india perspectives july-aug11

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDIAVOL 25 NO. 5 JULY-AUGUST 2011

PERSPECTIVES

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Celebrating lives of individuals who are shaping

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PERSPECTIVES

s we go into print, meteorologists have announced that themonsoon is likely to keep its annual date with the southern shoresof India on June 1. Coming in two streams from the Bay of Bengalin the east and the Arabian Sea in the west, the monsoon makesa leisurely progression towards northern India, usually reachingDelhi by the end of June or the beginning of July. The unforgettable

scent of the first monsoon shower on land parched by the long Indian summer hasbeen the inspiration of festivals and folklore, of music and poetry, of romance andreflection. Several eminent Indians share their reminiscences about the monsoon,echoing sentiments which are all too familiar.

The rhythms of the rain also bring alive the chirping of birds, prompting us totake you to the Thattekad Sanctuary and the Kole wetlands of Kerala. The beautifulCoorg region in nearby Karnataka is also a traveller’s delight, while the gold filigreeThewa jewellery is a marvel of artistic skill and dexterity.

The recently concluded jazz festival in Delhi witnessed a surprising turnout,testimony perhaps to the growing cosmopolitan culture of the capital city. In adifferent vein, celebrated author Khushwant Singh looks back on his association withNew Delhi as the city gets ready to mark its first centenary. Author and city are, infact, near contemporaries.

In our continuing series on green heroes, we profile Ashok Khosla’s DevelopmentAlternatives and his enduring contribution to a sustainable environment, while Nepalis the focus in our section on development partnerships.

We also explore the rapidly expanding global footprint of India Inc., highlightingthe remarkable blend of vision and enterprise that has enabled major Indiancompanies to make high-profile acquisitions in Africa, Europe, the United States,Latin America and elsewhere.

We value the comments and suggestions that we have received on our last issue.Do keep writing in!

Happy reading.

NNaavvddeeeepp SSuurrii

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03JUNE 2011 � INDIA PERSPECTIVES

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24/05/11 3:49 PM Page 3

o mark Independence Day on August 15, we decided to make this a specialdouble issue that looks at India Tomorrow. Not through statistics and forecastsbut through the eyes of a few remarkable individuals and their extraordinaryvision to make tomorrow’s India a better place. They see an India where societycares for its poorest, protects the environment, nurtures its crafts, preserves its

rich cultural heritage and promotes classical dance and yoga. They include architects,economists, musicians, social entrepreneurs, technology wonks and politicians who aretrying to shape the country’s future. And they are among thousands of others doingsomething similar in pockets around the country. To say that I am humbled by theirachievements would be an understatement: I get gooseflesh each time I read about them.

Apart from these extraordinary stories we delve into another noteworthy occurrence. Ifa free and vibrant media is the lifeblood of a true democracy, then India has it in suchabundance that it is mind-boggling even by the standards of older Western democracies.Consider the fact that till the late 1980s, we only had one state-owned channel,Doordarshan, providing an assortment of news and entertainment. Two decades later, wehave over 500 cable and satellite channels competing for the viewer’s attention. Thisincludes, at last count, at least 122 news channels. When you contrast this with the fact thatmature TV markets like the UK, US and much of Europe have less than half a dozen newschannels each, the perspective becomes clearer. Or maybe not. Because the sameexplosion in the television industry that will propel India past the US to become the world’slargest Direct to Home satellite market by 2012 is also prompting concerns about the needfor self-restraint and calls for a strong independent regulator. The lead story in this issue takesa closer look at the burgeoning TV industry.

On a more sombre note, we pay tribute to the rich legacy of iconic artist M.F. Husainwho passed way recently. Largely self-taught, the 96 year-old, often described as the PabloPicasso of the subcontinent, took Indian art on to the global stage. We also explore the richheritage of Chettinad in Tamil Nadu – its graceful mansions, its mouth-watering cuisine andthe typical weaves of its saris.

Over the last few issues, we have carried several articles that focus on India’s growingdevelopment partnership with Africa. The Second Africa-India Forum Summit held in Addis Ababa on May 24-25 was a landmark event for its people-centric focus and we runa photofeature that gives a flavour of the range of concurrent activities that accompaniedthe summit.

We hope you enjoy the issue and we look forward to hearing from you, via email orthrough our Facebook page.

Navdeep Suri

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03JULYAUGUST 2011 � INDIA PERSPECTIVES

EDITORIAL NOTE

INDIA THIS MONTH JULY-AUGUST

2011

August 18 -22 Krishna Coinciding withJanamasthmi, the birthof Lord Krishna a dancedrama depicting the BlueGod’s multi-faceted lifeproduced and directedby the renowned cultural icon, ShobhaDeepak Singh. Where: KamaniAuditorium, Delhi

August 24 A Handful of Dust With a career spanningfour decades,accomplished danseuseAnita Ratnam payshomage to RabindranathTagore in an evocativetheatrical presentation. Where: Birla MahasabhaAuditorium, Kolkata

September 1-3 Tarnetar Fair Ethnic folk dance forms,such as the garba, rasand haro, music andcolourful costumes centrearound young tribals likethe Rabari seekingmarriage partners in thisthree-day fair. Where: Thangadh,Surendarnagarh, Gujarat

September 1-15 Ladakh Festival An exhaustive gamut ofevents ranging from polomatches, lion and yakmask dances to archerycompetitions and raftingexpeditions engagevisitors and locals in thistwo week culturalextravaganza. Where: Leh, Ladakh

August 29-September 8 Velankanni ChurchFestivalThe church, known asthe ‘Lourdes of the East’,is the centre of a nine-day celebration. Amidstprayers for world peaceall these days are markedwith dances, songs andprocessions. Where: VelankanniChurch, Chennai

September 1-30 Manjit Bawa Exihbition Showcasing one of India’smost prominentcontemporary artisteswhose works had beeninspired by nature andHindu mythology. Where: Vadehra ArtGallery, Defence Colony,New Delhi

September 15-18 South Asian FilmFestival The only film festival forSouth Asian countriesbrings together eminentfilmmakers to discusssocial, cultural, politicalaspects of the region’scinema. Where: Goa

August 25-September 2 Paryushan Parva One of the mostimportant festivals of theJain community, thesedays are observedespecially for selfpurification through aseries of religious ritualsand cultural programmes. Where: All over India

September 14-18 Vysakhi Nrithyostav Eminent dancers from allover India, trained in ninedifferent classical andfolk forms participate andcompete in this vibrantdisplay of tradition,discipline and dedication. Where: Visakhapatnam,Andhra Pradesh

September 1-3 Ganesh Chaturthi The birthday of thelovable Ganesha ismarked by food andfeasting. The birthday isfollowed by 11 days offestivity. Where: Maharashtra,Goa, Tamil Nadu,Karnataka and AndhraPradesh.

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EEddiittoorr:: Navdeep Suri

AAssssiissttaanntt EEddiittoorr:: Neelu Rohra

MMEEDDIIAA TTRRAANNSSAASSIIAA TTEEAAMM

EEddiittoorr--iinn--CChhiieeff:: Maneesha Dube

EEddiittoorr:: Mannika Chopra

CCrreeaattiivvee DDiirreeccttoorr:: Bipin Kumar

DDeesskk:: Urmila Marak, Swati Bhasin

EEddiittoorriiaall CCoooorrddiinnaattoorr:: Kanchan Rana

DDeessiiggnn:: Vikas Verma (Sr. Visualiser), Ajay Kumar (Sr. Designer), Sujit Singh

PPrroodduuccttiioonn:: Sunil Dubey (DGM), Ri tesh Roy (Sr. Manager)Brijesh K. Juyal (Pre-press Operator)

CChhaaiirrmmaann:: J.S. Uberoi

PPrreessiiddeenntt:: Xavier Collaco

FFiinnaanncciiaall CCoonnttrroolllleerr:: Puneet Nanda

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India Perspectives is published every month in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali,English, French, German, Hindi, Italian,Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu andVietnamese. Views expressed in the articles are those of the contributors and not necessarily those of the Ministry of External Affairs.

This edition is published for the Ministry ofExternal Affairs by Navdeep Suri, Joint Secretary, Public Diplomacy Division,New Delhi, 140 ‘A’ Wing, Shastri Bhawan, New Delhi-110001.Telephones: 91-11-23389471, 91-11-23388873, Fax: 91-11-23385549

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July-August 2011 � VOL 25 No. 5/2011

JULY-AUGUST 2011

COVER PHOTO: IMAGESBAZAAR/COVER DESIGN: BIPIN KUMAR


INDIAPERSPECTIVES

Television: Thriving Network 14

Africa-India Summit: Cordial Affair 18

Adoor: Adoor Gopalakrishnan at Seventy 70

Sport: Indian Golfers Have Arrived 76

Innovation: Global Games For Village Toys 80

Travel: Sprawling, Exotic Chettinad 82

History: Vaishali, a most ancient democracy 86

IN REVIEW

Books: Charming Chronicle 88

Verbatim: Chanda Kochhar 90

INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL

INDIA TOMORROW 24

Essay: Celebrating the Human Spirit 26

Politics: Chavvi Rajawat 28

Technology: Gyanesh Pandey 32

Economy: D. Udaya Kumar 36

Social Entrepreneur: Rikin Gandhi 38

Craft: Sumita Ghosh 42

Social Entrepreneur: Anshu Gupta 46

Dance: Krishna Mohan Reddy 50

Tradition: T. V. S. Desikachar 52

Conservation: Saima Iqbal 56

Media: Harivansh 60

Music: Shillong Chamber Choir 64

Architecture: Chandrashekhar Hariharan 66

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A BOLD BRUSHWITH LIFEHusain was a living iconof Hindu-Muslim culture. His art was quintessentially Indian inform but global in its Picasso-esque appeal. A tribute to the artist.

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TEXT: S. KALIDAS

A BOLDBRUSHWITHLIFEHusain was a livingicon of Hindu-Muslimculture. His art wasquintessentially Indian in form butglobal in its Picasso-esque appeal.A tribute to the artist

MAESTRO AT WORK: M. F. Husain at his studio

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Maqbool Fida Husain (1915-2011), easily India’s mosticonic contemporary artist,died in a London hospital

on June 9. Born in 1915 at the templetown of Pandharpur in Maharashtra, M. F.Husain came from a lower middle classSulemani Muslim family and rose throughthe ranks to become India’s most famouspainter of people, places and events.Even at the advanced age of 96 he remained frantically active, working withepic themes – History of Indian Cinema,Arab Civilisation, Ramayana—in London,Dubai and Qatar whose nationality he accepted last year after leaving India in aself-imposed exile in 2006.

As a 20th century modernist painterHusain surfed the crest of a nascent andevolving national consciousness. Whenhe first burst on the Indian art scene inthe post-Independence era, he instantly became a much celebrated symbol ofthe Nehruvian ideal of a secular modernity. Yet, that very celebrity madehim vulnerable to be misrepresented and reviled three decades later by extremistgroups that led to his eventual self- imposed exile from India.

Educated in the Indore School of Artsand the JJ School of Arts, Mumbai. Husain was immensely talented and intelligent with an enormous curiosityabout the world. Despite all his fame andmuch flaunted wealth he was personallyuntouched by both. He would be as comfortable in a dhaba dipping hisroti in a glass of tea as in a five star hotel relishing an expensive meal. He was immensely generous, capriciously whimsical, and quite stylishly eccentric indress and behaviour. For example, he stopped wearing footwear as a tributeto the Hindi Poet Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh in 1974 and used to walk barefoot into the most exclusive

LIGHTER MOMENTS: Husain with his son Shamshad at his makeshift studio in New Delhi

“But even at that time Iknew that time I would be an artist one day. There was atime when Ipainted furnitureby day and myown art by night. I paintednonstop.”

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and august gatherings and clubs the world over.

Husain had arrived in what was thenBombay in the early-1930s penniless butbursting with enthusiasm and energy, traitsthat he retained all through his colourfuland long life. He first started out offeringto paint portraits of people who could af-ford to pay him ` 25 in the busy andbustling bazaars of the metropolis. Soon,he moved to painting cinema hoardings,first for V. Shantaram’s Prabhat Studiosand later for New Theatres.

Here, perched high on bamboo scaffoldings, Husain learnt to be able toconcentrate despite the noise and chaosof the street below and the blazing sunabove for many years. “But even at thattime I knew that I would be an artist oneday,” he used to say, adding, “There was atime when I painted furniture by day andmy own art by night. I painted non-stop.”

Cinema held a life-long fascination forHusain and decades later he went on tomake several much-talked about films.Of these, Through the Eyes of a Painter(1967) won the Golden Bear at theBerlin Film Festival but the most wellknown is Gaja Gamini (2000) that featured the Bollywood queen MadhuriDixit as his muse..

Husain’s life started to change radi-cally around the time of Independence. Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002), theprodigious enfant terrible of Indian art,spotted Husain’s talent and immediatelyincluded him in his Progressive ArtistsGroup in 1947. Husain’s work was no-ticed right from that first showing andwith the encouragement of Rudi von Leyden, the German art critic, he held hisfirst one-man show in Mumbai in 1950.With prices ranging from ` 50 to ` 300the exhibition was a huge success. As Husain would chuckle later, “I was a best-seller right from the start.”

