Bangalore is known as the silicon valley of India. This is the city that has been hailed as the face of modern India, of India's resurgence, of India's imminent global domination. This is also the city that has been blamed for stealing American jobs by providing cheap labor and unfair competitive advantage to Indian software companies. So, you would think that the Karnataka government (the state of which Bangalore is the capital) would be the last to embrace any sort of protectionist policies. After all, free trade has been the main reason for the states recent prosperity. And yet, a few months back, the state government imposed a 7 week moratorium on the release of non-Kannada films (Kannada is the local language of Karnataka) in the state. The move was aimed at providing incentives to the local film industry. Apart from the obvious flaw in this approach (people wont watch a bad kannada movie just because there is no better non-kannada movie playing), it is ironic that the Karnataka govt. resorted to such blatant protectionism.
Read more about it here.
November 2004 Archives
I have been trying to access Yahoo groups since yesterday. First I thought that the site was down but then I remembered that last year the govt. had blocked access to Yahoo groups since there existed some anti-India groups. (search on Google)It seems like the site is still blocked. This sort of censorship is against the very spirit of the internet and serves no purpose. There is hardly any censorship in the Indian media. Then why try to censor anything on the internet? In general, I feel there is complete freedom of speech in India (in fact too much freedom IMHO) so its surprising that the govt. chose to take this step.
UPDATE: yahoo groups is accessible now, so maybe it was a false alarm!
Robert Scoble linked to me. You aren't a true geek-blogger until you get Scoblized :)
Interesting article about the recent trend of many NRIs returning back to India. Makes a R2Ier like myself feel better about my decision :)
The election for the governor of Washington state was decided by just 42 votes! For a electoral size of 2.8 million, this margin is statistically insignificant. So when they say "every vote counts", they really mean it!
According to Zdnet Microsoft is running a pilot program that allows people running pirated copies of XP to get a legit copy as long as their copy came pre-installed and they can show proof of purchase. This is a very clever strategy to go after the root of piracy rather than the end users. However, it is going to be much more difficult to make this work in India since the so called neighborhood "assemblers" who assemble computers rarely hand out receipts (to avoid taxes).
In my previous post, I had listed the obstacles in developing software for the domestic market. Where there are big obstacles, there is a bigger opportunity. India is the 4th largest economy in the world. The Indian economy is growing at more than 6% and there is a growing middle class with greater purchasing power than ever. India is adding 2 million mobile connections each month so there is a clear willingness and even eagerness to embrace technology.
Some innovative solutions have been proposed for the hurdles I mentioned previously. For example, Rajesh Jain has proposed a networked comuting device which would access software residing on a central server. This would take care of piracy concerns and also lower the cost of owning a computer (since the access device will require minimum computing power)
Bringing computing power to the masses is only one half of the equation. But harnessing that power for providing useful applications is even more critical. People are willing to shell out Rs 5000+ for a cellphone and another few hundered a month for rent. Why? Because the utility of a cellphone is obvious. Selling a PC is much harder today. What would your mom use a PC for? Word, Powerpoint or Photoshop dont interest her. But what about a Tivo like application which records her favorite shows on the computer? That might catch her eye. Or a simple electronic medical records software suited for Indian needs might sell a PC to a doctor. A tutoring software might make the PC attractive to teachers.
Clearly there is a whole lot of software and applications just waiting to be written. The question is when will it get written and who will write it.
Since India has the second largest pool of programmers in the world, it is not surprising that a large share of world's software development happens here. However, even with such an abundance of technical manpower, the domestic market is woefully under served. There are hardly any software packages written primarily for the Indian end user. Companies like Microsoft are attempting to cater to the Indian market by localizing Office and Windows. But that is more of an after thought. Word wasn't developed with the Indian customer in mind. It is intriguing that there are very few Indian software companies that create domestic software packages. The reasons for this, while obvious, are worth listing:
1. Huge margins in outsourced projects: Serving clients in US and Europe is much more profitable than serving the domestic market. The margins are very high and there is so much business available right now, that Indian software companies can choose to ignore the domestic market.
2. Piracy: Piracy is rampant in India. Microsoft or Adobe can still make profits because majority of their sales happen in relatively low piracy zones like US. However, if a software package was developed only for the Indian market, piracy will kill it no time.
3. Low computer penetration: The target market for domestic software is very small.
4. Even lower broadband penetration: Many interesting applications (voice, video on demand etc) require broadband and always connected computers. Broadband costs are still high and computers are not always on or always connected.
