Economists project India and China to be major growing economies together with Russia and Brazil. They have coined the term BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to focus on these areas of growth collectively. As Indians we need to keep an eye on China for frequent comparison. It must be borne in mind that India is a democracy while China is a party dictatorship. India is multi-ethnic while China is almost unilingual with only two languages i.e., Cantonese and Mandarin being used there. Ethnic minorities in China are strewn all over with minimal representation. But India is a mosaic of states, each being a unique cultural entity. These basic differences would facilitate our understanding of the two countries. It is also essential to bear in mind that they represent two most ancient civilizations that have survived all through the ages. Here are some salient facts:
Trade
China’s trade with US is worth $200 billion while the turnover of Indian trade with the US is $20 billion a year.
Indians and Chinese Abroad
Both countries have seen huge exodus of their citizens to overseas. Now settled there they constitute an important element of their culture and economy. India’s diaspora is of the size of 20 million while that of China is of 57 million.
China opts for citizenship emanating from jus sanguinis—right of blood while India seeks inspiration for citizenship for jus soli—right of soil.
Business Info
In China information about business companies is hard to get and is unreliable. Assets of companies are not publicly listed.
In India annual reports of companies provide basic rudiments of information that Western observers expect. The Center for Monitoring Indian Economy CMIE is a privately owned clearing house of reliable information. It was set up by Narottam Shah.
India has passed Right to Information Act (RTI) in 2005, most positive piece of legislation.
Although info environment in India is transparent compared with China’s, it suffers from what statisticians call white noise. The truth is hidden in a morass of irrelevant, though not intentionally inaccurate information.
Divergence on Public Interest
China can build cities overnights. In India, construction of a culvert may take more than a year. China can do so because it errs on the side of serving public interest even if it means violating private property. India errs on the side of private property, sometimes to the detriment of the society.
State-owned enterprises, while their numbers have shrunk, continue to account for half of all of China’s assets.
Style of the Statecraft
Chinese statecraft has always aimed for order, harmony and hierarchy. Mao preserved the mandate of Confucian tradition, that hierarchy is key to preserving social order by extension of good governance.
India has a proud tradition of pluralism, dissent and debate. These traditions are deep-seated and long lived.
Things are done in China by executive order, while India needs legislative clearance which is unlikely to come from fractured legislatures ruled by coalitions.
Business Transparency
Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (CLSA) has highlighted China’s failed corporate governance. The criteria CLSA used to assess corporate governance were management discipline, transparency, independence, accountability, responsibility, fairness, and social responsibility. ON CLSA ‘s weighted scoring scale of 1 to 10, India scored 5.4 for corporate governance and China was placed at 3.4. India ranked sixth in the study overall, behind Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, among others. China ranked 19th.
In 2003, eighty per cent of the China’s rural population—i.e., 640 million people—still lacked health insurance. In a ranking of 191 member nations on the overall health of their populations, the WHO‘s 2000report ranked China 81st and India 134th. Although India has a number of charismatic individuals whose work in private sector entrepreneurship is heartening, India’s public sector health failure, which is far more prevalent, is absolutely heart-wrenching. In 2000 the Government of India was spending $4 annually on health care for each Indian. By mid-80s more than 80% of rural Indians used the private sector for outpatients services as a first line of treatment in both urban and rural area. Barefoot doctors in rural China deliver a baby at $4.
On Corruption
Corruption takes different forms in India and China. Indians stash their black income abroad while Chinese flee with the wealth as corrupt official are severely punished in China. Few have been jailed in India despite all-pervasive corruption. But hundreds have been executed by China for being corrupt. Indians have $1.4 billion deposited in secret accounts of Swiss banks. In 2004 the Chinese Ministry of Commerce estimated that during the past 20 years 4,000 corrupt officials had fled the country with a total of $50billion and China’s Ministry’s of Public Security estimated that 500 outstanding ‘economic crime suspects’ were living overseas.
(Source: The facts and figures are based on Tarun Khanna’s latest book Billions of Entrepreneurs by Harvard Business Review Press. Khanna teaches at the Harvard Business School.)

Several unethical practices have crept into the medical profession. Doctors make huge profits by being on kickbacks list of nursing homes, diagnostic labs and pharmacists.

