India, China to lead aviation industry growth: IATA
PTI Dec 13, 2012, 05.47PM IST
GENEVA: India, China and Latin America would continue to lead the growth next year in the global aviation industry which would improve its profit from USD 6.7 billion to an estimated USD 8.4 billion, IATA said on Thursday.
While Chinese domestic market continues to expand "very strongly" despite a slowdown earlier this year, the Indian market by contrast went into a "sharp reverse" in 2012 following the problems faced by Kingfisher Airlines and the slowdown in the Indian economy, the top brass of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said here
[Media] [Heading]
Gang rape of a woman on a bus in New Delhi raises outrage in India
Posted by Rama Lakshmi on December 18, 2012 at 11:00 am
NEW DELHI– The gang-rape of a 23-year old medical student in a New Delhi bus on Sunday night has outraged India’s otherwise apathetic middle class against the increasing lack of safety for women in the nation’s cities.
The horrific details of the crime — the young woman and her male friend were brutally beaten with an iron rod inside a private bus as they were returning home after watching a movie in a mall; she was then raped by four men before being thrown out and left to die on the street – has caused an uproar on the streets, social media, television and in Parliament.
Indian women activists shout slogans demanding safety for women as they stage a protest on Tuesday. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
The incident has highlighted, once again, the utter disregard for women’s safety in India and how politicians, police and powerful community leaders often blame the women for venturing out late in the night, visiting pubs or for even dressing in a certain way.
The India–China border dispute: re-thinking the past to claim the future
December 2nd, 2012
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International
New Delhi’s special representative to the Sino–Indian boundary negotiations, Shiv Shankar Menon, is due to arrive in the Chinese capital in early December.
The trip will take place almost 50 years to the day that the People’s Liberation Army commenced a unilateral withdrawal from territories captured in the Assam Himalayas after inflicting a punishing defeat on Indian positions. Menon and his departing Chinese counterpart, Dai Bingguo, are expected to lay out a joint record of the progress achieved in the 15 rounds of special representative-level talks conducted since 2003.
The origins of the 1962 conflict lie in New Delhi’s decision to encroach militarily in the Tibet–Aksai-Ladakh (western) sector of their disputed boundary.
[Border war]
Jaguar Land Rover: China approves joint venture
Jaguar Land Rover is to make vehicles in China for the first time after Beijing approved a £1bn joint venture.
The West Midlands-based luxury carmaker agreed a "milestone" deal with Chery Automobile and will build a plant near Shanghai, which is due to open in 2015.
JLR said any cars produced would be in addition to its existing output, and it had no intention of moving its manufacturing base out of Britain.
Sales of JLR models in China have risen by 80% so far this year.
The company, owned by India's Tata Motors, began talks with Chery months ago, but had been awaiting approval.
[IJV]
Why David Cameron is doing business with India's 'modern-day Nero'
Britain has boycotted Narendra Modi for years – but now the government has brought him in from the cold
Aditya Chakrabortty The Guardian, Monday 19 November 2012 19.46 GMT Narendra Modi
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. Photograph: Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images
Here are two stories about Britain's relations with India, both from the past month. One has been rinsed in the news cycle dozens of times; the other barely got a once-over. Yet it's the obscure story that matters – and that should alarm anyone who cares how this country behaves abroad.
Like I say, you'll know the first one, about Britain scrapping aid to India. You'll know it, because despite Justine Greening only making her announcement a couple of weeks ago, the decision has been trailed for over a year.
Journalists have had plenty of time to chew over the pros and cons: Delhi's space programme versus the fact that India is home to more poor people than all of Africa; I'd go on but you probably know all the words to this tune better than me.
What comes up rather less often is that the amount given away is just "peanuts", as India's former finance minister Pranab Mukherjee used to say. At £280m a year, Whitehall's aid comes to 0.03% of India's annual income. Whatever the rights and wrongs, this issue is much more about the one-time Empire fallen on hard times, than its former colony.
Yet just last month dropped a genuinely surprising bit of news, far more suggestive of how David Cameron wants to do business with the rest of the world – and which barely rated a few hundred words in the papers.
The foreign office despatched its man in India to Gujarat, to meet the western state's chief minister, Narendra Modi.
