Amazon turns attention to fashion; Why India Muslims have better sex ratio than Hindus; Don't cry -- at the office; SA youth see no value in books; Where Aussie job losses will be; Why 'Made in India' is just a slogan

1 Amazon turns its attention to fashion (The New York Times) Having wounded the publishing industry, slashed pricing in electronics and made the toy industry quiver, Amazon is taking on the high-end clothing business in its typical way: go big and spare no expense. “It’s Day 1 in the category,” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. He said the company was making a “significant” investment in fashion to convince top brands that it wanted to work with them, not against them. The traditional retail world players are gearing up to fight for their lives.

Amazon’s decision to go after high fashion is about plain economics. Because Amazon’s costs are about the same whether it is shipping a $10 book or a $1,000 skirt, “gross profit dollars per unit will be much higher on a fashion item,” Mr. Bezos said, and it already makes money on fashion. Amazon has not just size on its side but money. The company has about $5.7bn in cash and marketable securities. Amazon’s considerable computing capability has been turned to fashion and the analysis of enormous amounts of shopping data.

2 When the wind whispers, whose name does it call? (The New York Times) Acciona, a big renewable energy company based in Spain, says it is naming its new 32-megawatt wind farm in Oklahoma “Big Smile.” The name is an oblique reference to an Acciona employee who died last year, the company says. That makes the wind farm one of the few in the US not named for its location or a nearby geographic feature. Google lists 102 operating wind farms of 120 megawatts or more in this country, plus two under construction and 24 proposed, none of which are named after anyone, although some bear the name of a town that was named after a person long ago.

Ronald Reagan has airports, buildings and bridges named after him, but not a wind farm. Why aren’t wind farms named after people? Perhaps because they are built by companies that are not old enough to have retired executives they wish to lionize. Or maybe the builders think the geographic names will make them more popular than other kinds of names.

3 Why India Muslims have better sex ratio than Hindus (The Wall Street Journal) Bollywood actor Aamir Khan managed to do what the Indian census, countless academic papers and seminars and commentators have failed to do: put the issue of son preference, sex selection and female feticide on the nation’s radar screen. The evidence is certainly alarming. As the most recent census 2011 data show, the sex ratio for children under the age of six was 914 girls against 1,000 boys, which represents a worsening from the 2001 census in which the sex ratio was 927 girls per 1,000 boys. In a natural world with no sex selection, the sex ratio should be approximately 1,020 females per 1,000 males.

An interesting twist to the sex selection saga is that India’s Muslims have close to normal sex ratios, not nearly as skewed as the population at large or upper caste Hindus in particular. According to the most recent data that’s been analysed from the 2001 census, the sex ratio among Hindus, who account for almost four-fifths of the population, was 931. The comparable ratio for Muslims, who make up less than 15% of the population, was 936. This difference appears small but is it statistically or economically important? As a side note, Christians, accounting for a little more than 2% of the population had an even better sex ratio, skewed towards normality at 1,009. When the numbers from the 2011 census are crunched, we’ll know if these trends have changed.

There’s persuasive statistical evidence that the difference of five girls in 1,000 boys isn’t a fluke or an anomaly. This is interpreted as evidence as Muslim culture or values work to lessen the impact of son preference compared to the majority Hindu community. This certainly sounds plausible but could something else be at work? One important factor could be fertility. Different measurements show markedly higher fertility among Muslims than Hindus. Why is this important? It’s because we know that higher fertility in turn is correlated with lessened son preference and is intuitively obviously why. A family that has decided to have only one child but has a culturally inherited preference for a boy is highly likely to engage in female feticide, or worse still, infanticide, to ensure that their one and only child is a boy. This is exactly the story of the perverse effects on the sex ratio of China’s one child policy.

4 Don’t cry – at the office (The Wall Street Journal) Whether you cry or lose your composure because you're blamed for something that wasn't your fault or snapped at by an angry customer, there's a stigma attached to emotional responses in the workplace that compels many executives to just bottle up their feelings. The unhealthy result of what experts call "emotional suppression" has been shown in studies to cloud thinking, promote job unhappiness and negatively impact work performance. That's why experts say that it's important for employees to be attuned to what their emotional triggers are, so responses can be predictably managed for more productive outcomes.

The problem is people tend to catch strong emotions from each other like viruses. It's called "emotional contagion," and it can be an instinctive response to mimic those strong emotions, says Sigal Barsade, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, who researches the influence of emotions in organizations. She recommends that employees first consider their place in the hierarchy and regulate themselves appropriately.

Don't vent at work. Excuse yourself if necessary and go home. Lean on your personal network, a therapist or even a career coach who can offer some objective advice. You can also try writing about the incident from the point of view of your antagonist. Stopping to reflect will allow you to cool down, deconstruct the problem and find ways to move forward by understanding why your antagonist acted the way he or she did.

