Recession for India, never happened! ! – An analysis

In my opinion, recession for people of India never actually happened as compared to many of us in the US.

India as a transitional economy, is very vibrant, resilient and to some extent, self sustaining. India enjoys the benefits of being a developing country with much-talked domestic growth, staggering internal consumption from its burgeoning 800 million strong middle class and the new spirit of entrepreneurship . So when the economic downturn started in the US two years ago, the India exports were still steady and imports increased marginally. However as the economic condition worsen over the months, it was only in December 2008, every other country felt the ripples as well.

Indian recession was primarily triggered by a mix of couple of factors. First, the global financial meltdown tailored by few at Wall Street brought the entire US credit market down. With Fanney and AIG going down, the two heavy hitters brought jitters to the people at Oval office.  Beginning of the year and the unemployment rate grew upto 13%, highest in the history of United States in this modern era. Higher credit crunch, means more layoffs. With more and more people becoming unemployment, the number of expats going back home to India rose sharply. The not-so-much expected “changes”  in the fields of money sent by expats to India as remittance exports diminished as the demand globally hit the bottom.

Thanks to the provisions of Stimulus bill and Tarp funds, bad assets were bought out and economic players were freed of the upcoming bankruptcy. In addition to the good work these funds did, they limited the ability to hire American companies foreign nationals. Indian software industry was the worst hit by this. For the ninth year in a row, India has been the top source of sending students to study in the US. Foreign nationals graduating from school, and also who were already here, heavily rely on H1 B visas and the provisions of the Stimulus limited this overflow. Slowly and slowly, as the credit crunch at the Wall street eases, US economy continues to recover from depression bruises.

Less people working in the US means less money sent back home as remittance to India. As a result, the Indian earnings dropped for fiscal year. The world must not forget that US is of course $13 trillion economy and whereas India is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2020. There is a whole lot of dollar gap even if that happens. So developing countries will continue to line up for US’s business.  And as more and more companies recover from red lines in the balance sheets, the business will struggle back to come back to it’s “expected state.”    This means more business for the countries like India, who depend heavily on imports and are in the process of becoming industrialized nations.

Another important dichotomy to be noted is that, many in the BRIC countries didn’t experience negative growth. Indian economy never went down to a negative number in the recession, however the world’s biggest economies did. Japan, UK, Germany and the US contracted by atleast one percent of their economic size during this recession. At worst, the Indian economy declined to a figure near 6.5 % and NOT negative. So I m very convinced that recession for India never happened.

I could have easily bought the argument that Indian economy slowed down in the midst of the economic meltdown, but recession never came to the people of South east transitional economy.

Calorie Count – Day 3, 4, and all of the days till now!

Okay, I am guilty. Guilty of not writing regularly, but I am certainly not guilty of over eating. I kept track of what I was eating and how much I was eating. The portion size is important right? Yes I thought so. !

The gone day i.e. 10/04/09, I ate just 5 strawberries and one banana till 8 pm in the night! And then I fell into the trap of HUNGER. I went to White Castle and order two jalapeno burgers and medium fries. So my calorie count on Sunday was around 1000 Cal. Kill me!

I remembered the fact that each of us should fast one day each week. This process helps you be clean from the inside and helps strengthen the metabolism! So when are you fasting next? I chose Sundays J

For the most of the week and weekend I ate moderately, except on Friday lunch and dinner and Saturday dinner. Now you will ask me that is pretty much everything   That is not all  I had fasting for the entire Sunday and Saturday morning to even out excess food! So the reason is that I was really hungry and didn’t bring my lunch to work on Friday, so that eventually leaves me with the option of Subway. Understandably, my colleagues disobeyed my standing orders to go to Subway and instead we landed at a Chinese, Japanese buffet kind of restaurant. The food was delicious ! Yummm !

But the bad part is, like every other student, I ate a little over what I eat normally. So I assumed that this huge meal killed my appetite for dinner and I planned to have only salad!

The sad part is that I forgot that I have to go to the Sikh Temple at Bridgewater, NJ ( I try to go every Friday evening and Sunday morning). So I landed up there, and it is customary to have dinner after prayers as a pious offering. But I ate modestly   again. So say Friday wasn’t that bad, I was a little above 2200 cal (Calories breakdown not provided, because I don’t remember what I ate). Intense I know

For Saturday I think I had a little intense dinner with around 1400 calories at once but be assured that I ate nothing all day. Except milk and cereals in the morning and water melon; PS: I love water melon.

I love watermelons

Till my next rambling then! Chao! Leave comments!

Review of “Confessions of an economic Hit Man (EHM)”

Book cover

I don’t exactly remember which of my friends and/or acquaintances told me to read this book in the first place, and like always I added this book to my “to be read” list and decided to wait whenever it’s turn comes up in the my list.

Initially I had reservations reading this book. For a guy like me who had none whatsoever background of accounting & economics, words like Economic Hit Man were totally intimidating. My first reaction to the title was of fear. It appeared daunting and a bit of too subjective to read. It is not clear to me, what made me read this book – my internal ability to push myself to do new (read weird) things and keep myself open (read vulnerable) to everything or my ability to torture myself with most awkward things in life just because I want to see myself as strong (read Mighty STRONG) or just random curiosity. But whatever it was, I can’t thank it enough for making me read this book and completing it till the very end.