HIS MUSES: (above) With actor Tabu and (right) with actor Madhuri Dixit

Whatdifferentiates

Husain from hisProgressive

contemporariesis his deeply

rooted ‘Indianness’through his

celebration ofIndian life and

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What differentiates Husain from his Progressive contemporaries is his deeplyrooted ‘Indian-ness’ through his celebrationof Indian life and people. He sought inspiration in temple sculptures (Mathuraand Khajuraho), Pahari miniature paintingsand Indian folk art.

In the mid-1950s, Husain got nationalrecognition with two very seminal canvasesZameen and Between the Spider and theLamp. Zameen was inspired by Bimal Roy’sDo Bigha Zameen (1955) but instead of bemoaning rural poverty it presents a symbolic celebration of life in rural India witha vibrancy that had never been seen before.Nor did he, at any time, understand the angstof existentialism. The next year he painted themore enigmatic Between the Spider and the Lamp, considered by critics to be his all time best.

As Husain became a living icon of Hindu-Muslim culture, his art acquired a quintessentially Indian in form and contentwhile being global in its Picasso-esque appeal. Moreover, Husain invariably broughtrelevance to his paintings by making themtopical almost in a journalistic fashion. Hewas ever ready with the ‘image of the day’whether it entailed painting the Man on theMoon in 1969 or Indira Gandhi as Durgaafter the Bangladesh war in 1971.

As modern Indian art gained wider acceptance through the ’70s and ’80s Husain was steadily scaling up the marketcharts. His colourful persona and his escapades became the grist of the mediamills. “Life without drama would be toodrab,” he used to say. And collectors camein droves.

But no epic saga is ever picture perfect.And Husain had more than his share ofcelebrityhood and brickbats. However, it is in posterity that Husain’s art and his persona will get a truer reckoning that thismost talented son of this vast and varied subcontinent rightly deserves. �

IN CANVAS: Displaying one of his paintings

Husain invariablybroughtrelevance to hispaintings bymaking themtopical almost ina journalisticfashion.

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Thriving Network Twenty years after entering India, today over 515 cable and satellite channels reach out to 134 million households

TEXT: MANNIKA CHOPRA

Television is influencing the way Indians are entertained, how they live, think, and even eat. It’sfair to say that today TV has become the dominant national mass medium, uniting, in someway,a culturally diverse nation, urging it to react to a common impulse. Yet, it was only 52 years agothat the first steps were taken to set up a national network. And it was only

20 years ago that cable and satellite (C&S) television was first introduced, thanks largely to the 1991 Gulfwar. Seeing the opportunity in cable TV, entrepreneurs like Subhash Chandra, originally a rice merchant,launched a clutch of channels, putting a template in place that changed India’s mediascape radically.

Doordarshan, the national public broadcaster, may continue to have the largest reach, but it is theC&S broadcast market which has the most buzz. Stimulated by the liberalisation policies of 1992,which allowed private and foreign broadcasters to enter the market for the first time, the sector isthriving. “The deregulation of the early 1990s was a defining moment for Indian television history,”says Uday Shankar, CEO of the Star group and president of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF),an apex body of leading broadcasters.

From one public broadcaster in 1969, today there are 515 C&S channels, broadcasting in all thecountry’s major languages. Among them Zee TV, Star TV, SET, HBO, CBS, UTV, Discovery, NationalGeographic, NDTV, CNN-IBN, CNN, BBC, Times Now, Headlines Today and Aaj Tak have enteredIndian homes. There are 122 news channels, 380 entertainment channels, over 70 foreign channels,last year alone ten new English entertainment channels were launched, making this, some say, theGolden Age of Indian TV.

According to the IBF, C&S reaches 134 million households out of the 223 million who havetelevision sets; this includes 23.7 million Direct to Home (DTH) subscribers. Eighty five percent ofthose living in cities own or have access to television; 70 percent have access to C&S or DTH. Andthe audience just keeps expanding. While families who own TV sets are growing at 8-10 percent, thegrowth in the C&S segment is very healthy at 15 percent and in the DTH sector it is a whopping 28percent. In fact, it has been reported that India is set to outstrip the US as the world’s largest DTHmarket by 2012.

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With the increase in the number of channels, the advertising revenue has also escalated,averaging a growth rate of 15-20 percent. Media Partners Asia which tracks media andentertainment industries has projected that advertisement spend on the Indian small screen willbe US $2.7 billion in 2011, 20 percent of which will be cornered by cricket.

But what has all this meant for viewers? Programming is now much more diverse, imaginativeand sophisticated. It has come a long way from the time when everybody waited breathlessly towatch a film aired by Doordarshan every Sunday. Today, for a monthly fee of `110 ($2.50), anaverage viewer can access 40 general entertainment, news and niche channels that range fromcooking, to yoga to spiritual discourses. Viewers can choose between soaps, emotional family

dramas, popularly called saas-bahu (mother-in-law, daughter-in-law) serials to franchise realityshows like Kaun Banega Crorepati, (Who Wantsto be a Millionaire), Sach ka Samna (Moment ofTruth) and the X Factor. Undeniably, over the lastdecade the influence of television over popularculture has been rivaling that of films.

Other genres which have captured eyeballshave been sport, almost exclusively cricket. Thegame has become a major driving force for TV, notonly for sports channels but also for current affairschannels. For example, the combined viewershipof the recently held Indian Premier League andWorld Cup matches totalled 290 million.

But it has been the current affairs channelswhich have seen the most activity. “Today, thereare nearly 100 news channels that have sproutedall over India. The bad news is a lot of them havelow credibility but the good news is that, thanks totelevision, there is a personal connect between thepublic and with what is happening in the countrywhich was not there earlier, ” says RajdeepSardesai, editor-in-chief of the IBN group.

Certainly technology has pushed the numbers. With digitisation the spectrum for channels hasimproved as has the quality of transmission. The DTH market, dominated currently by six serviceproviders, is poised for a nationwide expansion, resulting in multi-tiered programming ranging fromgeneral entertainment to news to films and innovative packages that include games, educationand learning English.

With all this embarrassment of riches the real challenge now is to separate the substantial fromthe sensational and introduce programming codes. Currently a debate is taking place about theneed to regulate the airwaves to give viewers a choice of quality content rather than a hugesmorgasbord of the good, bad and the ugly.

—Mannika Chopra is a media columnist

REACHING THE WORLD* Star Plus India is available in 70 countries.

It reaches viewers in North America, the

UK, West Asia and Hong Kong. The Star

India group plans to enter other

European countries.

* Zee TV reaches 500 million viewers in

67 countries and will launch more Hindi

channels in Latin America, the Caribbean,

Africa and West Asia.

*The TV Today network can be seen in the

US, UK, Canada and has plans extend itself

in the Middle East and Australia

* Viacom 18, which owns the IBN network,

has already entered the US, the UK,

Australia and New Zealand.

*From the NDTV stable, flagship channel

NDTV 24x7 is available in 74 countries,

including USA, UK, Canada, the Middle East,

Africa and Australia; NDTV Profit is available

in 6 countries as is NDTV India while NDTV

Good Times can be seen in 11 countries.


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Marking a major upsurge in the country’s diplomaticforay, India concluded a second summit withAfrica in Addis Ababa on May 25 on a high note.A package of US $5.7 billion was unveiled for

setting up over 80 capacity-building institutions and freshtraining programmes that seek to empower nearly one billionpeople of the African continent and spur their resurgence.

These signature initiatives are aimed at building a ‘modern andcontemporary partnership’ between India and Africa. The two hadonce battled colonialism and are now leveraging their collective

weight to combat poverty and transform the world order. Theinitiatives, announced by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh onAfrica Day, struck a chord and were appreciated by the leadershipacross the continent. The African Union reciprocated by tellingIndia that it can ‘count on its support’ for the UN reforms. It alsodeclared support for New Delhi’s claim for a permanent seat inthe UN Security Council.

The summit, held every three years, culminated in the AddisAbaba Declaration and the Africa-India Framework for EnhancedCooperation – the two all-encompassing documents. These will

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DEVELOPMENT PARTNERSHIPS

The Second Africa-India Summit concluded on a high note as both the countries resolved to work closely on global issues

TEXT: MANISH CHAND

ENDURINGPARTNERSHIPS

Signature Initiatives� Offer of US $5 billion for the nextthree years under Lines of Credit tohelp Africa’s development.� Offer of an additional US $700million to establish newinstitutions and trainingprogrammes. � To support the development ofa new Ethio-Djibouti Railway lineto the tune of US $300 million. � Setting up an India-Africa VirtualUniversity & introducing 10,000new scholarships for Africanstudents at proposed varsity. � More scholarships for Africanstudents under the IndianTechnical and EconomicCooperation programme, takingtotal scholarships to 22,000 overthe next three years.� Establishment of an India-AfricaFood Processing Cluster; anIntegrated Textiles Cluster; ACentre for Medium RangeWeather Forecasting; A Universityfor Life and Earth Sciences andInstitute of Agriculture and RuralDevelopment. � Offer to increase the access ofAfrican airlines to Indian citiesover the next three years. � Proposal to work with RegionalEconomic Communities toestablish at the regional level, soil,water and tissue testing labs.� Proposal to establish institutesfor English language training,Information Technology,entrepreneurship developmentand vocational training. � Proposal to establish an India-Africa Business Council. � India to contribute US $2million for the African UnionMission in Somalia.

CLOSE COOPERATION: (facing page)Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singhwith Chairperson of the African UnionCommission Jean Ping in Addis Ababa;(left) the Prime Minister inspects theguard of honour in the Ethiopian capital

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serve as a template for expanding the development-centricpartnership revolving around enhanced trade, capacity-buildingand training till the next summit in New Delhi in 2014.

In the two documents as well as in the Prime Minister’sspeeches and comments at the summit, the message of Afro-optimism was inescapable. Dr Singh promised the leaders of15 countries, and selected by the AU, to represent the entirecontinent and that India will do everything possible to enableAfrica to realise its potential as ‘a major growth pole of the worldeconomy.’ “Africa is determined to partner in India’s economicresurgence as India is committed to be a close partner in Africa’s

renaissance,” stated the Addis Ababa Declaration. Both sidesalso committed themselves to supporting their candidatures‘with full rights’ in an expanded UN Security Council.

The summit reinforced unique and enduring features ofIndia’s multi-pronged approach which is animated by aresponse to Africa’s ‘needs, requests and priorities.’ Thisapproach, which makes the relations ‘a genuine two-way street,’sets it apart from other external partners of Africa which havetended to be prescriptive and focussed on extractive resourceswhile giving aid and assistance to the continent.

The outcome of the summit reflected India’s long-term

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UNITY IN DIVERSITY: (clockwise fromtop) Indian and African craftsmen showcase their work at the trade exhibition in Addis Ababa; particpatingcraftswomen in ‘Handcrafting Hope’; anAlgerian artiste regales an audiencewith his mandolin during a culturalshow; Indian craftswomen; Minister ofCommerce, Anand Sharma and the FirstLady of Ethiopia, Azeb Mesfin; and(bottom right) commemorative stamp released by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh


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commitment to develop Africa’s most precious resource of overhalf a billion young people by setting up a network of trainingcolleges in areas ranging from agriculture, rural development andfood processing to information technology, vocational training,English language centres and entrepreneurial developmentinstitutes. Signalling a new economic surge, India resolved to scaleup bilateral trade from US $46 billion to US $70 billion by 2015and agreed to set up clusters for food processing, textiles,agriculture and rural development. Infrastructure developmentgot an impetus with India pledging US $300 million Line of Creditfor a new Ethio-Djibouti railway line.

The second Africa-India Forum sought to add the much-

needed ‘strategic depth’ to the relationship as the two sidesresolved to closely coordinate on global issues such as the UNreforms, terrorism, piracy, global trade negotiations and climatechange negotiations. India made it clear to Western powers tryingto conjure up a zone of contention between New Delhi andBeijing that its engagement with Africa was based on somethingmuch larger than mere economics or strategy. It is a sense ofdeep-rooted solidarity and kinship that goes back to the sharedstruggle against colonial injustice and is being driven by a desirefor mutual resurgence. Investment in Africa, as Dr Singh saidmemorably at the end of the summit, is an act of faith.

—Manish Chand is with IANS and editor, Africa Quarterly

THE SUMMIT REINFORCEDUNIQUE AND ENDURING FEATURES OF INDIA’SMULTI-PRONGED APPROACH WHICH IS ANIMATED BY A RESPONSE TO AFRICA’S‘NEEDS, REQUESTS ANDPRIORITIES.’

ENTERTAINMENT UNLIMITED:(clockwise from left) Indian dancersperform at a gala cultural event; aposter of the Indian Film Festival heldduring the summit and an Africanchild shares a moment with an Indian craftswoman


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CELEBRATING LIVES OF INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE SHAPING THE NATION’S FUTURE

indiaTOMORROW

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Celebrating the

Human Spirit, Twelve Stories

of UntoldPossibilities

Anniversaries and birthdays resonatewith significance. They areopportunities to celebrate, markprogress and provide a frame to

gauge future potential. The birth of a nationis even more significant, it provides anoccasion for an appraisal of larger issues —the state of the economy, polity, futuredirections, past follies. As India marks her 64th year as an independent country there will be no shortage of tributes,souvenirs, specially designed programmesand unravelling of exhilarating statistics.

