In The News

Topsy-Turvy World

R Ravimohan April 16, 2004
When R. Ravimohan, a columnist for India's Business Standard, reads anything about the American outcry over the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage countries, he blames one root cause: the wide economic disparity between the developed and developing world. "Given the unshakeable viability of the differences in cost structures of different economies," he writes, "it is but natural...

R & D: India's New Star Industry

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar April 10, 2004
American multinational companies are setting up research and development (R & D) centers in India, participating in a new trend in the contemporary era of global capitalism - the outsourcing of production activities.. No longer content to only look overseas for low-wage service sector jobs like call centers, large US corporations are tapping into the technical expertise and specialized...

Uncle Sam's Sly Sally

V. Sudarshan April 5, 2004
After effusively proclaiming US-Indian relations to be best they have been in years, US Secretary of State Colin Powell offered Pakistan membership in the exclusive club of Major Non-Nato Allies (MNNA). Though Powell had met with India’s foreign minister mere days earlier, the Indian government learned about the agreement from the media. Washington claims that it had not wanted to announce its...

India Seethes as US Warms to Pakistan

Edward Luce April 1, 2004
The United States recently removed all remaining sanctions placed on Pakistan when that country’s current leader, General Pervez Musharraf, was installed in a 1999 military coup. After September 11th, Musharraf lost his pariah status and emerged as a key US ally in the anti-terror fight. The partnership was cemented this week, as Musharraf deployed troops to hunt Al-Qaeda along the Afghan border...

Clearing Clouds Over the Karakoram Pass

Ziad Haider March 29, 2004
Over the latter half of the 20th century, relations between China and Pakistan were anchored in large part on both countries' strategic interest in balancing India as a regional power. The Karakoram Highway, which runs for 500 miles between the two nations, is representative of those collective interests. However, says Ziad Haider of the Henry L. Stimson Center, since the Highway was...

American Democracy May Taste Indian Voting Machines

March 26, 2004
As the US presidential election approaches (and memories of the 2000 election's complications remain fresh), the question of how US citizens will vote – by machine or by paper – has become unusually heated. Now an Indian company, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), enters the fray by marketing its own voting machine designed for India' parliamentary elections. Importing electronic voting...

An Outsourcing Giant Fights Back

Saritha Rai March 21, 2004
Azim Premji, the founder of one of India’s leading technology giant Wipro, has found himself on the defensive of late. Premji's business is one of the leading outsourcing concerns in the world, with a net worth of $8 billion and clients from the top layer of their industries. As the domestic debates in America over job loss and outsourcing grow, . Premji has come to symbolize exactly...