Doctors are turning out to be cheats. Whenever they are approached, they make a big hole into the pockets of the patients whom they consider as clients. A number of unscrupulous practices can be listed to show the devious role a medical practitioner plays in healing back the patients to health.
A family doctor gets 40 to 60% commission over the diagnostic tests (such as x-ray, pathology, radiology, MRI etc) he prescribes from a diagnostic lab.
The commission he gets from consultants, specialists and surgeons on referring patients for specialized treatments or surgeries amounts to 30 to 40 % of their fee.
If hospitalization is recommended, the hospital authorities pay him around 30 to 40 % of the fee they charge the patients.
Some tests doctors prescribe such as stool, urine, sputum or blood, are not at all necessary. They help inflate the bill. They simply collect the sample and throw them into the sink. They have come to be known as ‘Sink Tests’.
Many surgical procedures are done to keep the cash register ringing. Caesarean deliveries and hysterectomy (removal of uterus) are high on the list. Women undergoing pangs of birth are unnecessarily advised caesarean deliveries even it is not required. Menopausal women experience bodily changes that make them nervous and gullible. They can be frightened by words like “fibroids” that are presents in almost every normal woman’s radiology reports. Most husbands agree without a second’s thought.
A good number of doctors do not balk at even conducting “Emergency surgery” on dead body. If a surgeon hurriedly wheels your patient from the Intensive Care Unit to the operation theater, refuses to let you go inside and see him, and wants your signature on the consent form for “an emergency operation to save his life”, it is likely that your patient is already dead. The “emergency operation” is for inflating the bill; if you agree to it, the surgeon will come out 15 minutes later and report that your patient died on the operation table. While taking the delivery of the dead body, you will pay OT charges, anesthesiologist’s charges, blah-blah.
To be on the panel of a prestigious hospital, there is mutual give-and-take involved between a doctor and the hospital. The hospital expects the doctor to refer a prescribed number of patients for hospital admission. If he fails to keep up the number, he is quietly dumped. So the doctor advises hospitalization even the patient does not need it.
(Source: Extracted and reworded from article in The Journal of the Science of Healing Outcomes by Prof. B. M. Hegde, former vice chancellor, Manipal University and Padma Bhushan Awardee in 2010)

India ranks 62 while Pakistan is placed at 105th Position.

‘Innovation’ is one of the most commonly used and misused buzzwords in the corporate world and beyond. In simple terms, ‘innovation’ is the conversion of information into valuable knowledge and ideas and subsequently into a significant benefit that may take the form of new or improved products, processes, or services. It is a means to realize the potential of an invention by commercializing it so that the customer is willing to pay for it.
Innovation holds key to leadership in science, technology and development. People, communities and countries that hold the reigns of innovation, ultimately set the rules of civilization as well as domination.
Global Innovation Index (GII) is an annual rating of nations in matters of innovation. It has been developed by INSEAD Business School which has campuses at several places including in the US, France, Israel and Abu Dhabi. The GII is ranking is derived by factoring into scientific output, creative output and GDP.
India ranks 62nd in the list for the year 2011 of the Global Innovation Index this year. Last year it stood at 56th position. China now ranks 29.
Switzerland is the world’s most innovative nation. It topped this year’s GII ranking, moving up three places in the index compared to last year. Sweden comes next at No. 2 but shows the highest scientific output. Singapore and Hong Kong rank 3rd and 4th. United States occupies the 7th slot. Denmark is on 5th position. Netherland, England and Iceland are placed 9th, 10th and 11th. Following them are Germany, Ireland and Israel which take up 12th and 13th and 14th position. They are followed by New Zealand, Korea and Luxembourg one after another. Austria and Japan are ranked 19th and 20th.
Our neighbour Pakistan is placed 105th position.
The GII is compiled in the second quarter of the year. The Report covers 125 economies, accounting for 93.2% of the world’s population and 98.0% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.
Among the Muslim countries the first to figure on the list is Qatar which stands at 26th position. Malaysia is on 31st position while United Arab Emirates occupies 34th position. Jordan is on 42nd slot. Surprisingly, Kuwait takes 46th position while Saudi Arabia is 54th and Oman on 57th.

Five cuckoos which left Britain in June 2011 have now reached Africa, making a journey of almost 5,000 kms in less than three months, scientists who fitted the birds with tiny satellite-tracking tags have claimed.
Researchers from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) who wanted to track the migration routes of the birds, caught five cuckoos and tagged them with GPS trackers in tiny backpacks.
Having started their journeys from the same breeding ground in East Anglia in June, the birds have now reached Africa and distributed across 3,000km of the continent. Their tags automatically switch on once every two days for 10 hours and send off a radio signal revealing their whereabouts, which is picked up by a satellite. The cuckoo-tracking team, led by the BTO’s Chris Hewson, is able to follow the birds from the comfort of the Trust’s headquarters in Thetford.
Four of the birds have already crossed the Sahara; two are in southern Chad, one is in northern Nigeria and the fourth one is in Burkina Faso. One cuckoo is lagging slightly behind the rest and has made it as far as Morocco. Crossing the Sahara is one of the major sources of death for many migrants, so the team is relieved that almost all the birds have made it safely across the desert. The team wants to find out what environments the birds rely on and where they stop off to feed along the way. Cuckoos are one of several migrant species declining in Britain.

The symptoms of America’s decline are evident. According to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey, based on questioning in April, the proportion of respondents who think China has already replaced America as the world’s leading superpower, or will do so one day, was 63% in China, 65% in Britain and 46% even in America (up from 33% as recently as 2009).

African-Americans are 10 percentage points less likely to get research grants from the US National Institute of Health (NIH) than Caucasians (whites). Even Asians are 4 percentage points less likely to get these grants, reveals a study by the NIH which oversees $ 31 billion annually in medical research. The study was carried out between 2006 and 2010.

40,000 post offices in India are in danger of being closed due to decrease in traffic of letter in the wake of new communication technologies replacing the postal communication of olden days.

8,000 to 10,000 youths are missing in custody since the start of the militancy in the Kashmir valley, according to Parveena Ahangar, president of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. (Deccan Herald, August. 21, 2011). The Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Commission has revealed that 2,156 unidentified bodies are lying in mass graves in three districts of North Kashmir. (The Hindu, August 21, 2011)

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