[Communalism]
Sentimentalizing Gandhi:
An Interview With Perry Anderson on "The Indian Ideology"
by Praful Bidwai
An outstanding Marxist scholar, historian and essayist, and editor of the New Left Review since 1962, Perry Anderson is known for a rich, incisive body of work spanning European history, the contemporary world, the Western Marxist tradition and intellectual history. The distinguished professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, now trains his lens on modern Indian history. His latest book, The Indian Ideology, just published by the Three Essays Collective, is a scathing critique of the dominant celebratory discourse of the Idea of India, or the lionising of the democratic stability, multi-cultural unity and impartial secularity of the Indian state as a miracle.
Your new book The Indian Ideology is just out. What prompted this first foray into Indian terrain?
I was working on the contemporary inter-state system, and after writing about the US, Russia, China and Brazil, and India was the next step.
How would you sum up the book?
You could say that, very roughly, it advances five main arguments that run counter to conventional wisdom in India today. Firstly, that the idea of a subcontinental unity stretching back six thousand years is a myth. Secondly, that Gandhi’s injection of religion into the national movement was ultimately a disaster for it. Thirdly, that primary responsibility for Partition lay not with the Raj, but Congress. Fourthly, that Nehru’s legacy to Republic was far more ambiguous than his admirers will admit. Lastly, that Indian democracy is not contradicted by caste inequality, but rather enabled by it.
[Dynasty]
Outsourcing in India and the US Election
by JYOTI SARASWATI
When Romney criticized outsourcing in his election campaign, he broke with Republican tradition.[i] Outsourcing had been one of the few topics in which both parties appeared to genuinely disagree on, the one issue in which the underlying class dynamics of the pro-business Republicans and labor-backed Democrats were laid bare. By taking the lead in condemning outsourcing, Romney has been able to shift the contours of the debate, from the issue of class interests within the US, to the notion of a zero-sum affair between nations. Obama has quietly acquiesced to this new framework.
But how valid is this shift? Can the outsourcing of an American call-centre or software job to Bangalore in India, or a US manufacturing job to China, really be understood in the simple terms of a net loss for the US and a net gain for India or China? Is there a better framework for understanding the process?
There are several ways of answering these questions.
[Offshoring] [US_election12]
For India, the best Olympics news may be that they're almost over
By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers
LONDON — It’s an unwritten rule of the Olympics that there’s no rooting from the press section, but in the closing minutes of a recent men’s field hockey match between India and Belgium, the Indian journalists could no longer hide their partisanship.
“Horrible,” muttered one reporter as an Indian player sent a pass sailing out of bounds, aimed at no one in particular. “Hopeless,” said another reporter, Parvinder Nath, as the clock ticked down on a 3-0 drubbing by Belgium.
The loss on Tuesday mercifully ended India’s Olympic hockey campaign, which produced an 0-5 record in group play. The head coach didn’t show for the postgame news conference, sending in his place an assistant, Mohammed Riaz Nabhi, who said, “We are continuously losing games, so the morale is totally down.”
It’s been another miserable Olympics for India, which by day’s end Wednesday had won just four medals, none of them gold
Trade Gap Strains India-China Ties
By AMOL SHARMA
NEW DELHI—India is pressing China to buy more of its goods—from pharmaceuticals to software—and taking steps to reduce Chinese imports as it grows increasingly worried about its widening trade gap with its Asian rival.
As Chinese-made goods flow into India, a growing trade imbalance is sparking tension between the two countries.
.
New Delhi is frustrated that trade talks launched when Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited India in late 2010 haven't yielded significant benefits. India's trade deficit with China jumped 42% to nearly $40 billion in the last fiscal year ended March 31, and was the largest contributor to the country's overall gap between exports and imports.
In an interview, Anand Sharma, India's commerce minister, said he is "very concerned" about the trade imbalance with China. He said India will be hosting a meeting with Chinese officials this month in which the issue "will be on top of the agenda."
India's trade woes have become a serious economic threat for the nation. The country's current account deficit—which measures the balance of trade with the world—was 4.5% of gross domestic product in the quarter that ended March 31, an all-time high. That has contributed to a sharp depreciation in the rupee and has put enormous pressure on India to attract foreign capital.
