India Job Market for fresh graduates.

The job market in India is undergoing a phase shift in the current economic times.

You have to look at the broader perspective on the Indian Economy and the job trends in the developed nations to get the big picture on what skills are required today and in future.

In the last decade or so we saw the Technology boom in USA & Europe and this led to a number of IT and Technology jobs in India and this created a service sector. Now with the economy down in USA, there growth has stalled and its impact is reflected in the India IT job market with a number of company experiencing job cuts etc.. The technology sector has matured now and the skills required to fill these jobs are different and more emphasis on the business process / knowledge and communication. Although India produces several hundreds of Engineering in IT and other areas study by several analysts has shown that not all engineering graduates are qualified for the open positions.

OK, on the brighter side, fresh graduate in India should look for openings in other areas like Research, bio-medicine, Financial/ Market Analysts etc.. and with the booming economy of India there will be more opportunities for the qualified in these areas.

Green Revolution – How some European countries are leading the way !

Iceland – Reykjavik - The Greenest place on earth!

Iceland is a small Island country in the North American hemisphere and is in the forefront with the Green revolution and Energy efficient ways.

Iceland meets about 80 % of the energy requirements with the renewable energy like Geo-thermal, Water and wind. This is against the forecasts for using renewable energy of 20% by the European union by 2020 and less than 5% by Asian countries like India and China.

The leading green index countries are Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, UK .. and US is around the 66 in the list and India is close to the bottom of the list as of now.

Iceland is the first country in the world to make commercial use Hydrogen in the cars and is also making great use of the Geo-thermal and water energy for the daily business and residential energy consumptions with practically no emissions and minimal use of the fossil fuels.

The country has a small population of about 300,000 and mostly concentrated around the capital city Reykjavik. High Energy dependent manufactures such as Aluminum - especially ALCOA sees this an opportunity to stay committed to stay Green and is in the process of build 300+ stoves using the energy from Geo-thermal and water. The renewable energy in Iceland is extremely cheap due to its availability in abundance and also innovative ideas and technologies of the Icelander's. This small island has or planning on having more than 8 Hydroelectirc plants and 6-8 large Geo-thermal based plants and is the pioneer for using Hydrogen fuel in commercial cars etc.. Iceland is indeed committed to the environment, preserving natural resources and staying green.

Some of new energy friendly and innovative green initiatives:

Developed nations in North America and Europe and combined with rapid growth in the BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China there is an un precedence growth in the consumption of natural energy and fossil fuels in the last few years driving up the oil prices and also resulting in consumption of non-recycle resources.

Here are some of the initiatives that some of the companies in Europe are taking to help protect the natural resources and be green friendly.

Recycle - More and more biz in Europe and North America are using recycle papers, plastics, Aluminum and other precious product that are using natural resources. This is help avoid the land refills and also reuse the natural resources..

Energy conservations bulbs– Leading manufactures in Europe are doing research in coming with LED bulbs instead of the energy efficient CFL. These new generation bulbs will utilize less than half of the energy of CFL and produce equivalent or more lumen output and will be significantly more lasting.

Wind Power for Shipping: Wind power is being tested to be used for large Ships complementing the regular oil guzzling engines and tests have proved that the energy requirements of the ships can be reduced by as much as 20% if the wind power is used during the sail. Just to keep the perspective – large ships consume oil to deliver 35 to 40 feet per gallon and the study predicts that the shipping industry is consuming couple of billions of gallons of oil.

Energy efficient Hybrid cars – Several new energy efficient cars are in the research stage and recently Aptera Motors out of Carlsbad, California has rolled out prototypes of the new 2 seat car that can go up to 300 miles per gallon and is expected to be priced around 30000 USD and working primarily on recharging battery with minimal to no fuel emission. Number of these units have already being pre-sold.

Energy efficient cooking stoves: In the developing countries, there is significant usage of stoves that are energy in-efficient and natural resources. Shell foundation has invested about 25 million to work with companies to develop low cost energy efficient stoves and these will be sent to about 10 million households in India, Africa and Latin America.

That is it for now..Save energy - Think and implement Green !

D&A Blogs - Contactus@daaspace.com

References and Resources: Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Economist

Why India and why now ?

In the last 10 years, India has emerged as a growing economy and a power in the Asia and continues to be a rising star in the international business community, India has unlimited opportunities and is becoming the land of opportunities.

