(CBS, 60 Minutes 6/22/03,7:00pm)
What is America's most valuable import from India? It may very well be brainpower.
Hundreds of thousands of well-educated Indians have come to the U.S. in recent decades - many to work in the computer and software industries. The best and brainiest among them seem to share a common credential: They're graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology, better known as IIT. IIT has seven campuses throughout the country, and as we discovered when we traveled there last year, its students consider themselves the luckiest people in India. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports on this story which first aired March 2, 2003.
Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton together, and you begin to get an idea of the status of IIT in India. IIT is dedicated to producing world-class chemical, electrical and computer engineers with a curriculum that may be the most rigorous in the world. Just outside the campus gates, the slums, congestion and chaos of Bombay are overwhelming. But inside, it's quiet and uncrowded and, by Indian standards, very well equipped. Getting here is the fervent dream of nearly every student. With a population of over a billion people in India, competition to get into the IITs is ferocious. Last year, 178,000 high school seniors took the entrance exam called the JEE. Just over 3,500 were accepted, or less than two percent. Compare that with Harvard, which accepts about 10 percent of its applicants.
“The IITs probably are the hardest school in the world to get into, to the best of my knowledge,” says Vinod Khosla, who got into IIT about 30 years ago. After graduating, Khosla came to the U.S., co-founded Sun Microsystems and became one of Silicon Valley's most important venture capitalists. He's one of thousands of IIT graduates who have made it big in the U.S. “Microsoft, Intel, PCs, Sun Microsystems -- you name it, I can't imagine a major area where Indian IIT engineers haven't played a leading role,” says Khosla. “And, of course, the American consumer and the American business in the end is the beneficiary of that.” It isn't just high tech. The head of the giant consulting firm McKinsey & Company is an IIT grad. So is the vice chairman of Citigroup and the former CEO of US Airways. Fortune 500 headhunters are always on the lookout for that IIT degree. “They are favored over almost anybody else. If you're a WASP walking in for a job, you wouldn't have as much pre-assigned credibility as you do if you're an engineer from IIT,” says Khosla.
Ninety percent of IIT students are male, and the young men we met in Bombay know they're hot commodities. Plus, the American companies love the kids from IIT. And the students view it as a ticket to another way of life. Em Rahm, one of India's leading journalists, says that because the stakes are so high, a kid starts preparing early. “By 10, you know whether you've made it--you're made for it or not,” he says. But just standing out in school won't be enough. At about 16, students enroll in a prep class where they're drilled for the IIT entrance exam. There are even pre-dawn tutoring classes – before they go to school. “I normally stay up all night and study for my exams,” says one student.
After years of preparation, students reach the day they and their families believe will make or break the future finally arrives. “On the day of the exam, my dad, my mom and my younger brother -- they all accompanied me to the center,” says one student. “I said, 'OK, now you can leave. I'll come home on my own.' But I was literally amazed when I came back out of the center and see my parents and brother still waiting for me outside the center.”
After six hours of testing, there’s an excruciating month-long wait for the results. Results are posted on the Web. And after 10 days, students receive a letter. Top rankers get their photographs in the paper. But the ranking isn't just an ego trip. The top kids get to choose which campus they want and which major. “It's a big deal in India, it is,” says Narayana Murthy, founder of the huge software company Infosys. He’s known as the Bill Gates of India. “It's very easy to lose hope in this country. It's very easy to set your aspirations low in this country. But amidst all this, this competition among high-quality students, this institution of IIT, sets your aspirations much higher.”
Murthy’s own son, who wanted to do computer science at IIT, couldn’t get in. He went to Cornell, instead. Imagine a kid from India using an Ivy League university as a safety school. That's how smart these guys are. “I do know cases where students who couldn't get into computer science at IITs, they have gotten scholarship at MIT, at Princeton, at Caltech,” says Murthy.
“When I finished IIT Delhi and went to Carnegie Mellon for my master's, I thought I was cruising all the way through Carnegie Mellon
because it was so easy, relative to the education I had gotten at IIT Delhi,” says Khosla.
