milligan4congress.com

By TAMER EL-GHOBASHY and PERVAIZ SHALLWANI

A New York City police officer was arrested Tuesday after he allegedly used his police department-issued credentials to gain access to sensitive computer records and pass them on to a convicted drug dealer.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Federal Court in Brooklyn, Officer Devon Daniels’s alleged involvement with a heroin dealer was uncovered during a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation that utilized wire taps.

Mr. Daniels on numerous occasions between April 2010 and April 2011 allegedly used an NYPD database to look up license-plate numbers to help locate the owners of vehicles for the leader of a heroin ring based in Jamaica, Queens, and to check the status of criminal warrants related to associates of the ring, the complaint stated.

It is alleged that the 30-year-old officer, who was based out of the 111th Precinct in Queens, gained access to the information from a computer in his squad car while using his password and that of his partner.

Mr. Daniels is believed to have used his partner’s password without that officer’s knowledge. His partner is not a suspect in the case.

On the wiretaps, Mr. Daniels is allegedly heard having telephone conversations with Guy Curtis, the drug dealer, during which the officer asks for money, “any working revolver” and permission to borrow Mr. Curtis’s vehicles.

On an occasion when Mr. Daniels was driving one of those cars, he stopped at the scene of an arrest during which an associate of Mr. Curtis was being apprehended, according to the criminal complaint.

The officer quizzed his colleagues at the scene and then “immediately reported that information to Guy Curtis,” according to the criminal complaint.

Mr. Curtis, who pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute heroin, also allegedly made use of Mr. Daniels’s privileges and expertise as a police officer.

The drug dealer was provided an NYPD parking placard by Mr. Daniels and once asked the officer how to get “gun shot residue off your hands,” the complaint says.

In another instance, he instructed Mr. Daniels to arrest a felon who was known for “always carrying a gun.”

It was not clear whether the police officer followed that order.

The criminal complaint also alleges that Mr. Daniels helped Mr. Curtis launder money associated with a drug deal.

A drug distributer in Kansas once deposited $3,500 from a drug transaction into Mr. Daniels’s bank account. Mr. Daniels then allegedly withdrew the money and gave it to Mr. Curtis.

On Tuesday, Mr. Daniels appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Roanne Mann and was informed of the charges against him.

He did not enter a plea and was released on a $150,000 bond and placed under electronic monitoring. He was also ordered to surrender his NYPD-issued handgun.

The officer’s attorney, Devian Daniels, who is also his sister, declined to comment after the court proceeding. In court, other family members said Mr. Daniels is the father of “several” children.

Mr. Daniels joined the police department in 2007 and was assigned to a housing unit in Brooklyn at the time of his arrest, police said.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau had identified Mr. Daniels based on the wiretapped information and assisted in his arrest.

The officer has been suspended without pay and could face departmental sanctions, including termination, regardless of the outcome of the federal case against him, Mr. Browne said.

Formal charges have not yet been filed in the case.

Write to Tamer El-Ghobashy at tamer.el-ghobashy@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 16, 2012, on page A17 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Police Officer Arrested.

Por STELIOS BOURAS y ALKMAN GRANITSAS

ATENAS (EFE Dow Jones)–El Gobierno griego allanó el camino el miércoles para que los debilitados bancos del país reciban una inyección de capital que les permitirá seguir acudiendo al Banco Central Europeo al tiempo que fortalecen sus colchones para posibles imprevistos.

“Hemos llegado a un acuerdo sobre los términos de la financiación puente” para los bancos, dijo un miembro del Gabinete tras la reunión. “Es un paso intermedio y cumple las demandas del Banco de Grecia y el Banco Central Europeo”, añadió.

El Gobierno de Grecia, junto con sus acreedores oficiales, ha discutido los detalles técnicos sobre cómo cubrir el agujero de 18.000 millones de euros en los balances de los cuatro grandes bancos del país tras cerrar el mes pasado un ambicioso plan de reestructuración de deuda.

La reestructuración redujo en 100.000 millones de euros la deuda nacional pero dejó a las cuatro grandes entidades financieras de Grecia –National Bank of Greece S.A., EFG Eurobank Ergasias S.A., Alpha Bank AS y Piraeus Bank S.A.– en una situación de insolvencia técnica.

Este mes, Grecia recibió 25.000 millones de euros en bonos del Fondo Europeo de Estabilidad Financiera, FEEF, para ayudar a recapitalizar a sus acreedores privados.