John Perkins writes very candidly about his life, his geographically widespread professional entourage, turbulent personal accidents and of all the stories which his experience brought to him. The book started with a confused and a not clear note, which is acceptable given the fact that the reader should be able to put things in “his perspective” rather than putting things in “author’s perspective”.

At first I guessed that this book would be a fable of some economic blunders made in the US economy and some of its “free trade partners” in this global economy, but to my surprise this book contained that and much more.

The way John passes through countries through countries and explains tirelessly about what MAIN Corporation stands for and how MAIN reaped him in, intertwined with the notion of personal life as well is nothing short of indescribable. Earlier just professional and later his personal experiences started to revolve around MAIN’ strategy to expand the global empire and meeting to my realms of understanding, this thirst of oil continues to evade US supported MAIN from one continent to another.

Horrifying examples of Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia, and Canal country are meant to open the eyes of the readers and the masses (by a long shot though) to the corporate bureaucracy. The author coined a new term out of it, which is interesting too. The book clearly shows that the oldest democracy in the world has outlawed all the international laws (the experience stories about Vietnam and Iraq war), nullified all the popular democracy movements in the targeted countries (for e.g. Canal), CIA assassinations imprints (for example, murder of Roduge) all over the books, colossal amount of national debts incurred to these countries in lieu of providing foreign aid for building infrastructure ( such as highways, dams, power plants, oil plants and many more), loss of national freedom, and many similar activities.
Why this book & its controversial experiences seem to me as different is a good question that I am asking myself, way before even I thought I would write a review about it.

Big fish still eats the small fish. A mightier country today dictates the smaller country by means money (read foreign aid), technology transfer (read lobbying for concessions and army base) and sometimes war (read US supported army coup). Oil thirst seems to overtake everything else in the world and on this planet. NOTHING stands in front it. The fact that first EHMs are sent to a country to investigate and prepare the ground to a new country and if that fails, the jackals are sent shows the pinch of might these bigger conglomerates have over you and my daily affairs.

Each one of us likes to think that I am free and I am equal as guaranteed by the constitution (this is usually true for most of the countries, irrespective of where you belong to and from where you are reading this), but in the bigger picture, these big money earning and oil thirsty juggernauts will destroy the very fundamental of freedom by enslaving everyone of us with their products, services and money.

To our greatest fear, even today the imperialism prevails. It really doesn’t matter that which nation you are reading this entry from, but it matters what history you nation has and most importantly what it is going through now. Imperialism as we knew it, ended ages ago. Now you don’t see geographically spread colonies and rampant human slavery, but you see huge national debts of countries once rich with natural resources, now we don’t see blacks and browns tortured because of their skin color (partly thanks to the system and partly to education that let’s everyone to be seen as equals), but we see good people like John Perkins working as EHM and helping to create global empires for the countries like this one on the expense of so many others.

You can visit this page to read on goodreads
or visit my page at blogger at http://myownhope.blogspot.com/

The beginning – How it started?

Disclaimer: This blog post is written with the intention of sharing one of my important life altering moments and is solely written to express my gratitude towards that moment and Mr. KJ.

It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.
— Carl Sagan

It was sort of early evening in August of 2005 when sun was about to go for the day. Faintly I remember, there was absolutely no hope of winds in the air and with it’s sultry outlook, I understood it was the beginning of fall that year. Entering from outside was my own barely seen shadow passing by the first gate. On the left I saw our dogs Bruno and Tommy. If I remeclearly year 2005 was Bruno’s third birth year and for obvious reasons he was young and sturdy. He would play with me all the time and whereas Tommy on the other hand was fragile and pale looking. Well it is not his fault. Breed of that dogs are known to be of similar health. And more importantly, playing with Tommy was never my fun moment.

As I entered my  own house complex from the gates after the first black gate, I saw KJ aka Mr.Tenant. He is one of brothers of our tenants. Over the last ten years, they have enjoyed living here and as much we have enjoyed having them here. Even though they decided to move out in late 2008 to their own house. I continue to wander myself with them. Last time I talked to him, he works at a deluxe group of hotels in New Delhi, near to the north campus Delhi University.
He as I walked to the main entrance of our house was standing and he looked into my eyes and said “What’s up?”

I replied “Hello! Nice weather outside! I was just coming from my private tuition classes. How are you doing?”

He looked calm and said “How is your application process coming along? So are you still applying for the schools in the US and New Zealand?” He looked intrigued.

I looked perplexed clearly. I was befuddled to decide to lend my voice to which of my thoughts? Agreeably, I had so many of them and all of them crushed my sanity to death every second in my mind. Going into the whirlwind of thoughts and the actions all around those thoughts, I got even more confused..what should I say, yes to US, maybe to New Zealand schools..! Which schools? New York, Missouri or Auckland or Christchurch!! What should I say? Which of the countries I should go to?

He looked at me and I looked back at him and said “Honestly I have been thinking what to do. I have this imbroglio of choosing the right university and country in the background. I am young in my education and I think it would be a decent decision to choose US for obvious reasons.”

