Manohar Parrikar, who just became India's new Defense Minister is a workaholic engineer with a passion for cricket, is known to be both an able administrator and a master vote-getter In 1988 he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the former Portuguese colony of Goa, where the party was...
India's Perception Gap exceeded only by China and Russia
The Reputation Institute of the UK asked residents of more than 30 countries rate their home country on the basis of “overall respect, trust, esteem, admiration and good feelings” and also to rate other countries on similar measures The “Reputation Gap” plots the difference between the two sets of scores...
Low Cost Water Purifer: Bottom of the Pyramid innovation from Tata
Tata Chemicals is challenging Unilever's India unit for the world lowest cost home water purifier, based on a rice husk ash filter. With a starting retail price of $16 for the unit, it costs less than half of Hindustan Unilever's breakthrough PureIt unit which has been a runaway success in...
Mathematicians in Movies: Only in Bollywood
Sir Ben Kingsley, who played the the title role in 1982's Oscar-winning Gandhi (and much less remembered role in the worst movie of the 21st Century so far, the Love Guru) is soon to be seen in a Bollywood movie, Teen Patti ( three cards, or three-card poker). Perci Trachtenberg...
Powerful women in India
While half of India's women are illiterate and many who are in poverty have little power and freedom, a different picture emerges at the highest echelons of power and education in the country. In politics, government and in corporate boardrooms women abound. Here is a sampling of some names who...
India's powerful have American links
Business Week just published its list of India's 50 most powerful people . You may be surprised how many of them have strong links to the West, most often to the United States. Among captains of industry, Ratan Tata has a degree from Cornell, Mukesh Ambani studied at Stanford’s Graduate...