May 2009 Archives

You would have heard about the recent restrictions that US government is putting on outsourcing services and export trade for other countries.. majorly affecting Indian and Chinese interests in the US market.

I subscribe to a newsletter from a non-government, non-profit 'National US INDIA chamber of commerce', which reports 'clear-and-accounted' lobbying of some Indian companies in the US for easing US stand on its restrictions..

India Inc paying millions on lobbying in U.S.

Wednesday,6th May 2009

Washington: Indian companies, including top corporate entity RIL and industry body Nasscom, are paying thousands of dollars on lobbying with lawmakers and government departments in the U.S. on issues ranging from immigrant visas to bilateral trade and individual business ventures.

Four Indian entities - Reliance Industries, Nasscom, Sun Pharma and Orchid Chemicals - have together paid close to $2,75,000 (about Rs 1.4 crore) towards lobbying their causes during the first three months of 2009, says the disclosure reports filed by lobbyists firms with the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Out of this, RIL has paid $1,90,000 to BGR Holding, a high-profile lobbyist group that has many Fortune 500 firms and foreign governments as its clients, for providing 'strategic counsel on issues related to trade.'

Incidentally, the U.S. Congress and House of Representatives are currently considering new legislations to penalize companies that supply petroleum products to Iran, which includes RIL. The penalty could include a ban from doing business in the U.S. Besides, Nasscom has paid $70,000 to the same lobbyist, BGR, in the first quarter of 2009 for lobbying on international technology and immigration issues.

Indian software industry has reacted sharply to the recent moves by the U.S. administration to put curbs on H1-B visas, a skilled foreign worker visa that have largely been given to Indian IT professionals in the past.

While the payment made by Sun Pharma in Q1 2009 is below $5,000, Orchid Chemicals has paid $10,000 for lobbying on issues related to the U.S. drug regulator FDA's policies. Sun Pharma's lobbying issues have been related to the citizens' petitions and FDA reforms. While there are no past disclosures about RIL's lobbying attempts, Nasscom, Sun Pharma and Orchid have been quite active on this front in the past.

Purnima Voria, Founder/CEO
National US India Chamber of Commerce (NUICC)

My take:

US 's recent restrictions on trade is more so like war-time Restrictions / Sanctions which could have very serious reverberating summary effect on the industries.. especially in India, because India's software industry and general economy itself is very much dependent on business with the US.

While US is doing this as a economy-saving measure for themselves, they are actually making it worser for them without realizing it, because these restrictions would mean many US industries or products built there will be more costly than in recent past, though there will be advantage that unemployment problems in US will get a breathing, and also US people will grow more mature to have competitive salaries in their jobs and more drive to make cheaper products or services.. rather than thinking cheaper always means outsourcing or allowing the markets to import.

An important thing of Note about US: I don't know How and Why the US legalises things like Lobbying the senate and lawmakers, spending billions for election campaign taking money through donor companies/industries itself, and all..

If bribing a senator to help work on a law is accounted as legal as 'Lobbying' or such people as 'Lobbyists', accounting those costs, then it is like just running a Casino.. not a government I think.

Also, if companies/industries can donate huge sums legally (after paying taxes) to the republicans or democrats, and if the parties can spend any amount for election campaigns, then I think they are just making all their hard earned money flow into forming a government which will then run the casino.. and all politicians and lobbyists make lot of money, and people make "nothing".. all this legal.

It is typically a routing that politicians in america have created over the years to bring all the money to their coppers.

There are presidential campaign reported expenditure websites and accounted statements online, which have something like 20-60 billion US$ being spent by the ruling party's next presidential campaign. That is a horrifying canal route bleeding every American's pocket to make that sum. The capitalist organizations bleed the people by over-pricing their products, then donate it to presidential campaign funds. .. This happens in every country.. but then, it will only be a few hundred millions.. not any close to the figures that americans pay to their president and his people.

First Americans have to correct all this, rather than stupidly thinking that buying services from India / China is costing them their economy. Buying from these countries could only make their economy stronger because of cheaper costs.. Is it real that they don't understand that ?, and they still believe all their president's and governments words about where all the money has gone ?..

If you didn't know.. I recently got married.. to be exact on April 9th.

Many of you, my friends, graced the occassion with your presence, or phone call wishes,.. or even through emails.. it was nice of many of you to do that, finding time.. I can't remember how many times I have missed attending friends marriages or even dropping in an email.. so it was great.

And so, whether you are a friend or a foe, relative or a stranger.. you might be interested to see the photos of my marriage and the wedding reception.. in the below link. The marriage was a traditional fare and you will find 40-50% of the process same as what any average hindu marriage follows in India.

You can find photos here:
MyPhotos.HarishPalaniappan.com

I / Triveni will be excited to see your comments on the photos if you get time. Thanks.

Finally, I have fully moved to using windows vista from xp for... everything.. from development, to blogging at home, to browsing the internet... and I am happy I made this shift soo much later after vista arrived (what a couple of YEARS back already!!).

The shift to vista, more than anything else, becomes more safer an OS for me to rely on these days, after going through all kinds of childish viruses.. if they were intelligent viruses atleast i would have had nice time trying to find a fix.. but these childish viruses would come in through a weakness of firefox or internet explorer, write some dlls on my laptop, overwrite explorer.exe to create those dlls everytime explorer.exe did anything.. and what for all this.. just to make more channels open, close firewall blocks, disable antivirus .. to just have fun having taken over some space on my laptop..

other than that the writers of those viruses achieved nothing.. typically nothing.. i didnt lose any files, i could even work normal offline, and only when i connected to internet they used my internet bandwidth to spread making my laptop a host.. again all that for nothing, but just to go to another system or a usb key, or a cd written.. on my system. Children who learn software try all this, trying to disable something and say 'wow my code shutdown the computer' like stuff when they learn new programming areas.. and get happy about the *achievement*.

so, with vista's security features, which is like even if you open a program on your laptop, vista will ask did u try to open this to verify security.. the childish safety issues which eat up a looot of productive time is now secured.. but only for now.. i think with simple modifications in the code of those children.. even the 'did you want to run this program' request could be avoided or already answered programmatically.. and the children will be back.

anyways.. giving me back my productive time... and for sometime allowing me to not bother about the best way to block children viruses.. which is installing a personal firewall managed by me with a password on my laptop.. and allowing or blocking each and every port and request on the computer .. this would be pain to do.. so i am happy that i don't have to do this for sometime.

also, i think Microsoft is fully focussing on supporting vista and malware affecting vista or program updates and security updates for vista.. so much that .. I really see a lot of windows update items available every now and then when my laptop automatically checks, which is far more than what windows update items or frequency of updates are available for windows xp off late..

Vista, in the US costs close to 50$ if I am right.. and with a decent firewall + antivirus like AVG/ mcAfee internet suites.. for a few extra bucks.. should be all that is neccessary for a pain-free internet access laptop.

Why a firewall.. windows firewall is easy to hack.. Microsoft has clear specs and allows programmatic control of windos firewall which a hacking program can easily manage without your knowledge.

Though those 'Do you want to run this program', 'Did you try to open network properties, if yes, press continue' are frustrating.. I think this is going to be the order of the day hereafter on windows OSes, and that should be good news for MAC-OS or linux based systems which are at present less vulnerable to viruses or hacking..