Gunjan Bagla, a presenter in the ICA Institute's Tap into Chindia Global Virtual Seminar Series, offers expert advice in his new book.

Tata Sons, Ltd. Executive Director, R. Gopalakrishnan calls Doing Business in 21st Century India "A refreshingly simple book on a very complex subject."

Doing Business in 21st Century India is packed with everything business leaders need to know in order to understand and succeed in this emerging market, including:
· An overview of the most promising sectors which every investor will want to read
· Guidance on navigating the often complicated laws, rules and regulations
· The keys to understanding important cultural differences
· Essential advice on sales and marketing in the region
· Relevant background and history
· Numerous supporting examples and interviews with top professionals in India

Doing Business in 21st Century India is available at fine booksellers everywhere and online at Amazon.com, www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com or at www.amritt.com

China studying India-IAEA sageguard agreement (Business Standard, Jul 24)
China today said it was studying the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement, whose approval by the global nuclear watchdog is essential to take the Indo-US nuclear deal forward. "I would like to tell you that China is now studying the draft safeguards agreement between India and the IAEA. The relevant study work is still going on," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told reporters here.

India Takes A Free-Market Turn (Forbes.com, Jul 23)
Indian stocks rallied on Wednesday, after the Congress Party-led government won a crucial vote of confidence in the lower house of Parliament. The market is counting on the government, newly unencumbered by leftist coalition partners, bringing in a stream of reforms to the financial sector and pressing ahead with a nuclear-energy deal with the United States that should help relieve the country's energy shortage.

China to intensify co-op with S. Korea, U.S., Australia, says Chinese FM (China View, Jul 23)
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi Wednesday met here separately with South Korea's Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on bilateral cooperation and regional issues of common concern at the sidelines of the 15th ASEAN Regional Forum.

Energy-efficiency ratings to be set (China View, Jul 24)
Energy-efficiency ratings on electronic devices of eight categories will be published at the end of this year and put into force next year, the country's authority of standardization said Wednesday, warning manufactures, importers and exporters involved to be prepared. The eight categories that will be labeled will include both white goods and office appliances, such as water heaters, electric cookers, fans, variable-frequency air conditioners, computer monitors and copy machines, according to Wang Ruohong, deputy director of resource and environment standardization under China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS).

Investment Report of China Coal Industry, 2000-2008 (WSJ's Market Watch, Jul 24)
Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Investment Report of China Coal Industry, 2000-2008" report to their offering. China with rich coal resources ranks the first in the world in terms of coal reserves. In 2007, China's coal output and sales grew about 9% to 10%, and the profit growth rate of China's coal companies hit around 35% against the previous year. The industry prosperity was further enhanced.

Analysis
Oil Below $120 Will Reverse `BR-IC' Fortunes (Bloomberg.com, Jul 24)
Merrill Lynch & Co. strategist Mark Matthews has a checklist for investors in India and China. If the price of oil goes below $120 a barrel (from about $126 yesterday), if China's annual inflation rate slows to 5 percent (from 7.1 percent last month), and if the U.S. banking crisis comes to an end, then the sagging fortunes of equity markets in the two Asian countries may reverse in relation to their better-performing ``BRIC'' cousins: Brazil and Russia.

Home-based biz may spend over $8 b on ICT (Sify.com, Jul 24)
Home-based businesses (HBBs) in India are on track to spend $8.4 billion on their ICT (information, communication and technology) infrastructure in 2008. This would represent a rise of 19 per cent over similar spend in 2007, according to a recent study conducted by the New York-headquartered Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc. The study states that there are around 16.8 million such businesses in India and they constitute about 8 per cent of the 202.9 million households in the country. Nearly one-eighth of these are PC-penetrated and are set to spend around $8.4 billion on their ICT infrastructure.

China in top gear (Computerworld, Jul 24)
ICT vendors are now increasingly looking to both India and China as emerging end-markets, although China generally receives more attention than India in this respect. China also wants Indian IT companies to invest in China and to access global markets from China using local talent in return for access to the local market.

India not to extend futures ban to new commodities (Reuters India, Jul 24)
India has no plans to curb futures trading in more commodities and is likely to lift a ban on four items in September, the market regulator said, despite a report recommending futures should be discouraged. In May, the government, under pressure from its allies to control soaring inflation, suspended futures trading in soyoil, potato, rubber and chickpea for four months. However, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and an official panel probing the impact of futures trading on commodity prices said in then there was no clear link between the two.

Dollar decline, oil help drive up food prices, study says (USA Today, Jul 24)
A diverse and complex set of factors - including biofuels production, high oil prices, a week dollar and food consumption rates - are behind the sharply rising cost of food, according to an analysis by Purdue University agricultural economists released Wednesday. The economists predict food prices will remain high as long as oil prices are also high and the dollar is weak. "Lower oil and a strong dollar would bring pressure on commodity prices to fall," said economist Wally Tyner, the report's lead author. He also said the full impact of higher corn and soybean prices haven't shown up in grocery prices yet.

China industrial output rose 16.3% in first half of '08 (Reliable Plant, July 22)
From January to June, China's industrial output from enterprises with annual sales incomes of more than RMB 5 million yuan ($720,000) increased 16.3 percent compared with the same period last year.

China's Climate Change Playbook is Worth Reading (The Huffington Post, July 23)
In a few weeks, elite athletes from around the world will gather in Beijing. Press coverage of the Games is likely to highlight competition between America and China about which will win the most medals. Media coverage will also − as it has already − focus on air quality and environmental conditions in China.

Indian Inc not ready for climate change initiatives (The Economic Times, July 23)
Despite wide awareness about climate change, Indian corporates are not ready to tackle this issue, says a study by global consultancy KPMG released on Wednesday.

Students teach kids dangers of 'gutka' in India (CNN Health, July 23)
What are you doing on your summer vacation? If you are an innovative student from the University of Southern California, the answer might be spending going to India, providing innovative water treatment measures to mitigate the spread of waterborne diseases, or educating locals on how to prevent oral cancer.

Indian doctors contributing big to Britain's National Health Service (The Economic Times, July 24)
Dr Ashok Pathak is a senior orthopaedic surgeon working for UK's National Health Service for the last 28 years. And he strongly feels that Indian doctors have contributed in a very big way towards the healthcare system in UK.

China Medicine sees R&D as prescription for success (QuamNet, July 16)
Research and development into new products is set be a key earnings driver for China Medicine Corp, a drug distributor and budding manufacturer, said CEO Yang Senshan.

Global logistic provider awards Datacraft with a network integration contract to establish and manage MPLS-based network across India (PR-Inside, July 23)
Datacraft, the leading independent IT services and solutions company in Asia Pacific, has won an approximately US$1 million contract to set up a secure network infrastructure connecting 118 locations in India for the world's leading logistics company.

Logistics World 2008 - The Largest Logistics Event in East China with International Concurrent Events (MoreRFID, July 22)
Nanjing, the provincial capital of Jiangsu Province, serves as a key transportation hub of the East China region, and it is also one of the most important manufacturing bases for different industries in China. The city's manufacturing capacity of electronic and chemical industries both ranked second among China's cities, while the production scale of automobile ranked third in China.

Publisher: L. Roxanne Russell
Editor of Academic Resources: Dr. S.V. Char
Co-Editor: Abhijit Agrawal
Co-Editor: RJ Paulsick