November 2005 119th Issue

Hua Hin News

Traditional (Hua Hin - Cha Am) Tournament

This event, co-sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand, and the Palm Hills Golf Resort and Country Club, was held on September 28th, 2005. The venues were Palm Hills Golf Resort and Country Club, the Majestic Creek Golf and Resort, Springfield Golf Resort and Spa and the Royal Hua Hin Golf Course, and the winners were:

The Administrative Team of the Royal Hua Hin Golf Course, the male staff of Palm Hills Golf Resort and Country Club, and the female staff of Springfield Golf Resort and Spa.

NEWS FLASH!

The Index Living Mall opened on 15th October, with it's Grand Opening on 22nd October, with many special offers available. It is located on Phetkasem Road next to Soi 23.

HUA HIN KEBABS

Real kebabs available 3 nights a week now! Hua Hin Kebabs are for sale on Tuesday and Friday evenings at Goannas and on Saturday nights at Johnnie Walkers - both are located on Soi Selakarm. Party bookings also available - call Duang on 09-248-5306.

PALM HILLS

Palm Hills golf course completed their extensive renovations in October and welcomes golfers to check out the many improvements.

Commencement Ceremony

Princess Ubolratana will graciously preside over The Sixth Commencement Ceremony on November 5, 2005 at the Hua-Hin – Cha-Am Main Campus of Stamford International University

For information please call 032 442 322 or visit www.stamford.edu

ASIA V EUROPE

It has been announced that there will be a ‘Ryder Cup' style event held between Asia and Europe . The event will be called The Royal Trophy and will be held in Bangkok at the Amata Spring Country Club from 5-8 January 2006. After that it will be held bi-annually.

The event will consist of eight players per team, six of which will be chosen according to each tours order of merit and world rankings, the other two will be captains choices.

There will be a prize fund of $1.5 million, with $1 million going to the winners and $ 0.5 million to the losers.

Seve Ballesteros will captain the European team and the Asian team Captain will be announced shortly.

Hua Hin Events

The Royal Dusit Hall, Hall for all Occasions

H.E. General Prem Tinsulanonda, the President of the Privy Council and statesman, presided over the grand opening of The Royal Dusit Hall. He was welcomed to Dusit Resort, Hua Hin by Chatri Sophonpanich, Chanin Donavanik and General Manager, Victor Sukseree

John hayes celebrates his birthday in style at Crawfords in Cha Am - the local fire service were called in shortly after this picture was taken!

The celebration party at GDL Pools was very well attended and featured a fine performance by the army band from the local military base.

Matt and Tom (2nd and 4th right) have a party to celebrate moving into their new house. Unfortunately they couldn't find one in Aston Villa's colours!

Loi Krathong

This most picturesque of all Thai festivals is held annually on the full moon of the 12th lunar month (November) and is an apology to “Mother Water” for polluting. In 2005 it is being held on 16th November in Hua Hin, and there is a three-day festival from the 14th to 16th November in Bangkok . Details of the Hua Hin event can be obtained from the Hua Hin Education Division Office on 032-532-480, and the Bangkok Festival details are available from the TAT Call Centre on 1672 or the Events Department on 02-250-5500 Ext. 3969.

Traditionally, the people use leaves to fashion krathongs or small boats which are decorated with joss sticks, flowers and a lighted candle. A coin is usually added as an offering as krathongs are eased into waterways. Many Thais also add a hair or nail clipping to the krathong, believing it will bring them luck. In recent years Thai environmentalists have been making inroads to persuade people to use environmentally friendly materials in the making of the boats, as there had been a large number that were not. More specifically they were encouraging the use of materials that could be eaten by the sea-life, so that as well as not polluting the sea, the launching of the krathong is a benefit.

