From the Economist:

A growing Indian empire
Oct 20th 2006
From Economist.com

Tata Steel�s $8 billion purchase of Corus, an Anglo-Dutch rival, says much about consolidation in the steel industry and about India�s acquisitiveness

WHAT a difference a year makes. In 2005 Tata Steel, India's largest private-sector steelmaker, was an industry minnow ranked as only the 56th largest steelmaker in the world, by production. It was a likely meal for bigger fish to swallow. Now, after striking an $8 billion agreement to take over Corus, a much larger Anglo-Dutch rival, it is poised to become the sixth largest such firm on the planet, with a likely annual output (judging by last year�s performances) of some 22.6m tonnes.

The deal was announced on Friday October 20th, with the two firms pledging to complete by January, leaving time for a possible�though some say unlikely�rival bid for Corus to emerge. For Tata it represents a significant triumph in a fragmented industry that is fast consolidating. Analysts who monitor the big metals and mining firms, where there has been a frenzy of activity in recent months, increasingly classify companies as either �hunter or hunted�. Mittal Steel (a Europe-based firm run by an Indian tycoon, Lakshmi Mittal) has devoured Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based steelmaker, for $32.2 billion, and is easily the world's biggest steelmaker. Consolidation in the steel industry seems to be the result of firms seeking more leverage over the few global suppliers of the raw materials (iron ore and coking coal) for making the metal.

The expansion of Tata is also a reflection of a rapid growth in confidence among Indian firms. This deal is by far the largest foreign purchase ever made by an Indian company. Corporate India has matured dramatically since 1991, when reforms cut away bureaucratic controls and encouraged the creation of a more competitive marketplace. Tata Steel is emblematic of the successful parts of Indian manufacturing and is known as the lowest-cost producer in the world.

Indian companies are in an expansive, acquisitive mood. So far this year Indian firms have announced 131 foreign acquisitions, with a total value of $18.7 billion, a huge increase on previous years, and much more than foreign firms have invested in Indian purchases.

The shopping spree spans industries from information technology (IT) and outsourcing to liquor. Wipro, for example, one of the country's big three IT firms, has this year acquired technology companies in Portugal, Finland and California. In pharmaceuticals Ranbaxy, an Indian maker of generic drugs, bought Ethimed of Belgium and Mundogen, the Spanish generics arm of GlaxoSmithKline.

Bharat Forge, the world's second-biggest maker of forgings for engine and chassis components, based in the Indian city of Pune, has since 2004 bought six companies in four countries�Britain, Germany, Sweden and China. Suzlon, another Pune firm, which makes wind turbines, this year bought Hansen, a Belgian gearbox-maker. And United Breweries, a booze conglomerate from Bangalore, has made an unsolicited bid for Whyte & Mackay, a Scottish whisky distiller.

Behind this push overseas lies a combination of forces: a domestic boom; the availability of credit; a rush to achieve global scale; and a new self-confidence about Indian business's ability to add managerial value. India's economy is in its fourth successive year of growth at around 8%. In the first two quarters of this year GDP grew at rates of 9.3% and 8.9% respectively over the same periods in 2005.

What is noteworthy about many of the firms is that the root of their success is not India's obvious competitive advantage: its vast, low-cost labour force. In the IT and outsourcing industries, lower salaries for college graduates are an important reason behind Indian firms' rapid growth. But in manufacturing the stars tend to be experts in automated, capital-intensive production. Bosses who have flourished in such businesses in India, with its poor infrastructure and still-daunting regulatory environment, understandably feel confident that they have lessons to teach their new purchases in other countries.

Samir, I am on the same page as you. Most India bashing that goes on in Nepal is plain BS. A smalll country seems to have given some of us a small mind : we simply are unwilling or perhaps even incapable of thinking beyond being victims of India.

Yes, some of us just bash India and never try to realise our own shortcomings. Practically people from every sector in Nepal suffer from this mentality.

If we consider just one area in Nepal, then this thing becomes more clear. I am trying to illustrate our hypocrisy from the situation of the medical colleges in Nepal.

