No tax break for outsourcers?

In a complete misreading of the latest moves by the US Govt, reflecting its own obsession with outsourcing, Indian media today screamed “No Tax Breaks for Outsourcing Companies“. Then came the usual laments about how this will hurt the Indian software industry, how protectionism is bad for the US economy, how outsourcing helps the US economy etc. etc. etc.

A close reading of the details of this repealed tax break indicates absolutely no connection with outsourcing as we know it. A close reading of Obama’s actual statement further illuminates the power of the English language to confound and confuse!

The Slumdog Experience

The best part of the Academy awards night was when the whole Slumdog troupe went on stage to receive the best picture award. The presence of the kids lent a rather unusual (and un-occidental) charm to the moment. And they give you a clue as to why this rather average film has been receiving so many accolades. 

It is not so much about the on-screen movie as about the off-screen reality.

I watched the movie, the BAFTA awards and the Academy awards and they were all part of the Slumdog experience. It was as if the movie had stretched beyond the screen and encompassed events that happened after it. The slides you see above are as much a climax of the Slumdog experience as the final question (and the phone a friend) was that of the Slumdog movie! And Danny Boyle was directing it to the very end!

The icing on the cake is of course the strange and obvious parallel between the on-screen and off-screen endings – “it is written” that these kids from Mumbai will end up on the stage, alongside A. R. Rahman and Anil Kapoor, at the Oscar awards ceremony, in far away Los Angeles!

Corporate Governance (or lack of it) at HBOS, UK

While we in India are all captivated (and shamed) by the failure of corporate governance at Satyam, elsewhere in the world, in the not-so-venerable financial district of London, one Mr. Paul Moore has turned the spotlight on a surprisingly neglected aspect of the global financial meltdown – massive failure of corporate governance!

Here are some extracts from the full text of Mr. Moore’s evidence presented at the House of Commons ‘Banking Crisis’ hearing:

Nightmare on 15th St

It is public knowledge now that the financial crisis in the private banking and financial services sector in the US has now been transferred to the government of the USA. TARP was unveiled and apparently went nowhere, changing track mid-stream to re-capitalize US banks rather than buy troubled assets.

Then along comes the new Treasury Secretary (who apparently was the back-room boy for the previous one, and hence is not really new), and he raises the bailout number from 700 Billion to 2.5 Trillion [Bailout Plan: $2.5 Trillion and a Strong U.S. Hand]. And there he stopped. Absolutely no details as to what this number meant and where this money will come from (everyone knows where it will go – into the sinkhole).

This got me thinking. Clearly, the US government is dragging its feet. There is something which prevents the US government from acting decisively, not withstanding President Obama’s sincere sense of urgency. 

There are two possibilities here:

• These gentlemen do now really know what they are dealing with here and how to deal with this crisis. By now, everyone knows what we are dealing with here – the after-effects of imprudent excessive leverage by US banks and financial institutions. Agreed, it is not clear how to value the troubled assets (a value of zero would be probably accurate but no one wants to hear that) and it is not easy to see a clear path out of this mess, but I suspect there is a different reason to this feet- dragging.
• These gentlemen in the government know too well the state of the US government’s finances and they realise that the US government is in no position to bail-out the private banks. In other words, the US government is also highly leveraged, and is in the same tar-pit as the private banks and financial institutions.

Calvin Explaining the Financial Crisis

The Sublime Khwaja

Recently my wife force-fed Jodha Akbar to me. The movie trundled along passably well without making any deep inpression until the lone gem buried in this costume drama flicked on the screen.

This sublime A. R. Rahman fugue for three voices (all three voices being A. R. Rahman’s) combined with brilliant visuals and a dramatic, understated choreography lifted this intense song sequence way above the rest of the film.

The making of Khwaja Mere Khwaja

Last month, I was tremendously surprised to see Star Screen Awards recognize this song sequence with the Best Choreography award. Didn’t quite expect an Indian jury to reward understatement (the awards program itself was of course loud, garish and completely gross).