By DIANA MIDDLETON

(See Corrections & Amplifications item below)

In these tough times, lots of workers are stuck in a bind: They need an M.B.A. to boost their career, but they can’t afford the cost or the time out of the work force.

The solution? Many are turning to programs that let them earn a degree in half the time, often at a fraction of the cost.

Consider Marco André. He knew if he wanted to achieve his dream of managing companies and working in different countries, he’d need to get an M.B.A. But taking two years away from his career for a traditional program was too big a sacrifice. So, Mr. André, a product-management director for a technology company in Portugal, opted for ESADE’s one-year program in Barcelona.

His M.B.A. brought him the change he wanted: After graduating last April, he landed a job as a market-planning manager for Procter & Gamble Co. in Madrid. “At a certain point, the extra length just doesn’t add value,” says Mr. André. “You can learn everything perfectly well in a shorter time span. Nowadays, the opportunity cost of two years is just too high.”

Accelerated M.B.A. programs, which take between 10 and 15 months to complete, have been around for decades and are the norm in Europe. Although these programs are much less common in the U.S., they’re growing increasingly attractive—especially among older students, who are becoming less willing to spend two years out of the work force.

More and more students are opting to attend one-year MBA programs, rather than the typical two-year program. While these can be more stressful, student Alli Johnson finds they offer rewards. Diana Middleton reports.

These programs have rarely been evaluated by outsiders, in part because they’re still less ubiquitous than their two-year counterparts. About 90 accredited schools world-wide offer the accelerated M.B.A., and many of them only recently added the option.

But the degree’s growing popularity and reach led The Wall Street Journal to take its first close look at accelerated M.B.A. programs. To measure these programs’ quality, and student and alumni satisfaction with them, the Journal, with the help of research firm Management Research Group and survey technicians Critical Insights, surveyed the current graduating classes and alumni who graduated two years earlier at 48 schools. We looked only at schools that have graduated four or more classes with 12 or more students. We eliminated schools where students had little or no work experience. Responses came in from 1,361 recent grads and 735 alumni. We asked students about everything from the programs’ flexibility to career services. And we pressed alumni on issues like the usefulness of the training in their careers and whether their degree protected them in the recession. (See the full methodology.)

European Edge

The result is the Journal’s first-ever ranking of accelerated M.B.A. programs. The ranking comprises nine European schools, five in the U.S. and one in Latin America. Some smaller, lesser-known schools—along with bigger schools that haven’t been offering a fast-track degree long enough—might be noticeably absent for now. But as the degree gains ground, more entrants are sure to be evaluated.

At the top of the list are three European schools with a strong tradition of delivering respected degree programs. At No. 1: IE Business School in Madrid, praised by students and alumni for the diversity of its student body and networking opportunities. From Switzerland, IMD’s rigorous leadership-oriented 11-month program came in at No. 2. The U.K.’s Cranfield School of Management, with its teamwork-focused atmosphere, is No. 3. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business—both in the U.S.—round out the top five.

Frank Brown, the dean of INSEAD, a business school with campuses in France and Singapore, discusses the advantages of taking an accelerated MBA program. He also tells WSJ’s Diana Middleton what he believes are the benefits of attending an international school.

These schools stood out by delivering a strong curriculum and cramming in a healthy dose of international exposure. The best schools also cultivate relationships with local and global companies, giving students the chance to work on real-world projects.

At IE, students and alumni say the program’s intensity lent itself to constant engagement in their course work, as well as close bonds with their classmates. They say they benefited from IE’s additional programs, such as the Venture Lab, a competition that awards student entrepreneurs capital to launch a business. At IMD, the course work had the rhythm of a real job, students said—real, that is, if 100-hour workweeks are the norm.

Spanning the Globe

The driving factor for pursuing a fast-track M.B.A. among those surveyed was the ability to re-enter the work force faster—more than 82% of students put that at the top of their list. When it came to choosing a school, students and alumni cited reputation (92% said it was critical and 43% called it the most important consideration) and an international focus (74% said it was critical and 15% said it was at the top of their list) as the biggest criteria.

Indeed, almost all the schools offer plenty of chances to stretch internationally. At IMD, students recently traveled to South Africa for 12 days to meet with 20 companies to help get new ventures off the ground. Eighty percent of INSEAD’s students spend time at the school’s two campuses—one in Fontainebleau, France, the other in Singapore. Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, requires its students to spend five weeks abroad doing mini-internships. Other schools, like IE, offer international seminars and exchange programs from Latin America to China.