Since the Liberalization of the Indian Economy in the early 1990, the trade laws in India have been revised to allow significant foreign investment and trading with foreign companies and other nations has become relatively easily. The new regulations have opened the doors for Indian Business to market their services outside India. This helped the Indian Businesses as they began to partner with large companies including a number of Fortune 500 companies by providing quality services at low costs.

As we all know that the water flows from an high level to a low level, so do the costs ! Business in the high cost and developed countries took a note of the low cost service providers and manufacturers as well as manufacturing opportunities in India and are looking at lower their costs of operating business in these high cost countries ie, USA, UK and other European countries.

While more and more service are being provided by the Indian Companies or the Multi-nationals companies in India, the costs of services, salaries, real estate and property costs are increasing in India due to the exponential increase in the demand and is causing a strain the te infrastructure. However there cost differentials are still quite high between USA & India and this will continue to be so till the next few decades.

With the liberalization during the early 1990s the doors opened up for the Indian businesses to explore the opportunities with the business across the world. The Y2K fear during the late 1990s compounding with the gigantic nature of the impact to the business and the scope of work prompted the businesses in USA and UK to look for cheap resources outside. The newly available IT Services in India came as a critical resources to the businesses.

Together with the Internet boom during the same period, IT companies like INFOSYS, TATA CONSULTANCY (TCS), WIPRO, SATYAM etc.. opened their doors to the business in the USA and Europe. Initially during the mid to late 1990s the businesses in USA and Europe were looking for help with the Y2K, Euro initiatives and some software maintenance from these companies.

The Internet boom in during the 1999 and 2000 led to tremendous requirements in the Internet & eCommerce programming for the dot com businesses in the USA & Europe.

With the boom in Foreign direct investments (FDI) in India, the requirement for the IT & Business skills increased tremendously and workers in these areas started to see their salaries and perks raise and the attrition rate began to climb.

Most of the skilled work force are int he 20s and 30s and this affluent age group now are the main drivers of the real estate, automotive and the retail industries.These factors let to changes in Indian market dynamics and the young middle class now have a lot of money to spend and now moving from the basic necessities to the looking at buying the luxuries in life. The Business marketing in India are now targeting this young work force by offering products and services targeted at this audience. This size of this young target middle to high class is growing rapidly and the estimates are that by 2025 India will have largest working middle class in the world.

During the years prior to the 1990s, the Indian middle and rich could not purchase imported items as the Government had a number of restrictions on imports due to the low foreign exchange (FOREX) reserves and also was asking the Indian citizens to purchase the Indian made goods and items. Most of the items in the automotive and electronics were using the old technology and were not appealing to the Indian consumers. The liberalization of Indian Economy allowed the companies in India to partner in Technology transfer and tie up and partner with the leading manufacturers in the developed countries like USA, Germany and UK primarily in the consumer and automotive industries. The Indian consumers can purchase the world best automotive and consumer goods and also able to afford these goods.

As we all know that the water flows from an high level to a low level, so business do want to lower their costs !

The Businesses in the high cost and developed countries like USA, UK & Canada are in high pressure to lower cost and stay competitive and also improve the shareholder value. These businesses are now taking a note of the low cost service providers and manufacturers as well as manufacturing opportunities in India and are looking at lower their costs of operating business

The trade laws in India now allow investments and trade with foreign companies and other nations like USA, UK, Canada, Germany. This has resulted in an affluent middle class in India and the demand for foreign goods and high quality consumer goods has increased by multiple folds and thereby opening up an new market segment for the affluents.

सौर्सस: बुसिनेस वीक, इकोनोमिस्ट॥

Licence Raj – An obstacle in India growth..

Licence Raj – An obstacle in India growth..

India has had a good growth in the past 15 years and more importantly in the last 5-8 years. The growth has been at a rate of over 9% year after year in the past 4-5 years. This year the growth is set at 8.4 %. The private sector has been doing a tremendous job and the growth is also dependent on the Indian administration called the civil service. The civil service is about 10 million strong in the public sector and the government sectors. The faster growth rate is affected by the failure of the government to react quickly to improve the infrastructure and this is setting a speed limit on growth. Significant amount of foreign resources are being invested in India and most of the foreign capital is pumped in the Indian Stock Market (BSE) and this turbulence is noted in the Indian Stock market lately and there is a noticeable unproductive growth in the FOREX.

In order to sustain the growth there is an immediate need to change some of the government policies and the License Raj system prevalent in India.

