Accidental Blogger

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a business / person ...

Didn't Mitt Romney know that if he ran for the highest office of the nation, his personal taxes were going to be of some interest to voters and the media? Of course he did. But for some reason Romney has decided that it may do less harm to his candidacy if he were to brazen it out by not disclosing but a minuscule portion of his past tax returns than allow Americans to get a glimpse of his finances. His secretiveness has naturally given rise to much speculation as it deviates from the norm set by most past presidential candidates, including Romney's own father, of disclosing several years worth of tax documents. One thought is that the Romneys, despite their enormous wealth, may have paid very low taxes over the years compared to the average wage earner with far less income. It has also been suggested that there may have been some years when Romney paid no taxes.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada dropped a bombshell recently by declaring publicly that he has learnt from a reliable source that indeed Romney paid zero taxes for ten years during a period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Romney challenged Reid to reveal his source ("put up or shut up") and some Republican congressmen have called the Democratic Senate Majority Leader a liar. But as of yesterday, Reid was sticking by his assertions, adding that his source is a Republican with inside knowledge of Bain Capital, Romney's company. Now there is speculation about the identity of Reid's "source." The Daily Kos is reporting that it may be one of the two Huntsmans - father & son, both Jon, both ex-governors of Utah and Junior a past rival of Romney for the GOP presidential ticket. (If true, this may turn out to be a high power Mormon conspiracy / grudge fest. Reid, the Huntsmans and Romney are all Mormons. The Huntsmans are said to be friendly with Democrat Reid but can't stand Romney, their own party's candidate)

Whatever we find out (or don't) about Romney's tax returns between now and November, may be up to how much pressure the media and the Obama campaign can bring to bear on the Romney camp and the latter's ability to withstand it. But for now, it doesn't look like Romney has made a coherent or convincing case as to why he should not make more of his tax returns public. Here is a report in the Washington Post.

The man who once said “corporations are people” apparently doesn’t believe the inverse.

When pressed on why he’s not releasing more tax returns in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mitt Romney justified it by saying: “I’m not a business.”

Bloomberg asked Romney whether, if he was investing in a company, he would want to see more than two years of financial reports, likening that process to the American people electing a president. But Romney suggested the standards aren’t the same for people and businesses.

“I’m not a business,” he said. “We have a process in this country, which was established by law, which provides for the transparency which candidates are required to meet. I have met with that requirement with full financial ­disclosure of all my investments, but in addition have provided and will provide a full two years of tax returns.”

This is the candidate who, almost exactly one year ago, got into a somewhat-heated exchange with a heckler in Iowa in which Romney made that case that “corporations are people” — that is, what happens to corporations affects the people who work for them.

“Of course they are,” Romney said at the time. “Everything corporations earn
also goes to people.”

So according to Romney, a person is not a business but a business is a person for tax purposes. Ah well. I guess that can be defined as opportunistic logic. I have been wondering about something else. During this time when hot words are being exchanged between Reid, Romney and some GOP politicians, one prominent Republican who may know more about this matter than anyone outside Bain Capital's accounting office, has maintained total silence. John McCain had vetted Romney as a possible running mate in 2008 at which time he examined twenty three years worth of Romney's tax returns. McCain has not said a word against Reid or in favor of Romney. 

Greed, loyalty(?), chaat and three thousand year old "ola leaves"

The sentencing of Sri Lankan born hedge fund billionaire, Raj Rajaratnam to a lengthy jail term on charges of insider trading is big news in the financial world. The news has also proved to be of special interest to South Asian Americans who are used to seeing the conspicuous success of members of their community but not so much their downfall. I for one, cringed when I read the widely cited interview of Rajaratnam by Suketu Mehta in Newsweek and its sister web site The Daily Beast. The reason for my discomfort was not so much that I belong to the same community as most of the culprits of this gang. I once pointed out here that I rarely ever personalize the success or failure of people who share my ethnicity. What I found jarring in Mehta's otherwise very readable interview was the emphasis on the desi angle to Rajaratnam's crimes and subsequent arrest and conviction.

