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

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (3543)	1/25/1999 2:26:00 PM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12475

Mohan, Thanks for the news on Infosys. Surely if the industry were capital constrained, the ADRs would already be trading. But I suppose the purpose is to raise its visibility in USA, rather than tap foreign capital. They are probably busy enough in India that this is not a top priority at the moment. It would be interesting to compare Infosys with say, MSFT, to see how P/E, P/S, P/G ratios stack up. Glad to see your coffee house is so active. Was it just my browser or was the photo of that sky-clad sadhu blurred? It reminded me of a scene in "Waking Ned Devine," where a man in his 70s absent-mindedly gets on his motorcycle after skinny-dipping, wearing only a helmet and shoes! On a more serious note, I was sorry to hear about that missionary murder. I had always found most Indians to have great respect for other religions and cultures. I remember once seeing a poster in an Indian shop proclaiming that all religions are spokes of the same wheel, which had a lasting impression on me, since most religions tend to be exclusionary. Christian missionaries have been active in India for a long time, often doing good work and winning conversions mainly on the fringes of Hindu society, i.e., "untouchables". In tribal or "adhivasi" areas, there may be competing streams of upward mobility, one favoring "Sanskritization" which may accompany acceptance of certain customary dietary taboos, etc. and another which promotes conversion to Christianity. These competing forces have been in play in India for hundreds of years, though perhaps they have been intensified recently by urbanization's erosion of the caste system and xenophobic reaction to Sonia Gandhi's political ascendency. I certainly hope that India continues to embrace the "modern secular state" model ensuring religious freedom for all, rather than allowing the country to be torn apart by religious bigots. There is too much diversity in India for such ideas to be practical. One only has to remember the violence and bloodshed that accompanied partition to see that such solutions do not work. I love India precisely because it is such a delicious and exotic "massala" of different religions, cultures and customs. Such diversity enriches India and makes it stronger, since we live in a multi-cultural world. Namaste, Sam