1. Embrace Market Economy.
2. Red Carpet welcome to foreign investors.
3. Large scale private participation
4. Promote IT and Biotechnology
5. Close all sick PSUs
6. Get aid from World Bank and ADB
If I said this was the plan of Communists, you may not believe it. And even more unbelievable is that it comes from the Communists in Kerala. After systematically preventing any progress in Kerala, the Communists in 2005 have realized that they need to make it a prosperous state.

The CPM leadership in the state believes that its primary duty is to make Kerala a prosperous state. The leadership is realistic enough to realise that this cannot be achieved unless Kerala attracts a remarkable amount of capital to the state.
“Earlier, the party had adopted a to-be-or-not-to-be-stand on foreign capital and the aid from foreign agencies like the World Bank and the ADB. Now there is no ambiguity regarding this. The document will come out with more clarity in support of seeking aid from them,” the sources said. [CPM bid to do a Buddha in Kerala]

As the forces of globalization sweeps through commie land, how do the comrades explain this to their cadres who have been bought up on a diet of anti-globalization slogans ?
Related Links: The Marx Bros INC (Thanks Ravikiran)

Last month, there was a discussion on opening the skies between India and United States, thus allowing more flights between the two countries. India, in the mean time allowed its local carriers to fly to countries around India. But now in another exciting development, Indian private carrier, Jet Airways has been allowed to fly to New York.

While Jet Airways officials refused to comment on when they would launch the New York operations, the airline has been planning to acquire large wide-bodied aircraft like Boeing 777s, Boeing 747s and Airbus-340s.
The civil aviation ministry had on January 31 allotted a total of nine flights to the UK to Jet Airways and Air Sahara from March-April this year.
While Jet Airways was allotted seven flights to London Heathrow per week, Air Sahara has been allotted two to Gatwick.
Air India would be operating 24 services to UK and had applied for additional flights, instead of 18. Earlier this month, the two private carriers were allowed to carry out daily operations to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. [Jet gets nod to fly to New York]

Jet Airways with its excellent service and tasty Porotta (not Paratha) and Chicken Curry can give Singapore Airlines a run for its money. Singapore Airlines is minting money from their West Coast services to India and there is no reason why Indian companies should not get a share. Jai Globalization Bhagwan!
Related News: Jet IPO sold out in five minutes

One organization calling itself Tamil Protection Movement decided that from now, Tamil movies should have only Tamil names. Their ire is against Kamal Hassan and S J Surya, both of whom are releasing movies with English names. Besides this, the organization also wants Tamil to be made the language of worship in temples and commericial establishments have Tamil names prominently displayed.

It has been our stand that Tamil films should have Tamil titles. It is true that many films have had English titles in the past. But this trend can

Remember the World Social Forum folks who assembled in India last year to whine and dine about everything in the world, but mainly against America ? This year, the same folks are meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil to continue whining. The speeches last year did not have any effect on the masses, so the WSF folks have decided to take it up a notch and work alongwith – Hizballah

Hizballah was described at the conference as

Fighting globalization makes for a good political slogan, but smart politicians are the ones who know how to exploit globalization to uplift people out of poverty.

The Chief Minister said that developing countries have to face the twin challenge of adhering to the W.T.O.’s legal provisions and to secure a space for their products in the market. Referring to India’s wealth of knowledge the Chief Minister said that India might have lagged behind in the race of progress due to foreign invasions and political slavery but she has now joined the race with renewed resolve.
A number of countries have progressed well by importing Indian agricultural products, spices, and medicinal plants. Indians should learn to be proud of Swadeshi and evolve a system to ensure that poor population should benefit from globalization. For this, he said, India artisans, weavers and farmers should acquire excellence in marking of their products besides improving their quality to international standards. The state governments should play the role of facilitator in this, he added.[India capable to withstand challenge of globalization: Gaur]

Globalization forces changes on you and if you can adapt you can survive. But then anticipating this and preparing for it is half the job.

Outsourcing has presented so many business opportunities for Indians, all you need is think creatively. The most obvious ones like IT, Auto Parts etc. are booming. Here is something different – remote teachers.

Twice in a week, Ann Maria, a sixth grader at Silver Oak Elementary School, California logs on to the internet from home after school hours. Ann is not chatting up her friends. She is connecting to her personal tutor, already online, armed with headset and a pen mouse sitting in a call centre like cubicle almost a timezone away in Panampillynagar, Kochi, Kerala.
Your neighbourhood tuition teacher, riding on the Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) wave, has gone global and his monthly pay packet turned meatier __ the 17 teachers who work with the Growing Star Infotech (P) Ltd would testify. The firm a subsidiary of California-based Growing Stars Inc went online in January last year.
Growing Stars currently has a 57-seater facility, but feels it may need more space as they expand. The shift starts at 4.30 in the morning and ends by 12.30 pm. One reason for the high growth rate could be that personalised tuition in US is highly expensive. “We started of with Indian students. But we have now around 60 American students and every one is happy because they are bettering the grades,” says Bina. The only hitch is the accent of the tutors which is being taken care of with help from a language trainer. [US parents outsource maths tuition to teachers in Kerala]

Even though California is one of the largest economies in the world, when it comes to academic standards, they rank very low in the nation and there may be a market for more remote teachers.