Rajaratnam is an immigrant, not American-born. He had grown up, as he tells it, in fear: of the Sinhalese majority in his homeland; of the skinheads in Britain where he’d studied; and of the established elites of Wall Street where he did business. At just about every stage of his life, there were people out to get him. “I saw myself as an underdog.”...

...Part of Rajaratnam’s narrative is that of a man from a smaller South Asian country seduced and betrayed by people from the Big Brother country. Kumar had introduced him to Rajat Gupta. The two of them wanted to start an Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. “I gave them [the school] a million dollars. I later found out they never contributed any of their money, and are listed as the school’s founders. And I’m not even a fucking Indian.”

The betrayal by the Indian associates hurts the most—he barely mentions the white government witnesses. He regrets doing a joint venture with the Indians.

The South Asian connection makes less sinister some of the allegations in the trial. For example, the prosecution noted that Rajaratnam would visit Goel’s house in Silicon Valley, presumably to talk about Intel. But the real explanation is more human. “His wife makes really good chaat[a savory snack]!” Rajaratnam and Goel were very good friends, so his betrayal hurts him personally.

“There are two types of plea bargains. One is, you cooperate with the government. You finger 10 other people. The other is a plea bargain without cooperation.” The white defendants all pleaded without cooperating; they did not wear a wire. “The South Asians all did the plea bargain with fingering,” he notes sourly. “The Americans stood their ground. Every bloody Indian cooperated—Goel, Khan, Kumar.” He puts it down to “the insecurity of being an immigrant, lawyers bullying them into that position.”

Rajaratnam has very deep pockets, lived in a Penthouse in Manhattan and stole like many other high rollers of Wall Street. That his network consisted mostly of Indians is not terribly germaine to the legal troubles he is in. After all, the prosecutor who went after him is also of Indian origin and one of the two FBI agents who arrested him is Asian. Do people feel more comfortable in committing crimes when they are among "friends" or cohorts who "understand" them? (Think of the Italian/Jewish/Irish Mafias of the mid 20th century) Perhaps. But it still makes them criminals. The fact that Rajaratnam and his partners are relatively new immigrants is relevant only if they were operating under the misguided notion that a) they would not be caught and b) that if caught, they could buy their way out as they may well have in the countries of their birth. Both Preet Bharara, the prosecutor and Rajaratnam himself hint that indeed the underlying mentality may have been a bit like that, even when it was clear that things don't quite work that way in the US for the most part and the American law can not accommodate a culprit's cultural background.

The whole story speaks to the South Asian–American community: its pursuit of success and money at any cost; the differences between immigrants and the first generation; and the immigrants’ incomplete understanding of the rigor of the law in the U.S.

“There are rules and there are laws, and they apply to everyone, no matter who you are or how much money you have,” says [Preet] Bharara. This is what was not easily understood by the South Asians named in the conspiracy. There are laws and rules in India and Sri Lanka, too, but they can be tested, ignored by those who have money or friends"...

As late as two weeks before the sentencing, Rajaratnam was still being asked by the government to turn on Gupta. But he wouldn’t wear a wire, he says, so he could sleep at night. “Anil Kumar’s son worked at Galleon one summer. I used to vacation with Rajiv Goel’s family. Their families knew my family. You don’t think this is going to haunt these guys? They wanted me to plea-bargain. They want to get Rajat. I am not going to do what people did to me. Rajat has four daughters.”

The Rajaratnam case can be seen as a metaphor of the difference between immigrants from South Asia, who have a more elastic view of rules and a more keenly developed art of networking, and their children, the first generation, schooled to play by American rules. Preet Bharara came to the U.S. when he was an infant. Yet for all his complaints about unfairness, Rajaratnam, surprisingly, still believes in American justice. “In Sri Lanka I would have given the judge 50,000 rupees and he’d be sitting having dinner at my house. Here, I got my shot. The American justice system is by and large fair.”

In your case too?” I ask. “I said by and large.” 

Suketu Mehta is a professor of journalism but he is also a successful fiction writer. Did the latter persona influence his interview in this case, emphasizing the "outsider" status of the players in a sordid case of corruption? In the end, what it really came down to was greed, opportunism, superstition about one's infallible luck and the lack of honor among thieves. There is no special ethnic angle to that age old story.