But far away from the debates and eventsis a universe in which a number ofindividuals are transforming the way we thinkabout ourselves as a nation. They arecertainly not household names nor do theyfollow any set formula but given theirpassion and pragmatism they have becomea vital part of the India story, perhaps a keyto her future. Representing diverse fields,they are innovative, dynamic, hearts andheads perfectly matched; all working towardsmaking India a better place. They are proofthat you don’t have to be supported by the government or large institutions to makea difference.

These are not standard-issue heroes but ground-level activists, entrepreneurs,cultural figures reacquainting us with theindominatable will of the human spirit.

India Perspectives showcases some ofthese icons-in-the-making. This selection isnot a celebrity circus nor is it the result of apopularity contest. It is also not a completelist by any means nor is it a balancedregional or professional representation.

What it is, is an attempt to highlight

performance-based, result-oriented individualswho are in the business of shaking things upby bringing important and serious issues into the national mainstream. Often unsungand unnoticed, these crusaders are so sureof what they want to do that they havehappily left greener pastures to follow their convictions. The 12 committed andcompassionate people profiled in this specialissue represent a slice of India.

Like Harivansh, who took a leap of faithwhen he shifted from the life of a high profilemetro journalist to become the editor andguiding force of the widely-circulated, multi-edition Prabhat Khabar by determinedlysticking to the basic principles of journalism— in spite of the prevailing belief that nothing succeeds like sensationalism. Formany consumers of news Harivansh has changed how people feel about the media. Then there is 34 year-old Saima Iqbal, anarchitect who has brought conservation andpreserving one’s architectural heritage intothe discourse of Jammu and Kashmir. Seewhat Anshu Gupta has accomplished whenhe left a blue chip company to set up aprofessionally-managed distribution networkthat gives clothes to the needy all over India.Or Chhavi Rajawat, a peppy MBA, who as thevillage head of Soda in Rajasthan has takencharge of the area’s development. Amongthe stories are also those of individualsrealising their potential. One such is aboutthe rise of the Prince Dance Group, run byKrishna Mohan Reddy and made up of 25illiterate daily wagers, whose only aim in lifeis to dance, dance, dance.

These then are inspiring stories of untoldpossibilities. Many happy returns, India. �

26 27JULYAUGUST 2011 � INDIA PERSPECTIVESINDIA PERSPECTIVES � JULYAUGUST 2011

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INDIA TOMORROW


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With her long tresses and willowy figure,Chhavi Rajawat can easily pass off as aslinky model or a Bollywood actor. Butinstead this MBA from Pune has donned

the role of a sarpanch or a village head of Soda, 60km from the state capital Jaipur, located in District Tonk, one of the most backward areas ofRajasthan. Only it’s not a role. This is real life for thethirty-year-old, clad in jeans and a T-shirt, driving herjeep to supervise the desilting of an old water body or taking a municipal officer to task while villagers listen to her with respect and sometimes shock. It was the same feeling Rajawat encountered when sheaddressed the 11th Info-Poverty World Conference at the UN when she spoke of the imperatives of

including new technologies in achieving the MillenniumDevelopment Goals.

This grit and glamour is all in a day’s work forRajawat ever since she left her senior managementposition with Airtel group’s Bharti Televentures to returnto her roots. Last year, Rajawat contested thepanchayat elections and won with a handsome marginfollowing in the footsteps of her grandfather RaghubirSingh who had been sarpanch of Soda for 15 years. “Itwas primarily the love, faith and respect for mygrandfather, who also looked after the development ofthis area, that people here wanted someone from thesame family to stand for elections,” she says with hertrademark candour. Since Soda is a seat reserved forwomen, Rajawat faced competition from 18 otherwomen candidates who had whittled down to 2 asvoting day drew closer.

A popular leader she is constantly helped bynumerous villagers as she implements her projects.

In spite of the number of ruraldevelopment schemes on paper the

villagers are still suffering and struggling.Someone has to take steps to fix it.


TEXT: URMILA MARAK

The WillDo Lady

POLITICS CHAVVI RAJAWAT

An MBA graduate is India’s youngest village head in Soda, Rajasthan

INDIA TOMORROW

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Rajawat’s priorities include ensuring safe drinkingwater for the villagers in this acutely saline-prone areabesides building water harvesting structures. Incharge of implementing the Mahatma GandhiNational Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Soda,she is also trying to increase job opportunities byinvolving NGOs. “For the reservoir revival project,which covers an area of 100 acres, I thought I wouldreceive support from NGOs and corporate houses,”explains the young sarpanch. But the response wasslow. She needs ` 35 million for the project but asyet has been able to collect only `2 million with helpfrom her immediate family and friends. “In spite ofthe number of rural development schemes on paperthe villagers are still suffering and struggling.Someone has to take steps to fix it,” she says.

In many ways, Rajawat’s MBA degree has helped inputting Soda in the public eye. The sarpanch has beenable to tap well wishers for funds even strangers havecontributed to her efforts after hearing her interviews onthe radio. “The degree has also helped me plan thingsand also made government officials realise that I meanbusiness and I am not here to kill time,” she says.

The thought of her contemporaries in the corporateworld earning the big bucks doesn’t faze her. “I haveno regrets because the satisfaction I receive from beingable to execute projects and improve the lives of

10,000 plus people is far more than any fat salary canbring me, ’’ she says.

Rajawat has already been instrumental in opening the first bank in Soda but her to-do list remains packed.Water conservation, water management are top itemsfollowed by sanitation, reforestation, electrification,education, with a huge emphasis on primary educationand focussed vocational training and schemes for self-employment.

Grassroots politics has always inspired Rajawat.Still, being a sarpanch is not exactly a remunerativecareer path. So this young politician-cum-entrepreneur,together with a friend, who has represented India ininternational equestrian championships, has taken herlove for the great outdoors and her passion for horsesby teaching horse riding in the Equest Horse RidingAcademy. In between, her packed schedule she alsolooks after the family hotel in Jaipur.

Educated in Rishi Valley, Bengaluru and Lady ShriRam College, Delhi and then Pune, Chhavi representsthe new face of pan-India: Educated, committed andcommunity-oriented. The road ahead is daunting butjust after a year-and-a-half as a sarpanch, Chhavi isconfident that within three years she will be abletransform her village and bring about the change thatSoda as yet has been only dreaming about. �

More on Chavvi Rajawat at www.soda-india.in


The MBA degree has also helped me planand manage things a lot better and alsomade government officials realise that I mean business and I am not here to kill time. �


TEXT: USHA RAI

The EnergyStar

Without light and energy it is not possibleto change the face of rural India. “Thebackward villages of India cannot bemainstreamed for development unless

there is education and access to education should notbe blighted by a lack of electricity.” The thought droveGyanesh Pandey and his friends to look for alternativepower for some of the remotest villages of Bihar in east and west Champaran, Muzzafarpur, Sitamarhiand Lakisarai.

Pandey knew about life without electricity. FromBaithania village located in power-starved Chamaparan,his school years were spent outside the state. Aftercompleting his engineering from Banaras Hindu

University, he went to the United States for his mastersin engineering. It was there he began studying non-conventional energy sources — solar, wind energy and bio-diesel — but they did not seem workable options for Bihar.

When he returned to India he stumbled on the ideaof generating power from rice husk through a personproviding gasification technology for rice mills. However,instead of using diesel for turbines he hit on the ideaof rice husk. Some research work had already beendone on rice husk power in the Indian Institute ofTechnologies but Pandey’s job was to make it happen.The first plant of Husk Power Systems (HPS) — bornfrom the combined efforts of Pandey, his two friends,Ratnesh Yadav and Manoj Sinha and Charles W. Ransler, an American who studied with him in theUS — was set up in 2007 in the wilderness of Tamkuha,West Champaran, some seven hours from Patna.

TECHNOLOGY GYANESH PANDEY

The backward villages of India cannot bemainstreamed for development unless thereis education and access to education should

not be blighted by a lack of electricity.


He generates electricity from husk powerproviding a brighter future for Bihar

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The plant converts waste rice husk to combustiblegas that drives a small turbine. Today HPS has set up60 mini-power plants, each generating enough powerfor about four villages — depending on the size of thevillages and the power consumed. The mini-plants are also lighting up over 250 villages helping apopulation of 300,000.

Eighty five to ninety percent of the homes in thevillages where power is available are buying a six-hoursupply at ` 80 a month from HPS. It is enough tocharge a mobile phone and turn on two CFL bulbsensuring children finish their studies for the day andwomen their household chores. On a monthly basisHPS collects ` 40,000 to ` 50,000 as revenue fromsale of electricity but gives back to villages about `10,000 a month by generating employment.With the amount of rice husk generated in the state,Pandey estimates that Bihar has the capacity to run2,000 mini-power plants. Now HPS is developing afranchising model which will catapult it onto the globalsocial enterprise stage. It will also enlist Indian partnerswho want to open their own HPS franchise.

The environment-friendly HPS power plants havereduced the annual consumption of 42,000 litres ofkerosene and 18,000 litres of diesel in the villages.Since they are non-polluting, it is estimated that theHPS plants have saved 50,000 tonnes of Co2 being

released into the atmosphere between 2007 toAugust 2010. All these plus points have won HPS this June the coveted £120,000 Ashden Award forinnovations in sustainable energy.

Pandey has developed other streams of activity too.Providing power to rural India is just one part of his bigdream. Health, education, agriculture and women’sempowerment are other aspects of rural life that heseeks to delve into. “With a network of roads, wirefacilities coming to the region we will piggyback on theplants to set up medical care and health units in2014,” says Pandey.

A Husk Power University — run independently of HPSthrough a foundation called Samta Samriddhi — hasbeen set up training people to run the power plants.Thus his vision for employment and empowerment ofwomen is already taking shape. Using the char from therice husk women are being trained to make incensesticks. To speed up production and ensure quality of theincense Pandey developed a machine that costs about` 3,000. Some women have been given machines andtrained so that they can earn at least ` 60 a day.

“It has been a continuous struggle but when you actually see villages light up and children studying at home, there is a huge sense of satisfaction,” admits Pandey. �

More on Gyanesh Pandey at www.huskpowersystems.com

With a network of roads, wire facilitiescoming to the region we will piggybackon the plants to set up medical care and health units in 2014.


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TEXT: SWATI BHASIN

Symbol ofSuccess

Ayear ago Dharmalingam Udaya Kumar, 32,invented the rupee symbol. This month it hasemerged from the mint stamped on coins ofvarious denominations as well as ` 10 notes.

Now, everybody in India, from a child buying a toffee for50 paisa in Nagercoil to a person paying ` 10 for parkingat a busy bazaar in Delhi will be familiar with Kumar’sdesign, which was the winner of a contest organised bythe Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Kumar,who pursued his doctoral studies at the Industrial DesignCentre at IIT Bombay, beat 3,000 other participants to

take the prize of ` 250,000, which he has donated toPrajwala, a Hyderabad-based NGO.

Currently an assistant professor at the Indian Instituteof Technology in Guwahati, Kumar must be a proud manbecause India is only the second country in the world —the first being England — to have its currency symbolprinted on its notes. And the fifth to have a symbol at all.

The Indian rupee mark is a blend of the Devanagri —^j^ and the Roman ‘R’ and is based on the Indiantricolour and arithmetic equivalence according to thedesigner. Kumar chose this fusion so that the markwould be unique and be easily differentiated form therupiah of Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.Passionate about graphic design, typography, type designand design research, the young designer has to his credit

a Tamil font, Parashakti, and a book on Tamil typography.Born in Kallakurichi and brought up in Chennai,

Kumar is fascinated by the ocean, so much so that hehas designed Waterworld, a futuristic floating city to dealwith congestion in Mumbai. A visit to his webpagewww.dudayakumar.com reveals that the bachelor is asports enthusiast, a nature lover and leads a simplelifestyle. Also, he strongly believes in himself and certainfundamental principles – righteousness, equality, love,trust, cleanliness and discipline. He says “Every time Isee the symbol in newspapers and magazines, it strikesme, it is my biggest achievement so far.” Anachievement that has ensured his place in India’sbusiness history. �

More on D. Uday Kumar at www.dudayakumar.com

ECONOMY D. UDAYA KUMAR


The designer of the rupee symbol now turnshis attention to making jewellery from junk

Every time I see thesymbol in newspapers

and magazines, it strikesme, it is my biggestachievement so far.

AFP

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TEXT: ERAM AGHA

Life through a Lens

TECHONOLOGY RIKIN GANDHI

Our goal is to support livelihood of farmersacross India and in the world. Problems of

health, nutrition, and credit need to bedealt with as well.


All that Rikin Gandhi required was a vision anda video camera to build Digital Green, a not-for-profit organisation that uses tools ofinformation and communication technology

for social change. “I visited India for a bio-diesel venturein 2006 and interacted with rural India for the first time.That’s when I realised that farmers don’t have an accessto right information. I joined Microsoft Research inBengaluru to figure out how technology interspersedwith social organisation can be applied for thebetterment of marginal and small farmers,” he says. Theresult is the Bengaluru-based organisation, Digital Green.Over time it has spun off and is now an independententity of which Gandhi is CEO.