The trade gap is one of many structural deficiencies that are plaguing India's economy. Inflation is persistent and economists expect it to tick up more this year. Spending on expensive energy subsidies is weighing down the treasury. And, as was on stark display this week when India suffered the world's largest-ever electricity blackout—covering states inhabited by 680 million people—the country's infrastructure is badly outdated and unable to meet the demands of a huge, emerging middle class.
[China competition] [Trade]
China and India: a reality check
Despite the uncertainties they face, the rise of China and India — particularly China’s growing relative power — is causing alarm in Asia and the US. Some US political leaders and strategists advocate sharply divergent policies toward China and India. They view China as a competitor that Washington should ‘hedge’ against, and they view India as a natural security partner whose power should be enhanced.
But it may be more complicated than simply defining them as either enemies or allies. A ‘reality check’ on the history of Chinese and Indian international behaviour indicates that both China and India will present the US with sustained challenges as well as opportunities in the coming years. Washington will need nuanced, if distinct, approaches to each.
Our book Chinese and Indian Strategic Behavior: Growing Power and Alarm creates a framework for comparing Chinese and Indian international strategic behaviour in three areas: foreign policy, military modernisation and economic strategies.
[US global policy] [Counterbalance] [China confrontation] [India]
India’s American Friends and Iranian Partners
Brahma Chellaney
Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.
Full profile
Jul. 4, 2012
NEW DELHI – The United States recently took the Iran-sanctions monkey off India’s back: it granted India an exemption from Iran-related financial sanctions in exchange for significant cuts in Indian purchases of Iranian oil. Nevertheless, Iran continues to cast a pall over an otherwise brightening US-India relationship.
Illustration by Dean Rohrer
From India’s perspective, Iran is an important neighbor with which it can ill afford to rupture its relationship. Indeed, India already seems locked geographically in an arc of failing or dysfunctional states, confronting it with external threats from virtually all directions.
If India joined the US containment strategy against Iran, it would have to bear serious strategic costs. For starters, it would lose access to Afghanistan via Iran, which has served as a conduit for the substantial flow of Indian aid to Kabul. Moreover, containment would undermine India’s energy interests
[US India] [Tribute]
India, China to Jointly Explore Energy Assets Overseas
By RAKESH SHARMA
NEW DELHI—India and China's largest oil companies have agreed to jointly explore for oil and natural gas world-wide, in an attempt to put aside a long-standing rivalry and better use their combined financial resources and expertise to secure energy supplies for their fast-growing economies.
While the two energy-deficient countries already work together on several international oil projects, they also have a history of bad relations, and of proposing cost-reducing alliances to jointly buy foreign energy assets and crude oil that mostly have come to nothing.
According to an initial pact signed Monday between state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp. 500312.BY +1.67% of India and China National Petroleum Corp., the companies will jointly explore assets in other countries, cementing existing partnerships in Myanmar, Syria and Sudan.
ONGC said in a written statement that the companies also agreed to expand cooperation in refining and processing of crude oil and natural gas, marketing and distribution of petroleum products, and construction and operation of oil and gas pipelines.
[China India Cooperation]
Are Indo-U.S. relations cooling a bit since ’05 embrace?
By Padma Rao Sundarji and Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
NEW DELHI — High-level official visitors to the Indian capital usually don’t skip a photo-op at Rajghat, the memorial in which the ashes of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi, the father of India’s nonviolent independence movement, are enshrined. But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta did.
Before meeting his Indian counterpart during a two-day visit last week, Panetta stopped at India Gate, a soaring stone arch in the ceremonial heart of New Delhi. Head bowed and a hand on his heart, the Pentagon chief stood silently in the blazing sun at the British colonial-era memorial to Indian soldiers who died fighting someone else’s wars.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/06/12/152145/are-indo-us-relations-cooling.html#storylink=cpy
[Counterbalance] [US India] [Deal]
No, India Cannot Be the US’ Poodle
Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR | 20.05.2012 | 00:00
The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's warning about the possibility of outbreak of "full-blown wars" with the use of nuclear weapons in the current global security scenario can be seen as a timely interjection on the eve of the G8 and North Atlantic Treaty Organization summits taking place in the United States. Russia has already put the American hosts on prior notice that it will dissociate from any attempt at the G8 to impose views on Syria or Iran.
