Posts from — January 2010

Diesel and natural gas engines manufacturer Cummins India announced its entry into the retail and consumer market by introducing small power generator sets of 7.5 kVA and 10 kVA.

“The small capacity power generators will cater to power needs of lesser capacities such as those required by individuals, households, retail stores, clinics, small hospitals, and government institutions,” Vice President of Power Generation unit of Cummins India, Beau Lintereur said at the launch here.

The power generation units of the company manufactures low and high horse power generators sets in capacities ranging between 15 to 3,000 kVA.

Takeaway:  American companies that are successful in India can then expand their footprint aggressively.

While India new airports at Bangalore (BLR)  and Hyderabad (HYD) are quite modern and efficient, there are are still air traffic challenges in the skies and are exacerbated severely by the winter fog in Delhi and other parts of northern India.

Its two busiest airports, the Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi (DEL) and the Chatrapati Shivaji Airport in Mumbai (BOM) are at the top of Forbes Magazine’s list of the the “World’s most delayed airports“. Both airports have had seen new construction at the terminals recent years, but runways are still limited.  Forbes also ranked Chennai (MAA) in south India among the word’s most delayed airports:  modernization here has just started and it may take quite a while before we see improvements. Forbes used data from FlightStats to compile its annual list. Delhi and Mumbai were near the top in last year’s list as well.

Beijing International (PEK) was on the list as well and so were five American airports: Newark (EWR), New York La Guardia (LGA), Dallas Fort Worth (DFW), Miami (MIA) and LA-Ontario (ONT).

Indian Citizen, Honorary American Mother Teresa

This year, the U.S. Postal Service recognizes Mother Teresa, the India citizen who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her humanitarian work. Noted for her compassion toward the poor and suffering, Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic nun and honorary U.S. citizen, served the sick and destitute of India and the world for nearly 50 years.

Centenary year for Nun

Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on Aug. 26, 1910, in Skopje in what is now the Republic of Macedonia. Drawn to the religious life as a young girl, she left her home at the age of 18 to serve as a Roman Catholic missionary in India. “By then I realized my vocation was towards the poor,” she later said. “From then on, I have never had the least doubt of my decision.” Having adopted the name of Sister Mary Teresa, she arrived in India in 1929 and underwent initial training in religious life at a convent in Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills. Two years later, she took temporary vows as a nun before transferring to a convent in Calcutta. She became known as Mother Teresa in 1937, when she took her final vows.

Moved by the poverty and suffering she saw in the streets of Calcutta, Mother Teresa left her teaching post at the convent in 1948 to devote herself completely to the city’s indigent residents. Two years later, she founded her own congregation, the Missionaries of Charity. Like Mother Teresa, the nuns of the new order wore white saris with a blue border rather than traditional nuns’ habits. In addition to the traditional vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, they took a fourth vow of wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor. “In order to understand and help those who have nothing,” Mother Teresa told the young women, “we must live like them.”

When Mother Teresa accepted the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize—one of her numerous honors and distinctions—she did so “in the name of the poor, the hungry, the sick and the lonely,” and convinced the organizers to donate to the needy the money normally used to fund the awards banquet. Well respected worldwide, she successfully urged many of the world’s business and political leaders to give their time and resources to help those in need. President Ronald Reagan presented Mother Teresa with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985, the same year she began work on behalf of AIDS sufferers in the U.S. and other countries. In 1997, Congress awarded Mother Teresa the Congressional Gold Medal for her “outstanding and enduring contributions through humanitarian and charitable activities.”

Mother Teresa died in Kolkata, India on September 5, 1997, and is buried there. She had been a citizen of India since 1948.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton and the U.S. Congress awarded Mother Teresa honorary U.S. citizenship. As of February 2009, the honor has only been bestowed on five others. Winston Churchill received it in 1963, Raoul Wallenberg in 1981, William Penn and Hannah Callowhill Penn in 1984, and the Marquis de Lafayette in 2002. The stamp features a portrait of Mother Teresa painted Thomas Blackshear II of Colorado Springs, CO.

The Reputation Institute of the UK asked residents of more than 30 countries rate their home country on the basis of “overall respect, trust, esteem, admiration and good feelings” and also to rate other countries on similar measures

The “Reputation Gap” plots the difference between the two sets of scores – a crude measure of the extent to which a country overrates itself. Residents of China, Russia and India, with the US not far behind, all think more of themselves than do others – hence the large numbers on their score cards. Japan is the only place where non-residents think more of the country than its residents – giving a negative score.

China
How they rate themselves 79
How others rate them 38
Perception gap 41

Russia
How they rate themselves 74
How others rate them 36
Perception gap 38

India
How they rate themselves 82
How others rate them 50
Perception gap 32

United States
How they rate themselves 77
How others rate them 48
Perception gap 29

The production team for Eat, Pray, Love, the forthcoming Julia Roberts movie, erected a huge set to depict a bustling India market, complete with a traveling circus in Mirzapur, Haryana near New Delhi. More than 500 people were employed in the construction of the make-believe market. The movie is based on the #1 best selling book of 2006, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Although some villagers climbed trees and filled rooftops in the dusty village to have a look at Roberts and the shooting, most of them had no idea who Julia Roberts is or what the book was about. Scheduled  August 2010 release, “Eat, Pray, Love” also stars Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Viola Davis (Doubt) and Billy Crudup (Almost Famous). Roberts’ last big hit “Charlie Wilson’s War” (2007) barely registered on the Indian box office, hopefully this time around Ms. Roberts will be able to pull crowds at the Indian box office.