5 Crisis-hit Portugal axes holidays (BBC) Portugal has taken austerity measures to a new level with the decision to scrap four of its 14 public holidays. Two religious festivals and two other public holidays will be suspended for five years from 2013. The decision over which Catholic festivals to cut was negotiated with the Vatican. The country agreed to a 78bn euro bailout deal with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund last year and recently passed the latest review of its spending cuts.It is hoped the suspension of the public holidays will improve competitiveness and boost economic activity.

6 Greece, France and the future of euro (Stephanie Flanders on BBC) Short term, at least, the most important thing that has happened in the past few days is that Greece has moved several steps closer to leaving the euro. Weeks without a government, probably leading to new elections, more uncertainty and a wrangle over the next IMF review in June - it all leaves plenty of room for accidents. So, the rest of the eurozone finds itself once again needing to answer two questions: First, do they have the tools and money to protect the rest of the European periphery from the fallout of a Greek exit? And second, do they have an economic strategy that can offer those other troubled economies a way out of crisis, without leaving the single currency as well?

The answer to the first question is that they are much better prepared than they were 6 or 12 months ago to tackle the market contagion from a Greek exit. The answer to the second question is that they have an economic strategy for getting out of this - but it's not one that any of the key players in the eurozone have a great deal of confidence in (with the possible exception of Chancellor Merkel). What's changed in the last few weeks is that the ECB President, the incoming French President, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission all now seem to agree that there needs to be a greater focus on "growth". The bad news is that they completely disagree on what a more "growth-focused" approach would look like.

7 SA youth see no value in books (Johannesburg Times) Justice Malala made an analysis in his column "Where are the black writers?", saying the reason black people are not reading and writing books is the result of Hendrik Verwoerd's apartheid experiment. But that alone, is an inaccurate diagnosis of the problem. True, apartheid's focus on the mass production of mediocre school literature was meant to sanitise the truth. But that was then. The average new generation South African is 18 years old; on average the last person to receive a Verwoerdian education did so 18 years ago.

The question that Malala should raise and get a crisp answer to is: Why are the current youth [14 to 35] not reading and writing? The answer is misplaced priorities. This same demographic group buys thousands of rands worth of smart phones, expensive cars, branded clothes and single malt whisky, and spends more on a night out than my generation did in two months. This is a generation that idolises pop culture icons, and their priorities are twisted because their beloved pop stars rarely talk about books or dare to read. Their icons talk about entertainment - there are gigabytes of data downloaded on iTunes and videos on their cell phones. The real problem is that the current generation does not consider books as valuable as the next big tender. If tenders were published in novels, thousands of books would be bought.

8 Appeal to close Indonesia zoo (Straits Times) British singer Morrissey called on the Indonesian government to immediately shut down a notorious zoo in eastern Java where hundreds of animals have died or disappeared. 'Your ministry called for a change at the Surabaya Zoo, but no improvements have been made,' the vegetarian and animal rights activist wrote in the letter.  

9 Where Aussie job losses will be (The Canberra Times) The federal bureaucracy will shed more than 4,200 full-time jobs next financial year, its first significant contraction since John Howard wielded the axe in the late 1990s. Based on forecasts, indications are that the austerity drive will continue for at least three years, resulting in total losses of more than 12,000 employees by the end of 2014-15. Several thousand public service job cuts are forecast.

Here's a list outlining the portfolios that will lose staff (figures are full-time-equivalent jobs). Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry – 111, Attorney-General’s – 353, Climate Change and Energy Efficiency – 39, Defence (civilians only) – 674, Parliament – 23, Education, Employment and Workplace Relations – 1,255, Finance and Deregulation – 68, Foreign Affairs and Trade – 29, Health and Ageing – 120, Human Services – 440, Prime Minister and Cabinet – 219, Resources and Energy – 56, Treasury – 1,890.

10 Abused Pak woman gets nose back after 32 years (Dawn) Allah Rakhi is getting used to breathing through her nose and wearing a new look. For 32 years, she has been breathing through her mouth. From the age of 19 when her husband cut her nose with a shaving razor, Allah Rakhi wore a two-by-two-inch bandage around it, just like a pirate who wears a patch around his damaged eye. “I never imagined something so heinous could ever happen to me. I never thought he would ever hurt me so badly,” said Allah Rakhi, who now looks everyone in the eyes as she passes by people in the streets and no longer covers her face with a shawl.