Speaking at an international conference on international law at St. Petersburg, Medvedev said on Thursday, “The introduction of all sorts of collective sanctions bypassing international institutions does not improve the situation in the world while reckless military operations in foreign states usually end up with radicals coming to power. At some point such actions, which undermine state sovereignty, may well end in a full-blown regional war and even - I’m not trying to spook anyone - the use of nuclear weapons.”
Is Agni V the silver bullet that India was looking for?
Apr 22, 2012, 07.16AM IST
By: Josy Joseph
In April 19, from a nondescript island off India's east coast, a 50-tonne monster made of assorted metals and classified chemicals blasted off, pierced the Earth's atmosphere, turned around, re-entered it, and plunged into the southern Indian Ocean with a thunderous thud.
Arguably, it was a small, yet, significant step for missile technology, but if you go by 24X7 TV and social media networks, the launch of Agni V from Wheeler Island off the Odisha coast was a giant leap for India. The prime minister congratulated the scientists of Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) - an outfit often pulled up for perceived slowness in cutting-edge research - its scientists were paraded as national heroes; even China took note, making noises about cooperation, not competition.
So, now that the dust has settled well in Wheeler Island, it's time for a reality check. Is Agni V the silver bullet that India was looking for?
[Missile] [China confrontation]
India's Broken Promise
How a Would-Be Great Power Hobbles Itself
By Basharat Peer
May/June 2012
India's political and business elites have long harbored a desire for their country to become a great power. They cheered when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finalized a nuclear deal with the United States in 2008. Indian elites saw the deal, which gave India access to nuclear technology despite its refusal to give up its nuclear weapons or sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, as a recognition of its growing influence and power. And Indian elites were also encouraged when U.S. President Barack Obama announced, during a 2010 visit to India, that the United States would support India's quest to gain permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council, which would put the country on an equal footing with its longtime rival, China. In recent years, such sentiments have also spread to large segments of the Indian middle class, which, owing to the country's remarkable economic growth in the past two decades, now numbers around 300 million. Nearly nine out of ten Indians say their country already is or will eventually be one of the most powerful nations in the world, an October 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey revealed.
Symbols of India's newfound wealth and power abound. Last year, 55 Indians graced Forbes' list of the world's billionaires, up from 23 in 2006. In 2008, the Indian automobile company Tata Motors acquired Jaguar and Land Rover; last year, Harvard Business School broke ground on Tata Hall, a new academic center made possible by a gift of $50 million from the company's chair, Ratan Tata. And in 2009, a company run by the Indian billionaire Anil Ambani, a telecommunications and Bollywood baron, acquired a 50 percent stake in Steven Spielberg's production company, DreamWorks. Gaudy, gargantuan shopping malls proliferate in India's cities, and BMWs compete with auto-rickshaws on crowded Indian roads. Tom Cruise, eyeing the enormous Indian movie market, cast Anil Kapoor, a veteran Bollywood star, in the most recent Mission: Impossible sequel and spent a few weeks in the country to promote the film. "Now they are coming to us," one Indian tabloid gloated.
A New Great Game in the Asia-Pacific
by Deepak Tripathi
On April 19, India tested its first inter-continental ballistic missile, named Agni-V, and joined the select group of nations possessing both nuclear weapons and a delivery system capable of hitting targets across continents. Only a few days before, nuclear capable North Korea had test fired a rocket, supposedly to place a satellite in the orbit, but it failed.
Within days, India’s long-time adversary, Pakistan, tested a more advance version of its Shaheen-1 missile. Named Shaheen-1A, it is capable of hitting targets between 2000 and 3000 miles––a substantially upgraded intermediate-range ballistic missile. Before the latest launch, Pakistan’s longest-range missile, Shaheen II, was thought to have a range of less than 1500 miles.
[Missiles] [Counterbalance]
India being swept up by missile delusion
Global Times | April 19, 2012 00:38
By Global Times
India announced a test of its long-range nuclear-capable Agni V missile. The missile has a range of over 5,000 kilometers, meaning it could reach China. India apparently is hoping to enter the global intercontinental missile club, despite intercontinental missiles normally having a range of over 8,000 km.