Legends vary as to Loi Krathong's origin. Most agree that the festival started in Sukothai about 800 years ago as a sort of Thai Thanksgiving. It marked the end of the rainy season and the main rice harvest. It is based on a Hindu tradition of thanking the water god for the waters. The farmers of Sukhothai used to hold a festival of floating candles. One year, a beautiful woman called Noppamas, who was the chief royal consort, made some special lanterns for the festival. She made them from banana leaves and shaped them like lotus flowers. The king was impressed with what he saw, so he announced that krathongs would be floated on the water every year from then on. Today, the memory of that woman who made the first krathong is remembered in a beauty contest called “The Noppamas Queen Contest”. By paying respect with the incense and offering, the Thais are asking forgiveness of “mother river” for their pollution. And by floating away the krathongs they are floating their sins away. One Thai legend claims that when a boy and a girl launch a krathong together they will be lovers in this life or the next life.

Loi Krathong varies, but is generally a one to three day holiday that may include parades, fairs, fireworks and parties. Loi Krathong begins to weave its magic at dusk when krathongs, lights and lanterns transform night into day. Flickering candles drifting out across the water create an aura of romance that is irresistible. It is a singular experience to hear a string of 3,000 firecrackers go off nearby. Or even more so to see a beauty contest where the contestants are clad in traditional Thai dress rather than swim wear.

Shimmering reflections light the sky as the heady aroma of incense fills the air and invigorates the spirit. A mystical silence hangs as each person prays and thinks their private thoughts while watching their offerings drift out of sight. For the longer the candle burns, the better the next year will be. Houses may be decorated with palm fronds, coloured paper and lanterns. Loi Krathong is also a day of merit making as Thais make offerings at Buddhist temples.

In Hua Hin the main focus is normally the beach, where thousands of local Thais mingle with holidaymakers as they throng to the sea to launch their krathongs. The area near the railway station is where the official festivities occur, and most of the major hotels will also be putting on special events. Krathongs will be on sale all over the town in the days leading up to the festival, and on the day itself almost any area of water will have people gathering by it to take part, including swimming pools and in particular canals. Many Thais travel down from Bangkok to celebrate in Hua Hin so make sure your travel and accommodation is arranged accordingly!

Ready, Set, Launch ... Oops!

Northern Thailand has a unique addition to the Loi Krathong festival. It is the Yi Peng festival which includes launching “khom loi” later in the evening. This has extended to many other parts of Thailand as well. The khom loi is a small hot air balloon made of coarse translucent paper and approximately the size of a large trash bag. The bags are often white but may be coloured and decorated. Three or four strings support the “candles/engines” that hang perhaps half a meter below the “bag.” Soaking rolls of toilet paper in wax or paraffin preparations makes the engines. Then the roll is sliced crosswise into sections about 3 cm thick and a wick is added. The engine also serves as illumination. Strings of sparklers may be attached below the engine.

Launching a khom loi is no task for a novice. It is common to see several people trying to cooperate in the effort since the bag has to be held steady and deployed while the air inside heats up. During that process the engine may go out, the wind may change, a string supporting the engine may break. Or someone might hold on when he was supposed to let go, or the thing may tangle in overhead lines or hang on the edge of a roof.

It is not too uncommon to see the khom loi go up, or down, in flames while all onlookers and launch committee laugh at their attempts. In recent years the ‘amateur' launching of khom lois has been frowned upon by national government and local authorities, mainly because of safety, so check with your hotel or the Thai tourist police before attempting a launch yourself!

There is also a song traditionally sung for Loi Krathong, and below are the lyrics translated into English;

November full moon shines,

Loi Krathong, Loi Krathong,

and the water's high

in the river and local klong,

Loi Loi Krathong,

Loi Loi Krathong,

Loi Krathong is here and everybody's full of cheer,

We're together at the klong,

Each one with this krathong,

As we push away we pray,

We can see a better day

Mindful Meditation Retreat

What is the aim of meditation? Meditation is not just to keep your mind still and peaceful, but it is to develop yourself for Supreme Wisdom or Enlightenment.

