India FBT - Fringe Benefit Tax Union Budget 2006 Changes

Changes in Fringe Benefit Tax announced in today's Union Budget are posted here.

The 3 risks of China.

These are mainly in 3 strategic areas :

First, Understanding as to what is their strategic superpower intentions as a country vis-a-vis the developed nations like the US and others. To me, it is absolutely clear about their long term intentions. There is no rocket science here.

Second, the absence of a democratic system right from the grass-roots level upwards. Democracy cannot be driven from Beijing downwards in a top-down fashion, it has to work upwards in a messy slow fashion (like India.)

Third, absence of accurate, reliable, verifiable information as regards their economic and other business indicators as also absence of free market legal, banking and other financial market systems.

India has a lot to learn and emulate from China.

Perhaps our horrible physical infrastructure vis-a-vis China can be a lever for a long term strategic advantage in the IT usage space ? An introductory thought on the same here.

Overcoming China's Looming Lead in Infrastructure.

In my consulting work with individuals and organizations, the most frequent complaint that I hear about India is our pathetic infrastructure in our cities and how China has managed to leap ahead of India in this respect.

Indians should take two initiatives to ensure that our bad urban infrastructure does not necessarily become a drag on our progress as we move ahead.

First, start or get involved with a local community group like an ALM - Advanced Locality Management in Mumbai and strive to improve the immediate geographic area around your neighbourhood. If every one of India's 1 Billion People started collaborating and contributing to improving their local communities, our physical infrastructure would improve.

Second, if China has beat us in physical infrastructure, remember they still perhaps lag behind India in our Information Technology and Software skills. So, perhaps, in all operations involving our own lives and work in our organizations, we can strive to improve our virtual Electronic and Computing Infrastructure better than China's.

Automate all manual work, and continue doing the same relentlessly.

So, China's lead in infrastructure can be leaped by community collaboration and implementing computing solutions on a war footing in our daily affairs.