Advantage India, Disadvantage India

Image via WikipediaI first thought in terms of India. An Indian does not need to look far and wide to find poverty. It's right there. It's right there in the backyard. India has the vast majority of the dollar a day, two dollars a day people.

I'd start out by knowing the culture. I'd know the language. And when I say that I mean to say English also, not just Hindi, not just Maithili and Bhojpuri. India is the biggest English speaking country in the world.

And there is the size. I could take the company IPO based just on Bihar. Bihar alone is that big. It would make sense to polish the basic business model in Bihar and then take it to Africa, rather than otherwise.

India is a vibrant democracy, the biggest in the world.

Top Discussion At A Top LinkedIn Microfinance Group

Image via WikipediaA discussion I started a week ago (and kinda forgot about) at a LinkedIn group with over 1200 members has become the top discussion at that group. The group is Microfinance Focus. This activity has made me take a serious look at LinkedIn for the first time. This thing is working, yo.

This has also made me look at India all over again. India was the country I started with in terms of where I wanted to go. But I was advised that the Indian government makes it very hard to bring money into the country. It is much better to start with some middle income country in Latin America. So I am thinking Costa Rica, more recently Paraguay. Much more recently I have been thinking Kenya. But I have had this gnawing feeling that a Bihari needs to be thinking Bihar.

Slumdog Millionaire: A Movie About My People

Raising Money, Building Teams

Rootlessness And The City

Image by joiseyshowaa via FlickrI was born in India. I grew up in Nepal next door. I came to America for college. When I was applying for colleges while in Nepal, I did not have a favorite college in mind. I liked all sorts of colleges. Every prospectus I picked up I absolutely fell in love with. Now I realize what I was really applying for back then was to get into New York City. People who go to all those colleges all end up in New York City.

I have something akin to a PhD in race relations. There is the conscious level of the mind, the subconscious level, and there's deeper stuff. Racial identity can inhabit the mind at several levels. That's what makes a white guy high school drop out detain the top movie star in India for an hour at the New Jersey airport. Your name is Khan? You must be a terrorist.