Modi’s U.S. / Ireland Visits – Business Outcomes and Personal Glory

Whether India will get a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, and when, remains to be seen but Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started off from where his predecessors left by reinforcing the pitch.

Mr Modi’s visit to the U.S. and Ireland that ended yesterday focused on his Digital India vision with his other pet projects of Make in India and Skill India not getting much traction. He had highly publicised visits to the offices of Facebook, Google and Tesla.

And all of India (sycophantic NRIs living overseas not excluded) is going gaga over how Mr Modi is the best Prime Minister India has ever had!

But what did his visits yield? Here is an armchair recap from my cosy confines in Singapore, relying on digital platforms – the Internet and the social media – that tickle Mr Modi.

U.S. West Coast visit

• Tesla – a test ride on a battery-powered cart around their factory for Modi

• This was more meaningful than FB and Google visits as it put the spotlight on battery packs for cars.
• There is substance in Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s statement that batteries and solar panels could be the future of electricity generation for India, particularly in rural areas of the country.
• Tesla was a thoughtful, offbeat choice, though the company does not sell its battery cars in India. They may do so when they come up with a cheaper version.
• Whether or not Tesla starts to make electric cars in India, there is some promise of an innovative spirit that could appeal to the country. So full credit to Mr Modi!

• Facebook – hugs and hype for Modi, – all Indians just got excited about CEO Mark Zuckerberg changing his profile photo with a Tricolour filter. That was to demonstrate Facebook’s support for the Digital India Movement. Millions of Indians followed suit.

• It may be premature to draw conclusions so quick; perhaps Mr Modi’s visit has generated enough interest for Facebook to boost investments in India.

• Google –Wi-Fi hotspots at some train stations for free 30-minute connectivity

• They are not big in manufacturing, but there were no commitments on manufacturing in India — Nexus phones, for instance

Investments from Unlikely Quarters

• Qualcomm to invest US$150 million in startups in India

Other Announcements / Meetings

• Microsoft to open three data centres in India, as announced by CEO Satya Nadella at the Digital India meeting in San Jose
• But this is nothing new; it is a reiteration of an announcement made to that effect mid last year.
• This will allow Microsoft to capitalise on the huge demand for cloud services in India, with players like Amazon, IBM and Google having similar plans with security concerns making customers shun the idea of data residing outside of the country.
• The DC plan makes sense for Microsoft as the company is placing big emphasis on cloud-based Office 365
• Mr Modi also met Apple CEO Tim Cook and requested him to consider making iPhones/iPads in India

• It was a warm meeting, but no commitments made.
• Apple’s manufacturing partner, nonetheless, has already set up a base in India

Ireland Stopover

• Three years ago, when a pregnant Indian dentist died because doctors in Catholic Ireland refused to carry out abortion in a medical emergency, people in India took to the social media to slam the country and its religion.
• This time, though, the focus was on promoting bilateral trade, easier visas for Indians wishing to study in Ireland and tourism promotion between the two countries.

So, another of Mr Modi’s visits is complete and his thrust will now shift to the upcoming elections in Bihar where the Congress and other opposition parties will have to be ready for another embarrassing defeat.

The lack of any big successes in the U.S. notwithstanding, Mr Modi and the BJP will harp on it and on how he is changing the face of India.

G Joslin Vethakumar

Modi Right in Talking about Corruption under Congress!

But why is he not expediting investigations to put the culprits behind bars? Action in needed, not vile talk!

I don’t see anything wrong in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s barbs against Sonia Gandhi’s Congress, though talking about it at overseas fora is not in keeping with the position he holds..

The corruption charges against the family do not appear totally unconvincing. Apparently, there is evidence linking the family, particularly Robert Vadra, to the scams. It is just that the BJP government is not keen on bringing the corrupt to book soon to suit their own political ends. A guy who ran a small-scale unit (arts and crafts) is reported to have amassed billions in a very short span and that deserved a through, quick probe. All we see are superficial investigations and little progress with them.

That is the tragedy of India – no influential person is ever brought to justice. If there is no truth in the allegations, they can easily file defamation suits without waiting for court and Enforcement Directorate verdicts.

In my opinion, the family of Sonia Gandhi has destroyed the party built by freedom fighters.

