ultranomics

Two such important economies of the Asian arena, Pakistan and India are at logger heads again! Well for the duration of this article, I’m going to be the referee. My scorecard will sometimes go against one contestant, sometimes against the other. To see who wins or if it’s a draw, you will just have to read till the end…

Some fresh punches have recently been thrown in this 60 year old boxing match between the two South East Asian nuclear rivals. The latest game was started after the Mumbai attacks when the Indian government blamed Pakistan and was adamant that surely the Pakistani government couldn’t be totally unaware in such an incident when only 10 insurgents caused havoc for a week for the Indian special [and not so special] forces.

Pakistanis have responded by saying that as yet no concrete evidence linking any official Pakistani government agency or even any individual has been provided. I guess they have a point.

Let’s just say for the sake of argument we take the line of reasoning that if the insurgents are proven to be from Pakistan then this fact by itself will prove that the Government of Pakistan was indeed involved in the Mumbai attacks. Then it can be argued in the same fashion that surely the Indian Government is involved at the highest level in the recent high profile Satyam espionage case at the World Bank!

For people unaware of Satyam this Indian IT company is/was run by Ramalinga Raju who has been hailed as one of the leading lights of Indian enterprise. The World Bank who were one of the bigger clients of Satyam discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank’s Washington headquarters. Was Satyam used as a tool of espionage by the Indian government to steal proprietary information from important agencies, companies and countries?

Frances Karamouzis, an analyst at Gartner says “This is a crisis of trust, it’s not really Satyam at stake; it’s the India Inc. brand”. As a result India’s Sensex index tumbled 7.3 percent on Jan 7th 2009 led by a 78 percent plunge in Satyam after Chairman Ramalinga Raju said profits at the company had been inflated for years and then resigned. Satyam American depositary receipts fell $8.42 or 90 percent to 93 cents before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange, which then halted trading in the stock.

This has brought out into the open that outsourcing to India is becoming increasingly dangerous and the service delivered by the Indian IT companies is in a continued state of decline. Not only is this reflected in the quality of output but also in the falling standards of plain old fashioned business ethics. According to The New York Times of 8th January 2009 “The financial fraud at Satyam is rippling through the technology services industry, as customers scramble to line up other suppliers and rivals look to pick up business. Already, competitors are angling for a share of Satyam’s nearly $2 billion in annual revenue. The big winners from the fallout are likely to be two American companies Accenture and IBM”.

Gartner evaluated 30 countries in three world regions that could address enterprise companies’ outsourcing needs. Considering 10 key criteria, Gartner scored the potential of numerous cities to provide the right mix of English language proficiency, local government support, infrastructure and technical considerations such as data security and “privacy” [yes guys the key word here is privacy - the next paragraph explains.]
The future of offshore telemarketing in India was thrown into doubt after UK’s Channel 4 Dispatches Program revealed the incredible lack of security in India’s call centres. Channel 4 senior reporter, Sue Turton exposes the seedy world of the trade of personal data in Indian call centres. In a 12-month undercover investigation, Turton infiltrated criminal networks which trade British consumers’ bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world’s new call centre capital. The show showed how the process works from beginning to end. Call centres dialling for mobile phone companies extract credit or other banking information from people they sell to which is part of a legitimate sales process. This data including credit card numbers, expiry dates and security codes is stored by the call centre and even though the data is sent through to their clients in the UK, a copy is stored on the databases at the call-centre. This data is then taken out of the call centre through a variety of methods including memory sticks. It is then sold through a network of middlemen to other clients or to criminal gangs for between £5 and £25 per record. In some cases the call centre owners are involved in the sale of this data.

The latest Gartner report confirms that India might not be the only country that comes to mind when considering outsourcing work overseas. The location selection is a key factor companies need to consider when thinking of sending work overseas. The city they choose will impact the success of the offshore engagement. “Whether you have a country-led or vendor-led approach to offshore services, you must understand the offshore location landscape,” according to a presentation by Gartner research vice president Ian Marriott. He further adds “Determine which vendors are the right fit for your organization, don’t just seek the leaders”.

Something tells me Pakistan stands to benefit from the unfortunate Indian turmoil because Gartner had previously released a report titled, “Analysis of Pakistan as an Offshore Service Location” which placed the country in the First Category destinations and also acknowledged that Pakistan’s labour costs were 30% lower than India’s, while Telecom costs were the lowest of any outsourcing destination. No wonder Pakistan had a USD 1Billion worth of outsourcing business closed in 2008.

Even in this time of Economic doom and gloom [mostly caused by confusing policies and not enough action by the ruling Pakistan People's Party] Pakistan’s private sector is ever inspiring and has the power to impress and lead. I would start by mentioning that Pakistan enjoys the world’s largest WiMAX network. Wateen Telecom rolled out WiMAX in 17 cities throughout Pakistan – can USA catch up?

Futuristic chalets in Islamabad

Perhaps I should also tell our scientifically minded readers that Around 27 Pakistani scientists and technicians took part in the flawless start to the CERN’s LHC [Large Hadron Collider] ‘Big Bang’ experiment that will re-enact the first moments of the universe. ‘Fifteen physicists, ten engineers, five Lasers and Opto-electronics experts, six computer professionals and six students from National Centre for Physics (NCP) and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) are involved in the experiment.

