Journalist and food critic Chitrita Banerji has written an interesting op-ed piece on Calcutta in today’s New York Times that’s not all too favorable to Mother Teresa.

Banerji takes issue with the media, the Catholic Church and above all Mother Teresa for reducing Calcutta into a caricature of poverty, starvation and suffering without any mention of its rich cultural and literary life, beautiful buildings, educated middle class or religious tolerance.

For Calcutta natives like me, however, Mother Teresa’s charity also evoked the colonial past — she felt she knew what was best for the third world masses, whether it was condemning abortion or offering to convert those who were on the verge of death.

Banerji is not pleased that even 10 years after Mother Teresa’s death, Continue Reading…

Just as the Zunes and Sonys struggle to find favor with music afficionados, Apple rolled out its gorgeous iPod Touch that lets users listen to music, watch videos and browse the Internet.

A sleek widget in the hallmark Apple style, the iPod Touch can be considered the iPhone for those not looking for a cell phone or unwilling to fork out a monthly fee to AT&T.

Apple iPod Touch

With a 3.5-inch wide screen, Wi-Fi capabilities, touch screen interface and the Safari browser, iPod Touch comes in 8GB and 16GB versions priced at $299 and $399 respectively.

The new device includes a YouTube application that lets users access, browse and search millions of free YouTube videos over Wi-Fi.

iPod Touch features up to 22 hours of audio playback and up to five hours of video playback.

Apple also struck a deal with Starbucks to let customers buy music from

Continue Reading…

Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines intends to offer web based e-mail and instant messaging services to passengers on its long distance flights starting in 2008 and follow it up a year later with Internet access and mobile phone services.

Kingfisher has picked aircraft manufacturer Airbus‘ subsidiary OnAir to provide the e-mail and Internet services.

Kingfisher plans to install OnAir’s services on five Airbus A330s and A340s aircrafts each flying to Europe, Asia and the U.S. (the airline currently does not fly on international routes but plans to do so).

An onboard computer server will connect to the ground infrastructure via SwiftBroadband to provide the online services.

Fees for the new online services Continue Reading…

A study by three finance professors into 75,000 Danish companies has found that the profitability of a company increases by 7% after the CEO’s mother-in-law dies.

We swear we are not making this up.

This interesting study and its results are from a front page story in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The study is part of an emerging — and controversial — area of financial research that delves into the lives and personalities of executives in search of links to stock prices and corporate performance. The trend is an outgrowth of the tendency to lionize CEOs as critical to the businesses they lead. If their performance is so vital, the researchers say, investors should want to know anything that could affect it.

The study also found that the profitability decreased 21.45% in the two years after the death of a child and 14.7% after the death of a spouse.

The three professors who conducted the study are Daniel Wolfenzon of New York University’s Stern School of Business, Morten Bennedsen of Copenhagen Business School and Francisco Pérez-González of the University of Texas.

Other researchers into CEO behavior and stock performance/profitability have come up with equally interesting results.

For instance, professors David Yermack of New York University and Crocker Liu of Arizona State University have seen patterns in the stock performance of companies and buying or building large houses:

[S]tock performance tended to deteriorate after a CEO bought or built an extremely large or costly estate, which they defined as over 10,000 square feet or sited on more than 10 acres. On average, these companies’ stocks underperformed the S&P 500 index by about 25 percentage points over the three years after the purchase.

Wait, there’s more. Continue Reading…

Some of the ferocious entrepreneurial energy that has propelled India to a growth rate of over 9% lately seems to be moving westward - to Pakistan.

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Peter Wonacott sees a new class of entrepreneurs in Pakistan ushering in pockets of dramatic change:

Scores of new businesses once unseen in Pakistan, from fitness studios to chic coffee shops to hair-transplant centers, are springing up in the wake of a dramatic economic expansion. As a result, new wealth and unprecedented consumer choice have become part of Pakistan’s volatile social mix.

Unlike its arch-enemy India, Pakistan missed the software and outsourcing boats that have ushered in a new generation of entrepreneurs and dramatically expanded the Indian middle class.

Caught between the Scylla of Islamic militants and the Charybdis of an army that has refused to let democracy take roots in the country, Pakistan seems to be sinking slowly into a violent hellhole.

At first glance, that’s how it seems. But look deeper and Wonacott sees lively economic activity in the country.

Wonacott argues that Pakistan’s violence and clashes between the militants and the security forces are overshadowing the changes happening in this South Asian nation.

A new class of entrepreneurs is emerging who, in small but significant ways, have challenged the religious orthodoxy. They provide a stark counterpoint to the rising Islamic radicalism that the U.S. and others view as a threat to Pakistan’s position as a staunch Western ally. And with many importing ideas from abroad, they are contributing to Pakistan’s 21st-century search for itself.

Seed capital from abroad, U.S. economic aid and expansion of credit facilities have contributed to the recent economic activity in Pakistan and the rise of the middle class.

But with civilian political leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Shariff expected to return to Pakistan soon from exile, that could mean more political uncertainty and cast a cloud over the economic growth of this combustible nation.