I stared right into his eyes and wandered away immediately after that. In the backdrop, I realized that it was hard for me to capture my thoughts in totality and let myself be sure of one definite thought.

I continued saying “I am actually a little inclined to go to New Zealand. I got family there. It might of some assistance when I am alone and may need something. This country is growing and life standards are equally good. May be if I stay over a little longer, I can stay because New Zealand is happy to have educated people on their land.” He looked to the tree to his left in our garden and then he looked at me. He said something that I haven’t forgotten till day.

He said “Look. No matter what comes by your way and what options you have, always try for the first best. If you do not have the option of trying for the first best, then settle for the second best. But never ever settle for the second best!”

Startled I looked at him.

I said to one own-self in my mind “Yeah, this is something concrete. But I still don’t know what option is the right one.”

Again, I looked at him and said “Uh, yeah. You know what, it helps. May be, it’s a little easier with that thought in my head now. Thank you!”. He looked at me & smiled.

“You’re welcome”, he said.

And it was in one moment, it was so clear to me what I was missing. And in one moment I knew what I was supposed to do. No confusion any more grip my mind and I was already ware what kind of school I was going to try.

This is nothing more than a regular short small talk type of conversation. But if you read between the lines, it is easier to see and you will see that the message is a lot bigger. Never settle for the second best option. One should always aim for the first best, that too always. Always First best!! Just the very first best, always!

Thought I would share with you guys how my journey to achieve the very best started. On another note, my journey to achieve the very best has started on a good note, but it is long way from halting now.

Fair day people!

A random old post – Career Interests – Reflects my views in 2005

Albert Einstein once said

” I never think of the future – it comes soon enough. “

My prejudiced opinion about future has been considerably influenced by this quote. I religiously follow this thought as my guideline for today’s Karma. In short, I live in today.

My career interests are varied. As the years have passed, more and more varied interests got added to my “favorites” list. I always wanted to become an engineer, which I did when I graduated in Aug ’06.

Telecommunications was and is, one of my hot craves. Deep inside this area has further more complex areas of interests, which are CDMA, GSM and VoIP. In the similar group, telecommunication industry offers Broadband Over Power Line(BPL).
This was my old love which seems to have taken a back seat since last year.

Ability to maintain data and manipulate information in the form of tables and SQL queries is what developed my penchant for databases. My specific goals are to work towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and develop existing compatibility tools between databases and front-ends.

E-Commerce is the youngest member of my old times love. The fact that the actual business can be run, fully automated on the internet is what inclined me to this subject. My first encounter with this subject was rather superficial and was limited to a brief introduction about this topic. But the subject interest brought a point where I changed my focus of research towards SOA and Business E-Commerce.

Υποδοχή to my new craze of Management of Information Systems (MIS). In case, you could not understand the first word of this line, it is greek translation for welcome
The world of business is very much dependent on technology and so is technology on business. Greater developments in technology has enabled nearly complete automation of business processes. The extent of automations has touched every silos of almost all organizations. Reaching out to the business people and understanding what they do and making sure that technology is doing exactly what it is required to do by the overall process of automation.

The process of discovering this new member of my knowledge castle is exciting and is keeping my involved. My career target positions at the beginning level are ERP Analyst or Junior Analyst, Website Designer & developer, Database Administrator, Database Application Designer !!

Countries Shortlisting

After earning a master’s degree in multidisciplinary studies from Rochester Institute of Technology, I am hoping to get through another school for PhD
In this process, I have short listed the following countries with some of the schools that I am sure at the moment that I am applying to/ or in the process of applying to for my Phd entourage.

1. United States

My imperative to apply here is that I am in the country and I already know how education system is, it would be beneficial for me to apply and get through here rather than any other country.

I haven’t had a chance to make a possible school list for myself till now, but I have short listed University of Rochester and RIT as two schools where I want to apply for sure.
I can sure make use of some help here )

2. Canada

From an international student perspective, Canada remains a focal point. Education is competitive. Standards are equally high as United States. What else can I ask for ?

McGill and University of Toronto are for now on the list. As I move ahead in my search and application, I am sure I can see a couple of schools added to this list.

3. New Zealand

There is no specific reason for me to apply to NZ, and I would have not thought about applying to NZ in the light of recent racist attack(s) on a student community in Australia. Not to forget & mention both, Auckland or New Zealand is in close cultural and geographical influence of Australia.

Straying away from the main point , University of Auckland is the only university in New Zealand that offers me competitive PHD learning in my desired field of Information systems and BPR. ( sorry not in the Comp departments )

4. Singapore

Lately Singapore has become the financial hub of the world and some of the univerisities in the country are really top notch. For instance, NUS and NTU ( where I am applying for sure ( both)) are in top 40 schools of the world. WOW! Isnt that great? Plus if I was a not a person who is attracted to ranks and numbers, NUS has a substantially cooler PHD program than many of the univerisities web pages I have visited over the web throughout the world.

Any and all suggestions are more than welcome. Dig it or just like it. We love to hear back from you! Just hit comment and that’s it !