LyrArc Article Gist
On world tuberculosis day the work of Dr. Zarir Udwadia is acclaimed for drawing attention to a resurgent tuberculosis in India through a medical journal article in 2012 for untreatable TB. India has 2.8 million new TB cases annually, 100,000 being drug resistant, according to WHO. India relies on outdated diagnostic tests that miss about 50% of the cases and Dr Udwadia says India needs newer technologies including GeneXpert tests. TB can be easily treated at a cost of $5 with 4 drugs over 6 months if done in time. Wrong drugs, incorrect doses, irregular medication, lets the TB bacteria become resistant causing havoc- leading to taking of 250 injections and 15000 pills treated for upto 2 years and costing thousands of dollars, with the toxicity of the drugs levels creating risks of deafness, blindness, kidney failure, and psychotic conditions. Crowded conditions in slum areas act as an incubator of the disease and infection rates, with 20 people being infected by one patient alone. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Nvidia's Head of Engineering, Jonah Alben, is from Schenectady, upstate New York. Here he is credited with exporting the latest US advanced chips to China by reducing their effectiveness. US administrations Biden's and DJT's say this pushes the rules of export controls. It also undermines the US lead in advanced technologies needed for the US to keep the peace in the Pacific and in Europe as new tensions emerge over Taiwan and in Eastern Europe. For years the US egregiously restricted the flow of technologies to democracies such as India and allowed a concentration of semiconductor manufacture in Taiwan, over concentration of manufacturing in China, both of which led to supply chain issues in recent years and pose supply chain issues in the future. Ironically restrictions on technologies sale to India which with 1.4 billon people, and a similar culture in Indonesia forms homogenous culture of 1.7 billion people, is the only place of this size where parliamentary democracy has taken root. With an exercise of legislative assemblies through elections in all Indian states in the 1930's under the British with Mohandas Gandhi's leadership and example. Because of Gandhi and the leaders who preceded him Dadabhai Naoroji and Vivekananda in the 1890's India has older democratic forms than Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain and most of Europe, all of Asia, Latin America and Africa. It also has among the ordinary people a deep respect for Lincon, FDR and his fight to help Gandhi with Sukarno fight the British and Dutch Empires to bring freedom to 1.7 billion people.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This article in The Indian Express shows that even though Subhas Chandra Bose differed with Mohandas Gandhi during the late 1930's, Bose had a deep respect and affection for Gandhi in mobilizing the Indian people for Swaraj. Bose's relationship with Nehru and Patel were of people at the same level and appeared to compete for attention compared to the relationship with Gandhi which was one of mentor and follower. In the end Bose's restlessness at British refusal to negotiate Swaraj and Gandhi's patience led to Bose actively resisting British rule in 1940.  Mohandas Gandhi had deep faith in the Bhagavad Gita and believed the lines in the Bhagavad Gita where it says- "Whenever, O descendent of Bharata, there is decline of Dharma, and rise of Adharma, then I embody Myself. For the protection of the good, for the destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of Dharma, I come into being in every age." Gandhi wrote in his Discourses on the Bhagavad Gita on November 11, 1930- "God dwells in our hearts as the holy spirit within us, and when yearning for knowledge, like Arjuna, we take our spiritual difficulties to Him, and seek his guidance, seek refuge in Him, He is ever ready to instruct us." The other way in which Gandhi differed was in his deep insights and views of the British as a people that Bose lacked. Some of this came from his days in London and some of this from his days in South Africa working with and negotiating with the British. Mohandas Gandhi says in Hind Swaraj in 1910- "The English merchants were able to get a footing in India because we encouraged them. When our princes fought among themselves they sought the help of Company Bahadur. That corporation (British East India Company) was vested alike in commerce and war. It was unhampered by questions of morality. Its object was to increase its commerce and make money. It accepted our assistance, and increased the number of its warehouses. To protect the latter it employed an army which was utilized by us also. Is it not then useless for us to blame the British for what they did at that time? The Hindus and the Mahomedans were at daggers drawn. This too, gave the Company its opportunity, and thus we created the circumstances that gave the British control over India. Hence it is truer to say that we gave India to the British than India was lost. The causes that gave them India help them retain it. Some Englishmen say they took India and they hold India by the sword, both these statements are wrong. The sword is entirely useless for holding India. We alone keep them." Gandhi''s view of India was of a nation of shopkeepers, even citing Kruger of South Africa when he was asked if there was gold on the moon. Kruger said likely not, for if there was the British would have annexed it. By 1945 when Gen. Wavell, the Viceroy wrote back to London that he would require more army divisions to control India than Britain could afford, or the British people had the will to support or had commercial interests worth protecting after the war, the British moved up the year of their withdrawal. And began the negotiations with Gandhi for independent India.  Gandhi also says that in his reading of Vivekananda's writings the love that I had for my country became a thousand-fold. Gandhi looked to Vivekananda for inspiration in some of his ideas on Swaraj. Bose says Vivekananda's writings sent him into raptures yet saw Vivekananda "simple as a child" not realizing the spiritual strength Vivekananda had drawn from which overcomes all. As the Lord says in the Bhagavad Gita- "I am the Self, O Gudakesa, existent in the heart of all beings, I am the beginning, the middle, and also the end of all beings. Of the Adityas, I am Vishnu, of luminaries, the radiant Sun; of the winds I am Marici; of the asterisms, the moon."   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Pictures of the damage done by cyclone Fani as it moves eastward from the coast line near Vishakapatnam, to Odisha state and further to West Bengal and Bangladesh. The Indian government has announced a relief fund of Rs 1000 crores ($150 million) to help repair damage from the cyclone. About 1 million people were evacuated.

