:::The Desi Flavor:::

Is outsourcing good for America?

Jay Gohil

There is lots of debate going on in this country arguing that outsourcing of service sector employment to foreign countries such as India will lead to a decline in U.S. white-collar jobs, and are in favor of economic nationalism and protectionist trade policy.

However, Doug Irvin, one of America's leading trade economist offers a lengthy description on the benefits of outsourcing. Read the whole thing:

Has U.S. manufacturing been vaporized in the process? No--manufacturing production has risen about 40 percent over the past decade. Despite lower wages abroad, foreign firms have chosen to produce cars made by high-wage workers here, including Honda in Ohio, Mercedes-Benz in Alabama, BMW in South Carolina, and Toyota in California. Of course, the share of the American workforce in manufacturing has fallen steadily over the postwar period because of vast increases in productivity, but this is a worldwide phenomenon. Between 1995 and 2002, China, Japan, Brazil, and other countries lost more manufacturing jobs than did the United States, according to an Alliance Capital Management study.

The service sector will be reshaped by international developments, too. But just as low-wage China has not taken all of our manufacturing capability, low-wage India is not going to take all of our service sector production. Service producers will become even more specialized and will have to seek new ways of improving their efficiency and productivity. (Productivity in the service sector has notoriously lagged behind that in manufacturing.) As long as the American workforce retains its high level of skills and remains flexible as firms position themselves to improve their productivity, the high-value portion of the service sector will not evaporate.

Outsourcing and comparative advantages

Jay Gohil

Arnold Kling takes on the topic of job outsourcing and comparative advantage, with am emphasis on the role of mathematics

Is the American middle class in jeopardy because modern communications technology enables U.S. firms to use workers in India for tasks such as call-center staffing and software development? Pundits appear to be divided on this issue. However, if you look closely, you will see that professional economists, regardless of ideology, all disagree with the claim that the American middle class will be impoverished by trade with India. We remain loyal to the analysis first propounded by David Ricardo, who would spin in his grave if he could see the contrarian views of outsourcing recently espoused by policy wonk Michael Lind or columnist Paul Craig Roberts and Senator Charles Schumer.

What accounts for the persistent belief that trade with poor countries will make us worse off? Recently, it occurred to me that evolutionary psychology might provide the answer. Anthropologist Alan Fiske has pointed out that there are four ways in which humans transact: on the basis of authority; on the basis of communal sharing; on the basis of equality matching; and on the basis of market pricing. In the era of small hunter-gatherer tribes in which our brains evolved, only the first three were needed. Market pricing is required once you start to interact with strangers.

My hypothesis is that people are not "hard-wired" to understand market pricing, so that they often fall back on the models of authority ranking, communal sharing, or equality matching to guide them. Thus, people interpret trade with India as if it were communal sharing with India. It certainly is true that if we share with India, we will be poorer. However, it is not true that trading with India at market prices will lower our well-being.

Hasta Mudra - research project in movement & myth

Jay Gohil

Yogi statue depicting an offering of wisdom using trishula hasta with one hand and suchi hasta in the other. Source: Hasta Mudra project

Hasta Mudra meaning hand gestures or sign language has been used in Bharata Natyam - Indian classical dance. The Husta Mudra project is exploring the connections between the use of hasta mudrars in various traditional healing and performing arts and linking them to modern day usage today. Their website contains information about the history, the siginificance, it's usage and examples - video clip showing the use of Hasta Mudra in dance piece about Lord Shiva and another on Yoshada and Krishna.

The literal translation of the Sanskrit hasta mudra is hand (hasta) symbol (mudra), though hasta mudra can be interpreted in English as hand gestures or sign language. The broader scope of this project encompasses the ancient art of hand symbols as found in all the arts, including fine arts, performing arts, ritual arts, and healing arts.