The ranked schools also prepared graduates to land higher-paying jobs and excel in a global business environment, according to students and alumni. And most survey respondents say recruiters and managers view their fast-track degree in the same light as a two-year degree.

There was one big divide among the schools: Students and alumni thought programs outside the U.S. offered a much stronger international exposure. Eighty-six percent of students at non-U.S. programs identified their program’s international focus as critical to their choice. Only 36% of those at U.S. schools said the same.

Why the divide? Non-U.S. programs often take great care to choose students from a host of countries and industry backgrounds. In addition, students at many European schools are often required to learn another language, and some schools require that students be bilingual before setting foot on campus.

Albany, N.Y., native Ian Rogan, a December 2008 graduate of Switzerland’s IMD, says the school was his only choice for an M.B.A. program. For Mr. Rogan, who had been working as an assistant director of the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics at Boston College, studying abroad was the best way to test his leadership style.

“In my study group, there was never any one nationality represented twice,” says Mr. Rogan. “We were put under pressure to deliver solutions, and when you have different personalities at play, you have to navigate the cultural differences and find a way to come to a consensus.” Mr. Rogan returned to Boston College, but in what he calls a “significantly heightened role,” as a director of operations and finance at the school’s Center for Corporate Citizenship.

There are other distinctions between U.S. schools and their European counterparts. For one, few U.S. schools offer the shorter M.B.A. option. Those that do still focus the bulk of their attention—like career services and recruitment—on their two-year offerings. Non-U.S. schools tend to have larger graduating classes and older students—an average of 30 years old vs. 28 at U.S. schools. Programs outside the U.S. are slightly shorter as well—with most averaging just under 12 months.

Still, U.S. programs have their own strengths. Partway through the one-year programs, some accelerated M.B.A. students at Kellogg and Cornell, for example, start taking classes with two-year MBA students, offering an influx of new study partners and work experiences to incorporate in their personal networks. And U.S. schools tend to have more women—35% vs. 23%.

American schools also tend to excel in softer skills, like teamwork, building relationships and managing across functions. According to alumni, Kellogg outperformed all other schools in negotiation training, for example. (The one European school that stood out in this area was IMD, which focuses heavily on leadership training.)

What’s Not to Like?

Of course, these programs aren’t for everyone. If you’re expecting hand-holding or significant help changing careers, an accelerated M.B.A. might not be for you.

Many students complained that their career-service departments didn’t do enough to help them build contacts or make inroads to a new career. In addition, there’s sometimes not enough time to squeeze in an internship or consulting projects—which means no chance to build contacts at a new company. And some students said the alumni networks weren’t well developed, unlike the strong networks at two-year programs.

Still, for people looking for a boost in their current career—or a way to wrangle the skills they have into a new industry—the fast-track M.B.A. can produce a boost in title and salary. On average, alumni survey respondents reported pre-M.B.A. base pay of $55,050. At their first job after graduation, that figure increased to $95,000. And two years later, the same alumni earn just over $110,000.

Economic Buffer

What’s more, many alumni said they felt the degree protected their careers in the economic downturn. “I have friends who’ve been laid off who were at the same level as me [prior to graduation],” says Justin Rose, who graduated from Kellogg’s one-year program in June. “When they interviewed for [new] jobs, they were told the firms would only hire M.B.A.s.”

Mr. Rose says the degree also helped him land a promotion: Before the program, Mr. Rose was a project leader at Boston Consulting Group; now he is a principal with the firm. Overall, alumni of the top 15 programs largely gave their schools high marks for making a lasting impact on their careers. “I can lead and participate in conversations around any functional area of business and feel well prepared to make decisions quickly,” wrote one Babson graduate.

All of this comes with a heavy commitment to studies. While IMD is famous for its six-day, 100-hour weeks, most of the programs in our ranking also have rigorous course work. Nearly two-thirds of the students surveyed said they spent more than 15 hours each week on schoolwork outside the classroom.

Some students said they wish they had more time to absorb case studies. Others said that the fast-paced curriculum was exhausting, leaving little time for extracurricular activities, like clubs or business-plan competitions.

It’s all true, administrators say. “These students want to be taught, and then they want to move on,” says Sean Rickard, director of Cranfield’s M.B.A. program, adding that students have no time to do anything but study. “They never stop. It’s five days of intensive lecturing and projects, week after week—except for Christmas. They begin to realize they can handle any problem you throw at them.”