LyrArc Article Gist
Foreign institutional investment in India declined to a mere $172 million in April 2012, from $5 billion in February. Foreign direct investment in India is falling. It was down to $27.5 billion in 2011, with only $4.2 billion in Jan-Feb. 2012.

LyrArc Article Gist
About Azim Premji who leads one of India's largest software and outsourcing companies. He was educated at St Marys school in Bombay and later at Stanford as an undergraduate, has roots going back to the 1940's in Bombay, and has run WIPRO from Bangalore in southern Indian state of Karnataka which does not have much of a religious orientation of Hindus and Muslims that is found in northern India. So it may not be so unnatural for him to keep aside religion from the rest of his life and in doing business and also for him to embrace the secularist basis of India's constitutional and moral fabric. Just as a Nehru who was one of the founders of the Indian Republic and one of the people involved in drafting its constitution and governmental structures remained aloof from religion Hindu or Muslim even though he was born in a Kashmiri Hindu family that settled in Allahabad. Nehru was widely described as agnostic and was educated at Harrow an English school and went to Cambridge for his undergraduate education. Upbringing and education from school days can have a significant influence and Premji's success may be due to the fact that he must be a very well educated, sharp and mature person just like Narayan Murthy of Infosys, so much so that he would stay out of the political and religious quarrels that plague any region and because of the depth of ignorance and hostility brought about by religious groups stay completely aloof from them....

LyrArc Article Gist
Innovation and competition in India's cellphone industry as rural areas are next big market for companies.

LyrArc Article Gist
Issues of cost of living and higher taxes in states in the northeastern US and California vs the lower taxes and lower cost of living in the Southern States of the US. Whose side each of the two main parties are on in the US has switched in the period since Harry Truman and FDR in the 1940's. The Republicans represent small business and the less educated in society, the Democrats represent the more educated, affluent sections, and women, the black minority, with Hispanics divided between the two parties. Unions are now neutral and workers in factories lean more towards Republicans. On health care there is a failure for both parties. Both parties have failed miserably with all the lobbying creating obstacles-- to provide cost of living in healthcare. In comparing healthcare and the wealth of societies, it can now be noted that a well funded healthcare system with medicine within reach of the entire population of 1.4 billion people in a poor country like India does better than that of a rich society like the US with 350 million people. This makes a huge difference in the quality of life. Infrastructure investments in relatively far less affluent countries like China and now India make it possible to have better conditions of living relative to the US with infrastructure and transportation from the 19th century still awaiting rebuilding. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Oracle increases its stake in a banking service provider i-flex of India.

