Business with Latin America

For the first time, I attended the Seminar on 'India and Latin America - Augmenting Synergies in the post-crisis world'. I got an invitation from the Indian ambassador for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay Mr.R.Viswanathan, who was fondly called by the entrepreneurs, CII, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of External Affairs as 'One Man Army of Latin America' as he has passion for Latin America to increase the trade between two regions (India and LatAm). I could see the meaning of this in him directly. It was very inspiring to watch him. There was a big queue of people who are already into the business waiting to talk to him to get his advice on various things. Mr. Viswanathan showcased one MSME entrepreneur (Ratnakumar) from Coimbatore who is doing business with LatAm region. I could see the happiness in the face of Ratnakumar and his family. I am sure Mr.Viswanathan will be able to inspire and motivate more people and take the trade volume and reach the targets earlier than planned. It was also very interesting to see the Columbian Ambassador Mr. Alejandro Pelaez trying to market for doing trade with his country. "You can come to me for any kind of help in doing business with Columbia and knowing the tax details etc free of cost. I am available always for you entrepreneurs. Take adavantage of me." These are the exact words Mr. Alejandro used to lure the entrepreneurs. Currently, India is doing $16 billion trade with LatAm and targetting to reach $30 billion by 2012 while China is already doing business worth $140 billion with LatAm. Come on India, we can do it and beat China!!

Business in the name of Olympiad

There were two circulars from my son's school asking for consent letter for participating in the computer science and science olympiad. (He is in standard two). Just like most of the parents, we simply consented for his participation each costing around Rs.150. He was also given a text book and work book by both the olympiads. We have been doing this for the second year and it is going to continue till he reached standard twelve. I googled for some of the related terms and figured out that there is only one olympiad which is international and supported by indian government which also yields good amount of scholarships internationally and nationally. All other olympiad seems to be misnomer and they are all purely business though kids will benefit learning cumputer science basics at the early age (may be too much at the age of 6 and 7). When I called up the founder of the olympiads 'International informatics olympiad' and 'Science olympiad foundation', I realized that they mean purely business. Following two links are the ones related to the international olympiad.
(1) http://olympiads.hbcse.tifr.res.in/subjects/mathematics/stages
(2) http://www.nbhm.dae.gov.in/about.html
To cinfirm my findings, I called up Professor K.N. Ranganathan (9600082365) who is the regional coordinator of the Maths Olympiad. He said that my findings are correct and olympiad word is not registered by any government or international body. So, it is not possible to control the wrong usage by various companies who are doing good business with the term 'Olympiad'.
Original Olympiad which is supported by Government has 6 subjects. They are Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy and Junior Science. Concept of this is to identify the best brains and give them the scholoarships. Students who are in XI and XII can take up this exam at regional level and move on to national level and 6 toppers from each country will be sent for the international level competition. Beware of Olympiad!!!!!!!!!