Drawing connections within movement and myth, life and art, this project aims to provide insight into the world of hand symbolism through examining written and visual examples. We start with a brief historical overview and then proceed to analyze the usage of hasta mudras in dance. Technical nuances in their significance are examined as well as important artistic and stylistic qualities. This study's analysis is offered from the point of view of an experienced practitioner of the art and is supported by several ancient texts, lending it both a personal as well as scholarly perspective

The hand gestures are similar to the alphabet, 24 basic mudras each having multiple meanings. The same mudra may be used to depict different expressions in different situations. Click here for a pictorial understanding of the 24 basic mudras. Hat tip: MetaFilter

Farmers get access to call-centre

Jay Gohil

The Indian government is setting up free call-centres to distribute agricultural information to farmers.

India's hundreds of millions of farmers have a new friend in the eternal battle against failing crops and cattle diseases. Under a government scheme, agricultural workers in India's ancient, rural economy will have access to an innovation symbolic of India's booming new economy - the telephone call centre. Farmers who make the free phone call to the centre will find themselves speaking to one of many multi-lingual agricultural science graduates, trained to troubleshoot farming problems.

Another example of the social revolution that is currently taking place in India. A great strategy adopted by the government, which is much better than protectionist policies (subsidies and tariffs), that previously were the norm.

Are outsourcing fears overblown?

Jay Gohil

Are they overblown? Certainly they are in my eyes and Clay Risen takes a hard look at it in the New Republic:

While offshoring is definitely an economic trend, there is no statistical evidence pointing to the massive employment drain activists call the "coring out" of America's best jobs. In fact, recent studies show that the opposite is true: While offshoring may displace some workers in the short term, in the medium and long terms it represents a net benefit for both domestic businesses and their workers. In fact, the greatest threat from outsourcing is that its opponents will use it to force a new wave of protectionism.

The frenzy over offshoring got going in late 2002, when Forrester Research released a startling study showing that 3.3 million white-collar jobs would move overseas by 2015. Then, in July of last year, the research firm Gartner trotted out its own study saying that as many as 5 percent of all information technology (I.T.) jobs could move abroad between mid-2003 and the end of 2004. And a 2003 report from Deloitte Research said that the top 100 financial-services firms plan to move $356 billion in operations and two million jobs overseas in the next five years.

But those numbers aren't as scary as they sound. For one thing, while offshore outsourcing is definitely occurring, it's difficult to say just how large a trend it is at present. The Forrester research is based primarily on surveys of business leaders who are merely speculating about future offshoring decisions they might make: "There is no objective data to prove all these jobs are going overseas," says Michaela Platzer of the AeA (formerly the American Electronics Association). "There's just a lot of anecdotal evidence." Some point to the jobless recovery as evidence of offshoring's impact, but the lack of jobs is just as likely the result of booming productivity and the economy's (until recently) anemic pace. "I think people are confusing the business cycle with long-term trends," says Daniel Griswold, an economist at the Cato Institute. "People are looking for someone to blame. They say, 'Aha, it's because our jobs are moving to India.' If you look at the late 1990s, though, all these globalizing phenomena were going on." In other words, it wasn't that offshoring practices changed; it was that the economy slowed.

.....

But, while offshoring-related protectionism may stifle economic development and unnecessarily force business closures, its biggest impact may be longer term. That's because, as the baby-boomers move into retirement, the size of the working population will decline precipitously, by 5 percent by 2015, according to the McKinsey report. Without a readily available source of high-quality, young labor--i.e., the sort provided by offshore outsourcing--the country could find itself in a sort of economic sclerosis. Growth could be permanently hamstrung by the high labor costs and booming social spending that have turned Germany, where it's extraordinarily difficult for companies to lay off employees, from an economic engine into a plodding giant. As Carl Steidtmann, chief economist for Deloitte Research, wrote recently, "Restrictive employment laws in Europe go a long way toward explaining why Europe consistently runs a higher rate of unemployment when contrasted with the U.S. or Britain."

Catherine Mann has done research in this area and makes the following observations:

: Cheaper IT goods has helped boost productivity which added $230 billion to GDP.

: Recent efforts to quantify IT-related and other white collar job loss "offshore" frequently use the peak of the economic and technology boom as the base for the analysis, thus ignoring the business cycle, trend decline in manufacturing employment, dollar overvaluation, and technology bust.

