SAJAforum

GLOBALIZATION: OWS in South Asia

When the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement began on Sept. 17, 2011, in New York City's Zuccotti Park, it was hard to imagine that the protest would spread across many cities in the U.S., let alone go global.

Here's a look at OWS in various South Asian countries.

OWS IN INDIA: 2011 was a year of anti-corruption and "people power" protests long before anyone had heard of Zuccoti Park. Therefore, the traction that OWS has received in India has been mixed. 

Occupy Dalal Street was launched in October. Dalal Street of Mumbai is like the Wall Street of New York, but the "ODS" has failed to gain momentum. In October, Hindustan Times reported that ODS Facebook page had only 36 likes. As of today, the Facebook page has only 192 likes and it was last updated on Nov. 4.  However, other, more individualized protests have arisen in other parts of the country.

MAGAZINES: India vs China on the cover of The Economist

This cover is from the Sept. 30, 2010, issue of The Economist. We have added it to our collection of 159 U.S. magazine covers 1921-today.

Here's the lead editorial, "India's surprising economic miracle - The country’s state may be weak, but its private companies are strong." And here's the India briefing article: "A bumpier but freer road - Despite all the mess and chaos of India, the country’s business is booming. This will change the world."

See SAJA's collection of 159 South Asia-related U.S. magazine covers, 1921-today.

 

 

TV: What do you think of NBC's new "Outsourced" show?

SAJAforum's Ankita Rao wrote in June about "Outsourced," a new NBC's show this fall:

A spin-off of the 2006 movie by the same name, the plot follows a jaded salesman, Todd (Ben Rappaport), to India to oversee a call center.

If the movie is indeed a taste-test, “Outsourced” promises to channel a stereotype into a subtle, lively storyline complete with romance and cultural commentary.

The cast is mostly comprised of vaguely recognizable BBC stars, sitcom hoppers and newcomers such as Rizwan Manji, Rebecca Hazlewood, Anisha Nagarajan and Sacha Dhawan.

Writer Robert Borden hails from “The Drew Cary Show”, and director Ken Kwapis tested out his diversity comedy with “The Office”.

The show debuts tonight, as part of the Thursday night 9:30 pm slot, right after "The Office." You can see the trailer below. More on the show at http://www.nbc.com/outsourced.

Many of you weighed in on Ankita's post (more than 50 comments!), without seeing the show. Please watch tonight and post your comments and analysis below.

NEW PROJECT: WSJ launches Hindi version of its "India Real Time" blog

In yet another sign of the changing media landscape, the Wall Street Journal's India blog, India Real Time - which has already gotten a lot of attention in a short time - now has a Hindi version as well. It's all part of the india.wsj.com site. From a memo from Paul Beckett, the Journal India bureau chief:

...this is part of the WSJ’s commitment to greater engagement with its Indian audience in India and around the world, which started with the India web site and now includes an India mobile application, India Real Time, India Real Time in Hindi, India Chief Mentor, our award-winning Rural India page, India Jobs listings in partnership with Naukri.com, and same-day publishing in India of The Wall Street Journal Asia.

See the full memo below, as well as screengrabs of the Hindi and English versions of the site. Let us know what you think in the comments.

[Paul Beckett's memo]

From: Beckett, Paul

To: Beckett, Paul
Sent: Wed Sep 15 20:41:44 2010
Subject: What's New on India.WSJ.com: "Hindi" Real Time

Dear All:

I should really be writing this in Hindi since it is to announce that this afternoon our India blog – India Real Time – went live in Hindi as well as English.

The new Hindi site is here: http://realtime.wsj.com/in/india/

Please check it out, see what you think, and tell others who may be more interested in reading our take on news and events in India in Hindi.

More broadly, this is part of the WSJ’s commitment to greater engagement with its Indian audience in India and around the world, which started with the India web site and now includes an India mobile application, India Real Time, India Real Time in Hindi, India Chief Mentor, our award-winning Rural India page, India Jobs listings in partnership with Naukri.com, and same-day publishing in India of The Wall Street Journal Asia.

Let me also take this opportunity to thank you for your support over the past 18 months and we hope you’ll keep in close touch with us and our publications in the months ahead.

All the best,
Paul

Paul Beckett
Bureau Chief
The Wall Street Journal
New Delhi
(+91) 98 7366 XXXX

visit us at: http://india.WSJ.com

Post your comments below.

JOBS: A U.S. Job Fair for Those Who Want To Work in India

Here's an unusual jobs-related item that came via e-mail: A job fair in the US for those looking to move to India. Includes booths for journalism jobs at the Hindustan Times, a general-interest daily and Mint, a Delhi-based business launched by SAJAers Raju Narisetti (now managing editor of the Washington Post), S. Mitra Kalita (now an editor at WSJ in NYC) and others with U.S. connections who moved temporarily or permanently to India.

