the Indian government’s Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council.

He has a Masters from Harvard , a B Tech from IIT and his awards include Distinguished Alumnus from IITK,.

Indian Angel Network: A Backgrounder:

Indian Angel Network (IAN), founded in 2006 by successful entrepreneurs like Saurabh Srivastava, Mohit Goyal, Pradeep Gupta, Raman Roy, Harish Mehta, Jerry Rao, Pramod Bhasin, Arvind Singhal, Hemant Kanakia, Alok Mittal among others, nurtures the entrepreneurial ecosystem by offering Angel funding to budding entrepreneurs.

IAN members are the who’s who of Indian entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs who represent thought leadership across multiple sectors.

Besides looking at investment opportunities for wealth creation, the IAN members are keen to mentor entrepreneurs, share their experience and wisdom with young men and women with innovative, scalable and differentiated ideas/propositions.

The entire process of dealing with requests for funding new ideas to investing, nurturing and exiting (early Stage Investing) has been formalised, tried and tested over the last four years.

IAN now has a membership of over 140 members—both individuals and institutions, with about one-sixth of them located outside India. With investible funds of tens of millions of dollars, IAN members look to fund up to $1 million with an average of about $400-$600K and expect to exit in about 3-5 years.

So far IAN has funded about 23 ideas, including 4 outside India, and have made five successful exits, with a recent exit giving a 5x return in 15 months.

The membership of IAN spans successful Indian entrepreneurs and dynamic CEOs with high credibility and image on one hand and a passion and conviction to help young innovators with good propositions ideas.

IAN today has operations in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. This brings entrepreneurs closer to IAN, apart from connecting with IAN investor virtually from anywhere.

The Network has now established a unique incubator program bringing IAN members together with a large pool of mentors to help innovators and entrepreneurs create ventures.

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Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, the pre-eminent Hindustani classical vocalist breathed his last in the early hours of today after a prolonged illness. He would have been 89 on February 4. Although the maestro had retired a few years ago, his passing away makes the void palpable.

Amongst 20th century giants of vocalism, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi enjoyed a rare combination of popularity and stature. He charmed three generations of music lovers with his renditions of Khayal, Thumree, and Bhajans in Hindi, Kannada, and Marathi. According to reliable estimates, he could have delivered more than 10,000 concerts during his career spanning six decades, and recorded over a 100 discs. He is also the only Hindustani classical vocalist to have earned the Platinum Disc of the Gramophone Company of India (HMV).

Bhimsenji was acclaimed as an exponent of the Kairana gharana (stylistic tradition) of Khayal vocalism, having trained under Sawai Gandharva, the tallest disciple of Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan. He was, however, a reformer of the gharana’s music, and the initiator of an original style, incorporating features of several other stylistic traditions. This explains the influence he wielded over younger generations of audiences and male vocalists.

The Bharat Ratna, conferred on him in 2008, was the crowning glory of an illustrious career. Panditji was  amongst the most decorated musicians of the country. Amongst his major awards are: Ustad Enayet Khan Foundation Award (2002), Padma Vibhushan (1999), HMV Platinum Disc (1986), Padma Bhushan (1985), Sangeet Natak Akademi Award (1976), and Padma Shri (1972 ).

Childhood and grooming

Bhimsen Joshi was amongst the most distinguished products of the vibrant bi-lingual Northern Karnataka musical culture. He was born into a Kannada-speaking, Madhava Brahmin family of Kirtankar-s, hailing from Gadag in Dharwad district. His father, Gururaj Joshi, was the Headmaster of a Municipal School. He wanted Bhimsen to qualify as an engineer or a doctor. But, Bhimsen’s only passion was music.

The defining moment of young Bhimsen’s life came when, around the age of 12, he heard a three-minute 78 rpm record of Ustad Abdul Kareem Khan, featuring a Khayal in raga Basant, and a Thumree in raga Jhinjhoti. He decided that that he had to be able to sing like the Ustad, and quietly left home one night in search of a Guru, with neither any baggage, nor any money in his pocket.

His search was arduous, replete with ticket-less travel followed by nights spent in jail, destitution, singing for his supper, sleepless nights in strange places, days without a square meal, menial jobs taken up to keep body and soul together, and exploitation by insensitive employers. The three-year long odyssey took him to Pune, Gwalior, Calcutta  and even Jallandhar. But, none of these cities delivered to him a Guru.

At the Harvallabh Sammelan in Jallandhar, Bhimsen met the Gwalior gharana stalwart, Vinayakrao Patwardhan. Patwardhan advised him to return home, and start studies with Sawai Gandharva (Rambhau Kundgolkar), the most distinguished disciple of Abdul Kareem Khan. Rambhau had, by that time, settled in Kundgol, not far from Bhimsen’s hometown, Gadag. So, to the extreme relief of his parents, the 15-year old Bhimsen returned home.

Entering Sawai Gandharva’s tutelage was not easy. The Guru demanded a fee of Rs. 25 per month, one-fourth of Bhimsen’s father’s salary. Despite the senior Joshi’s responsibility for seven children, he made the sacrifice --just to keep Bhimsen closer to home.

Bhimsen’s education was typical of the Gurukul Paddhati in those days. The disciple lived with the Guru, served him in every way, and learnt music. For almost 18 months after formalizing the tutelage, Sawai Gandharva taught him nothing, but tested Bhimsen’s

determination by entrusting menial domestic chores to him. Bhimsen passed the test with flying colors. Once the maestro was won over, he stopped accepting fees, and taught him from four in the morning till midnight every day, with only a couple of breaks in between.

Rambhau’s teaching was in the traditional mode, without any notations being written or permitted. All learning was by internalization and memorization. Even after serious lessons commenced, the burden of domestic responsibilities in Rambhau’s household continued to interrupt Bhimsen’s training routine. In dry Kundgol, it was Bhimsen's duty to fetch unending pitchers of water for his guru's house from a distant water tank.

"Poor fellow; in the scorching heat, he would carry water on his shoulders… but as he walked he would constantly sing. How many times I've heard him practicing the taans of Multani, Shankara…!" recalled Gangubai Hangal, who was his senior amongst the maestro’s disciples (an interview to Deepa Ganesh of The Hindu). If Bhimsen needed clarifications on his lessons, he sought them from Gangubai. During his apprenticeship with Sawai Gandharva, which lasted about five years, the maestro taught Bhimsen three ragas – Todi, Multani and Puriya. He learnt several other raga-s by supporting his Guru at concerts.

Career

After returning home from Rambhau’s tutelage, Bhimsen felt attracted to the thumree and semi-classical genres, as performed in the Purab (Eastern UP) region. So, he traveled to Benares and Lucknow, to hear the thumree stalwarts – Begum Akhtar, Siddheshwari Devi, Rasoolan Bai. Begum Akhtar recommended Bhimsenji for perhaps his first job as a musician – with All India Radio, Lucknow, a major center of classical music in those days. In 1943, he took a transfer to Bombay, the music capital of the country, which opened the doors of destiny for him.

Bhimsen gave his first public concert of classical music in Pune at the age of 19 (1941), and showed great promise. In 1944, he made his first 78 rpm discs of Marathi and Kannada devotional songs, which gave him tremendous popularity in Maharashtra and Karnataka. In 1946, he started recording classical music for HMV, and these releases also sold extremely well.

In the same year, he achieved a major breakthrough at the 60th birthday celebrations of his Guru, Sawai Gandharva, held in Pune. His performance at the event, with the most influential patrons and the greatest musicians of the era in attendance, heralded the arrival of a new maestro. His fame spread steadily thereafter, and within a decade, he became the busiest vocalist on the concert circuit. By the 1960’s, Bhimsen Joshi’s contemporaries in the profession had begun to joke – enviously, no doubt -- that he knew every air hostess on Indian Airlines by name, and the entire Bradshaw (Indian Railways time-table) by heart.

His career graph zoomed once concert-length recordings became available in the mid-1960s through LP records, and later audio-cassettes. He achieved iconic status in the 1970s after the publication of "Santavani", a four-hour collection of Bhajans. He also enhanced his popularity with his playback renditions for films. His songs for the Marathi film, Gulacha Ganapati, and Hindi films like Basant Bahar, Bhairavi, Anhoni, and Ankahee brought his voice into homes that had little interest in classical music.

Joshi became a universally recognized voice of a resurgent India in the 1990s with his rendition of "Mile Sur Mera Tumhara" in a series of television clips devised to promote national integration.

Like most other leading musicians of his generation, Bhimsenji did perform for adulatory audiences abroad. But, in a radio interview with the Marathi littérateur, P L Deshpande, he almost brushed aside this facet of his career as insignificant. He evidently placed the highest value on his relationship with audiences at home.

Repertoire

Bhimsen was singled out -- rather unjustly -- for his limited repertoire of raga-s, and their repeated rendition at concerts and on commercial recordings. He built up a formidable edifice of musicianship with his renditions of about 20 ragas, mainly -- Darbari, Puriya Kalyan, Miya-ki-Todi, Lalit, Shuddha Kalyan, Miya-ki-Malhar, Puriya, Multani, Marwa, Malkauns, Maru Bihag, Abhogi, Gaur Sarang, Brindabani Sarang, and Jaijaiwanti.