“It’s a miracle,” said Allah Rakhi, her eyes filling up with tears. Married off as young as 13 in 1974 and with a little boy and a girl six years later, her husband used to beat her black and blue, she said bowing to show a scar in the centre of her head where he had given her 18 stitches. “As I left him one afternoon in 1980 for my parents’ home, he stopped me in the street, held me down to the ground, cut my nose and slashed my right ankle that he almost severed. “For six years I could not walk without a stick,” she said explaining how in the beginning she used to hide her face from her own son who was then only knee high.

Her husband was out of the jail after six months. A year after when he knew he was off the hook, Allah Rakhi was divorced. A bus driver married her with whom she lived for many happy years and saw her two children married off. She lost him to a road accident eight years ago. Three years ago, Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF) that usually helps burn victims took her in as special case. In-charge of nursing care and rehabilitation unit, Balqees Shehzad has been by her side since then. After two surgeries, Allah Rakhi could look in the mirror without feeling bad,” said Balqees Shehzad.

Allah Rakhi is one of the innumerable victims of this centuries-old brutal practice against the women of lower socio-economic strata in the region.  Allah Rakhi’s son, now in his mid 30s with children of his own, took her back home in Gujranwala where she takes joy to see her grandchildren run around.

11 India’s foreign policy? What’s that? (Swaminathan SA Aiyar in The Economic Times) An ambitious attempt by some of India’s finest thinkers, backed by the National Defence College and Centre for Policy Research, has produced a policy paper is titled Nonalignment 2.0.The title shows, sadly, that the Cold War is over but the Cold War mentality is not. It says the aim of foreign policy must be to maximise autonomy of action. Sorry, but this is plain wrong. A country refusing to have any relations at all with any other country has maximised its freedom of action, but has opted to become a pariah. Pariahs have total autonomy, but also total misery. Successful states seek to maximise their interests, not autonomy. They cultivate multiple relationships to maximise economic, political and social aims. This is multiple alignment, not non-alignment.

The document’s repeated emphasis on maximising autonomy sounds like a throwback to the days of Nehruvian self-sufficiency. Nehru saw self-sufficiency as economic independence, as important as political independence. He saw free trade as a colonial device to keep developing countries as exporters of commodities and importers of manufactures. He and his Congress brethren saw the ghost of the East India Co in every foreign investor. Many other developing countries ignored these neo-imperialist fears, and went for interdependence rather than self-sufficiency. The four most successful ones — South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong — were soon called Asian Tigers. They were followed by Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

The Big Three of the non-aligned movement — Nehru, Tito and Nasser — produced economic systems that lagged way behind the best. Even during the Cold War, non-alignment was more farce than strategy. Over 150 years ago, Lord Palmerston defined good foreign policy: we have no permanent friends or foes, only permanent interests. He was clear that every country should have alignments, along with the understanding that every alignment was temporary, depending on changing circumstances.

12 Why made in India is just a slogan (Harish Damodaran in Business Line) Production has never been part of the DNA of India's business class, which arose mainly from the bazaar as opposed to the shop-floor, fields or laboratories. This had to do with the traditional varna system, where business was an occupational silo and businessmen predominantly recruited from the vaishya or mercantile order. The varna vyavastha reinforced an almost neat divide between the trading castes or owners of capital, on the one hand, and those responsible for actual production — the shudras and the dalits — on the other. The resulting divide had huge implications for innovation.

Innovate our businessmen certainly did, but these were mostly restricted to the realm of marketing and finance. Their ingenuity was manifested, among others, in the hundi (an indigenous discountable and negotiable bill of exchange enabling seamless movement of goods and money across the subcontinent), fatka (futures transactions rarely resulting in actual delivery of the underlying commodities), teji-mandi (put- and call-option contracts), goladari (warehouse receipt financing) or even rotating savings-and-credit schemes like nidhis, kuries and chit funds.

While Indian businessmen were second to none in evolving the most sophisticated trading and financing mechanisms, not being directly involved in the production process meant they couldn't have, however, conceived of the moving assembly line or manufacturing with machine-made interchangeable parts. The only ones who could have done that were the various artisanal, farming and other production-oriented communities. But what they lacked was the capital to convert any of their raw manufacturing innovations — jugaad — into reliable, marketable products. The mainstream vaishya business class, while having the resources, found it more expedient to allocate them for mercantile and speculative activities in the bazaar.

This fundamentally bazaar-centric disposition of India's capitalists was found wanting, especially when they sought to make the transition to factory-based manufacturing in the post-First World War period. It fostered an inevitable dependence on foreign technology. That legacy has continued even in recent times. It is most visible in IT/telecom equipment or continuous process industries like oil refining, petrochemicals and fertilisers — where the core technology providers are wholly foreign. It would probably require a new post-vaishya entrepreneurial class to bring about the change that infuses real meaning to Made in India.

13 Salam’s cartoon in The Economic Times: 'Yes, there was a time when I believed work was worship. Then I realized life can be fun if one just worshipped the boss.'