Contagious India

There are 3.22 million Indians in USA - 1.5 percent of population, yet:

38 percent of doctors in USA are Indians;
12 percent scientists in USA are Indians;
36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians;
34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians;
28 percent of IBM employees are Indians;
17 percent of INTEL scientists are Indians;
13 percent of XEROX employees are Indians.
Indians constitute ten percent of all medical students in America.
Indians own nearly 40 percent of all the small and mid-size hotels in the country.
Four out of 10 Silicon Valley startups are run by Indians.Indians are the richest immigrant class in the US, with nearly 200,000 millionaires.Between 1990 and 2000, the population of Indian scientists and engineers (S and E) in Silicon Valley grew by 646%.

Richest man in the world is an Indian, Mukesh Ambani who was born in April 1957. He completed his graduation in Chemical engineering, and studied for MBA at Stanford University, and joined Relinace Industries in 1981. He is a Chairman and Managing Director of Reliance Industries and resides in Mumbai. He is the richest man in the world with total value of 63.2 billion dollars not because he is Hindu or an Indian, but because he is an entrepreneur who has worked hard for his position.
The fifth richest man is also an Indian, Lakshmi Mittal with total value of $50.9 billion. He was born on 15th of June 1950 in Rajasthan. He heads the multi national steel company Mittal Steel, which is one of the largest steel companies in the world, with steel making facilities in fourteen countries with 150,000 employees.
General Manager of Hewlett Packard is an Indian, Rajiv Gupta; creator of Pentium chip (90 percent of the today's computers run on it) is also an Indian, Vinod Dahm. Creator of world's No1 web based email program - hotmail is also an Indian - Sabeer Bhatia. The president of AT and T-Bell Labs - creator of programmes like C, C++, Unix etc is an India, Arun Netravalli. Microsoft Testing Director of Windows 2000 and responsible for all initial problems is an Indian, Sanjay Tejwrika.

Apart from that India consumes a fifth of the world's gold output. India is the largest producer and consumer of tea in the world, accounting for more than 30 percent of global production and 25 percent of consumption. India is the world's premier centre for diamond cutting and polishing. Nine out of every 10 stones sold in the world pass through India. India's Hero Honda is the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer, with 2002 production of 1.7m units. India has the second-largest pool of scientists and engineers in the world. India has the third-largest investor base in the world.
India has the third-largest army in the world, nearly 1.5 million strong. Indian Railways is the largest employer in the world, with a staff of 1.6 million people under single management. India is the second-largest cement-producing country in the world, producing more than 110m tonnes. India is the largest democracy in the world, with nearly 400m voting in the last national elections.
India is among the few countries who have built a supercomputer indigenously. India is ranked the sixth country in the world in terms of satellite launches. There are over 70,000 bank branches in India - among the highest in the world.
Indian immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the past decade (1995-2005) than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. Almost 26% of all immigrant-founded companies in the last ten years were founded by Indian immigrants. Immigrants from the UK, China, and Taiwan contributed to 7.1 percent, 6.9 percent and 5.8 percent of all immigrant-founded businesses, respectively.
Based on analysis of the World Intellectual Property Organization, patent databases, the largest group of immigrant non-citizen inventors were Chinese (Mainland and Taiwan-born). Indians were second, followed by the Canadians and British

10 Most Unusual People

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India's double standards

While India blames Pakistan for inaction after Mumbai's terror attacks, it turns a blind eye to a dangerous terror organisation


"There should be no double standards in the global fight against terrorism," the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh declared last week. The message was intended for Pakistan, but if Dr Singh is concerned about double standards, he should look closer to home.

Earlier this month Sri Lanka's state-run Sunday Observer published an interview with the country's army chief, Sarath Fonseka, who, while expressing solidarity with India after the Mumbai attacks, severely criticised some Indian politicians for supporting the LTTE. Fonseka had particularly harsh words for the powerful Tamil Nadu politicians Vaiko Gopalsamy and P Nedumaran, calling them "jokers" and accusing them of being venal mouthpieces of the LTTE. He wondered why these men would support an organisation that had assassinated an Indian prime minister, and warned that they were a threat to India's own integrity.

