India and China have been on the news for their exponential growth in the past few years. With India’s economy growing at an unprecedented 8%, are we seeing any improvement on the country on a macro-scale? Perhaps, it’s too soon to see changes. Technology and out-sourcing is the primary cause for the boom in our economy. With such a narrow cause, we are providing opportunities for a slice of India’s work force. I suppose this is good because we do produce over a million technology/engineering related graduates a year. The cream of the crop is absorbed by elite companies to enrich their employee base with talented, skilled workers to increase their profit margin. In the recent years, we have also seen an influx of employment from the medical, law and business sector, to alleviate bloated costs of foreign companies, as we provide a cheaper, yet brilliant task force for routine jobs.

However, it seems like the improvements in standards of living are purely urban, and in the upper bourgeoisie. The rural parts are still impoverished, and people die unnecessarily from lack of basic amenities and food. Agriculture is still the largest source of our income, and that has not seen the necessary change to help the farmers from difficulties. I believe that the money needs to be allocated differently, and we need to make changes in our domestic policy to alleviate the conditions of the common man. For one, we spend an obscene amount of money on Defense. Also, we need to fix our foreign policy issues related to Pakistan. A lot of our problems stem from that dispute.

The plight of the common populace of the country has not changed, and till that happens, our progress is inconsequential. We do NOT want to further alienate the poor, and create a rift between the upper and lower economic classes. Right now, the rich are getting richer, and poor are staying poor. The only improvement has been in the standard of living of youth in technology, business, medical and law job sectors. That is not right. We need an overall positive change, not segmented.

The inspiration for this post is from Pankaj Mishra’s op-ed “The Myth of New India” in NY Times.

If the op-ed is unavailable on NYT, follow the link below for the full article.

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• The Myth of the New India - New York Times
  (tags: economics media opinion)

The United States is still the dominant force in technology, innovation, productivity and profits. But Americans don’t quite realize how fast the rest of the world is catching up.

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The headlines are about low-wage illegals, but Mexico is swiftly upgrading its workforce. Another reason that US needs to worry about the outsourcing issue..

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There were a few bits about double standards and hypocracy which included Google and US foreign nuclear policy. Most of you must have heard about DoJ’s subpoena to Google for a one-month search records, and Google’s challenge to that. It’s obviously an user privacy issue on grass roots level. I know that the government doesn’t want specifics but rather trends from search history to battle paedophilia. But Big Brother society coming out in the open has to start somewhere. For those people who tell me that NSA and other agencies have already been doing that, they have been doing so with stealth. This is one of the first times I remember this kind of issue being public. On the flip side, we have Google’s censoring its Chinese portal to comply with the Chinese communist regime. It’s business. There are a ton of other businesses out there complying with the local laws. And from what I read, some of it is actually protecting the Chinese public from getting themselves into trouble. Did you hear about a Chinese blogger being arrested and detained after Yahoo! gave the Chinese authorities his information? Which would you rather have? Safety with censors or freedom with the chance of being arrested? I suppose you would like the choice, eh? And recently, with the introduction of Google Desktop 3’s new feature of searching across networks by sending the index to Google has sent the consumer privacy groups up in arms. This time I agree. I would not like to send personal private information anywhere online especially if I didn’t know for sure who had access to that information.

I guess this is good for now. Food for thought, or discussion.

I know that Discovery probably featured the possibility of this engineering marvel a few years ago. However, it was brought to my attention only a few days back. I was fascinated by the implications of this railroad tunnel. A travel time of 52 minutes from New York City to London is stupendous. It’s five times faster than the Late super-sonic Concorde. A thousand passengers traveling in utmost comfort, at a mind blowing speed of 5000 mph. The kick that this project would create will be great for engineering and science in general because new technologies have to be invented and old ones streamlined for such a dangerous endeavor. It would be great for our world because it would need global alliances for a project of this scale. Investment-wise think International Space Station, but on earth. Actually, underwater. Across the most tumultuous water body on the planet.

Yeah, I am going to into science where I need people to think about the future and progress. But I am a pragmatist.

Technorati Tags: Science, Engineering, Water, Travel, Transit, Train, Tunnels, Business, Ocean, Atlantic Ocean

Outsourcing outrage Indian call-center workers suffer abuse

I wonder what your views on outsourcing are. I wouldn’t mind a discussion on this topic.

U.S. reaches Net detente with U.N. | CNET News.com

A compromise has been acheived. Looks like US keeps hold of the internet with an international oversight committee. Lets see how this works.

WSJ.com - Thinking Global

I finally see some official debate on the internet governance issue between the US and the rest of the world. Yet another installment about this issue.

Slashdot | Congress Pays You $3 Billion to Keep Watching TV

This just makes me mad. These budget cuts in NSF funding directly hurts me and science research in general. Additionally, we are spending 3 billion dollars of friggin’ television. What the hell?