I have not written nearly enough about India on this blog, not because I am not interested and fascinated by the place, but because I just don’t know India; I only know a bit about China.
This short 60 Minutes segment, Out of India, is a required assignment for you to watch.
You will enjoy this video and will learn a lot. This segment also builds nicely on Mr. Asnani’s excellent talk with you a few weeks ago about his ecountant business, and, the call center in India we will also visit.
See also this related Wall Street Journal article that just came out, In India Parents Become Part of the Picture for Outsourcing Firms. Fascinating employee recruitment development, retention and HR issues are highlighted in this article as it applies to the outsourcing industry in India and the above video.
The world today is an amazing place. I can’t think of a better or more exciting time to be alive and in business.
Students, your thoughts?
May 28th, 2008
UC San Diego Professor and former Deputy Assistant of State responsible for China, Susan Shirk, has written an outstanding book, China: Fragile Superpower: How China’s Internal Politics Could Derail Its Peaceful Rise. Her book is so good and so well written that I will likely require it as book review reading next year for all students.
In her book she has an excellent chapter on how the media and internet present both challenges and opportunities for the CCP. For example, the “let’s bash Japan” issue and phenomenon in China has now become even more of a volatile issue that the CCP cannot control and manage to its benefit, in large part due to the Internet.
This NY Times article, China Leader Makes Debut in Great Wall of Facebook, made me think of her excellent book and analysis, and her chapter on the media and Internet. Although Prime Minister Wen Jiabao still lags behind people like Obama and Aaaarnold in number of fans, he is ahead of icons like Ronald Reagan and rabble-rousers such as Hugo Chavez.
One other thing about this article of note:
Once the earthquake hit, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao got his butt out to Sichuan, right away, to at least go through the public motions that showed he and the government were there and cared (too bad they were asleep on building code issues for schools before the quake, though, in particular - but that debate will occur in another place and in another time).
See also this NY Times article, Fearing Floods: China Orders Evacuations in Quake Area, re: how the Chinese government just ordered the evacuation of 150,000, that’s right 150,000 people, due to possible flooding if a natural dam were to burst. And an estimated 16 MILLION buildings were destroyed by the quake (click here). 16 friggin’ MILLION! The import here is that in China, Katrina like events and disasters are not unusual (e.g., Yangtze flooding; the snowstorm this past winter that stranded hundreds of thousands of peasants at train stations trying to get back to see their families during the Chinese New Year, etc.), and their top down government/model seems to handle these situations pretty well (see my related post on this topic, Human Rights, Part II). To move and evacuate 150,000 people in China, with it’s 1.3 billion people, tends to be ho-hum news that makes page three, not page one. And the CCP knows it has to get these situations right … if they botch too many of these post natural disaster relief situations, it knows its days in power will be numbered. Not many second or certainly third chances will be given in today’s Internet world to top down governments.
Yep, ladies and gents, this is not yo’ momma’s CCP.
May 28th, 2008
