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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: k.ramesh who wrote (1510)	1/24/1998 3:42:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 9980

<<<Is it Jude Wanniski or something?>> No Ramesh, it's Dr.Laffer as Bill correctly pionted out in an earlier post.

To: k.ramesh who wrote (1510)	1/25/1998 3:58:00 PM
From: Worswick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Ramesh that is a great idea of yours....India now has the consumers for all that it can produce and does not have to resign itself to making stuff for Pier 1 imports and Toysrus and Nike. I agree completely with your post. It is just when? When will this happen? And what is between now and then. And in what form "India" will be? When was the last time you were in India? Where did you go? What was the feeling of the people you met?

To: k.ramesh who wrote (1510)	1/25/1998 4:57:00 PM
From: Thomas Haegin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Ramesh, at the bank I used to work with we once had a complete overhaul of our IT system, hardware and software. This was about starting around 1990 or so. We chose a subsidiary of Citibank as our software provider (the system was COSMOS). I can tell all this because they have kicked it all out again last year, again <g>. My point is another one. Over the time of the project which was mor than one year, we constantly had software guys from India with us that maintained and changed the programs to our requirements. We went out a lot for lunches, etc. It was then that I also thought that India is pretty much a modern country and has a middle class, etc. At least in the big metro areas. So Worswick recent post left me a bit confused as to how true my impression from back then was. I sure wish India to emerge from a state of fairy tale romanticism and become a state of strong local economic forces and social liberalisation. So any comments from you or links to this regard would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to get a better picture of India still, even after Mohan puts up all those valuable links and posts <g> :-) Thomas

To: k.ramesh who wrote (1510)	1/25/1998 5:27:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 9980

Ramesh: glad you could join us here.I couldn't respond to all your comments except for Dr.Laffer bit due to I don't remember what. <<Re:Thomas mentioned the caste system and 'Others relegated to begging' etc. What century are you guys living in.>> Assuming for a minitue we are all in the same time-space continum,are you by any chance denying we don't have these problems,at least to a lesser degree? <<Back in the real world where the 900 mill live I think enormous progress has been made>>> Sure progress has been made and many great things achieved,agreed. I will be hesitant to call it 'enormous' though,at least not yet,due to the enormity of the problems we still need to address. <<<,A good middle class job requires a good education and educational opportunity is pretty wide open in India and costs nothing. >> True, but still some 50% of the people are illiterate,particularly in states like Bihar,UP,etc etc.Long way to go if you ask me,at least in this area. <<<Further there are no restrictions on mobility which takes some of the edge off political corruption that diverts money to certain regions.>> How so and how does it work? You mean because of mobility the corrupt politician can take his/her loot and run to another place<<ggg>.May be I am missing something here,i am sure. <<<People go on and on about wasted resources by the public sector and the government. Where did it all go - into the creation of a huge middle class despite leakages like brain drain. >> I don't think blindly practicing Keneysian economics is any way to achieve economic prosperity or shall I say 'nirvana', last 50 years should have proven the point. Brain drain- you do have a point here. The last time I looked 60% of all the graduates from Indian Institutes of Technology ended up in the West,along with thousands of others. The only way to stop this is to create a better economic structure and that doesn't include goverment spending. The number of the middel-class people have certainly increased and now we got to do it at a much faster clip. <<. Finally Nehru's and Indira's dream of a self sufficient India might be within grasp because India now has the consumers for all that it can produce and does not have to resign itself to making stuff for Pier 1 imports and Toysrus and Nike.(like an old sienfeld episode - Not that there is anyhing wrong with that).>>> I don't know about Nehru's or Indira's dream but the aspirations of the people might be within grasp. Oh, the tounge-in-cheek comment about Pier 1, etc, now that I like. I presume you are a Sienfeld fan? I think I covered pretty much everything didn't I? So off to watch the game. I am for the Cheese Heads,they say if they win it would be good for the market.