From: Helena Podgorniak <helena.podgorniak@relianceada.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:50:25
Subject: India Calling! US Job Fair 2010 - Journalism Jobs In India Available!

Greetings from Shine.com!

Shine.com, a career portal of Hindustan Times Media Ltd., is pleased to announce US Job Fair 2010 - a Job & Relocation Fair in US to be held over 2 weekends in August and September, reaching out to NRIs looking for job opportunities in India. The fair will be held in New Jersey & California.

   - 28th and 29th August at Raritan Exposition Centre, Edison, NJ
   - 3rd and 4th September at Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA

TV: "Outsourced" hits the small screen, as an NBC sitcom

While Kal Penn  and Aziz Ansari  have paved the way for South Asian funny guys, a full cast from the subcontinent are just now making their way to the small screen in NBC Thursday’s new sitcom, “Outsourced”.

A spin-off of the 2006 movie by the same name, the plot follows a jaded salesman, Todd (Ben Rappaport), to India to oversee a call center.

If the movie is indeed a taste-test, “Outsourced” promises to channel a stereotype into a subtle, lively storyline complete with romance and cultural commentary.

The cast is mostly comprised of vaguely recognizable BBC stars, sitcom hoppers and newcomers such as Rizwan Manji, Rebecca Hazlewood, Anisha Nagarajan and Sacha Dhawan.

Writer Robert Borden hails from “The Drew Cary Show”, and director Ken Kwapis tested out his diversity comedy with “The Office”. 

“Outsourced” bumped out “Parks and Recreation” (starring Ansari) for the Thursday evening spot at 9:30, although that doc-style comedy is only on hold, not canceled. NBC is adding five new comedies and seven new dramas to their line-up, according to the NBC website.

You can see some clips from the show here.

Post your comments, please.

BUSINESS: Foreign companies employing Americans and Providing a Lifeline

“The Selling of the American Economy: How Foreign Companies Are Remaking the American Dream” is a new book by NYT reporter Micheline Maynard. An excerpt ran in today's NYT and here are three key paras:

As scores of companies are hemorrhaging jobs, closing plants and slashing compensation, foreign employers have become a lifeline for Ms. Ryan and millions of other Americans. While they haven’t been immune from the recession, foreign-owned companies in the United States have a work force of more than 5.3 million, or some 3.5 percent of all workers, and are spread across the 50 states in sectors from manufacturing to retail and publishing. If these jobs did not exist, the nation’s unemployment rate would be above 13 percent.

Investments in the United States by big car companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have received the greatest share of attention over the past two decades. But there are also tens of thousands of Americans working for companies like the Tata Group of India, which recently reopened the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan and makes Eight O’Clock Coffee; Haier, the Chinese appliance maker, with a refrigerator plant in South Carolina and an impressive headquarters in a landmark building in Manhattan; and Nestlé, the Swiss food company, which employs hundreds to make Nesquik and Coffee-Mate in Indiana. Even Anheuser-Busch, America’s best-selling beer maker, is now owned by a Belgian company, InBev.

Foreign companies may touch a nerve in American society and may still be an object of fear and distrust among many, who view foreign investment as a threat to the American worker and way of life. But foreign investment isn’t simply about helping workers earn a weekly paycheck. Foreign companies that invest in the United States are having a significant — and largely positive — impact on not only the lives of workers, but also the health of the American economy and society as a whole.

That got me thinking there must be other companies based in India that are employing Americans. We are not talking about companies that import Indian citizens to work for U.S. subsidiaries via the H1-B program; we are talking about companies that are the Indian equivalents of the Japanese automotive plants in various U.S. regions.

If you know of any beyond the Tata Group/Pierre Hotel/Eight O'Clock Coffee sited above, please list them in the comments section below.

INDIA: The search for a new rupee symbol

A guest post by Rumee Singh, who's previously interviewed Time's Bobby Ghosh and CNN's Rena Golden for this blog.

The Indian finance ministry has started a contest to find a design for the symbol of the rupee. The rupee is commonly used as ‘Rs’ or ‘INR’ (Indian Rupee) and has no globally recognized symbol unlike major currencies of the world. India shares the current abbreviated form of the rupee with Pakistan, Nepal, Seychelles and Sri Lanka.

A statement from the Indian finance ministry said the new symbol will be the 'identity of the Indian currency'. Rules for the contest listed on the Indian Finance Ministry website stipulate ‘the symbol should represent the historical and cultural ethos of India’. It also requires the symbol to be applicable to the standard computer keyboard – a drawback that the euro still faces.

