Sunday 17 June 2007

Globalisation and a hair dresser's reaction.

This weekend the first priority for me was to have haircut as I had not had one for many weeks. I went to a local hairstylist where one did’t need an appointment, just walk in. That shop has 3 hairdressers so you get chance faster. I hardly waited for 5 minutes, which I did not realise as I had picked up a local newspaper to read, before my turn came. It was Carlos who was doing haircut for me. Incidently his girlfriend is an Indian so he has learnt quite a few hindi words/phrases /short sentences. So you can just tell him that you want 'chhota hair' instead of short hair and at the end you can tell him 'badiya haircut' and dhanyawad. So that's globalisation of a sort.
The main hairdresser,named Charlie, of the shop, I guess he is owner as well, has been working on that shop for decades now as I came to know from himself on my one of my earlier visit to the shop.
When yesterday I was having haircut I overheard Charlie speaking to his customer while giving him haircut. He was talking about the current phenomenon of outsourcing to Asian countries like China & India. What Charlie was saying to his customer is that these Chinese are manufacturing everything in their country and selling back to us stealing our jobs. And the politicians and businessman are not having a long-term view of this situation and indulging in short-term profiteering. He was saying that when he was very young, around 40 years back, he read in Bible that time would come when yellow people would rule the world and he said it looked like the time was very near now. Specially he was trying to mention how Chinese are manufacturing British cars like MG in china and selling them back in Britain. But what he does not understand is that this car company had already gone bust and Chinese came after last moment to save this brand. Had Chinese not come and taken over this MG brand of cars would have become a history. Now that Chinese are manufacturing these cars a lot of businesses in dealerships, maintenance, etc are saved and so are saved the jobs in such supporting industries. Even Chinese are promising to start some manufacturing at local British factories as well means creating some manufacturing jobs.
I was sympathetic to his views as I understood what it was like loosing a job to some other country and not having much hope for future. But I can’t do anything. I am also here to steal somebody’s job. But it’s global phenomenon and everyone has to bear the fruits of this, even we Indian are also bearing in some of other way and I am sure even Chinese would also be bearing. It’s give and take thing. You loose some we gain some and vice-versa.

Presidential election

The announcement of name of Pratibha Patil as the candidate for presidential elections was almost a shock to most of Indians (I think so). She was hardly known to most of Indians before her name was announced barring few areas like Maharashtra and Rajsthan where she has been active in political life.

According to the media reports she was selected because left and congress were are agreeing on any one candidate so then they chose a least controversial candidate. Least controversial means being a rubber stamp. Criteria for the highet post in nation is not credential of a person but how easily he/she could toy a party or a person's line.

Everyone is bragging now that it's triumph of womer power in India yes that is very true it's triumph of women power not because Pratibha Patil was selected but because she was selected by Sonia Gandhi.

She was only selected at the last moment tell itself that she was the last choice and all these days name of not a single women firgured in discussions.

What are we doing with our great institutions, like president's post, putting people who are more loyal to a particular family? Is this how a democracy should work.

President like Dr. Kalam has raised standards for this institution to a very high level. It'd be very difficult for any new person to even match them, forget raising them further.
I just hope that Pratibha Patil lives up to the standards of that post and she herself creates new
benchmark and leave a mark of her own.