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

Tata Chemicals is challenging Unilever’s India unit for the world lowest cost home water purifier, based on a rice husk ash filter. With a starting retail price of $16 for the unit, it costs less than half of Hindustan Unilever‘s breakthrough PureIt unit which has been a runaway success in India with $40 million in sales and three million units delivered already. The replacable filter for the Tata unit costs $6.

Tata "Swach" low cost water purifier

Tata’s Rallis Kisan Sansar and Tata salt’s distrbution network will distrbute the product.Built around a bulb-like water purifier made of rice husk ash filled with nano-silver particles, the Tata “Swach” can function without electric power or running water. The cartridge bulb has a purification medium that kills bacteria and disease causing organisms. It can purify up to 3,000 litres of water, after which the cartridge stops water flow. Fifteen patents have been filed for the technology and product. The filter was designed in a Tata Consultancy Services lab in Pune, while the silver nanotechnology was added by Tata Chemicals. Titan, Tata’s watch subsidiary, made the precision machine tools to manufacture the filter. Pune based Design Directions Private Limited provided industrial design services.Among the features of Swach which Design Directions added was pattern of the upper chamber which will facilitate manual  cleaning,and the stackability’ of the two chambers which reduced the height of the box used for packaging (this makes it possible to fit one inside the other ensures that more packs can be carried in one truck). The current model doesn’t neutralize some contaminants such as arsenic.

Ratan Tata shows off Tata "Swach"

Initial production will be one million units a year from a Tata Chemicals plant in Haldia, West Bengal, with a planned ramp-up to three million units annually within five years.

Safe clean water is in dire shortage in India and other developing countries. Without it disease is rampant: typhoid, cholera, jaundice and diarrhoea (which will kill about 380,000 children in India alone this year). Almost 80 per cent of diseases in developing countries are associated with water, causing some 3 million early deaths. Tata expects to sell this unit in Africa and other parts of the world eventually.

Sir Ben Kingsley, who played the the title role in 1982′s Oscar-winning Gandhi (and much less remembered role in the worst movie of the 21st Century so far, the Love Guru) is soon to be seen in a Bollywood movie, Teen Patti ( three cards, or three-card poker).

Mathematicians in movies: Bachchan and Kingsley

Perci Trachtenberg (Sir Ben Kingsley) is world’s greatest living mathematician.  Perci encounters Venkat (Amitabh Bachchan, India’s biggest film star of all time) a solitary mathematician from India at a casino in Londo. Venkat tells Perci about an equation that could change the dialog on math forever and perhaps win an unimaginable fortune in gambling.  A cut-throad adventure, Bollyood style follow.

The movie is directed by Leena Yadav and releases in February.

While half of India’s women are illiterate and many who are  in poverty have little power and freedom, a different picture emerges at the highest echelons of power and education in the country. In politics, government and in corporate boardrooms women abound.   Here is a sampling of some names who have reached heights that their American sisters would envy. Only a few got to the pinnacle because of birth or marriage.

India’s most powerful women include

• Neelam Dhawan, 49, Managing Director of Hewlett Packard India
• Naina Lal Kidwai, 52, Country Head, HSBC India
• Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, 56, Managing Director, Biocon (and India’s wealthiest self-made woman)
• Kalpana Morparia, 60, CEO of JP Morgan India
• Amrita Patel, 66 , Chairman, National Dairy Development Board
• Chitra Ramakrishna, 46, Joint Managing Director, National Stock Exchange Ltd
• Preetha Reddy, 52, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group
• Shikha Sharma, 50, CEO Axis Bank
• Renu Sud Karnad, 57, Joint Managing Director, Housing Development & Finance Corporation (HDFC)
• Jyotsna Suri, 57, Managing Director, Bharat (“Lalit”) Hotels
• Meera Shankar, 60, India’s Ambassador to the United States
• Indu Lieberhan, Secretary, Defence Finance
• Sonia Gandhi, President, Indian National Congress Party

For an “official” list of the thirty most powerful women in India today, look here.

Business Week just published its list of India’s 50 most powerful people . You may be surprised how many of them have strong links to the West, most often to the United States.

Among captains of industry, Ratan Tata has a degree from Cornell, Mukesh Ambani studied at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, his estranged brother and Anil Ambani got an MBA from Wharton. Anand Mahindra has an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Azim Premji studied Electrical Engineering at Stanford and MS Ramadorai of Tata Consultancy Services has a degree from UCLA. Vijay Mahajan of Basix was educated at Princeton

Some are running Indian units of American companies, such as Shankar Annaswamy of IBM, who presides over the largest number of IBM-ers in any country outside the United States. And Sailesh Rao runs Google India, while Ashwini Vardi runs upstart TV channel Viacom Colors and Amit Verma is affiliated with Wall Street Journal’s joint venture, called the The Mint. Ronnie Screwala’s UTV took in a majority investment from the Walt Disney Company.

And some Indians own important interests in the United States, such as Ajit Balakrishnan of Rediff.com which also publishes the weekly print paper from New York, India Abroad. Others have received significant investments from American venture capitalists, such as microfinance king Vikram Akula, whose company SKS Finance was funded by Sequoia Capital (Akula is a product of Tuft, Yale and McKinsey & Co); Draper Fisher Jurvetson funded the Reva Electric Car company led by Chetan Maini, who has a US degree in mechanical engineering.

On university campuses, American degrees abound. Dr. Ashok Jhunjunwala at IIT Madras earned his PhD from the University of Maine; he made it to Business Week’s list on the strength of a series of startups that have launched under the leadership of his TeNet center. US universities have invited IT billionaire NR Narayana Murthy to join their boards, including Yale, Stanford, and Harvard. Of course, Murthy’s company, Infosys draws the largest chunk of its revenue from the United States.

Some on the list actually live in the United States but have a strong interest in India. Silicon Valley billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures has taken a strong interest in India, funding alternative energy, microfinance and other companies. New York based PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi is the current Chairperson of the US India Business Council. Strategy guru, professor and prolific author CK Prahalad is on the faculty of the University of Michigan but lives in San Diego and travels to India frequently.

Are Indian politicians immune from such US links? After all, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was denied a visa by the Bush administration. And Mayawati of Uttar Pradesh has never even travelled to the United States. But Oxford- and Cambridge- educated Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has a daughter, Amrit, who is an attorney with the ACLU in New York.

That’s 21 of the 50 and I am sure I have missed a few.