A few things that I deem to be world class in India have been mentioned below. Before I proceed, it is important to define the term world-class. To me the term world-class means “having quality that is more or less on par with the best in the world”.
1.ISB: The Indian School of Business, a decade-old institute at Hyderabad is the youngest entrant in the top twenty business schools of the world according to Financial Times.
2.The Delhi Metro: It is definitely the best in India and comparable with the best in the world for its reliability, spaciousness, comfort and affordability. All this despite the accidents which happened during its construction killing a few people.
3.Tata Nano: The cheapest car in the world is fast gaining a strong foothold in the small car market which it created in India. After a slump, it is raking in the sales numbers and is all set to be exported.
4.Dabbawallahs: The Harvard Business School has come up with a case study on the Dabbawallahs of Mumbai. With no technology at their disposal these men put six sigma experts to shame with their impeccable and timely delivery of lunch boxes to thousands of Mumbaikars from their homes.
5.Narayana Hrudayalaya and Shankara Netralaya: These heart and eye hospitals provide world-class healthcare at affordable rates thanks to an innovative business model that makes social service sustainable and profitable.
6.Sachin Tendulkar: The only sportsperson from India to have dominated a global sport ie; the world of cricket as a batsman for almost one and a half decades (out of a twenty two year old ongoing career). He is arguably the greatest batsman to have graced the game of cricket.
7.Indian IT talent: Indian IT workers are considered world-class for their analytical and programming skills, besides their knowledge of English and the willingness to work overtime. From Silicon Valley to Bengaluru, the Indian techies have carved a niche for themselves and are highly sought after, be it for IT services or products.
8.Taj Mahal: It’s majestic monument which is one of the seven wonders of the world. Perhaps, the only monument that has put India on the global tourist’s map.
A platform where I will share my views on topics and issues that interest me deeply (with a strong business bias, of course)and chronicle the major events in my life beginning 2010.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
World-class Universities and Institutes in India
Of late, I got to read a few articles about the Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s remarks on IIT/IIM faculty. He had said that the IITs/IIMs were world-class institutions because of their students and not the faculty. His statement was not original and is an open secret.
Research output in India (including the IITs/IIMs) is negligible both in terms of quantity and quality. The primary reason behind this is that there is no ecosystem for research to happen in India. There is neither strong industry-academia partnership nor adequate funding. MIT’s annual budget is about seven times the government funding available to all the IITs put together. (Source: Angela Saini's book The Geek Nation).The whole government funding system should be replaced by an endowment system which is in vogue in the US and other European universities and institutes. The ecosystem is not just about money but a change of mindset as well. In the US, higher education institutions follow the principle of “publish or perish” in letter and spirit. The same culture needs to be imbibed by Indian higher education institutions if they really want to become world-class. Besides, the government needs to give them autonomy and reservations must not exist at all (neither for the students nor for the faculty). The students at IITs/IIMs and other higher education institutions in India should be selected purely on the basis of merit and should be encouraged to do research for which adequate grants and support should be provided by their alma mater. India Inc. should also come forward and donate money generously to set up chair professorships, new departments and high-tech labs as a part of their CSR activities. The bottomline is if you can keep the government and reservations away ( or at least, as far as possible) and change the funding model altogether, there is no reason why we cant have a few Indian universities up there in the global top 100 rankings.
Research output in India (including the IITs/IIMs) is negligible both in terms of quantity and quality. The primary reason behind this is that there is no ecosystem for research to happen in India. There is neither strong industry-academia partnership nor adequate funding. MIT’s annual budget is about seven times the government funding available to all the IITs put together. (Source: Angela Saini's book The Geek Nation).The whole government funding system should be replaced by an endowment system which is in vogue in the US and other European universities and institutes. The ecosystem is not just about money but a change of mindset as well. In the US, higher education institutions follow the principle of “publish or perish” in letter and spirit. The same culture needs to be imbibed by Indian higher education institutions if they really want to become world-class. Besides, the government needs to give them autonomy and reservations must not exist at all (neither for the students nor for the faculty). The students at IITs/IIMs and other higher education institutions in India should be selected purely on the basis of merit and should be encouraged to do research for which adequate grants and support should be provided by their alma mater. India Inc. should also come forward and donate money generously to set up chair professorships, new departments and high-tech labs as a part of their CSR activities. The bottomline is if you can keep the government and reservations away ( or at least, as far as possible) and change the funding model altogether, there is no reason why we cant have a few Indian universities up there in the global top 100 rankings.
Greatest American business leaders and entrepreneurs
Nitin Nohria, the current dean of Harvard Business School (HBS)in his JRD Tata Memorial Lecture, which he delivered in 2010, mentions about the following American leaders who form a part of the "Greatest business leaders" course being taught at HBS.Most of us are aware of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Jack Welch. To know more about the men who built the world's largest economy, read on. For the entire speech, click here
Andrew Carnegie, who at the turn of the 20th century built the steel mills that provided the raw material for the railroads and transportation infrastructure that connected America and made it the world’s largest integrated domestic economy.
CW Post, who during the 1910s and 1920s introduced Post Cereal and launched the consumer packaged goods industry in America
Walt Disney, who during the 1930s built one of the great media and entertainment companies, even though he started during the depths of the Great Depression
Henry Kaiser, who helped build the Hoover Dam and many other extraordinary infrastructure projects including a shipyard that, during the height of World War II, was completing three Liberty Ships every day.