Follow up in the New York Times and a rebuttal in the San Francisco Chronicle .

India launches Aakash tablet computer priced at $35 (Norman Costa)

India launches Aakash tablet computer priced at $35 (Norman Costa)

In 2008, Tata Motors announced the Nano.

It is 3 metres long, seats four comfortably or five at a squeeze, does 65mph and aims to revolutionise travel for millions. The “People’s Car” is also the cheapest in the world at 100,000 rupees (£1,300) – the same price as the DVD player in a Lexus.

 

Today, India announces the Aakash tablet.

India has launched what it says is the world's cheapest touch-screen tablet computer, priced at just $35 (£23).

What happens when China or India start developing pharmaceuticals at a fraction of the cost of U.S. and German drug developers? How about heavy lift rockets that can compete with the Russians? We've been out of that game for a long time. In a generation both Europe and the U.S. will find it hard to compete with Russia in the commercial aircraft market. Within another generation, if not sooner, India, China, and Brazil, will be taking their own sizeable share.

Read more HERE.

Labor law abuses in the Gulf Coast ... again.

In 2008, I had reported on the unlawful exploitation of foreign workers during the rebuilding efforts in Louisiana following Katrina. It seems that the practice is quite common and the financial and physical abuse  is sometimes aided by the governments of the countries from where the workers are imported by US companies.

GALVESTON — A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court seeks more than $200 million in damages from companies accused of the human trafficking of Vietnamese laborers to the United States to unknowingly work as indentured servants.

Attorneys Anthony Buzbee and Tammy Tran filed the lawsuit in Galveston federal court to “expose an international human trafficking conspiracy,” the lawsuit claims.

Nine of the 12 men named as plaintiffs live in Galveston County. The others, including 43 unnamed men, reside in Louisiana and Texas.

The lawsuit accuses Hanoi, Vietnam, companies International Investment Trade and Service Group, known as Interserco, and General Automotive Industry Corp. of Vietnam, known as Vinamotors, of engaging in a human trafficking ring with U.S. “co-conspirators,” Coast to Coast Resources and ILP Agency.

Coast to Coast and ILP were sued in March 2009 in Harris County district court after two years of litigation, and an agreed judgment of $60 million was entered, the lawsuit claims.

 The full story from Houston.

"If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead"

Matthew Stewart, author- philosopher- business manager, explains:

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.

The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.

After I left the consulting business, in a reversal of the usual order of things, I decided to check out the management literature. Partly, I wanted to “process” my own experience and find out what I had missed in skipping business school. Partly, I had a lot of time on my hands. As I plowed through tomes on competitive strategy, business process re-engineering, and the like, not once did I catch myself thinking, Damn! If only I had known this sooner! Instead, I found myself thinking things I never thought I’d think, like, I’d rather be reading Heidegger! It was a disturbing experience. It thickened the mystery around the question that had nagged me from the start of my business career: Why does management education exist?

More here.  (via Leiter Reports)

Is the FDA a public watchdog or a corporate sponsor?

This news story is beyond absurd; it smacks of ethics violations. The company awarded the special privilege doesn't even have the excuse of recuperating the costs of R&D! And we wonder why the health care costs go up?

Still think the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has your best interests in mind? According to new reports, the agency has arbitrarily decided to grant exclusive approval to KV Pharmaceutical to produce the one-and-only FDA-approved premature birth prevention drug -- which is really just a modified, patented version of the common hormone progesterone -- administered to women with a high risk of preterm delivery. So what used to cost women as little as $10 to buy from their local compounding pharmacy will now cost $1,500, thanks to the FDA.

Progesterone injections have long been custom-made by compounding pharmacies and sold for very little to women in need of them because, frankly, they cost very little to produce. But a backroom deal over at the FDA has changed everything, allowing a single pharmaceutical company to gain monopolistic control over the drug, which in turn allows that company to charge whatever it wants to for the injections, even if it is thousands of times more than what the drug actually costs to produce.