From childhood, we all have been taught to learn by thinking with the brain such as analysis, calculation, problem solving and others. No one has been taught to learn by the mindfulness and awareness of one's consciousness. So the power of consciousness is lost through the thinking of the past and future and also through the six sense-bases i.e. the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body and all forms of sensation. More than 90 % of consciousness is lost outside while we are using only less than 10 % of consciousness to lead our lives. The result of consciousness leakage is the poor quality of life of a person, a family, a society and a country. Hence the mindful meditation program is an insight approach to restore one's consciousness, which is to be applied to any activities of one's life without any leakage so that it can be developed to Supreme Wisdom.

Being able to apply mindfulness practice to develop one's consciousness, one should understand the different meanings of mind, consciousness, mindfulness and awareness clearly. For example, most people have interpreted the two words, mindfulness (Sati) and awareness (Sampajana) to be one using mindfulness (Sati) to mean awareness (Sampajana) and we have been taught to use Sati and Sampajana as one word. But if we can clarify the different meaning of ‘Sati' and ‘Sampajana', we will find out the correct insight practice for developing Sati and Sampajana separately and efficiently. The different meanings of ‘Sati' and ‘Sampajana' is like breaking the word ‘eat' into ‘intake' and ‘chew'. Another example is the hand movement. When you raise your hand and are fully aware of the hand moving upward, it is the awareness or Sampajana in Pali. So Sampajana is clarity of consciousness or full awareness. Sati should be mindfulness. When you have Sati or mindfulness in Sampajana of hand moving upward, this will result in full comprehension of the hand movement. Hence, ‘Sampajana' is a full awareness of eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, nose-consciousness, tongue-consciousness, body-consciousness and mind-consciousness and ‘Sati' is the mindfulness of those six sense-bases' consciousness. And the result of the practice of Sati in Sampajana is the mindfulness with the full awareness of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. This practice will lead to complete Satipatthana or foundations of mindfulness (mindfulness as regards the body, the feeling, the thought and the ideas). Therefore the right concentration is the result of right mindfulness and awareness. Nowadays most people have tried to practice meditation without the knowledge of how to benefit from the practice of mindfulness and awareness. The mindful meditation program is the insight approach to develop right concentration through right mindfulness and awareness.

This mindful meditation program is taught by the Venerable Luang Poh Vimmokkha from his experience, to guide all participants with many techniques to develop insight mindful meditation for Supreme Wisdom.

Those interested to join the program kindly email to: wimoak@yahoo.com or phone 09-2334265 for reservation or for more information about the program.

The website of mindful meditation precepts by the venerable monk can be viewed at: www.vimokkhadhamma.com.

Before Angkor

Along the dusty road, you pass ancient two-wheeled carts, pulled by large cows. Half wild herds of buffalo make their lazy way through lush dense jungle, driven by barefoot boys wearing krama. Rice farmers squat in their flooded fields, their heads protected from the intense Cambodian sun by pointed wide-brimmed straw hats.

Children play, casing pigs and chickens under the houses on stilts, whose thatched walls are made of woven palm leaves or shredded bamboo. Many of the front doors are adorned with a plastic bag of red liquid to ward off the vampires believed to drink the blood of young girls. Women, wearing traditional dress, their heads wrapped in krama, walk or ride bicycles along the side of the road. Merchants on bicycles, over-loaded with colourful plastic kitchenware, ride from house to house, selling their goods, the original pedlars.

The place is called Koh Ker, and it is located approximately eighty kilometres from Siem Reap. Until the year 946, this place of breath-taking natural beauty was the capital of Cambodia , until King Jayavarman IV moved the capital to Siem Reap. If not for the plastic and the occasional motorcycle, the scene could just as easily have been a photo of Cambodia one hundred years ago, or five hundred, or nearly a millennium ago, when the king still held court at this location. An early history of Cambodia , written in 1296, by Chau Da Guan, a visiting Chinese diplomat, from the court of Emperor Kublai Kahn, tells us that the basic house design hasn't changed.