But where I have an issue is in the Prime Minister merely talking about the corruption by the Sonia family.

What India needs is action, not mere talk aimed at gaining political mileage. As the ruling party, the BJP and Mr Modi are expected to act against the corrupt.

Why are they not expediting all investigations and putting the Gandhis behind bars if their involvement is established. That is what India needs, not a Prime Minister who revels in just talking about the crores the son-in-law made.

G Joslin Vethakumar

Chambers Continues to be the Face of Cisco at Major Events

Chuck Robbins Hardly in the League of Other CEO Luminaries

It does not look like Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins, who replaced Mr John Chambers in July this year, is the face the company is keen to project – not as yet.

It was Mr Chambers who represented Cisco at recent meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held separately a few days apart.

Mr Chambers it was who sat with Mr Modi, along with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and other top technology leaders, at the Digital India dinner conversations aired live a few hours ago by some Indian news channels – NDTV, Times Now and CNN-IBN.

So it was with President Xi last Wednesday at an event that had CEOs of Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Amazon and LinkedIn among many technology hotshots.

Mr Chambers remains with Cisco as its Executive Chairman, so he will be the automatic choice to front mega events where you have other top CEOs with brilliant academic credentials and professional accomplishments and Prime Ministers and Presidents.

Mr Chuck Robbins, who holds a BSc degree in Mathematics, is hardly in that league of CEO luminaries. How he made it to the Cisco helm is not something I am qualified enough to discuss.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, front-row-center, poses for a photo with a group of CEOs and other executives at Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, Washington, Wednesday, September 23, 2015. AFP PHOTO / POOL / TED S. WARREN

Mr Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout and Late Steve Jobs did not have an impressive academic background as well. But they were creative geniuses who helped transform the world.

Digital Era Imperative: Incidentally, while a visit to the Cisco headquarters in San Jose was not on the agenda of Mr Modi’s Silicon Valley visit the Digital India dinner was an opportunity for him to catch up with Mr Chambers.

Speaking at the dinner, Mr Chambers spoke about the digital era imperative of “disrupt or be disrupted.”

That is a message he has been articulating for long, with another of his pet phrases being “go digital or die”.

At a Cisco Live conference in June this year, titled Disrupt or be Disrupted, he had highlighted that “companies fail because they keep doing the right thing too long.”

He cannot be wrong as in a dynamic world, companies and countries have to keep reinventing themselves to surge ahead.

Not surprisingly, the Digital India dinner was an event full of platitudes with Mr Chambers saying “the US and India would be very strong together under your leadership.”

Cisco is perhaps the biggest investor in India among American technology companies. But it has a significant presence in China as well.

“One has to compete against one’s ability to innovate, and not against other companies or countries,” he emphasised.

Silly Indian Journalists: NDTV and other Indian news channels got the title of Mr Chambers wrong, referring to him as Cisco CEO, a position he relinquished in July this year.

One Times Now journalist spoke about how India’s past experience with invaders still haunted India. He was referring to the East India Company and the 300 years of British rule in the country that resulted in the country being looted by them.

His argument that the loot made them prosperous, even helping transform a country (England) into a First World economy, sounded too much of a stretch!

Another Indian channel, CNN-IBN, was taking credit for being the first to talk to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. At the same time, Times Now was flashing news about its interactions with Mr Nadella.

Who talks to who first is a scoop in today’s journalistic climate in India!

G Joslin Vethakumar

Why is it easy for manipulators to dupe elderly women in Singapore?

No due diligence in granting of Power of Attorney and Revoking wills involving those suffering from dementia?

What is it about the Singapore system that appears to encourage foreign “talent” to come here and target rich, elderly women and deprive them of all their wealth?

The legal community that is ready to defend the culprits so they can get a cut in the loot?

Or the judiciary which goes to the extent of suggesting that the victims and the criminals try to reach out-of-court settlements through the Singapore Mediation Centre?

The latter suggestion was recently made by the High Court in the case involving former China tour guide Yang Yin charged with manipulating a wealthy 87-year-old widow Madam Chung Khin Chun to part with her assets estimated to be in excess of $40 million.

The widow’s niece, Madam Hedy Mok, swiftly rejected the suggestion. I think she took the right decision, considering the scale of the fraud, which also saw Yang use a fake degree to get Singapore PR. That is how lax Singapore’s immigration policies are!