Born and brought up in the US, Gandhi holds aMaster’s degree in aeronautical and astronauticalengineering from the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology in the US – he is mentioned in theinstitute’s list of innovative thinkers. After completinghis course he joined Oracle as a software engineer, butthe 29-year-old with a pilot’s licence for the US AirForce harboured ambitions of joining the US spaceprogramme. However, his visit to India five years agochanged all that. ‘‘While growing up I read biographiesof astronauts, they would go to space and see theworld differently from that formidable height. Questionslike, ‘What will I do when I come back to Earth?’occurred to them. Some of them became farmers orschoolteachers after coming back to Earth. DigitalGreen, for me is a step to reconnect with people.’’

Gandhi’s story runs a trajectory similar to that of thecharacter played by Shah Rukh Khan in the Hindi film

A US-born aeronautical engineer’s greendream won the hearts of farmers in India

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Because there is a need to build trust inany method of knowledge dissemination,our videos carry the names of the farmersand their villages. This adds authenticity.

Swades. “No. I am not inspired by that story as I havenot seen the film,” Gandhi affirms. All the same like theprotagonist in Swades, Gandhi too ‘‘reverse-migrated’’to work with farmers in India. After arriving in India,Gandhi quickly grasped the loopholes of the traditionalmethods of disseminating knowledge among farmers.He worked out a plan that would make Digital Greendifferent. ‘‘There were traditional ways like broadcast TVand radio which were very generic. Some programmeswere intensive in their training and work but they werenot cost effective. Because there is a need to build trustin any method of knowledge dissemination, our videoscarry the names of the farmers and their villages. Thisadds authenticity. Use of videos makes the systemdemonstrative!” says Gandhi. The stars of the videosare the farmers themselves. They are shot by hand-held camcorders demonstrating farming techniques,the footage is then checked by partner NGOs foraccuracy and then screened in villages using hand-heldprojectors. Gandhi’s interaction with the farmers hasbeen facilitated by social groups already working withthe local community.

The farmers recognise the change Digital Green, whichreaches 56,015 farmers, has brought about in their lives.Says Mallappa Pudabangi, 52, a farmer from villageDasanatti, Belgaum in Karnataka: “It is a very useful

platform for us to learn about effective farming techniques.When I saw the film I was motivated to change my wayof farming.” His enthusiasm is palpable when he says thatthe farmers need many more Rikin Gandhis.

In the course of his research, Gandhi discovered thaturban Indians are disconnected with food. ‘‘In the sensethey know what to eat and from where to buy but don’tknow anything about agriculture and rural set-up,’’ saysGandhi. To help the urban population connect with thefarming community Digital Green started a game calledWonder Village through which the urban population getsto understand issues of rural development.

So far, the farmers have shot around 1,609 videos.But this is just a beginning. Gandhi’s plans are as big asthe fields he works for. ‘‘When one of our videos wasshown to President Obama on his recent trip to India,there was talk on how India and the US can cometogether for agricultural development in Africa. Also, wehave to work with the Institute of International Agricultureand look at best practices that can be used and sharedwith the local community. Our goal is to supportlivelihood of farmers across India and in the world.Problems of health, nutrition, and credit need to be dealtwith as well,” says Gandhi. It seems Gandhi’s greendreams are becoming a reality. �

More on Rikin Gandhi at www.digitalgreen.org


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It was towards the end of 2006 that Rangsutra wasset up as a bridge between, “artisans and cus-tomers, tradition and contemporary and change andcontinuity.” From the three groups of artisans who

began working with Rangsutra when it was launchedthe company now comprises 30 groups, each with 25to 200 skilled artisans. In some 2,000 homes acrossthe country artisans are working for Rangsutra. Of them1,100 are shareholders coming from remote parts ofthe country – the deserts of Rajasthan, the hills of Ut-taranchal and the underdeveloped areas of AndhraPradesh, Assam and West Bengal.

The driving force behind Rangustra is a diminutivepowerhouse, the Delhi-based Sumita Ghose. A

Fulbright scholar, she was working with artisans in Rajasthan in the mid-eighties when, she, along withSanjoy Ghose, set up URMUL, an NGO, which tappedthe traditional skills of weaving and embroidery to helpfarmers to improve their lives. In 2006, she decided togo back on that road and work out how the artisancommunity could become part of a thriving India.

Ghose’s guiding principle has been to celebrateIndia’s rich crafts heritage, ensuring a sustainable livelihood for artisans by creating quality, handmadeproducts and marketing them by strictly using fair tradepractices. Profits from sale are ploughed back to providefor a better life for the artisan communities. “Socially”, saysthe bespectacled Ghose, “craftspeople and artisans comefrom some of the most disadvantaged communities withvery little opportunity for self-development and growth.”

Making the company market-oriented was the realchallenge since it was not mandated to be dependent

Socially, craftspeople and artisans comefrom some of the most disadvantaged

communities with very little opportunityfor self-development and growth.


TEXT: USHA RAI

Artisans TurnShareholders

CRAFT SUMITA GHOSE

A diminutive powerhouse develops a profitable community-owned company

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on grants. Before asking artisans to step in with their financial contributions, Ghose took two loans – ` 2.3 million from Avishkaar, a social venture or angelfund and ` 3 million from Artisans Micro Finance, a subsidiary of FabIndia, an organisation which connectsartisans to modern urban markets; Ghose’s own contribution was `1 million. While her two big funders own 50 percent of the shares, she, along withother artisans, owns the rest. Gradually she hopes toraise the shares of the artisans to 49 percent.

The venture fund has paid twice the price the artisanpaid for a share and barely five years down the line thevalue of a share has increased five-fold, from `100 to `500. “Though there are 1,100 shareholders, the num-ber of workers associated with Rangsutra is over 2,000.I am confident that gradually all of them will becomeshareholders,” says Ghose. All shareholders get dividends and in the last three years, Rangsutra’s dividends have risen from 10 percent in 2008-2009 to25 percent this financial and turnover has soaredfrom ` 3 million in 2006-’07 to `105 million in 2010-2011.

Driven by a commitment for excellence, Ghose,along with her two young designers, Ritu Suri and RuchiTripathi, both graduates of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, is constantly motivating the artisans,

giving them new designs, searching for fresh marketsand sourcing new talent and group specialisations. Forinstance, Mahila Sannathkar’s forte, in the old city of Hyderabad, is aari embroidery, quality stitching and tailoring. In the Sundarbans area of West Bengal, thereare some 200 artisans who specialise in silk batik. WhileRangsutra’s biggest buyer is FabIndia, it also exports asmall amount of its exquisite products to France, theNetherlands and the UK.

Seventy percent of Rangsutra’s workers are women.Working part-time from their homes and depending onthe level of their skills they are able to earn anythingfrom ` 3,000 to ` 5,000 a month whereas earlier theymay have sporadically earned anything from ` 500 to ` 1,000. Working full- time skilled male workers canearn up to ̀ 10,000 in a month: the payment piece rateis the same for men and women.

For many, being a shareholder in a profitable venture is a huge sense of accomplishment. Theshares women have in Rangsutra are not just scraps ofpaper. For them it is a new form of saving, as valuableas the chunky silver they wear, which probably explainswhy one of the artisans has chosen to frame her shareand hang it prominently on a wall in her house – anobvious symbol of a resurgent India. �

More on Sumita Ghosh at www.rangsutra.com


I am confident that gradually all the 2,000 workers associated with Rangsutrawill become shareholders.

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TEXT: SWATI BHASIN

The MaterialMan

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR ANSHU GUPTA

I never followed any conventions; I didn’tknow anybody who could guide me. I made

my own rules for approaching people,giving presentations and fundraising.


It was while Anshu Gupta was on a freelanceassignment with the Deccan Chronicle on a bitterlycold winter night in Old Delhi that he realised howextremely privileged he was. He stumbled upon a

barely clad man trying to keep the cold away with liquor.It was a troubling narrative. But for the twentysomethingGupta those images gave an insight into the importanceof clothing: the lack of which could lead to death; thepresence of which was a road to dignity. Not longafterwards, leaving a job with a blue chip company, Guptaset up Goonj (literally echo) devoting his life to collectingclothes contributed by the advantaged and distributingthem to those in need.

From a niggling idea that thought has now become

a streamlined movement. Gupta, a strapping forty year-old with the build of a basketball player, is at the hubof a collection centre-cum-office-cum-recycling unit inDelhi’s trendy Sarita Vihar. In a very functional officewhere the walls are decorated with precious awards,charts showing schedules, goals, Gupta and a team offive, along with 300 volunteers, collects, coordinatesand dispatches clothes. From the 67 items that Guptainitially picked out of his own wardrobe Goonj presentlyprovides 70,000 kgs of clothes, utencils, schoolmaterial and old furniture every month to various partsof India. Helped by 250 partner groups Goonj’scollection centres operate in seven cities distributing to21 states. Looking back, Gupta says: “I never followedany conventions. I didn’t know anybody who couldguide me. I made my own rules for approachingpeople, giving presentations and fundraising.”

It was unchartered territory for this powerful

A social innovator takes on the charge of clothing the needy

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I really do not believe in charity. That is why we have to change our thinking fromdonor’s pride to receiver’s dignity.

entrepreneur but the results have been satisfying. Thesize and the scope of the operation have growndramatically. Contributed clothes are divided accordingto gender, age, size and other demographic andgeographic needs. And the art of giving has extendedbeyond clothes to toys, books for children, electronicgadgets and office furniture. A separate unit isdedicated to making sanitary napkins for rural women from sun-dried cotton cloth filled with unusedmaterial donated by export houses. Five units are packed together and sold from `1 to ` 5 depending onthe spending capacity of the women in the villages. Presently, Goonj produces around 200,000 napkins every month for distribution to the ruralhinterland. Additionally, meetings are held to educatevillage women on hygiene and destroy myths about menstruation.

Gupta never intended Goonj to be an organisationthat pitied the deprived. Respecting the dignity of theneedy has been his mantra. That’s the reason why theprojects and schemes being put in place ehance thereceiver’s self-worth. The organisation’s Cloth for Workinitiative, for instance, ensures that clothes collected forvillagers are not distributed gratis. The villagers need to‘earn’ the clothes just like wages. In the remote areasof Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa typically villagers

collectively construct bore wells, bridges and repairdamaged roads in exchange for value-added clothes.Similar guidelines are also developed when toys andbooks are being distributed to children.

The core philosophy of Goonj lies in not wastinganything that is contributed. If it is not worthy ofdistribution it is all transformed creatively by untrainedhands: audio tapes are used to decorate handbags,colourful stress balls are made from swatches, mats andmattresses from waste material are some of the itemssold in fund-raising camps or distributed in villages.

Innovation and strategising has been a key elementof Gupta’s thinking. From an empty till, Goonj todayhas a turnover of around ` 40 million: around 50percent comes from individual contributions, the rest from the sale of products. “People invest theirmoney and they get happiness in return, he says.

It’s a trade-off which that has worked well which iswhy Gupta prefers to call himself a social entrepreneurinstead of a social worker because he knows he has togenerate enough money in order to meet the basicrequirements of logistics — staffing and transportation.“I really do not believe in charity. That is why,” says thisiconic entrepreneur-activist, “we have to change ourthinking from donor’s pride to receiver’s dignity.” �

More on Anshu Gupta at www.goonj.org


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TEXT: J.K. MOHAPATRA

Rhythm of Life

Six years ago, a 23-year-old daily wage labourerworking in Mumbai's construction industry sawa dream of building a dance troupe in hisnative village of Ambapua of Orissa's Ganjam

district. T. Krishna Mohan Reddy was not content witha life of lifting bricks and mixing cement. His passionwas dance. He left Mumbai and organised a smallgroup of like-minded friends in the town of Berhampurand called it the Prince Dance Group. After work, thegroup would start practising on the premises of adilapidiated Kali temple. His partners were twenty five

other boys, most of them school dropouts and dailylabourers, two of them were even afflicted by polio.Though none of them had any formal dance training,they were all keen to make a mark in local dance shows.

Things changed in 2006 when the Prince DanceGroup became runners-up in a TV reality dance show,Boogie Woogie on Sony. Mixing contemporary dancewith mythology the group put up a stellar performancethough they missed the crown by a whisker.

Life took on a more dramatic turn in 2009 when thegroup auditioned for the first edition of India's GotTalent, a reality show on Colors channel. Their dance,Saare jahan se achha choreographed by Reddy hadeveryone in tears “Everyone, starting from thecameraperson to judge Shekhar Kapoor was crying. It

was the happiest day of my life,” recounts Reddy. As scores of labourers and the general public in Orissa, as

well as in his village in Ambapua and neighbouring Berhampurtown, watched the finals on huge television screens, the grouptrumped their rivals by putting up a scintillating, act called DasAvatar, the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu. The ` 5 millionprize money was divided equally among all the memberswhile ` 50,000 was earmarked for the construction of a newKali temple, the premises on which they started their practice.

The group members are now full-time performers,travelling from festival to festival. They are starting a danceschool on a one-acre plot donated by the Orissagovernment near the Gopalpur-on-Sea beach. Fromlabourers to celebrities it’s been such a rewarding journey. �

More on PDG at www.princedancegroup.org

DANCE PRINCE DANCE GROUP


Daily wagers beat the odds and form anaward-winning dance group

Everyone, starting fromthe cameraperson to

judge Shekhar Kapoorwas crying. It was the

happiest day of my life.

