Friday, October 20, 2006
Nearly $300,000 Wall Street Paycheck Not What It Seems
New York State Comptroller Hevesi Figure's Means Many Bankers Make Less ... a Few Make a Lot More
By HARI SREENIVASAN
Oct. 20, 2006 — - An average compensation of $289,644 sounds pretty good for the population not working within a mile of the New York Stock Exchange. But according to New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi in a new study, that is what the average salary is on Wall Street.
To be clear, that doesn't mean that all bankers make this much. It means that there is a large army of men and a few women who make much less -- and a few very, very wealthy individuals who make an astronomical sum of more.
First, this not the average salary -- it's the average compensation, which includes a bonus.
Most of the investment banks, asset managers and hedge funds structure their overall compensation on relatively low salaries and bonuses proportioned to the revenue generated by the employee.
For example, if you work on a team that helps one Fortune 500 company merge with another and that acquisition brings in $25 million in business for your firm, you can expect your bonus in January to include a small slice of that. If you manage a portfolio of a billion dollars of someone else's money, you will likely share a percentage of the profit that you bring to that billion.
"It has been a good year for investment bankers. There have been a lot of mergers and acquisitions fueled by a rise in equity," said Andrew Barber, associate editor at Trader magazine. Trader is a lifestyle magazine geared toward professional traders who Barber says likely bring home much more than the average from the recent study.
When Business Is Good, So Is Competition
According to the report, compensation on Wall Street increased almost 22 percent in 2004 and an additional 11.8 percent in 2005. Barber says part of the reason for the increase is that when business is good, competition for top talent gets ferocious. "Large Wall Street banks have been a magnet for top traders and top investment bankers," Barber said. "Places like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have had to work hard to keep their best employees," he said.
Whether it is marquee investment banks competing against one another for the talent, or hedge funds and asset management firms recruiting the same leaders, executive recruiting firms like the Gerson Group are at times almost tracking indexes of market confidence. Maureen Brille, managing director of the Gerson Group, helps place some high-priced and high-value talent throughout the investment banking world. "It's not about the money most of the time, it is about succeeding and excelling for most [of] our clients," she said.
When the overall compensation can include guaranteed bonuses or equity in a firm that could be in the seven- or eight-figure range for managing director level executives, not too many people are thinking about the $300,000 base salary.
While difficult to comprehend for those outside the business, people working in the profession justify their earnings in several ways. "I've worked 80-hour weeks every year since I've come out of college, and when you think about the fact that I personally generated $185 million in revenue last year for my firm, my bonus seems appropriate," said a vice president level investment banker at a top tier Wall Street firm who asked to remain anonymous.
A Manhattan hedge-fund manager who took home more than $2 million last year said that he had generated wealth for his clients, and that none of them had complained about what they had paid him. "It isn't like I'm making the money when they're not. When we have good years, everyone gets paid," he said.
Good Times in Cycles
Times are not always this good. Barber remembers that there have been lean times even in recent memory. "Being an investment banker in 2001 and 2002 was about as easy a path to riches as being a stock trader in 1931," he said, referencing The Great Depression.
Brille also emphasizes that this is as pure a performance industry as there ever has been created. "You have to produce every year. You have to be originating, bringing in business. Maintain long-term knowledge of the transactions, and you have to keep closing deals," she said.
While Trader magazine may be filled with advertisements for $300,000 cars and $10 million yachts, the irony is that some of the people who can afford these toys rarely have the time to enjoy them. "Most of the people have to work tremendously long hours and spend a tremendous portion of their adult lives to reach that level. Having the time to enjoy them is another matter," Barber said.
Copyright
© 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
posted by h |
6:22 PM
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Passage to India, For Surgery
Passage to India, for Surgery
Americans Flock Overseas for Affordable Medical Procedures
By HARI SREENIVASAN
VIDEO
Oct. 19, 2006 — - With the rising sun comes the morning chores, for 60-year-old Dodie Gilmore of Caddo, Okla. She heads out to feed the cows in the fields and the catfish in the pond on her 180-acre ranch. She then heads off to work as a real estate agent in nearby Durant. Showing property in these parts of Oklahoma isn't as easy as pulling into the driveway of a McMansion and showing someone around. It involves hopping out of the car repeatedly to open and close lots of gates on big tracts of land, something that has become increasingly difficult for Gilmore because of the arthritis in her hip. "It's bone grating on bone ... you're never out of pain," says Gilmore.