Reforms are not done at a fast enough pace and the poor infrastructure is affecting the foreign capital inflow and this largely due to the government debts, limited freedom to the banks, pension funds etc..

The civil service is administered by the elite Indian Administrative Service (IAS) who provide the administration and management of the state welfare measures and partly oversee the infrastructure.

The state welfare is managed by Collectors, formed by the British Rulers, as bill/revenue collectors for the district. The state magistrates and the collectors sometimes oversee about more than 500 villages and serve over a million people and have out dated machinery. And some barely have the technology such as Computers etc.. to manage these welfare measures. This leads to lot of delay and red tapism and the welfare measures may not reach the villages or the villagers in a timely manner and the critical infrastructure projects either get delayed or do not see the light.

Although India does provide Universal Health care, water, food and education the spending on this basic provisions is very meager and more needs to be done to ensure that the basic welfare reach the poor and the needy in a timely manner.

India Civil service has about 3 million in the central gov and about 7 million in the states and the world largest employer, the Indian Railways, has over 1 million employees. Majority of the civil servants are peons, clerks, office administrators, office assistants, drivers, who are ready to take orders and do the work from their superiors or administrators; about 5000 IAS officers. All the 604 districts in India, about 60% of Public Sector units, State organizations, Police and Railways are head or managed by the IAS officers. Each year about 100-150 IAS officers are recruited from about 200, 000 applicants from across the country.

Although this is an elite position, there is a large inequality in the salaries between the private sector and due to this the quality of the IAS officers appears to be on the decline to due the inequality. Political influence, low pay structure and interference, caste based reservations etc.. are also having an impact on the quality.

It is critical that the Indian Government take a note of the situation and look at revamping the License Raj system to meet the current times to keep in pace with the dynamic economy and to ensure that the growth can be sustained on an ongoing basis.

The foreign capital market is competitive and countries like China, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil etc..are competing for this foreign investments and capital. It is important for India to keep a check on the red tapism and improve the infrastructure in a quick turnaround period and in planned manner in order to sustain the growth.

D&A

contact - contactus@daaspace.com


Resources:
1) The Economist – London
2) Foreign Affairs – USA
3) Business Week - USA

Impact of urban sprawls in USA

Background, harms & implications:
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is the spreading of a city and its suburbs over rural land at the fringe of an urban area. For example, in large cities like Milwaukee, there is urban sprawl in the neighboring area to the Milwaukee city.

-Residents of sprawling neighborhoods tend to live in single-family homes and commute by automobile to work. Low population density is an indicator of sprawl.

-Urban planners emphasize the qualitative aspects of sprawl such as the lack of transportation options and pedestrian friendly neighborhoods.

-Conservationists and environmentalists tend to focus on the actual amount of land that has been urbanized by sprawl

Causes and effects
Health and environmental impact - The primary cause of these negative outcomes is that sprawl leads to people having to depend on the automobile because it will be a greater distance to travel and people will not be able to walk or ride their bicycles to their destinations.
Source: Measuring Sprawl and Its Impact, a Smart Growth America (SGA) study released October 2002.

Increased pollution and reliance on fossil fuel- On average, suburban residents generate more pollution and carbon emissions than their urban counterparts because of their increased driving.

Increase in traffic and traffic-related fatalities - Residents of more sprawling areas are at greater risk of automobile accidents and dying in a car crash.

Increased obesity – Urban sprawl culture forces to drive everywhere, thus walking far less than their urban people.

Decrease in social capital - Sprawl tends to replace public spaces such as parks with private spaces such as fenced-in backyards.

Decrease in land and water quantity and quality - Due to the larger area consumed by sprawling suburbs compared to urban neighborhoods, more farmland and wildlife habitats are displaced per resident and results in more wastage of water.

Increased infrastructure costs - Living in a larger, more spread out space makes public services more expensive. City planners are forced to build large highway and parking infrastructure, which in turn decreases taxable land and revenue

Increased personal transportation costs - Residents of low density areas in urban sprawls spend a higher proportion of their income on transportation than residents of Cities .

Brainstorm possible solutions

Smart Growth America (SGA at http://www.smartgrowthamerica.com/), is a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group has some of the following recommendations:

- Reinvest in neglected communities and provide more housing opportunities in urban areas and cities.

-Rehabilitate abandoned properties in cities

- Encourage new development or redevelopment in already built up areas

-Create and nurture thriving, mixed-use centers of activities in cities;"