Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Distinguished teamwork

Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to participate in the Inside China article (Business & Economy cover story for the month of August 2012). I am impressed by the knowledge and expertise of the authors and the overall quality of production. Your staff did a terrific job of adding graphics, tables, photos and editorial changes to my humble story. It has received positive reviews from friends, family and colleagues for its level of professionalism and polished appearance. I especially enjoyed reading the China: Read. Learn. Repeat article by Prof.A. Sandeep. The focus on the Chinese auto industry was spot on and well written. I am pleased to be associated with such a distinguished collection of experts. Thank you once again.

Arthur C. Wheaton
Director, Western NY Labor and Environmental Programs & Faculty of Industrial Relations, Cornell University ILR School

Great issue on Reverse Innovation/Exnovation

The Business & Economy issue on ‘Reverse Innovation/Exnovation’ (cover story for the month of October 2012) was simply a great issue and I totally loved it. You have exactly captured the essence of reverse innovation. In my view, Reverse Innovation represents the biggest opportunity for India in sectors as diverse as transportation, energy, health care and education.

Prof. Vijay Govindarajan
Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business, Tuck School of Business University of Dartmouth


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles

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Saturday, May 04, 2013

Exorcising the demons of the 1962 Indo-China war

Fifty years ago, India and China fought a bitter and brutal war sparked off by mutual distrust and acrimony. Today, though both countries continue to build and strengthen bilateral ties, the memory of that war still haunts the two countries .

The commemoration of 50 years of the India-China war is now upon us. On October 20 1962, China launched a two-pronged offensive in Ladakh and across the McMahon Line, overrunning Indian forces in both theatres and capturing Rezang la in Chushul in the western theatre, as well as Tawang in the eastern theatre. Then, a month later, on November 20, the Chinese declared a ceasefire and announced the withdrawal from the conflict zones.

After the war, India claimed that China was occupying about 33,000 square kilometres of its territory in the Aksai Chin region of Ladakh. China laid control over Aksai Chin, a high altitude desert, and established the current Line of Actual Control following the short border war. Despite the region being nearly uninhabitable, it remains strategically important for China as it connects Tibet and East Turkistan, China’s occupied western frontiers.

Excuses have been thrown up for the Indian military debacle. India was ill prepared; it believed in non-violence; it trusted the Chinese and in the ‘Hindi-Chini bhai bhai’ shibboleth. Fingers have been pointed, most famously at then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, defence minister Krishna Menon, and Lieutenant General B.N Kaul, who was in charge of the army on India’s eastern frontier. But even fifty years later, people of India are not still unaware of the circumstances and reasons that led to India’s defeat.

Successive Indian governments have refused to release the Henderson-Brooks report that investigated the lapses of 1962. The report submitted by Lt.Gen. Henderson Brooks and Brigadier P.S. Bhagat in 1963 was presented to prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and a couple of ministers. Unfortunately, the report remains “top secret” till date. The government made a statement in Parliament on May 10, 2012 that the Report of the Operations Review Committee on the 1962 war will not be published following an order of March 19, 2009 by a Bench of the Central Information Commission as it is likely to have a security bearing on army’s operational strategy in the north-east and deployment of forces along the line of Actual Control.

According to a widespread view among many scholars of the India-China war, China wrongly believed that India was going to seize Tibet after providing political asylum to the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama. Also, India’s forward policy of building new outposts along the de facto line of control, even pushing that line forward, annoyed China immensely. According to a recently published book on the India-China war by a senior Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise) official K.N. Raghavan, India erred in unilaterally fixing her borders with China in 1954. This, along with India’s decision to give asylum to the Dalai Lama, made China suspicious of India, says the book, titled ‘Dividing Lines’.