This pattern is not unique to Bhimsen Joshi, and is also understandable. There are, of course, a few gharana-s which pride themselves in performing a wide range of raga-s. A majority of them, however, have a marked preference for a select few ragas which enable them to express their stylistic inclinations most effectively. Further, each musician has learnt some raga-s most intensively, practiced most rigorously, and found most suited to his temperament. He excels in these ragas, and audiences never tire of his renderings of them because he is able to present them with freshness and impact each time. But, because the finest amongst musicians have internalized the concept of raga-ness, they are able to easily master new raga-s, and also create new melodic entities of their own.

Bhimsen was candid about the limitations of his repertoire, without being apologetic. But, like many others, he responded to public demand and the goading of recording companies, by recording an entire series of "Unsung Ragas", many of which are rare, and even created new ragas like Kalashri ( a blend of Kalavati and Rageshri) and Lalit-Bhatiyar (combining Lalit with Bhatiyar).

Musicianship

No other 20th century vocalist, with the exception of Ustad Faiyyaz Khan and Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan, has held his audiences in abject surrender like Bhimsen Joshi did.

Panditji’s unique bonding with audiences was attributed to several factors. The most significant facet of his musical personality was his voice with all its qualities – precision, richness, power, range, malleability and agility – and the emotional involvement he invested in every rendition. Veteran connoisseurs have also noted that, over the years, there was no change in the youthfulness and freshness of his voice, and delivery. Another important aspect was his wide repertoire of genres, and his equal command over all departments of musicianship in each of them. The third substantial facet was his amazing consistency as a performer.

Amongst vocalists, his consistency rating has been matched, in the last 60 years, only by Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan. Enhancing the influence of these qualities was his ability to astutely judge profiles of audiences, select the repertoire most suited to them, and to deliver it with gripping impact.

Bhimsen Joshi’s star started rising while the titans of the pre-independence era – Kesarbai Kerkar, Omkarnath Thakur, and Krishnarao Pandit -- were still active. He built his career sharing the stage with formidable contemporaries -- Gangubai Hangal, Hirabai Barodekar, and Roshanara Begum of his own gharana, Ustad Ameer Khan of Indore/Bhindi Bazaar, Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan of Patiala, and D V Paluskar of Gwalior.

The stature and popularity of Joshi, a classicist, remained unaffected by the later rise of the hugely influential romanticists – Kumar Gandharva, Jasraj and Kishori Amonkar.

His musicianship shone brightly amidst such a galaxy because his vocalism could outgrow the shadows of orthodox Kairana without sacrificing its essentials, and evolve into an original modern style with a broad-spectrum appeal.

During his long career, Bhimsen Joshi trained a few competent students. If they do not feature in the "Who’s Who" of the next generation, his is not an isolated case. With the demise of aristocratic patronage after independence, music became an extremely stressful and nomadic profession, which left thriving musicians with neither the time, nor the temperament, for being effective Gurus. However, thanks to the ample availability of his recordings, Bhimsen Joshi’s influence pervades all of male vocalism. In fact, today, it is difficult to find a male singer below 50, who has not been visibly influenced by him.

Beyond music

Bhimsen Joshi was greatly admired for setting up an organization for hosting the annual Sawai Gandhrva music festival at Pune in the memory of his Guru. The festival, held consistently for 58 years now, is Bhimsen’s unique contribution to India’s cultural life. The three-day festival features some of the finest musicians in the country, while also providing a platform for the launch of promising young talent. The concerts begin at 8.00 pm and end in the wee hours of the morning, with audiences ranging from 7000 to 15,000. During the event, Bhimsen Joshi worked like any other volunteer, often seen sweeping the stage, bringing the instruments of other musicians to the concert platform, or helping younger artistes tune their Tanpura-s to perfection. The Sawai Gandharva Festival has now acquired a life of its own, and bids fair to survive its founder.

The best known passion of Bhimsen Joshi outside music was cars. He always owned a fleet of big cars in which he loved driving himself and all his accompanists, along with their instruments, to concert locations within a motorable distance. He had his share of car accidents; but nothing could make him quit driving. His passion for cars was, not surprisingly, accompanied by an astonishing knowledge of automobile engineering. He once told an interviewer --. "If I had not been a musician, I would have happily spent my life as a garage mechanic tuning engines of cars".

Other than his romance with cars, Bhimsen was a man of simple interests – yoga, swimming, and football. Though he had slowed down on his concert engagements after turning 75, he demonstrated his lifelong commitment to physical fitness at the age of 85 by performing for 40 minutes at the 55th Sawai Gandharva Festival in December, 2007.

Pandit Bhimsen Joshi was the last of the great 20th century classicists in Hindustani vocalism. His most valuable legacy is the massive archive of music, recorded over a period of more than 60 years, covering a variety of genres. In this, he bequeaths to the nation a library of some of the finest specimens of 20th century vocalism.

Deepak Raja is a management professional by education ( an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad ), and a musicologist by choice. He is a sitar and surbahar player of the Imdad Khan/ Etawah gharana, and has also received training in vocal music in the Jaipur-Atrauli gharana of Khayal vocalism. He is a Repertoire Analyst for India Archive Music, New York, and an author of several books on Hindustani music.

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• Legendary classical vocalist Pandit Bhimsen Joshi passes away in Pune - January 24, 2011

Nearly a million starry-eyed young Indians last week waited keenly for announcements on the start of the process of admission to the hallowed portals of leading management schools.

A flurry of activity kicked in among final year college students aspiring for a place in the management programmes for the 2011 batch at the ten Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS) in the North, the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) in the West and the Xavier’s Labour Relations Institute (XLRI) in the East.

The results of these four MBA entrance exams will allow candidates’ entry into these 13 well-known institutes. They are also accepted by over 200 other MBA institutions as the yardstick for admission to their programmes, many of them equally reputed and having rigorous academic standards.

In recent years there has been an exponential growth in the number of test-takers to IIMs and other management institutes. This has put immense pressure on the testing system as well as faculty at management institutes, resulting in the search for computer-based tests similar to GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test).

GMAT’s standardised tests use psychometric principles to design, calibrate and score questions using advanced statistical models to accurately determine a candidate’s aptitude. That is perhaps why it is taken as a benchmark, as its test scores are used by over 1,800 graduate programmes worldwide and have helped establish the MBA degree as a hallmark of excellence in management education.

In India, the equivalent could be the new computer-based assessment model being tried out. On paper, computer-based assessment offers many advantages. A more efficient system, it saves time for the students, provides them with the flexibility of choosing and or rescheduling the test date, ensures security and nullifies chances of leaked question papers. Each candidate gets a unique but equivalent question paper. At the same time it also frees up the faculty from unnecessary administrative headaches and gives them more time to concentrate on academics.

The year 2009 was a watershed year in terms of introduction of computer-based testing by the IIMs and NMIMS. XLRI, the 60-year old management school, pioneered the conduct of the computer-based test, XAT, for pre-admission selection in 2001-02 but reverted to a paper and pencil method of testing as the infrastructure was just not ready then. Delhi University’s Faculty of Management Studies, that has been offering post-graduate management programmes for over five decades, too follows this traditional method of testing.

The experience of many among the quarter million students who appeared for the first computer-based admission test by US-testing company Prometric, ranged from less than satisfactory to traumatic, while NMIMS Admission Test (NMAT) takers reported a trouble-free computer-based admission test in early 2010 in terms of student experience despite adherence to strict academic rigour. The entrance exams for XLRI and FMS too passed off smoothly.

In response to the issues faced by test takers, the vibrant management education institutions and testing industry have taken several steps. IIMs have extended the test window to 20 days (from 10 days last year) as a risk mitigation strategy, NMIMS’ NMAT is using the 90-day window to move towards "on-demand" testing, following other leading global admission tests, enabling the candidates to take the test when they are best prepared.

NMAT 2011 incorporates many candidate- friendly international features. For example, each candidate can opt for three attempts and highest score out of these attempts will be used for evaluation purposes akin to how top MBA programmes like Harvard and Wharton use the best score in GMAT. Self-scheduling option will allow candidates to choose the date and time of test in real time mode from the comfort of their homes.

NMIMS has taken a conscious decision to do away with negative marking. Most leading global tests like GMAT, LSAT and GRE do not do negative marking and instead rely on latest techniques in psychometrics based on a candidate’s response to questions, including taking informed guesses without the fear of losing marks to measure a candidate’s aptitude based on behaviour. The candidates must thank NMIMS’ testing partner Pearson VUE for taking away the unwarranted stress posed by negative marking in the pre-admission tests.

An educational process, as in any other process, is strongly linked to quality of input into the process. A well-designed admission test serves the critical purpose of accurately determining a candidate’s aptitude best suited for their programmes.

Now is the time for the test-takers to focus on rigorous preparation so that they make it to the top 200 management schools. Only then will India be able to select MBA aspirants who are bright, passionate and committed to making a career. Institutes that have an experienced faculty and strong industry-linked curriculum and students who have triumphed a tough but fair, equitable and trusted admission process will give the Indian economy a strong fillip with a managerial cadre that supplements growth.

The author is a Strategic Communications and PR Counsel for the services industry. He was until recently the Group Executive Vice-President for the NIIT Group. In this role, he was brand custodian for NIIT for nearly 20 years. An alumnus of the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, he writes occasionally on issues of national importance.

I have stated my SOCO up front. As Public Relations (PR) professionals, we are as much a part of India’s democracy as we are of its economy.