In the ancient times of the Jen La period (6th to 9th Century) and the Angkor period (9th to 12th Century), stone was considered sacred, reserved only for the construction of religious buildings. Even the king lived in a wooden structure, demonstrating his subservience to the Hindu gods, in the days before Buddhism swept through Indochina . Chau Da Guan confirms that while the people lived in homes made of thatch, the king and other royals lived in grand homes made of precious teak wood. Almost as proof of the enduring power of the deity, the jungle consumed the dwellings of the kings and common folk, erasing their existence, with only the ancient Chinese text left to remind us that they once lived. But the stone temples, places of worship, still stand, in an eternal battle of the elements, as the sheer faith of stone grapples with the never-ending advance of the primordial jungle.

The well mapped, historic tourist sites of other countries have been institutionalised and commercialised, until the dignity of the ancients has been reduced to a sterile Disney World exhibition complete with a T-shirt an mouse ears. But, in Cambodia history, like the landscape, is still wild. The past is still being written, as archaeologists fight to reclaim countless temples from hundreds of years of jungle growth.

Cambodia is an exciting country, full of change and movement. Even the ancient temples, many nearly one thousand years old, are in constant metamorphosis, as they are rediscovered and preserved. This is not Europe , where history is a stagnant fact, belonging to the past. Cambodia is a country of vibrant active culture. People don't come to Cambodia looking for a boring story of extinct civilizations. They come to Cambodia looking for adventure. And, they find it!

Watching from the window of an air-conditioned minibus, the Cambodian countryside is just more TV. But, on a motorcycle you experience everything about the world around you. You notice the changes in temperature as you pass by a flooded rice field or lake. You smell the dusty earth, the green fields, and the herds of animals, which you have to dodge on the road. You hear the song of the farmers as they toil, and of the women as they walk. You taste the sweet waters of the afternoon rain. You feel like a time traveller, as eighty kilometres of traditional Khmer village life flies by you. The constant hum and vibration of your motorcycle engine lull you into a strange hypnosis, where nothing is real.

By the time you reach the Koh Ker temple complex, with its more than one hundred stone structures, you are ready for anything. Stepping off your bike and into the jungle, you feel like Laura Kroft or Indian Jones. No tour guides here, no guardrails, and no Yellow brick Road to follow, nothing separates you from the ancient monoliths except the limits of your own imagination.

You pick a direction and just go. The park is yours. Eventually, jungle overgrowth gives way to a path strewn with massive stones, like the toys of some giant child at play. The smell of wood fires drifts across the open field adding another dimension to your experience.

Monoliths begin to appear, tremendous stone sculptures bearing the tool marks of artisans from centuries gone. Stony constructs poke their way through the dense jungle, which has been trying to claim them. Defiantly, these stone-works, crafted by the ancient Khmer ancestors to honour the Hindu gods in a time before Buddhism spread through Indochina , push their way through the viny nets, towering over the earth.

The temples, built between 920 and 940 AD, are architechtural wonders, featuring peaked entranceways, supported by square columns. The perfectly square windows are ornately decorated with balustrades, demonstrating both the craftsmanship and the undying faith of the ancients. Over centuries, the 114 temples have fallen into various stages of disrepair, leaving a priceless litter of collapsed stone and statuary covering nearly every inch of the complex grounds. If you stoop, and push away the vines, you will see among the broken statues, massive lions, which once supported the rooves of the covered passage ways. You will also see fallen Hindu gods, Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma, almost like a metaphor for the ascension of Buddhism, in place of Hinduism.

Many of the temples feature linga, the Hindu statue of the falic symbol. The linga are often displayed attached to yoni, the symbol of female fertility. In ancient Hindu ceremonies, the monks would wash the linga with milk and water. Drains at the bottom of the yoni would direct the holy runoff to a spout, on the side of the temple, where the believers would come, and wash away their sadness. Although the annual Hindu ceremony is no longer practiced in Cambodia , locals still engage monks to ritualisticly wash them with the runoff, when they are sad. Once again demonstrating that these ancient temples are not just tourist attractions, but a living part of modern Khmer culture.