: Going forward, broader diffusion of IT throughout the economy points to even greater demand for workers with IT skills and proficiency. In the 1990s, investment in IT propelled job growth for workers with IT skills to twice the rate of job growth in the overall economy. Over the next decade, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that job growth to 2010 in occupations requiring IT skills well more than three times the rate of job growth in the overall economy.

Recommend reading the whole thing.

Special Jury Award in Short Filmmaking awarded to Shilpi Gupta

Jay Gohil

Congratulations to Shilpi Gupta for winning the Special Jury award in short filmmaking at the Sundance festival. Her short documentary - When the Storm came, tells an intimate story about rape victims in the war torn Kashmir region. Her film also Her film also just received a silver award in the Student Academy Awards. This year the award was split between her and Ryan Fleck, director of Gowanus Brooklyn

Related posts:
: 5 S. Asian's selected for Sundance Film Festival 2004

: Jason Calacanis interviews Shilpi Gupta

DJ Rekha Nominated for Best DJ in NYC

Jay Gohil

Source: Pink Noises

DJ Rekha one of the pioneers of New York' s South Asian scene has been nominated as the Best DJ of the Year by New York Magazine. British born DJ has founded Basement Bhangra and co-founded Mutiny, has been instrumental in bringing the sounds of Bhangra and British Asian music to North America. Here is an excerpt of an interview she gave to Pink Noises:

PN: What made you want to be a DJ? Was it working the crowds, or presenting the music you liked to other people?

R: I was very excited about the music; and it was kind of like a family bonding thing with me and my cousins. We wanted to do something together, we wanted an activity, and we thought maybe we could make some money... We actually were inspired because we saw a lot of punk-asses do it, and thought they did a really bad job, or thought... we could do this better, which made a lot of sense. And then before I knew it, one of my cousins all of a sudden landed upon some hot gear. It was like one minute we're talking about it, next minute, someone's selling me a CD player, mic... and I'm like, OK, cool, that's it, done, we're started! And I still have that gear I bought. It was a Radio Shack mixer, CD player, tape deck, microphone, like good shit, you know?

PN: And to you, is Mutiny more musically exciting?

R: In many ways it is. To me, Basement Bhangra is just a fuckin' no-holds-barred, rock-on house party. You know, seriously. Work out and all that shit, you know? But Mutiny, you're gonna go and experience something. It is about dancing, but sometimes it's about listening. And I think that is exciting to me. And there's so many different people who DJ at that party, and so you're really getting open to a lot of different things, whereas at Basement, it's just me and Phil [Money], and we have our ways.

PN: How would you characterize Mutiny musically?

R: Very hard to characterize. We used to say South Asian drum-n-bass, and I don't even think that's true anymore. Electronic music is such a vast landscape. And I feel like we draw on electronic music in every form, and we put in a lot of South Asian influences, and that's kind of where we go. Sometimes DJs will be doing a straight d-n-b set, or you know, everyone's on the electro kick, or whatever... I think it can go in lots of different directions. It's very eclectic.

Other related posts:
: Bhangra Over Bombs Over Baghdad -The Villagevoice

: What's Shakin'? Bhangra. Big Time - Washington Post

: The big Bhangra theory - Time Out New York

: DJ Rekha - Citysearch

: Studio360 interviewing DJ Rekha about her work and the rise of Bhangra. (audio file)

: New Bhangra - Coming of Age

Andrew Sullivan reviews Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Andrew Sullivan's insights are worth reading and recently he reviewed Irshad Manji's book - The Trouble with Islam. Here are some interesting paragraphs:

Her basic argument is that the Koran is a complex, contradictory, human book. Its proscriptions are many and conflicting. Abandoning the role of a thinking person is not something that should be required of any religious individual. Reason and faith, Manji wants to believe, are not in conflict. And yet, as Islam is frequently practiced, reason is deplored as something that should defer in every instance not simply to the Koran but to the political authoritarians who reserve to themselves the sole right to interpret it.