But PR is also about telling stories. So I’m going to tell you a story that I hope will give you a perspective on how our business has grown and developed and the challenges it faces.

Many years ago, when I came to India to set up IPAN (Indian Public Affairs Network), I used to tell the story of how PR became the world’s second oldest profession. We all know what the oldest profession is.

It has to do with Moses, who led the chosen people out of Egypt with the Pharaoh hot in pursuit. They found themselves stranded on the banks of the Red Sea. This was a huge problem. So Moses got his core strategy team together to look at the options.

There seemed to be none. His defence guy said they should stand and fight. His finance guy, who understood the salubrious impact of money, suggested the possibility of buying them out. But in their heart of hearts, his key advisers knew only a miracle could save them.

"Don’t worry," said Moses, "I will part the sea and we will walk across to liberty." At that point, his PR guy spoke up, "Sir, if you can do that then I will get you ten pages in the Old Testament."

So Moses performed the miracle and got his ten pages in the Old Testament.

I told this story 20 years ago, when PR consulting was a little known business. Times were simpler but mindsets were rigid. The press (and it was just the print media those days) did not entertain any releases or information from the corporate sector. For its part, the corporate sector saw PR as a free advertising.

Meanwhile clever operators like the public sector and some private sector firms managed to play the press like a fine-tuned fiddle. Just think, the public sector delivered very little but no questions were asked. It was the holy cow. I can remember the PR strategy of a Calcutta-based public sector firm: "Kill the story and I’ll get you two tickets on the Rajdhani."

Some private entrepreneurs also cultivated friends in the press to oppose liberalization and reform. The notorious Bombay Club fought tooth and nail against foreign investment and against any changes in the license-permit raj.

Fast forward two decades and we find that the media are friendlier; the PR profession is recognized in its own right and is a significant player in the fast growing economy.

Recent developments have however cast a shadow that could affect the profession's standing. I am referring to the current media attention on the role of PR firms in influencing choices in public policy. It is not at all surprising that the telecom sector is the source of stories about corporate sleaze and government corruption.

Why do I say it is not surprising? Let me digress a little: to the early 1980s, when I lived in the US. We had formed a group called India Forum that met weekly to consider developments in India. All of us were struck by the emergence of Rajiv Gandhi. In the event, many of us including my good friend Sam Pitroda took our first tentative steps to engage with India.

Our focus was on telecom because that was Sam’s field. At the time, the sector was in a primitive state. There were not enough phones and existent phones rarely worked. It was a project to make long distance calls, impossible to get connections. In fact, it was said that the entire telecom bureaucracy made money from providing out-of-turn connections.

We took the matter up with Rajiv Gandhi. The task was to convince him that the sector was vital to economic growth and to change political mindsets that held telephones to be a luxury. As such, Rajiv put his heft behind our recommendation that India should go in for digital rather than analog technology.

The rest is history. But the baggage is still there. The telecom sector seems to be a magnet for sleaze and murkiness as the recent controversy shows. And the PR profession risks being stigmatized unless it makes some forceful interventions.

In a recent e-mail interview to a leading financial paper, I was asked about lobbying and what the reporter saw as concomitant sleaze. She did highlight my responses in her front-page story and I believe I may have even helped her re-look at the lobbying controversy in which it was alleged that a PR firm tried to influence the choice of telecom minister and subsequently telecom policy.

There is nothing wrong in trying to influence public policy. Indeed, in a democracy, everyone has the right, nay the duty, to challenge wrong-headed legislation or to advocate for new policies to deal with changing situations. Over the years, I have chalked up many, many case studies in which we actively influenced government decisions in areas as diverse as consumer products; financial services; cable and satellite television; power generation; water management; public health and primary education.

Our strategy was to win media support, raise the debate in various public forums and to seek out articulate spokesmen and credible third-party endorsements.

To ensure that the profession does not get besmirched by the dirt and corruption of illegal methods, it needs to make the following assertions:

1. Lobbying is a legitimate activity. It does not mean the exchange of money and favors to achieve a desired outcome. Bribery and corruption are illegal.

2. Lobbying is not relevant in India because of the sheer lack of transparency in government and politics. Legislators do not have backup policy staff; bureaucrats are too control-minded to be open to legitimate suggestions.

3. An advocacy strategy may be the most effective way to influence public policy. This involves working with the media and other influentials to advocate our views to policymakers.

4. The claims in the media are wildly exaggerated. I find it difficult to believe that a PR executive can influence the selection of cabinet ministers.

5. The gratuitous remarks by civil society activists about the pernicious impact of lobbying should be dismissed out of hand. They are themselves power brokers and fixers. Their prescriptions have crippled the economy, especially in the areas of infrastructure and agriculture.

On the other hand, the media also have much to answer for. You would think triviality is the first as in the sad spectacle of Sania Mirza; Shashi Tharoor; Lalit Modi; the IPL. Obsessed with trivialities, the media and their concomitant sources, the PR guys, tend to hijack the public debate.

There are other issues such as the nexus between the marketing people of corporations and the "brand managers" in the media. Just recently, The New York Times ran a story about how the major media are selling editorial space and time.

What’s happening is a travesty. If you undermine Indian democracy, you take away a major advantage we enjoy in the world.

On the economy, while I lament the Leftist thinking that still dominates intellectual life in India; I have to say that rampant commercialism is a bad thing. If PR professionals acquiesce in "treaties" and "packages," they are selling their profession short, making it the equivalent of advertising.

It’s not just these subversive agreements, PR professionals are all called upon to measure their contribution in terms of advertising spends.

The PR profession has its roots in Mahatma Gandhi. He used an advocacy strategy in which he staged events to influence the press and the government and petitioned the courts to in order to assert his rights under the law. That defeated first, the racist government in South Africa and then the colonial British government in India.

His SOCO: it is possible to change things.

I know there is a deep-rooted cynicism in the public debate that the only way to get things done in India is to bend rules, pay bribes or resort to blackmail.

Of course, these things happen. But if PR professionals are ever going to build their profession as a legitimate part, not just of the economy but of India’s loud and raucous democracy, they have to stand for skepticism not cynicism; debate and negotiation, not surrender and compromise. Above all, they must stand for transparency.

This may sound impractical given the fact that media are willing to sell editorial space for a consideration. But then, I for one did not come to India to spark the PR consulting business only to see it flounder in murk and opacity.

I repeat: our business is squarely rooted in the Gandhian tradition. This sounds so idealistic that many of you would be blameless if you think I am naïve. Thank whatever Gods there be, our founding fathers who wrote our Constitution were not cynical. Else, we would have been like Pakistan, or Iran or any of the multifarious countries who are called the developing nations.

Remember the SOCO; the PR profession is as much a part of our democracy as it is of the economy.

And by the way, the term SOCO was invented by my team at Hill & Knowlton in Chicago in the early 1980s.

(The above article is adapted from a Keynote Speech delivered by the author at the Exchange4Media PR Summit held in New Delhi recently.)

Rajiv Desai is the founder of public relations consulting firm Comma. He established India’s first PR consulting firm, IPAN, in December 1987 when he relocated to Delhi after having spent the best part of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States.

In the 17 years that he steered IPAN, Mr Desai played a key role in the entry into India of Pepsi in 1988; in the launch of Citibank’s global consumer bank in 1989; in the rapid popularization of Golf, a 1990 campaign on behalf of ITC (Wills Circuit Golf); in the entry and launch of STAR TV in 1991; in the incipient technology boom for companies like Microsoft, Cisco and Intel in the mid 1990s; as also in the opening up of the telecom sector for companies such Nokia, Hughes, Alcatel, BT and BPL Mobile (the first cellular service).

Over the years, Mr Desai has also established a parallel career in journalism as a columnist on public affairs. In 1999, he authored a book, Indian Business Culture. He is the founding editor of India Tribune, a 30-year old community newspaper in Chicago.

Mr Desai served as media adviser to Rajiv Gandhi in the 1989 and 1991 parliamentary election campaigns. In 1993 and 1994, he was an adviser to the UNICEF representative in India. In 1997, he was appointed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to its serve as counselor in the party's Media Department. In 1998, he was involved in the development of the Delhi’s government’s community initiative called "Bhagidari" (partnership).

Here we go again. Indian Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has "launched" a $35 computer, evidently his "dream project".

The touch-screen, Linux-based device looks iPad inspired, but we know little about how it works. It emerged from a student project with a bill of material adding up to $47, a price that the minister wants to bring down to $10 "to take forward inclusive education". It promises browser and PDF reader, wi-fi, 2GB memory, USB, Open Office, and multimedia content viewers and interfaces.

Will it die a quick death within this year, or a painful, government-funded one over the next two? I fear the latter. Project Sakshat even has a busy website so it looks like a project well under way.

The Rs 10,000 PC. The Simputer. The $100 MIT laptop. NetPCs from a host of companies. India's so-called $10 laptop. How many flops and failures will it take to convince governments (and brave but misled companies) to get these facts of tech, products, and life?

You don't launch products until you have a product to launch. Else it's vaporware. The Indian government is building up a good track record of vaporware, from $10 laptops upward. (Apple launches with a million units ready to sell, and midnight queues outside.)

You don't show prototypes unless they are working ones with running apps, backed by a clear game plan to build up a vendor and apps network, and a clear design, spec (and preferably bill of materials).