India has moved rapidly in developing missile technology. It successfully launched the Agni IV with a range of 3,500 km last year. Indian public opinion has long seen China as its reference point for military development.
It seems India's path for boosting its military strength has not met too many obstacles. India is still poor and lags behind in infrastructure construction, but its society is highly supportive of developing nuclear power and the West chooses to overlook India's disregard of nuclear and missile control treaties. The West remains silent on the fact that India's military spending increased by 17 percent in 2012 and the country has again become the largest weapons importer in the world.
India should not overestimate its strength. Even if it has missiles that could reach most parts of China, that does not mean it will gain anything from being arrogant during disputes with China. India should be clear that China's nuclear power is stronger and more reliable. For the foreseeable future, India would stand no chance in an overall arms race with China.
[China confrontation] [Missile] [Double standards]
India tests long-range nuclear missile
India launches nuclear-capable missile that would give it capability of striking major Chinese cities for the first time
Share23
Reuters in Bhubaneswar
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012 04.54 BST
In this photo released by Indian Ministry of Defense, India's Agni V missile lifts off from the launch pad at Wheeler Island off India's east coast. Photograph: AP
India test-fired a long range missile capable of reaching deep into China and Europe on Thursday, thrusting the emerging Asian power into an elite club of nations with intercontinental nuclear weapons capabilities.
A scientist at the launch site confirmed the launch was successful, minutes after television images showed the rocket with a range of more than 5,000km (3,100 miles) blasting through clouds from an island off India's east coast.
"It has met all the mission objectives," SP Dash, director of the test range, told Reuters. "It hit the target with very good accuracy."
The Indian-made Agni V is the crowning achievement of a now-mothballed missile programme developed primarily with a possible threat from neighbouring China in mind.
Only the UN security council permanent members - China, France, Russia the US and Britain - along with Israel, are believed to have such long-range weapons.
Fast emerging as a world economic power, India is keen to play a larger role on the global stage and has long angled for a permanent seat on the security council. In recent years it has emerged as the world's top arms importer as it rushes to upgrade equipment for a large but outdated military.
"It is one of the ways of signalling India's arrival on the global stage, that India deserves to be sitting at the high table," said Harsh Pant, a defence expert at King's College, London, describing the launch as a "confidence boost".
The launch, which was flagged well in advance, has attracted none of the criticism from the west faced by North Korea for a failed bid to send up a similar rocket last week.
[Double standards] [Media] [Missile] [China confrontation] [Inversion]
India tests missile capable of reaching Beijing
By Simon Denyer, Updated: Thursday, April 19, 5:31 PM
NEW DELHI — India successfully test-launched a long-range missile Wednesday that would give it the capability of sending a nuclear warhead as far as China’s capital, Beijing, for the first time, officials said.
Officials and defense experts said that the Agni-V missile would mark a significant improvement in India’s nuclear-deterrent capability and strengthen its hand in a hostile neighborhood, where the country is sandwiched between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and China.
The head of India’s Defense Research and Development Organization, Vijay Saraswat, said the missile was launched just after 8 a.m. from Wheeler Island off eastern India.
It rose to an altitude of more than 370 miles and its payload was deployed as planned, he told Times Now news channel.
[missile] [Double standards]
The two views on India’s Narendra Modi
By Simon Denyer, Thursday, April 5, 2:34 PMThe Washington Post GANDHINAGAR, India — He is widely touted as a possible future prime minister of India, but he is a pariah in much of the Western world. Some in India call him a role model, their country’s most competent leader. Others accuse him of being complicit in the mass murder of Muslims.
Narendra Modi is probably India’s most complex and divisive figure, a man whose rise could kick-start the economy but whose Hindu nationalist leanings would polarize the country along religious lines and potentially, critics say, undermine the long-cherished secular identity of the world’s largest democracy and a key American strategic ally.
Since Modi, Gujarat has seen faster economic growth than the nation as a whole
The chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat, Modi is fawned over by business leaders for the way he has rooted out corruption and promoted economic and industrial growth. His fast-growing state has attracted investment from all over India as well as from American companies such as Ford and General Motors.
