Tea world

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Forget 'What are your strengths and weaknesses?' If you want to get the real dope on prospective employees, ask job candidates these seven questions.

Jo-Ann Stores is posting impressive sales and earnings numbers and is an example of a retail sector on which Walmart doesn't have a steel grip.

Even smart people make financial moves that are downright illogical. Emotions and superstitions have a sneaky way of keeping you from rational financial decisions. But dumb choices can have serious, real-world consequences. Here are some of the biggest blunders we all make, plus tips from the experts on how to keep cool.

Desicritics Author: Howard Dratch
Superior South Asian bloggers on Culture, Media, Politics, Sport, Business, and Technology.

• Book Review: Q&A by Vikas Swarup
  

  Vikas Swarup has broken that rule that says to write about what you know. Swarup, the publisher tells us, "... is an Indian diplomat who has served in Turkey, the United States, Ethiopia, and Great Britain... (and) currently works in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi."Q&A is a first novel and is a winner. It is winning since it is being translated into 18 languages and is due as a film (Hollywood with an "H" or a "B", I wonder). It won my award -- I read it, finished it, enjoyed it and the discussions with my wife who did the same. Bingo!

  Our hero is not of the world of the Indian diplomatic corps. He is the character we learn about and may love or not love. He made me so mad in one chapter that I dropped the book for a week because I knew he would disappoint me. The little bugger had earned some money and was robbed because he acted like a stupid and very young boy. Finally I remembered he was a very young boy -- so very much younger than we can believe because he is a boy of the streets, poor and orphaned, living on his wits and staying just ahead of starvation and worse. Not only that but, since I was once one of them -- boys, that is -- they are inherently stupid on certain occasions such as showing off to other boys and pretty girls. So he did and paid for it. And I, realizing I was punishing myself needlessly, returned to the pleasure of the story of Ram Mohammed Thomas.

  Our hero is Ram Mohammed Thomas. He is named for a Christian, Hindu and Muslim - he is the ecumenical world that could bring peace. There is a story there. You will enjoy it but I am not going to tell it to you. Read it for yourself. Swarup writes stories like the 1001 nights. Each question from the TV quiz show on which he is a contestant is a story, a long story, a good story, a story of India and Indian culture, of boys and boy-culture, of mankind and human culture.

  It did make me think that there is still hope for the world and maybe an Indian diplomat (who better?) has found it. It is all a matter of names and naming, of the luck of knowing not what to ask or what to answer but of living decently and learning the puzzle of creation which is the way it all fits together. Perhaps our real world of the 21st century could be saved by some re-naming. Pope Benedict, had he been called Khomeni Rabbi Benedict Robertson, might have fared more easily this year.

  Ram Mohammed Thomas is a little urchin. Whenever I think him living the difficult life of an 18-year-old and the wisdom (sometimes) of an ancient, Swarup reminds us of a 13-year old who is first encountered in the police station, arrested and being tortured. He is just a street boy accused by people with money, TV producers with a billion rupees (about 22.222 million dollars) they would give away to the person who answered their questions. Ram did. They do not believe he answer honestly and plan to find out how he did it. They do not tell the police they really cannot pay all the billion rupees and had bet that no one would win for long enough for them to accumulate the prize money. They are also not averse to cheating a little themselves to keep our friend -- after a while Ram is our friend -- from winning and becoming a rich man with power in a growing, changing, developing powerhouse of an economy where money talks and talking money creates the power to do both good and evil.

  A lawyer mysteriously appears to support the peniless prisoner and forces him out of police clutches. She starts her recorder going and has DVDs of the programs where he answered the questions everyone believes he should not have been able to answer. For each question worth 1000 rupees, 2000, 5000 there are stories that take us into the clutches of what I can only imagine is a reality, a number of realities of Indian life culminating toward the end in stories of hydrophobia, of death and sadness and of the beauty of the Taj Mahal. We meet faded movie stars of Bollywood history living in a Sunset Strip of Indian decadence of spies and bandits on trains and men who beat their wives and chase their daughters.