For more on Americans going overseas to get medical procedures, watch "Nightline" tonight.
Her insurance called this a pre-existing condition and surgery to replace the hip wasn't covered, so Gilmore went online and learned about a procedure called hip resurfacing. She was given estimates of $28,000 to $40,000 for the surgery in the United States -- well beyond the wallet of her or her employer.
But she found that the surgery is performed in India at a fraction of the cost.
A trip to India, she learned, organized by an intermediary called PlanetHospital would bring her surgical costs down to $7,000. She could even take her sister Carol from Oregon along, stay in a hotel for a few days after, and the total bill wouldn't climb past $10,500 (shopping not included). It was an idea her boss, Martin Van Meter, supported.
So earlier this month, Gilmore decided to go to India, joining a growing number of Americans who in recent years have gone overseas to get medical procedures that they can't afford at home.
On Oct.5, Gilmore and her sister flew to India, spending 30 hours in planes -- no small feat for someone who has trouble sitting or standing in one place for too long. Arriving in India late at night, she was whisked off to Max Hospital in New Delhi, which resembles a fancy hotel, with glass doors, large sky-lit lobbies, and marble floors that seem to be constantly getting mopped and waxed.
A cadre of staff was waiting and over the next 24 hours while waiting for the surgery, more than 20 personnel would rotate through her room. There were junior and senior residents and attendings, nurses and their supervisors, internists, orthopedists, a dietitian and psychiatrist.
"They get to spend a lot of time with you, and they're genuinely concerned about your problems. In the states, all I would've gotten -- speaking from experience of having a broken leg -- is they just buzz through your room and it's just ... very quick, very impersonal treatment," Gilmore said.
The operating theater was clean and ultramodern and included a high-tech ventilation system that whisks any germs from the operating team away from the patient. The hospital says the infection rates are well below the ones tolerated by the World Health Organization and even the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gilmore's surgery at Max Hospital took place the morning of Tuesday, Oct.10. The whole procedure took less then a half an hour.
It went very well, Gilmore said. She felt great and was up and walking just two days later. She's still in New Dehli, staying at a hotel near the hospital with her sister. She goes in next week to get her stitches out and said she hopes to head back home before the end of the month.
The titanium parts that were used in Gilmore's procedure are so new, they are still awaiting U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
Gilmore's surgeon, Dr. S.K.S. Marya, has already performed more than 150 of these procedures using the new device. He has trained all over the West, including in the United States, England, Switzerland and Australia, and has published in academic journals and recently finished writing a book on hip resurfacings.
The group that helped organize Gilmore's trip, PlanetHospital, has relationships with hospitals in at least seven countries, and all patients have to do is show up, CEO Rudy Rupak said.
"We take care of everything, from their hospital, the airlines, their hotels," Rupak said. "When they arrive in the country of their choice, one of our team members is there to greet them. We take them to their hotel or hospital. We take them to the doctor. We act as their advocate in the country so that if they're not happy with the doctor or the surgeon or the hospital, we'll take them to another place. If there's a dispute with the bill, we stand on the patient's side to fight on behalf of the patient to get satisfaction in their ways."
Van Meter tries to run a profitable small business, but something about these wide-open spaces brings people together a bit more. "We're kind of a family. Dodie needs this help, and we're willing to help her if this is the only way that she can get the surgery that she needs," said Van Meter, who knows that keeping a fit and productive real estate agent will pay dividends.
"Dodie and she will pay me back many times with her being able to go back into the field, you know, sell a ranch (and she) could get my money back," he said.
It is a choice so many small businesses struggle with -- how to balance the bottom line with the needs of their employees. Overseas medical travel has been popular for a long time for those patients seeking more minor procedures, like cosmetic surgery, but now everything from hip to heart to brain surgeries are available overseas -- at a fraction of the price.
Rick Wade, spokesman for the American Hospital Association, said the hospitals in his network aren't concerned yet. But he admits that this is a sign of how broken some parts of the American medical system are. And he wonders whether people are willing to take all the risks involved in globetrotting for medical care.