You are free explore the park uncovering temples for yourself. Some are completely overgrown, and require a keen I to be “discovered.” You could spend weeks in Koh Ker and still have weeks of new adventures ahead of you. Presat Tom was one of the most exciting adventures. This was a tall, castle like temple rising way up above the tree tops. Originally, there was a stone staircase leading all of the way to the top, but the lower third of the stairs were removed by French treasure hunters. Today, there is a wooden ladder, which leads to a nearly vertical climb up the stone steps. The view from the top is breath taking, particularly if you are able to summon up your time travel abilities and see the complex below, as it must have stood, a thousand years before.

In a number of locations, one could see where the statues of the Hindu gods were actually removed, after the coming of Buddhism. Several of the temples were scared by a huge hole in the floor, where robbers, following up oral legends, dug up the earth, looking for buried treasure. Sadly, all of the small details and sculptures have been carried off and sold. Many of the remaining sculptures bear the scars of thieves, thwarted in their attempts to steel the national antiquities.

My guide, Mr. Samban from Phnom Penh Tours, was explaining the ancient inscriptions found on the temple walls. “The writing system is called ancient Khmer.” I could see that it bore some similarity to modern Khmer. In trying to read one section, I was certain that it said “no smoking.”

Samban laughed. “That might be what it said if it were modern Khmer.” But, Samban went on to explain that the two languages used in ancient Hindu were Sanskrit and Pali. Both language remain a part of modern Khmer Buddhism, almost as Latin remains a part of Catholicism. “But the problem in doing translation.” Began Samban, “is that the writing system is ancient khmer, but the words are ancient Sanskrit or Pali, which almost none of us can speak today.” He went on to say that the ancient languages were taught at the Buddhist University in Phnom Penh , but that a shortage of translators has left many ancient texts untranslated.

As a trained linguist, I wanted to help out my Khmer hosts any way I could. So, drawing on all of my years of education and experience, I pieced together one of the inscriptions. “This text seems to be written in a primitive dialect of English.” I said. “It predicts the arrival of Amy and Thomas from Sydney in 2002.”

Samban shook his head. “That's not an inscription. That's graffiti. Amy and Thomas probably visited here in 2002.”

“So, the prediction did come true!” I marvelled.

The beauty of the park is that you are free to roam and experience, rather than merely look at history. One of the most amazing feelings is to not only touch the ancient stone structures, but to press your cheek up against the massive stone monoliths and feel the coldness and the centuries old power that lay inside. But, be respectful! The temples are still a holy site and must be preserved. Do not deface the temples, and do not steel anything. The bad karma you would get for robbing a temple could never be washed away.

To find out more about Koh Ker, or any of the historic sites in Cambodia contact:

Mr. Long Leng at: leng@abercrombiekent.com.kh

Contact the author at: antonio_graceffo@hotmail.com

Tributes to Otis Redding – The lost genius of Soul

Otis learned the basics of singing at church and local clubs and listening to idols of the day such as Sam Cooke.

