Hindustan Times

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Business down in Mumbai

That Mumbai is a rising international business hub is known. But a report released by MasterCard on Emerging Markets Index reveals that while Mumbai tops the chart when it comes to financial services network and trading in shares and bonds, it performs miserably where security, infrastructure, technology penetration and quality of urban life are concerned.

The report, released on Monday, ranked 65 cities across the globe. Eight Indian cities Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune and Coimbatore made it to the list. This was only second to China, which had 15 cities.

Mumbai took the lead among Indian cities at rank 19. But nine Asian cities occupied higher positions than Mumbai out of which six were from China. New Delhi came second at 28 followed by Bangalore at 38, Chennai at 39, Hyderabad at 46, Kolkata at 48 and Pune at 52. Last year, the Prime Minister set up a task force to make Mumbai an international financial centre.

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Labels: china, Indian cities, MasterCard Emerging Markets index, nine Asian cities, occupied higher positions

Friday, October 31, 2008

A wedding plan for China

In officially atheist China, it’s hard to imagine young Chinese couples tying the knot in a traditional Indian wedding ceremony But. India’s tourism office in Beijing thinks the idea is not far-fetched.

To entice the young Chinese to spend their wealth in India as the yuan rises and the dollar sinks, the India Tourism office will arrange mock marriages for Chinese couples in India’s biggest and almost untapped tourism market.

“We want to put India on China’s honeymoon itinerary,’’ India Tourism Director Shoeb Samad told the Hindustan Times in his six month-old Beijing office. “China, like India, has a major wedding industry We are networking to come in . as wedding managers.’’

The scheme planned for early next year, will include a sponsored bridal lehenga and a honeymoon photo clicked before the Taj Mahal. Couples will be chosen from contests and lucky draws held in Chinese wedding magazines.

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Labels: Beijing, china, Chinese couples, Chinese wedding magazines, India Tourism office, Indian wedding ceremony, lucky draws, mock marriages, Shoeb Samad, Taj Mahal

Monday, August 4, 2008

Aboard the Beijing Bullet, lessons for Delhi

IN LESS than two minutes, the Harmony silently glided past the top speed of India's fastest trains, the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi.

A week before the most definitive moment in China's modern history as a rising superpower - the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing at 8.08 pm on 08.08.08 - I bought a second-class ticket out of the capital. HTs daily dispatch for the Beijing Olympics began aboard China's latest and the world's fastest intercity bullet train that will shuttle football fans between inland Beijing and coastal Tianjin at a record 350 kmph in 30 minutes. By 2013, a high-speed railway wn cut train travel between BeijingShanghai from 10 hours to five. I skipped the media test ride to line up as a common commuter between inland Beijing and China's third-largest city and its busiest northern seaport about 135 km away The Made-in China bullet trains cut the com- mute from a previous 70 minutes at 200-250 kmph to 30 minutes. The new commute combines Beijing and Tianjin into one city Chinese researcher Zhou Gansi told China Central Television. "It can dramatically change people's way of life." The local train from Mumbai's southern financial hub to its northern suburbs takes twice as long. Imagine the potential of a Delhi-Chandigarh or Mumbai-Ptme train giving professionals the choice of a comfortable daily intercity commute instead of migration. The fastest Mumbai-Pune train takes three hours to cover 192 km. The seven-year infrastructure revolution inside India's largest and most powerful neighbour goes beyond its 37 Olympic stadiums.

My journey began at Asia's largest railway station (by one estimate, the size of 20 football fields) that opened in south Beijing last week with none of the fanfare that would accompany such an event if it happened in India.

After all, Beijing opened the world's biggest international airport terminal this year, to welcome over 10,000 athletes and modern China's biggest-ever influx of foreigners (about half a million) from August 8-24.

The solar panel-roofed station looks like an international airport, and is bigger than the 91,000-seat Bird's Nest stadium that will host the opening ceremony. As commuters bought instant noodles they prepared with hot water from the station taps, I was the only Indian in the crowd, struggling to decipher Chinese signs.

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Labels: Beijing, Beijing Olympics, china, fastest trains, International Airport, Mumbai, pune, trains, travel

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Job prospects best in India

Despite fears of an economic slow down at home and a slump worldwide, the country's employers are looking for workers actively. India has topped a global employment outlook survey, powered mainly by service industries such as IT, realty and financial services.