It isn't about the hardware. It's the application and the apps ecosystem. What will it be used for, and who will make those apps? Where's the developer community and the roadmap for hundreds of apps, as Apple had when it launched the iPhone and the iPad?

Product design isn't one-off. It's an ongoing process, with software updates, improvements, upgrades, and most of all, growing apps support. You can make a working laptop, but it's no trivial task maintaining it through the life-cycle of the product, ensuring support, firmware and hardware upgrades, and new versions.

Replicating the Nano story is no joke. It takes years, expertise, innovation, hard work and lots of luck (and many patents, as with the Nano) to launch a product at one-tenth the current market price. I don't know of any examples of such overnight miracles (the Nano arrived after years of work, at about half of the current entry-level product's price tag.)

You don't re-invent the wheel. We already have $35 computing devices. We call them mobile phones. They're capable, connected, always-on, personal, and every second Indian has one. They're an ideal front-end to information and entertainment, served over voice or SMS or data.

Over the years I've been less blunt about cheap-PC efforts. But now I am angry. The government is wasting its efforts and my tax money, and making a laughing stock of Indian technological prowess.

It isn't the government's job to create and sell cheap PCs. If it wants to use ICT for development and education, it can use some of our tax rupees to build the ecosystem. Create compelling G2C (government to citizen) apps. Shift to education delivered over networks, make e-tax filings mandatory, create citizen services delivered over the internet.

And ramp up tech usage in the government: ensure employees have broadband at home, with reasons to use it—intranets and work-from-home—as well as mobile data and apps. Oh, and it can use the funds and roadmap of the Sakshat project to fund content development for $35 mobile phones—of which there must be 100 million in India.

This isn't the first "cheap laptop" effort. MIT's $100 laptop hasn't taken off yet, though it's at the $200 level and has a roadmap—including options to fund a subsidy. And maybe Sakshat 2.0 is not a hoax, unlike its predecessor. Yes, you can reach any price with sufficient subsidy. But that is no enduring solution. It may make more sense for India to negotiate a rock-bottom price for 10 million of last year's laptops, and subsidize them down to $35.

Prasanto Kumar Roy, 43, is a noted technology journalist and analyst. He is Chief Editor of Cybermedia's infotech and telecom publications and CIOL.com, a tech portal.  An alumnus of St. Stephen's College, Delhi, he is deeply interested in mobile technology, and is a keen evangelist and writer on green tech. He travels widely and lectures on technology and media issues.

NNN

Visiting us during her vacations, Manjari, my teenage niece, asked me if I would help her with a summer project. I agreed. It involved the study of coins. The curious kid wanted to know what a one-paisa coin looked like. Her next question: "What can one paisa buy?"

We were amused as to why a teacher would give a 'one paisa' project when the cheapest toffee costs 50 paisa, or around one cent. Manjari's search into the shape, size, and metallic content of one paisa coin landed her at the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI's) monetary museum. She learnt that over a period of time, the cost-benefit considerations led to a gradual discontinuance of 1, 2 and 3 paisa coins in 1970s.

Then came a discovery of sorts. There was something that was worth a paisa -- offered by the burgeoning, yet highly competitive, Indian telecom industry. For just one paisa, one can talk to someone in the farthest corner of India for one second, or send an SMS of 160 characters to any one of the 600 million mobile phone users in India. Not only that, one can extract more from the service provider if the bill plan is well chosen. Of course, it also depends on the desperation of the service provider to acquire and retain a customer.

The Indian telecom industry, the world's fastest growing, must be credited with applying all the marketing tricks ranging from product or service sampling, marginal costing, happy hours, family and friends packs among others to hook the customer.

This explains the offer for sending 15,000 SMSs for Rs.99 (around $2) a month -- a cool 3 SMSs for 2 paise. Or for just Rs.299 (around $6.5) to call 65 hours, or full-hour of talking with your mother for under Rs.5 (11 cents). If your circle of friends extends nationally, at Rs.599 ($13.3) per month plan you can talk for 65 hours, packing in 60 minutes of calling for a little over Rs.9 ($2).

For the service provider there is little money to be made in the local or long-distance calls from an individual subscriber. However, money is made from value added services -- ranging from ring tones and astrology, music downloads and jokes, stock alerts to cricket scores, international calls and data services. It is estimated that there are at least 100 different services that add up to plum value added services. There is hardly a subscriber who has not subscribed to a service or two at a minimum of Rs.15 (33 cents) per month.

If you include data services like browsing the web to send email, downloading music or streaming video to watch TV, the billing potential for the mobile companies is huge and is likely to grow manifold in the third generation (3G) regime. By subscribing to data packages on a mobile phone the subscriber can navigate unknown routes or even make international calls for a song.

While all 600 million Indian mobile subscribers don't own a handset that supports data services, it is only a matter of time when some of the cheaper "copycat" look-alike handsets -- as market researcher, IDC calls them -- will be within every mobile user's reach for as little as one-tenth the average price of a smart phone.

Industry analysts expect that a number of service providers could be offering mobile voice over internet protocol (VoIP) services to offer cheap international calls. Right now making international calls is not only expensive it also needs activation, often for a fee and a fat security deposit. Once the mobile VoIP services are available, the call rates could drop from the current Rs.6.40 (14 cents) per minute at the lower band to as low as Re.1-Rs.2 (2-4 cents) per minute.

Already a few options like the iTel Mobile Dialer Express available in the market allow a phone subscriber to make VoIP call from the mobile phone. With the mass deployment of Wi-Fi networks in many countries and the introduction of cheap GPRS service, calling from mobile set using VoIP technology is getting popular.

The telecom tariffs in India, among the lowest in the world, have silently been making a visible difference at the sociological level -- you see it in a bus, train or plane. At another level there are mobile air space consumers who are busy converting phone calls from a primarily day time activity to a 24/7 activity.

With a variety of cheap night-time calling packages on offer, it is not uncommon for friends to call each other late into night and for much longer durations. With value offerings targeted in the non-peak hours, the service providers have been able to make inroads into the sleeping hours of young student community successfully.

The time is not far when the mobile revolution will embrace the remaining half of the country -- at a steady rate of adding 20 million new mobile connections every month -- in less than three years. The economies of scale will hopefully extract the India demographic advantage for many more seconds at the cost of a single paisa.

Sanjit Chatterjee is Director Global Marketing and Strategy for Singapore-based mobile VoIPsolution provider REVE Systems. REVE Systems' iTel Mobile Dialer has been named product of the year 2009 by Internet Telephony.

Over the last 10 years, Chatterjee has seen the telecom industry grow in various dimensions while working with Net4India, Indiatimes and FlyTxt.

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India’s policy response to the economic downturn has been very swift with the Reseve Bank of India (RBI) cutting the repo rate by 425 bps in a span of six months and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 400 bps in just three months.

With the economic recovery gaining ground, despite rising inflation, the RBI went slow on withdrawing accommodative policy. It was a calibrated move, given the risk of snapping growth which was in a nascent stage.

However, with robust pick-up in consumption demand, recovery in private capex gaining momentum, early signs of improvement in credit growth and inflation becoming more broad-based than merely led by drought-impacted rise in food prices, it is time to move away from excessively accommodative monetary policy towards a neutral policy regime.

Along with the economy going through its second highest inflation phase in the decade, the RBI also faces the challenge of managing the highest ever net annual government borrowing programme in a smooth and non-disruptive manner.

Corporate and consumer credit off-take is likely to gain momentum due to improving consumer and business confidence. Further, higher oil price will increase under-recoveries of down-stream oil companies and increase credit demand from this sector.

Given such a scenario, higher government borrowing programme may have a crowding-out effect on private sector credit and thereby significantly impact interest rates in short-to-medium term. All these factors will have a significant bearing on RBI’s Monetary Policy over the next one year.

We expect RBI to display optimism on economic growth and set its FY11 GDP growth projection at 8.25% with an upward bias even though concerns on core inflation are likely to be elevated due to surge in global commodity prices, strong domestic demand and supply constraints.

The RBI’s surprise rate hike in the month of March 2010 clearly flagged its concern over rising broad-based inflation expectation. Policymakers' continued thrust on driving consumption through stimulus has put consumption drivers in top gear.

However, despite low interest rate regime due to aftermath of global financial crisis capex growth has been lacklustre. We expect capex to pick up aggressively in the next 12-18 months which will further propel credit growth. However, in the interim, surging manufacturing inflation remains a key risk.

Despite RBI being behind the curve in rate normalization till now, we expect acceleration in rate hike going forward, which will play a crucial role in shaping outlook for near-term economic growth. We expect RBI to hike the repo and reverse repo rates by 50 bps in either its scheduled policy meet on April 20, 2010 or soon thereafter.

On an average, Rs 12000 crore of g-sec auction is planned every week. So, RBI is unlikely to aggressively absorb excess liquidity from the system which is currently to the tune of Rs.50,000 crore.

Over the course of next one year, we are likely to see repo rate, reverse repo rate and CRR rising by 100 bps each. In our views, managing government borrowing programme is not a staggering task, albeit at an elevated cost.

It is going to be a defining moment for the RBI to manage the growth and inflation tussle simultaneously without impacting the other but, in my view, this time the focus should be on inflation rather than growth because it is cause of concern that we see signs of higher inflation at such an early stage of the uptrend in the business cycle.

