India less corrupt than China: Survey

While Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan are considered the least corrupt among 13 major Asian economies, India, ranked 8th, fared better than 10th-placed China in a survey conducted by a regional think-tank.

The annual survey by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy exclude countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh, notorious for corruption.

On a scale of zero to 10, where zero is the best possible score, Singapore topped the list with 1.13, followed by Hong Kong (1.80) and Japan (2.25).

India was ranked 8th with a score of 7.25, faring worst than last year, when it scored 6.67.

China was placed at number 10 at 7.98, compared to the previous year score of 6.29.

The Philippines was considered the most corrupt economy with a score of 9.00, followed by Thailand (8.00).

More than 400 expatriate business people were asked to rank countries based on issues that could negatively impact their business.

These included red tape, policy clarity, financial reforms, transparency and liberalisation, PERC said.

"Our survey of over 400 expatriate businessmen working in Asia put the inadequacies of the various banking systems of the region into a fairly accurate perspective," the PERC said.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/mar/10india1.htm

India to have 1 mn new jobs in 2008: Survey

The hospitality, health and education sectors are likely to replace the IT/ITeS sector as leading job creators in the country, which will have over 10 lakh new work opportunities in 2008, a survey revealed on Thursday.

India will add 10,25,800 jobs, a tad lower than 10,30,000 jobs in 2007, predicted the Ma Foi Employment Survey 2008.

"The traditional job creating horses like IT and ITeS sectors have been replaced by hospitality, health and education sector," Ma Foi Management Consultants Managing Director K Pandia Rajan said while releasing the survey.

Ma Foi is the largest human resource service provider and staffing company in India. It has been conducting the employment survey since 2004.

The 2008 survey was carried among 2006 companies from 22 sectors of the economy and is claimed to be the largest study on the organised sector.

The hospitality sector is shown to generate the maximum number of employment in 2008 with over 4.26 lakh jobs.

"An estimated USD 11.41 billion is expected to be seen in the hospitality sector in the next two years. India is likely to have around 40 international hotel brands by 2011," the survey highlighted.

The health sector is expected to create over 2.95 lakh jobs led by a strong presence of private players and rising opportunities in medical tourism and telemedicine.

The education sector, including training and consultancy, is expected to add 1.66 lakh employees.

The survey found that manufacturing sectors of food products and beverages, furniture, mineral and metal products and mining will witness a constraint in hiring in 2008.

Indians second-most romantic lot in Asia: survey

If celebrating Valentine's Day is any measure of being romantic, Indians are Asia's second-most romantic lot with 68.5 per cent of them showing affection for their partners on this day, a survey has found.
But India is the only place in the region where more women want their men to foot the bill for the day as against a parity in spending between the sexes elsewhere.

Indians are second only to Filipinos in celebrating the Day, according to the survey conducted by GE Money across Asia.

However, in terms of spending for the Valentine's Day, Singaporean, Chinese and Koreans came on the top, while Thais would spend the least.

The survey results revealed parity in spending between the sexes for Valentine's Day across Asia, except in India. In India, 21 per cent of females said that their men should spend between 500-5,000 dollars on this day, a view shared by only 7 per cent of men, GE Money said.

Fifty per cent of the Indian respondents said they would spend same as 2007, while 38 per cent indicated a likeliness to spend more this season.

Overall, Japanese men emerged as the least romantic with only 16 per cent indicating they would celebrate the day.

The survey also found that Asian women would spend more than the men.

For funding the day's spending, Indian and Thais said they would use a mix of cash and credit cards, while over 60 per cent of Filipinos and Japanese would use cash and close to 92 per cent Koreans expressed their likeness for credit cards.

According to the survey, Indians were not as organised as their Asian peers who complete their Valentine's shopping one week before, with 76 per cent of Indians saying they shopped just a day before.

http://www.ptinews.com/pti/ptisite.nsf/all/C034661931A4A1EC652573EF00446F01?Opendocument

Smoking kills million Indians a year: Study

Smoking is killing nearly a million people a year in India, exacting a higher toll than previously thought, but allied problems are often different to those seen in the West, according to research published on Thursday.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows Indian smokers prefer traditional leaf-wrapped, hand-rolled "beedis" to manufactured filter brands; are more likely to die of tuberculosis than cancer; and, almost never quit.