We all know that many medical colleges have been set up in different parts of the country in the last 10-12 years, with investments of Nepal or India or both. In the beginning, all these colleges had Indians working as teaching faculties and dictors, as there were insufficient numbers of trained doctors in the country at that point of time. In all those years, these colleges have produced at least five hundred nepalese doctors. But they are still facing a crisis of Nepali teaching faculties and doctors as they werefacing 10 years back. Though they keep on publishing vacancies for different posts at least 4 times a year, for interested Nepalese candidates, no one applies. The reason ? Almost all of the medical graduates who pass out want to go to Kathmandu, or else to some foreign country. The pay and facilities in these colleges is very good if we consider the general nepalese or even indian context. Pay scale equivalent to $500 - $1000 per month in Nepal can't be considered bad. But still they're not joining there. And once they get a job in Kathmandu or get a chance to go abroad, they just say that those colleges are full of Indians, Indians are useless, they shouldn't be allowed to come to Nepal, 'Indians working in academic institutions in Nepal' should be banned, Indians are getting so much money from Nepal and so on and so forth. But they themselves are unwilling to change the scenario. And these colleges are continuing with more than 60% of its staffs being Indian.

I feel that most of us are similar kind of hypocrites.

Very true. I shudder to think what it would be like to be treated by people with so much hate in them. After all, you would think medicine is about compassion and care. I suppose the saying, physician heal thyself, would have relevance in this context :)

hey captain, my buddy, how ya doing?
good to read your informative post yet again. thanks. :)

India is certainly on a role no doubt and hypocrites nepalese will always keep on whining and bashing them for no rhyme and reason. i don't see it getting changed. it's high time we came out of the prejudices...it's not leading us anywhere!

there was a thread on a similar note (india's growing economy) some time back in sajha. you may want to visit it, if you haven't done so.

- http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/OpenThread.cfm?forum=2&ThreadID=35832

and here's an interesting documentary:

Race to the Top of The World--India vs. China






Have a good one!

LooTe

Loote!! Buddy ole pal! How goes?

Thanks for the video - a great piece of commentary no doubt. I don't know if you have seen Fareed Zakaria's interview with Tom Friedman - I couldn't find it on YouTube - but it touches on a very similar theme.

Undoubtedly, India has miles to go before it catches up with China but it is getting there slowly but surely. Like the VP at Infosys said, no one has been able to pull so many people out of poverty in such a short span as China, but India continues to thrive in spite of it's poverty which is pretty remarkable. The key, in my opinion, will be to continue to keep wages competitive to attract Western businesses and build long-term institutions that will guarantee a good pool of talent to meet the needs of such businesses.

Also from the current Economist:

Asia and the world economy
The alternative engine
Oct 19th 2006 | HONG KONG
From The Economist print edition

A sharp slowdown in the American economy could be offset by the growing and largely unrecognised power of Asia's consumers

AMERICAN consumers have been one of the main engines of global growth for the past decade. But now, as America's housing boom threatens to turn into a bust, many forecasters expect household spending to stall. A few even worry that America could come perilously close to a recession in 2007. Previous American downturns have usually dragged the rest of the world economy down, too. Yet this time its fate will depend largely upon whether China and the other Asian economies can decouple from the slowing American locomotive.

According to conventional wisdom, American consumers have single-handedly kept the world economy chugging along, whereas cautious Europeans and Asians have preferred to save. Yet the importance of America's role in global growth is often exaggerated. During the past five years America has accounted for only 13% of global real GDP growth, using purchasing-power parity (PPP) weights.

The real driver of the world economy has been Asia, which has accounted for over half of the world's growth since 2001. Even in current dollar terms, rather than PPP, Asia's 21% contribution to the increase in world GDP exceeded America's 19%. But current dollar figures understate Asia's weight in the world, because in China and other poor countries things like housing and domestic services are much cheaper than in rich countries, so a dollar of spending buys a lot more. If you want to compare consumer spending across countries, it therefore makes more sense to convert local currency spending into dollars using PPPs rather than market exchange rates.