Yet he has been denied a visa to visit the United States over allegations that he failed to prevent Hindu mobs from massacring between 1,000 and 2,000 Muslims during riots in his state in 2002 or that he even actively encouraged the slaughter.
[Communalism] [Spin]
Inside India's defence acquisition mess
Praveen Swami
Even as armed forces are being called on to prepare for a two-front war, they're short of everything from tanks to helmets
Less than two years ago, Defence Minister A.K. Anthony directed the armed forces to prepare themselves for a nightmare scenario: a two-front war with nuclear-armed Pakistan and China. In the years since, two new mountain divisions and a third artillery division have been raised; an air assault division, two mountain divisions, and an entire new corps are being assembled.
In a leaked March 12 letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Chief of the Army Staff General V.K. Singh has revealed a somewhat darker reality: the artillery and tanks that make up the backbone of these formations are near-defunct and the air-defence systems protecting them obsolescent.
[China confrontation] [Military balance]
Arms Sales for India
How Military Trade Could Energize U.S.-Indian Relations
By Sunil Dasgupta and Stephen P. Cohen
March/April 2011
Article Summary and Author Biography
With India planning to buy $100 billion worth of new weapons over the next ten years, arms sales may be the best way to revive Washington's relationship with New Delhi, its most important strategic partner in the region.
Much has been made of U.S. President Barack Obama's pledge to support India's push for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, which was offered during his November trip to India, but the real story from his visit was its implications for bilateral military trade. During the trip, Obama announced that the United States would sell $5 billion worth of U.S. military equipment to India, including ten Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft and 100 General Electric F-414 fighter aircraft. Although the details are still being worked out, these and other contracts already in the works will propel the United States into the ranks of India's top three military suppliers, alongside Russia and Israel. With India planning to buy $100 billion worth of new weapons over the next ten years, arms sales may be the best way for the United States to revive stagnating U.S.-Indian relations.
[Arms sales] [Nuclear deal]
Ssangyong issue to entangle Indian PM
Kim Jeong-woo, left, leader of the former Ssangyong Motors labor union, talks to Abhijit Roy, an Indian Embassy official, Wednesday, on his delegation’s request for a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his forthcoming visit to Seoul. They want Singh to help reinstate fired workers at the automkaer now under Mahindra’s control.
/ Courtesy of Federation of Korean Metal Workers Trade Unions
By Kim Tae-jong
Members of a labor union visited the Indian Embassy in Seoul, Wednesday, and requested a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reinstate laid-off workers from Ssangyong Motors, which is now owned and managed by Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian company.
[IJV] [Labour]
Fulfilling the promise of India’s manufacturing sector
India’s product makers have a golden opportunity to join the global big leagues. They should seize it.
MARCH 2012 • Rajat Dhawan, Gautam Swaroop, and Adil Zainulbhai
Source: Operations Practice
..India’s manufacturers have a golden chance to emerge from the shadow of the country’s services sector and seize more of the global market. McKinsey analysis finds that rising demand in India, together with the multinationals’ desire to diversify their production to include low-cost plants in countries other than China, could together help India’s manufacturing sector to grow sixfold by 2025, to $1 trillion, while creating up to 90 million domestic jobs.
Four imperatives for India’s government
India’s central and state governments must eliminate four barriers that slow down the efforts of the country’s manufacturers to improve their capital and labor productivity.
[Manufacturing]
How multinationals can win in India
Companies should avoid simply imposing global business models and practices on the local market.
MARCH 2012 • Vimal Choudhary, Alok Kshirsagar, and Ananth Narayanan
Source: Strategy Practice
..Over the past 20 years, multinational companies have made considerable inroads into the Indian market. But many have failed to realize their potential: some have succeeded only in niches and not achieved large-scale market leadership, while others haven’t maximized economies of scale or tapped into the country’s breadth of talent. The experience of a leading multinational consumer goods company illustrates the challenge: its revenue in India has grown by 7 percent compounded annually in the past seven years—almost twice the rate of the parent company in the same period. Nevertheless, the company’s growth rate in India is only about half that of the sector
[MNE]
Afghanistan stands by bidding process for Hajigak mine
Jon Stephenson McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan's Ministry of Mines on Saturday rejected allegations of problems in the bidding for one of the country's largest mines, calling it "a fair and transparent process."