"The extreme risks from smoking that we found surprised us, as smokers in India start at a later age than those in Europe or America and smoke less," said lead author Prabhat Jha of the Toronto-based Centre for Global Health Research.

He said the study was prompted by a lack of research into the nature of smoking in India and other developing countries.

The results are partly explained by the fact that, unlike in the West, many people in India are infected with asymptomatic tuberculosis. Smoking can cause enough damage to the lungs that the latent infection can no longer be contained, researchers said.

As a result, tuberculosis is the most common cause of smoking-related deaths among Indian men.

Around 120 million people smoke in India, most of them men, according to the study.

Indian health authorities want tobacco companies to print grisly images of tobacco-related diseases on packets of cigarettes and beedis, but face opposition from politicians keen to protect the jobs of tobacco workers.

The study said that more than half of Indian smokers are illiterate and only 2 percent ever quit - and mostly only because they are too sick to continue.

The research involved tracking deaths between 2001 and 2003 in more than a million homes across India chosen to be nationally representative of the population.

Researchers arrived at their results by comparing the smoking history of 74,000 Indians who had recently died with 78,000 living Indians.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080214/r_t_ie_nl_general/tnl-smoking-kills-million-indians-a-year-aaaedd4.html

Indian wages rise 14.8 pct in 2007 - survey

Wages in India are expected to rise by 14.4 percent in 2008, a fifth year of double-digit growth as companies fight for talent in a booming economy, human resource consulting firm Hewitt Associates said on Wednesday.

The firm's annual 14-country survey showed salaries in India rose 14.8 percent rise this year, a growth rate that trailed only a 15.3 percent increase in Sri Lanka, where high inflation has boosted wage rises.

"Companies tend to be conservative in giving their future salary projections and it wouldn't be a surprise if the actual percentage increase is closer to 15 percent," Nishchae Suri, head of Hewitt's Talent and Organization Consulting Analytics practice in Asia, told Reuters of the outlook for 2008.

Vietnam was the only other Asian country to post a double-digit rise in wages this year, with a 10.3 percent rise seen. The survey found wages in China were up 8.6 percent in 2007.

India's economy has grown at an average rate of 8.6 percent in the last four fiscal years, and it is expected to sustain similar levels of growth in the year ending March 2008. Skills shortages have led to a sharp increase in wages in many sectors.

"With more opportunities and avenues, organisations are increasingly at the mercy of employees making a choice," Suri said.

Hewitt surveyed 262 companies in India, and none reported a salary freeze in 2007 and none expected a freeze for 2008.

"Wage price inflation is a matter of serious concern," said Suri, who recommended firms use more variable salary components that were linked to performance. Stock options were the most popular form of long-term incentives among surveyed firms.

Employees at the junior management level received the highest average wage increase of 16 percent this year, and are expected to get a 15.6 percent increase in 2008, the survey found.

http://in.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idINIndia-30621420071121

Men believe family planning is woman's business, says survey

While an increasing number of Indian women are using contraceptives to prevent unwanted pregnancies or space out children, men in the country still believe family planning is a woman's business and they should not worry about it, according to a survey.

Twenty-two per cent of men think that contraception is women's business and that a man should not have to worry about it. Almost half of men believe that a woman who is breastfeeding cannot become pregnant, according to the National Health and Family survey part III.

This is not all, around 16 per cent of men believe that women who use contraceptives become promiscuous, the survey shows.

Female sterilisation is the most well known method of contraception as the survey found that 97 per cent of women and 95 per cent of men in the age group of 15-49 years had heard of it.

But other methods are less well known. Only sixty-one per cent of women and 49 per cent of men reported knowledge of all three modern spacing methods offered by the government family planning programme, pill, IUD and condom.

The survey shows that awareness of spacing methods is much higher in urban areas than in rural areas.

For example, 74 per cent of women in the age of 15-49 in urban areas know all three spacing methods, compared with 54 per cent in rural areas.

Female sterilisation is the most widely known method in 26 of the 29 states.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1131896