Satyam Computer Services Ltd. will be recruiting 3,000 employees in the first phase of its new software development centre here, Mr B. Rama Raju, the company’s CEO, said here on Thursday. The centre is being planned on a 50-acre plot, Mr Raju told reporters, after the company announced that it has signed a five-year contract to maintain Nissan North America’s business applications, that the land for the development centre in Chennai had been allotted.

Satyam will be investing Rs 30 crores in the first phase, which is scheduled to be completed in 12 months. He said the Chennai centre would eventually become Satyam’s second largest centre in the country, after Hyderabad, where the NYSE-listed company is headquartered.

Referring to the Nissan deal, Mr Subu D. Subramanian, director and senior vice-president of Satyam’s manufacturing and automotive business, said revenues would start flowing in from the first quarter of 2006-07. Satyam declined to quantify the deal. He said Satyam would solely manage all of Nissan’s business deals in the North American market.

Since the bubble burst in 2000, we have been obsessed with economic imbalances: low levels of savings and high levels of debt, America’s trade deficit, the rise of China and its challenge to developed economies. But one imbalance has received far fewer headlines — the gap between the economic performance of nations and of companies.

In 2005, global GDP growth was approximately 3.2 per cent, according to the IMF, and should be about the same in 2006. That is the aggregate of nearly 200 national econ-omies, and it reflects both China (9.5 per cent) at one extreme and Zimbabwe (7.1 per cent) at the other. The US, which represents nearly a third of the global economy, has been registering steady growth of 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent a year. Now look at companies. In 2004, earnings for the S&P 500 grew 22 per cent, with revenue growth exceeding 10 per cent. Coming off the high base of 2004, earnings in 2005 will be in the 13 per cent to 15 per cent range.

Companies with global reach have done even better. For example, in 2004, 101 S&P 500 companies derived between 20 per cent and 40 per cent of their revenue outside the US and registered a staggering 42 per cent growth in earnings. The performance gap will likely widen as offshoring and advancements in information technology diminish corporations’ loyalty to their home countries.

Yet States continue to behave as though they were ascendant. Consider their approach to taxation, even in the face of the WTO’s successful erosion of trade barriers, which significantly undermines the right of governments to collect revenue. The European Union’s attempt to slap tariffs on bras made in China was laughable, as was the ill-named American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, which gave US-domiciled companies a onetime exemption to repatriate profits from abroad.

Meanwhile, central banks maintain the conceit that interest rates are best regulated by the State, even as evidence piles up that global flows of capital exert more influence on rates than any one bank — including the Federal Reserve — could hope to. The result: Governments keep spending and borrowing even as most face shrinking or stagnant revenues.

Government leaders must accept their diminished influence and not try to create regulatory hurdles for errant companies or waste resources prosecuting a random few. Instead, States should look for ways to channel the activities of global companies in constructive directions and create incentives for them to change their behaviour. Corporations, for their part, must shoulder a heavier burden in matters of economic and environmental policy, intellectual property rights and even security.

If States and corporations don’t recognize their changed status, others will. Those others will include religious ideologues, and they will condemn both for failing to address the needs of billions of people. The old cliche holds that with power comes responsibility. The old cliche is right.

Professor Lawrence H. Summers, outgoing president of Harvard University, presented a five-point action agenda for achieving excellence in higher education.

He underlined the importance of competition, flexibility, liberated attitude towards ideas, private philanthropy, and fundamental research as keys in order to achie excellence in education.

Professor Summers mentioned these five points as lessons to be learnt from the US experience to strengthen the higher education system in India. Professor Summers announced Harvard University’s intention to expand contacts with India and South Asia.

He felt that India should stress on the development of both of its primary as well as higher education system.