Indian Bank Strike

Today was the second day of a 2 day strike by 1 million bank workers in India.  The strikers are protesting against a genuinely positive move by the Indian Government - to de-regulate and allow more private capital into the banking sector.  Most of the strikers were of course from state owned banks - 70% of the banking sector is state owned.  This compares to 20% in Central Europe (still remarkably high) and 15% in Latin America.

Despite a huge loss to the economy (estimated to be 300bn Rupees) things seemed to carry on mostly as normal - just a couple of queues at bank machines.  Generally, a strike by vested interests against reform, means the government must be doing something right.  Lets hope the government sticks to its guns - a re-invigorated private banking sector could be a timely boon.

India's IT genius

The IT sector in India has famously been amazingly successful - it has grown over 10 fold in the last decade to around $100bn in 2011.  IT is not an easy sector to succeed in - computer programmes are incredibly complex things to build and even more complex to make work.  My limited experience of running technology companies in the mobile sector has given me some idea of just how difficult.  So how and why did India succeed in an industry which should have been one of the most difficult to penetrate?

My thoughts on this were first aroused when my worldly goods were held up for a month in Mumbai port on their way from London, and yet I knew that I could email client quotes and contracts and upload software code in a second, from my new office in Fort, Mumbai.  These suspicions were confirmed when I went to a talk recently, organised by the Indian Business Group in Mumbai, and featuring Dr Lalit Kanodia.  Dr Kanodia is an IT genius and visionary - head of his class at MIT, helped write the code that formed MULTIX, the precursor of UNIX, and was the founding CEO of Tata Consulting Services, now India's largest IT company.

The IBG has been organising some inspirational events, and his was one of the most interesting talks I have ever been to.  He spoke of the Indian Government trying to jail him when he set up the first satellite data link between India and the USA in the late 1960's.  He then told of the Minister for IT coming to see him in the early 1970's to ask what exactly was TCS doing, and how could the Government control it.  Dr Kanodia's response: "You can't control it, and even if you could, I wouldn't tell you how".

For me, that sums up India's IT success.  Imagine what could happen if the rest of India were set free?

Alcohol licence for buying alcohol in Mumbai

I had heard the rumours for a while - the fact that you needed a licence to buy alcohol in Mumbai - but I had dismissed them as being surely an urban myth.  The other day though, I was ordering a simple Kingfisher beer at the Breach Candy Club, when the waiter asked to see my Alcohol Licence.  I stayed calm and managed to palm him off with my driving licence and an additional food order.

Having now investigated, i can confirm that this is no urban myth - under the 1949 Bombay Prohibition Act, a licence is required for all purchase, possession and consumption of alcohol in the state of Maharastra.  Quite clearly this is a ridiculous law which serves only the police, who can use this as another excuse to ask for a bribe.  This will serve nicely as the first of no doubt innumerable rules that should be repealed and make India just that little bit freer.

5 text messages a day limit

The indian govt today limited the number of text messages, anyone in the entire country can send, to 5 a day!  Seems like a good place to start my Set India Free blog that I've been thinking about for a while.  Despite being a democracy and a great, crazy one at that, India is far from being a free country, particularly economically.  The number of regulations and control on every aspect of life, has been somewhat of a shock since i moved here.  For instance, on the same day that I couldn't send any more text messages, I tried and failed to obtain my Alcohol Licence - that is a licence needed in order to consume alcohol.  No joke.  More on that in my next post.