LyrArc Article Gist
Dilip Hiro's new book on the emergence of two states India and Pakistan in 1947 presents the story in terms of the two founding leaders Mohandas Gandhi and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The division of the region into conflicting states is shown as a result of the divergent views and politics of the two leaders. Jinnah who was skeptical of the mass civil disobedience movement of Gandhi and preferred a legislative approach, and Gandhi who appealed to the masses and oppressed millions in British India. Jinnah and Gandhi's style and approach were fundamentally different. Seven decades later Pakistan has failed to build a genuine participatory democracy for most of this period with military actively involved in government, and India in the manner of Gandhi built institutions of participatory democracy under different political parties. Jinnah was an assistant to Dadabhai Naoroji, India's first nationalist leader at the turn of the century, when the two were in London. Naoroji passionately argued against the British policies that entrenched the poverty of millions of Indians in the countryside. Ironically it was Gandhi, not Jinnah, who took up Naoroji's call for bringing hope to the hundreds of millions of people on the subcontinent in "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India," first published in 1901, and showing how the draining of the country by the British was leaving India weak and oppressed. In 2015 that struggle of Naoroji for bringing hope and economic opportunity to millions of people is the task taken up by India's new government and the new government in Pakistan. Naoroji, the first Asian to be elected as a member of the British parliament, established the East India Association in 1867, the predecessor organization to the Indian National Congress which he founded with Hume, and is the leader Gandhi and Jinnah most respected in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Naoroji was elected to the British parliament for the Liberal party from Finsbury Central in 1892, and was assisted in his campaign and duties as a member of parliament by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In the light of this common upbringing for Gandhi and Jinnah, the nineteen forties and their aftermath could be seen as a detour, not the substance of political life on the subcontinent- just as Mao and Chiang Kai Shek are a sort of detour for today's China. Particularly in a globalized world where technology continues to open up unbelievable economic opportunity, interchange and communication. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Shruti Sharma, Ankita Agrawal, and Gamini Singla are in the top 1, 2, and 3 ranking in the 2021 Civil Service examinations conducted by the Union Public Service Commission. All three women say it was a long and difficult journey. Women are now in parity with men in higher education yet in the Indian Civil Service women make up only 26%. Women can provide the empathy needed for development in smaller towns and villages as they take up positions in these areas early in their IAS career. More women need to take up careers in the Civil Service to provide the kind of leadership needed in running the country that India needs at a critical time in its move forward in development and modernization.

LyrArc Article Gist
Patel's speech on August 15 1948, provides a point of reflection for Gandhi's project of Hind Swaraj announced in his book Hind Swaraj written on a steamship voyage in 1909 returning to South Africa from England, and this week's Vikshit Bharat 2047 vision taking shape 75 years after 1947. Hear this audio podcast from All India Radio of Indian Deputy prime minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's broadcast to the Indian Nation on Aug 15, 1948. It  is a point for reflection just one year after independence when the "paramountcy of the British inIndia came to an end," yet it was not clear that India would be pulled together as one Nation or be in pieces "Tukda, tukda." 75 years ago Patel talks about the situation in China where civil war raged- on that day the NYT showed Koumintang and Communist armies facing each other near Nanking and in Shantung province. Hyper inflation had already hit Shanghai a sack of rice cost 6.7 million yuan and the highest denomination currency was 180 million yuan, the Kouminatang decided to print money to fight the civil war.  Malaysia had riots and communist insurgency was about to take place. Synghman Rhee was made president of South Korea with US Gen. Douglas McArthur present in Seoul and the invasion by Communist North Korea on June 25, 1950 was around the corner.  Israel's Ben Gurion asked the UN to have Arab armies withdraw or it would have to go to war. In India the Kashmir invasion in the Himalayas starts on 12 September 1947 with Liaquat Ali Khan approving plans for tribals and Pathans to attack Kashmir.The states of Hyderabad, Travancore and Junagadh among princely states(which were one third of the British Empire) that had not been integrated. In Europe the Berlin Blockade had started in June 1948. This is the Asia and Europe that Patel saw in 1948 as he pondered on the meaning of Gandhi's success and what had still to be achieved. It is also a point of reflection in advance of  August 15, when India gained its freedom from British rule and set the stage for the decolonization of Indonesia from the Dutch, of Vietnam from the French, and Malaya from the British, followed by decolonization in all of Africa. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
How Indian software industry is working through Washington lawmakersafter hiring former US Ambassador Blackwill as lobbyist, and working through local organizations to show that it benefits the local economy whether Boeing in the local Seattle economy or in some other state or metropolitan region. This reduces the chance that outsourcing as a jobs issue gets tossed around in political battles of rival politicians and helps create an atmosphere where the advantages of free trade can be discussed in a quieter environment.

LyrArc Article Gist
Madras High Court decides that it has no jurisdiction over whether Indian patent law violates WTO guidelines on intellectual property. Novartis had asked the Madras High Court to clarify this point. Indian patent law (2005 patent legislation) states that a drug qualifies for a patent only if it is a new invention or a significant improvement, not a new version of a drug from before 1995. The court upheld this. Novartis's modified version of Gleevec, a leukemia drug, was denied a patent by a Indian court. Was it right in doing so? The Madras High Court affirmed this decision, and it will not be appealed to the Supreme Court.