Corrections & Amplifications

Miami University (Ohio) requires its student to spend five weeks abroad doing mini-internships. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Miami required two weeks of mini-internships.

–Ms. Middleton is a management-education reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York. She can be reached at diana.middleton@wsj.com.

Asia’s Drive for Free Trade

East-West trade tensions are rising, and a new global free-trade agreement seems a distant dream. Yet here’s the paradox: the drive for free trade within Asia, where the world’s greatest concentration of economic growth now resides, has never been stronger.
Fears of rising protectionism in the West are inspiring a newfound Asian enthusiasm to promote intraregional trade. With talks for the Doha round of global trade stalled indefinitely, “we have to deal with the new normal, where politicians in the leading countries are running scared of free trade,” Kishore Mahbubani, a veteran Singaporean diplomat and policy advisor said Saturday at the 20th Asian Corporate Conference in New Delhi. The Wall Street Journal Asia cohosted this year’s gathering in India along with Asia Society and the Confederation of Indian Industry.

For Asia, the U.S. Congress’s failure so far to pass a long-awaited free-trade deal with South Korea is emblematic of the problem. But the U.S. is keeping a horse in the race amid competing proposals for regional trade clubs. Last week, negotiators from eight nations—the U.S., Australia, Brunei, China, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam—held preliminary talks in Melbourne on creating an Australia-backed free-trade zone. Japan’s government, meanwhile, is pushing for an “East Asian Community” and hopes to hammer out details of its proposal in coming months.

European Pressphoto Agency

Chinese-made toys dominate this Indonesian market in December 2009.

Ideas to augment the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations, comprised of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam , come in several flavors. There’s the “plus three” version, which adds South Korea, Japan and China. Then there’s the “plus six” version that also includes India, Australia and New Zealand. On Saturday in New Delhi, Singapore’s Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, proposed a “plus eight” model to include the U.S. and Russia.

Bilateral free-trade agreements are sprouting like weeds. Last August, Asean signed a deal with India, and one with China came into effect in January. India also inked a deal with South Korea. Japan, South Korea and China are exploring a trilateral trade agreement, and India and China are looking at a deal of their own.

Trade within the region has been growing by leaps and bounds. In the five years between 2002 and 2006, trade among the 10 Asean members more than doubled to $188 billion, and trade between China and Asean tripled from $59 billion to $192 billion, according to data Mr. Mahbubani cited.

However, a significant portion involved components for goods ultimately destined for export to the U.S. and Europe, highlighting the limits to any aspirations of Asian regional self-reliance. Political tensions within the region also pose serious obstacles to trade growth: While trade between India and China jumped from $15 billion in 2005 to $41 billion in 2009, that’s a paltry figure considering the size of their two economies. Suspicion between the two giants dating back to a bitterly fought 1962 border war hasn’t been helped by China’s concern that the U.S. is courting New Delhi as a hedge against China’s military ambitions.

The perpetual war-footing between India and Pakistan is one reason India’s trade with its South Asian neighbors remains paltry, although smuggling and trade routed through third countries belies the official data. C. Raja Mohan, an Indian author and political commentator speaking at the conference, recalled the days of the Raj that brought together much of South Asia under British rule.

“The Raj created this whole region into a single market,” Mr. Mohan said. “We need a policy initiative from the Indian side which takes the leadership to open its markets unilaterally.”

Other optimistic visions of ways to promote regional trade included a suggestion by Victor Zhikai Gao, director of the China National Association of International Studies, that China extend a high-speed rail network connecting Beijing with Tibet across the Himalayan border into India.

“This would be a major breakthrough,” enthused Mr. Gao, and “would really increase the exchange of people, goods and eventually ideas between these two countries.” Of course, critics of the railway’s environmental impact and China’s controversial policies toward its Tibetan population probably wouldn’t be too thrilled.

If the conversation in New Delhi veered toward the utopian at points, there was still a firmly grounded message that most of those involved would agree on, enunciated by Mr. Mahbubani: All efforts to promote free trade within the region, however flawed, were still “the sensible answer to the imperfect world we live in.”

—Peter Stein

Climate Change

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Saturday’s panel on climate change showed that a slideshow can be worth more than the many thousands of words spoken on why a meaningful global agreement on controlling carbon emissions remains elusive.