I think of myself as a serious bollywood fan. Ironically, my fascination with bollywood began not in India but in US. Over the last three years, I saw close to 150 movies (I am not kidding). That is some serious time spent watching people dance around trees. So, when it comes to rating movies, it will be fair to say, I am very generous and forgiving. And yet, I find it hard to give Naach a rating of more than 1/5. I should have been warned when I couldn't get tickets for any of the other movies and yet the theater was almost empty for this one.
The movie promos are misleading to say the least. The name of the movie (Naach == dance) gives a connotation of joy, happiness and festivity. But the movie is anything like that. Naach is a slow movie in the most literal sense of the word. Actors speak their dialogues slowly, pausing between sentences. In many scenes, Abhishek and Antra are just staring into the camera for several seconds apparently trying to look intense. The pace of the movie is slow as well.
The gist of the story is that Antra is a budding choreographer who wants to make it big in bollywood with originality and without any help, unlike Abhishek who is willing to give the audience what they want, however trashy it might be. This leads to differences between the two which get resolved in the end when Antra finally makes it big and Abhishek acknowledges her true talent. The story is predictable but I have no problems with that (this is bollywood after all). The problem with the movie is in the treatment of the subject. The director failed to capture the passion for dance that Antra's character supposedly has. It is unclear exactly what Antra's character (i have forgotten the character's name) stood for. The song in which she finally finds her true expression doesn't convey anything different as well. In some scenes, the director takes a cheap shot at some well known bollywood personalities. That was completely unnecessary.
My verdict: 1/5
Summary: A somewhat offbeat movie that could have been much more with better treatment.
Plusses: not the usual fare, Abhishek's intensity, Antra's amazing abs
Minuses: Slow, unconvincing, boring
From Wired "There's no escaping advertising. Show even a modicum of success, and marketers start looking for a way in. Really Simple Syndication feeds are the latest target."
Talking about serving the impoverished teeming millions of Indians seems to be the flavor of the month. After Kalam's address at IITF last week (see last post), Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also spoke about how IT can help remove poverty.
Interestingly Mukesh Ambani was Ballmer's class mate at Harvard!
The annual India International Trade Fair (IITF) kicked off on 14th. The two week long fair is an annual feature and is very popular with the general public and businesses alike. This year, focus is on IT and the partner country is China.
In his inaugral speech, president Kalam pointed out that India has 700 million people living in six lakh villages and the rural sector is a big market. Thats a huge market just waiting to be tapped.
Read more here.
Rediff is reporting that Hathway Cable will soon be offering 512kbps for Rs 250/month (2400 Mbps limit per month. This will actually make dial up more expensive than broadband since local phone calls in India are not free.
The creativity of Indian news channels is commendable. One of the hindi news channels reported Bush's victory with the catch line "Bush phir khush" (Bush happy again). I was surprised by the election results because in the last year or so I didn't meet even a single American who supported Bush. But then I lived in WA which is a predominantly Democrat state. One big difference between the American and Indian democracy is that people in America seem to be much more loyal to their party. The results in most states were identical to the 2000 elections. By Indian standards, Bush's performance would have led to a total rout in the elections. The "Tehelka scandal" a few years ago had almost the brought the government to its knees. But Fahrenheight 911 made a lot of noise but hardly had an impact on the election results. Something like the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would surely have led to an opposition walkout in the parliament and wide public outrage. In India, smaller scandals have led to collapse of governments. The Indian public has no loyalty to any party. If the Prime Minister didn't meet their expectations, people will vote him out in a heartbeat. Such dynamism seems to be missing in American politics. While this ensures political stability, it also means that a medicore performance might be enough to take the President through to a second term.
Yesterday's newspapers carried ads for Airtel's broadband service. I called them to find out more details. The definition of broadband is not quite broad in India yet. The basic service that Airtel provides is 64kbps unlimited access for Rs 500 per month. You can get 128 kbps for Rs 900. 128 kbps is not quite broadband but sure beats the dial up connection that I am currently putting up with. VSNL's recent acquisition of Tyco should lead to higher bandwidth and lower costs.
MTNL is introducing high speed wireless access in Delhi. Wi-Fi will be launched officially on November 14 and by December-end MTNL will have 100 access points. The cost is expected to be much less han Rs 30 per hour. Most wireless service providers are also providing GPRS based internet access. You can use a compatible handset as a
modem and connect it to your laptop. This service costs about Rs 500 ($10) per month.