  Ram Mohammed Thomas has not only many names but many stories and they are the stories not of evil Muslim who enslave women but of men who turn their impotence on the defenseless. These are the stories of life in the streets and a life in imaginations of stardom and mothers-who-care and the priest who loves you as he loves mankind and the priest who preys on boys, the thieves and cheats, brothers who sell their sisters and a whore with a heart of gold.

  In the end... Wait! This is a first novel that grabs a grown boy by the imagination and may not be always perfect but doesn't let go until the story is mostly told. It is not perfect because perfection is too much for this world to offer. The dying movie queen does not meet her maker always with her make-up on and the train robber is not always stopped in his very own tracks.

  There are stories here that need to be read. They tell of India and of India I know so little. Like all the Indian books and stories I see they are filled with foods and smells, spices and tastes that I will never know but still manage to taste and smell as I read. There is "A Soldier's Tale" that must be read because war is war from either side and valor is either bravery or cowardice depending on the way it is seen. That is the enchantment of a novel that is enchanting -- there are so many ways to see so many things and then the knots are tied and untied and the cords are connected and the connections found even where we never thought that there were any.

  It is a grand start for a novelist and a fine view into the heart of a diplomat. Do diplomats have hearts? I never really knew and now I do.

• The Global Competitiveness Rankings - A U.S. Perspective
  

  Be warned, America. Our place on the world economic stage is in danger. CNN recently reported on a study by the World Economic Forum that the United States has fallen in global "competitiveness". It fell from first to sixth place in the annual survey and was replaced by Switzerland.

  We are seen this year as having a lowered rate of savings, record deficits at a high level and a balance of payments that is more and more negative. This caused the Forum to report that there is a "non-negligible risk" to our competitiveness in wold markets. Because America is one of the greatest of the economies of the world, this "non-negligible risk" becomes a factor in the "future of the global economy."

  The US fall in world economic positioning is based on the gigantic spending by the Bush administration on "defense", the homeland security apparatus, long-term needs to meet pension and health care costs and, perhaps, plans to lower taxes.

  The top 10 were Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Singapore. The United States, now sixth where it had been number one in 2005 was followed by Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Britain.

  India was seen as improving by two places to the 43d spot in ranking by the World Economic Forum. They did note, however, that "... persistent poverty, weak health infrastructure and a large public sector deficit... " acted to negate the blossoming advance in high-technology sectors.

  Italy fell to 42nd from 38th. Russia fell 9 spots from last year to 62d mostly based on business worries about the independence of the judiciary and the ability of businesses to seek legal redress. A survey of 11,000 businessmen world-wide found that...legal redress in Russia is neither expeditious, transparent nor inexpensive, unlike in the world's most competitive economies. Partly because of this, the property rights regime is extremely poor and worsening.

  China, the world's emerging powerhouse of economies (it has been said), fell this year from 48 to 54. Concerns were shown over its low secondary school and higher-education enrollment rates, lackluster "penetration" of cell phones, computers and other technologies, and concerns over the banking system.

  Chile was the leader for Latin America at 27th in the survey. Venezuela fell to 88th (four places) even though it showed a surplus in the oil-producing sector. The slight fall was due to the need the Forum saw for it to strengthen its' institutions that would allow methods to fight graft and to lessen government interference in economic activities.

  What does this mean for the United States, I wonder? First, I would think that it is the "wake-up call" for some serious thinking and planning in the US about what it is doing on the world stage, why, and what it is going to do in the future. It is obvious that we absolutely must protect against the barbarians who want to kill us unless we embrace their brand of violent religion. No one can question the need for self-preservation in a world where the forces of evil and chaos are growing. However, the way in which that protection is administered is surely questionable. Here we have seen the World Economic Forum questioning it heavily. Need we answer to them? Of course not. But they are the businessmen of the world and when they lose confidence in the economy of the nation that has led the world for so long, there is something amiss.