"This is a huge increase for something that can't be costing them that much to make," said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts' Medicaid Program. "For crying out loud, this is about making money."

And Snow is exactly right. The costs associated with producing progesterone are minimal, and there is absolutely no justification for charging $1,500 -- or as much as $30,000 throughout an entire pregnancy -- for progesterone treatment. But the FDA decision and the subsequent price increase are a natural result of what happens when government regulatory agencies are bought and paid for by the very industries they are supposed to be regulating.

How not to be energy efficient (prasad)

"Home electronics can gobble energy - including "phantom" draw even when off. That's why I like the Sony Bravia KDL-52VE5 Eco Series LCD TV: It has a motion sensor to shut down the unit when not in use, a high-efficiency backlight, and a switch to cut power entirely."

A $1900, 52-inch hi-def television that's "energy efficient" because if you're too lazy to switch it off when you leave or fall asleep, it'll notice it isn't being watched eventually.

Don't get battered; don't get pregnant.

We have all heard about cancer, heart disease, diabetes and even mental illness creating road blocks for people trying to get health insurance. Guess what else can qualify as a "pre-existing condition" for some insurance companies to deny you coverage? The possibility of becoming pregnant and being the victim of domestic violence!

When Peggy Robertson went shopping for a more affordable health insurance plan for her self-employed husband and two young boys, she ran into an unexpected problem: the birth of her son Luke in 2006 by caesarean section.  The healthy young mother was shocked when the Golden Rule Insurance company denied her coverage due to the C-Section birth of her son.  "I called Golden Rule and they said that if I would get sterilized, they would then be able to offer insurance to me."

and ---

With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.

It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.

Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.

Healthcare and Hitler

A couple of months ago, an otherwise cheerful neighborhood block party on our quiet street caused some agitation among the attendees when one of the neighbors began to describe President Obama as un-American, a socialist and a terrorist. He was angry with Obama's economic stimulus and distrustful of his health care plan. Even though there were only three people at that gathering who had voted for Obama (my husband and I accounted for two), even some of my Republican neighbors were a bit startled by the harsh rhetoric. 

There is danger in exaggeration, in describing things as much worse than they really are.  Not only does one thoroughly enrage the opposition, even those who agree with you in principle may not be willing to act with you. Although my neighbor, who claims to be a libertarian, did not call Obama a Nazi, the right wing opposition to health care reform routinely and loudly smears the president with Hitlerian analogies. Words like the Final Solution, Nazi and Mein Kampf are being carelessly tossed about by reactionary loud mouths like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. A swastika graffiti defaced the sign bearing the name of a Democratic congressman who supports Obama. Major and minor GOP operatives are gloating about spontaneous grass roots uprisings against the dreaded Obamacare. Protesters are showing up at town hall meetings with guns (even assault rifles) and pictures of Obama donning a clipped mustache. Yesterday a woman brandishing a placard depicting Obama as Hitler, asked Rep Barney Frank (D-MA) why he supported a "Nazi" like policy. She quickly learned that it was a mistake to direct such a stupid question at a smart, gay, Jewish man with a sharp tongue.  

The funny thing is that the fear mongers who warn us that a national health care system is equal to the National Socialist Party of 1930s' Germany, willfully ignore the reality of health insurance in America - that we are currently at the mercy of jackbooted private insurance companies goosestepping over the sick and dying all the way to the bank.  Death panels already exist and rationing of health care is routine in the free market system that they so adore. Please read columnist Froma Harrop's account of her family's ordeal with the insurance company during a period of life and death decision making.

Have the GOP partisans, whose elected leaders have not condemned any of the tactics described above, gone too far in vilifying Obama and the Democratic Party's efforts at overhauling the health care system? Have they fallen victim to Godwin's Law too early in the debate? Most Americans are satisfied with their doctors but many are scared of their insurance companies. Obama will do well to tout the Health Care Reform bill as the Insurance Reform bill. I am hoping that the loud and abusive theatrics of the angry and armed right wingers will back fire (no pun intended) since most Americans would like to see their health insurance system improved. I would however be more reassured if I didn't find President Obama's insistence on feel-good bi-partisan solutions a bit disappointing. In his efforts to calm too many nerves and smooth too many ruffled feathers, he has wasted precious time trying to find compromises where no common ground exists. Has Obama squandered his political capital by ceding too much ground and time to adversaries who merely wish to see him fail?   