Despite the 1962 war, the border dispute between Indian and China has proved to be a tough nut to crack. The two countries share a border that is approximately 4,000 kilometres long but border disputes continue to prevent the full normalization of relations despite almost a quarter decade of negotiations. The Sino-Indian war crystallized and enshrined the suspicions and stereotypes that each side held of the other. To this day, Beijing suspects that India, with the help of the U.S., strives to undermine its rule in Tibet in order to balance against China’s growing power.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall
Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
BBA Management Education
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Monday, December 03, 2012

Now for some ‘Healthistaan’

Pepsi’s new initiative in rural markets faces a branding challenge

Phew! For a change, this is a refreshingly different story. At a time when companies are actually turning enemies of scale, PepsiCo India is actually continuing its untethered initiatives to achieve it in India. Claiming that the FMCG sector remains barely moved by the global slowdown otherwise troubling various industrial sectors of the world, Indra Nooyi, Global Chairman & CEO recently spoke with B&E to inform, “Irrespective of the recession, our sectoral volume growth has been not affected.”

Nooyi has just propagated the ‘Power of one’ strategy globally, and restructuring in India is on track with respect to this strategic direction. PepsiCo India and Frito-Lay will now come under Sanjeev Chadha as one entity and exploit mutual synergies. The company has earmarked another $500 million for expansion in India, hoping to triple its business in the Indian market. It’s a different matter that the company has also announced investments of $3 billion in Mexico and $1 billion in China recently!


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.

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Thursday, August 23, 2012

THE WORLD TODAY CAN ONLY IGNORE STAKE HOLDER ACTIVISM AT THEIR OWN PERIL

BE IT LEE SCOTT, RICHARD PARSONS, AKIO TOYODA OR HOWARD SCHULTZ, CEOS OF THE WORLD TODAY CAN ONLY IGNORE STAKE HOLDER ACTIVISM AT THEIR OWN PERIL

With the rise of blogs, such negative backlash can assume alarming proportions. A research conducted by University of Georgia, which studied three anti-brand websites for in-depth analysis: anti-Wal-Mart, anti-McDonald’s and anti-Starbucks, concluded that such blog activism activity actually hurts the company reputation as the word spreads faster than one can imagine. To tackle this form of activism, companies are launching their own communication platforms. According to industry reports, 15.8% (89) of Fortune 500 companies are blogging. Another case in point when discussing consumer activism is Toyota’s recent product recall, which fortunately hasn’t done much damage due to the company’s past reputation. In US, Toyota is facing 200 legal cases due to recalls related to faulty engineering. Contrast this with the fact that there are zero lawsuits against Toyota in Japan. Interestingly, Japan’s most famous consumer activist Fumio Matsuda is frustrated because there has been no consumer outburst pertaining to the recall in Japan. He says that the revolutionary activism he had ignited in Japan decades ago has lost momentum. According to Matsuda’s blog, “The Japanese these days are defending Toyota as though it is getting bashed unfairly.”

Employee Unrest becomes Activism

In today’s times of uncertain business fortunes, it is often natural for employees to feel that they are getting the shorter end of the stick. This is increasingly evident in China, where activism is actually getting well organised and hence dangerous for the establishment with associations being formed and legal advice also being sought. The younger lot of migrant workers there are far more aware of the happenings around the world and about what their rights should be, a trend with workers across the globe. Among the complaints of workers is the misuse of the ruling on the minimum wage by the government of 1100 yuan. Often, that’s all that owners provide them. Wages are not the only bone of contention in such cases. In a bizarre twist of events, 800 workers at the Carlsberg brewery went on a five day strike on April 8, 2010. The reason was a new company policy that put a ban on the drinking of beer during work hours. Earlier the workers were entitled to three free beers a day, which was brought down to just one during the lunch break. The strike caused the brewery to halt operations and delay domestic shipments for two days. This policy change by Carlsberg was a healthy and positive step but it faced huge agitations from workers. The strike at BA in 2009 was more about retrenchment policies. BA decided to reduce its staff strength by about 5,000 by March 2010, introduce changes to staff contracts and carry out a 2-year pay freeze plan. This led to huge disagreements between the workers union and the airline management, which led to cancellation of BA flights between December 22, 2009 and January 2, 2010. The 12 day planned strike by the cabin crew cost BA $5.6 billion, not to forget the loss on the reputation front. It is indeed risky to ignore employees in today’s time.