Vikram Kotak is the Chief Investment Officer, Birla Sun Life Insurance (BSLI) since July 2007. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has experience of more than 13 yers in debt and equity markets, corporate finance and research.

He is a member of the Working Group Committee on Investments formed by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA).

Before joining BSLI, Mr. Kotak was with Techno Group as President, Equity Business, for two years. Prior to that, he was Head – Fixed Income Business with Birla Sun Life Securities Limited (BSSL).

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Nandini Sahai

I have chosen to discuss Media and Democracy in South Asia, for the simple reason that in the last one year or so all the countries in the region have gone in for elections and are now democratic countries.

The mass media constitute the backbone of democracy. The media supply the political information that voters base their decisions on. They identify problems in our society and serve as a medium for deliberation. They are also the watchdogs that we rely on for uncovering errors and wrongdoings by those who have power.

It is therefore reasonable to require that the media perform to certain standards with respect to these functions, and our democratic society rests on the assumption that they do.

The state of media in South Asian countries in 2009 was as varied as diverse the countries of the region are. With almost 100 TV channels in India, dozens in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, South Asia has entered the electronic and digital multimedia stage in an unprecedented way.

Never in history has the growth in media been so mismatched with the archaic and obstructive legal, traditional and administrative structures at such a scale and with such intensity. At a nerve breaking speed, the information revolution is demolishing all hurdles and restrictions that come in its way.

Also in many South Asian countries, the judiciary has failed democracy. One of the major flaws in the judiciary is the delay in its legal System. In South Asia, more than two million cases are pending in 18 High Courts alone and more than 200,000 cases are pending in the Supreme Court for admission, interim reliefs or final hearing.

If you will look into The Guinness Book of Records you will perhaps find an entry, which says that the most protracted law suit ever, recorded was in India. A "mahant", who is a keeper of a temple, filed a suit in Pune in 1205 AD and the case was decided in 1966 –(761) years later! However, this is not the average time taken by the Indian courts for deciding cases. Normally, it takes between 5 and 15 years for a case to be decided in an Indian court. But this time is long enough to break anyone’s belief in the judicial system and democracy.

Democracy can only function when the state does not get involved in any judicial proceedings, just to save those whom it has favoured previously. It is up to the courts to give justice to the people or it would be sooner rather than later that the people start to lose trust in the judicial system. In fact, it is the duty of the state to ensure that judicial proceedings are free , fair, impartial and peaceful.

The people in South Asian countries may have lost trust and faith in judiciary and law system, but do they have trust in the police? Sadly speaking the answer is "NO" specially in the Indian context. Indian police discriminate against people on the basis of caste and financial status and consider themselves above the law, undermining the country’s democratic ideals, a leading human rights group said.

Police also stood accused of illegally detaining crime suspects, torturing them and even carrying out extra judicial killings in custody with impunity. The reports collated from interviews with about 80 policemen of various ranks and victims of police atrocities said several officers admitted in private that suspects were often tortured and beaten to extract confessions

Policemen charged at economist Professor Anu Muhammd with truncheons as he fell on the road during a police attack on a peaceful procession of the national committee to protect oil, gas, mineral resources, power and port, which was marching to lay siege to the Petrobangla head office in Dhaka.

Both legs of Anu Muhammad, also a professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University, were badly fractured in the police attack. He and other injured were taken to Dhaka Medical College Hospital and most of them were released after first aid. Professor Anu Muhammad was shifted to Square Hospital from DMCH.

Journalists trying to visit Anu Muhammad at Square Hospital were refused permission to see him. When contacted, the hospital management said it might have been done on the advice of the attending doctors.

South Asia is in the grip of multifaceted crises extenuated by the poor quality of governance and its inability to grapple with the challenges of population explosion, poverty, deprivation, social exclusion, rapid urbanization, and environmental degradation caused by the very forces of development.

The symptoms of this multifaceted crisis are seen in the rise of political and social violence, militarization of society, pervasive political graft and corruption, youth alienation, and, indeed, the undoing of democracy itself with the peaceful overthrow of an elected Government by the military establishment for mal-governance.

With a population of 1.3 billion or around 22% of the world population, the challenge to governance in South Asia is immense. The task ahead is made more complex by the regional diversity borne out of its multi-racial , multi-religious, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural composition.

Furthermore, around 550 million or about 45% of the world’s poor people are to be found in South Asia and have yet to fully enjoy the fruits of democracy and development. The poor are either out of the mainstream of development as chronically marginalized people or face hardships on account of anti-poor policies, priorities and institutions.

The lack of democratic participation and its relation to poverty in South Asia can be seen in terms of ineffective political parties, local governments, national parliaments, civil society and civil service. In addition, the lack of dynamic and visionary political, bureaucratic and business leadership also serve to retard the extent of democratic participation in South Asia, strengthening the involvement of provincial councils in energy.

Most South Asian countries are following independence from British rule and, in the case of Nepal, liberation from the autocracy of one family group in 1950. They have enjoyed democratic systems of governance at some time or the other, often for extended periods of time. Electoral processes have, however, been found wanting to some extent in all these countries.

We have to understand the electoral processes as they are actually operated in South Asia to discover the reasons for the flaws in these systems and the degrees of success or failure in attempts at reforms Manipulation of elections by government and electoral malpractices are of critical concern in all South Asian countries.

South Asia is home to 1.5 billion people, who together comrpise one-fifth of all humanity. One-fifth of the population in South Asia is between the ages of 15 and 24. This is the largest number of young people ever to transition into adulthood, both in South Asia and in the world as a whole.

The prevailing conditions of political and economic insecurity, and the need to address them in a collective manner, are compelling reasons to forge a strong South Asian community capable of acting locally and regionally.

A step towards this happened in New Delhi late last year. Youth representatives (18 - 30 years) from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives gathered in the capital to deliberate on various issues confronting their region as part of the South Asia Youth Summit 2008 (SAYS '08) on November 24 and 25, 2008.

The summit brought together nearly 100 delegates comprising youth representatives from the fields of Media, Politics, Arts, Law and Business from across South Asia to create a space for a liberal dialogue on common public policy issues faced by South Asian countries.

The culmination of the two-day summit took place at India Gate where participants formed a youth chain and lit candles in solidarity with each other to fight against terrorism and spread the message of peace. And there began the "drafting of a new South Asia."

The nations of South Asia are more alike than they are different. Cultures and languages spill across national borders, most of which were created in the colonial era.

As in many other parts of the world, the creation of new and "artificial" national identities has been the source of much conflict and violent upheaval. This complex struggle continues to shape South Asia's political and economic landscape.

South Asian economies are a mixture of poverty and plenty, with advanced and productive economies couped with persistent poverty.

The turbulent past 60 years of South Asia have cost the region dearly. The prospects of a region, which could have been a leading geo-political entity in a multi-polar world, were dampened.

Therefore, it is high time new solutions and right directions are sought, especially with the help of the youth of the region. It is they who can effectively make an impact with their contributions, thus leading to the formation of a peaceful democratic South Asia.

The media has a crucial role in not only strengthening democratic processes in each of the countries in the region, but also in fostering greater cooperation and understanding among them. They can create the demand for change and ensure that the process is implemented in the best possible manner. The vast resources that many media organisations in the region today have and the fact that technology has removed most constraints of distance and time give the media houses and individual journalists a unique opportunity to play the role that audiences trust them to perform.

Nandini Sahai is a distinguished development journalist who has used journalism as a powerful tool for social development.

She is currently the Director of The International Centre, Goa. She is the guiding spirit behind the Media Information and Communication Centre of India (MICCI), a non-profit organisation created by leading academicians, journalists and social activists, which has worked on projects in areas such as Right to Information, Women in Media, Community Radio, Media and Social Development, Media and Disaster Management, Rural Journalism, Broadcast Bill and Youth and Media.

Before forming MICCI, she was the Country Manager of AMIC-India, a subsidiary of AMIC (Asian Media and Information Centre), a Singapore-based International NGO working in media related issues.

She is one of the leading Right to Information (RTI) advocates and has been closely associated with Aruna Roy, a Magsaysay Award winner in creating awareness among people about their rights. She has also worked with International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT).

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Millions of us woke up on Sunday (November 29) morning with front-page headlines that screamed "Online birth pangs dog CAT", "CAT's e-debacle leaves students foxed", and so on. But what was a matter of clever wordplay for newspapers spells uncertainty and unwarranted anxiety for 240,000 IIM aspirants and their parents.

As for the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) experimenting with the online entrance exam and Prometric, the company handling this system of testing , it is a time of big crisis. The stakes involved for all the stakeholders are too high. They involve the future of the IIM admission seekers, the image of haloed IIMs and, most importantly, the future of e-governance in the country.

It's no easy task launching a mega computer-based testing operation of this scale that involves training, equipping and coordinating activities among a large number of dispersed players. A number of biometric and security devices built into the test system adds another layer of complexity. The risk of pranksters trying to sneak into the servers or infect them with viruses is equally real.

A variety of suggestions have been pouring in from academics, technical experts and test preparation companies. These range from extending pilot phase to building in redundancies in the computer systems to allow logging in by tens of thousands of aspirants simultaneously.

Some experts have blamed the current crisis on a complacent vendor with a failure record quoting examples of how the UK government body ended its five-year multi-million dollar contract with ETS, the parent company of Prometric, following serious troubles with the administration and marking of tests. The issue rocked the British parliament and continued to consume headlines day in and day out all through July and Augst 2008.