LyrArc Article Gist
As the coronavirus surges in India with over 300,000 cases a day on April 26, a clear picture on the vaccination drive in the country is critical. The following is the picture of the vaccination progress from Union Health Ministry in India as shown in The Hindustan Times. India has vaccinated 140 million people with at least one dose says this report in The Hindustan Times.  On Saturday 24th April 2.4 million doses were given for that day at 8 pm. This was done over 99 days. This means about 12% of the population of 1.2 billion has been vaccinated.  This compares with the vaccination in Germany for about 21% of people vaccinated with over 18 million getting the first dose in Germany by around April 25. Both Germany and India have suffered from vaccine shortages, some skepticism about vaccinations. Gradually sentiment is shifting in both countries so that once skeptical Germany now has about 75% of people willing to take vaccine on April 25, 2021. In India about 6 million healthcare workers have 2 doses of vaccine, and about 9 million have 1 dose. About 6 million frontline workers have 2 doses and 12 million frontline workers have 1 dose of vaccine.  There is a shortage of vaccine supplies and a bold decision was made by the Indian government on April 25th 2021, after the surge of cases to a world wide maximum of over 300,000 cases a day. The decision was to give immediate regulatory approval for the three major vaccines in the US to be brought and used in India. And delivery will be speeded up - no customs duties and fast processing of supplies access to speedy logistical supply routes. This is a huge step forward for the vaccination drive as this means Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines can now be used in India. The government is also urging the companies to make in India or export to India with prices that provide flexibility in pricing for the private market. The locally produced Covishield Astra Zeneca based vaccine produced by Serum Institute will be allowed to be sold to the private market at 600 rupees or close to about $10. Pfizer and Moderna, J&J can price in a way that would be somewhere around this price range. The access to more vaccines and the ability of the companies to make a reasonable profit in the Indian private market means that vaccine supplies should open up in May and June.  This could give a huge boost to vaccination numbers so that India's vaccination percentage of population vaccinated should keep up with that in countries like Germany and France that were slower to get started in Europe but are now catching up quickly. This is a massive achievement because the population numbers are huge compared to Europe. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Lack of vaccine supplies and differences between the European Union Commission in Brussels and the German, French governments is slowing the vaccination drive in both countries. The lack of a national concerted effort with the whole country, local and federal governments in agreement, is restricting the effectiveness of the vaccination drives. The failure to contract for more vaccine supplies adds to the problems. By contrast India has coordinated its drive for vaccinations, with the local and federal governments in agreement, and the whole population largely behind the effort to vaccinate. Very critical for a population of 1.4 billion when one includes Bangladesh which has received 2 million doses of vaccine. India has gone one step further with supplying of vaccines to Brazil, Morocco, and other countries. BBC says India has exported 60 million vaccine doses to 76 countries. This is an amazing story and much credit goes to the concerted government effort at all levels local, state and federal and public support. Germany and France can gain by looking at the Indian experience in vaccination drives, just as India has gained by looking at the vaccination drive in the UK, Israel and the US. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Credit Suisse research of loans at 3,550 nonfinancial services companies in India with total borrowing of $385 billion as of March 31, 2011, shows 30% had net debt more than six times current earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. This is an increase of 50% in 5 years. Goldman Sachs estimates gross nonperforming loans including restructured debt will climb up to 6% of total loans in the next financial year. This is an increase from the 5% in March 2011. The Reserve Bank of India's stress test report of Dec. 2011 forecasts 5.8% of non-performing assets in a worst case scenario. This is twice the current level. This is largely a result of Indian banks increasing lending after the 2008 global financial crisis, with the worst affected and leveraged sectors being private airlines, construction companies, utilities and real estate developers. At the same time prudent regulation has ensured a capital to risk-weighted assets ratio according to RBI of 13.5% at the end of March 2011. This compares with the same ratio at 14.5% as of March 2010. Additional risks come from declining economic growth. Industrial output in October 2011 was down 5.1% from the prior year. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Walter Mead of WSJ offers this view- expect more action from DJT in 2026 not less, than 2025. The president took the US Supreme Court's decision in stride, noting that it lets him do the same thing on tariffs- charge tariffs on countries doing unfair trade with the US- with other tools in trade legislation, just not IIEP rules. On the practical side every country wants to keep its trade agreement with the US said the president- Britain, Japan, South Korea, Germany, China, India. China and India have increased exports in 2025 even with tariffs rules that allow some exemptions. Large trading nations do not want the uncertainty that comes with renegotiating agreements arrived at with much difficulty with the US. This is not mentioned much in the media such as WSJ and NYT which instead  focus on the tariff revenue already collected of $130 billion and its use or refunding. What is relevant is that the purpose of splitting powers beteen the executive branch and the Supreme Court and Congress is preceded to a great extent by the public's ideas about what is fair, of rights of the US to fair trade, and preventing the deindustrialization of US and Europe. Which is why the Supreme Court has tried to tread warily on issue of illegal migrants by millions entering the country, and is trying to tread warily on issue of rebuilding American industry and infrastructure using tariffs to reduce concentration in China and act to restore a fair trading system for the US and the world. ...