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Founder of the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram(KYM) in Chennai, T.K.V. Desikachar is one ofthe world’s foremost yoga teachers and arenowned authority on the therapeutic uses of

the discipline. It is difficult to believe that the master wasonce a reluctant student, going as far as to hide in a treeto avoid classes with his teacher and father TirumalaiKrishnamacharya, who was a strict disciplinarian and ademanding task master. No surprise then that the youngDesikachar was glad to get away from home to pursuea degree in engineering.

He graduated at the top of his class and landed agood job. But before he could embark on his new career, an incident changed the course of his life. It was1961, Desikachar was reading the newspaper sitting inthe balcony of his home when he espied an elegantly

dressed woman stepping out of an expensive car infront of his house. Sounding very excited she called outto Desikachar’s father. The moment she spotted Krishnamacharya, she hugged him and exclaimed,‘‘Thank you! Thank you very much!’’ The yoga gurusmiled and led her inside. Desikachar wondered why a Western woman was hugging his extremely conservative father.

Soon Desikachar would learn that the woman was achronic patient of insomnia and was being treated byhis father. The night before the visit was the first timein years that she had had a restful sleep without any medication. The relief was so great that she had rushedto thank Krishnamacharya. This was an eureka momentfor Desikachar, in that instant he understood the valueand importance of his father’s work; that yoga was notan esoteric philosophy or about dogmatic rituals, it wasabout transforming lives. ‘‘I realised how great myfather was, and how much he had to share withpeople. I decided to give up my career and become a

I decided to give up my career and becomea yoga student at a time when yoga was

not popular. Such a decision from a youngengineer with a secure job was unusual.


TEXT: NINA MUKHERJI

Master of the Mat

YOGA T.K.V. DESIKACHAR

The teacher spreads the belief that yoga is notmerely a set of exercises for physical fitness

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yoga student,’’ says Desikachar. ‘‘It was a time when yoga was not popular and such a decision from a young engineer with a secure job wasextremely unusual.’’

The son quickly turned disciple and asked his fatherto become his guru. Together they worked to give afresh impetus to the spread of yoga in its pure form. Iftoday yoga is a part of the lives of millions across theworld, it is due in large measure to the efforts of Krishnamacharya. While preserving ancient wisdomand reviving lost teachings, he developed and adaptedyoga practices that would offer health, mental clarityand spiritual growth to an individual. His knowledge ofyoga was so vast that he taught each studentdifferently, refusing to standardise the practice andteaching methodology. ‘‘We still adhere very strictly toour teacher Krishnamacharya’s philosophy of teachingyoga as it applies to the other. So each individual isgiven a specific set of asanas pertaining to his or herneeds and requirements,’’ says Geetha Shankar, asenior member of the faculty at KYM.

Some of the world’s best minds like Jiddu Krishnamurthy, a well-known writer and speaker onphilosophical and spiritual issues, studied under Desikachar and his father. It was the meeting with Krishnamurthy that helped Desikachar take yoga beyond the shores of India. ‘‘My father’s pioneering

effort in bringing different healing traditions of the worldtogether has resulted in KYM becoming one of the bestknown yoga therapy and research centres of the world.He has popularised yoga in many countries acrossEurope and America,’’ says Kausthub Desikachar, who isCEO of KYM. Krishnamacharya passed away in 1989, in2006 Desikachar, along with Kausthub, founded theKrishnamacharya Healing and Yoga Foundation (KHYF),which is committed to spreading the holistic yogateachings of T. Krishnamacharya.

Desikachar has authored many publications, including Health, Healing and Beyond and The Heartof Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice. Today, KYM, a registered public charitable trust, is a multi-departmental institution which employs over 30 teachers. His entire family, his wife, Menaka, sons,daughter and daughter-in-law are involved in one wayor the other with the running of the place. The institute,which has over a thousand students on a monthlybasis, offers courses in yoga studies and yoga therapy.Vedavani, a unit of KYM, also researches and teachesVedic chanting while KYM-Mitra is an outreachprogramme that gifts yoga to the underpriveleged anddifferently abled. Krishnamacharya had said, ‘‘Yoga isabout life,’’ and Desikachar and KYM continue tospread his message. �

More on T.K.V. Desikachar at www.kym.org


My father’s pioneering effort has resulted in KYM becoming one of the best known yoga therapy and researchcentres of the world.

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Most architects like nothing more than totalk about their buildings, plodding throughPowerPoint presentations to show off theirnew constructions. But there are a few

who believe that preserving historical buildings is a wayto honour the past and define the future. Thirty four year-old Saima Iqbal belongs to the later category. In the faceof inflation, apathy, neglect and uncertain times, Iqbal,Kashmir’s only conservation architect, is determined todocument and restore the diverse architectural historyof Jammu and Kashmir. “The architecture of this state isunique. It has features of the Hindu period — typified bythe massive stone temples like Martand, Awantipur,Naranga — the Muslim period and to some extent theBuddhist period.”

Speaking from a cramped one-room office of theIndian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage(INTACH) in Srinagar’s Press Enclave area, Iqbal,together with six others, is diligently classifyinghundreds of heritage monuments and buildings thatdot Jammu and Kashmir, including 70 monumentsprotected by the Centre and 26 monuments protectedby the State. Srinagar itself has 838 listed properties,though only 18 fall in a Grade1 classification and enjoylegal protection.

On any given day locals will see Iqbal with her short-cropped hair, laden with papers and a camera takingnotes and pictures and red-flagging problem areas. Itwas as a student at Presentation Convent, the Valley’spremier missionary school, that young Iqbal dreamt ofbecoming an architect. She recalls endlessly drawingsketches of houses, buildings, rivers and mountainswhile her father Zafar Iqbal, who was with the MilitaryEngineering Services, would travel the State building

I have never thought of leaving Kashmir.As an architect, there may be betteropportunities outside and a lot more

money but moving out is not an option.


TEXT: NASEER AHMAD

The HeritageWarrior

CONSERVATION SAIMA IQBAL

A young architect makes conservation part ofthe development discourse of the State

INDIA TOMORROW

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bridges. Having graduated in architecture in 1999 fromMSIA, Bijapur she returned home and started work withsome local architects. But she wanted something morethen simply overlapping bricks with mortar.

Soon soul mates Sameer Hamdani, Jabeen Mehjoorand Abid Hussain Khan joined up and in 2004 thequartet established the INTACH chapter of Jammu andKashmir. Later, Saleem Beg, whose expertise in heritageconservation made him the natural choice to head thechapter, joined in. “Saima was the first professional tojoin the campaign. Her efforts and that of her team havemade conservation and heritage part of thedevelopment discourse of the State,” admits Beg.

The first major project the team undertook was thecultural mapping of 1,600 year-old Srinagar especiallyits downtown areas which contain 250 historicalmonuments within a 3km area. The heritage warriorswent street by winding street, listing buildings, bridges,mosques, shrines and temples; dividing the area intoheritage zones. The initiative was not easy. One day aman followed Iqbal upto her office threatening policeaction against the architect who, he thought, was takingphotographs of his house to get a bank loan.

Eventually an exhaustive inventory of heritagebuildings made its way into a five-volume book,Cultural Resource Mapping of Srinagar City. The widelyacclaimed tome, now condensed into two volumes, isthe only historical database available on the heritage

buildings of Srinagar. Another precious project has beenthe Aali Masjid, the second largest mosque in Srinagarafter Jamia Mosque. Constructed in 1471 AD, duringthe rule of Sultan Hassan Shah, the mosque locatednear Eidgah in the Old City has been renovatedbecoming one of the best examples of Kashmir’svernacular wooden architecture. The history of themosque corresponds to four distinct political rules —the Sultanate, Mughals, Afghans and the Dogra periodsduring which the last known renovation wasundertaken. “It was very rewarding. We actually workedwith masons and carpenters to finish this INTACHproject,” she says proudly.

Presently, Iqbal is working round the clock to includethe Valley’s six Mughal Gardens — Nishat, Shalimar,Achabal, Chashma Shahi, Pari Mahal and Verinag — inUNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites. The listing willhelp Kashmir become a global tourism destination.

Even with an M.Sc in Historical Conservation fromOxford, Iqbal is sure she does not want to leaveSrinagar for better prospects. “I have never thought ofleaving Kashmir. As an architect, there may be betteropportunities outside and a lot more money butmoving out is not an option.” Out of the original team,two have already left but for the indefatigable Iqbal,“There is too much to be done here.” Clearly, Iqbal’sjourney of discovery has only just begun. �

More on Saima Iqbal at www.intach.org


The architecture of this state is unique. It hasfeatures of the Hindu period — typified bythe stone temples like Martand, Awantipur — and Muslim and Buddhist periods.

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Old School is the Right School

MEDIA HARIVANSH

The newspaper is committed to thecommon man which is why we have an

emotional bond with our readers.


Scan any list of India’s leading editors and thename Harivansh will be somewhere near thetop. The bespectacled, unassuming editor ofPrabhat Khabar embodies the journalistic

values of the old school: an irreverence for power, astrong belief that media is a tool for social and politicalchange and a conviction in the Gandhian principle thatit is readers who are the masters and the market is notthe king. In an era when sensationalism masqueradesas news; when celebrities make it to headlines moreoften than development issues; where a witty phrasecan be shrunk to 140 characters, 56 year-old Harivanshis an anachronism.

But he is a successful anachronism. As he himselfsays, Prabhat Khabar, tucked away in central Ranchi,

the capital of Jharkhand is an “experiment in today’sjournalism.” At the helm of the paper since 1989,Harivansh has seen the Hindi paper grow from ashoddily produced, eight-page daily, with a circulationof 600 brought out by an outdated printing press intoone published from 11 centres, with 60 editions and an audited circulation of 700,000 making it the eighth-largest Hindi paper in India and number one in Jharkhand.

In essence, the daily’s story is the story of onejournalist’s determination to create, as its motto says, ‘amovement not a paper.’ Brought up in rural India, aformer lecturer and bank officer, Harivansh opted forjournalism as a chosen career path. Trained undericonic journalists like Dharmveer Bharati and S.P. Singhand hugely influenced by Jaiparakash Narain, a politicalleader and noted social reformer, Harivansh took upthe challenge to edit Prabhat Khabar bought by theKolkata-based business group, Usha Martin. It was, well

A determined editor from the Hindi beltcreates a movement not a newspaper

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Such reader interaction through thesepeople’s forums was a new experience forus too. We also learnt along the way.

wishers said, a misguided leap of faith. With poorinfrastructure the paper’s catchment area was southBihar — perhaps one of the most backward areas ofthe country. But the pessimism was misplaced.

The root of Prabhat Khabar’s success has been its emphasis on the core values of journalism: lookingwith compassion and clarity at the life of the commonman. The ideal people’s spy in the corridors of power, Harivansh has ensured that during the last 22 years the activist-paper exposed scams that havebrought down politicians, reported on under-development resulting in a Supreme Court interventionand busted drug rackets. The paper even created amass movement for the separation of a new Jharkhandstate from Bihar which finally came about in 2000.

Harivansh’s pro-people approach runs counter to the over-processed, glossy, corporate-soaked tabloidstrategy followed by other Hindi national dailies whichare mopping up advertisements but leaving readerscold. “It has been a conscious decision not to followthe ‘lifestyle’ journalism that was adopted by themainstream media. The paper is committed to thecommon man which is why we have an emotionalbond with our readers,” says Harivansh.

On a shoestring budget he has put into place amodern newsroom, upgraded production technology,the paper’s design and layout and linked centres

through a computer network. He has also introducedthe idea of ‘reader involvement’ in developing editorialcontent. Journalists organise regular readers’ meets intowns and villages in which people explain what theywant to see in the newspaper. “Such interactionsthrough these people’s forums was a new experiencefor us, too. We learnt along the way,” he explains.

The strategy has paid off. The paper has more thanheld its own against established Hindi dailies from largemedia groups whose aggressive marketing strategieshave included distributing expensive gifts to enhancecirculation and cutthroat cover prices. Circulation hasincreased dramatically and by 1996 the paper hasbeen running without financial support from UshaMartin and launched several editions.

Alongside, there has been some inclement weatherlike the expected political pressure. Harivansh has30 court cases lined up against him. Five years ago,there was even a chance that the paper’s ownershipwould change leaving its editor in a vulnerable position.

But the turbulence has passed. With a strongerbottom line, Harivansh is able to commit editorialresources for newsgathering that will make anyaccountant cringe. This son of a farmer clearly believesthat, for the future of journalism, the old school is theright school. �

More on Harivansh at www.prabhatkhabar.com


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TEXT: URMILA MARAK

On a HighNote

Few in India had heard the dulcet tones of theShillong Chamber Choir till they had won thereality show, India’s Got Talent, aired onentertainment channel Colors last year. But in

point of fact the choir has been around since 2001and had already received much international acclaim:last year, they were awarded three gold medals in theWorld Choir Games, an Olympic-styled event, inShaoxing China. But it was when the group sang Yehdosti hum nahin todenge from the Hindi film, Sholayor classics such as Ajeeb dastaan hai yeh from thefilm Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai that the whole of Indiagot hooked.