The slideshow in question contained photos provided by David Breashears, a mountain climber and photographer who has documented with disturbing effectiveness the vanishing of glaciers in the greater Himalaya that feed the main river systems of Asia. Slide after slide compared photos he took of glaciers at Mt. Everest, the Karakoram range and other Himalayan areas with historical photos dating back to the early 20th century. As you can guess, the result was always the same: Glaciers were in retreat, leaving behind rubble or lakes in their wake where a century ago stood huge swaths of ancient ice.

Whatever the erudition of the seven other speakers who addressed the same subject Saturday, none were as effective as the Breashears photos at making the case for the urgency of measures to cap emissions that lead to global warming.

That said, a few zingers managed to stand out from the verbiage.

The first came from keynote speaker Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for the environment and forests. A questioner asked him whether China was simply being opportunistic in teaming up with India against the U.S. on the subject of emission caps. Absolutely, Ramesh responded, but that didn’t bother him if it helped achieve the goal of putting more pressure on Washington to make concessions.

“Negotiating with India is a headache for the U.S.,” Ramesh said, “but negotiating with India and China is a nightmare for the U.S.,” he said, smiling gleefully.

Later, a questioner complained that no one on the panel was addressing the view of Mahatma Gandhi that the world provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed. Why, the questioner asked, can’t people simply follow Gandhi’s approach and conserve our resources by consuming less?

“I’m a big believer in Gandhian politics,” answered Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. “I’m a less big believer in Ghandian economics.” He went on to argue that technologies for making more Gandhian use of existing resources, such as Singapore’s system for recycling waste water into drinking water, can allow the world to grow even as resources grow scarce.

Finally, Shyam Saran, another panelist, offered the best-phrased dodge of a politically sensitive question. Saran resigned last month as India’s special envoy on climate change amid speculation about a power struggle with Ramesh, the keynote speaker. Someone asked if he would elaborate on the reasons for his departure.

“The short answer,” said Saran, “is that the climate was right for me to leave.”

—Peter Stein

* * *

Skills Gap

The skills gap in India is a well-known and serious phenomenon: Tens of millions of young people unable to speak or read effectively in English and untrained in anything they would need for basic jobs in a consumer-driven economy. Many see in this the makings of a disaster. Harold McGraw III, chairman of The McGraw-Hill Companies, says he sees an opportunity.

Paul Beckett

He says in an interview that India will require 10 million sales people by 2013 as retail, autos and other industries expand. As a result, a partnership his company and India’s Tata group has had for many years has been reinvigorated to try to train those people online with skills that would make them hireable in the new workforce. A pilot program, planned for expansion in the summer, is currently offering a three-month course that includes a two-week internship aimed at students between 18 and 24 years old. It costs 10,000 rupees (about $220) to prepare applicants for retail jobs where they can expect to earn a beginning salary of 7,000 to 15,000 rupees a month. The plan is to extent the training program to a dozen other sectors including banking and insurance.

“One of the things that’s been created is the skills gap between skills learned in the traditional system from skills necessary and needed to get a job,” he says. “We can develop online learning platforms and deliver a skills set that will get that person a job.”

Skills development is something BusinessWeek staffers might feel in need of since many of them have lost their jobs after McGraw-Hill sold the magazine to Bloomberg a few months ago.

McGraw, who goes by Terry, said the decision to sell the venerable magazine was the right one given the downturn in advertising. But he added, “it did hurt the heart — I wanted to keep it as a centerpiece of thought leadership but the business model is very difficult.” He added that BusinessWeek was unable to “multipurpose” its editorial staff as Bloomberg can, which is another way of saying Bloomberg can fill the magazine with content generated by staff who also file for other parts of the organization such as Bloomberg News and the Asian and European broadcast outlets. “Bloomberg can multipurpose their editorial,” he said. “They are using their journalistic staff in lots of ways we didn’t have.”

In another part of the McGraw-Hill empire that has been in the spotlight – the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency — McGraw said things were looking up in the U.S. Corporate and municipal bond issuance is on the rise. “The S&P business overall is doing really great,” he said. Structured finance “has not come back,” he said, which isn’t too surprising given that its meltdown was central to the economic collapse that the world is still trying to climb out from under. But he predicted it would eventually. “In some form, the securitization market is going to come back, whether it is two years or whenever,” McGraw said. “Because it’s so powerful a tool for growth and you can do so much with it.”