However, the doomsayers argue that Asia's growth has itself been based largely on exporting to America, whereas domestic demand in the region has languished. Their evidence for this is that Asia is running a combined current-account surplus of over $400 billion, implying that it is contributing much more to world supply than to demand. Thus if America's demand stumbles, the growth in Asia's exports and output would also plunge.

Asia's export growth would certainly slow sharply, but it is the change in net exports that contributes to a country's growth rate, not the absolute size of that surplus. Since 2001 the increase in emerging Asia's trade surplus has added less than one percentage point a year on average to the region's average growth rate of almost 7%. Contrary to the received view, the bulk of Asia's growth has been domestically driven. True, domestic demand (investment and consumption) has grown more slowly than GDP over the past year everywhere except in Malaysia (see chart 1). But in most cases the gap has been small, especially in China, India, Japan and Indonesia. In contrast, growth in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore has been heavily dependent on external demand over the past year.

t is true that exports account for 40% of China's GDP, but those exports have a large import component; only a quarter of the value of China's exports is added locally. The impact of a slowdown in export growth would therefore be partially offset by a slowdown in imports. China's GDP growth has come mainly from domestic demand, which has been growing by an annual 9% in recent years.

The idea that China's growth is mainly export-led is not the only popular myth. Another, says Jonathan Anderson, an economist at UBS, is that China's consumer spending is feeble. Several recent reports highlight that according to official figures spending has fallen from 50% of nominal GDP in 1990 to 42% today. But this partly reflects an even stronger boom in capital spending. Real consumer spending has been growing at an average annual pace of 10% over the past decade�the fastest in the world and much faster than in America (see chart 2).

There is also good reason to believe that official figures understate consumer spending in China because of their inadequate coverage of services. Purchases of homes by the Chinese have risen rapidly since they were first allowed in 1998, but these are also excluded from the figures. If they are added in, Mr Anderson calculates, total household spending has not fallen as a share of GDP.

How does this square with the common perception that Chinese household saving is extraordinarily high and rising? The truth is that it is not. The saving of Chinese households has in fact fallen from 20% to 16% of GDP over the past decade. The main reason why China's total national saving rate looks so high (at close to 50%) is that Chinese companies have been saving a much bigger slice of their booming profits (see article).

Bags and bags of shopping
Across many other Asian countries, the notion of the frugal Asian consumer is equally flawed, says Mr Anderson. Although consumption has fallen as a share of GDP in most Asian countries, this does not mean that households are saving more. Excluding China and India, household saving has fallen sharply, from 15% of GDP in the late 1980s to 8% today. The paradox is explained by the fact that wage incomes have risen more slowly than GDP as production has become more capital intensive. But this means that Asian consumers are spending a rising share of their income by borrowing or running down their savings. Amazingly, the savings rate of Japanese households has fallen more sharply than that of American households over the past decade.

The IMF estimates that in Asia as a whole (including Japan as well as the emerging economies) real growth in consumer spending has averaged a healthy 6.3% a year in 2005 and 2006. This suggests that Asian consumers can help sustain fairly robust GDP growth in Asia even if America's economy takes a dive.

Some pundits have predicted a boom in Asian consumer spending over the coming years, which would help to fill the gap left by American consumers cutting back on their purchases. But if consumer spending is already rising strongly in Asia, there is little pent-up demand ready to explode. On the other hand, spending by firms could pick up. After the Asian economic crisis in the late 1990s, investment plunged everywhere except China. It has remained relatively weak. However, as the overhang of excess capacity and debt has disappeared, capital spending is now starting to perk up across Asia.

Japanese firms' average return on assets now exceeds long-term interest rates by 5%, the widest margin for decades, according to Merrill Lynch. The Bank of Japan's latest Tankan survey of business confidence found firms to be unexpectedly cheery. Big Japanese manufacturers now report insufficient production capacity for the first time since 1991 and plan to increase capital spending by 17% in the year to March.