Students act like entrepreneurs the whole time they're at IIT. They run everything in the dorms, which might be mistaken for cell blocks if not for all the Pentium 4 PCs. They organize the sports themselves. They even hire the chefs and pick the food in the mess halls. And unlike so many other institutions in India, they all know they're here because they deserve to be here. “There is no corruption. It's a pure meritocracy,” says Murthy.
IIT may also be one of the best educational bargains in the world. It costs a family just about $700 a year for room, board and tuition. That's less than 20 percent of the true cost since the Indian government subsidizes all the rest. While some IIT grads stay and have helped build India's flourishing high-tech sector, almost two-thirds--up to 2,000 people--leave every year, most for the U.S.
“Some people would say you're subsidizing factories, which produce largely for the higher end of the American employment market,” says Rahm. “You don't have to be crudely nationalistic to raise this question. There's a need here. There's a demand here, and these guys are simply not available.” How many of them ever come back? “Very small percentage, but my view is that we also have to work harder here to make it attractive for them to come back,” says Murthy. And Murthy is doing his part. His software company, Infosys, hires about 150 IIT graduates every year to stay and work in India. He says the brain-drain doesn't worry him. “Some of these people who have reached the higher echelons in the corporate world in the U.S., you know, they have persuaded their corporations to start operations in India, whether it's Texas Instruments, whether it's General Electric, whether it's Citibank,” says Murthy.
“I have no question that India now is benefiting significantly from the cycling of knowledge, the back and forth, no question about it,” says Khosla. And individual IIT grads are sending lots of money back home, too, but the U.S. still gets the better end of the bargain. “How many jobs have entrepreneurs, Indian entrepreneurs, in Silicon Valley created over the last 15, 20 years? Hundreds of thousands, I would
guess,” says Khosla. “For America to be able to pick off this human capital, these well-trained engineers with great minds, it's a great deal.”
this quote from John Templeton:
"The total debt of America is now $31 trillion. That is three times the GNP of the U.S. That is unprecedented in a major nation. No nation has ever had such a big debt as America has, and it's bigger than it was at the peak of the stock market boom. Think of the dangers involved. Almost everyone has a home mortgage, and some are 89% of the value of the home [and yes, some are more]. If home prices start down, there will be bankruptcies, and in bankruptcy, houses are sold at lower prices, pushing home prices down further."
The Fed set off an equity raid that has Americans deeper in debt than at any time in history. The only way out IMHO is inflation.
In recent months, efforts to recall Governor Gray Davis from office have drawn attention to the recall process in California. The recall is the power of the voters to remove elected officers before their terms expire. It was added to the state constitution in 1911, along with the initiative and referendum and other changes resulting from the Progressive movement.
Recall elections combine features of both a ballot measure and a candidate election. A question of recalling an elected official is placed on the ballot by filing petitions containing the signatures of the required number of registered voters. For a statewide officer, this is 12 percent of the number who last voted for the office, or in this case 897,158 signatures, based on the approximately 7.5 million who voted in the November 2002 gubernatorial election. As in other cases where signatures are gathered, such as to qualify initiatives for the ballot, more than the minimum number of signatures are obtained to allow for ineligible ones. The goal of recall proponents is likely to be roughly 1.2 to 1.3 million.
Proponents of the recall have 160 days for circulating petitions. Every 30 days, county elections officials certify the number of qualified signatures they have received to that point. Once the Secretary of State certifies that sufficient signatures have been obtained, a special election is set to take place within 60 to 80 days. However, if a regularly scheduled statewide election will take place within 180 days of certification, the recall election can be consolidated with it.
Thus, if enough signatures are certified for the recall of the governor by September 3, 2003, a special election must be called for a date in the fall of 2003. If signatures for a recall election are certified after that date, the election would be consolidated with the March 2, 2004 statewide primary election. Accounting for the time required for the certification process, recall proponents believe they must turn in signatures by July 16, 2003 to ensure a fall 2003 special election.
Before 1994, the only question at the recall election was whether the official should be recalled; if the recall was approved by a majority of the voters, a subsequent election was held to elect a successor. However, in November 1994 the law was amended to consolidate those two elections. Now the question of the recall and a list of candidates to succeed the official appear on the same ballot.