Within hours of the interview's publication, Tamil Nadu's political establishment united in condemnation of General Fonseka. In a letter to the Indian prime minister, Vaiko demanded that New Delhi seek an apology from the president of Sri Lanka. "In a democracy," he wrote, "army generals do not criticise leaders of a foreign country." Sensing trouble, Sri Lanka's president issued a statement "regretting" General Fonseka's remarks, and last week the Sunday Observer's editor Dinesh Weerawansa was summarily sacked. But all of this, far from diminishing General Fonseka's claims, only casts light on India's own irresponsible role in the vortex of terror that threatens to consume Sri Lanka.

The LTTE could not have grown without the support of successive state governments of Tamil Nadu in India. Founded in 1972, the LTTE was among the many groups formed to resist the majoritarian constitution of Sri Lanka which imposed Sinhala as the "sole official language" upon the country. Tamil Tigers used Chennai as a safe haven, and their activities, as the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha wrote, "were actively helped by the state government, with New Delhi turning an indulgent blind eye". The 1987 pact signed by Rajiv Gandhi and JR Jayawardene put a temporary halt to this, and India agreed to send peacekeeping forces to Sri Lanka to help Colombo disarm the LTTE, an adventure so disastrous that one Indian journalist at the time called it "India's Vietnam". The Tamil Tigers retaliated by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi.

The LTTE is arguably the world's most dangerous terrorist organisation. It is the only terrorist outfit to have successfully carried out assassinations of two heads of government. Its international cadres regularly extort money from Tamils in Canada and Australia and even Britain. By imposing the "one family, one fighter" rule, it has enslaved the very people whose liberation it claims to fight for. It has its own air force (Air Tigers), its own navy (Sea Tigers), an elite fighting unit (the Charles Anthony Regiment) and a dedicated suicide squad (Black Tigers). The Tamil Tigers make al-Qaeda look amateurish. But because the LTTE's victims are not western, it does not elicit the same kind of response that Islamist terror groups do.

India banned the LTTE in 1992, but a report released by Jane's Information Group last year identified Tamil Nadu as the principal source of LTTE's weapons; and Fonseka was not exaggerating when he said that the Indian politicians who support the LTTE are a threat to India's own integrity—much as the men who supported the Mumbai attackers are a threat to Pakistan's. Vaiko, the LTTE's fiercest Indian supporter, was recently arrested for suggesting that India's unity would be jeopardised if it supported the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers.

New Delhi did not intervene on behalf of Tibetan protesters—even though their leader, the Dalai Lama, was described by the Indian prime minister as the "personification of non-violence" — and it was conspicuous in its silence over the protests in Burma. It has accepted that Tibet is an integral part of China, and it has struck lucrative petroleum deals with the Burmese Junta—even though protesters in both nations have relied mostly on non-violent means to make their voices heard.

But it has consistently meddled in Sri Lankan affairs, stymieing Colombo's efforts against an adversary that has used almost exclusively violent means to achieve its ends. Much of this is no doubt a consequence of coalition politics: the government in New Delhi has to do certain things to keep its allies happy. But New Delhi dismisses Pakistan's messy internal problems as an excuse which Islamabad invokes to justify its inaction against Islamist terrorists based on its soil. How can it use the same excuse to carry on its do-nothing policy against Tamil terrorists based on its soil? After the Mumbai attacks Singh stated in emphatic terms that there can be no negotiations with terrorists; then, kowtowing to pressure from Tamil Nadu politicians, he agreed to send his Foreign Minister to Colombo to push the Sri Lankan government to do exactly that. If this does not amount to double standards, what does?

Kapil Komireddi guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 December 2008 13.00 GMT

Killinochchi Fall