However, neither the choir nor its mentor-cumdirector-cum-manager, 41year-old pianist NeilNongkynrih are consciously reaching out for fame andfortune. When the choir is not travelling it is ensconcedin a house in Shillong, admittedly India’s Rock capital,owned by Nongkynrih’s family. Here the youngsters livetogether, pray together and practice eight hours a dayin one seamless thread.

It’s a dedicated and loyal group. Some members like Ibarisha Lyngdoh, a soprano with the choir hasbeen offered a place at the prestigious Julliard Schoolof Music in New York, William Basaiawmoit, a studentof St Stephen’s College has been offered a scholarshipin France. But they’re not leaving the choir preferring tostay in Shillong under tutelage of ‘Uncle Neil.’ AsNongkynrih says: “When you join a choir group, youhave to look beyond the superficial and materialistic.

We are not just a choir group our goal is to promote peace,humanity and hope.”

From single digits the choir has now expanded to a 20-member team ranging from 15 to 29 years. Most of themhave come into the fold in search of a more meaningful life,others for inspiration, some for a gap year from their chosencareer paths but they all have an almost spiritual faith in theirmusic which is eclectic and timeless — a mixture of jazz,baroque, Khasi, pop, classical and contemporary.

It’s a mixture that has won them admirers all over theworld. The choir has performed with the Vienna ChamberOrchestra, the Sri Lankan choir in China, participated in twoWorld Choir Games and preformed for the Presidents of Indiaand the United States. And this unique music group is nowheaded towards Europe and Canada for a concert eventsponsored by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. �

More on SCC at www.shillongchamberchoir.com

MUSIC SHILLONG CHAMBER CHOIR


Their music, a mixture of jazz, Khasi, Hindifilms and pop, has won them global admirers

When you join a choirgroup, you have to look

beyond the superficial andmaterialistic. We are not

just a choir group our goalis to promote peace,humanity and hope.

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He has built hundreds of homes in Bengaluru.But Dr Chandrashekar Hariharan is hardly ahousehold name in India’s IT city. Only the‘green’ folk know him and the wanna-be

greens who closely monitor his projects. For Hariharan, is Bengaluru’s, and perhaps India’s,

foremost green builder with his ecologically friendly andself-sustainable homes which goes under the brandname of ZED, an acronym for Zero Energy Driven. TheZed way is no grid supply for water, no grid sewagedisposal, minimal dependence on the power grid andmaximum dependence on green building materials.

A Johnny-come-lately to the building industry, TeamZed has managed to walk away with a clutch of

20 awards given for sustainable development,environment friendly homes, water management andexcellence in sustainable architecture.

The world according to Hariharan is a long list of list ofno’s – no bricks, no clay blocks, no clay tiles, no ceramicor vitrified tiles, no forest timber, no incandescent bulbs,no regular fluorescent lamps, no halogen lamps, nogeysers, no toxic paints, no export of waste and no importof municipal water.

These no’s are replaced by soil stabilised blocksinstead of brick, natural stone instead of vitrified tiles,plantation wood instead of conventional teak. The use ofCFLs, LEDs , solar water heaters, recycled water andorganic garbage which turns into bio gas are all babysteps that can make a home green. One of the mainpillars that Zed homes adhere to is the concept of“embodied energy” which is the amount of energyconsumed up to the point of use of a product or

The ancients moved water uphill in places like Amber in Rajasthan and in Hampi in

Karnataka. How did they do it?


TEXT: ROSHIN VARGHESE

The ZeroHero

ARCHITECTURE CHANDRASHEKHAR HARIHARAN

A former journalist reconciles architecturewith environmental responsibility

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material, including the acquisition of raw materials,processing, manufacture, transport and construction.Senior project manager, B.S. Harikrishna says: “We arenot building the way we do for getting a platinum awardor for a better grading but to create a sustainable home.”

Hariharan,’s real strength has been his nine years inwater management while working with several NGOs. Aformer journalist who quit the profession because “itmerely reported change and did not initiate change,” hisexpertise in water conservation and garnering of waterresources has challenged mainstream builders. Lookingback, he agrees that the history of water managementhas been his inspiration. “The history and architecture ofwater in India fascinates me. The ancients moved wateruphill in places like Amber in Rajasthan and in Hampi inKarnataka. How did they do it? After all, Hampi had apopulation of 58,000 people who needed water for theirdaily use! They studied gradient levels and tanks wereconstructed,” he says passionately.

He has used the same principles in a project, T-Zed ,completed in 2007. T-Zed with its 76 flats and 15 villasis located in Whitefield, a suburb of Bengaluru and atraditionally water critical area with no municipal supply.A combination of 44 interconnected shallow wells, thejudicious pumping up of water, along with a system ofwater percolation and ground water recharge has beenthe success behind water sufficiency in T-Zed. Resident

Vinay Nair concedes that in the past four years, a watertanker has supplied the six-acre property with water onlythree or four times.

The Zed Collective has the added advantage of geo-thermal cooling which has been introduced to coolthe building. A seemingly simple method of using lateritewalls and mud blocks has also been used to cool thebuildings thus bypassing conventional air-conditioning.This is due to a “respect for traditional knowledge withcontemporary engineering understanding,” according toHariharan, who has a doctorate in econometrics.

The Zed team of architects, engineers and designersare constantly thinking out of the box, designing energyefficient fans, lights, verdant lawns on sloping roofs,vertical gardens, engineered masonry blocks, usingbamboo flooring that looks like wood, building homesand workspaces that consume less energy and are inharmony with natural surroundings. “Restoring the skinof the earth” as Hariharan says, is a priority, and thesensitive stewardship of the land with each project hasearned them kudos.

The company which started off as BiodiversityConservation India Ltd in 1995 and morphed into Zedhas made a dent in the ecologically friendly, but stylish,chic homes segment, a far cry from the rustic homesone associates with the green homes of yesterday. �

More on C. Hariharan at www.ecobcil.com


There has to be respect for traditionalknowledge with contemporaryengineering understanding.

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The sun was about to dip out of sight, painting the sky a strange orangey hue over CinecitaStudios in Rome. Pointing upwards, Federico Fellini, midway through an interview, tellsme: “You know what I like about being a director. I can play God. Look at that sunset. IfI don’t like it I can always change it. If the moon is too high in the sky, I can always move

it down.” Fellini’s words from two decades ago resurface in my mind as Adoor Gopalakrishnan talksin his measured way about how he makes his films. The two are masters of their created universes, albeit fundamentally different ones. Actors are ‘mediums’ for both. Adoor also likes toplay God on his sets. His films are translations of his vision, and everything and everyone else issubservient to that vision, idea or moral issue he happens to be chewing on at the time.

We are sitting in the living room of his magnificent home in Thiruvananthapuram. The

Multi-award winning director, Adoor Gopalakrishnan has revolutionised cinema in aland known primarily for its Bollywoood films. A profile as the master turns seventy.

ADOORSEVENTY

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director’s abundant mane glows like a silver halo against the backdrop of therather sombre interior of his Travancore-style home. The sloping ceiling and thewalls are made of deep, dark, old wood.With the lighting at a bare minimum enhancing the amber glow of the walls,you can’t help the fleeting impression thatAdoor, his face slipping in and out of thedarkness as he moves in his chair, is inside a Rembrandt painting.

At an agile 70, Adoor, just 11 featurefilms and several documentaries old, hasa long way to go before he yells cut forhimself. Film critics have often asked himwhy his over-three-decade-long career asa director has yielded so few films. Hemade his first feature film, Swayamvaram(One’s Own Choice), in 1972. His latest,Oru Pennum Randaanum (A Climate forCrime) in 2008.

And in between came Kodiyettam(The Ascent), Elippathayam (The RatTrap), Mukhamukham (Face to Face),Anantharam (Monologue), Mathilukal(The Walls), Vidheyan (The Servile),Kathapurushan (The Protagonist) andNaalu Pennungal (Four Women).

Obviously, Adoor likes to take his timeover his films. His are not pressure-cookerfilms, the ‘factory’ kind for which youthrow in all the ingredients and turn upthe heat. His oeuvre is marinated, slow-cooking: ideas and concepts livewith him for a long time — at times formany years — before they find their realisation on celluloid. He is a chroniclerof his times, focussing his lens on a society in transition. To use the metaphorof a long exposure, the director has, overthe years, captured both the gradual, attimes barely perceptible, collapse of a

social order and decline of feudalism aswell as the advent of democracy and‘modernity’. The cineaste poignantly depicts the dilemma of the individualcaught in the vortex of social change.

Adoor works only with what he knows.The cineaste’s obsession with authenticityis well known: he won’t touch periodfilms, no matter how tempting the subject. “I can’t do any falsification of thepast. I make films only about the period I have lived through — nothing before the 1940s.”

His first film — after a couple of falsestarts based on plays by others — had its genesis in his own life. “For Swayamvaram, I wrote a script about mystruggle. I did not run away with a younggirl, as in the film. But the undercurrent ofthe film is about somebody’s dream tobecome a writer before actually going

through the experience of living… Thefilm starts off with genuine roots in reallife. The experience may be interesting,but you have to make it acceptable. Ithas to be specific, and it has to be truthful to its specificity. In the creation ofmy film, I discover myself. Your mentalclimate is likely to get reflected in yourwork.” Apparently, most viewers havenot cottoned on to the autobiographical element in his films.

Adoor is nothing if not reticent — oftenretreating into the shell of formality —while most of the protagonists in hisfilms are vulnerable and filled with angst.Interestingly, other cineastes have beenable to read between the lines. He is adirector’s director. “I feel that film-makershave understood my work more thanothers. When Elippathayam was shownin Kolkata in 1982, Mrinal Sen put his

arm round me and asked, “Did you gothrough intense pain and agony?” I askedhim how he knew. And he replied: “It isthere in the film. No critic would havesaid that.”

So, if you look carefully and read between the images, Adoor has laid baresome of his early life, rather essences ofa life transmogrified into cinema throughthe “reworking of memory”. “Yes, I amre-creating the atmosphere of Adoor inThiruvananthapuram,” he says.

The cineaste grew up in his village,called Adoor, located between Thiru-vananthapuram and Kottayam, midwaybetween the hills and the sea, but reallyneither. The place is the crucible of hisimagination, where his first “real love”,theatre, was nurtured. Much of his child-hood and adolescence was spent withinthe large fold of his mother’s family, as

(from extreme left):Exploring the landscape of God’s Own Country;with his wife

“THE ABSENCE OFMY FATHER

AFFECTED US, ESPECIALLY MY

ELDER BROTHERAND ME. IN THE

MIDST OF PLENTY,WE LED A

DIFFICULT LIFE.”

NNIIZZHHAALLKKKKUUTTHHUU ((22000022))(Shadow Kill)

SSWWAAYYAAMMVVAARRAAMM ((11997722))(One’s Own Choice)



burning. For the last twenty-five years,however, he has been making them onthe performing arts, alongside his featurefilms. “It is a learning period for me. Theresearch you do is a rewarding experience.The performing arts of our culture go toour roots. It is the mother tongue, the lan-guage that we speak. The genius of ourpeople is in our art forms… The culture ofdocumentaries is evident in my featurework. It is a kind of discipline, austerity in itsmaking — even when it is being made forsomebody else.”

In 2007, Adoor worked on a project,Dance of the Enchantress, on Mohiniattamwith French dancer Brigitte Chataignier.

The ‘discipline’ the director so unequiv-ocally pursues is evident in his relationshipwith his actors. “I don’t want my actors tointerpret the role on their own, as there will be a clash of interpretation. I don’t letthem read the script. I explain the

sequence and their role. This is my methodof working. I am not saying that this is theright way or not, but for me it makes forunity and integrity of work. It is my vision.An actor is not acting out a role to the au-dience. The immediate relationship is withme. He is acting out to me. Therefore, Ihave to correct and get it down to what Ineed. The actor remains as raw material.What he does doesn’t go as performed: itis qualified by what comes before and after,and by what I keep.”

In the early 1970s he, along with fourother graduates from FTII, established Chitralekha Film Unit to propagate the‘other’ cinema by setting up a film societymovement and also producing films.

Meanwhile, the director continues toexplore the landscape of God’s OwnCountry, Kerela, taking his camera into itsdarker corners and revealing its often troubled innerscapes. n

74

was the practice for those who belongedto the matrilineal system.

It was an intermittently happy childhood. His mother’s family was oflandlords and patrons of the arts. Heacted in and wrote plays when he was notquite a teenager: Thy Kingdom Comethand The Enlightenment That Came Lateare two of his early plays. “When I wasgrowing up, the modern play was emerging in Malayalam. I also wanted toread about Western theatre. Ibsen was abig influence on me. I read plays by N. Krishna Pillai and C.J. Thomas. My ambition was to write modern theatre. Ilearnt English and read all of Ibsen andGeorge Bernard Shaw. I used to read witha dictionary. I got a special chair made, likea planter’s chair, so that I could put thedictionary on the arm and keep a notebook for jotting down the words. Thisis how I read Galsworthy, Pirandello,

O’Neil, Williams and Wilder. And, ofcourse, the critics. As I started readingabout the plays, the number of words Iwrote came down.”

