Mystery Shopper Goes to Mumbai

In the piece Kurtis and Cattle in Mumbai, Financial Times's mystery shopper talks about her experience shopping while attending a business conference in Mumbai. Interesting take-aways for me from the article.

1. Prices of clothing at high-end boutiques are very high. She bought a dress for $300, another one for $95, Leggings for $35 and a kurti for $67.
2. All these were designer clothes - and she does give the names of the designers. Most designers of these women's clothing, however, were male. Rohit Gandhi, Rahul Khanna, Manish Arora, Manish Malhotra, Tarun Tahiliani. Yes, there were women too - Anupama, and Ritu Kumar.
   
3. She went shopping to a sari, but never bought one. So, Sari is no longer the symbol of Indian shopping.

"Perhaps they did not hate us after all"

The Financial Times of March 12, 2010 has a piece on Indian Art. Titled Face Values, it describes a current exhibit at National Portrait Gallery in London.

The article is informative and easy to read. What caught my attention, however, are the writer's musings on why there is a string of shows about India. Instead of paraphrasing, and losing part of the meaning, here is her direct quote.

So why, with all these exhibitions pulling in the crowds, do the British have such a taste for Indian art? The obvious answer is the fascination with the colonial past that all ex-colonisers have. Beyond that, we seem to scan these images for echoes, traces of ourselves, and are happy when we find them. Perhaps they didn’t hate us after all? Perhaps the enduring legacy of that time was a rich one? And perhaps this world is knowable, perhaps we can learn to read it, and the people who made it, and live well together in our own times.

Perhaps they didn't hate us after all? Does the current generation in India really hate the British? I don't think so. So, where is this "inferiority complex" coming from? I don't know. In fact, until I read this article, I did not even realize that it existed. The view from the other side of the fence is different, and as in this case, sometimes very different.

There is moss in them thar hills

India recently went through its annual budget exercise. Every year, the Government has the ability to modify tax rates and prices it will charge on products and services from public sector undertakings.This is very different from the US, where tax rates are considered sacred, and changing them is an extra-ordinary process. One populist measure for politicians is run on platforms of not raising taxes.

Both systems - virtually fixed tax-rates, and annually-changing tax rates create behavior patterns. In the case of the India, consumers and businesses may sometimes wait for the next year, hoping that tax rates may become beneficial for them. In the US, businesses build their structures around existing tax rates, and find it difficult to adjust to changing tax rates, or for that matter, to other conditions.

In these days of "Who stole my cheese," and agile development environments, who do we think is better suited for long-term successes - those businesses that are static, or the rolling stones that gather no moss?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like to read more on the budget process, here are two references.

If you want to understand more details about India's budget, here is a writeup on the philosophy India's Budget Process (in Theory). Rediff.com gives the stages of the budget process.

Born in South Asia?

At the recently concluded TED 2010, I met Chris Anderson, the Curator of TED conferences.

The first line about his biography in Wikipedia says: "Anderson, who is British, was born in Pakistan in 1957."

Recently I also met one of the founders of Danger, a telephone company that has now been acquired by Microsoft. A Caucasian, he said he was born in India.

These two were in South Asia, because their parents were missionaries there. Both are immensely successful. So are quite a few other successful Caucasians were born there. So, the question in my mind is:

1. Does their birth in South Asia anything have to do with their success?
2. Or, does their birth in South Asia have anything to do with their ability to promote themselves?

Or, am I misreading the situation, and Caucasians born in South Asia are no more or less likely to succeed, compare to Caucasians born in the US.

It will be interesting to have someone do a study of this.

Naga of Ancient Indian Philosophy and Naga Babas

Is there a relation between Naga Babas - known mainly for initiating the Kumbh Mela every three years, and the ancient system of Indian belief that revered Nagas. (The above images are from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Naga_baba.jpg and http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Naga182.JPG)?

I would say yes, based only on one fact - Kumbh Mela is started by a march of the Naga Babas to the water. And, in traditional belief, Naga represented not just snakes, but also water. (More at http://isai-os.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-on-early-religion-of-india-nagas.html)

What I have not been able to figure out, is if this has anything to do with Nagaland, a state in India. Nagaland is now a mainly Christian state. However, there are references to the region being a traditional Naga culture, e.g. in Gita Mehta's book - River Sutra.

A dose of reality (or fantasy)

An article in the Financial Times of July 16, 2009 paraphrases Ramachandra Guha, giving reasons why India will not and should become a superpower. Here is a summary list from the article:

1. Rise of political extremism (primarily naxalites)
   
2. Corrupt government with a Gandhi family firm at its center
3. Weakened public institutions
4. Supine media
5. Rising inequalities between rich and poor
6. Unstable neighborhood
7. Discontented states (Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur)
8. Environmental degradation (Massive depletion of underground aquifers, chemical depletion of soil, death of rivers and loss of species)

The writer of the article, James Lamont, closes it aptly with "Today, much of India is watching the skies rather than reachng for them."

Whether or not you believe these, they are good public discussion points.

Stern Grove concert to feature Indian performers

"Every summer, Stern Grove Festival brings world-class performing arts to you, admission-free, in one of the country's most beautiful and unique natural settings.

Year after year, summer after summer ..."
- http://www.sterngrove.org/2009season.html

Today we were at Stern Grove to listen to Joan Baez. It was, by all accounts, a superb performance. More important that the performance itself, it brought back memories - memories of old social issues, and memories of when words in songs mattered.

In this summer-long series, two Indian groups will be performing later in the season - on Sunday, August 2 (Kailash Kher's Kailasa, and Delhi 2 Dublin).

I know of Kailash Kher's - he sang Chak De Phattay in the movie Khosla Ka Ghonsla. Until today I had not heard of Delhi 2 Dublin. I checked them out on YouTube - they both sound awesome.

More important than how good the groups are, however, is the fact that Indian music is being played to "mainstream" audience. Today's attendance was mostly middle-aged people - not the kind that usually experiment with music. Commendations to the organizers for believing that Indian Music would go well this group.

This is not the first time Indian musicians have played there. Previous perfomers include Anoushka Shankar, and "Non-stop Bhangra Collective." And, in the distant past, Ali Akbar Khan, Swapan Chaudhary and Chitresh Das.

Are more things Indian going mainstream? At least in San Francisco.