The latest quarterly survey of about 5,636 employers - part of a global sample of 55,000 - by multinational human resource firm Manpower Inc says that India's Net Employment Outlook for the July-September quarter stands at 45 per cent, the highest in the world.

"The strongest hiring intention is seen in sectors such as the services, finance, insurance, real estate, media and tourism," said Naresh Malhan, managing director of the Indian unit of Manpower .

Hiring intentions are weakest in the whole sale and retail trade industry sector and the manufacturing sector where employers have indicated a decline in their hiring plans.

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Labels: call centers, china, hiring, human resource, India, India's Net Employment Outlook, IT, ITES, Job, MNC, prospects, Singapore, survey

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

China Shaken

Within Hours, the official death toll from a massive earthquake that shook China on Monday afternoon shot up from four to 107 to "several thousands". At the time of going to press, more than 9,000 people were feared dead in the earthquake the worst in China in over three decades.

In southwest China's Sichuan province - 100 km from the epicentre - 900 children were feared buried under the rubble of their high school. Rescue operations were on till 1ate night. State news agency Xinhua reported that the children were "struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help". Xinhua said 8,533 people died in Sichuan alone. In Beichuan county, near Sichuan's capital Chengdu, 80 per cent of buildings collapsed and about 5,000 people were killed.

The extent of the death and destruction from the magnitude 7.8 earthquake which struck at 2.28 pm was not revealed until evening.

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Labels: 7.8 magnitude quake, china, earthquake, kills, people, President Hu Jintao, Rescue operations

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Stop the violence, or I quit

Even as Beijing launched a strong verbal assault on the Dalai Lama, the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibetans on Tuesday threatened to resign if the violence in Tibet did not stop.

He appealed to the Tibetan people to remain committed to non-violence. "Should the majority of the Tibetan people want to use violence, I would have no other option but to resign from leading the Tibetan struggle," he told reporters in Dharamsala. He expressed concern over the turmoil in Tibet, but said the situation was gradually improving.

The Dalai Lama spoke after Chinese premier Wen JiaBao blamed him for the violence. "There is ample fact and we also have plenty of evidence - proving that this incident was organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique," Wen said at his annual news conference at the end of China's national legislative session in Beijing. "

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Labels: Beijing, china, Dalai Lama, Dharamsala, Tibetan Communist Party Committee, Tibetans

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Pollution cloud over Olympics

There's a dark shadow over certain events at the Beijing Olympics this August. In Lausanne on Monday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) didn't rule out postponing endurance competitions like the marathon because of the heavy pollution in the air over the Chinese capital. If that happens, it will be unprecedented.

There may be "some risk (to the health of the athletes)" from the pollution, the IOC said. It will consider a 'Plan B', and may even postpone events if, after daily monitoring of the air quality, weather conditions and other relevant data, it finds the conditions aren't conducive for competition.

Events that require a minimum one hour of continuous physical effort at a high level, are under the scanner; the IOC said. These would include the marathon, swimming, mountain biking, urban road cycling, triathlon and the walks.

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Labels: Beijing Olympics, china, International Olympic Committee, Justine Henin, Plan B

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

China's satellite clicks the moon

CHINA'S LEADERS celebrated the first images sent from the country's first lunar satellite on Monday, saying they showed their nation had thrust itself into the front ranks of global technological powers. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, visiting the scientists who have guided the lunar probe Chang'e 1 into space and around the moon, proclaimed the mission a success after it began to send back images, according to the Chinese state news agency Xinhua news.

"The full success of our country's first lunar exploration mission is helping to turn the Chinese nation's 1,000year old dream of reaching the moon a reality," Premier Wen reportedly said. The picture on the Xinhua website showed a patch of grey moon surface splotched with craters.

Even as hundreds of millions of Chinese struggle in rural hardship, the ruling Communist Party is committed to clambering into the select ranks of global space powers, and Chang'e 1's journey has been accompanied by a stream of patriotic propaganda. In 2003, China became only the third country in the world to put a man into space using its own rocket after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It then sent two astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI rocket in October 2005.

China plans to launch its third manned rocket, Shenzhou VII, into space in October 2008 and may send an astronaut on a space walk, a Shanghai paper said. The probe's success showed the world that "the Chinese people have the will, confidence and ability to constantly compose fine new chapters as we scale the peaks of modern science and technology", Wen said of the mission.
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image and article source:HindustanTimes
article taken from the issue:27th November, 2007

Labels: china, lunar satellite, satellite, Shenzhou VI, Shenzhou VII, space research, xinhua news

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