After his brilliant beginning, the president suddenly looks weak and unreliable. That will be the common interpretation around Washington of the president's abrupt retreat on substantive heathcare reform. Give Barack Obama a hard shove, they will say, rough him up a bit and he folds. A few weeks back, the president was touting a "public option" health plan as an essential element in reform. Now he says, take it or leave it. Whatever Congress does, he's okay with that.

The White House quickly added confusion to the outrage by insisting the president didn't really say anything new. He's just being flexible. He still wants what most Democrats want--a government plan that gives people a real escape from the profit-driven clutches of the insurance companies. But serious power players will not be fooled by the nimble spinners. Obama choked. He raised the white flag, even before the fight got underway in Congress.

He hands the insurance industry a huge victory. He rewards the right-wing frothers who have been calling him Adolph Hitler or Dr. Death. He caves to the conservative bias of the major media who insist only bipartisan consensus is acceptable for big reform (a standard they never invoked during the Bush years). Obama is deluded if he thinks this will win him any peace or respect or Republican votes. Weakness does not lead to consensus in Washington. It leads to more weakness. The Party of No intends to bring him down and will pile on. Obama has inadvertently demonstrated their strategy of vicious invective seems to be working.

I don't know if things are as bad as the Nation article suggests. I think the president still has time to pivot around, steel his nerves and gather support from those who are committed to correcting the current flawed system of health care in America. Perhaps he will learn to ignore the name callers. Just today he went on the air and met with Democratic members of Congress to dispel some of the blatant misinformation spread by his critics whose only aim is to muddy the waters and stall any progress on this front. Obama called health care reform a moral obligation.  

When the orchestrated hysteria of the town hall fiascoes first began, I used to wince every time I heard Obama speak of bi-partisanship and then get whacked with derision, lies and abuse.  Now I am beginning to get impatient and even a little angry with his unwillingness so far to exercise his confrontational skills (if he has any, that is) in a timely fashion. He doesn't have to do quite what Barney Frank did. But a toned down variation of it will be refreshing. It is time to upgrade the campaign slogan of "Yes, we can" to the presidential drumbeat of "Yes, we will."

Bloggers Under Scrutiny

Bloggers can continue to rave and rant about anything that suits their fancy. But now the Federal  Trade Commission plans to monitor their claims, especially if money or freebies are changing hands.

Savvy consumers often go online for independent consumer reviews of products and services, scouring through comments from everyday Joes and Janes to help them find a gem or shun a lemon.

What some fail to realize, though, is that such reviews can be tainted: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. Bloggers vary in how they disclose such freebies, if they do so at all.

The practice has grown to the degree that the Federal Trade Commission is paying attention. New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers - as well as the companies that compensate them - for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer - and getting commissions for any sales from it - would be enough to trigger oversight.

"If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," said Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices. "Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and ... they have an economic motive for what they're saying, that's information a consumer should know."

The guidelines also would bring uniformity to a community that has shunned that.

As blogging rises in importance and sophistication, it has taken on characteristics of community journalism - but without consensus on the types of ethical practices typically found in traditional media.

Journalists who work for newspapers and broadcasters are held accountable by their employers, and they generally cannot receive payments from marketers and must return free products after they finish reviewing them.

The blogosphere is quite different.

More here from the Associated Press Report.

Sexualizing Fast Food

I have never been impressed by overly sensual/ carnal language applied to food.  I know, I know, sex too is a natural appetite and lust and gluttony can describe urges both above and below the belt. But for some reason, calling a piece of chocolate cake "sinfully delicious" doesn't make me want to eat it more. So it was not a surprise that I found the following article about marketing a burger with overt sexual imagery quite annoying.