Another reason for believing that Asian economies can decouple from an American downturn is that most of them have small budget deficits or even surpluses. This means they have plenty of scope to ease fiscal policy to support domestic demand so as to offset some of the fall in exports. The main exception is Japan, which has a massive public debt; Taiwan, where domestic demand is worryingly weak, is also constrained by a large budget deficit. South Korea, on the other hand, which has run a budget surplus for seven years, has plenty of scope to ease up.


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When America sneezes, the rest of the world's economies may no longer catch a cold
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The United States of where?
Not only is growth in China and the rest of Asia chiefly domestically led, but America's share of Asia's total exports has fallen from 25% to 20% over the past five years. Regional trade links within Asia have also deepened, thanks partly to growing Chinese demand. Goldman Sachs reports that five years ago China's imports for domestic use were only half as big as those for the assembly and re-export of products, but now they are roughly the same size. So strong domestic demand in China sucks in more imports.

China's exports to America have fallen from 34% of its total exports in 1999 to 25% now (adjusting for the re-exports which are made through Hong Kong). Chinese exports to the European Union are now almost as big as those to America and are growing faster.

America takes only 23% of Japan's exports, down from almost 40% in the late 1980s. However, this understates Japan's total exposure. Japanese firms (like those in South Korea and Taiwan) send a lot of components to China for assembly into goods, which are then exported to America as finished products. On top of this, if a sinking American economy pulled the dollar down with it, this would further squeeze Asian exporters.

A recent report by Peter Morgan at HSBC estimates that slower American growth will hurt China, India and Japan much less than it will the smaller Asian economies, such as Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, that are more dependent on foreign demand. China, India and Japan account for three-quarters of Asia's GDP and so, given the deeper regional trade links, they should help to support demand in the whole region. If America's GDP growth slows next year to 1.9%, from 3.5% in 2006, as HSBC expects, then Asia's growth is tipped to slow from just above 7% this year to just below 6% in 2007. Weaker exports will badly hurt some industries, but overall, the region will continue to grow at a reasonable pace.

Could Asia withstand a sharper American slowdown? Hong Liang at Goldman Sachs estimates that if America's GDP growth drops to zero by the end of 2007 then China's annual export growth could plummet from 26% in early 2006 to a decline of 2% by late 2007. That sounds dire. Yet after taking account of the impact of slower export growth on imports and domestic demand (ie, slower growth in investment), Ms Liang estimates that China's GDP would still expand by a respectable 8%. That is significantly down from this year's growth rate of over 10%, which is still too fast to be sustained. China is today tightening policy so as to slow down its runaway economy: weaker external demand could be partly offset by reversing these measures.

In sum, if America suffers a slump, the economies of China and the rest of Asia would slow, but they are unlikely to be derailed. However, a slowdown in America could affect Asia indirectly through other channels. Most important and least certain of all would be the impact of an American recession on financial markets. Even if economies can decouple, global financial markets tend to be more tightly linked through the investment strategies of hedge funds and the like. If America's economy hits the buffers, this will surely trigger a rise in risk premiums and a drying up of market liquidity, pushing share prices lower in Asia as well as in America. When America sneezes, the rest of the world's economies may no longer catch a cold; but if Wall Street shivers, global tremors will still be widely felt.

Well, India, or anyone else for that matter, is not going to give anything to Nepal on a platter. If we have failed to take advantage of India's growing prosperity, it has largely been because of our own incompetencies and failures. Fortunately, it isn't too late and we can still try and take better advantage of our close location to India, a country which increasingly has become Nepal's gateway to wealth creation and economic prosperity.
--

I agree with it with some reservations.

You are right, we have to be able to take advantage of India's economic growth and for that we need people/scholars/bureaucrats/diplomats who know and understand India. Its kind of sad that in Nepal we have no genuine India scholar, i.e., someone who has studied India and who can analyze the events in India and or India's position on Nepal from the Indian perspective. What we do is, and there are some examples of this in this thread , we are still locked in our "nationalist" mindset and we derive immense pleasure by bashing India.