"Does it make a difference to you that there has been a military coup outside the hospital where you just went for surgery?" Wade said. For some doctors, though, the trend is cause for concern.
"I think the number of people considering going overseas for care should be an absolute red star, if you will, to health policy makers to everyone in elected office, that this system is in serious trouble," said Nancy Dickey, the president of the Health Science Center and vice chancellor for health affairs in the Texas A&M System.
Dickey points out there could be a rise in postoperative care back in the United States if there are complications, and warns that there may not be malpractice laws in place in other countries. But she acknowledges these are some of the reasons health care in the United States is so expensive. "I may do tests, extensive imaging ... not because I want those test results but because I want those test results to protect me down the road in case you want to sue me," Dickey said.
The cost disparity between health care in the United States and in other countries helps create a market that companies like Planet Hospital thrive in. "An international price comparison of 15 procedures reveals that there could be savings of around $1.4 billion annually, even if only one in 10 U.S. patients choose to undergo treatment abroad," World Bank economist Aaditya Mattoo wrote in the journal Health Affairs. However, the World Bank report also found that health insurance providers discriminate based on location of care, meaning many just won't pay for medical care overseas. There is only so far "out of network" you can be.
In the room next to Gilmore's at her New Delhi hospital was another American hip patient, Rick Thues, a 53-year-old computer consultant from California who loves to skydive and wanted legs strong enough to land on. He said he would have preferred to go to a hospital in Orange County, Calif., where one of the pioneers in the field works, but that his HMO let him down.
"They denied my requests for hip resurfacing, even though it costs no more -- they didn't have a code for it -- and therefore they flat denied my hip resurfacing as opposed to hip replacement," Thues said.
Thues took his claim to the state board of appeals and lost, although one doctor agreed that it was the right surgery. The other two believed there wasn't enough historical evidence: Hip resurfacing has only recently been approved in the United States. "I don't think I had another choice. I really don't. What could I have done? I -- well, I could've paid more money. I could've waited four to six months. I could've gotten last year's prosthetic. But I didn't. I decided I wanted the state of the art, and I wanted it now because I needed it now," he said.
Max Hospital is one of nearly a half dozen new hospitals popping up within a half hour of the Delhi International Airport. By the year 2010, there will be 2000 more Western-standard hospital beds -- at Indian prices. Many of the new hospitals are already accredited by an organization called the Joint Commission, which also helps set the standard for thousands of hospitals in the United States, and has approved more than 100 hospitals around the world in the past six years.
One of India's most ambitious new hospitals, in the town of Gurgaon, was spearheaded by Dr. Naresh Trehan, the most prominent heart surgeons in India today. He used to work in the United States but came back to build a hospital that offered the same standard of care for his countrymen back home.
The existing hospital already handles a volume of heart surgeries greater than most Western hospitals, but his latest research specialty institution hopes to combine the best of Eastern and Western medicines for both international and domestic clients. "International patients are great, but you have to realize there are 300 million middle-class Indians who can afford the kind of care we are providing," Trehan said.
Analysts wonder what impact this will have on health care in the United States. People like Dodie Gilmore are finding less-expensive health care outside the United States, and the quality of care she received in India has reset the bar for what she feels entitled to in a medical experience. "I really believe that health care is really the only industry in America that's never really had competition before, and competition is healthy," PlanetHospital's Rupak said.
Copyright
© 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
posted by h |
9:36 AM
Behind the Scenes of a 'Nightline' Report
Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan and Producer Deborah Apton's Travels to India
Reporters Notebook By HARI SREENIVASAN
Oct. 23, 2006 — - The piece you see on "Nightline" is entirely shot by producer Deborah Apton with yours truly using our mini-DV cameras. So it doesn't have the glow of fancy lights, but it tells a story.
I'm a native of India, still a citizen of the country, and speak some languages well enough.
We followed Dodie Gilmore and her sister Carol from rural Oklahoma to New Delhi, and watched a process called medical tourism or medical value travel firsthand.
We spent most of our time at the Max Healthcare facility in New Delhi, a shiny, new hospital that resembles any you would see in the West, with a Subway sandwich store in the cafeteria and gleaming marble floors. The difference, of course, is that cows sometime wander across the parking lot, to Deborah's unending amusement. She was on her first trip to India.