After a family move to Macon (Georgia) Otis made his first moves into the world of music by cutting two singles on a small local label “Confederate”, imitating the styles of Little Richard and Barrett Strong, before joining forces with fellow singer Johnny Jenkins and becoming part of a backing band called The Pinetoppers. The first record “Love Twist” was signed up by the Atlantic label who swiftly moved them to the Stax studios in Memphis . Struggling for a follow up single the session was cancelled which left open a slice of studio time and Otis managed to persuade the producer to record one of his own songs with the Stax house band featuring Al Jackson and Steve Cropper, “These Arms Of Mine” was cut and released on Volt records, a sub label of Stax, Although it hardly got into the top 100 it was the beginning of a great partnership. Redding 's solo career was truly on it's way, though the hits didn't really start to fly until 1965 and 1966, when “Mr. Pitiful,” “I've Been Loving You Too Long,” “I Can't Turn You Loose,” a cover of the Rolling Stones' “Satisfaction,” and “Respect” (later turned into a huge pop smash by Aretha Franklin) were all big sellers. Redding wrote much of his own material, sometimes with the assistance of Booker T. & the MG's guitarist Steve Cropper. Yet at the time, Redding 's success was primarily confined to the soul market; his singles charted only mildly on the pop listings. He was nonetheless tremendously respected by many white groups, particularly the Rolling Stones, who covered Redding 's “That's How Strong My Love Is” and “Pain in My Heart.” ( Redding also returned the favour with “Satisfaction.”) One of Redding 's biggest hits was a duet with fellow Stax star Carla Thomas, “Tramp,” in 1967. But Otis's talents were being overshadowed by Detroit 's hit factory Tamla Motown. Otis in fact took a leaf out of Marvin Gaye's book when teaming up with Carla Thomas, for an album called “King and Queen”, but although a few of the tracks from this album were successful (“Knock On Wood” and “”Tramp”) it still wasn't a match for Tamla Motown, as the southern rootsy R&B sound couldn't quite hit with the mainstream soul of the time. While he had other hits such as “My Girl” (a Smokey Robinson song), “Love Man” and “Hard To Handle”, “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay“ will always be the song he will be most remembered for. He began to show signs of making major inroads into the white audience, particularly with a well-received performance at the Monterey Pop Festival In 1967, but sadly this was his last live performance - three days after he recorded “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay” Otis and four members of the Stax house band The Bar keys along with the pilot of the private plane were killed when the plane crashed into Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin on December 10, 1967. “Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay” was released in 1968 and spent 4 weeks at No 1 in the US and peaked at No 3 in the UK selling over a million copies. Otis Redding's final entry in the US charts in 1969 was the posthumous single “Love Man”. As it is, he did record a considerable wealth of music at Stax, which are now available on thoughtfully archived reissues.

(Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay

Sittin' in the morning sun

I'll be sittin' when the evening comes

Watching the ships roll in

And I watch ‘em roll away again

Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wasting time

I left my home in Georgia

Headed for the ‘Frisco bay

Cause I had nothing to live for

And look like nothing's gonna come my way

So I'm just.. Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wasting time .

Look like nothing's gonna change

Everything still remains the same

I can't do what ten people tell me to do

So I guess I'll remain the same

Sittin' here resting my bones

And this loneliness won't leave me alone

It's two thousand miles I roamed

Just to make this dock my home

Now, I'm just. Sittin' on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll awaaaaaay

I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay

Wasting time

Asian news and current affairs

The flip side of outsourcing to India

By Rabindra P Kar

In recent years, there has been a vigorous, sometimes acrimonious, debate about whether offshoring (also referred to as "outsourcing") is positive or negative for the United States and the other developed Western economies. Underlying this debate is an unspoken assumption - that offshoring has been very good for the developing countries where the jobs have moved. India is widely regarded as the prime beneficiary of this phenomenon. Consequently, it seems like a rhetorical question to ask whether offshoring is good for India .

If we consider the recent past, since the early 1990s, the general consensus is that offshoring has been a big positive for India . It has been a big factor in changing India 's image from a land of poverty and social "backwardness" into a potential economic superpower. It has spawned an information technology industry with exports of more than US$10 billion annually. It has greatly slowed, if not reversed, the "brain-drain" of educated and talented Indians to the West.

Of course, there have been negatives too. The sudden influx of companies and jobs into a few urban areas, notably Bangalore and New Delhi 's suburbs, has overwhelmed the existing poor infrastructure, leading to impossibly congested roads as well as water and electricity shortages. The huge inflation in land and housing prices in urban areas has hit the common man hard because the average Indian's income is puny compared to what the nouveau-riche techies earn. On balance though, the offshoring wave has benefited India , both psychologically and economically. At least so far.

Can India ride this wave to economic stardom in the next generation? Long-term, is offshoring good for India ?