That aside, today’s edition of The Straits Times had a piece about how a Sri Lankan maid (Arulampalam Kanthimathy) and two Indian nationals (Kulandaivelu Malayaperumal and Gopal Subramanian) are reported to have pocketed $5 million belonging to an 86-year-old lady, Dr Freda Paul, suffering from dementia.

This case has similarities with the Yang Yin fraud, with both involving granting of a Power of Attorney for the culprits who then used that to revoke the earlier wills to serve their own interests. The two Indian nationals who came here on a work pass, employed at a construction site, have also been able to get permanent residence here.

Why is it so easy to revoke wills and get a power of attorney in Singapore? Will not the relevant authorities apply proper due diligence in such instances, particularly when it involves elderly single women suffering from dementia?

G Joslin Vethakumar

Cisco Not on Modi’s Agenda in San Jose!

That’s a Surprise Given the Company’s Large Investments in India

In December 2006, Cisco Systems announced that India would be its second headquarters with the establishment of the Globalisation Centre East in Bangalore and moving senior executives there from San Jose. It included Wim Elfrink as Chief Globalisation Officer.

With a colleague on my first visit to San Jose in August 2005, soon after I joined Cisco Systems

Credit must go to the then Indian government for Cisco placing its big bets on India then.

Cisco has a huge presence in Bangalore.

India’s Silicon Valley, is home to the Cisco Global Development Center, the largest outside of the U.S. The company has a headcount of more than 10,000 personnel at its seven offices in India.

In June 2015 Cisco also announced it would invest US$2 billion more in India this year.

It was part of an initiative to support some of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects:

• Make in India
• Skill India
• Digital India

Cisco campus in San Jose, on my second visit there in 2006

Chambers, Chairman of US-India Business Council: Moreover, just a few days ago, John Chambers, Executive Chairman of Cisco, was elected as the new chairman of the US-India Business Council (USIBC), the apex advocacy group for Indian and American companies in the U.S.

So I find it a surprise to note that Cisco does not figure in the agenda of Mr Modi’s September 27 visit to San Jose, the company’s global headquarters.

There is no technology company with a bigger presence in San Jose / Silicon Valley than networking giant Cisco Systems.

Ubiquity and Telecommuting: Almost anywhere you turn in San Jose you will see a Cisco building – so ubiquitous is their presence in the Silicon Valley. But it has been of late selling and exiting some of its buildings there, partly due to downsizing and partly because most of its staff there work from home.

I have been to its buildings there during many of my visits to San Jose while I was employed with the company (2005-2010). Even then I would see empty cubicles everywhere. Cisco has always been big in encouraging the idea of telecommuting.

Even in Singapore, while I was always working from the office, I had my home equipped with the necessary equipment for connectivity – an IP phone and networking gear. That was helpful because every other night I had to dial into the bridge for conference calls with business units in San Jose.

I do not have to read too much into why Mr Modi has no Cisco meeting scheduled in San Jose. Mr Chambers had, in any case, met him when he visited India earlier this year.

Incidentally, I had visited its offices in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai a few times during my stay with Cisco, based in Singapore with bid management responsibility for the Asia-Pacific region.

G Joslin Vethakumar

Singapore needs an Opposition that can stand up to Intellectual Might of PAP

A proletariat agenda or mindset unlikely to work

Yesterday’s edition of The Straits Times had many pieces dissecting the outcome of the recent elections in Singapore which gave the ruling People’s Action Party an overwhelming majority at the expense of the opposition living in fools’ paradise, imagining all the online ranting against the government was an indication of their growing clout.

I don’t want to risk repeating myself as I had already blogged about it on September 12.

But I doubt the Workers Party can ever be an alternative to the PAP. Singaporeans are a well-educated lot who cannot be swayed by populism. Neither is the country down in the dumps economically to take shelter under parties that are unable to come up with a compelling value proposition to ensure Singapore’s continued success.

Put simply, a proletariat agenda or mindset does not seem relevant for Singapore.

Singapore needs an opposition that can stand up to the intellectual might of the PAP. Half-baked individuals who are almost toeing the PAP line can hardly get Singaporeans to risk the country’s future and line up behind them.