What Manji discovered in the madrasa was a symptom of what she sees as a broader and deeper problem: that Muslims have stopped thinking, that their faith has been hijacked by tyrants and bullies, and that it has become infested with all kinds of hatred -- of Jews, of women, of gays, of the West. And instead of confronting these issues directly and openly, most Western Muslims -- perhaps the only group of Muslims with the actual freedom to question, criticize and debate -- have decided to retreat into victimology and appeasement. Aided and abetted by the moral nihilism of academic postmodernism, these people have surrendered to the new fascists of the Arab world.

....

Her answer to her own question is guilelessly to challenge certain givens. The Koran mandates the veiling of the wives of the Prophet. So why are all women now required to be covered from head to foot? In the distant past, Islam integrated and celebrated human diversity, and honored Christian and Jewish culture. So why has Islam degenerated into a maelstrom of the most virulent anti-Semitism? ''Let there be no compulsion in religion,'' says Chapter 2 of the Koran. So why do many Arab Muslim states persecute or ostracize nonbelievers?

Irshad Manji's - Trouble with Islam

Jay Gohil

Source: Muslim Refusenik

Irshad Manji's thoughts are interesting. But can she really create reform in Islam? She is a Canadian Muslim lesbian who has written a book entitled "The Trouble with Islam," which is her attempt to open an international dialogue regarding much-needed Muslim reform, especially with regard to the treatment of women, Jew bashing and the virtual imprisonment of those living under Islamic rule. From her website:

I remain a hugely ambivalent Muslim because of what's happening "on the ground" -- massive human rights violations, particularly against women and religious minorities -- in the name of Allah.

Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam. But these Muslims should own up to something: Prophet Muhammad himself said that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. By that standard, how Muslims actually behave is Islam, and to sweep that reality under the rug of theory is to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human beings.

...

I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place?

My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?

For her efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims. Manji's predicament is unfortunately all too typical of what courageous, moderate, modern Muslims face when they speak out against the scourge of militant Islam. Her experience echoes the threats against the lives of such writers as Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.

Her website - Muslim Refusenik provides tonnes of information regarding her opinions and books.

ABCDs vs FOBs

Jenifer Javia

Areeee Chanduuu look at these girls can you believe it they have no respect at all what are they thinking shoulders like that!!!

Damn girl check that boy out I can fry samosa’s from all the oil dripping outta his hair!

Ahhhhh the age old ABCD vs. FOB battle. Why oh why can’t we all just get along? I feel like forcing all of my fellow ABCD’s to sing the barney song and making all the FOB’s out there sing hogaya hai tujko to pyar sajana.

Then again why fight the difference? It is really quite simple if you ask me…Fobs are particularly weird according to ABCD’s and FOB’s just think ABCD’s are low class. It is only when you ask why things get really complicated.

These things are complicated on the surface but once you bust out a drill and dig a little deeper, things begin to simplify.

FOB’s just came from India and ABCD’s have been here a long long long time. There it is folks all of your questions answered in one sentence but of course I can not just leave it at that I must over simplify it for all my wonderful readers out there!

There is an incredible amount of cultural shock for those individuals just immigrating from India. Not only do they have to deal with a whole new language and country they are also thrown at slabs of ABCD’s that regret their existence in 'their' country. ABCD’s are embarrassed at the way FOB’s speak, dress, and more importantly smell.

I invite these ABCD’s to take a step back and really look at the FOB’s…they really can’t help it. FOB’s are new to this country and they do not know what is expected out of them. For once why don’t we stop making fun of them and actually help them adjust to living life in a foreign country.

This said and done ABCD’s are not the only ones at fault. FOB’s need to realize that they are not always right. They need to leave that macho attitude behind and realize that they are in a new country and while it saddens me to say so, things are done differently here.

We live in a high rise society and they, as fobs, knew this before coming here. America is a materialistic society and all said and done it will always stay that way. If FOB’s hate being considered a FOB then do something about it…adapt to your surroundings. On the same token if ABCD’s hate being called that then you do something about it…get off your butts and learn something about your culture.

Come on now don’t make me sing a sappy song…unless you need me to break a couple windows in your house!