We would schlep our gear to and from the hospital almost every day, documenting different pre-op tests Dodie was having.
Some things that didn't make it into the finished piece were the occasional linguistic and cultural gaps. Almost the entire staff of nurses and doctors spoke English; some had a stiff accent while others didn't. There were moments when Dodie was a bit flustered and called for a different staff member to make sure both parties understood. To be fair, these moments were not that frequent.
When Dodie's name was incorrect on the hospital door, she was a bit worried. The vials during her first blood draw the next morning also had the wrong name. It was a small clerical error that was in fact rectified very quickly, but it was one of those things that was unsettling in a foreign land, when one is about to go under the knife. Fortunately the rest of her stay and surgery went smoothly.
There is the matter with the cell phones. They do not stop ringing. There were multiple occasions during consultations with Dodie where doctors took a cell phone call. I even watched it happen in the operating theater with people who were not directly involved with the surgery, though that isn't uncommon in the United States. A couple of my surgeon friends told me that a nurse held a phone up to their ears at times when I called.
Shooting the surgery was very cool. I've been in an operating room once before to shoot eye surgeries, and being in that environment is a rush. Perhaps the coolest part is that you are seeing something most people will never see. Hip resurfacing is a very mechanical surgery. There is hammering, drilling, pounding. It was amazing to think that there was a leg and a hip in there, and even more bizarre to think that Dodie was attached and semiconscious -- thanks to a spinal anesthetic -- during the process.
Besides the operating theater footage, it was exciting to shoot from on top of a construction crane at the medi-city site in Gurgaon. I had the assistance of the tower operator named Rajnikanth because we couldn't get Deborah to overcome her fear of heights. To be honest, I was a bit unsettled climbing a 75-foot tower without a harness, and with a camera strapped through my belt. I'm sure the construction equipment was up to standard, but there were some gusts of wind that could have made me a very different part of the story.
We also shot in the alleys across the street from the hospital and other general street life from Delhi. I've never shot in India in the company of a fair-skinned American before, so it was a slightly different experience. Deborah was an attraction, and I pretty much looked like her employee/cameraman. There are lots of cable TV channels in India that shoot using similar cameras, and I think people are pretty accustomed to seeing them out on the streets. When, however, you have a Caucasian in the mix, things change a bit.
Because I'm a vegetarian, Deborah became one for the week as well. We'd lunch at nice hotels for about $25 or $30. For dinner, we'd head to a place known as the Bengali market and eat street food called chaat. It's tasty, and I don't think I saw a single foreigner at either of the two establishments we frequented. The bill usually came out to a whopping $4. I think we splurged and had dessert once, which might have pushed the bill closer to $5.
The Gilmore Girls -- as we liked to call them, though that isn't Carol's last name -- were very accommodating. We'd like to thank them for their patience in allowing us into their hospital room every day, sometimes accidentally waking them from a nap, and filming all sorts of tests, pokes and prods that Dodie experienced before, during, and after the surgery. It was also great to meet Rick Thues, Dodie's neighbor, in the hospital. He is recovering from his hip resurfacing, which happened just days before hers. He has been blogging about his trip (http://imentor.us.)
Check the India section for his pictures and thoughts on medical travel. He is an avid sky diver, and I've jumped about a dozen times in college. It's always good to meet another person who would step off a perfectly good airplane in midair so I'm glad we met.
Overall the only logistical thing I'd change about the trip was that on our incredibly tiny budget, we flew coach/economy. Though we were on separate flights and separate airlines, Deborah and I got seats on the way back that didn't recline and my aching back is proof of it.
Hope you enjoyed it.
Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures
posted by h |
9:30 AM
Monday, September 18, 2006
Freddie Hoffman Has Peddled More Than 1.3 Million Miles By HARI SREENIVASANVideo of InterviewSept. 18, 2006 — - It doesn't take long to realize that there is something special about Freddie Hoffman. Whether it's his firm handshake, his intense stare when he meets someone, the cadence of his voice or the matter-of-fact nature of his words, it's clear that Hoffman will do whatever he sets his mind to. Born with an oxygen deficiency to his brain, Hoffman entered the world with certain challenges most of us will never face. The sense of self-esteem, which might have been torn down by the cruelty of children on the playground, came back a pedal push at a time once Hoffman discovered the freedom he could have on two wheels. "Other boys didn't accept me, so I turned to my bicycle as a brother, companion and even a playmate and counselor," said Hoffman. It was something I could do on my own without the help of others." Inspired by watching astronauts land on the moon, Hoffman realized at a young age that his limitations would keep him from becoming an astronaut, in the literal sense. So he decided to ride the distance to the moon (approximately 238,856 miles) on his bicycle. Now 48, Hoffman long ago reached that goal. He said he's totaled 1.3 million miles, far enough to make it to the moon and back -- twice. "I actually have a lifetime average of 81.4 miles per day over the past 41 years. My diary has recorded about 24,700 days riding and approximately 1,500 days that I entered zero that I didn't ride," Hoffman said. He has taken thousands of photographs of places he has been. His travels have taken him across the United States more than 20 times, over all 48 contiguous states -- across mountain passes and deserts, through the smallest towns and the biggest cities, sometimes to the most desolate corners of America. "I've been on roads that are not even published on maps where I could go all day. ... I had one instance in Nevada where I rode 200 miles, and not a car passed me on the highway," he said. Hoffman rides not for himself but for his mother and the 19 other relatives he has lost to leukemia and lymphoma, as well as everyone else affected by these diseases. Almost every summer he raises thousands of dollars through pledges from neighbors in his native New Jersey and friends he has made all over the country. There are no fancy colored wristbands, no marketing campaigns, just Hoffman going door-to-door. Last year, he reached almost 5,000 people. Click Here to Learn More About Leukemia and Lymphoma Hoffman does admit to getting something out of it himself. "To go up on a mountain pass that is so high that I'm looking down on the clouds and know that I pedaled up that with my strength and determination -- there's just a special feeling of accomplishment," he said. Hoffman has worked as a janitor at the same church for decades and spends most of his time taking care of his father, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, but his burdens shift from his shoulders to his legs every day as he rides through life. Hoffman doesn't own a car, because he can't get a driver's license, but ironically enough, he has been nominated for an award recognizing outstanding human beings in the Volvo for Life program. Hoffman's bicycle "rocket" that he built for himself is named after his mother, Ruth. He has worn through other rocket ships. He's on bike No. 4 now, and he rides so far and so hard that he wears through the teeth on the chain ring -- a collector's item that he gives to some of his longtime financial supporters. Hoffman has outfitted his bike with all sorts of gadgets, from altimeters to odometers to a radio. When he loads it with all his tools, supplies and gear, it weighs more than 100 pounds. He rides with a confidence that slips past most of us. Hoffman continues to be a guiding star for those he inspires. He doesn't know where the end is yet, how many more miles he wants to ride or where he wants to go, but he credits some old-fashioned virtues that continue to propel him. Hoffman said, "If you want to do something bad enough, even if it's improbably hard and very long, even if you have to do it one tiny piece at a time, stick with it. Don't worry about how long it takes and eventually you'll get there."