Pakistan has also bagged 3 of the 16 APICTA [The Asia Pacific ICT] 2008 awards. However I am not too happy to report that Karachi based Integrated Dynamics are providing the state-of-the-art UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles] to the US border protection service which are probably indirectly being used to kill fellow Pakistanis! These UAVs, with their sophisticated navigation and monitoring software [also written in Pakistan] have been deployed to protect the borders of the United States. Even Wired magazine covered Pakistan’s growing UAV capabilities in one of its articles.

Staying on the old adage of building a tank and then chasing after an anti tank weapon, Pakistani scientists are also developing a sophisticated system to hit high flying spy planes as recently confirmed by Federal Defence Production Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi. Much of the involved technology is in networking the disparate radar systems – writing detection software and applications that can interpret large amounts of raw data emanating from passive sensors deployed over vast geographical areas. Sophisticated UAVs, especially those covered with Radar Absorbent Materials provide a very small RCS [Radar Cross Section]. Herein lies the challenge of detecting them. It’s not very different to an air defence that can detect and tackle stealth aircraft. In some ways, perhaps even more challenging since the audio signatures from slow flying stealth UAVs are smaller than those of their manned counterparts.

No wonder the Indian government stopped its forces on attempting any “surgical strikes” within Pakistan. According to an Indian defence analyst the Indian army lacked key artillery equipment and adequate ammunition supplies. According to him “The 400-odd Bofors guns we bought in the 1980s are falling apart for want of spares. The 600-odd Shilka anti-aircraft cannons are in desperate need of upgrade. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” he wrote, quoting an unidentified retired general. The same general disclosed that India’s numerically vast tank fleet was in poor shape and it did not have any mobile artillery to speak of.

Most of the Indian armaments are still of Russian origin and due to Soviet breakup there is no backup for servicing or spares. The Aamir Khan starring bollywood film “Rang De Basanti” was also based on the ever crashing historic Indian ‘flying coffin’ MIG aircrafts. The Indian military is in tatters and feared that the Pakistanis would take Indian territory in case of a war. Moreover the US forces are using Karachi port for its supplies to the troops in Afghanistan and the Indian Govt just could not take the chance of any of their “surgical strikes” taking out a US convoy or plane because then uncle Sam would send Bruce Willis to kick some butt.

In comparison Pakistan has a ready churning program of Al-Khalid MBT [main battle tank] and joint strike fighter plane JF-17 Thunder built in Pakistan with the co-operation of long standing friend China and with the help of France a Mirage Rebuild factory is in full swing. Pakistan also has acquired the technology from France to manufacture Agosta class submarines. A few squadrons of F16s and A5s are also ever ready for some special urgent pizza deliveries to Indian hot spots.

What does all of this say about our dear countries of India and Pakistan? You won’t be surprised to know that Pakistan is spending a major portion of its budget on defence to keep India at bay. No doubt India does the same. Why oh why????????

It’s not like Pakistan and India don’t have more needy causes. The recent terrific bollywood flick Slumdog Millionaire gave the most honest and raw version of the poverty rife in the Indian heartlands. Unfortunately this tends to be hidden from the world’s attention through the perverse portrayal of sari-clad super-rich clans propagated daily on satellite channels like Zee TV and StarPlus. The ever conspiring women depicted in these never-ending screensaver soap operas are always in full makeup during the rain, in the bed or even at the death bed. They talk only in hundreds of millions and every man in the cast has either married them or else is manipulated by them! Bravo to directors like Danny Boyle, who has shown a glimpse of the reality for the impoverished Indian underclasses in Slumdog. There were some great performances by Dev Patel (Jamal), Madhur Mittal (Salim) and Freida Pinto (Latika). However Anil Kapoor (gameshow host) was straight out of one of the Zee TV dramas mentioned above.

Big Brother points gun at Little Brother

Unless we have an epic scenario of drifting sub-continental tectonic plates, causing Pakistan & India to get separated [now THAT would make a great movie – any director listening?] both the countries have to realise that they are conjoined twins. India’s side may have a few more heads though! Anyway pun aside India definitely has had better rulers than Pakistan, for example the current Indian President Manmohan Singh is definitely more educationally polished then his Pakistani counterpart. Manmohan Singh earned his DPhil from UK’s Oxford University as compared to Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari [zard-aaree = yellow saw] whose biggest and only qualification is marrying Benazir Bhutto [RIP] the twice Prime Minister of Pakistan. Zardari is also responsible for telling the US VP Candidate Sarah Palin that she is “gorgeous” and said: “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you”. When the photographers asked the two to keep shaking hands, he replied: “If he insists I might hug you”. This was just one day after he delivered an emotional speech at the UN in NewYork waving a photograph of his deceased wife who was assassinated only a few months prior.

It should also be mentioned that India are a stronger democracy with the proof that their Army unlike Pakistan so far has never intervened in the country’s affairs, not even when leaders like Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi were assassinated.

I have said this before and I am saying it again – Pakistan and India are two nations full of energetic and very intelligent individuals. Together we run the worlds IT networks, and we make up a large portion of the western world’s health and telecommunications professionals.

No prestigious educational institution on the face of this earth has been without a Pakistani or Indian student coming on the top. For the sake of saving and developing our economies this boxing rope-a-dope has to end. Let’s face it, both countries cannot risk to use nuclear weapons against each other because both are scared of the fallback, both are aware of the MAD [mutually assured destruction]. So why are we wasting our energies and resources on trivial issues fighting each other? Why can’t we use our brains to better our peoples’ lives with food, health, clean water, security, communication…? Anyone?

jq@ultranomics.com