Posts from — September 2008

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives gave final approval to the U.S.-India Civilian Nuclear Cooperation Initiative with a bipartisan vote of 298-117.  The bill must now be approved by the Senate.  There are already reports that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may fly to New Delhi shortly to complete the process.

Approval of this is expected to open up business opportunities for companies such as General Electric, Westinghouse, Bechtel and Stone/Webster as India prepare to spend up to $100 billion on new nuclear power plants. French and Russian companies are also likely to compete for this business.

There’s been a lot of malarkey about the agreement. Some of  this malarkey  comes from the democratic congressman from Massachussetts,  Rep Ed Malarkey, eh Markey.  He argued incredibly that ” opposing the bill did not mean opposing India. This is a debate about Iran. This is a debate about North Korea, about Pakistan, about Venezuela, about any other country in the world that harbors the goal of acquiring nuclear weapons,” You can listen to it here http://markey.house.gov/ .

The deal has made it through Congress so far in just a few weeks since the Nuclear Supplier Group gave the nod in early September. But AFP reports today that “The agreement had long been stalled in Congress,”.  It seems that both Rep Markey and the AFP are distracted by the financial meltdown.

I’ve been humbled by the ten five star reviews accorded to my book ( Doing Business in 21st Century India )  on Amazon.  There are many books that present a strongly positive image of India and its potential;  words such as Planet, Billions, Arriving, Unbound, as part of their title convey their intent. I set out to write a balanced but passionate book, one that conveyed the energy and potential but also the challenges and difficulties that one might face.

So I was most pleased by the following sentence in a recent review ” Bagla reacts to ‘Indianness’ with surprising neutrality.”  Since I am of Indian origin, the review meant to chide me gently for not being more gung-ho about my native country.   This is the best compliment I could have received, since it confirms that my book is balanced.  You can read the entire review here.

Yesterday I was asked to speak about “The Drivers of India’s Success” as the think tank RAND Corporation. The Asia Society, co-organized the event. I was honored to have another author, Professor  SarDesai of  UCLA, attend my talk, along with his wife.

In the next few weeks Hollywood celebrities, agents, dealmakers, assistants and paparazzi are going to learn how to pronounce Anil Dhirubhai Ambani’s name.  Amid all the turmoil in the financial markets, Ambani’s company Reliance ADAG has just plunked down $500 million to help Steven Spielberg (the god of Hollywood) take Dreamworks SKG out of the hands of Viacom’s Paramount Pictures and make it a private entity. Seasoned Hollywood insiders are chuckling. “Rich foreigners have lost their shirts in Hollywood with surprisingly regularity.”  The Japanese with Matushita’s investment into Universal Pictures. The French with utility Vivendi, SA. Perhaps even the Canadians with Seagrams. And countless German and other European investors who have funded movies as a tax write-off but did not realize that they were writing off their entire investment (at least they got have dinner with a star or starlet).

But Ambani’s is different as I said in my blog entry when this deal was first announced in June. And in August as Bloomberg News and others start the predict that the deal would be signed any day now, I predicted that the time was not quite yet.  See this write up and then this one.

Stay tuned for more. And note that Ambani’s investment number reduced form $600 millon to $500 million, even as the reported size of the deal rose from $1 billion to $1.2 billion.  While full terms haven’t been disclosed yet (and may never be), I can promise you that Ambani has better terms in the 12 weeks that have elapsed since the discussion came to light.

The White House said late last Wednesday it sent the text of a landmark US-India civilian nuclear agreement to Congress for final approval.

The pro-deal arguments are best summarized at a website run by the US India Business Council, an industry group based in Washington, DC.

Leading the charge against the deal is a newspaper I normally agree with, but not on this count, it’s the Economist.

The Asia Society invited me to give a snapshot of business opportunities with India last Thursday.  Tejpreet S. Chopra, the head of General Electric India’s $3 billion business is visting the USA and he spoke about the disruptive innovations happening in India today. He also talked about how Western companies such as GE and others can play in the Indian economy. GE’s research center in south India now has 5000 scientists and engineers who have produced major innovations for the company such as a low-cost EKG machine and improvements on the GE-Nx jet engine that powers the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

India Journal reported on the event and on my comments “Chopra’s address was preceded by a quick review of the recently released book “Doing business in 21st century India” by author Gunjan Bagla. He explained how Asia has been misunderstood by politicians and the press.. On the other hand he explained, in a few nuggets that globalization has been good for the world and in reality has created and saved many jobs in the US.”