Today's Top Stories

I make a point to read the Times of India every morning. Almost every day there are some priceless gems that come out of the Indian news. Here are today’s top 5 stories as chosen by me.

5. A group of dabbawallas in Mumbai just received the Six Sigma Excellence award from IIT. Dabbawalla loosely translates to “lunch driver”. Basically, this is an organization of men who go around to the homes of office employees who live too far from work to come home from lunch. They pick up lunches that were home cooked and transport them by bicycle to people’s offices. People can then have fresh hot lunches prepared by their loving wives. Mumbai's 5,000 dabbawallas deliver move than 200,000 meals per day and have an error rate of around 1 in 6 million! This is even more impressive when you consider that few of the wallas can read, so they use a system of colored ribbons and easy to memorize letter combinations to find their destinations. The New York Times also recently profiled these dabbawallas.

4. Page 2 of the Bangalore section details where the power outages will be in the next few days. Today, from noon to 2pm, almost all neighborhoods that I recognized would be without power. From Friday to Monday, an even bigger list of neighborhoods was told to expect “intermittent power”.

3. The Sanjay Dutt saga continues. Sanjay has been in jail for just over 3 weeks. Indian law states that convicted criminals must be furnished with a written copy of the judgment against them so they can read the verdict and determine whether they should appeal. In the Sanjay Dutt case, this judgment is expected to be quite long, around 600 pages. Due to the length of the judgment and the backlog in the justice system, they expect that it will take 2 months before a copy of the judgment can be given to Sanjay. Since they do not have a copy of the judgment and therefore can not properly consider his appeal, his defense team applied for bail. Bail has been granted, so Sanjay will go free until the court can give him a written copy of his verdict. But, since the bail processing paperwork takes some time, he remains in jail. His bail was approved on Monday but he will probably not be actually freed until Friday. He will have to return to jail as soon as he receives his copy of the verdict. Can you imagine if this happened in the Michael Vick case!?

2. There was a long article about the “reverse brain drain” that the US is facing. It is becoming more and more difficult for professionals to get visas to work in the US. At the same time, India and China are becoming more attractive places to live and work. Many smart and talented immigrant Americans that in the past would have gotten visas in the US are returning home. Over the past ten years, 1 in 4 new businesses was stated by an immigrant entrepreneur. Chinese or Indian visa holders filed over 40% of new patents in the US in the last 10 years. And, as the US is making it harder for smart scientists and engineers to stay in the states, we are not just hurting our businesses but we are helping start competitors in China, India, and elsewhere.

1. A Member of Parliament introduced a new bill yesterday that would require married male Indians to bring with them a signed permission slip from their wife to travel outside India. To pass through immigration, an Indian married man would have to show his passport, any needed visas, and this signed permission slip. This is intended to cut down on Indian men leaving the country to travel on business and not returning, leaving their wives and families estranged. The Times did not opine on whether the bill would pass.