However, even as the directors of IIMs and the technical teams from Prometric work towards stabilizing the system, they also need to step up their communication with candidates. They need to issue statements, assuring candidates that they would find ways to accommodate all those who missed their tests.

Finally, instead of belittling the new system, it is in every one's interest to let this new model succeed because a mega initiative like this has lessons not only for the IIMs but for the entire education system. If it succeeds, it could possibly lead to a transparent e-governance system emerging in the education system.

The decision of the IIMs to move from the traditional three-decade old paper and pencil method of selection of candidates for 3,000-odd seats to the computer-based method is revolutionary in more ways than one and it is important to give it a fair try.

The online Common Admission Test (CAT) exam is the first baby step in application of IT beyond the private sector that will help overcome the oft-quoted risk of impersonation at the entrance exams and enable transparency. It will also help build a database of applicants, over years, and correlate the performance levels of successful applicants and their actual performance at IIMs.

The average Indian has benefited from e-governance initiatives that have brought some semblance of order to the earlier chaos. Two most successful examples that touch the lives of every Indian include the replacement of the old ballot system by electronic voting machines in elections. The second national success story is the railway reservation system adopted over two decades ago. The system has seamlessly moved on to internet-based booking of tickets over a period of time.

But can we say that these two high impact systems are with absolutely zero defect? Perhaps, no. Because there are occasional failures, system breakdowns and outages due to a variety of reasons that render them dysfunctional for a few moments to a few hours.

The education system needs a full-fledged e-governance system that goes beyond handling online admissions, generating fee bills to recording attendance and posting results. The country needs to graduate to a seamless system of education that offers relevant and most up-to-date content and allows mobility of students across streams, across colleges and above all inclusion of those who have no access to education. We need to look ahead, and seek ways to building linkages with the unique identity systems being launched by the government under Nandan Nilekani.

The author is a Strategic Communications and PR Counsel for the services industry. He was until recently the Group Executive Vice-President for the NIIT Group. In this role, he was brand custodian for NIIT for nearly 20 years. An alumnus of the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi, he writes occasionally on issues of national importance.

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(The following are excerpts from a speech on Affordable Land and Housing delivered by Mr Deepak S Parekh, Executive Chairman, HDFC, at the Habitat Business Forum in Delhi on July 7, 2009.)

India and China are going to be the economic torchbearers as the world slowly recuperates from arguably, the greatest financial crisis in the modern era.

Housing plays a pivotal role in the economy and its importance can be gauged from the fact that the global financial crisis had its roots in the US housing sector. The US had always been credited for its well developed, sophisticated housing finance market and perhaps no one envisaged the enormity and snowball effect of this crisis.

But when one looks back, certain fundamentals went completely awry. The crux of the mortgage crisis was that prudent lending norms had been disregarded, structured financial products had become so complex that few were able to understand the risks associated with these instruments, there were regulatory lapses and lastly, the greed factor led to excessive risk taking.

The collapse of several leading financial institutions had its repercussions across all financial markets and the total expected write downs on global exposures is now expected to be in the range of US $ 4 trillion.

The global financial system is strongly interlinked and this has debunked the decoupling theory. But the impact of the global financial crisis varies from country to country. In many western economies, the financial sector's largest exposures were in the housing and real estate sector, which is not the case with say, China or India. Both China and India continue to have low mortgage to GDP ratios at 11% and 7% respectively and the demand for housing continues to remain enormous in these rapidly growing nations.

Fortunately, the importance of housing has been recognised by the governments of both these countries.

The Chinese economy has benefited from the government's mega stimulus package of US$ 586 billion. In an effort to promote affordable housing for the urban poor, the Chinese government's stimulus plan includes a pledge to build 5.2 million low-rent homes over the next three years and subsidise housing for 7.5 million poor urban families. A total of US$ 59 billion is earmarked for affordable housing projects and US$ 54 billion on improving rural living standards.

Despite India being the second fastest growing economy, its Achilles' heel has always been the state of its infrastructure and the acute shortage of housing. To the discerning eye of a visitor to India, the rapid economic growth is not reflected in the quality of urban infrastructure or civic life.

India is urbanising at a pace that is higher than the world average. Its cities today are unable to cope with the burgeoning population. Projections indicate that by 2030, more than 40% of the country's population will be residing in urban areas compared to the present 28%.

Economic development and urbanisation are inextricably linked. Cities have created employment opportunities and are generators of wealth, with 55% of the country's GDP being contributed from cities. But as the housing stock is unable to keep pace with the demand, the result has been an environment of mushrooming unauthorised construction, congestion, proliferation of slums and degradation of the urban living experience. Adding to these woes is the severe shortage of basic amenities, with scores of citizens continuing to be without power, water and sanitation.

The Indian government recognises the challenges it faces on housing, particularly on account of the rising pace of urbanisation. While the government has initiated several measures and programmes to deal with these challenges, one has to appreciate that solutions are not easy given the huge shortage of housing in India. Again, there are large income disparities, which means that different solutions need to be sought for different income groups.

Take for instance the fiscal incentives offered by the government on a housing loan. This has helped scores of middle-class Indians to realise their dreams of owning a home. For example, if the interest rate on a housing loan is 9.25% p.a. and if one factors in the fiscal concessions of interest exemption of Rs. 1.5 million and the deduction of the principal component of Rs. 1 million, the effective rate of interest paid on a housing loan for a tax paying individual comes down to less than 4% p.a. This serves as a tremendous saving for the individual.

It is uplifting to hear President Pratibha Patil set the tone with an ambitious target of making India slum-free in the next five years. The ground reality is that there is an urgent need to take some hard decisions, but in my opinion it is not beyond the grasp of the new government.

The top priority of the government should be to ensure the reintroduction of the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill and the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, despite the new political noises being made. SEZs have become a non-starter, road and airport projects have been hindered and industrial projects have been delayed due to land acquisition related issues.

The total urban land stock in India is only 2.3% of the country's total geographical area, but houses 30% of the country's population. At a policy level, there is a need to bring in additional urban lands on a regular basis. The process of land acquisition and conversion of agricultural lands for urban use also needs to be simplified.

The affordable housing agenda is extremely challenging, but solutions can be found through inter supportive public private arrangements. The private sector has to be incentivised to participate in this segment, while the government has to create the enabling environment. To that effect, the slum rehabilitation schemes have worked well - the developer provides the slum dwellers with permanent structures, typically a one- room tenement with an attached bathroom free of cost, while the developer benefits from the surplus land which can be used for commercial purposes. Going forward, it is imperative that the government rationalise stamp duties, review processes for master planning, provide for upward increases in FSI, which is commensurate with investment in infrastructure and encourage more in-situ development.

State housing boards can also play an important role. One can cite the recent success cases of state housing boards like the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) or the Delhi Development Authority, which offered flats at prices that were within the common man's reach. The number of applications received for these homes is testimony of the immense demand.

Sometimes, however, state housing boards tend to shift their focus from providing housing to merely selling land for profit. The housing board either sits on these huge cash surpluses or the funds get passed on to the state government which, in turn, gets deployed in other areas, besides housing. It is imperative that such profits be ring-fenced and deployed for affordable housing only. Given the huge demand for homes built by state housing boards, they should ramp up their scale of operations and ensure that more affordable homes are built faster.

There is also merit in the Urban Development Ministry's proposed "reverse tendering" plan wherein state-owned land would be provided at a pre-determined price and expressions of interest would be invited from private developers for building homes at the lowest possible price. This would go a long way in providing housing to the middle and low-income groups, without the risks of speculation creeping in through artificially inflated land prices.

Personally, I am sceptical whether the present breed of developers will stay committed to the affordable housing segment. Certain top rung developers have already started increasing prices, especially in mid-income projects, following the recent pick up in sales. Besides, with liquidity no longer being a constraint, certain developers are seeking to once again increase their margins.

The real estate market had just begun correcting itself and it would be extremely unfortunate if developers were to increase home prices at this juncture. Over the longer term, I envisage that the affordable housing segment will belong to dedicated niche players. We already have a few such examples, but to increase scale, these players may need to be appropriately supported and incentivised.

A point that I have repeatedly raised is the compelling need to introduce a real estate regulator, whose role would be to oversee and monitor the affordable housing agenda, promote real estate reforms and act as a platform to protect buyers from real estate fraud.

Why should it be difficult for the government to insist that all flats be sold only on the basis of carpet area, which is the actual liveable space? Why is the idea of a real estate regulator, which can protect a homebuyer, be resisted at all? For instance, our regulators for various financial products and services are extremely vigilant in protecting customers, but in the case of buying a home, which is the single largest investment made by a person in his or her lifetime, there is no regulator or even an Ombudsman-type body to redress instances of real estate fraud. A real estate regulator will immensely help this sector.

Let me briefly turn to financing aspects. The demand for housing finance continues to remain immense and one is hopeful that the surplus liquidity within the system will provide scope for some softening of interest rates in the ensuing period.

India has prided itself on its robust financial system which largely remained insulated from the global financial meltdown. The central bank has been credited for its vigilance on the real estate market and for its pre-emptive measures such as increasing risk weights on commercial real estate loans and provisioning requirements to prevent the build-up of an asset bubble.