Green Activism

Exxon’s Valdez oil spill in March 1989 was one of the biggest man made environmental disasters before the current BP oil rig leak (refer to the special coverage on BP in this issue). It occurred when an oil tanker on its way to Long Beach California hit Bligh Reef and “Eleven million gallons of oil spilled into Alaska’s Prince William Sound; killing hundreds of seals, thousands of otters and hundreds of thousands of seabirds. Alaska’s marine life is still eating oil from the spill two decades later,” says John Hocevar, Oceans Campaign Director, Greenpeace USA. After the event occurred, all the blame was put on Exxon for the horrible disaster and Exxon was held responsible for loss of livelihood (fishermen) and wild life in the Alaskan region, “When the spill occurred, Exxon lied, covered up as much information as possible, and also enlisted an army of lawyers to fight the claims of fishermen and other injured parties. Of the plaintiffs in the litigation, over 6,000 died in the 20 years it took to settle the claims, ” says Dan Strickland, Bristol Bay Fisheries Liaison for Alaska Marine Conservation Council. And as the BP case shows, an environmental disaster can be even more damning in today’s time and age.

Relevance of the green word today hardly needs a mention. It may not even need a disaster at times. Wal-Mart is an acknowledged ‘enemy’ of the environment by green groups. Part of the problem is its size itself, which automatically means a huge carbon footprint attributable to one irresistible target company. Its logistics in US alone involves a mammoth number of 7,000 tractors and 50,000 trailers. The company was slapped with fines for environment damage across 9 states in 2004 and has come under fire for alleged water pollution, greenhouse emissions, et al. It responded by unleashing a campaign in 2005 under the then CEO Lee Scott, which also laid out a target to reduce greenhouse emissions in its operations by 20% in seven years and improve fleet efficiency by 25% in three years. Now Wal-Mart makes it a point to highlight its green initiatives. While the scepticism persists, the lesson cannot be missed. If you are taking actions on the environment front, ensure that the world knows. Genuine intent is important; a strong communication campaign all the more.



          
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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

GURCHARAN DAS, MANAGEMENT GURU AND PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

India’s economic journey from the times of the measly Hindu rate of growth is indeed incredible. Economic reform coupled with administrative reform is the way forward

Things began to change with modest liberalisation in the eighties when annual economic growth rose to 5.6%. This happy trend continued in the reform decade of the nineties when growth averaged 6.2% a year, while population slowed to 1.8%; thus, per capita income rose by a decent 4.4%.

Gaurav Datt and Martin Ravallion, both respected economists, employed a new series of consumption-based poverty measures from 1950 to 2006 and 47 rounds of National Sample Surveys, to show that slightly more than one person in two lived below the poverty line in India during the 1950s and ‘60s. By 1990 this had fallen to one person in three. By 2005, it fell again, and only one in five persons now lives below the poverty line. The authors conclude that “the post-reform process of urban economic growth has brought significant gains to the rural poor as well as the urban poor.”

An earlier study by the two economists had examined the period prior to 1991 when our economy grew more slowly. India’s per capita GDP grew at an annual rate of barely 1% in the 1960s and 1970s; it picked up to 3% in the 1980s; and accelerated to 4-5% after 1991. In the pre-1991 period, modest urban growth brought little or no benefit to the rural poor. Rural poverty decreased only through rural growth, such as the Green Revolution.

In another study comparing India, China and Brazil, Martin Ravallion shows that China (with higher growth) and Brazil (with lower growth) have done a much better job at poverty reduction. India’s failure in education and health is not a function of money alone, as the Prime Minister suggested this week when he vowed to raise spending on education to 6%. When one in four teachers is absent and one in four is not teaching, we need accountability in delivering services to the poor. Thus, administrative reforms are just as important to the lives of the poor than even economic reforms.


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