—Paul Beckett

* * *

Film Industry

India’s thriving film and television industry employed 1.8 billion people, generated revenue of $7.7 billion and contributed $6.2 billion to its gross domestic product in the financial year that ended March 31, 2009, a report released on the sidelines of 20th Asian Corporate Conference of the Asia Society in New Delhi said.

The U.S. and international films have been making rapid inroads into India. In 2009, the Hollywood and international films collected $66 million out of the Indian market, the report said.

In India,the television sector alone accounted for $4.6 billion of economic contribution and provided jobs for 1.4 million people, according to the report prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers for Motion Picture Distributors Association (India).

All together, the contribution of the film and television industry constituted 0.5% of India’s GDP, the report said. The report estimates the industry will grow at cumulative growth rate of 11.5% over the five-year period till 2013 with revenues almost doubling to $13.2 billion.

Piracy continue to bedevil the film industry in India and around the world, said the panelists at the luncheon session over Indian film and television industry. The individuals sneaking into the movie halls with their camcorders and recording the movie to illegally sell it or share among others, were leading the piracy business, said Dan Glickman, chairman of Motion Picture Association of America.

The piracy issue seriously affects the livelihood of those in the film industry all over the world, Mr.Glickman added.

—Krishna Pokharel

* * *

How to Run India’s Cities

A better plan for running Indian cities would be to bring them under community management — that appeared to be the consensus of a mid-afternoon brainstorming at a session on urbanization in India.

But “do you think there would be a bureaucrat smart enough” to manage the community? That was a rhetorical salvo from K. C. Sivaramakrishnan, a leading expert on urbanization among the panelists of the session.

Managing India’s cities is going to be one of the great challenges of the next half-century as hundreds of millions more Indians flee the countryside for the bright lights (provided they figure out how to fix the power cuts.)

India amended its Constitution in the early 1990s to give power to its urban local bodies to manage city affairs. But that hasn’t happened, Right now, government, bureaucracy and the elected local representatives all function in “silos” and collaboration is lacking, said Rajiv Lall from Infrastructure Development Finance Company. Yet good governance at the local level is key to city management, said Mark Chandler from the mayor’s office of the city of San Francisco.

Cities also “need soul” and urbanization shouldn’t just be viewed as a process of real estate development. That hasn’t been the case in India so far, said Arun Nanda, president of Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd.

—Krishna Pokharel

* * *

Naan

The award for best metaphor of the conference so far goes to K.C. Sivaramakrishnan, chairman of the Center for Policy Research, who was speaking at a session on managing the growth of new cities.

Peter Stein

Disputing the idea that Indian cities can become “islands of excellence,” as another panelist suggested, Sivaramakrishnan instead compared Indian urban development to the country’s traditional flat bread, the naan.

Naan, as everyone knows, is not very round or regular, he said. It’s “bulging here, burnt out there.” That’s the reality. But he doesn’t see any reason to despair. “We were brought up under these conditions and we will thrive under these conditions!”

—Peter Stein

* * *

Kamal Nath wants to ease your commute

The minister for transport and highways was asked about how all the disposable income being spent on cars – Nath had pointed to the 30%-plus growth in monthly car sales recently – could possibly co-exist with the dreadful state of urban traffic infrastructure. Aren’t we heading for one giant road wreck, in other words?

Nath acknowledged it was an issue to which there were no easy solutions. You can add tax to cars but that’ll stint purchases. And you can’t deny people the right to buy a car. You need better traffic management and you need the “dispersal of cities,” Nath said.

So the sprawl you already see around Delhi is set to increase to lessen the concentration of vehicles in the center of town. “The carrying capacity of our cities, we’ve exceeded,” Nath said.

His department has identified 16,000 expressways to try to encourage people to move to the suburbs. “In the next one year, at least in some of our cities that have a great burden of traffic density, we will see some relief.”

That has nothing to do with powering Asia’s ascent. But it may be a development even the delegates who have sat in traffic to reach the conference will welcome.

—Paul Beckett

* * *

Headhunting

When it comes to headhunting, bankers are usually the hunted, not the hunters. Ranodeb Roy, Morgan Stanley’s head of fixed-income for Asia, shook up the routine Friday morning at the 20th Asian Corporate Conference in New Delhi by testing his executive recruitment skills on Brooks Entwistle, who heads up the India business for Goldman Sachs.
At the first panel discussion of the conference, which The Wall Street Journal Asia is cohosting along with Asia Society and the Conferation of Indian Industry, Roy made the case for India’s future as a global hub of financial services. The gist of the argument was that India’s competency in math skills and information technology give it a competitive advantage.