posted by h |
3:20 PM
Friday, September 01, 2006
Witch Movie Opens This Weekend: Know Before You Go REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK By HARI SREENIVASAN Sept. 1, 2006 — - Nicholas Cage and Ellen Burstyn -- some serious star power for the remake of an odd, cultish (figuratively and literally) low-budget '70s British horror film -- but that is what's opening this weekend at theaters nationwide. The rough plot of "The Wicker Man" is a very Christian policeman who investigates a missing girl on a very remote island. The locals are very secretive, and practice a very twisted version of pagan rituals -- and I don't want to give away the end of the film, but suffice it to say that the policeman is in for a surprise. The movie plays on a tension between Christianity and Paganism, throws in some sexually provocative scenes and, voila, you've got a "classic." Pagan, in Latin, means from the country or rural citizen, so before you get the idea that it is all about animal sacrifice and devil worship, realize that most indigenous religions are by definition pagan -- the word doesn't carry any of those stereotypes in its definition. It is also important to keep in mind that while we look at paganism, our piece looked at one branch, Wicca -- and that there are several sub-branches of practices and faiths. One thing both the witches we spoke to in the piece strongly agree on is that there is no devil worship or human sacrifice in their craft, and that there never will be. Paganism flourished in the 1970s and '80s and according to a religious studies professor in California there could be anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 people who practice the faith around the United States. Pagan rituals like the burning of effigies to send a message to the powers that be are still practiced today -- take for example the annual Burning Man festival, which is currently under way in the Nevada desert. Some branches of pagans are polytheistic, some aren't, some follow the Wicca tradition, some are Dianic, some are Gardnerian -- there are several flavors. I didn't know much, if anything, about witchcraft, except for the cheeky stereotypes I'd grown accustomed to from Halloween and caricatures of what a witch ought to look like from cartoons and movies. So for the piece our crew wandered into the hills of upstate New York, to meet the Wiccan witch of Woodstock -- and as I say in the piece, the only thing wicked about her is her sense of humor. Susun Weed is a high priestess in the Dianic tradition, a branch that reveres the Goddess energy. She says that the celebration of the female is something that draws young people to her practice, because it is at its very core, empowering women. Weed said witches were women of power all through the ages and have always been scapegoated. From the inquisition to the Salem witch trials, they were targeted by organized religion and others who were interested in suppressing their power. Hundreds of years ago a man could mix chemicals and be considered a scientist, if a woman was to make potions with herbs she would be considered a witch. Once condemned, a witch would have to pay for her jailor, her judge and even the wood that burned her at the stake. It was a great scam for the state or the church in power to reclaim property that a woman might have owned. Another reason that witches suffered persecution, Weed said, was because of their seeming immortality. Ever wonder why all the caricatures of witches include long noses, ears and chins? Susun said it is something that naturally happens when you reach very very old ages -- a buildup of extra cartilidge -- so these women in the Middle Ages who might have lived to be 90 or a 100 were more than anomolies, considering how short the life expectancy was for people of that era. Those who didn't understand how the witches were healing themselves, feared them. Weed is a green witch -- another way to think of a green witch is as an herbalist. She teaches her apprentices how to make magic potions and how to cast spells. She even taught me how to cast one. More on that later. While she does have brooms, she told me that a witch's broom is only a staff of power in disguise. No, they don't fly -- I asked. Green witches are at home in the woods -- and Susun is certainly that. We walked through her parcel of land, which used to be an old rock quarry, through what seemed like an enchanted forest. We got to the only flat mesa and stood on rock that had been carved out by the glaciers -- the heart center of her land, as she put it. It is her grand altar. She showed me how dancing in a circle in opposite directions can loosen up the energy of a space and then taught me what she says is her most powerful spell. Now, before you think I've sold out of the correspondent gig and become a warlock like ones you see on "Bewitched," there is one simple thing you should understand about witchcraft -- karma. Several witches believe that any spell they cast will come back to them threefold. If you are truly interested in using your powers of witchcraft against something or someone instead of for the improvement of others, there is an inherent interest then in killing your enemy with kindness, not by wishing harm upon them. So for example, if you really couldn't stand someone, you wouldn't try to inflict pain on them because you might feel that pain somewhere else in your life threefold. Instead, you might wish them a wonderful opportunity somewhere far away from you. So the spell she taught me to cast on a boss I might not get along with included the following words, "I (insert your full name) exist in the universe. My boss (insert name) exists in the universe. There exists a connection between my boss and I that brings about pleasure and beauty." Thats it, simple as that. Whatever the fate of my boss, it's probably not as bad as that of the wickerman.