The central premise of this article is that while offshoring has been good for India in the short-term, the long-term negatives will outweigh the positives. Since that is both a counter-intuitive and controversial assertion, the rest of this article will deal with the pitfalls of offshoring as a driver of India 's socio-economic destiny.

Let's start by looking at offshoring's employment potential. Estimates in the US media of the number of jobs currently outsourced to India range between 400,000 and 700,000. The most highly publicized outsourcing estimate, by Forrester Research (2004), predicted that 3.3 million US jobs would be offshored by 2015. Even if (a big if) India got a big majority of them, that amounts to at most 2.5 million jobs. If in the same period the European Union, Japan , Australia and Canada combined outsourced twice as many jobs as the US , that would total 7.5 million jobs in 2015.

Now consider that India 's population in 2015 will be nearly 1.2 billion people, which implies an adult workforce of 300 million or more. Thus even the optimistic predictions are that no more than 2.5% of India 's workforce will be employed in offshore services. Yet today, both India 's central government and many "progressive" state governments are obsessively focused on attracting offshore work - spending precious resources to create technology zones, offering tax incentives and lavishing time and attention on pitches to multinational corporate executives. If India 's population were similar to South Korea or Taiwan (in the tens of millions), providing offshore services could have been a big part of its future employment plans. But a nation containing one-sixth of humanity cannot achieve prosperity by taking jobs from other nations with much smaller populations. That is simply not a long-term, sustainable strategy.

A more subtle problem with the offshoring boom, is that it is giving urban Indians unrealistic expectations and distorted goals. The middle-class in India and China now believe that as the jobs move to Asia, they will be able to enjoy the consumption-heavy living standards of middle-class Westerners - two cars, a big, single-family, centrally air-conditioned home; all the electronic gizmos that their hearts desire, and so on. Their dreams of gizmos galore are achievable, since electronic goods keep getting cheaper and more plentiful. But there are some huge obstacles in the way of the other expectations - namely population size, population density, energy constraints and environmental limits.

First consider the effects of widespread automobile ownership. If just one-third of China and India 's combined population could afford the US norm of one car per adult, that would be 800 million more cars in these two countries alone. With the world now struggling with oil at more than US$60 per barrel, what would the price of oil be then? If the 200 million cars in the US produce such damaging levels of pollution and global-warming, can our planet withstand a three- or four-fold increase in automobiles?

We have to recognize that living standards are not merely a function of national income levels. They are bound by the limited natural resources available within a nation's borders. India 's population density is nine times that of the US . Hence the average Indian can never enjoy the 2,500 square foot single-family home with front and back yards, which is so commonplace in American suburbia. Indians may think that they will be able to buy a bigger home if their income rises. But if the average income in a city or region doubles, the price of good housing often more than doubles.

It isn't just housing that's resource-constrained. Clean water and energy are very finite resources, at least in the foreseeable future. To achieve a living standard comparable to the West, Indians will need access to much more fresh water and electricity per capita. India 's water situation is precariously dependent on the monsoon even at the current levels of consumption. As for electricity, India 's massive fossil-fuel dependence throws it between the devil (of pollution from coal-fired plants) and the deep blue sea (of high oil prices and coming oil shortages).

The bottom line is that money earned from offshoring cannot significantly raise the living conditions of the average Indian, but it definitely raises expectations. The yawning lifestyle gap between the small, techno-savvy class and the rest, simply creates resentment and frustration, not progress.

Despite its population and limited natural resources, India is not doomed to poverty and shortage. If India 's awesome collective brainpower is directed toward developing and utilizing technologies and strategies appropriate to India , it could dramatically raise its own living standards and that of much of the world. The areas of intense focus should be:

(a) Renewable, low-polluting energy sources: India should be investing a lot more in the development and deployment of solar, wind and waste-biomass power. Consider solar power. Being a tropical country it gets much more solar power per square meter per year than Europe or Japan . Moreover, since Indians have not become "used to" central air-conditioning, even current levels of solar-panel efficiency generate enough electricity for the average Indian home. Or consider hybrid (gas-electric) automobile technology. Given its huge oil-import bill, India should be concentrating on research and development (R&D) and manufacturing of hybrids or fuel-cell technology instead of taking pride in the explosion of gas-guzzling foreign car models on Indian roads.

