Putin Out - Medvedev In (Putin In)

When Vladimir Putin came to power, on New Year’s Eve, 1999, we learned that he was a judo expert, that he had a poodle named Toska, and that his grandfather had been a cook for Lenin. But the most salient fact about him was that he was a career K.G.B. agent. And, in eight years as President of the Russian Federation, Putin has been as true to his school as any Old Etonian. According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a well-regarded sociologist in Moscow, who studies the biographies of the Russian élites, Putin has filled the leadership ranks with former officials from the K.G.B. and the F.S.B. As he once told an assembly of officers at Lubyanka, “There is no such thing as a former agent.”The most salient fact about Medvedev is not that he will have been elected by the Russian people to be their President but that he was selected by Putin to be his junior partner. Medvedev, of course, understands his role. In the speech in which he announced his candidacy, he thrilled the spies, bureaucrats, and corporate barons who depend on Putin for their status and their wealth by declaring that, if, perchance, he was lucky enough to win, he would make Putin his prime minister. It was at that moment that Dmitry Medvedev became five feet three.

Smoke on the Water: Comment: The New Yorker

Economics of IPL - The Indian Premier League

While searching on Internet for the economics of IPL (the Indian Premier League, which is roughly modelled on EPL and NBA), I found this wonderful article in Deccan Herald. Read On -

How much BCCI will earn?
* The bidders pay only 10 per cent of the price they offered to buy each team, which means Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Group needs to pay a little over Rs36 crore for the first year, with similar amounts for the next 10 years.
* Of the total Rs 2,894 crore bid amount for the eight teams, the board will get about Rs288 crore each year.
* The Board also earns money raised from the sale of TV rights (Rs 4,000 crore put up by Sony and World Sports Group). That amount is also to be paid over 10 years.
How do the franchisees make money?
* Of the amount raised as TV rights each year, approximately 60 percent is distributed among the eight franchise owners as their income from TV rights.
* The franchisee also gets gate collection money; can raise further revenue from logos on T-shirts,merchandising and other promotions.
How much do teams earn?
* The tournament, involving teams based in eight cities, will be held in eight cities under floodlights for 44 days beginning April 18. The prize money will be approximately Rs 16 crore.
* Each team will play 14 matches, seven at home and seven away.
What’s in it for the players?
* The auction money may range from a few lakhs to a few crores. For example the Icon Players -- Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Yuvraj Singh -- will get 10 to 15 per cent more than the other highest paid players.
* Minimum salary to be paid for a player around Rs 8 lakh per year with a contract of minimum of three years. The salary can shoot up to Rs 1.6 crore (Shane Warne’s reported fee).
* Even Anil Kumble, who has retired from the shorter version of the game, will get around Rs 1 crore. Harbhajan Singh too will cost around while Irfan Pathan will be cheaper by around Rs 30 lakh. The T20 stars like Robin Uthappa, Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag will cost a neat Rs 80 lakh.* Players can also earn from individual endorsements deals.

Deccan Herald - On super highway to super power

Also see the details of auction of players here.

China to Change One-Child Policy?

Taking clues from the Malthusian logic, China successfully enacted the One-Child policy to control the burgeoning population. However, over the years, this compulsion is showing more ill-effects than the benefits. There is a news that China is muling over a change in this policy. May be China look at her neighbor - India. In India, sometime ago there was a debate as to how to reign in India's population growth. India took the route of non-coercive policy measures for achieving the same result. In India, the process of slowing down population growth is painfully slow - it relies more on public education, awareness creation and most importantly woman empowerment. However, one benefit of this slow progress is that there is a lot of progressive fine tuning happens and this is beneficial in long run. Anyways, China is now waking up to the unintended consequences of a coercive regime. Read on...

"Under the current mandate, Beijing limits most urban couples to one child and rural couples to two to conserve scarce resources. Critics say the policy has led to forced abortions, sterilisations and a dangerously unbalanced sex ratio due to a traditional preference for male heirs that has prompted countless families to abort female foetuses.Southern China's Hunan province has had nearly 1,400 cases in the past three years involving illegal use of ultrasound to determine a foetus sex and abortions of female foetuses, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.More than 1,100 people received party discipline or administrative punishment, the report said. Seventy-five doctors lost their licences.Potential changes in the family planning policy also stem from concerns about China's aging population, with those aged 60 or older expected to top 200 million by 2015 and 280 million by 2025, according to the government."

China reviewing one-child policy - World - smh.com.au

Is Indian BPO Inductry Losing Its Sheen?

Sramana Mitra thinks so. In her Forbes article she has focused on the thinning competitive advantage that India has in terms of lower wages. She predicts that by 2015, this wage difference will disappear and so will be the BPO's in India. Interestingly, she doesn't talk about the quality of workforce in India. Combined with lower wages, the highly qualified taskforce is India's competitive edge; not lower wages alone. That's the reason why India is moving from BPO to KPO (Knowledge Processed Outsourcing). However one thing is sure that in India we do have Infosys and Wipro's but India still does not have Microsoft & Google & SAP. Barring Zoho, I don't see a single Indian company which is into products.
Read on the original piece -

"Forbes recently published some scary statistics on wage inflation in India. (See "Indian Employees Enjoying Swift Pay Hikes.") Salaries rose 15.1% in 2007, up from 14.4% the previous year. The 2008 forecast: 15.2%. This would be the fifth consecutive year of salary growth above 10%.Add to that the appreciation of the rupee against the weakening dollar, and its impact on the labor arbitrage market.Is the death of Indian outsourcing all that far off?Assuming a 15% year-to-year salary hike rate, and a 2007 cost advantage of 1:3 in favor of India, if U.S. wages remain constant, India’s cost advantage disappears by 2015. Then what?"

The Coming Death Of Indian Outsourcing - Forbes.com

Microsoft Foresaw Vista Problems - WSJ.com

A Microsoft Corp. executive last year said the software company made a mistake by lowering the minimum technical requirements needed to run Windows Vista, a decision he said was made to help Intel Corp. meet its quarterly earnings, according to internal emails disclosed this week.The emails provide a glimpse into how Microsoft executives and hardware partners grappled with technical glitches and other problems as they prepared the long-awaited Windows Vista software for market. The emails were released as part of a federal class-action suit alleging that Microsoft's marketing program for Windows Vista misled consumers.In several of the emails, Microsoft executives appear to be planning how they will explain to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner how a branding program implied that certain PCs were technically capable of running Windows Vista operating system when, in fact, they weren't. The emails also show how Microsoft executives struggled to respond to complaints from a Microsoft board member about technical problems he had encountered.

Microsoft Foresaw Vista Problems - WSJ.com

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