Jet Airways to flythe American way...

Jet Airways has delivered a major blow to all the airlines of the country by signing an exclusive code sharing agreement with the world’s largest carrier – American Airlines, for flights operating between India and the US. As per the deal, travellers from across the Indian terrain will access the Jet Airways’ network to first travel to London, then fl y to Chicago and also further via the American Airlines’ network. The catch here is – with a single ticket to Chicago, sales of the both the airlines will get a strong push.

The latest MOTO – ‘Made In India’!

Savour this: It’s dirt cheap (comes at a price of Rs.1650), is endowed with just the essentials (thus simpleton) and is wafer thin (0.35 inch). While Motorola’s latest off ering, MOTOFONE F3 might act as Motorola’s new weapon in snatching away more market share from Nokia, what makes this phone truly special is the fact that it comes with a ‘Made in India’ tag. With its release across both GSM & CDMA formats, Motorola seems to have delivered quite an awesome combo.

‘Tata’ to political wrath...? Not yet!

Tata’s plan to open its auto plant in Singur, West Bengal has caught itself in the line of fire that too political. After Naxals ransacked a Tata Motors showroom at Beckbagan in Kolkata, the Singur project has been facing tough political opposition from first Medha Patekar and then from Mamta Banerjee of the Trinamul Congress & Rajnath Singh of BJP. Both claim that the state government has sold ‘agricultural land’ to Tatas. However, the work on the project continues amidst the hullabaloo and is getting full support from the CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. A fiery beginning, shall we say?

A Malaysian detour for Satyam?

India’s leading soft ware company, Satyam Computer Services is setting up a 2000 seater campus-style soft ware development centre in Malaysia. This will be Satyam’s largest centre outside India. The company already has a 350-seater global development centre (GDC) in Melbourne, Australia. The Malaysian GDC will serve the ASEAN, US and Middle Eastern customers of Satyam. A similar campus in China is on the cards too.

Airports, now ‘Stop’ping ‘Shoppers’

With the Indian aviation sector on a rock n’ roll, B. S. Nagesh, MD, Shoppers’ Stop now plans to woo the travelers on the airports itself as they go about from one place to another. Nagesh has signed an MoU with the Swiss retailer Nuance Group in Hyderabad to operate retail stores in the Bangalore International airport, where it would be putting up foreign brands on the domestic as well as the international terminal. The Indian retailer has already informed the Bombay Stock Exchange of its intentions. While the 50:50 JV between the two will operate duty free shops at the international terminal, Shoppers’ Stop will explore the paid route at the domestic airport with support from the Nuance Group. The contract will be valid for a period of five years and five stores would be operational at the international terminal once the airport project is completed.

Forget stocks... A(I)UM for the MFs!

Led by a strong rally in both primary and secondary markets, the mutual fund industry has also witnessed Assets Under Management (AUM) setting new records. Total AUM of the mutual fund industry at the end of November 2006 stood at Rs.3,392.33 billion as compared to Rs.3,098.30 billion in October and Rs.2,040.32 billion last year. UTI MF emerged as the biggest fund house with total AUM of Rs.416.23 billion, while Prudential ICICI was the second biggest. The news comes against the backdrop of SEBI considering raising resources for the set up of an ‘Investor protection fund’. The proceeds of the fund will be used for educating retail investors.

If not global warming...

The developed world needs to arrest their green house emissions in order to save Africa. It may not be very long before Africa is completely erased from the World Atlas. If the effects of unending poverty, AIDS & war destroyed almost everything, then global warming is finishing the rest by creating havoc in the region by causing irrevocable damages to the environment. The entire ecosystem, including snow clad mountains, rain-forests, and beautiful beaches, are on the verge of extinction.

The irony is, Africa (constituting 14% of the global population in its 57 countries) isn’t bearing this catastrophe as an outcome of its own insensitivities towards nature, (majority of Africans are poor and thus have negligible access to electricity and transport; Africans contribute only 3% of the global greenhouse gas emissions) but as an outcome of the monstrous green house emissions of its developed counterparts like Australia and Canada with the US leading the pack (constituting only 5 % of the global population and contributing a staggering 25% of the global greenhouse gas emission). Of all the African nations, Nigeria, Liberia and Congo have relatively higher greenhouse emissions and that too on account of oil and gas exploration and deforestation, which in turn is driven to pacify the insatiable appetite of the developed world. It is most unfortunate, for Africa being an egalitarian society, most of the inhabitants still depend heavily on agriculture for their survival, and thus environment becomes all the more critical for their sustenance.

