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MTIndia Digest #085 PDF Print E-mail
Sunday, 11 August 2002

MT India Digest - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MTID

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MT India Digest
Moderated Discussion List
"Effective MT Forum"
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                    Published by:
MT India                                  www.MTIndia.org

                    Moderated by:
Amit Chatterjee, SM                This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

..................................................
Aug 12, 2002         Digest #085
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.....IN THIS DIGEST.....

======MODERATOR COMMENT =======

-=MT India & part timers=-

   ~Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM

=============NEW===============

-=Cease-fire is brought to you by?=-

   ~Saurabh Sinha
"influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the
trick."

-=HIPAA =-

   ~Murali Krishnan
"impact of HIPAA on our buisnesses"

===========BILLBOARD==============

-=Part timers?=-

   ~Asokan

======MODERATOR COMMENT =======

Dear MTIDers,

As usual, I guess I have started something... :)

Please let me clarify, clarify, and clarify...

MTIndia or Mediweb are not MT service providers - we DO NOT have a
"work at home" position for you to do MT work from home. If our
advertisement sounded such, I apologize.

MTIndia is a vertical portal, catering to a niche segment - MT in
the Indian subcontinent. We do need professionals to create
content, advise, administer, educate. My experience tells me no
professional would devote to such endeavors full time - or else
he/she might stop being a professional! We are asking you to devote
your spare time towards such - and be reasonably compensated for
it - if our members are paying, I consider it fair that such
collections go to those who directly provide the service. Your
support could be at weekends, or say even an hour a day. But as I
have said earlier - I would need explicit clearance from your
employer.

I will also answer to Ashokan's post below in public, though I
answered him in private, for the benefit of all:

1) This is unlike any employment - we are just trying to reasonably
compensate anyone who is ready to devote personal time towards
community welfare, towards which the community is contributing.

2) This not MT work, more like a club - a place to talk, interact,
give and take. I don't think anybody doing such will be handicapped
by also doing regular MT work. In fact I would consider anybody not
involved in the actual transcription process to be incompetent to
handle this.

3) I don't think this is dual employment at all! If you have good
people, flaunt them in front of the world, and bill us! :)

I would appreciate your feedback and answer your apprehensions, if
any!

"Ability is of little account without opportunity ~ Napoleon
Bonaparte"

Best regards,

Maj (Dr.) Amit Chatterjee, SM
http://mtindia.org  - not non-profit on purpose....

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=============NEW===============

From: "Saurabh Sinha" < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Subject: NY Times editorial article

Hi all!

This article gives a perspective of how India's leading IT and
backoffice services industry had a deterring effect on the nuclear
war tension escalation across its border. Its an interesting
perspective. Friedman is a very famous international journalist.

--------------------------------------------------
India, Pakistan and G.E.
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

BANGALORE, India - Two months ago India and Pakistan appeared
headed for a nuclear war. Colin Powell, the U.S. secretary of state
and a former general, played a key role in talking the two parties
back from the brink. But here in India, I've discovered that there
was another new, and fascinating, set of pressures that restrained
the Indian government and made nuclear war, from its side,
unthinkable. Quite simply, India's huge software and information
technology industry, which has emerged over the last decade and
made India the back-room and research hub of many of the world's
largest corporations, essentially told the nationalist Indian
government to cool it.

And the government here got the message and has sought to
de-escalate ever since. That's right - in the crunch, it was the
influence of General Electric, not General Powell, that did the
trick.

This story starts with the fact that, thanks to the Internet and
satellites, India has been able to connect its millions of
educated, English-speaking, low-wage, tech-savvy young people to
the world's largest corporations. They live in India, but they
design and run the software and systems that now support the
world's biggest companies, earning India an unprecedented $60
billion in foreign reserves - which doubled in just the last three
years. But this has made the world more dependent on India, and
India on the world, than ever before.

If you lose your luggage on British Airways, the techies who track
it down are here in India. If your Dell computer has a problem, the
techie who walks you through it is in Bangalore, India's Silicon
Valley. Ernst & Young may be doing your company's tax returns here
with Indian accountants. Indian software giants in Bangalore, like
Wipro, Infosys and MindTree, now manage back-room operations -
accounting, inventory management, billing, accounts receivable,
payrolls, credit card approvals - for global firms like Nortel
Networks, Reebok, Sony, American Express, HSBC and GE Capital.

You go to the Bangalore campuses of these Indian companies and they
point out: "That's G.E.'s back room over here. That's American
Express's back office over there." G.E.'s biggest research center
outside the U.S. is in Bangalore, with 1,700 Indian engineers and
scientists. The brain chip for every Nokia cellphone is designed in
Bangalore. Renting a car from Avis online? It's managed here.

So it was no wonder that when the State Department issued a travel
advisory on May 31 warning Americans to leave India because the war
prospects had risen to "serious levels," all these global firms who
had moved their back rooms to Bangalore went nuts.

"That day," said Vivek Paul, vice chairman of Wipro, "I had a
C.I.O. [chief information officer] from one of our big American
clients send me an e-mail saying: `I am now spending a lot of time
looking for alternative sources to India. I don't think you want me
doing that, and I don't want to be doing it.' I immediately
forwarded his letter to the Indian ambassador in Washington and
told him to get it to the right person."

No wonder. For many global companies, "the main heart of their
business is now supported here," said N. Krishnakumar, president of
MindTree. "It can cause chaos if there is a disruption." While not
trying to meddle in foreign affairs, he added, "what we explained
to our government, through the Confederation of Indian Industry, is
that providing a stable, predictable operating environment is now
the key to India's development."

This was a real education for India's elderly leaders in New Delhi,
but, officials conceded, they got the message: loose talk about war
or nukes could be disastrous for India. This was reinforced by
another new lobby: the information technology ministers who now
exist in every Indian state to drum up business.

"We don't get involved in politics," said Vivek Kulkarni, the
information technology secretary for Bangalore, "but we did bring
to the government's attention the problems the Indian I.T. industry
might face if there were a war. . . . Ten years ago [a lobby of
I.T. ministers] never existed."

To be sure, none of this guarantees there will be no war. Tomorrow,
Pakistani militants could easily do something so outrageous and
provocative that India would have to retaliate. But it does
guarantee that India's leaders will now think 10 times about how
they respond, and if war is inevitable, that India will pay 10
times the price it would have paid a decade ago.

In the meantime, this cease-fire is brought to you by G.E. - and
all its friends here in Bangalore.
--------------------------------------------------------

Comments?

Saurabh Sinha
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++++ new post - different topic ++++

From: Murali Krishnan < This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Subject   : HIPAA

Dear Amit,

I am Murali Krishnan of Cyberservices, Bangalore. We met in our
office in Bangalore a couple of years ago. We are doing reasonable
well in MT. I would like to know about the impact of HIPAA on our
buisnesses. Any special precaution the Indian MT companies are
undertaking. Even a post on the forum did not evoke any response,
but HIPAA definitely applies to MT and what steps are Indian
companies undertaking and should undertake. Could you throw some
light on this.

Best Regards,

Murali
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[Moderator comment - see:
http://www.mtindia.org/article/default.cfm
We will bring out more soon]

===============BILLBOARD==================

From: Asokan< This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it >
Subject: Part timers?

Dear Amit

I was surprised that MT India has asked for part-timers. This is
against the spirit of the game. You are encouraging double
employment when all of us are talking against that.

I hope you will not go ahead with that and if necessary publish
this too.

Regards
Asokan
TSPL
www.alpsinfosys.com
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