Candidates must file nomination papers and a declaration of candidacy 59 days prior to the election. For governor, a filing fee of $3,500 and 65 valid signatures of registered voters of the same party as the candidate are required. Candidates not affiliated with a party may submit 65 valid signatures of registered voters of any party affiliation. Candidates may apply for a fee waver by submitting additional signatures.
If the recall succeeds, the candidate with the largest number of votes is elected to the office and takes office the following day.There are no party primaries to select candidates, and no provision for a runoff if no candidate receives a majority of the vote. There is no limit on the number of candidates who can run. If there are a number of candidates running, the winner could be elected with a relatively low percentage of the vote.The proponents' statement of reasons for recall and the response, if any, filed by the official whose recall is sought are printed on the recall petitions and on the sample ballots mailed to voters.
According to a Fair Political Practices Commission fact sheet, the recall part of the election would be classified as a ballot measure, for which there are no contribution limits under the state Political Reform Act. Thus, the contribution limits of Proposition 34 would not apply either to the proponents of the recall measure or to the elected official who is the target of the recall. However, Proposition 34 contribution limits would apply to the campaigns of the candidates running to succeed the recalled official. As with other elections in California, all candidates and campaign committees have reporting and disclosure obligations under the Political Reform Act.
If a special statewide recall election is called, the cost to taxpayers is estimated at $25-35 million. If the elected official is not recalled, his or her campaign expenses are reimbursed by the state. This potential cost to taxpayers is unknown.
(ABC News,Aug. 11) ‘Total Disbelief’
Penis Removal Just Latest In Series of Surgical Mistakes, But Patients Can Protect Themselves
— After 67-year-old Hurshell Ralls went into surgery for bladder cancer, he came out of surgery missing more than he ever expected. His penis and testicles were gone.
"My wife had to hold my hand in the bed there. And she said 'Honey it's over. They got all the cancer.' And she waited a few minutes and then said 'But they had to remove your penis.' And I was one mad dude, you know," Ralls said on ABCNEWS' Good Morning America.
Ralls, a mechanic, says doctors never warned him or his wife that amputation of the penis and testicles might have been part of surgery before he went in for the procedure in November 1999. Ralls filed a negligence lawsuit against the Clinics of North Texas in Wichita Falls, and the doctors who operated on him. The civil case is set for trial Aug. 25.
"It was never even discussed. And I felt like he ought to have at least told us that this might be a possibility so that we could have talked it over even before he was admitted to the hospital," said Thelma Ralls, his wife. In a February deposition, Ralls' doctor said that he determined the cancer had spread to the penis while he was removing Ralls' bladder. Doctors did not send a tissue sample to the lab until after the surgery. A Dallas doctor who examined cell slides later found that Ralls did not have penile cancer.
マリナーズのイチローの活躍が野球の試合そのものを面白くしている。投げて良し、打って良し、走って良しと三拍子揃った選手にはちょっとやそっとではお目にかかれない。そのため年棒がヤンキーズの松井よりかなり低いのは気になる。
2003 Salary Ichiro: $4,697,000/Matsui: $6,000,000
＊＊＊＊＊＊
ESPN2: SEA@OAK Sep20Sun., 4:05 PM ET
By Tony Gwynn
Special to ESPN Insider
When August began, Ichiro Suzuki was leading the American League in hitting, but now he isn't even in the top 10. He was a leading candidate for the MVP, but not anymore.
In August, Ichiro batted .242, and his slump has deepened in September, when he's hit .212. Not surprisingly, Ichiro's troubles at the plate have corresponded with the troubles of the Seattle Mariners in the standings. Seattle once had a comfortable lead in the AL West, but that lead evaporated long ago. The Mariners now find themselves looking up at both the torrid Oakland Athletics (in the division) and the Boston Red Sox (in the wild-card race).
Ichiro makes the Mariners go. When he struggles, it's far more difficult for other guys in the lineup -- like Bret Boone, John Olerud and Edgar Martinez -- to produce. When Ichiro gets on base from his leadoff spot, he disrupts the opponent's focus with his speed on the basepaths. When he doesn't get on base, well ... you can see the results.
