varnam

Today morning's WSJ's main story  was on why some American software companies are shutting down their business in India and bringing back their engineers to United States.

Across Silicon Valley, some technology companies, particularly start-up and midsize ones, are beginning to turn away from India for low-cost labor to do sophisticated tech work. Kana Software Inc. of Menlo Park, Calif., eliminated 100 software-development jobs in India in late 2005 and expanded its U.S. hiring instead. Teneros Inc. shut down a 30-member India office and brought 12 of the people to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Some tech start-ups are choosing other low-wage foreign locales, such as Romania and Poland.

Against a backdrop of rising wages and international competition, it's important for India's economy that its tech giants expand into higher margin business, in order to sustain their growth rates and gain market share. Large Indian outsourcing companies are trying to expand into higher-margin programming and design work, rather than just basic call-center outsourcing and tech maintenance, which now may be done more cheaply in countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam.[Some in Silicon Valley Begin to Sour on India]

The main reason cited for this turn around is that some engineers are getting paid almost 75% of the salary of an American software engineer and the high rate of turnover. Considering that this is the main story of WSJ, it is going to get lot of traction among politicians and business men.

Yet another anniversary has passed away and the victims have not got justice. The Prime Minister has not lost sleep over last years Mumbai train blasts  since all has been taken care of by the Mumbai Spirit, which he must be thinking should be something along the lines of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit after all he spends much time listening to the lady from Rome.

Following the days of the attack there were many suspects ranging from Dawood to SIMI, but soon that too faded away. The National Security Advisor was very sure that the evidence pointed to the ISI, but later he was not even talking about it. The ATS officials leaked the confessions of one of the suspects to prove that they had cracked the case, but the political class decided not to act for they did not want to disrupt the Indo-Pak love fest that is still going on.

One year after, a Compact Disk (CD) containing the confessions of one of the arrested suspects, Mohammad Ali, leaked to the media allegedly by some ATS official. In that CD, Ali can be seen admitting to the blast conspiracy and taking names of Faisal Sheikh and Azam cheema and their connection across the border. Plausibly, the ATS might have wanted to show that it had actually cracked the case long back, but the agency was under some kind of duress. So it opted now to show the people of India to instill confidence.

However, why and how the CD reached media is not the question (the CD leak case could bring whole ATS under scanner). The point is since the Mumbai blast, there were many more terrorist attacks including– Samjhauta train blasts and Mecca Mosque blasts, but the intelligence and security agencies have failed to fathom any of them. May be there is a lack of strong political will as far as present government is concern, which can push those (intel and security) agencies to run that needed extra mile[Mumbai Train Blasts: Masterminds Still At Large, Question Marks Remain!]

Thubron last saw China 18 years ago, before its market economy took off. In Xian, searching for the “coal dust” and “autumnal mud” he remembers, he finds instead a “hectic procession of shopping malls, restaurants and high-tech industrial suburbs,” the invasion of Givenchy, Bally, Dior and L’Oréal. He sees “couples walking hand in hand, even kissing — a Maoist outrage.”

Yet the past, as Thubron amply demonstrates, is no haven for angels. In China, he visits an old friend , a professor of English literature. A survivor of the Cultural Revolution’s mass terror, in which more than a million people are said to have died, this man’s concerns are confined to the forwardness of college students and, ironically, the widespread teaching of English. As Thubron makes his way through the former Soviet republics of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, he finds other living contradictions — like the Uzbek grandmother who reveres Stalin, killer of her husband and father.[The Way West]