Archive for 'Business'
India’s Poor Cry Foul Over Fuel Prices
Posted on July 5, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, International.
MUMBAI, India — Kids played cricket on empty streets and motorbikes easily zoomed through normally congested intersections in Mumbai as opposition parties pulled off a nationwide strike Monday to protest a fuel price hike.
The strike, called by the main opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the leftist bloc, closed businesses and schools and disrupted ground and air transportation. Police made thousands of arrests and sporadic acts of violence were reported in cities across the country.
The one-day strike represents a protest by the opposition parties and the nation’s lower and middle classes against the Congress-led government’s policies that have led to spiraling food and fuel prices.
While India’s economy, one of the fastest growing in the world, is expected to increase by more than 8 percent this year, much of the country’s poor are left out. India — where one in two children is malnourished — accounts for a third of the world’s 1.4 billion poor people, according to the World Bank.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
Health Food Booms in India
Posted on June 1, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, Health, International.
MUMBAI, India — As I devour a (delicious) frozen yogurt, store manager Ankush Chopra tells me that Indian celebrities frequently visit his Mumbai shop. He rattles off names of Bollywood stars and then pulls out his mobile phone to show me proof. He turns his phone to me so I can see the photograph he took of one such actor, Jackie Shroff, wearing sunglasses and sitting in his car in front of the store.
“He has taken the ‘berry blast’ flavor, one medium, one small,” Chopra tells me. “With all the berries [as toppings] – strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and blackberry.”
Bollywood actress Raveena Tandon prefers the original flavor, Chopra adds.
As we chat in the store’s outdoor seating in Mumbai’s relatively posh Pali Hill neighborhood, a deliveryman from the nearby market walks up to the shop, carrying a two-foot wide basket of fresh strawberries on his head.
Cocoberry, India’s first non-fat premium frozen yogurt, opened a year ago in an effort to capitalize on a rising demand for health food among India’s growing class of wealthy consumers. The health food market, measured at $92 million in the end of 2008, is expected to nearly triple in size by the end of 2013, according to Shushmul Maheshwari, the chief executive of market-research company RNCOS.
The beginning of an organized, formal market for health food began a few years ago when big retailers began offering health products in their stores, Maheshwari wrote in an email. This developed as a result of a rise in education level and the emergence of strong advertising channels by which retailers could reach consumers.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
India: The Pimped Out Rickshaw
Posted on May 28, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, International.
MUMBAI, India — I tell the driver where I’m going and then duck into the auto rickshaw’s passenger compartment. I rummage through my purse, looking for my iPod to block out the honking on Mumbai’s busy streets. I put on PRI’s “The World” and settle in for the bumpy ride ahead. But as the news begins to play, I notice something is off.
In front of me, attached to the back of the driver’s seat, a pouch made of sparkling red and black faux snakeskin holds a selection of the day’s Hindi newspapers. I glance down at my seat — matching snakeskin. I slowly look around the rickshaw and notice a first-aid kid, a small fire extinguisher and containers holding tissues and a notebook and pen. Red and blue floral fabric with rug-like fringes decorates the top. An angle statue holds up the meter, speakers line the back and two silver vases with plastic flowers sit on a built-in dashboard above the steering wheel.
This is one pimped out rickshaw.
“Very fancy,” I say to the driver, Aresh Ghatge. He laughs and nods his head.
“This is my BMW,” Ghatge says a month later when we meet in Bandra, a Mumbai suburb. Ghatge’s wearing loose white cotton pants, matching top and traditional leather Kolhapuri sandals, named after a town about 400 kilometers south of Mumbai. A brass triangle-shaped badge reading, “Mumbai Cab Driver 144702,” attached to his keychain hangs from a buttonhole near his collar. “I treat my rickshaw like it’s my first wife,” he says through a translator. “I want to make it comfortable for my passengers, like a home.”
India’s financial capital is a booming, fast-paced city that — despite its overcrowded trains and exorbitantly expensive housing — attracts much of the country’s hardest working and most innovative young people. Aspiring actors and dancers leave families behind, rent out tiny rooms in far-flung suburbs and scrounge for auditions as they hope to become Bollywood’s next biggest star. Young men with little to no education set up their own mini shops selling the palate cleanser paan or the local snack pani puri.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
Fair Trade in India
Posted on March 29, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, International.
AMRAVATI, India — Rajendra Panja Kadu lives with his family in a small, humble home in a farming village in central India. He works three jobs — farming his two acres, milking his water buffalo and working as a laborer on others’ farms — but Kadu, like millions of other Indian farmers, can barely make ends meet.
Kadu earns about 60,000 rupees ($1,300) a year and must rely on government ration cards to help him buy food, he says as he sits on his wooden bed. Mounds of cotton puffs waiting to be sold peek out from under the bed. Large sacks of soybeans lean against one wall. Paintings of Hindu gods adorn another.
When Kadu is low on cash, he must borrow about 10,000 rupees a year from moneylenders, who he says charge him a 5 percent monthly interest rate.
The farmer, who lives in Ghodghwan village in Amravati district, says he continues farming despite the difficulties because he has no better options. “It is my business. It is my job,” he said. “I don’t know anything else.”
Continue reading here.
Follow me on Twitter: @HannaIngber
No Comments
Drinking and Driving in India: Party On
Posted on March 25, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business, International.
MUMBAI, India — Paras Turakhia, 26, earns enough money in Mumbai to have bought his first car — with his own sound system, iPod dock, “the works” — and employ a full-time driver.
But every Saturday, when Turakhia gets ready to spend a night on the town, he leaves behind his driver.
India is a land known for its nosiness, and Turakhia’s driver is in “constant contact” with the young man’s family, neighbors and business relationships. If Turakhia or his friends get a little sloppy one night, his driver is likely to spread the news around, the young man says.
Enter a new market opportunity in New India.
Continue reading at GlobalPost.
No Comments
Rebate Checks, Keep ‘Em Coming
Posted on April 28, 2008, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Business.
My husband and I will soon get $600 from the U.S. government in tax rebates. The IRS will start sending rebates via direct deposit today and via snail mail May 9. Unlike 82 percent of the public, as determined by a Los Angeles Times/ Bloomberg poll, we will spend our money. We are both students, both broke, and both determined to use the money on more groceries, gas and even clothes. Therefore, we are clearly good Americans (well, I’m a good American; my husband, Aung Moe, is a good permanent resident).
Unlike all those rebate collectors who want to pay off debt or save - read “hoard” - their new cash, we promise to spend it. We will pump it back into the economy, exactly what the rebates were intended for. President Bush said in January: “Letting Americans keep more of their own money should increase consumer spending.”
In exchange for our patriotism, I for one think we should be given more money. President Bush and Mr. IRS, if you would like to help the economy even more, if you are serious about pulling this nation out of a recession, go right ahead and send us another check. (1917 Rodney Drive, Apt. 203, Los Angeles, CA 90027). You have our word that we will spend it.
2 Comments