When I watch the Carl's Jr. commercial featuring "Top Chef" host and mega-model Padma Lakshmi make hot sweet love to a Western Bacon Cheeseburger, I have many thoughts, some of which, I confess, are not entirely to my credit. The spot features the former Mrs. Salman Rushdie sitting on a brownstone stoop in a clingy sundress hiked up mid-thigh, cramming the giant burger into her educated maw and sucking barbecue sauce from her fingers and wrists. Let's not mince onions here: This is sex with a burger.

You might think that here, at last, television advertising might have crossed some sort of debauched Rubicon, or at least some tripwire at the Federal Communications Commission. Not even close. It's merely the latest chapter in the weird mash-up between sex and diabolically unhealthful fast food.

What gives?

Go ahead and read the whole unappetizing story and take a good look at the model, Padma Lakshmi aka  ex-Mrs. Salman Rushdie #4.  The only sentence you need to pay attention to is the one at the very end.

And so you have the impossibly lean and beautiful Lakshmi wolfing down a 1,000-calorie burger. Now that's hard to swallow.

"M" Is For Money - In Marriage, At Least

Love and marriage? How about the global economy and marriage?

Indian bachelors in the US and other western countries used to be a coveted catch in the arranged marriage market back home. Not any more. With India's own economy improving and western job markets wobbly, many Indian brides (and their parents) are opting for marital bliss at home.  With their own job prospects improving in the domestic sector, career women in India too find the lure of settling in a foreign country less compelling. The "Boy from Foreign" is no longer the marketable Prince Charming he used to be. (Link to the WSJ article via Razib)

Vikas Marwaha would normally be considered a good catch by Indian parents seeking a husband for their daughter. The 27-year-old software engineer earns $80,000 to $100,000 a year and comes from a family "of doctors and engineers," according to his profile on a matrimonial Web site.

But Mr. Marwaha works for a start-up Internet phone company in San Francisco. And because the U.S. economy is wobbly, that's a problem. Many Indian parents now are balking at sending their daughters to the U.S. to marry.

During a two-week wife-hunting trip to India in December, Mr. Marwaha interviewed 20 potential brides in 10 days. He says several parents asked him, "How has the recession impacted your job?" Mr. Marwaha says he assured them he hadn't been affected at all, but still he returned to the U.S. brideless.

Indian parents used to think it a plus to marry off their daughters to Indian men living in wealthier countries, including the U.S. and Britain. But as India has grown more affluent in recent years, the demand for overseas Indian grooms has been fading. While India's economy is also slowing down, it is still growing, and layoffs aren't as widespread as in the West.

"Even if something happens, in India there's a comfort" that the woman's parents are around to help, says Murugavel Janakiraman, founder of the matrimonial Web site Bharatmatrimony.com. Favorable responses to overseas grooms registered on his site have declined by 20% in the past nine months, he says. ....

Anisha Seth, 26, has been looking for a groom for two years now. But she feels "jittery" about considering nonresident Indians as possible options.

Ms. Seth says that if she were to move to the U.S. or to another developed country, she might not get a job quickly and would have to be dependent on her husband for a while. While she's open to the idea of giving up her independence, she worries that given the state of the U.S. economy, a groom based in America might not be earning enough to support her. For instance, Ms. Seth says she likes nice clothes and would like to have a flat-screen TV. "Is he really prepared to provide the kind of lifestyle that I have right now?" She expects a husband to earn more than she does.

Some brides simply see India as more livable these days. As salaries have gone up there, Indian married couples are able to afford houses, and young women with jobs have money of their own. In contrast, in the U.S., "people have to even clean their own toilets," says Hasit Dave, 55, who runs the Klassic Match Marriage Bureau in Ahmedabad, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Career-oriented Indian women, meanwhile, have grown concerned about their job prospects in the U.S. Sandeep Gohad, a Manchester, Conn., software consultant who's between jobs, got such questions during a two-month-long visit to his hometown of Pune, near Mumbai. He told bride candidates they would have a hard time getting a work visa in the U.S. And even if they did, finding jobs would be tough. He, too, came home single. An engineer or doctor "has absolutely no reason to go to the U.S.A. and work as a housewife," he says.