Globalization has the power to bring people out of poverty, but it also has the capability to push people who don’t adapt into poverty.
The case study is the arrival of global food chains in Latin America. These chains after changing the way food is distributed have now started affecting the way food is grown and this has hit the small farmer as they are not able to produce according to the supermarket specifications.

Its feeble attempts to sell to major supermarkets illustrate how the odds are stacked against small farmers, as well as the uneven effects of globalization itself. Many small farmers in the region are getting left behind, while medium-sized and larger growers, with more money and marketing savvy, are far more likely to benefit.
Most fruits and vegetables in the region are still sold in small shops and open-air markets, but the value of supermarket purchases from farmers has soared and now surpasses that of produce exports by two and half times, researchers say.
The bottom line: supermarkets and their privately set standards already loom larger for many farmers than the rules of the World Trade Organization. [Survival of the Biggest; Supermarket Giants Crush Central American Farmers ]

The problem is that small farmers lack the expertise to keep away diseases as well as the finances to afford pesticides. But co-ops which have adapted to this new economy are surviving.

Not too far from Palencia, in the city of Chimaltenango, is Aj Ticonel, an association of small farmers that has thrived because it has something Mr. Chinchilla’s co-op lacked: a shrewd and enterprising businessman to run it.
But even for a savvy company like Aj Ticonel, success came not from supplying choosy supermarket chains but rather from its ability to exploit a global market.
Aj Ticonel sells three million pounds of mini-vegetables and snow peas for export to the United States, but only 80,000 pounds to supermarkets. Alberto Monterroso said he gave up on growing broccoli for La Fragua. He found the chain bought inconsistent amounts. “There are a lot of competitors here,” he said, “a lot of small farmers trying to sell to them, so the prices are low.”
The company’s success has been built instead on sales of pricey vegetables for export. It now sells the same to La Fragua, and its membership has risen from 40 families in 1999 to 2,000 today.

Every business leader in the US is now visiting India. Craig Barret, Intel’s Chief Executive was there for a two day visit and was evaluating India for setting up a chip manufacturing center. Intel hired 800 people this year making the total employee count about 2400. Intel has invested $40 million so far and is planning to invest the same over the next two years.
The next person was Steve Ballmer, who too is bullish about India and made some commitments to serve the rural population of India. The only specific he provided was that Windows is being localized into 14 additional Indian languages. Currently it is available only in Hindi.
Unlike the Americans in the State Department, these businessmen do not find it necessary to make the obligatory visit to Pakistan. There no hyphenated equation with the neighbor nextdoor and the businessmen know where to put the money and where not to. If only the State Dept followed the instincts of the businessmen.

In Jan, 2005 when the Multi Fibre Agreement lapses and it becomes a free for all in the global apparel market how are the Indian companies going to perform ? Are they geared to meet the challenge ? The Frontline takes a look at the knitted garment industry in Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu

THE industry, on the eve of the dismantling of the multi-fibre agreement (MFA) wears a different look now. The bigger units supply their wares to some of the leading retail chains in the developed world such as Wal Mart, Marks and Spencer, C&A and many others. Many of the products wear labels of some of the top brands. [Towards new frontiers]

The Businessworld does not share this optimism and suggests that China is going to make a kill. Jagdish Bhagwati made a note of the mistakes India did in his book In Defence of Globalization. Now there are more problems.

Although the top factories have increased their capacities substantially, by and large the country is not ready for the post-quota advantage. “There is going to be a huge capacity crunch, looking at the volume of business coming our way,” warns Hinduja.
The capacity crunch is the direct fallout of policies that encouraged the proliferation of small units with their inherent inefficiencies, at the cost of large-scale production. While China has created huge capacities and capitalised on economies of scale, India has an incredibly fragmented industry which is simply not geared to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing global industry. There are hundreds of thousands of powerloom units producing 90-95 per cent of the fabrics in the country, while the organised sector turns out just over 5 per cent.
“If we believe we can overrun the world on the strength of powerloom manufacturing and hand-processing units, then we are extremely naïve,” says a textile industry analyst. [Too little, too late]

In 2005 when the Multi-Fiber Agreement ends and quotas are removed for textile manufacture, many countries will be in trouble. One such country maybe Bangladesh whose business could be undercut by India and China. But it may not be developing countries that get affected, it could be United States too.

Meanwhile, here in the slowly beating heart of the remaining American textile industry, workers and owners of factories still operating along a stretch of Interstate 85 from Charlotte to Greensboro see the dawning of 2005 as a death sentence. More companies, they fear, will go bankrupt. More communities will wither like Kannapolis, and thousands more workers will be desperate for training, employment and health insurance.

In hopes of staving off the worst, politicians in the Southeast from both parties are taking advantage of the close outlook for the presidential election to win last-minute concessions from the White House that could slow the flood of imports from China.

Most experts expect that China, left unimpeded, will gain almost half the global apparel market. Its factories now make about 20 percent of the clothing and textiles sold in the United States; China is expected to capture as much as 70 percent of that market, potentially leading to the closing of half the surviving American mills and layoffs for tens of thousands more workers. [

जयकृष्णः | ജയകൃഷ്ണൻ Globalization November 9, 2004 1 Minute