(Less discussed were some of the copious disadvantages weighing against India, such as an overly bureaucratic regulatory environment that currently drives many India-focused funds to base themselves outside the country.)

At one point, Roy suggested that bringing foreign talent into domestic financial institutions could be one way to kickstart this whole financial hub idea. An American bank like Citigroup is open enough to put an Indian, Vikram Pandit, in its top spot, Roy noted. Why couldn’t Mr. Entwistle, an American, run ICICI Bank, India’s 2nd-largest lender?

Entwistle kept a good poker face at the suggestion. (Was he just mulling it over?) “I’m working on your career development, Brooks,” Roy quickly added by way of explanation.

— Peter Stein

* * *

India: Powering Asia’s Ascent

The theme of this conference is “India: Powering Asia’s Ascent.” Once again, it is being held in the cavernous ballroom at the Taj Palace hotel in New Delhi (why has no other hotel opened a decent conference facility in this city?)

It took no lesser a wag than Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Indian government’s Planning Commission, to note at Thursday night’s opening dinner that India is “predominantly concerned with powering India’s ascent.”

This points to an important conundrum for many companies globally as they seek to adjust to the new post-economic crisis environment: Is India in Asia at all? Where does it fit?

That India is powering its own strong path upward seems in little doubt. Hari Bhartia, co-chairman of Jubilant Organosys, turned his scheduled brief welcome address into a lengthy and well-trod litany of India’s many economic accomplishments and anticipated successes.
Dr. Ahluwalia sounded sober by comparison even when predicting that India’s economic growth in the year ending March 31, 2011, will hit 8.5% followed by 9% the following year. These are numbers India just touched even in the global economic boom of three years ago.

How much this matters to Asia was essentially the topic of discussion at the first panel Friday, which I moderated. (The WSJ is a partner in this conference along with Asia Society and the Confederation of Indian Industry.)

Indian companies used to care more about Asia than they do now, but in the past five or so years have tilted heavily toward the U.S., Africa, Europe, the Middle East. Now that many of those markets are in the dumps and Asia continues to hum along, there is an eastern shift underway, said Brooks Entwistle, CEO of Goldman Sachs in India. “I feel that is dramatically changing.”

AFP/Getty Images

Workers assemble a Maxximo mini-truck at the Mahindra and Mahindra India plant in Chakan, 160kms (100 miles) southeast of Mumbai on March 13, 2010.

In turn, Asian companies are viewing India as a much more attractive market. The Koreans have been leading the charge in recent years after the Japanese tried but largely retreated, said Leo Puri, managing director of Warburg Pincus in Mumbai.

Now, the Japanese are interested again as they seek to gain some balance to their dependence on the Chinese market. “India is rapidly emerging in Japanese political thinking,” Mr. Puri said. Increased investments by Asian government sovereign wealth funds is another sign of India’s increased Asian importance.

There’s no reason it can’t become a hub for the region or the world for international financial services too, noted Ranodeb Roy, managing director of fixed income for Morgan Stanley in Asia, especially in areas like inter-dealer broking and other electronic services. If it can do it for software and for back-office services….Though no one really seems to believe that Mumbai’s aspirations as a financial hub to rival Hong Kong or Singapore will be realized anytime soon.

Will all this increased interaction make a difference politically? Henrietta Holsman Fore, chairman of Holsman International, said India should use its increasing commercial and economic links with Asia to be a role model in a number of areas: water, women’s enfranchisement and entrepreneurship, clean technology, agriculture.

Yet this political aspect is thorny. It inevitably brings up the elephant in the room: India’s relationship with China, which more than anything else will define the contours of this “Asian century.”

And on that front the picture is less sanguine. You can’t throw a stone in central Delhi without hitting someone who believes it is 1962 and India needs to prepare for war (that it will more than likely once again lose) – a hard environment in which to foster a thriving commercial relationship.

Overall, no one seemed to disagree with Dr. Ahluwaliah’s contention that India needs to be working hardest on India’s own future, given the many challenges it faces from national security to human development. But given the forces already underway, it’s time as a powerhouse in Asia will come. When? “Realistically, 15 to 20 years,” according to Terry McGraw, CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies.

—Paul Beckett