March | 2014 | CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

02/03/2014

India Wants to Build Its Own Chips to Satisfy Electronics Demand – Businessweek

India’s IT services companies are tops in outsourcing, with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS:IN) and Infosys (INFY) competing globally with IBM (IBM) and Accenture (ACN). The cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad are well established as research centers for such multinationals as Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), and Intel (INTC).

Pedestrians pass in front of smartphone wholesale outlets at Gaffar Market in New Delhi on April 9, 2013

But when it comes to hardware, India is behind. In 2013 it imported $33.5 billion worth of electronics, from semiconductors to smartphones. That’s more than it spent on any imports except oil and gold. With India’s large and growing middle class buying more digital devices, the reliance on imported semiconductors and other hardware is likely to increase. By next year, according to market analysts Frost & Sullivan, such imports will top $42 billion. “Our manufacturing has not kept pace with our consumption,” says PVG Menon, president of the Indian Electronic & Semiconductor Association. India does some assembly of TVs, mobile phones, computers, and set-top boxes.

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is trying to address this technology gap. The Indian cabinet on Feb. 14 approved plans for two semiconductor manufacturing projects, requiring an investment of $10.2 billion, with IBM, Geneva-based STMicroelectronics (STM:FP), and Israel’s Tower Semiconductor (TSEM:IT) taking part.

via India Wants to Build Its Own Chips to Satisfy Electronics Demand – Businessweek.

Posted in Economics, India alert, Manufacturing, Technology | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Accenture, General Electric, IBM, India, Infosys, Intel, manmohan singh, Microsoft, Semiconductors, STMicroelectronics, Tata Consultancy Services

02/03/2014

Chinese Employers Discriminate Against Women Planning to Have Two Children – Businessweek

Late last year, China’s central government announced reforms to the controversial one-child policy—in particular, approving a resolution that would allow couples to have two children if at least one of the parents was an only child. But the change didn’t go into effect instantly; implementation is controlled locally. On Tuesday, Shanghai’s government approved measures to enact the so-called two-child policy, effective March 1. Shanghai is the seventh region in China to adopt guidelines for reforming, not abolishing, the country’s sprawling population-control bureaucracy.

To some extent, the number of children couples can have—and when they can have them—will vary by city. Shanghai’s policies are more liberal than Beijing’s, where new guidelines took hold last Friday. Shanghai parents qualified to have two children can do so regardless of their own ages or the time between births. But Beijing parents with one child must wait until the mother turns 28, or the first child turns 4, before having a second child, as independent newsmagazine Caijing reported.

China’s relaxed birth-control policies also bring unexpected consequences. According to state-run Global Times, some female job applicants are already facing increased hiring discrimination as potential employers appear reluctant to pay for two maternity leaves. “An interviewer asked me if I was going to have two children, and I did not know how to answer,” one young woman in Zhejiang province told the newspaper. “Having children is also making a contribution to society, but they [potential employers] treat us like enemies, which is so unfair.”

via Chinese Employers Discriminate Against Women Planning to Have Two Children – Businessweek.

Posted in China alert, Economics, employment, One-child policy, Social & cultural | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, Central government, China, one-child policy, Shanghai, two children, Zhejiang

02/03/2014

The Right to Inherit Isn’t Working for Indian Women, Says U.N. Study – India Real Time – WSJ

As their husbands, fathers, and brothers migrate to cities in search of work, women across India have become the backbone of the country’s agricultural sector. Nearly 80% of all rural women in India labor in the fields.

A study released Sunday by United Nations Women India and Landesa, a U.S.-headquartered nonprofit working to improve land rights for women and men, found that despite their time spent working in orchards, cotton fields, and rice paddies, and changes to inheritance laws, women rarely inherit the land that has sustained them and that they have sustained.

In 2005, the government of India amended its inheritance laws to ensure daughters enjoyed equal rights to inherit their parent’s land and property. But the law seems to be having little impact.

The survey of more than 1,400 women and 360 men in agricultural districts with large numbers of women farmers in three Indian states, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh, found that just one in eight women whose parents own agricultural land inherit any of it.

This has significance far beyond intra-family squabbles over divvying up the family fortune. It is fundamental to India’s rural development and progress on a host of development indicators.

Simply, if women farm the land but don’t own it, they are little more than migrant laborers tilling fields owned by others. Without legal control over the land, or any documentation that they have rights to the ground they farm, they can’t access institutional credit, such as bank loans. Nor can they take advantage of agricultural extension programs, such as government offers of subsidized seeds and fertilizers. All of this stymies agricultural development.

It also limits agricultural production. This doesn’t just mean women have fewer tools for climbing out of poverty, it can also mean that their children are stuck there too: Researchers have found that women simply direct more of their income than men towards their children’s education and nutrition, which in turn lowers child mortality and helps reduce diseases of poverty.

The 2005, Hindu Succession Amendment Act giving sons and daughters equal rights to inheriting family land and property was heralded as an important step forward for India’s women.

The study published Sunday, is the first substantial evaluation of the impact of that amendment and indicates that many women have yet to benefit from the legal changes.

via The Right to Inherit Isn’t Working for Indian Women, Says U.N. Study – India Real Time – WSJ.

Posted in agriculture, Economics, India alert, inheritance | Leave a Comment »

Tags: agricultural development, agricultural land, agricultural sector, agriculture, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, India, inheritance laws, Land law, Landesa, Madhya Pradesh, rural women in India labor, United Nations Women India and Landesa, Women in India

02/03/2014

BBC News – China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage

Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded.

Stabbing victim arrives in hospital. 2 March 2014

A group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.

Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood.

State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.

A female suspect was arrested and is being treated in hospital for unspecified injuries while a search continues for others who fled the scene, the BBC’s Celia Hatton in Beijing reports.

Authorities described the incident as an “organised, premeditated, violent terrorist attack”.

via BBC News – China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage.

Posted in China alert, Dissident, Ethnic clash, Politics, Separatist | Leave a Comment »

Tags: Beijing, Celia Hatton, China, knife attack, Kunming, separatists, Train station, Xinjiang, Yunnan

CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon

Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon

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India Wants to Build Its Own Chips to Satisfy Electronics Demand – Businessweek

The Right to Inherit Isn’t Working for Indian Women, Says U.N. Study – India Real Time – WSJ

BBC News – China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage

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