If the PAP aims at a population of 6.9 million the Workers’ Party has its own white paper that is only putting the figure a tad less. They are also careful not to offend the PAP and end up losing their personal wealth through defamation suits.

The kind of sacrifices smarter opposition leaders like Dr Chee have had to make fighting for Singapore have also not moved the electorate. That is a pity!

I am also amused as to why 9/11 was chosen as the date for elections!

G Joslin Vethakumar

Kejriwal, You are a Big Let-Down!

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has been a big disappointment, squandering away the second chance the electorate gave him in February this year.

In April this year, he continued speaking at a rally where a farmer hung himself. For all his common-man pretensions, he has been splashing big money on projecting himself while keeping Delhi in filth and squalor.

Like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he also appears to be a leader who is full of himself.

Delhi has always been in the news for all the wrong reasons – rapes, political crimes, corruption of mindblowing scale and now dengue.

Dengue has reached an alarming scale with hospitals in the city turning away patients, including kids, in a critical state.

One instance that has struck a tragic chord is the death of a seven-year-old child after being denied admission by seven hospitals.  Compounding the tragedy was the suicide of the boy’s parents soon after their son lost his battle with dengue because of the callousness of hospitals in India’s capital city and the local administration.

Mr Kejriwal and the BJP then started playing politics by swinging into a slanging match against each other. They know very well tragedies surrounding the poor are soon forgotten by the larger population.

Mr Kejriwal and his Aam Admi Party have been a big letdown, savouring their new-found political glory with scant regard for addressing Delhi’s shortcomings.

G Joslin Vethakumar

Jingoism vs Patriotism

The Fall and Fall of India

It has been more than a year since the BJP’s ascension to power in India, aided by the corrupt Congress regime that had brought global disrepute to the country by completely messing up the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

The Congress guys who got to keep the loot did not attract any meaningful action against them even after Mr Narendra Modi became Prime Minister. That is evidence dealing with corruption is least of his and his party’s priorities.

Swami Vivekananda: What I find alarming is the rise of jingoism in India. One of my Facebook posts on the obsession of the new leadership with Hindi attracted some comments, one of which included a purported Swami Vivekananda quote.

“If India is dead today, the rest of the world will have died much earlier,” a friend quoted the Hindu saint as having said more than a century ago.

I replied saying I doubted the veracity of that attribution. I believe it is perhaps a misreading or misinterpretation of one of his quotes.

Frog in the Well: I don’t think Swami Vivekananda could have made such a narrow and negative statement as he was not “a frog in the well”, an analogy he famously narrated once.

If he did make the comment, I can only describe it as his moment of lapse. That said, the India of his time and the India of today are diametrically opposite.

What is always being overlooked is that a jingoist is never a patriot. In fact, he (or she) is the real antinational living in the past, taking pride in the faults and foibles of a country.

He blindly refuses to see merit in criticism, rakes up history at the drop of a hat, stands in the way of transformation and hardly makes a positive contribution for its development.

This is the leadership breed India is saddled with now. Describing them as self-seeking is not an exaggeration. It applies to both ruling and opposition elements.

Accepting and resisting any downside while fighting for positive change, in contrast, cannot be dismissed as activities inimical to the interests of a country. They may not be always right but divergent views can lead to an objective analysis and measured decisions.

Illiteracy and Poverty: Keeping the vast majority of Indians illiterate and poverty-ridden serves the parties well politically, be it the BJP or the Congress.

But what makes India different is that even the educated, including those living in the West, have become religious fanatics and jingoists.

It can be difficult to live in any place where jingoism reigns! I am so glad I have long ceased to be an Indian.

G Joslin Vethakumar

PAP Took Elections Seriously, Opposition Had No Hunger for Power

A few days before the elections, PAP’s Member of Parliament Josephine Teo visited our home in Bishan as part of the campaign. I was not at home then, but she connected with my wife.

I had a chance meeting with Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen as well.

Ms Josephine Teo with PM Lee Hsien Loong

All opposition candidates were content addressing rallies, imagining that the crowds they attracted and all the online ranting from Singaporeans were enough to give them a decent electoral performance.

The electorate proved what kind of a fool’s paradise the opposition parties have been living in by giving the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) a thumping victory.

