Category — Politics

Earlier this week, India announced that the French built Rafale had beat out the runner-up Typhoon in a $10 billion fighter aircraft contract. The Typhoon, built by the Cassidian unit of EADS would have sustained thousands of jobs in Germany and the United Kingdom. Instead the work and jobs will go to Dassault Aviation, Safran/Snecma and others located outside UK/Germany.

In a shallow complaint, British Conservative  Member of Parliament, David Davis  is quoted as exhorting British Prime Minister Cameron to  “to pull his full weight to get India to change its mind” pointing out that “we give aid to India many times more than what France gives.”

Davis is sometimes touted as a possible future Prime Minister and should know better than to make such absurd statements. First of all, a UK company BAE won an earlier order to deliver 66  Hawk Trainer aircraft to India, valued at 700 million pounds. Second, since India became Independent in 1947, it has bought much British hardware. Third, a billion dollars of aid does not “buy” you ten billion dollars of sales. In fact most people would find such an equation repugnant. Fourth, if Davis checked his own BBC, he would find that India is among the largest inbound investors into the United Kingdom, including such icons as Land Rover, Jaguar and the former British Steel. And finally, some of the richest Brits are actually hard-working people of Indian origin, such as Laxmi Mittal,  Swaraj Paul, and Anil Aggarwal.

What this means

I am an Anglophile and I love English culture, literature and all the good things things the British gave to India, most of all the English language. But MPs like Davis seem to pander to short term political needs and harm the greater interests of alignment between the British and Indian cultures and economies.

Davis’s outburst will probably soon be forgotten by all, and that would be for the best.

India celebrated its 63rd Republic Day on January  showing off its latest weapons at a military parade in the capital, Delhi. According to the BBC, thousands of people turned up at Rajpath (King’s Avenue) to watch the parade amid tight security. More than 25,000 policemen and paramilitary forces guarded the streets of Delhi and snipers were deployed on high-rise buildings.

The president, Pratibha Patil and the Prime Minster Dr. Manmohan Singh attended the show with the chief guest, Thailand’s  Prime Minister Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra.  Security was tight across India and thousands of policemen have been deployed in major cities and towns.

Yingluck Shinawatra, Thailand's Prime Minister (on left, in skirt) with Pratibha Patil, India's President (on right)

Today in California,  I am attending a celebration of Republic Day in San Francisco, hosted by Consul General Parthasarthi and his wife.

More photos from the parade in Delhi, hot off the press courtesy of India’s information bureau

ALH or Advanced Light Helicopters operated by India's Army

India's BSF or Border Security Force, shows off their motorbike skills

India's Defense R&D lab has designed and built this Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Rustom 1

I was surprised the First Lady Michelle Obama did not try a sari in India. After all her husband used to hang with the Indian crowd when he was known as Barry and cooked Dal with his roommate Vinai Thummalapally (now the Ambassador to Belize). But so many other Western women try on this versatile garment when they visit India. Here are some celebrity photos

Actress and Indian-Englishman's wife Elizabeth Hurley in sari

Pamela Anderson was wildly popular for the TV Show "BayWatch"

Russian born tennis player Anna Kournikova in Sari

Tennis players visiting India seem to prefer saris, perhaps because no one will ask them to play, once they don this garment. Here are sisters Venus and Serena in a sari

Tennis stars Venus and Serena williams in Saris

Super Model Naomi Campbell in Black Sari

The New York Times conducted an interesting series of interviews in Shanghai and New Delhi asking Chines and Indians what they think of their own countries and each other’s countries.

As one Indian says in the video, “We have gone from Bhai Bhai (a period of friendship and brotherhood in the 1950′s) to Bye-Bye (from the 1960′s due to the Chinese invasion of 1962 and the long tail of hostility ) to Buy-Buy (or expanding trade).”

Click here to watch the video.

According to SoCal Tech, Los Angeles- and Austin-based GameSalad, the iOS game creation software firm founded by Michael Agustin, Dan Treiman, Tan Tran, and Joshua Seaver, has an unlikely hand in the anti-corruption issues facing  India, and Indian activist Anna Hazare: a video game called “Angry Anna”.

The game–a takeoff the popular Angry Birds smartphone games–was developed with GameSalad’s software, and runs on HTML5 browsers and smartphones. GameSalad said the game has become a “viral hit” and has been played over 225,000 times since launching a week ago. The game was developed by Delhi area game development firm Geek Mentors Studio. Instead of birds, the game includes Indian anti-corruption figures Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev and Kiran Bedi.

What this means:

The Jon Stewart/Daily Show form of news/entertainment is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Young people in India don’t see the boundaries that newspaper-reading pre-GenXers grew up with.