In a letter to McClatchy, the ministry's director-general for policy and promotion, A. Jalil Jumriany, said that the selection of bids for four blocks of the Hajigak iron ore mine in central Afghanistan was overseen by a team of Afghan government experts, and that a panel of international advisers found that the process was "conducted according to international standards."
However, Jumriany's letter did not challenge the main points in a McClatchy report published Friday, which raised allegations of flaws in the bidding process and that the winning bidders — a state-led Indian consortium and a Canadian firm — hadn't demonstrated that they could meet production targets
[Client] [Decline] [India US]
Problems alleged with major Afghan mining deal
Jon Stephenson and Ali Safi McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan-American company that failed to win a multibillion-dollar contract to develop one of Afghanistan's most lucrative mines alleges that the bidding process was riddled with irregularities and that the winning bidders may not be able to meet production targets.
The claims, which were backed by a former senior Afghan mining official, suggest that a potential key source of revenue for the Afghan government — which will be saddled with massive bills after U.S. forces withdraw from the country — could be in jeopardy.
[Client] [Decline] [India US]
India walks tightrope as U.S. toughens Iran sanctions
By Simon Denyer, Wednesday, February 15, 5:16 AM
NEW DELHI — A bomb attack Monday on an Israeli diplomat’s car in New Delhi underlines the tough balancing act that India has to perform as it attempts to manage its relations with the United States and Israel, and with Iran.
Despite Iran’s denial that it was involved, the incident complicates an equation that India has managed adroitly for years. As U.S. pressure mounts on Iran, the government in New Delhi finds itself in an increasingly uncomfortable position: Its dependence on Iranian oil and unwillingness to join U.S.-led sanctions against Iran put it at odds with Washington over a top U.S. national security priority.
[Iran] [US India] [Tribute] [Subordinate]
India Explores Economic Opportunities in Iran, Denting Western Sanctions Plan
By RICK GLADSTONE
Published: February 9, 2012
India emerged as a major new irritant on Thursday in Western efforts to isolate Iran, announcing that it was sending a large trade delegation there within weeks to exploit opportunities created by the American and European antinuclear sanctions that are increasingly disrupting Iran’s economy.
[Iran] [Sanctions] [Subordinate] [Decline]
India Defies Sanctions, Won't Cut Iran Oil Imports
By ERIKA KINETZ AP Business Writer
MUMBAI, India January 31, 2012 (AP)
India has joined China in saying it will not cut back on oil imports from Iran, despite stiff new U.S. and European sanctions designed to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program.
[Iran] [Sanctions] [Client] [US China]
France to sell Rafale fighter jet to India
By Edward Cody, Wednesday, February 1, 6:21 AM
PARIS — After more than two decades of trying, France apparently has finally found a foreign customer for its Rafale fighter jet, reaching an $11 billion deal with India for 126 planes and a heavy technology transfer, the government announced Tuesday.
India’s choice of the Rafale, assuming it is finalized, was hailed as a lifesaving commercial victory for Dassault Aviation, a private firm that developed the swept-winged aircraft in the 1980s but until now had managed to sell it only to the French air force, despite aggressive marketing around the world.
India has entered into “exclusive negotiations” on prices of various components of the deal and the type and manner of technology transfers, officials said. They cautioned that the accord could still come undone but appeared confident that, for all practical purposes, the sale has been made.
“France is delighted at the decision by the Indian government,” said a communique from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Elysee Palace. “Negotiations on the contract will begin soon with the total support of French authorities. It will include important technology transfers guaranteed by the French government.”
India’s decision to enter into exclusive negotiations means that if the final discussions are successful, 18 Rafale jets will be constructed in Dassault plants in France and 108 in India, according to descriptions of the bargain in Paris. In that light, the technology transfer appeared to be an important part of the deal, reflecting India’s desire to improve its aeronautics industry as well as equip its air force with modern warplanes.
The Indian decision was between the Rafale and Eurofighter’s Typhoon. India had already announced it would not buy two U.S. planes that were offered for its consideration, Lockheed’s F-16 and Boeing’s F/A-18. Lockheed’s more modern F-22 was not offered.
[Arms sales]