Yesterday's newspapers carried a news article (sorry I cant search for links on my dial up!) about how different lending companies are going to start sharing credit records. So if you defaulted on your loan to HDFC (say), then ICICI will know about and it can deny you a loan. Similarly, people with a clean record will be offered lower
interest rates. This scheme has government approval and a seperate organisation has been created to maintain the database. These seem to be the first steps towards getting to a system similar to the credit history that is maintained by credit agencies in the US. Such a system is crucial to allow easier access to loans, to bring interest
rates down and to increase consumer spending. The still missing link in India is a uniform system for identification. In America, the SSN serves this purpose. We don't have a similar universal number (though the PAN number is getting there).
I landed in New Delhi on Monday morning. The IGI airport isn't the cleanest but it is not the dirtiest too. More importantly immigration and customs are streamlined and it didn't take me more than an hour to come out of the airport. The airport authorities are polite and helpful. I noticed an unattended piece of luggage lying near the
immigration counter. When I informed one of the officials about it, he pretended that he didn't hear. I guess somethings never change!
I spent the first day indoors. There are over 70 channels available on cable all for Rs. 150 (< $3) per month. There are at least 5 new channels since I visited India last year. Cricket and US elections dominated the news channels (and there are quite a few of those). The catch phrase on NDTV seems to be that for Indians the "known devil
(Bush) is better than the unknown devil (Kerry)". Interestingly, there is a plethora of religious channels now. There are channels offering prayers and teachings of Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity and Islam. So I guess India is still as secular as ever! On the other extreme, music videos on MTV and other music channels have redefined raunchiness. The square footage of skin shown on Indian television surely exceeeds that on American television. For R2Iers, all the popular American shows are available (Friends, Just Shoot Me, Will n Grace etc). Indian version of American Idol just started last week and as expected is getting wildly popular.
Today I finally ventured out of my home. I tried driving my dad's Wagon R around the block. It is a nice car and drives surprisingly smooth for Indian roads. I was driving a stick shift after many years but it didn't much time to get used to it. It wasn't too hard to adjust to Delhi roads but I still haven't dared to drive in the
crowded roads. I had forgotten some of the "unwritten rules" of Delhi roads (for example, you have to honk before you overtake and that there are no rules). Amazingly, Maruti 800 is not the most common car on the roads anymore. WagonR, Alto and Santro seem to be the most popular cars. Honda City, Skoda octavia and Hyundai Accent are popular bigger cars. I rented a Tata Indica for a day. The car comes with a driver and costs Rs 500 (~$10) for 8 hours and 80 kms. Delhi roads have changed a lot since my last visit. Almost every intersection on the ring road now has a flyover. The Safdarjung flyover is multi pronged and very impressive. Moolchand intersection has a Zee News electronic marquee displaying the latest news ("Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan turns 39 today"). Many traffic lights have a counter that displays how many seconds are left before the light turns green. Metro construction is going on at a very rapid pace. Apparently the first phase of construction was completed ahead of time and under budget. People have big hopes from the Metro. Riding the Metro is high on my list of things to do!
Cell phones have become omni present. Cab drivers carry cellphones, the colony sweeper carries a cell phone, the ande-waala (egg seller) on the road has a cell phone too. There are 4-5 different providers offering variety of services and plans. Apparently Hutch provides TV channels on cell phones. There is picture messaging, MMS, video on phone and much more. Compared to the US, mobile technology in India is leaps and bounds ahead. I can honestly say I found it easier to get a cell phone connection in Delhi than in Seattle. In Seattle I was denied once due to lack of credit history. Then I had to buy the phone and then call the Sprint customer service to get my phone activated. In Delhi, I walked to a cell phone service reseller (there are 3-4 on every corner), filled a form, showed my drivers license and got my phone activated. The whole process took less than 15 minutes.
I have been out of Delhi for only three years. And yet I felt like a stranger in the city. Today, very few cities in the world could be developing so fast. I doubt if I visited Seattle 3 years from now, I would see so much change. When they say that India is growing at 6% annually, this is what they mean. Delhi is changing for the better. And while it has a very very long way to go, it is heartening to see such visible progress in such a short time. The last century saw such progress in America and Europe. 21st century belongs to countries like China and India and I feel fortunate to be able to witness this change myself and even be a part of it!