There was a captive audience of nearlyfifty family members, with his mother’sbrothers actively encouraging buddingplaywrights and actors. But life was not allrosy. “The absence of my father deeply affected us, especially my elder brotherand me. I became sensitive. In the midstof plenty, we led a difficult life without ourfather’s support. People in the paddy fieldscheat you. We regularly heard excuses. Itwas difficult… you can see some of this inKathapurushan. It was not just the poverty.Others may not have even realised this.We had to keep up with other relatives —we were the poorest branch of the family.We had to put up appearances.”

In the beginning, Adoor made documentary films to keep the home fire

ELIPPATHAYAM (1981)(The Rat Trap)

MUKHAMUKHAM (1984)(Face to Face)

“WHEN ELIPPATHAYAMWAS SHOWN INKOLKATA IN 1982,MRINAL SEN ASKED

ME: ‘DID YOU GO THROUGH INTENSEPAIN AND AGONY?”

MILESTONES

l Awarded the PadmaVibhushan, second- highest civilian honour in India. l Awarded the Dadasaheb Phalke Awardfor Lifetime Achievementin Films. l Awarded the Legion ofHonour, the highest decoration in France andin the Commandeur ofthe Ordre des Arts et desLettres by the FrenchGovernment. l Won the National FilmAward 17 times in various categories. l Won the InternationalFilm Critics’ Prize(FIPRESCI) consecutivelyfor six feature films. l Won the British FilmInstitute’s Sutherland Trophy in 1982 for Elippathayam.l Awarded the LifetimeAchievement Award atthe Cairo InternationalFilm Festival. l Films have beenscreened at the Slovenian InternationalFilm Festival, 2009; the Munich Film Museum,2009; the French Cinematheque, Paris,1999 and at various international film festivalsincluding those held inCannes, Venice, Berlin,Toronto, Rotterdam,Moscow, Melbourne,London and Paris.l The Helsinki Film Festival was the first film festival to have a retrospective of AdoorGopalakrishnan’s films.l Jury member inVenice, Singapore, Hawaiiand Delhi internationalfilm festivals. l Winner of the UNICEFFilm Prize (Venice).l Winner of the OCICFilm Prize (Amiens).l Winner of the INTERFILM Prize Mannheim.

75INDIA PERSPECTIVES u JULYAUGUST 2011 JULYAUGUST 2011 u INDIA PERSPECTIVES


77

From what one sees in the media – both printand television – it is fairly easy to deduce that Indian golf has come a long way. All the elements of the game have progressed

tremendously and Indian golf has started receiving international recognition. The stalwarts of Indian golf likeJeev Milkha Singh, Arjun Atwal, Jyoti Randhawa, S.S.P.Chowrasia and the likes have brought laurels to the nation over the years. With the emergence of the nextgeneration of players like Gaganjeet Bhullar, AnirbanLahiri, Himmat Rai and others, it is safe to say that thesport is on the upswing.

This takes me back to 1991. At the Delhi Golf Club I stood watching Ali Sher on the 18th hole. He was waiting to play his second shot on the final hole of the Indian Open and the situation was such that if he birdiedthe hole, he would become the first Indian professional

76

SPORT

INDIANGOLFERSHAVE ARRIVEDThe country can now boast of having the talent and the ability to produce world beaters

TEXT: DIGRAJ SINGH

ARJUN ATWAL� The first Indian to win on the European Tour at

the 2002 Caltex Singapore Masters.� First Indian to win a PGA Tour card in 2004.� Won the 2008 Maybank Malaysian Open on

his comeback after injury and an accident case against him was dropped.

� In 2010, he became the first Indian to win onthe US PGA Tour.

JEEV MILKHA SINGH� Won the Bank Austria Open at Vienna in

June 2008. � No.1 player on the Asian Tour in 2006 and

37th in world golf rankings. � First Indian to play in a major tournament on

all four days in the 2007 Augusta Masters.� First Indian golfer to break into the top 50 in

the world official golf rankings in 2009.

SHIV KAPUR� Won an individual gold medal at the 2002

Asian Games, besides being a member ofthe team that won top honours.

� Captured his maiden title in 2005, when hewas just 23, at the Volvo Masters of Asia inThailand. Named Rookie of the Year.

� Maiden major tournament in the BritishOpen at Royal Liverpool in 2006


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41 INDIA PERSPECTIVES � JULY 2011 79

golfer to win an international event. An Indian golfer, beating the world to win the Indian Open! Thevery thought seemed incredible, but there he wasabout to do it. I had goose pimples. The couragewith which he birdied that hole and won, made allof us proud.

That one victory worked as a catalyst and wasone of the most significant moments in Indian golf.Other golfers who had seen Ali Sher grow up at theDelhi Golf Club realised that if he could win, withsome perseverance they could too. That eventfulday inspired many others to take up the sport seriously. Sher proved that it was no fluke by winning the Indian Open again in 1993.

For the next five years there were no significanthome performances but with Firoz Ali winning thetournament in 1998 and Arjun Atwal following suitin 1999, there were indications that the sport hadstarted acquiring some depth.

Many factors contributed to the growth of thegame — the fledgling amateur tour, juniors and professionals, set up by the Indian Golf Union(IGU), sponsorship support by visionaries such as Bharat Ram and Rajkumar Pitamber, the setting upof the Professional Golfers’ Association of India(PGA of India) followed by the creation of the Professional Golf Tour of India (PGTI), gutsy amateurs such as Simran Singh, the Randhawabrothers, international promotion of young playersby Arvind Khanna, development of internationalstandard courses by business houses and so on. Infact, if the wheels had not turned at all levels, wewould not have seen the growth that we are seeing today.

I remember when Phil Pilling won a professionaltournament in 1984 at the Bombay PresidencyGolf Club with a score that was under par for fourdays. It seemed like a huge achievement. Andwhen I witnessed Mukesh Kumar equal the worldrecord of 30-under at the Qutab Golf Course in2004, I reflected on the journey undertaken. Indian

golfers had started winning on international tours.Torchbearers like Jeev Milkha Singh and Arjun Atwalwith their victories on the European Tour, talentedplayers like Jyoti Randhawa and Shiv Kapur makingtheir mark on the Asian circuit. The Ministry ofTourism noticed that India was ready to be brandedas a golfing destination.

Event managers like IMG and Tiger Sports werecreating new paradigms of golfing events in India andthe ladies had started thinking of a professional tourof their own. Thanks to Gautam Thapar, the former world No.1, Vijay Singh also visited the country. With the media stepping in, the perceptionof the sport changed completely. Golf was no longerperceived as a rich man’s frivolous pastime; it had be-come a sport with many distinctions. The potential to develop and do business on the coursetoo played its part in raising the profile of the sport.Socially also, professional golf made the transition tobeing considered a well respected profession.

The PGTI which is managed by the players reflects the new found confidence and has taken thesport to the next level. Today, the domestic Tour is worth over `100 million, making it a lucrative career option for Indian professionals. Theladies tour is also in place. Junior programmes are coming up across the country and many international equipment brands have set up store inIndia. Players such as Ashok Kumar and MukeshKumar have risen through the junior ranks.

A birdie is no longer a term that people take for avariant of bird. Golf, as a sport, has never looked better. Following in the footsteps of past winners likeRohtas Singh, today’s generation has done one better — they are winning at the international levelagainst some of the best in the world. The Indian government too has recognised the achievements of players like Randhawa, Kapur and Jeev by honouring them with the highest award for sports –Arjuna Award. It goes on to show that people arewaking up to the prospects of a career in the sport. �

S.S.P. CHOWRASIA� Runner-up to Arjun Atwal in the 1999 Indian

Open and again to Jyoti Randhawa at the2006 Indian Open.

� The first winner of the inaugural EuropeanTour event in India – 2008 EMAAR-MGF Indian Masters at the Delhi Golf Club.

� Won his second European Tour title by clinching the Avantha Masters in February.

JYOTI RANDHAWA� The first Indian to win the Order of Merit title

in Asia in 2002� Got the Arjuna Award in 2005� Won the Indian Open three times� Third victory came at the 2007 Indian Open at

the Delhi Golf Club.� Won the Thailand Open in 2009.

>> TODAY’S GENERATION ISWINNING AT THE INTERNATIONALLEVEL AGAINST SOME OF THEBEST IN THE WORLD

>> IN 2004, INDIAN GOLFERS STARTED WINNING ON INTERNATIONALTOURS. TORCHBEARERS WERE JEEVMILKHA SINGH, ARJUN ATWAL, JYOTIRANDHAWA AND SHIV KAPUR

JULYAUGUST 2011 � INDIA PERSPECTIVES

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Among the artisans’ creations are figuresof mythological characters, flora andfauna, dolls, and musical instruments.Their designs, bright colours and earthyappeal have enhanced the popularity ofthese artefacts in India and abroad.

The products are crafted from locallyavailable wood, particularly, the Ankudu(Wrightia Tinctoria) and the dyes arealso obtained from indigenously grownplants, trees and flowers.

C.V. Raju, who learnt the Etikoppakaart from his ancestors, has sought torevive it in an organised fashion.Padmavathi Associates founded by Raju,is now synonymous with Etikoppakatoys. Ninety village artisans are now partof the organisation, which trains andhelps them market their products. Thehigh point of the revival of Etikoppakatoys has been the replacement ofchemical and synthetic dyes with thosederived from indigenous vegetation.Raju’s efforts have been recognised withthe National Innovation FoundationAward as well as, in 2006, the South AsiaSeal of Excellence given by UNESCO.

The artisans, through Padmavathi Associates, get 1.2 tonnes of lacquerevery year from the Indian Lac Research Institute in Ranchi. The concentrates

obtained do not require any chemicalsas fixatives, thickeners or binding agents.Rather, these are all obtained from various natural plant sources. The products are free of toxic substancessuch as titanium dioxide and lead, whichfind their way into synthetic dyes usedby other toy manufacturers ofEtikoppaka. The toys made by theartisans are safe for kids, who often putthings in their mouth.

Raju, the face of the village’s crafttoday, has made Etikoppaka a bywordfor quality handicrafts. Be it the procurement of raw materials, the creation of natural dyes, designing, marketing, or diversifying the productrange, Raju has structured every processand procedure. By organising thecraftsmen under Padmavathi Associates,he has sought to make availablefinancial support, health cards, life andmedical insurance coverage to them.

For the last ten years, the artisanshave been generating their own raw material. They have been allocated 300acres of land for development and regeneration of raw material. By 2012,the artisans hope to become self-sufficient in raw material, producing it allon their own land. �

80 81

INNOVATION

TEXT: CHITRA RAMASWAMY

The Etikoppaka artisanshave fine-tuned thedesigns to appeal to customers overseas

GLOBALGAMESFOR VILLAGE

COLOUR CRAFT

Button lacquer, so-calledbecause of its shape, is slowly

heated in a coal-fired oven. It ismelted and stretched severaltimes to obtain a uniform textureand sheen. The stretched lacqueris coated with the required colour,melted and moulded intocoloured sticks. The lacquer isapplied to the toys and artefactson a lathe. All dyes are madefrom wood, bark, leaves andplants, kept for ageing in earthenware or copper vessels.

The lacquer-painted woodentoys, utilities and fashion accessories from Etikoppaka inAndhra Pradesh have carved a

niche for themselves for their exquisiteand eco-friendly craftsmanship. The educational toys, in particular, are muchsought after in the West. The woodenbangles and earrings made by the artisans of the village on the banks of theVaraha River in Visakhapatnam district are a rage at fashion shows for theirdesigns and finish.

From creating mythological figurinesand carvings resembling those unearthedat the sites of Harappa and Mohenjodaro,the artisans have gone global with agamut of items they make for foreignmarkets. A toy aircraft and a range oftrains crafted from the wood of neemand jamun trees are some of their latest creations.

Etikoppaka, which means a group ofhouses on the bank of a river, is a villageof about 12,000 people, mostly farmers.

A traditional art from Andhra Pradesh is blendingform and function with eco-friendly innovation

TOYS


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In Tamil Nadu, between the templetowns of Thanjavur and Madurai, liesChettinad — a network of 75 villages.A two-hour drive from Chennai, the

capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, bringsme to Karaikudi — Chettinad’s largesttown. The car stops at The Bangala, afamily-run heritage hotel, from where I intend to discover the exotic countryside.My host is Meenakshi Meyyappan, whoruns the hotel, which is a refurbishedChettiar gentlemen’s leisure club.

The Chettiar merchants, after whomthis area is named, are famous for theirspicy cuisine, financial acumen and fabulous wealth. Back when there werereligious restrictions on Indians crossingthe seas, Chettiars were sailing to SouthEast Asia to trade, and spending themoney they earned to embellish theirhuge mansions. These included pillarsmade of Burma teak and Italian marbles,Czech ceiling tiles and Belgian mirrors.

Early next morning, I set out to scoutthe great Chettiar mansions. These mansions are known as nagara kottai(country fortresses) by the local people.After driving for a few kilometres we arrive at Kanadukathan, which has beendesignated as a heritage village by thegovernment. The cluster of mansionshere have ornate façades, grand pillaredporticos and cornices heavily populatedwith guardian deities.