But given the dynamic and constantly changing environment, India cannot rest on its laurels. The time may be apposite for India to perhaps take a leaf from the European Commission's recent draft on "Responsible Lending Standards for Home Loans." It is important to recognise that responsible lending for home loans must aim at not only providing the initial access to housing through credit for borrowers, but must keep in mind the long-term objective, which is keeping borrowers in their homes. These standards set out mutual obligations on the part of borrowers, credit intermediaries, lenders and regulators.

It is of utmost importance for a lender to provide adequate, transparent and understandable information to prospective home borrowers. An information overload must also be avoided. A customer must be educated sufficiently on a home loan product, (more so if it is a complex structure) so as to enable him or her to make a well-informed decision. Asset quality should always be the overriding factor. Landing up with excessive non-performing loans may be a drag on the financial system, but de-housing unintentional defaulters on account of mis-selling as we have seen in the US, is a path that India can ill-afford to follow. These are lessons we must keep in mind.

Across all income segments, man's dreams and aspirations remain the same - that of striving for a better quality of life. I am optimistic to believe that housing finance solutions can be found. There is no reason to believe that commercial financial institutions cannot finance low-income borrowers.

For instance, as long as there is a verifiable income source and a clear title to the property, commercial institutions must play their role. At the very bottom of the income group, government support is vital. So through public and private support, I am optimistic to believe India can successfully "straddle the pyramid".

By straddling the pyramid, one means that different sets of housing solutions can be found for different income segments. India is fortunate to have a number of visionary policymakers, intellectuals and professionals who are all trying very hard to find the right solutions. While the 20th century was called the "age of urbanisation", the 21st century may well be termed as the "age of sustainable urbanisation."

(Mr Deepak S Parekh is the executive Chairman of HDFC. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (England & Wales). Mr. Parekh joined HDFC in a senior management position in 1978. He was inducted as a wholetime director of the Corporation in 1985 and was appointed Chairman in 1993. He is the chief executive officer of the Corporation.)

The following is the text of an article by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on "The Vision of Emerging Powers--India" published in the compendium brought out by the G-8 nations on the eve of their Summit in Italy on July 9-10:

"As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the challenges of global governance in an increasingly inter-connected and multi-polar world are truly formidable. Our institutions of global governance, centred on what may be called the UN system, were designed for the most part at the end of the Second World War and reflected the politico-economic realities of that age. The world was then dominantly bipolar, in the political and military sense, international trade and international capital flows were low, the developing countries were not economically important, indeed most of them were not even independent.

There has been a sea change since then. Bipolarity has given way to multi-polarity, the developing countries are not only sovereign states but some group of developing countries have gained in relative economic importance and this trend will only gain momentum. The world has also become much more interconnected through the expansion of trade in goods and services and expansion of financial flows generated by capital account liberalisation. Interconnection has in turn greatly increased problems of contagion and vulnerability especially through financial linkages.

Our established institutions of global governance have evolved to some extent in response to these changes, but much less than they should have and the pace of evolution is likely to remain well behind the rate at which the world is changing. The centre piece of the post-war global architecture is the United Nations, conceived originally as the Parliament of the nations with the Security Council at its apex. The size of the international parliament has of course expanded and while there is occasional cynicism about how effectively the General Assembly can reflect global opinion, and especially evolve workable solutions on key issues, there is no doubt that it serves a valuable purpose in giving voice to every country.

However, this is not the same thing as saying that we have a structure which is functionally efficient and capable of dealing with the complex challenges the world faces today. The Security Council has not changed at all and its present structure poses serious problems of legitimacy. The system of two-tiered membership, which gives a veto to the five permanent members i.e. the nations that emerged victorious after the Second World War, is clearly anachronistic. Germany and Japan, which have significantly larger economies than Britain and France, both permanent members, are excluded. China is the only developing country in the P-5 and it is there for historical reasons, not as a large and economically important developing country. It is obvious that if the system was being designed today it would be very different. However, while the problems have long been recognised, efforts to reform the system have made little headway.

The unworkability of the existing structures has led to greater reliance on plurilateral groupings. Some of these such as the G-7, later expanded to the G-8, are to be seen as a group of countries with common interest, not necessarily representative of the global community. The original rationale of the G-7 was the belief that it would evolve more effective consultation among the more powerful countries on one side of the bipolar world of the 1970s and 1980s. Its expansion to the G-8 reflects the disappearance of that particular faultline by the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, while the Group includes many of the economically powerful nations, it is obviously not representative as it does not include any developing country.

Some years ago the G-8 has been expanded into the G-8 + 5 by adding China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. More recently, the group has been expanded even further to include a handful of countries in the name of achieving additional outreach. While these ad hoc expansions are a useful way of broadening the range of consultation undertaken by the G-8, it suffers from two limitations. The expanded group is not cohesive since the countries included for purposes of outreach do not participate fully in the proceedings, or the preparations, and the expanded group therefore does not have a composite identity. Second, these groupings do not have any special legitimacy within the UN System.

The deficiencies of the existing system of governance have been dramatically brought home during the recent international financial and economic crisis. The crisis has highlighted the fact that all economies are now highly inter connected and problems originating in one part of the world economy can quickly snowball into a global crisis. It has forcefully exposed fundamental weaknesses in the approach to financial regulation which emphasised light regulation and greater reliance on inhouse controls and market discipline to control risk. This approach gained popularity in the 1990s and is now perceived to have been overdone. The issue has revealed the inadequacies in the existing domestic regulatory systems in the industrialised countries and also in the international institutions set up to police these areas and to take remedial action when needed.

Whatever the causes and specific failures underlying the crisis, the world was quick to realise that a global crisis requires a global solution. It was also realised that the existing institutions of global governance did not permit effective coordination of a global response. The world therefore responded not by working within the existing system, but by convening a meeting of the G-20 at the level of leaders. The G-20 was established in 1999 at the suggestion of Paul Martin of Canada and has a composition which is somewhat different from the IMFC which meets regularly at Finance Ministers level. The G-20 has been meeting at the level of Finance Ministers since 1999. Recognising the seriousness of the crisis, the United States convened a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 in Washington D.C. in November 2008. The Group met again in London in April 2009. Unlike the G-8+5, this group has a composite identity since all member countries participate on equal terms including in the preparatory process. However, the selection of countries remains arbitrary and can be questioned as to its representativeness, especially since it departs from the composition of the IMFC which reflects the representation on the Board of the IMF.

The G-20 meeting in London certainly achieved a great deal more than normal meetings of this type, especially in two respects. First, it succeeded in expanding the perimeter of financial regulation and endorsing the establishment of global standards to which national standards can be aligned. These standards will be developed by the Financial Stability Forum (now renamed the Financial Stability Board) which has been expanded to include all G-20 countries that were not members earlier. Second it achieved a significant expansion in funding for the Bretton Woods Institutions. However, it did not achieve any significant reform of the international financial institutions. The Group has decided to meet again in September and it remains to be seen whether it will be able to evolve some ideas for making significant reforms by then.

The problems faced by the institutions of governance charged with handling the financial system are also relevant for other international institutions dealing with political and security issues, trade, climate change, etc. They need to update structures and upgrade work methods; reform decision-making and ensure effective delivery. They need to adapt, adjust and accommodate to adequately reflect ground realities, contemporary aspirations, and pressing requirements of developing countries including emerging economies.

India, as the largest democracy in the world and an emerging economy that has achieved the ability to grow rapidly, remains deeply committed to multilateralism. It has been an active member in global institutions – the United Nations, Bretton Woods Institutions, World Trade Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency and so on. It will continue to be so in the decades ahead, based on commitment to principles and values that define these institutions. India will seek its due place, play its destined role and share its assigned responsibility, giving voice to the hopes and aspirations of a billion people in South Asia. It will continue to strive for the reform of the United Nations to make it more democratic; to fight against the scourge of terrorism and dismantling its infrastructures on the basis of zero tolerance; to fight piracy on the high seas; to restructure the Bretton Woods Institutions to create a new financial architecture; to achieve an early conclusion of the Doha Round of trade negotiations, with its development dimension, and to address climate change issues, guided by the principle of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capability.

India’s view of the world has always been guided by the wisdom of that ancient Indian saying – Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – ‘the whole world is one family’. This idea found expression in Jawaharlal Nehru’s very first address as Prime Minister: "Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments." That eternal message of the Indian people will guide us in our attempt to seek inclusive global solutions to intractable global problems, and give new hope to humanity."

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Left ideology and thought played an important role in shaping the course of history in the 19th and 20th centuries. What is its relevance for India in the 21st century is a big question which is weighing heavily in the informed and enlightened public mind today.

The Lok Sabha elections being held in five phases from mid-April to mid-May will determine the Left parties' reach and rapport with the electorate to a limited extent. In fact, the Left policies have a much bigger role in the country's politics than their electoral strength and their limited presence in a few states.

The Left, in my opinion, should continue to remain relevant till poverty, inequality and disparity remain but if the present Left leadership, particularly of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), sticks to its "fundamentalist" path its reach would become increasingly limited.

But what is it that prevents the Left-of- Centre parties from playing their rightful role in national politics? A mixed set of misplaced priorities, mistaken notion of their strength, superiority complex and a skewed understanding of the emerging middle class prevents them from assuming the role that is due to them.

Theoretically, the Left appears to be stuck on a late 19th and early 20th century Marxist-Leninist-Maoist understanding of the national and international forces. This is one reason for their failure to grow in the public esteem.