Online Noise Just That: All the noise Singaporeans make, hiding under the anonymity privilege portals offer, is just a pastime for them.

All new Singaporeans may have cast their votes for the PAP as they are here thanks to the ruling party’s focus on boosting the country’s population by importing foreigners.

But that alone will not have enabled the kind of win the PAP eventually had. The timing of the elections appears to have done all the magic.

In any case, the PAP’s win will serve the country well if they listen to people and do not take the mandate to mean that Singaporeans:

• love to lose their jobs and university places to foreigners as what has been happening all these years
• enjoy seeing the population grow mindlessly and the quality of life here take a dip  

It will have been a disaster for Singapore if the Workers’ Party had been able to make further inroads into Parliament. They can hardly be an alternative to the PAP. The other opposition parties had high-calibre leaders but strangely Singaporeans did not take well to them.

Dr Chee of the Singapore Democratic Party

Reasons Behind PAP’s Thumping Win

1. Timing of elections with 2015 being the year the country lost its founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and celebrated its Golden Jubilee

• So the SG50 feel-good factor and Singaporeans’ love and respect for the late leader apparently worked to the advantage of the PAP.

1. Votes from new Singaporeans will have gone to the PAP towards foreigners
2. Fragmented Opposition
3. No courage or hunger for power among the Opposition — the leader of the main opposition party (Workers’ Party), Low Thia Khiang, had even said during the campaign that they were not ready to capture power. He perhaps just wanted to be in Parliament so he can toe the Government’s line.
4. While other opposition leaders such as Dr Chee Soon Juan of the Singapore Democratic Party had sacrificed their hard-earned wealth fighting defamation cases and becoming bankrupt, the Workers’ Party was just street-smart seeking individual glory.

• 

  Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Deputy PM and Finance Minister

  Dr Chee was even considered the best of the speakers in the poll campaign, followed by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, widely considered the most brilliant of the PAP’s Cabinet Ministers. Dr Tharman’s academic credentials are impressive — an alumni of the London School of Economics, Cambridge University and Harvard University.

• Kenneth Andrew Jeyaretnam, Secretary-General of the Reform Party, is also a political victim – his father late JB Jeyaratnam had lost all his money through the defamation suits he had to fight all his life.
• But intelligent opposition leaders hardly get the support they need from the electorate in most countries. Singapore is no exception.

I will have liked to see people like Dr Chee and Mr Jeyaratnam in Parliament. My wish now is that the PAP Government pays attention to trimming the country’s population as in a technology-driven smart nation more people will spell more trouble for the country.

G Joslin Vethakumar

It’s One Year Since My Mother’s Passing

Remembrance advertisement in The Hindu

September 7, 2015

Last year this day (September 7, 2014) my mother, Sathiavathy Gnanadhas, attained eternity. We are unable to make it to Chennai for her first anniversary but my brother is organising a prayer meeting at my home in Kilpauk this evening.

She was only 76 and could have lived longer had she paid greater attention to her health.

She had more faith in homeopathy than allopathy and will hardly take advice to the contrary. She blindly believed allopathic treatments caused more harm than good.

Me paying tributes to mom at the Thanksgiving service in September 2014

When you have heart and other serious ailments indigenous medicine can only expedite your death. This is what happened to her.

When we did persuade her to take allopathic medicine she was always half-hearted and irregular. It did not help that she lived alone with none to ensure she kept her intakes – except during the last three months of her life.

A Cardiologist Friend’s Lament: That was a period when she was attended to by a cardiologist from Malar Hospital and other doctors. But it was too late. A senior cardiologist, who was a close family friend, visited her often at our home and his lament always was that she never followed medical advice.

When I spoke to him from Singapore during her last days he said there was no hope then, almost chiding me for not paying attention to her.

Mom at the Phoenix Mall, Dec, 2013 – less than a year before she passed away

As the eldest of her two sons, I cannot disown responsibility.

Mom with me at our flat in Singapore, 2009

It will haunt me that she gave up without a fight. She will remain in our memory for ever.

G Joslin Vethakumar

Mom with Indira Gandhi

Mom with Annadurai (next to him), then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu

Mom during another visit to Singapore

Mom speaking at a function presided by then Congress leader, GK Moopanar