Breaking News
Friday, November 21, 2014
In India, you can’t buy anything directly from Amazon.com (AMZN).
To protect local merchants, the government bars companies that have
taken foreign investment from acting as retailers online. Instead,
Amazon India functions as an online bazaar, more like EBay (EBAY) or Alibaba (BABA). So do the country’s other industry leaders, Flipkart and Snapdeal.com, which are homegrown but have received foreign capital.
Still,
small Indian retailers complain that Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal can
exercise a level of control over products that breaks the law by
limiting choices and organizing flash sales, often compensating chosen
merchants who agree to slash prices. For certain products the sites
feature items from just a few retailers. Recent sales indicate “some
element of control and direct interference in the business of these
vendors,” says Praveen Khandelwal, national secretary general for the
Confederation of All India Traders, adding that the marketplace model
“is just a mask.”The Finance Ministry is reviewing the findings of lengthy investigations into whether the three e-commerce companies violated rules against foreign investment, says a person familiar with the investigation who wasn’t authorized to discuss it publicly. Flipkart said in an e-mailed statement that it “operates as a marketplace.” Snapdeal Chief Executive Officer Kunal Bahl said in an e-mailed statement that “the right to pricing and product solely lies with these sellers, and we have no role to play.” The ministry and Amazon declined to comment, but in a filing last month with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Amazon said it faces “substantial uncertainties” regarding its Indian operation. It also said that if the government found Amazon India in violation of “existing or future” laws, it “could be subject to fines and other financial penalties, have licenses revoked, or be forced to shut down entirely.”
Amazon said in July that it plans to spend $2 billion in India; foreign money has also flooded its local rivals. In October, Japanese telecom SoftBank (9984:JP) invested $627 million in Snapdeal. In July, Flipkart said it had raised $1 billion from investors including U.S. hedge fund Tiger Global Management, South African media conglomerate Naspers (NPN:SJ), Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC, and Russian venture firm DST Global. At $3 billion, the Indian e-commerce market is 1 percent the size of China’s, but it’s projected to grow tenfold over the next five years, says Ankur Bisen, senior vice president at market researcher Technopak Advisors.
Even India’s traditional mega-retailers, reluctant for years to take on the logistical problems that come with delivering online purchases, can’t ignore the opportunity. Conglomerate Reliance Industries (RIL:IN), owned by the country’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, is quietly testing Internet grocery sales. The Aditya Birla Group, which operates supermarket chains and apparel stores along with telecoms, banks, and mines, is examining online platforms, says its billionaire chairman, Kumar Mangalam Birla. “There’s a lot of ground for new ventures in e-commerce,” he says.
Domestic retail groups say they aren’t being adequately protected from the influence of foreign money. Khandelwal says traditional retailers of electronics, shoes, clothes, and other consumer items lost 45 percent of their business to e-commerce companies during the Diwali festival season in October.
Retailers’ complaints are a problem for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who took office in May. Although his party counts small shopkeepers among its backers and opposed the previous government’s attempts to ease restrictions on foreign investment, Modi promised during his campaign to make India a more attractive place for foreign businesses. Acting against the likes of Amazon or SoftBank “would send all sorts of signals the government doesn’t want to send,” says Ramanand Mundkur, head of Mundkur Law Partners, an Indian firm that has represented e-commerce companies but not Amazon, Flipkart, or Snapdeal. Kumar Rajagopalan, chief executive officer of the Retailers Association of India, says his group’s 900 members are losing patience. “One can’t afford to have retailers masquerading as marketplaces,” he says. “The rules have to be clarified, and quickly.”
Mysterious Britain (Stonehenge & Avebury)
Mysterious Britain Day Tour includes:
Return mini coach travel from Central London, entrance to Stonehenge, Visits to Avebury, Silbury Hill & West Kennet Long Barrow plus accompanying tour manager.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Baksei Chamkrong
Prasat Baksei Chamkrong is located 150 meters (492 feel) north of Phnom Bakheng and 80 meters (262 feet) from the road leading to the south gate of Angkor Thom. A visit to Baksei Chamkrong can be combined with a stop at the south gate of Angkor Thom. Enter and leave the temple from the east entrance.
Tip: The stairs to the Central Sanctuary are in poor condition but the architecture and decoration of this temple can be viewed by walking around it (in a clockwise direction). Those who persist in climbing to the Central Sanctuary should use the north stairway. It was built in middle of the tenth century (947), perhaps begun by Harshavarman I and completed by Rajendravarman II, dedicated to Siva (Hindu) may have been a funerary temple for the parents of the king with following transitional between Bakheng and Koh ker
BACKGROUND According to legend, the king fled during an attack on Angkor and was saved from being caught by the enemy when a large bird swooped down and spread its wings to shelter the king. The name of the temple derives from this legend.
Baksei Chamkrong was the first temple-mountain at Angkor built entirely of durable materials brick, laterite and sandstone. Even though it is small the balanced proportions and scale of this monument are noteworthy. Inscriptions on the columns of the door and the arches give the date of the temple and mention a golden image of Siva.
LAYOUT Baksei Chamkrong is a simple plan with a single tower on top of a square tiered base with four levels of diminishing size (27 meters, 89 feet, a side at the base) built of laterite (1-4). The height from the ground to the top of the Central Sanctuary (7) is 13 meters (43 feet). Three levels of the base are undecorated but the top one has horizontal molding around it and serves as a base for the Central sanctuary. A steep staircase on each side of the base leads to the top. A brick wall (5) with an entry tower (6) and sandstone steps enclosed the temple. Although it has almost all disappeared vestiges are visible on the east side of the temple.
CENTRAL SANCTUARY (7) The square central tower is built of brick and stands on a sandstone base. It has one door opening to the east with three false doors on the other sides. As is typical of tenth-century Khmer architecture, the columns and lintels are made of sandstone. A vertical panel in the center of each false door contains motifs of foliage on stems. The interior of the tower has a sunken floor and a vault with a corbel arch.
The finely worked decoction on the sandstone columns and horizontal beams above the doors imitates woodcarving. An outline divinity can be seen in the bricks at the corners of the tower. A three-headed elephant on the east lintel is finely carved.
Angkor Wat At Seam Reap
By the time building on Angkor Wat was begun early in the 12th century, this had been elaborated to a central tower surrounded by four smaller towers. The central monument represents the mythical Mount Meru, the holy mountain at the centre of the universe, which was home to the Hindu god Vishnu. The five towers symbolise Mount Meru's five peaks. It is difficult to express in words the enormous scale of Angkor Wat, but it can be explained in part by a look at the dimensions of the complex. The temple is surrounded by a moat which makes the one around the Tower of London, built at roughly the same time, look like nothing more than a garden trench.
At 190 metres wide and forming a rectangle measuring 1.5 km by 1.3 km, it is hard to imagine any attacking force overwhelming the defences. But the moat was more than just a defensive bulwark, in line with the temple's Hindu origins it represented the oceans of the world. A rectangular wall measuring 1025 metres by 800 metres borders the inner edge of the moat. There is a gate in each side of the wall, but unusually for the mainly Hindu-influenced Angkorian temples, the main entrance faces west. This entrance is a richly decorated portico, 235 m wide with three gates. However, the temple's greatest sculptural treasure is its 2 km-long bas-reliefs around the walls of the outer gallery and the hundred figures of devatas and apsaras. This intricately carved gallery tells stories of the god Vishnu and of Suryavarman II's successes on the battlefield. The whole complex covers 81 hectares.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Dusonine nineing neyingsch chhci
Moravia, Czech Republic
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