What we should do now is study India. We can't understand India or claim to understand India based on Bollywood movies and our short trips (or long Mbbs-Engineering study experience there). Its time that we move on to the next stage and study the Indian policy making process, history, economics, traditions and even philosophy. That way we will be able to accurately (or near accurately) predict what our next door neighbor is up to.

Too sad, we don't have an area studies department in TU.

Now,

Is it in India's best interest to let Nepal develop? Rephrase: Will India let Nepal take advantage of its growing economy? A weak, poor and dependant Nepal is in India's strategic and political interests. This is why our development plans have failed again and again. Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming India for our underdevelopment. It has to do what it has to do to preserve its national interests as one maxim of IR states that foreign policy is out of necessity, not out of sympathy. The problem is on our side: We haven't been full able to assert our national interests and the worst of all, we don't even have a policy to deal with India. India is either our Big Brother and its OK to depend on it or its a pure villian and should be c riticized whenever you get the chance to do so. Our leaders depend on India for everything. And this gives India an "strategic" upper hand when dealing with Nepal. Since strategic interests now include economic interests, it is in India's interests to exploit the Nepali market, i.e., sell its products from soap to cars in Nepali market. As a result, we will not industrialize and even for small consumer goods we will depend on India, and as a result, we will not be able to rise up economically. In my opinion, and I don't claim to know much about India or Nepal's dealing with India, we have to have a clear policy on how to deal with India. We have to have India scholars/sp[ecialists, and we have to learn to deal with our problems by ourselves. Maybe then, maybe in the long run, we will be able to take advantage of India's growth.. but now, talking about taking advantage of India's growth is like.. a good dream.

Isolated Freak -

As always, it is nice to hear what you have to say. Before I go on to comment, I want to clarify that the reason I am quoting parts of your last post are so that I can keep my reply coherent and I am not doing it with any malicious intent to slice and dice your argument. I get the big picture argument you are making and am mindful of it in my comments.

That said, I have the following comments:

"Is it in India's best interest to let Nepal develop? Rephrase: Will India let Nepal take advantage of its growing economy? A weak, poor and dependant Nepal is in India's strategic and political interests. This is why our development plans have failed again and again."

On the contrary, you could argue such a poor Nepal is against India's interests because poverty to create instability in Nepal, as has been the case of late, and such instabillity has the potential to spill over into India.

"Since strategic interests now include economic interests, it is in India's interests to exploit the Nepali market, i.e., sell its products from soap to cars in Nepali market. "

But if we are poor, how can we buy their goods? You would think it is in their interest for us to have the kind of purchasing power required to buy these goods, no? If you are trying to sell something to someone, it seems a bit absurd to think you don't want them to have the money to pay you for your goods.

"It has to do what it has to do to preserve its national interests as one maxim of IR states that foreign policy is out of necessity, not out of sympathy. The problem is on our side: We haven't been full able to assert our national interests and the worst of all, we don't even have a policy to deal with India. India is either our Big Brother and its OK to depend on it or its a pure villian and should be c riticized whenever you get the chance to do so. Our leaders depend on India for everything. And this gives India an "strategic" upper hand when dealing with Nepal."


Agree.

"As a result, we will not industrialize and even for small consumer goods we will depend on India, and as a result, we will not be able to rise up economically."

We will never be able to compete with them for soap and Maruti cars and shoudn't try to. One, among many, examples of how we might be able to make money from them would be by attracting the manufacturers of ancilliary industries to Nepal so that when they set up shop in Nepal we get jobs created in our country which will give people the opportunity to create wealth and move out of poverty. Their motivation to do business in Nepal would be the cheaper labor and more favorable tax and financial benefits if that's something we can get our government to do. And this is not a pipe dream. Some of this had already started with firms like Nepal Level and Dabur setting up shop in Nepal, although the Maoist insurgency forced them to scale back and even close operations.