The winning designer will receive a prize of Rs. 250,000 (~$5000) and will have to surrender the copyright of the design to the government, the finance ministry statement said. The deadline, by the way, is April 15, according to TOI, and applicants need to send in a bank draft of Rs. 500. 

While a new currency symbol to join the likes of the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen, might sound simple, implementing one could be a difficult and expensive task.

UK: BBC Journalists to Strike Over Proposed "Offshoring" of South Asia Services

Journalists from across all services of the BBC have resolved to hold two one-day strikes next month, prompted in large part by plans to "offshore" operations for the BBC World Service's Hindi, Nepali, and Urdu programming to Delhi, Kathmandu, and Islamabad. From the Guardian:

TV, radio and online news will be disrupted on Friday 3 April and Thursday 9 April after nearly 800 members of the National Union of Journalists chapel at the BBC today voted in favour of industrial action in a national ballot.

More than 1,100 of the union's nearly 4,000 members at the corporation took part in the vote, 77% of whom voted in favour of a strike.

The most urgent threat of compulsory cuts is at the World Service's South Asian section, where up to 20 members are at risk, the union has said. Staff in Scotland are also understood to be under threat.

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: "Journalists at the South Asian services have been fighting a heroic struggle against the outsourcing of their jobs ... now they have the weight of thousands of NUJ members at the BBC behind them." [link]

In late February, journalists within the South Asia services held their own one-day strike to protest the proposed restructuring. In addition to worrying about lost jobs in London, the journalists fear that shifting operations to the subcontinent would compromise the quality and independence of the BBC's coverage:

Staff are concerned that moving production of these BBC language services abroad will result in poorer output and a loss of independence which is integral to the BBC World Service.

One member commented: “If the BBC’s succeeds in imposing change, the tendency will be for the output to become more and more India-centric, in the case of the India service, as they try to compete with local FM broadcasters.

“This moves away from the World Service’s USP: impartial news with a global perspective. Why should the British taxpayer end up paying for a local Indian radio station?” [link]

The International Federation of Journalists has echoed these concerns, asserting that "the BBC management's off-shoring plans will put at risk seventy years of first-class journalism and expose their journalists to political and commercial pressures beyond their control." On the eve of last month's one-day strike, John McDonnell, a Labour MP for west London, elaborated upon these concerns even further:

IMMIGRATION: Vivek Wadhwa says "America's Loss, The World's Gain"

Long-time SAJA member Vivek Wadhwa, executive-in-residence for the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University; fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and BusinessWeek columnist, has news about his latest study, "America’s loss is the world’s gain" (scroll down to see some of his previous studies below - and a note from SAJA member Sandip Roy about a conference call on Monday with Wadhwa and other members of the study team):

From: Vivek Wadhwa <vivek[at]wadhwa.com>

My team at Duke, Harvard and Berkeley is releasing an important report on immigration on Monday morning (March 2, 2009). Journalists who agree to the Monday embargo can write to me for a copy of the report.

This report details the plight of skilled immigrants who came to the U.S. from India and China to work or study and returned home. There are no hard numbers available on how many have returned, but anecdotal evidence shows that this is in the tens of thousands. With the economic downturn, my guess is that we'll have over 100,000 Indians and as many Chinese return home over the next 3-5 years. This flood of western educated and skilled talent will greatly boost the economies of India and China and strengthen their competitiveness. India is already becoming a global hub for R&D. This will allow it to branch into many new areas and will accelerate the trend.

The U.S. has always had the luxury of being arrogant about immigration because it has been the strongest magnet for the world's best and brightest. As this paper shows, there are other strong magnets now. So immigrants who used to have to make substantial sacrifice to give their families better lives can achieve their objectives without the sacrifice -- they can return home to parents and friends…to a land where they are at the top of the social ladder rather than at the bottom.

The hollowing out that this will cause to our S&E workforce and the competition that this will create for the U.S. will hurt us for decades. Other countries like Australia, Singapore and Canada…and even Europe and Dubai have figured out that bringing in skilled talent provides a major economic boost. We haven't…We're sending ours away. We are effectively exporting our economic stimulus. Policies like those which the U.S. just enacted which prevents some banks from hiring foreign workers will have the opposite effect from what they intended -- they will send jobs abroad and scare away top talent.

I've spent 2 years on this project. You have no idea how hard it was to track down such large numbers of returnees and get them to complete a comprehensive questionairre!

Regards, Vivek

EMBARGOED UNTIL MONDAY MARCH 2, 2009, 8 A.M. EST