The footprints of the damage are ubiquitous. Over the past 100 years, ‘Lewis Glacier’ – Kenya’s largest glacier – has reduced to 10% of its actual size. Again, in Kenya, more than 10 million livestock has died, leaving almost 67% without any livelihood in the Turkana region as an aft ereffect of the drought that started almost 3 years back. It is projected that the world famous Mount Kilmanjaro in Tanzania would be extinct in another decade as more than 80% of its ice has disappeared in the last 90 years, with almost 33% disappearing in the last decade itself. The same is true for Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda, where, since the last decade or so, the glacier area has reduced by almost 75%. In Nigeria too, crops are being wiped out on account of regular flooding in the Niger Delta. Moreover, the climatic changes have also been instrumental in spreading the dreadful malaria in Kenya and Tanzania killing thousands of people. In addition, the rising temperatures at the lakes (Lake Chad has been reduced to a ‘name’; from 25,000 sq.km to 1,350 sq.km today), seas and oceans have affected marine life, biodiversity, tourism and most importantly, the resulting income.

Forget the cause of helping Africa through aid and similar other initiatives, the least the developed world could do is to empathise with African ecology, knowing very well how critical it is for their survival. To keep up their own industrial growth at the cost of such underdeveloped economies is nothing less than the new world hegemony.

...Or the forsaken gift of Ebola...
The new virus, if left unchecked, would be the next global epidemic

Here is another addition to Africa’s woes. It is now reeling under a virus that is a potential competitor to HIV and the deadliest killer of all – Ebola (from the river Ebola in Democratic Republic of Congo). And for the uninitiated, this disease is so lethal that the incidence of death is nearly 90% and many a time the doctors and the nurses treating the patients become the eventual victims.

It is so contagious that it can spread through not just the body fluids (saliva, stool, blood and sweat), but by mere contact with the infected person (even contact with clothes), because the viral particles remain present on skin in large numbers, so much so that a mere skin biopsy is good enough to detect the presence of the virus. The virus had its first outbreak in 1976 in Democratic republic of Congo, an outbreak which resulted in more than 400 deaths.

Till date there has not been any viable vaccine or medicine to prevent or cure the disease, which more oft en that not, leads to a violent death through bleeding. But the problem with Ebola doesn’t end here. On the contrary, it actually starts here. There is a direct correlation between the rapid spread of Ebola and lack of proper sanitation, which is why it has affected many of the sub Saharan African countries which has some of the worst hygiene conditions. Not just the lack of cure, up till today, researchers have not been able to identify its origin.

The bigger scare is, owing to its fast spreading capability, Ebola can at anytime be a potential weapon for bio-terrorism. So it becomes imperative for the developed world consider it as a global crisis than just any other African crisis and thereby concentrate on efforts to contain its spread before the virus takes any such ugly shape or takes the HIV proportions and spreads outside the geographical boundaries of Africa.

...Then lack of aid for sure!
The world spends $1 trillion in arms, but not on ending poverty

A recent report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) states that global defence spending in 2005 was a staggering $1 trillion. The top 15 spenders accounted for nearly 84% of the total expenditure. The United States of America led the chart with a mind-boggling annual defence spending of $478.2 billion followed by United Kingdom ($48.3b), France ($46.2b), Japan ($42.1b) and China ($41b). The top five accounted for 65.5% of the global defence spending followed by Germany with $33.2b, Italy with $27.2b, Saudi Arabia $25.2b, Russia $21b and India with $20.4b. Incidentally barring Canada, all of the G-8 countries are part of the list of the top 15 defence spenders.

What more, this annual defence spending does not include the several billions of dollars that are sanctioned by many of these countries on defence and allied research. The double standards of the developed world is revealed when one compares this with the fact that 2.8 billion people live with an income below $2 per day. And even then it takes years of deliberation and contemplation by the G-8 countries to write off the debt of $40b (when compared to what it spends on defence annually) of 18 of the poorest countries of the world, which included many of the poorest of the Sub-Sa- haran African countries. But in the new world order, it isn’t to be so, for spending money on tools to take lives is more of a priority than saving those lives.

Incidentally, the total debt of Africa is around $300b. If the G-8 takes the lead from the front in not only writing off the debt but also in intervening into the overall socio-economic development of Africa, half of mankind’s misery might come to end. And thereby putting a strong deterrent on such offensive spends on defence expenditure.