License plates

While many many things are regulated here, there is not a standard requirement for license plates, other than your number be shown and that it be white (except for taxis or other for hire vehicles, which are yellow). As seen in the examples below, people take artistic license.






How would I even be able to tell the police if this bike hit me?












No consistent font, language, size. KA is Karnataka, the state in which Bangalore is located. AP is Andra Pradesh, a neighboring state. Note that even the numbers are written differently in Kannada, the local language.

Some random thoughts on election coverage

Election results were announced today, so I watched a few hours of coverage. I am limited to watching, well, understanding really, the English language coverage, although I tried to at least watch some of the other languages too. The size and diversity of India comes through, and several things jump out:
-- the strength of regional parties is impressive. I keep wondering what language these folks, that often try to form coalitions in Delhi, use to talk to each other;
-- the graphics used are less colorfully informative than they would be in the US. For example, you have lots of GIS type district and state maps, but instead of the whole district being colored in (like in our lovely red and blue in the US), you get a little dot with the color. Given that the map is generally quite small on the screen, as it takes up maybe a third on the left, with the TV host in the top right, flashing numbers in garish info=garbage graphics, and then the crawling ticket, it is hard to take it all in.
-- the analysis seemed okay, better than the coverage during the campaign I thought.

In terms of the outcome, Congress seems quite strong, which should allow for more forward movement. My hope: serious education reform.

Cricket in the cage

While Amartya really misses his little league baseball team, he has taken to cricket. On the grounds of our office complex there is this lovely green space, and it has a cage that is perfect as a batting cage.
Someone "bowls" to him, which would be "pitches" in the baseball.And then Amartya bats.
He seems to enjoy the socializing as well as the playing.

From Buffalo to Bangalore

This was my first title for this blog, as it was catchy, but I thought that purists would argue that I'm not really from Buffalo -- Niagara Falls, where I grew up, is close, but not technically Buffalo -- so I searched for a different names. But the papers here today are full of Buffalo following Obama's statement about how the tax code should encourage creating jobs in Buffalo rather than in Bangalore. The NYTimes article today "Obama's Plan on Corporate Taxes Unnverves the Indian Outsourcing Industry" doesn't really capture the hysteria about this topic here, nor the range of opinions about the proposed changes' effects -- from disaster to irrelevant to positive. Here are some of the headlines from major papers: "Barack beats up Bangalore again," "All is still well, says Indian IT," "Research work will be unaffected," "Outsourcing will prove 50% dearer for US cos," "Advantage for desi IT cos," all from The Times of India; "Tax break will get us more work" (with a subtitle of "b'lore vs buffalo"), "Grass is green in BUFFALO, not Bangalore, says Obama" (yes, with Buff in all caps), "America Inc to fight Obama tax plan tooth and nail," and "It will hurt them, not us," from DNA; "Obama's tax prposal to hit US firms rather than Indian IT sector," in The Business Standard; and "Obama's tax measure: "a retrograde step"," "Nasscom downplays move" (Nasscom is the IT industry association here: the National Association of Software and Service Companies), and "Obama ends tax sops to outsourcing firms" in The Hindu. I'm not bothering to link to the articles as I've had bad luck with the URLs of articles here changing, and access to them disappearing quickly, but interested readers probably could find them.

I don't have time to give this proper attention, but a few quick points:
--There seems to be little understanding that Pres Obama is proposing something that is likely to get changed (although some of the more sophisticated analysis does mention this);
--The all important details are generally not provided. From what I can tell, they are probably not even available in Washington;
--the hypocrisy of folks saying this is protectionist and anti-WTO when Indian industry continues to be as protected as much as or more than most any other serious economy is hard to escape;
--I have found not one mention of the fact that TCS has an office in Buffalo! This is indicative of reporters not being aware of the dots to connect, let alone able to connect them;
--while I believe that Pres Obama is using Bangalore as a metaphor for all competitive global cities, the folks here, understandably I guess, take it very personally. But they are saying, "Okay, so what can we do to make ourselves more competitive?" but they take their position of the last few years for granted. In fact, I think that the dynamics of the market before this announcement were or should be more worrisome to them. Most of the IT firms haven't been viewing India as a potential market, while the US firms are now, partly because the margins are lower, and the profits have been so easy to get internationally. Now that the intl opportunities are not as numerous for anyone, India looks like a good market for foreign firms as well as Indian.

Much more to say, but need to go make dinner. Hopefully I will get back to this tonight ....

oh no! or maybe okay with enforced regulations

So many things to say, but let's start with an article in today's New York Times entitled "As Investors Circle Ailing Banks, Fed Sets Limits" that talks about some private equity groups wanting to buy sick banks. Okay, on the one hand, we want folks to buy banks and turn them around, and these are the folks with money BUT we don't want all the upside to be captured by these guys while we taxpayers take the whole downside risk (and in fact get a subsidy on top of it). My immediate reaction was "no, no, no" but then I thought about how at least the Fed here is talking about regulation and keeping the silos separate across activities. This brings up broader questions about what financial institutions should be allowed to do. Once the silos exist, and certainly under current regs, it is hard to image that there wouldn't be some joint databases that could cause problems. I'm more worried about a group that is widely considered as among the most risk-loving and freewheeling financial wheeler-dealers. While we might pine for the boring bankers of the old days, we still need to figure out how to get back to that state.

IPL and the Election

My attempts at posting over the weekend failed when power cuts doomed them and frustrated me. Tonight is cooler, and it rained a bit, so I'm hoping that I can post this before it gets lost.

This weekend I was writing as I was watching IPL cricket instead of election coverage. IPL is Indian Premier League, the 20/20 (short version) cricket league which is being held this season (or "tournament") in South Africa as the Indian government couldn't ensure sufficient security as the election is running at the same time. Like the majority of Indians, I am paying more attention to the cricket than to the election. The election is clearly more important, but given the month that it takes to carry it out throughout the whole country, it is hard to maintain sustained interest.

Some political ads

A great magazine cover with the political leaders of the parties other than Congress and BJP (the largest two, and most nation-wide parties). Most expect a coalition government as an outcome of the election, so these players could be quite powerful. One possibility is that they all align together (hence, the Third Front). However, most are leaders of regional parties. I wonder what language they use with each other.
One BJP ad.
Another BJP ad.
A close up of the image of Mr. Advani. The stance cracks me up -- like something out of Star Trek.