No this is not a man-bites dog story. While I (and maybe you) were sleeping, India has develope a race car team and I am not talking about a Bollywood movie.

Here are the first ranking from Formula One laps in Valencia, Spain

1. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, 1 minute 13.769 seconds, 93
2. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, 1:13.938, 71
3. Gary Paffett, McLaren, 1:14.292, 91
4. Paul di Resta, Force India, 1:14.461, 28

The Hindu,  a newspaper based in Chennai, had this to say

Force India’s Adrian Sutil clocked the second fastest time while Narain Karthikeyan in the Hispania Racing car dropped nearly two seconds off his Wednesday’s pace as the first Formula One (F1) pre-season testing concluded here Thursday. The 34-year old Karthikeyan, returning to F1 after a five-season break, clocked a best of one minute, 16.535 seconds over 63 laps as against the 1:14.472 he did the previous day while focusing on different set-ups. The Indian completed 188 laps in the three-day session.

The future isn’t what it used to be as Yogi Berra would say.  Discard (many of ) your old assumptions about India and you may see some opportunity that you did not see otherwise.

The latest Global Relocation Report from Brookfield GRS shows that China is the top relocation destination, cited by 19% of respondents. This was followed by United States cited by 17% and India ranked third at 11%.  But many such expatriate placements fail.  China also had the highest falure rate for expatriates, an incredible 22%.. India ranked second among repatriation failures in 2009 at 10%. And the united States was ranked Number 4, at 7%.

Preparation, selection, training and ongoing monitoring can reduce the failure rate dramatically. So can hiring the India Expert .

The emerging partnership between the United States and India took two steps forward in the last ten days. I am talking about progress on the US India Civil Nuclear Agreement of course. On July 22, the India’s coalition government survived a trust vote in Parliament; this vote was precipitated by the withdrawal of a coalition supporter over the government’s support of the nuclear accord. Then on August 1st the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency unanimously approved an updated “safeguards” agreement that allows this UN agency to monitor eight additional nuclear reactors in India.

There are still two more significant hurdles before American, French, Russian, Japanese and other companies can begin to bid for nuclear power projects in India. The first requires approval from the 45 nation Nuclear Suppliers Group. The second requires another resolution in the US Congress. The Bush administration is keen to get this process to the final stage. Neither Obama nor McCain have stated a strong position for or against the agreement: but supporters fear that it may languish at low priority under either administration.

Corporate America, including companies that have nothing to do with nuclear energy, are vigorous supporters of this process because they believe that a nuclear bond would accelerate two way trade in many other areas, such as defense, technology, food, chemicals, services, and more. The US-India Business Council is a vociferous supporter of this agreement