William Levitt, who created Levittown, the first mass-produced postwar American suburb, in the 1950s and built houses that redefined the American real estate landscape;
Sam Walton, who started building one of the biggest discount retailing companies in the 1970s;
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who ushered in the personal computer revolution in the 1980s;
Jack Welch, who transformed GE during the 1990s so that it remained an iconic company, and the only company that was on the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the entire 20th century.
Andrew Carnegie, who at the turn of the 20th century built the steel mills that provided the raw material for the railroads and transportation infrastructure that connected America and made it the world’s largest integrated domestic economy.
CW Post, who during the 1910s and 1920s introduced Post Cereal and launched the consumer packaged goods industry in America
Walt Disney, who during the 1930s built one of the great media and entertainment companies, even though he started during the depths of the Great Depression
Henry Kaiser, who helped build the Hoover Dam and many other extraordinary infrastructure projects including a shipyard that, during the height of World War II, was completing three Liberty Ships every day.
William Levitt, who created Levittown, the first mass-produced postwar American suburb, in the 1950s and built houses that redefined the American real estate landscape;
Sam Walton, who started building one of the biggest discount retailing companies in the 1970s;
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who ushered in the personal computer revolution in the 1980s;
Jack Welch, who transformed GE during the 1990s so that it remained an iconic company, and the only company that was on the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the entire 20th century.
Near-zero interest rates and their impact
I was brooding over the question as to why the US, Japan and Germany have near-zero interest rates and how it impacts the global financial markets. The following post is the answer to this question by Mr.Harshil Dave, one of my seniors at SDMIMD, Mysore. He is an MBA Finance guy working as a consultant at Oracle Financial Services. I agree with whatever he wrote about this topic on Facebook and I would welcome comments from my readers as well.
"In order to spur the GDP growth rate and reduce unemployment in their economies they need to provide incentive to businesses to borrow money from banks. By having near zero interest rates, the central bank is trying to encourage existing businesses and budding entrepreneurs and luring them by cheap credit. In theory, near-zero interest rates are supposed to help increase GDP growth rate (By capacity expansion and increased spending by businesses and households) and reduce unemployment (which stands at 9.8% in the US at present). After the crisis when major economies across the world were dragged into recession (which is characterized by multiple negative GDP growth rate quarters according to NBER definition of recession) the monetary policy makers had to cut down the interest rates to bring back the economy on positive GDP growth track. Near zero interest rates are also meant to restore confidence in the dried up inter-bank money market lending. This was in context of the US.
Coming to Japan, they have been a zero interest rate regime since a long time, you can refer to 'Yen carry trade' and 'Asian currency crisis' to go to the origins of the same!
Germany, had to follow France's footsteps of lowering the interest rates after Sarkozy accused Merkel of not taking adequate measures to combat recession!
Low interest rates increase liquidity in domestic economy, as in the case of the US what has happened is that since you can borrow money at virtually zero interest rates from commercial banks, the proprietary trading arms of big multinational banks have borrowed from their commercial banking arm and invested money in emerging economies like India, China and Brazil. Because of this we observe a surge in FII inflow led by prop trading desk activities and also by 'Dollar carry trade' (Selling short dollar against other currencies expecting dollar to depreciate on account of slow growth and more dollar bills being printed, and then investing that money made by shorting the dollar contract into other asset classes in Emerging economies).
Consider it as a tap of water (liquidity) opened by the Fed to aid the domestic economy, but the water (liquidity) spilled more in other places (Emerging Economies)! We see benchmark indices go up by 10-15% in matter of few months because of such liquidity. When the interest rates in the US will go up there is very high likelihood of reversal in this fund flows which can cause markets to crash in matter of few weeks!"
"In order to spur the GDP growth rate and reduce unemployment in their economies they need to provide incentive to businesses to borrow money from banks. By having near zero interest rates, the central bank is trying to encourage existing businesses and budding entrepreneurs and luring them by cheap credit. In theory, near-zero interest rates are supposed to help increase GDP growth rate (By capacity expansion and increased spending by businesses and households) and reduce unemployment (which stands at 9.8% in the US at present). After the crisis when major economies across the world were dragged into recession (which is characterized by multiple negative GDP growth rate quarters according to NBER definition of recession) the monetary policy makers had to cut down the interest rates to bring back the economy on positive GDP growth track. Near zero interest rates are also meant to restore confidence in the dried up inter-bank money market lending. This was in context of the US.
Coming to Japan, they have been a zero interest rate regime since a long time, you can refer to 'Yen carry trade' and 'Asian currency crisis' to go to the origins of the same!
Germany, had to follow France's footsteps of lowering the interest rates after Sarkozy accused Merkel of not taking adequate measures to combat recession!
Low interest rates increase liquidity in domestic economy, as in the case of the US what has happened is that since you can borrow money at virtually zero interest rates from commercial banks, the proprietary trading arms of big multinational banks have borrowed from their commercial banking arm and invested money in emerging economies like India, China and Brazil. Because of this we observe a surge in FII inflow led by prop trading desk activities and also by 'Dollar carry trade' (Selling short dollar against other currencies expecting dollar to depreciate on account of slow growth and more dollar bills being printed, and then investing that money made by shorting the dollar contract into other asset classes in Emerging economies).
Consider it as a tap of water (liquidity) opened by the Fed to aid the domestic economy, but the water (liquidity) spilled more in other places (Emerging Economies)! We see benchmark indices go up by 10-15% in matter of few months because of such liquidity. When the interest rates in the US will go up there is very high likelihood of reversal in this fund flows which can cause markets to crash in matter of few weeks!"
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