The same kind of potential also exists in the services industries. We could be sub-contractors to Indian firms who are looking for cheaper talent to serve their clients in the West. With BPO, IT and other services related work coming to India, we definately have the potential to get work out of the Indians who are bound to reach capacity issues or who may simply be looking for cheaper ways to sub work. Even China has capacity issue at times and has been looking at sub-ing out work to places like Vietnam and Thailand so it's not far fetched to think India might need to do the same when it reaches that point.

Yes, that may not sound like glamorous stuff, but economic development often takes the form of several baby steps before it sees a giant step or two.

Business, and just not politics or military alone, is likely, in my opinion, to drive India's foreign policy in the days ahead if recent trends like this are anything to go by. That is how I see us being able to use India's economic growth for our advantage.

Also to your point about needing more India scholars, I agree we could do with some more. I mean that kind of knowledge would always be useful, but while that might be helpful to an extent, it certainly is not the answer to how we can take advantage of India. And I am not saying that's what you think. My point is we can have people who talk their heads off but if commerce and trade are to be the driving force for our relationship with India, we also need more entrepreneurs and risk takers who have their heads closer to the ground.

Just a thought.

As always, it is nice to hear what you have to say. Before I go on to comment, I want to clarify that the reason I am quoting parts of your last post are so that I can keep my reply coherent and I am not doing it with any malicious intent to slice and dice your argument. I get the big picture argument you are making and am mindful of it in my comments.
]
==

hey man

Please feel free to disagre with me-- and believe me, i never think of constructive criticism as malicious or personal. We have our differeneces and I think differently than you, and you have your RIGHTS to disagree with me and that's that.

Having said that my dear Captain, I am on the road all this week--from 20 + hrs bus ride to 10 + hrs plane ride, and I am happy as can be (*read I substitute Carlseberg for water when I am travelling' a.. too bad I don't have any Tintin series to keep me company)..please do not think that I am not responding you. I will be respoding to your excellenet points as soon as I am back in my comfort zone.

UNtil then, let's drink some gin tonic and let ourselves wander a bit..... what says you?

Your's
IF

i second your sentiments there, isolated freak. that is why i said india has masterfully put the negative spills from its growing empire into nepal. and if i'm a hypocrite for focusing on the negative spills (barriers on our development) from india, then those with opposite view are simply being too naive in thinking nepal should be able to and can take advantage from inda's growth.

i think realistically speaking, the solution is somewhere between my hypocrisy and others naiveness. this is probably where we could use india scholars.

I think it is our own closed minds that are responsible for the country today. Being studied in India, i have always admired their hard work and more than that - their love to their country. I do not understand why there is no spillover effects being seen in Nepal while both our neighbors are running their race really well.

tata city is in Bihar..close to Nepal..i hope all the Madhesis goes there so we don't suffer from their Dhoti- lungi confusion problems

sure all said n done.........
i agree wid some of the points here
like sheetalb,being studied in india,i love their genuineness
but but but having said all those
i think everytime the terrorist strikes in india or any crime occurs in downtown,they try to protrait nepal as a playground of ISI or bredding ground of pakistani terrorist or they put the charges of crime into poor nepali heads who work there as a guard n poen.....
GUYS M I WRONG HERE?
WAT U SAY HADDOCK N SAMIR?
M I HYPOCRATIC THEN?

The nation building rests on the people in general. Nepalis hesitate to talk about our culture and way of lives in Nepal. I had a friend here in US who calls himself to be Indian whenever he is asked about his nationality . I was in India for years but I would never say that I am an Indian. We should develop a love to our mortherland.
On the Contrary ,Indians show love to thier nation. They are very hardworking. Its intersting to note the number of gas stations Indians own in the US. they are exceptional in hard working and I believe that this was chanelled in the right direction. One of em being the leftover of the british regime.
I am sure that Nepal too would develop in years to come. To that end we need a successful outcome of the ongoing talks.
---Peace----

