Hello Asiapundit readers this is my first guest post. I will be touring you around some of the blogs of South Asia.

Bangladesh:

Imtiaz slams Bangladesh politics, as opportunists are being able to influence the Prime Minister for their own interests.

Tasnuva talks about ignorant Pakistanis who does not have a clear idea of Bangladesh & the liberation war which separated itself from Pakistan.

Over at my blog ‘The third world view’ I have asked ‘whose problem is terrorism anyway’?

India:

Abhi of Sepia Mutiny finds that the London bombers are the second generation Pakistani-British. This has aroused another controversy as some think that the Indians should not be refered to as ‘desi’ or ‘South Asian’, because they are not Pakistanis or Bangladeshis.

Kiruba writes about an interesting legal battle between Coca-Cola & Sharad Haskar, the best digital photographer of India over a photograph.

Parag thinks that the plight of Muslim women in India is equally bad if not worse than Pakistan.

Pakistan:

Chapati Mystery celebrates the new ultra-hip cultural phenomenon ‘desi’ which is the focal point of marketing strategies of some of the US companies.

Pakistani Perspective slates a new ‘moral law’ (hasba).

KO Offroad Pakistan shows an alarming state of Pakistan’s Internet connectivity.

Nepal:

Anbika of United we Blog! discovers that Nepal’s private colleges are being increasingly involved into unhealthy competition to attract top students.

Global Voices has been redesigned and relaunched.

From Xiamen, Andrea says she doesn’t like: "Caucasians who cut the queue in a bank with a clear number queueing system." She asks "We all take a number and wait, why the hell on God’s green earth shouldn’t you?" Answer: Because we all look like Dashan.

Richard spots another ominous article on how the CPC is using the internet to control thought in China. Rebecca offers all of that and more.

CSR Asia reports that Japan and Korea have started investigating whether or not Chinese brewers are using formaldehyde .

Coca Cola’s former CEO David Daft once remarked that the company’s main competitor was not Pepsi, but water. They may be aggressively trying to squeeze out the competition. Tak at the Old Revolution notes that Daft’s former company may sue an Indian artist.

"Mr. Sharad Haksar, a photographer in India, faces a possible lawsuit for a billboard he has displayed in Chennai in an effort to bring attention to the severe water shortage caused by the company’s bottling plants."

Ampontan at Japundit discusses the cultural significance of Godzilla.

China is opening a memorial to martyred journalists. No monument for jailed journalists is expected.

There’s trouble at the boardroom of KFC Malaysia, the Colonel would never have tolerated such shenanigans.

Gloria Aroyo is willing to leave, but wants to set her own terms of exit.

Japan is diversifying away from China, Glenzo says everyone else should too,

Happy Birthday mr brown.

Amit Varma reports that Indian actress Pooja Bhatt is upset that someone "stole" the title of her upcoming film… Cabaret.

The report quotes Bhatt as saying:

My production company (Fish Eye Network) registered the film under four names with two spellings — Cabaret, Kabaret, Cabaret — The Dance of Love and Kabaret — The Dance of Love. I have the necessary documents to prove that I am the owner of the title.

She also accuses the film industry of having "a herd mentality and no originality".
And no, the reporter did not ask her if she had seen this particular film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli.

It’s long been known that agricultural subsidies in the West result in a massive misallocation of funds that could be put to more productive job-creating use elsewhere, while simultaneously hampering growth in the third world.

How should developing countries react when they can’t develop a market-oriented farming industry?  Daniel Drezner links to a NYT op-ed on outsourcing/offshoring that notes one way of doing so:

The rich countries can’t have it both ways. They can’t provide huge subsidies for their agricultural conglomerates and complain when Indians who can’t make a living on their farms then go to the cities and study computers and take away their jobs. Why are Indians willing to write code for a tenth of what Americans make for the same work? It’s not by choice; it’s because they’re still struggling to stand on their feet after 200 years of colonial rule. The day will soon come when Indian companies will find that it’s cheaper to hire computer programmers in Sri Lanka, and then it’s there that the Indian jobs will go.

A year ago Jiao Guobiao was a little- known professor, quietly teaching
journalism and advising graduate students at Peking University. Then the former journalist decided to write a scathing, online attack against the Communist Party’s Propaganda Department. Mr. Jiao said the department’s officials were as powerful and
self-righteous as the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages. "Anyone
who touches them will get burned," he wrote.

Indeed, we can be thankful that Jiao  Guobiao isn’t in jail.

Thanks to the long arm of the Internet, Chinese and English versions of the essay were soon being read around the world, propelling the gentle-mannered scholar into the international spotlight…
He was fired in April — right after leaving China to take a fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy, in Washington.
Mr. Jiao is the latest casualty in the Chinese government’s war against academic dissent, a campaign that has caught many scholars by surprise. Shortly before a new, younger generation of Chinese leaders took office in 2002, intellectuals in Beijing were hoping that Hu Jintao, who is now the country’s president, would be a force for reform.
Since taking the reins of power, however, the new regime has launched a bitter attack on freedom of expression. Newspapers have been shut down, books banned, journalists and dissidents imprisoned, and scholars brought under increased pressure to toe the official line. The political situation is the worst it has been in years, many scholars say.

I’m no fan of factory farming, but it’s hard not to feel sympathy for shareholders of Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group. The conglogerate - which introduced economies of scale to Thailand’s chicken farming industry - has been hammered by the outbreak of bird flu.:

It is Asia number one poultry’s exporter and, in many cases, controls the whole production chain, from feed to retail sales of processed chicken. Feed, and more specifically hybrid seed corn production, is the most lucrative part of this vertically integrated business. (4) According to Viroj Na Ranong, a researcher at the Thailand Development Research Institute "It is the poultry business that made CP well known in Thailand. In the seventies, the company entered the market with new breeds and the contract farming system inspired by its US partner Arbor Acres. As a result, chicken became the cheapest meat in the market. It changed people’s eating habits and backyard poultry disappeared." (5)
Even though its chicken operations account for only10% of the CP Group’s revenue, the avian flu hit the whole economic empire. The day after the Thai government officially recognised the outbreak of the virus, CP’s stock plummeted by 12.5% and the Stock Exchange of Thailand index fell sharply. In Thailand, when CP sneezes, the whole business community catches cold or, in this case, flu.

Via the Avian Flu Blog.