posted by h |
9:13 AM
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
July 12, 2006 
ABC News Now anchor Hari Sreenivasan blogs: If you watched some of the cable networks in the United States, you might think that terrorism just reached India -- that somehow post 9/11, post Madrid, post London, India was getting a wakeup call. It reminds me of the old adage if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really fall. Do you remember hearing about the Diwali blasts in India last year that killed almost 60 people, how about the time terrorists attacked the Indian parliament and engaged police in a gun battle, or how about when a bomb went off at the stock exchange at the city then known as Bombay? Then again, if you listened to half the newscasts in the U.S. or even saw an Associated Press wire story, you'd notice many of the stories still calling the city by the old name. The name is Mumbai by the way - and it has been for 11 YEARS! While the covers of Foreign Affairs, The Economist, even TIME magazine have begun to put the hackneyed "call center to the world" story to bed and begun featuring India as an up and coming global power, people don't read too much beyond that headline. There has been a significant disparity in the coverage that India gets for its economic prowess and the security challenges it faces. Leave it to Sumit Ganguly, the Tagore Professor of Indian Cultures and Civilizations, and a Professor of Political Science at Indiana University to put it bluntly "India is as much a victim of terror as Madrid, or London, the world can't pretend that brown lives are not worth the same, terrorism is seamless regardless of where it happens". India is a country that has managed in fits and starts to be engaged in an incredibly fragile peace process with Pakistan -- two countries cleaved apart on a drafting table as a side dish that came with independence as the main course almost 60 years ago. There have been 3 bloody wars between neighbors after a partition which caused as much heart ache and bloodshed as any family torn apart in the West Bank or the Gaza strip -- over a spectacular piece of earth named Kashmir, but that sort of history and context isn't part of the diet of information served or consumed here. Politics are no different in India -- except that the largest democracy on earth deals with more than a billion people instead of the 300 million which the most famous democracy on earth tries to represent. The prime minister has spent a tremendous amount of his political capital on continuing to engage Pakistan in peace talks; the explosions on the rails provide a fine opportunity now for politicians in Mumbai and other parts of the country to take advantage of this tragedy to support hawkish agendas. Business can be just as punishing as politics. The stock markets have already assigned Indian owned companies traded on global exchanges more than a slap on the wrist. Call it the terror or security premium, but now bombs in Mumbai affect bank books in Minneapolis. Ultimately not learning about what matters to India, or the politics of South Asia will cost Americans. A democratic nuclear power sandwiched between two non-democratic nuclear neighbors, with a revved up economic engine, and a track record for dealing with terrorism in close quarters for decades, still probably won't get the sort of coverage you saw from Madrid and London.
posted by h |
2:33 PM
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
July 11, 2006
ABC News Now anchor Hari Sreenivasan blogs:  Enough people have walked up to me in the office today wondering whether the Mumbai trains are really as crowded as the statistics or Wikipedia say they are. Yes, and then some. Getting on a rush hour train at Churchgate Station in downtown Mumbai will redefine your sense of personal space. (At left, outside Churchgate Station today.)
From the second you stand on the platform and realize that people are only getting closer to you in their attempt to get on the train -- to the moment you literally feel your feet leave the ground because the force of the crowd pushing you on board is so tremendous -- you are almost crushed by people.  Everyone dreads it, but they all have to do it in order to get on and off the train and get to and through their daily lives. Some will chant a prayer out loud as the train pulls up for its 10-15 second stop. When on the train, people let out a chuckle, smile and almost see themselves like athletes who just finished a difficult event. The rides are so crowded that people even take the train in the opposite direction to one of the ends of the lines -- just so they can try and get a seat when the train turns around. (At right, a rush hour train from SFGate.com)
Train cars are brimming with human beings. The young and macho make a habit of riding at times completely on the outside of the train, with their feet in the windowsills and fingers gripping the rain gutters. The etiquette is that if you've enjoyed a seat for half the ride, stand for the second half -- allowing the person who has been cowering over you a seat. The rails are the life blood of a city of approximately 20 million people carrying more than 6 million people a day. While the very rich might have the luxury of being driven through the congested streets, most of the middle class still find this the most efficient way to get to and from work.  While cities like New York have instituted random bag checks on the subways, Suketu Mehta, author of an award winning book on Mumbai called "Maximum City" says there is just no way to screen for suspicious packages on a train system serving as many people. "There are fisherwomen carrying fish, people with livestock in the third class cargo compartments, everyone has a package of some sort -- when an Indian travels, he carries his home with him." (At left, police investigate one of the bombing sites.)
Within a few hours of the attacks some trains were operational again, because India has no choice.
posted by h |
5:35 PM
Thursday, March 03, 2005
written: 2/15/05
published: ABC News.com
Reporter's Notebook: Sri Lanka and Baby 81
The Road to Kalmunai Offers Glimpses of an Island Nation
By HARI SREENIVASAN
Mar. 3, 2005 - Kalmunai is a small village town on the east coast of Sri Lanka. In recent weeks, it has become pretty famous as the home of Abilass Jeyarajah, aka Baby 81.