You know why we can't grow and will never grow as a prosporous nation because we are too busy talking about why one country is doing so well and the other isn't rather than thinking what do I need to do for my country to develop in such a way and what have I done so far?
Like right now we are arguing back and forth for no apperent reason. There is no reason to talk about India and its growth, why not talk about growth of Nepal and Nepalese thats where it starts. Another thing is there is truth to both side of the the argument above about why Nepal hasn't developed but most of it is due to lack of unity in our country and people. We lack leadership, we don't have any vision for our country, all our young generation are leaving the country as a cheap labor force that are being treated inhumanely. We think of new generation leaving the country as a cheap labor source as commodity (running our economy) but its our stupidity. Also recently I heard that poverty level has decreased but you know why it decreased because all the poor young lads are leaving the country never to return again. So tell me who are we to blame we can't just blame the politician because these are old people who do not have any idea of creating jobs or economy but we young generation do. So instead of thinking about what we should do to help our country we are instead worried about India.
Also I have been viewing sajha for 2 or 3 years (maybe more) I have yet to see a thread talking about any development projects in Nepal or anyone mentioning it. This is the reason why we are behind not anyone else but ourselves.

Captain Haddock! how you doing bro?

You always come up with great articles. You are 'the man' when it comes to discovering thought-provoking articles here in sajha to say the least. Quite plausibly, that makes you the first reader of these articles you post.

But here is a humble suggestion from me. Don't you think it will be a good idea to attempt to kinda summarize the article in a very short paragraph and also provide your own opinion in another short paragraph again given that some of these are overwhelmingly long for people in the land of drive-through eateries?

Thanks and keep up the good work.

Hukka Nepali -

I'll say it is fair game that you find my opinion to be naive because I find your's to be unreasonably cynical. In all humbleness, I think my ideas are realistic, practical and within the bounds of reason. As a matter of fact, quite a bit of what I have said is merely an account of things as they are right now, and is not a proposition for substantive change. Our economic destiny is tied to India's and has been so for the last 50 or 60 years if not longer. Whether we chose to accept that or deny it is upto us.We can only leverage what India has to offer if we can first accept some of these fundamental facts, however bitter they might be.

Isolated Freak - How many bottles do I need to finish before you show up to give me company? :) Hope you are doing well and will drop by with your comments when you get a chance. I too have a bit of a hectic week this week but will be logging into Sajha only in if I can.

Hushpuppy - I hope you are joking because if you are not, it's one of the dumbest things I have heard you say.

Bikash -

We have got to move on from looking at ourselves as victims of India. $hit like that always happens in life. The question is what you do when something like that happens - do you berate India for ever and blame them for everything or do you avenge them by moving on and taking advantage of them in a way that is beneficial to you and will empower you in the long run. India has some bad points. I don't dispute that. The question is what should our focus be : on the good things they have to offer or the bad. If people want to focus on the bad let them. For me the relationship with India needs to have a stong commercial and transactional nature to it inorder for us to get the respect from India that we so badly crave for.

You are not a hypoctrite - at the risk of sounding patronizing, I think you are a well meaning Nepali who appears to be misguided and, if I dare say so , a bit confused.

Ne23pe - I see nothing wrong in talking about other countries. We talk about ours all the time.

TM -Yo, brother, wassup? :) I laughed hard when I read your comment. So you want me to summarize for you, eh? Who do you think I am - your secretary? ;) Stop being lazy and read the damned thing - it is of a particular length for a good reason - trust me, it will be worth the while :)

Have a good day all!

i'm getting dumber dumber no doubt..hahhaha i'm just joking Captain haddok ...if my neighbors prosper..i would think i'd be called for a nice dinner..
well if i am nice...

Anyways its good to criticize and role play on the opposite stance to see what the reactions are ..

And of course no offense to Madheshi bros : my potty just broke and i badly could use a plumber...hahhahaha..i'm kiddin again

hey guys:

Do anyone of you know any indian office in US that do job placements for other professions like business, accounting ? If yes, could you post the link of them here.