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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (4970)	7/7/1999 12:40:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12475

Vajpayee at the Potomac- Anil Nair It is a thin red line that separates mature deshbhakthi from its yodelling version. Heaping shagadelic plaudits in print on our martyrs or installing them in video Valhalla in this age of saturation coverage will not, and should not, justify even one casualty than is absolutely necessary. As a way of offsetting World Cup ignominy we should resist the temptation of being obsessed with Deathwatch Kargil......... It is only natural that Kashmir being the political hot potato that it is at the moment, Vajpayee turned down Clinton's invitation to go to Washington. More significantly, given America's track record in the subcontinent it rightly deserves to be judged guilty until proven innocent............ But there are important changes too. It is evident that the United States is genuinely sensitive about forcing anything upon India this time around. This new found sensitivity is not due to any simple matter of niceties. There are powerful subterranean currents at work which India better pay heed to and capitalise if we are not to go back to square one with Pakistan: go back to routine secretary-level talks after all that has happened at Kargil. Kosovo, many political observers rightly pointed out, heralded a new international order, but not as they would have everyone believe, one that is uni-polar with the US as the headquarters of Arrogance Unlimited Inc. ................... Post-Cold War the principal menace to peace will emanate not from strong states bursting out of their borders but from weak ones that cannot keep the peace within. This makes the United Nations Charter that confers nationhood on every scrap of territory, and its corollary that what goes on within these half-incubated polities is their own matter, dangerously redundant. ........ Pakistan without doubt belongs to this category of 'not-quite states' and to enable it to grow out of it requires, though it is not politically correct to say so, a partial return to the good old days of the British district commissioner dispensing justice under the date palm. More than territory or the shariat, what Pakistan's entrenched elites -- and these include the generals -- seek out of issues like Kashmir is to be transported from the perpetual squalor and disgrace of their domestic situation to the heaven of chauffeur-driven Mercedes, luxurious embassies, Swiss bank accounts and glamorous photo ops with Clinton and Blair ............ Building a strategic partnership with the US -- like the one we had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War -- is a wager India must cover. In the short run it will deliver us a coup by allowing us to extricate ourselves from the tribal conflict in Kashmir while making the Americans, and by extension the international community, the hatchet man in case our intransigent neighbour refuses to go by the script.... rediff.com

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (4970)	7/7/1999 12:53:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Toyota-Kirloskar all set to sign MoU for 10-seater Kirloskar Group:- kirloskars.com Toyota Kirloskar Motors Pvt Ltd is all set to ink the memorandum of understanding with the directorate general of foreign trade by July-end for launching its much-awaited ten-seater multi-purpose vehicle. Toyota has already communicated its decision in this regard to the DGFT. The draft has been prepared and the MoU would be signed by the month-end, sources in the DGFT said today. The first vehicle under the venture is based on the Kijang multi-purpose vehicle, which Toyota is currently producing in Indonesia. The vehicle would be rolled on to the Indian roads in January 2000..... rediff.com

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (4970)	7/7/1999 5:41:00 PM
From: sea_biscuit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Article excerpt : "India has taken the classical route -- the military route to great power status. In the post-Cold War era, not only have nuclear weapons become delegitimised, but military force itself is a declining currency of power. Trade, economics and technology now constitute the foundations of societal power. Regime stability, population explosion, environmental threats, ethnic, sectarian and social mobilisation, and development of human rights on a positivist index are now the vantage reference points against which the security of any society is evaluated. In this context, India's search for great power status through nuclear- military means might at best be difficult and, at worst, an exercise in superfluity." My comments : Note that the "classical route to great power status" has also been a classical route to failure. The 50's - 80's period saw the Soviet Union try the same route to great power status only to fail miserably by early 90's. Ironically (or perhaps, appropriately!) it is the same Soviet Union (or, to be precise, the largest chunk of the erstwhile Soviet Union) that is now trying to sell off its useless military junk to another nation that is aspiring to achieve great power status by the very same route that the failed Soviet Union took!. The similarities to the erstwhile Soviet Union don't end there. Of the four "areas of achievement" for India that are mentioned these days -- space technology, defense systems, nuclear engineering, telecommunications, the first three are "holy cows" where cost is no factor, and no one is allowed to question the huge inefficiencies. Note that these are the very same areas in which the Soviet Union was crowing about its achievements (its investments in space technology being driven partly by reasons of "prestige" and mainly by military considerations, as is India's) before it went under!