It will be futile here to point out that the Left missed a historic opportunity to occupy a space in the public mind when the CPM, under the influence of the Kerala group, did not allow former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu to become the Prime Minister in 1996.

Not only that Jyoti Basu enjoyed credibility among the people but his expertise in managing a coalition would also have proved to the masses that the Left was a responsible player.

A five-year Jyoti Basu-led coalition government in New Delhi would have removed the stigma that non-Congress parties cannot provide a stable government.

Similarly, the CPM's stand on Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has contributed to its discredit. There were differences on the Somnath issue among the Left parties but the CPM succeeded in stopping them from coming into open. This has once again alienated the Left from the middle class.

Today, the Third Front, which has been floated by the Left, is being seen as a desperate attempt to prevent the Congress from coming to power. At the same time, there is a popular belief that any Third Front government would not last its full term and would result in another mid-term election.

Though the Left has been claiming that it wants to have a non-Congress and non-BJP government at the Centre but in their anti-Congressism zeal they may be promoting the communal outfits and parties. By ensuring division of the secular vote, the Left may unwittingly be helping the BJP candidates in the ongoing general elections.

First and foremost, the present Left leadership conducts national politics from an anti-Congress stand and sees international politics through an anti-imperialist prism. Apart from this, the Left leaders also suffer from the notion of mistaken moralist strength.

After having remained in power in West Bengal for over three decades and alternatively in Kerala for couple of times, the Left parties are no more perceived as better than other bourgeois parties in public perception.

Shorn of high moral ground, which they used to occupy in public perception, the Left today is being seen as a party which wants political power at all costs without any responsibility.

The internal differences and conflicts among the various parties in the Left Front are yet another reason which militates against it. The role of ideology is increasingly diminishing in the Left's political strategy. The Left-supported trade union movement has reduced itself to a wage revision mechanism and has failed to evolve into a movement which promotes positive labour practices and also contributes to higher levels of productivity.

What is surprising is that fact that the Communist and Socialist parties have nothing in common but for the fact that the Left, like the Socialists, have started equating caste to class.

Like the Socialist parties which were oriented on caste lines, the Left parties too have hopped onto the caste bandwagon. But programmatic unity is elusive and there has been no honest attempt in the last few years to achieve unity among the Left parties and a broad understanding between the Left and Socialists.

What we find today is that one Socialist faction-JD (U) - is aligned with the BJP and the other JD (S) is with the Left. Other socialist parties like the RJD and SP are floating the fourth front.

Ideally, the Left and Socialist parties should have been contesting the Lok Sabha election jointly but it appears an ever elusive wish.

What to talk of the Left-Socialist convergence, even the Left is divided. The CPM and CPI could have taken an initiative to show the way. This would then open doors for wider unity of the left which would include the CPI (M-L) and Naxal outfits.

Unity of the Left forces would go a long way to prove the sincerity of purpose for the national cause. This is not possible in the near future as almost all Left leaders without exception lack a long term vision of the national politics.

The ongoing general elections are going to be a watershed in the national politics and the 15th Lok Sabha.

^{About the author: Dr Satish Misra is a Senior Fellow of the Observer Research Foundation. He has done his Ph.D. from Humboldt University, Berlin, in International Affairs. He has done MA (Western History) from Lucknow University. Before joining ORF he has worked with various English newspapers and magazines. He has produced documentaries for Doordarshan, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Government of Madhya Pradesh. He has to his credit some publications - India and GDR: Three Decades of Relations, India and Antarctic Treaty (Contribution), Indira Gandhi: A Profile in Courage (Contribution), Jalianwala Bagh Massacre and the Tribune (Contribution), Pragyan Varshiki Aveam Gyan Kosh (Hindi Micropedia) (Contribution), Gujarat: A Case Study of the Tyranny of Power (Contribution). At present, he is working on the annual review of Indian Politics (with main focus on Uttar Pradesh) and on monographs of different political parties.}

US President Barack Obama came to London with a mission. His primary goal was to ensure the participation of other countries in the US effort to pump money into the global economy. His intentions were announced beforehand during his frequent media interactions. There had also been protests from the EU, led by France and Germany, who had rightly asserted that the institution of robust regulations in the global financial system must precede any further efforts to sustain the old world financial order by injecting funds through bailouts and stimuli. However, in the end Obama had his way, aided to a large extent by the emerging economies led by the Asian giants. While India eagerly supported the American line, the Chinese clearly lacked original voice, enmeshed as they are in the ‘Made in America’ mire.

The pre-summit dinner witnessed ‘Obamaspeak’ that was followed by the complementary and supportive remarks of the Indian Prime Minister, a noted economist and a credible voice of the Third World. These initial views seemed omnipresent in the final communiqué that was circulated at the conclusion of the summit. While Dr Manmohan Singh’s suggestions on protectionism, regulation and surveillance, IMF reforms and credit flows were a part of the final G-20 declaration, even he would be the first to admit (as he did at a press conference later), these key aspects formed part of the Rhetoric or future promise, even as the US endeavour to ensure global participation in the bail out efforts and recapitalization of institutions formed the substance of the agreement.

The Committee of 20 has agreed to infuse capital into the IMF without any immediate reform in its constitution and operations. The current $250 billion at the disposal of IMF would be increased by $500 billion. Japan and EU have agreed to provide $100 billion of additional funds while China will contribute $40 billion. The IMF will also increase the amount available to each country by way of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) by $250 billion. This allows distressed economies to literally print additional currency and convert it to tradable notes in extreme circumstances. There is also a suggestion that IMF would deploy more effective surveillance; hopefully implying it will watch the West as closely as it does the developing world. However, in the absence of regulations and regulatory authority it remains to be seen if this surveillance would amount to much. The world was expecting a reform of the IMF to be initiated and an urgent change in its governance; these measures have been relegated to the list of future efforts and promises.

The other major disappointment was the lack of progress in instituting a global financial regulator. As a consolation the G-20 agreed to strengthen the Financial Stability Forum and enlarge its membership to include India, China and Brazil (and have rechristened it as the Financial Stability Board). Though it aspires to serve as a watchdog and advise national regulators on activities of individual companies/organizations, the lack of defined powers will clearly undermine its ability to serve the role of a global regulator that is so urgently needed.

President Obama had unequivocally sought the participation of EU, India and China (read funding from) on the rescue efforts through government bailouts. His intention to get commitments from these countries was thwarted by the French and German governments. British Premier, Gordon Brown, though stitched together a compromise that restated the $ 5 trillion stimulus already announced by countries along with the possibility of further bail-outs in future if needed. Though this aspect was meant to be at the core of any G-20 resolution, it remains unresolved primarily due to the ‘Regulation Versus Stimulus’ divide between the US and continental Europe.

The Indian position has also supported the need for regulation though the conviction of its position will be tested in the days ahead. India needs to integrate with the global financial systems in order to access capital that it urgently needs. It is important that India argue for the early establishment of a supra-regulator so that the global risks to its banks and institutions are minimized.

India and other countries have also agreed to participate in recapitalizing financial institutions on the belief and with the stated intention of reviving global credit flows and have also agreed to jointly agree to the treatment of ‘toxic assets’. In fact  treatment of ‘toxic asset’ in the declaration does not cut any new ground and the responsibility for the same still rests with local governments though a commonality in the mechanics is proposed. One of the great impediments for bank credit is the presence of these bad loans. Unless these bad loans are purged from the balance sheets it remains to be seen if banks could resume regular lending again and this important challenge still remains unaddressed.

President Obama made it clear at a post-summit press conference that his primary mandate is to serve the American citizens and this was evident in the discussion on protectionism and its articulation in the summit agreement. While the wordings have asked countries to desist from protectionist tendencies (trade barriers) till 2010 (12 months), there is skepticism as 17 nations have already breached trade practices since November last, when a similar agreement had been endorsed. The suggestion of this 12 month time-frame itself is suspect. Why should any time-frame be mentioned and why should not all trade at all time respect the WTO arrangements? Wouldn’t this special emphasis on a time period actually encourage countries such as the US to operate outside of the WTO claiming special circumstances? This summit will also strengthen Obama’s hand as he defends his position on the issue of executive salaries and bonuses at home. New rules and best practices agreed to by the G-20 crack down on the multi-million dollar cash bonuses doled out as reward for risky investment and trading calls.

In conclusion it would seem that the while the current crisis may see the end of the ‘Washington Consensus’, the overwhelming dominance of President Obama at the summit underscores that Washington would firmly remain the architect and the driver of the new world order through, and on the other side of, this crisis. The outcome of this summit can be summed up as ‘No Stimulus and No Regulation’ declaration, though with plenty of promises on both fronts.

The author is Vice-President-Development and Outreach at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi. His area of expertise is Regulation/Policy, Corporate Communications and Media Studies. An electrical engineer by training, Mr Saran is a Masters in Media Studies from the London School of Economics. Frpm 1994 onwards he has had a rich and diverse experience in the Indian private sector and was actively engaged with regulators and policy-makers during the 1990s as India undertook economic reforms. Since October 2008, Mr Saran is developing and implementing the outreach and development programmes at ORF. His current projects are in the domain of "globalisation" and include studies on Islam, Radicalisation, Climate Change and the Global Financial Crisis. He continues to contribute in various fora on regulatory aspects and on the political economy. The views expressed in this article are his own.