All Chettiar houses are built along thesame lines. From outside, they appeartall, foreboding and imposing. But onceyou go past the ornate woodenthresholds, one courtyard opens onto

another one, rectangle after rectangle.The beauty of the architecture lies in thesimplicity of the courtyards. The openessensures constant air circulation andallows the mistress of the house, who sitsin the fourth and last courtyard (wherethe kitchens are located) to know what ishappening in the house without so muchas stirring an inch.

Karaikudi is also famous for itsAthangudi tiles which adorn the floors of

the mansions in the area. Thesehandmade tiles come in bright colours andhave patterns, both floral and geometric.

Recently Chettinad has seen a tourismexplosion. Says Meyyappan: ‘‘The interestshown by visitors to the Chettinad regionwill help preserve its remarkable legacy,especially as it is a place that only overseasvisitors seem to throng to.”

The Chettiars are a devout peopleand as such have contributed in a big


TRAVEL

MAGNIFICENT MANSION:(facing page) Chettiars relaxing in the courtyard ofa nagara kottai; (above) the main hall

TEXT: SMITA SINGH

SPRAWLING EXOTIC

CHETTINADSnuggled between the temple towns of

Thanjavur and Madurai, Chettinad is famous for itsunique architecture, distinct cuisine, saris and

brightly-coloured handmade tiles

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sambhar (lentil curry) and pongal (apreparation made from rice, green lentils,jaggery and milk). Lunch was served in thetraditional way — on large banana leaves.Every inch of the space on the leaf wasneeded for the lavish spread. The dishesincluded tomato rice with paneer korma,chow-chow kootu (squash with lentils),vegetable cutlets, vendankai mandi (a dishmade with okra), tomato chicken,pomegranate salad, fish fry and brusselsprouts masala. The sumptuous fest wasrounded off by almond halwa and home-made vanilla ice cream.

Another attraction of the region is the locally woven Kandangi sarees. I wastaken to a local workshop where a weaverwas hard at work on his handloom. Thefavoured patterns are checks and stripes andthe chosen colours are earthy red, orange,chrome and brown.

Chettinad weddings are grand affairs. Thevariety of food served and the jewels wornby the bride and bridegroom are awesome. Alavish breakfast and a sumptuous lunch areserved, raising hospitality to great heights.

It’s heartening to know, no matter how faror how long a Chettiar stays away fromhome, he always returns for every familygathering — be it a wedding, a childbirth ora birthday celebration, filling the courtyardsof their majestic homes with laughter and festivities. �

84 85

way towards building temples — the region is dotted with huge temples atAriyakudi, Pudukottai and Avudayarkoil.The community is divided into clans andeach clan has its own deity in whose honour the temples have been built. Thedonors have also ensured their place inhistory, by placing statues of themselveswithin the temple precincts.

This brings me to the next thing Chettinad is famous for, its cuisine. Theadage in south India goes, “One is luckyto eat like a Chettiar.” This traditional banking and moneylending community is

famous for and proud of its kitchen. I amgiven a crash course in authentic Chettinad cuisine at The Bangala. The ingredients and methods of cooking aretraditional. Cooked under the skillful supervision of Karuppiah, who has beenwith the Meyyappan family for 45 years,the cuisine is distinct and delicious.

The Chettiars may have travelled theworld and made other countries theirhome but in the matter of food they remained, as Visalakshi Ramaswamy, aleading community member, puts it,“Dominant to themselves. We made a

bigger impact on food in other countriesthan that food did on ours.” It is said with pride that Chettiar businessmen, on their travels abroad, took along cooks and provisions to ensure that they ate exactlyas they ate at home.

To the staple diet of coconut and rice of most people in Tamil Nadu, the meat-eating Chettiars added quail,chicken, mutton, fish and shell-fishbrought inland in trucks from the Bay ofBengal. Even if one is not staying at TheBangala, it is possible to have a mealhere, provided one orders in advance. For dinner, I was served appam (a lacy pancake made of rice batter) withcashew stew and Ceylon chutney followed by quail masala, idiappam (ricenoodles), fish masala and mushroommasala. The meal ended with passionfruit pudding.

Next morning, breakfast was a sumptuous affair — velapaniyaram (ballsmade with a batter of rice and lentils andcooked in a special skillet) with tomatochutney, idli (steamed rice cakes) with

CHETTINAD HERITAGE:(above) Carved wooden statues for sale inAthangudi village; (left)spices in traditionalwooden boxes; (facingpage, from top to bottom) antique shop with beautiful artefacts; the stunning Ariyakkudi Perumal Temple and a couple weaving the Kandangi sari

NAVIGATORGETTING THERE:By Air: Nearest airport is Madurai,90km awayBy Train: One can take theKaraikudi Express from EgmoreStation, ChennaiBy Road: Karaikudi, situated nearChettinad, is well-connected byNational Highway 45 and 210with Madurai, Trichy, Tanjore andChennai. It’s about a two-hourlong journey from Madurai.

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86

HISTORY

87

VAISHALI, A MOSTANCIENT DEMOCRACY Long before democracy flourished in ancient Greece the concepttook root in the independent republic of Vaishali

TEXT: PARSA VENKATESHWAR RAO JR.

domestic affairs, including justice, defence and so on. JagdishPrasad Sharma author of Vaishali, The World’s First Republic,explains how the representatives were the effective governmentand whatever decisions they took it was in accordance with thewishes of the gana (assembly). The government was fullyauthorised by the constitution to act freely and independently,provided it remained accountable to the assembly.

Vaishali was also closely connected with the 24th tirthankaraof the Jain tradition, Vardhamana Mahavira who came from anoble family which was ruling a principality, Kundalagrama, inthe suburbs of the city. The city was also an important point as

Buddha traversed the area preaching his new-found MiddlePath. It was in Vaishali that he delivered a sermon for the lasttime before he went to Kushinagara where he died, or asBuddhists believe attained mahaprinirvana.

On another note, Vaishali was also famous for its courtesan,Amrapali who was credited with making the city prosperous.She was celebrated in Buddhist lore as she became a discipleof the Buddha and dedicated her lands to the monastic order.It is rare for an ancient city to be known by the fame of acourtesan, but in ancient India it seems that they did not grudgea woman her celebrity status. �

Although it is widely believed that the idea of democracy and aconstitution were created in democratic Athens, around 506 BCE(Before Common Era), India saw the emergence of city republics

around 6th BCE where the concept of an elected ruler had taken root.Like the democratic efflorescence in ancient Greece which had left itsimpact on the thought and culture of the Ancient World, which surviveuntil today, it was cities like Vaishali that were the creative force behindprotestant religious movements like Jainism and Buddhism.

An ancient metropolis, the capital of the republic of the Vaishalistate and the capital of the Vijji confederacy, Vaishali is prominentlymentioned in Jain and Buddhist texts which emerged later. It is nowrecognised that Buddha borrowed freely from the republican modelof the cities that existed in east India especially the structure of theBuddhists monastic orders and that of the Buddhist sangha(assemblies)

Vaishali has been considered by ancient Indian historians to be partof India's second urban revolution. The first took place in the 3rdmillennium BCE in the cities of Mohenjodaro, Harappa along the banksof the Indus river in western India, which stretched through to urbanhabitations like Dholavira in Gujarat. The second urban efflorescence ineastern India, however, carries a much clearer stamp of a long-termrevolution in politics, religion, economy and culture of India.

Vaishali was putting up a stance with the other republican states, likethe Lichchhavis, against emerging kingdoms like that of Magadha. It wasdistinct in the sense that though it was ruled by an oligarchy of noblefamilies, there was no place for a hereditary monarchy. The republichad a city assembly with 7,707 elected city representatives all of themwho came from noble families. Probably, as eminent historianRadhakumud Mookherjee explains in a treatise the title of Raja was thenused to denote a republican citizen. The executive of each republiccomprised a body of eight sections – each with a different colour anduniform – representing different functional sections like foreign policy,

ANCIENT RELICS: (clockwise from facingpage) Relic stupa of the Lichchhavis atVaishali; a bell near the Relic stupa; Ananda stupa and a Ashokan pillar


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Raaja Bhasin has loved Shimlawith a quiet passion all his life.Nowhere is this more evidentthan in Simla The Summer

Capital of British India. It is at once a

halcyon ode to and an affectionate chronicle of the annals of his hometown.The book is a lot like its author: gently witty,sharply observant, rarely unkind. Bhasin’sdescription of Shimla, as it is now officiallyknown, hovers delicately over the historyof its picaresque residents.

Unlike Mussoorie, Shimla has not received glowing literary tributes in recent years. Historical narratives ofShimla are few and far between. This iswhy the second edition of Bhasin’s bookis a timely arrival. Bhasin creates a kaleidoscopic setting to the birth of whatis to be India’s capital one day: from the

time when it was ‘two or three miserableshepherds’ huts’ to its dazzling position asIndia’s capital at the apogee of the Raj.

The knockabout tales from its historyare happily balanced with lore on the big cheeses of the British Empire. The bureaucrat in me is tickled by the title, ‘Atop The Pedestal: Government, Monkeys And People’ and is completelyheld in thrall by Bhasin’s waggish accountof the pencil pushers, the grass widowsand above all, the oddball characters.

The most engaging parts of this book,to me, were the tales of Shimla’s non-gov-ernmental denizens who were at once be-

witching and commonplace. There is A.M. Jacob on whom Kipling would modelhis redoubtable Lurgan Sahib, CharlieRam, the Englishman who became a fakir,and Stella Mudge the cabaret dancer whowould beguile the Prince of Kapurthala.

If they could speak, Shimla’s buildingswould tell us fabulous tales of the timesgone by. Bhasin does a delightful job inanimating these lifeless structures by shar-ing hitherto unknown facts about theirgenesis and their occupants. One is star-tled to find that some facets remain un-changed, whether it is the treacherousbalconies of Gorton Castle, or the

‘sinking’ of the Ridge which has engagedShimla’s attention since 1918!

Name me no names for my disease, With uninforming breath;I tell you I am none of these,But homesick unto deathSo said Witter Bynner once. To read

Simla The Summer Capital of British Indiais to feed that homesickness, to seeka palliative for an old heartache. For if you cannot move to Shimla permanently, or even travel to Shimla forsome reason in the short-term, or if yousimply love this little hill town, then here’syour panacea in 450 pages. �

88 89

IN REVIEW: BOOKS

SIMLA THE SUMMERCAPITAL OF BRITISH INDIABy Raaja BhasinForeword by M.M. KayeRupa Publications Price: ` 595

The fabulous tale of a city,its bewitching past anddazzling denizens

CharmingChronicle

— Geetali Tare


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VERBATIM

90 INDIA PERSPECTIVES u JULYAUGUST 2011

One of corporate India’smost powerful women,Chanda Kochhar,managing director and

CEO of ICICI Bank, exudes an air ofoptimism. Named by Forbes magazineas the world’s 20th most powerfulwoman, she took over India’s second-largest bank two years ago at a timewhen the global economy was goingthrough a severe recessionary phase.She spoke to Sushma Ramachandranabout the challenges facing the countryand future plans for the bank.

At present the global financialscenario is in a state of flux followingthe recession. What is the role ofyour bank in this situation?India is on a high growth path whichshould be sustained over the mediumto long-term, though there could besome challenges in the near term. Asthe second-largest bank in India, weare conscious of our role in the growthand development of the Indianeconomy. There are robust growthdrivers for the banking sector in India.The retail business will grow due to thedemographic dividend and risinghousehold incomes and corporatebusiness due to the investment activityand trade flows.

Do you envisage rapid expansion forthe bank both within the countryand abroad?

In fiscal 2010, we followed a strategy ofconsolidation. We resumed growth infiscal 2011, with our loan portfoliogrowing by about 19 percent. Duringthis period, we significantly expandedour branch network, both organicallyand through the merger of Bank ofRajasthan. Our strategy is one ofgrowth, while sustaining theimprovements we have achieved overthe last two years. We expect to growin line with the industry in fiscal 2012.

How would you describe thechanges that have taken place sinceyou took over the bank?In 2009, we had set out our strategicpath for the next five years. The firststage of this strategy was to repositionthe balance sheet for the next phase ofgrowth. To this end, in fiscal 2010, wefocussed on rebalancing our asset andliability mix, improving cost efficiencyand reducing credit costs, whilemaintaining a strong capital position.Based on our progress in these areas,we had articulated our move to thenext stage of our strategy. Our strategyfor fiscal 2011 was to resume growthby capitalising on the emergingopportunities in the Indian economy,while maintaining and enhancing themore efficient balance sheet structurethat we achieved in fiscal 2010. Infiscal 2011, we executed this strategy,with robust growth in our loanportfolio; improved profitability;

and continued focus on key operatingparametres.

What is the reason that women havebeen able to break the glass ceilingin the banking industry?I believe that women have reached,and can reach, the top in organisationsthat follow policies of gender neutralityand meritocracy. Traditionally, theperception was that women are notsuited to industrial organisations but Ithink this has now changed .

What would you say to our readers? The underlying momentum of ourdemographic dividend and investmentpotential will support robust growthover the long-term. The comingdecade will indeed be India's decade. n

“THE PERCEPTION THAT WOMENARE NOT SUITED TO INDUSTRIALORGANISATIONS HAS CHANGED”

CHANDA KOCHHAR

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