(b) Water purification and conservation technologies: Most Indian rivers have undrinkable water because raw, untreated sewage is dumped into them by towns and villages upstream. Sewage treatment is not a "sexy" technology, but it is far more important to India 's well-being than software or automobiles. Most Indians have neither toilets nor showers. But the fortunate few who do are unaware or unconcerned with installing devices such as low-flow shower heads or dual-action flush tanks.

(c) Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are making great progress in India , but how little of it is oriented toward the diseases that affect the poor majority of Indians. India doesn't need better cholesterol-fighting drugs. It needs vaccines against malaria, cheap medicines against dysentery, cures for intestinal parasites. But most of all India needs cheaper and simpler contraceptives. If India 's population growth is not controlled, the current economic boom will make no long-term difference whatsoever.

Unfortunately, India 's dynamic private-sector companies are doing very little in the areas mentioned above. Instead, the lure of foreign investment and the great offshore services boom have them focused on products and competencies that serve wealthy, consumerist Western markets. After struggling to gain political independence after 150 years of colonial rule, India is "willingly" surrendering its economic independence to the agendas of Western corporate shareholders.

The final irony of the offshoring saga is that it is pushing Indian industry headlong into, what I call, the great intellectual property (IP) trap. Indians are swallowing self-serving Western "advice" that "strengthening" IP protections will encourage research and innovation. In truth, the Western patent regime is completely dysfunctional. Huge companies such as IBM and Microsoft are granted thousands of patents each year, not because they have made that many big "intellectual strides", but because the US patent office, deluged with applications, grants patents to minor improvements that are both obvious and trivial. Worse, a large number of "IP law firms" have come out of the woodwork, to profit from aggressively (sometimes abusively) enforcing these patents. Instead of encouraging innovation, this IP regime stifles it because individual inventors and small companies cannot afford expensive lawyers to defend themselves against predatory patent litigation.

Since R&D in developing economies such as India , China , Brazil and others, is often five to 20 years behind the "cutting edge", almost anything developed independently in these countries will run afoul of some Western patent. If the developing world honors all the patents filed in Western countries, its precious resources will be sucked dry paying royalties, or it will remain in permanent technological bondage. (Look at it from another angle - how much in royalties did the Western world pay India for inventing the zero?) Indians know in their hearts that IP protection is a game stacked in the developed world's favor. They know that no country becomes a great power while playing by some other great powers' rules.

But the CEOs and chairmen of India 's budding companies - the Wipros, the Infosys, the Ranbaxys - are not going to speak up in India 's interests because they fear that would be the end of their "partnerships" with Western multinationals. How could Indian Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms bid for offshore contracts from GE or Intel, if they don't sign on the dotted line with regard to intellectual property?

And what happens when they win the BPO contracts? Thousands of smart, educated Indians then become the intellectual slaves of a foreign company, for a fraction of the wages they pay their own employees. Every line of software code, every engineering drawing, every new molecule, every revolutionary idea now becomes the property of a Western corporation. Naturally, these advances will be duly patented or copyrighted. The supreme irony will be that future generations of Indians will be forking over royalties to Americans or Europeans for the intellectual output of their own countrymen. And that will be offshoring's enduring "legacy" to India .

Rabindra Kar was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India , and now lives and works as a computer software developer in Austin , Texas . He has been an activist on work-visa and offshoring issues since the early 1990s. Rabindra holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay; a masters degree in computer engineering from the University of Notre Dame; and an MBA from Portland State University, Oregon, USA.

(Copyright 2005 Rabindra P Kar)

Features

this month

regulars

stories

free ads

sports

golf

funnies

info

back issues