Archive for January, 2007
Business Nuggets: India Flourishes
India is the flavor of the day on FT’s emerging market section:
Tata Steel has won the bidding war for Anglo-Dutch steel firm Corus (FT.com, BBC reports). The combined company will be the fifth largest in the world:
Britain’s Takeover Panel said Tata had won after offering 608p per share, valuing Corus at £5.75bn ($11.3bn).
This is surprising [...]
A Talk by Mohammad Yunus: A Man Misunderstood
Today I heard a speech by Mohammad Yunus at FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in New Delhi. He spoke for 35 minutes to a packed, standing crowd, interrupted only by the laughter of his jokes and the occasional rude cellphone.
I am compelled to write this (long) post, because I must recommend [...]
The Relation between Health and GNP: India and China
Greg Mankiw points to a Google tool (from Gapminder) plotting per capita GNP and life expectancy of several countries over time. I presume it is supposed to show the strong correlation between economic growth and improvements in health, but I noticed some problems with.
Insufficient Correlation between Health and GNP
As a patriotic Indian I first compared [...]
India Nuggets: Happy Republic Day
January 26 is India’s Republic day, the day in 1950 that we chose to be a republic. As a modern republic and nation state, India is today 57 years old.Some interesting guardedly optimistic readings to celebrate, and thank those that preceded us, for what they built (and a hope that we don’t screw it up).
Development Aid: Critical Views by Becker-Posner and Friedman
Becker and Richard Posner have two wonderful critiques of International Development Assistance. They are long and worth every moment needed to read them, with a simple conclusion (Posner):
The focus of my discussion has been on the question whether the recipient nations benefit at all. My guess is that they do not. It is just a [...]
News Nuggets: Manufacturing Cheap Vaccines, Ayurveda, and Bioprospecting Breakthroughs
Three interesting health-related news, all from alternative media.
Vaccine Manufacture Breakthrough
The Voice of America is reporting (also reported on THDBlog and in India) that Henry Daniell of the University of Central Florida has achieved a breakthrough to manufacture existing vaccines by genetically engineering plants. The new process skips existing processes, cutting costs substantially and allows vaccines [...]
MSF Starts Petition against Novartis’ Legal Challenge in India
SciDev.net reports that Médecins Sans Frontières has launched a petition against the court case by Novartis against the Indian government (see previous post for details of the case).
Aid organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is collecting signatures against a lawsuit filed by pharmaceutical company Novartis. The court case is scheduled for 29 January in [...]
CSR in Developing Countries: Advocacy and Strategy
BusinessWeek has a cover story on CSR, Beyond the Green Corporation, suggesting the ethical, responsible corporation is no longer the stuff of fiction. It is very much here and while not mainstream, is certainly a visible minority.
The article may be a bit too optimistic in that prognosis. It rests on restating the same few examples, [...]
