Thought Garage

The Rediff Interview with Michael Porter, head, Strategy Insititute, Harvard with title ‘India still has a long way to go’ by Manjari Raman posted on December 29, 2004 at http://us.rediff.com/money/2004/dec/29inter.htm

More than one way he says, that Indians are good, but India as a business environment is not (yet).
“Indians come to the US and they thrive! They build great companies, they’re global. Isn’t that a wonderful metaphor for what we are talking about?”
“Although the Indian business environment is improving in multiple respects, it has some fundamental weaknesses. Number one, the capital markets remain relatively weak and undeveloped. Number two, the physical infrastructure is abysmally ranked.”

“Indian firms face a really compelling logistical disadvantage over companies in China in terms of getting goods and services to market. But the most pernicious problems in India–which are still not being confronted head-on – are the pervasive barriers to competition”

“China has taken better advantage of that than India has because China is in many ways more open, more dynamic. We’ve seen many more companies come into China because that’s such a dynamic place. The business environment is a bit more efficient, which is why multinationals use China as an export platform. But we don’t see that much in India. The multinationals are there primarily just to do business in India and sell to the Indian market”

Some more perceptions, we often hear from some or the other, some times from Indian entrepreneurs in US itself

“India needs to learn to be more self-critical, more open, and much more honest about what needs to be done”
“India is getting tremendous international profile from IT service exports, but they aren’t indicative of the broader economy.”
“India is doing quite well in IT-enabled services, but to a considerable extent, that’s it”
“it is still too early for India to think it has been successful — or even partially successful”
“India has a tremendous tendency for overstatement”
“Indians don’t take criticism well. They get very offended”

This article highlights some of the Indian Born product ventures, that received global acclaim. It is still a long way to go, but this proves the path taken is in the right direction.

“Tejas Networks and Ittiam Systems joined the global technology products big league by finding takers for their offerings. Subex Systems moved alongside the Indian product lone ranger i-flex in the financial space to leveraging its global acquisitions and arrive in the mature markets.”

Article posted at http://www.business-standard.com/iceworld/storypage.php?hpFlag=Y&chklogin=N&autono=176879&leftnm=lmnu9&leftindx=9&lselect=0

Posting at http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/national/stories/114687.html

IT’s still happening in Andhra
Hyderabad,
December 30, 2004

Brand Hyderabad finally arrived in style on the IT map of the country in 2004. Three big ticket happenings towards the end of the year confirmed the credentials that the city had slowly been building up as a preferred destination for IT investments, software and hardware, in the country.

Not long ago, some businessman compared IITs with the MIT and went on to say IITs are better than all the BEST in US combined. Sounds foolish. But most of the Media made it sink in the thoughts of many Indians as truth.

Some reality check, see if they can find where are IITs in the Academic Rankings of World Universities 2004 ? Possible they can also give an equally proud explanation.

Not a single Indian university ranks among the top 100 institutions in the world, according to a recent compilation for the year 2004 by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/2004Main.htm

Country wide rankings at
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/Statistics.htm

In the top 100 Asian universities however, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT Kharagpur, and University of Calcutta made it to the list.

C/C++ Articles & References that I have recently visited:

The C++ Source
http://www.artima.com/cppsource/index.jsp

Boost Libraries
http://www.boost.org/

ACE (Adaptive Communication Environment)
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html

Guru Of The Week
http://www.gotw.ca/

Inform IT
http://www.informit.com/articles/index.asp?st=41346

C/C++ User Journal
http://www.cuj.com/

Cetus Links
http://www.cetus-links.org/oo_c_plus_plus.html

Design Patterns – Tutorials
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/tutorials-patterns.html

Bjarne Stroustrup Home Page
http://www.research.att.com/~bs/homepage.html

http://www.partow.net/programming/index.html