A couple of weeks ago, while traveling in South Asia, I got a call at 3:45 a.m. local time to get to Kalmunai for the moment when authorities once and for all put an end to the controversy surrounding the true identity of the boy's parents.
Following is a travelogue of how I got to Kalmunai, which might help you gain some insight into this remarkable story and the family at the center of it.
As soon as the plane touches down in the capital, Colombo, Sri Lanka sends its humid fingers in to welcome you. Though the people may look Indian and some may be speaking an Indian language (Tamil), the island nation of Sri Lanka is NOT India, nor does it want to be taken for a satellite office of its neighbor to the north.
You realize it quickly when all of the banks at the airport refuse to exchange your Indian rupees for Sri Lankan ones. It feels like a credit card commercial where they tell you to bring your card because they don't take Indian rupees.
Although I was born in India, lived there when I was young and still visit annually, I had never managed to visit Sri Lanka. As long as I can remember, I had always heard more about its civil war as a reason to stay away than any other reasons why I should go visit.
There is a good amount of textile and garment exchange flowing between India and Sri Lanka and you notice it on the flight and at baggage claim, where gentlemen (they are usually men) are carrying the maximum weight possible (and often more) in the way of bound and saran-wrapped bundles of cloth.
These individuals are bringing across hundreds of kilos of fabrics in the form of saris or lungis (male lower body wraps which are common in South Asia) or bolts of cloth that will make their way into the malls and small stores all across the country.
Buying a commercial airline ticket is the cheapest and fastest way for these men to get cloth into the country. The alternative would be to ship it and have it sit on a container ship for weeks. In the United States, the immigration service would call these people mules because their sole purpose is to carry goods across borders.
Garment manufacturing is one of the prime sources of income to Sri Lanka. If you check your closet, somewhere in the mass of Made in China labels you're likely to find something you wear from Sri Lanka.
Kalmunai is about 185 miles east of Colombo, on the other side of the island. It's about the same as driving from New York to Boston, from Cleveland to Detroit, or from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon. But it's not quite as easy. On this island, it takes seven to nine hours.
The one-lane/no-lane blacktop tar roads burp and hiccup beneath you. They snake over lush, forested hills and across open valleys filled with rice fields. They sidewind up steep switchbacks where your car jockeys for position with small rickshaws and large trucks packed with goods.
You pass hamlets with names likely as hard to pronounce for a Western tongue as names of parishes in rural Louisiana. Some big cities have names as easy to say as Kandy (in the middle of the country) or, of course, the capital, which might remind Americans of the doddering detective played by Peter Falk.
You pass villages of Muslims. A relatively small minority in Sri Lanka, they live peacefully down the road from growing numbers of freshly converted Sinhalese and Tamil Christians. These communities are still nowhere in size compared with the more than 70 percent Buddhist population.
When you cross over the mountains in the middle and make it to the east coast, you begin to see the devastation of the area where the Jeyarajah family is from. Imagine an entire coast as far as you can see on either side, filled with debris of what once were towns. Some small bays seem to have been spared but most of what faces the ocean is in ruin.
Some, like the Jeyarajahs, have been fortunate to have relatives further inland whose homes were not destroyed take them in. Others are living in refugee camps from different aid agencies. Within any given hour on a major roadway along the east coast, you are bound to see a shiny white U.N. vehicle with the blue flag flapping.
People seem more anxious to get back to work and stand on their own two feet than wait for the next handout. Fisherman want to fish, and entrepreneurs want to rebuild, and everyone wants to try and put the tragedy in its place -- in the past. Even in the wake of the tsunami, their community is not back to normal -- the sheer number of foreigners alone has created two economies.
The fundamental laws of supply and demand are in effect if you are trying to find lodging anywhere near the damaged areas. The NGO population is putting such a strain on local lodging that people who would normally rent out guest rooms are making up to 10 times the money. It's not trickle-down economics necessarily, but a good deal of money is getting into the hands of the land-owning class.
Aside from the aid agencies and the work being done on the ground, the small coastal towns are otherwise sleepy. Children still smile and laugh but so many look like they've aged by weathering that December morning. While the world celebrates little Abilass -- whose name means hope -- he has become so much more than that to families who have lost so much, including their own hopes and aspirations.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
posted by h |
10:00 AM
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