meet india's tampon king

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
May 20, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — Not long ago, women in the small south Indian town of Coimbatore were convinced that 47-year-old A. Muruganantham was some kind of pervert.

After a failed attempt with his wife and sisters and a cockeyed do-it-yourself effort with a football bladder full of goat's blood, he'd finally hit upon a surefire way to test the low-cost sanitary napkin he was developing for India's poor. He was passing out free pads to college girls and collecting their used napkins for study. And he had a storeroom full of them. When his mother saw it, she burst into tears and packed her things to move in with his sister.

“Everybody claimed I am a psycho, [that] I am using this as a trump card to get close to girls,” said Murugantham, who taught himself English in the course of his research — partly to get past the telephone answering systems he encountered when he called U.S. suppliers. “Before going across that automatic, it will cost 300 and 400 rupees. The moment the operator starts speaking, it will cost 300 and 400 rupees. Then the person will speak in slang English, 'OK,' because this is a material that is only used by big companies.”

Nobody thinks he's a psycho anymore.

In 2006, Muruganantham, a high school dropout, perfected a machine for making low-cost sanitary napkins against all odds. Along the way he'd taught himself English, recruited local college professors to help him draft letters and surf the web for suppliers, worn panties (not to mention a sanitary pad and a football bladder full of blood), and spent many times the cost of his TVS Motors moped on laboratory analyses. He even invented an alter ego to get past the gatekeepers at the U.S. firms that supplied the pine wood-based cellulose — not cotton — that he discovered was the raw material he needed.

“The moment they hear that somebody is calling from some remote place, in India, they will ask, 'Who are you?' So I said I am a millionaire in Coimbatore. We are going to start the napkin company, so we want raw materials,” said Muruganantham.

Eventually, he triumphed. Capable of producing around 120 pads per hour, the machine Murugantham developed costs only about $2,500 — a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and Procter & Gamble (P&G) spend on their plants. And while output of 120 pads an hour hardly offers much in the way of economies of scale, Muruganantham's invention has created its own business model for small “self help groups” of low-income women — creating jobs that earn them twice what they made as ordinary laborers.

“It is an innovative way of addressing the issue of female hygiene and is accessing a market that the Kotex product made by Kimberly-Clark currently does not access,” said a spokesman for Kimberly-Clark.

But even as Muruganantham has intrigued multinationals, earned accolades from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (Madras) and the National Innovation Foundation and inked a deal with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to supply his machines to women's self-help groups in Africa, a controversial Indian government scheme threatens to squash his grassroots movement.

According to local newspaper reports, the government is finalizing plans to supply free and “highly subsidized” sanitary napkins to India's poor. The program is being designed to cover 200 million rural women, using 100 sanitary napkins each per year, at an estimated cost of around $450 million. No details are available yet regarding the supplier, but in India, as in the rest of the world, virtually the only major manufacturers of sanitary napkins are multinationals P&G, J&J and Kimberly-Clark.

“This is a 'first of kind' program where public-private partnership is being explored to bring high quality products to rural poor at affordable rates,” said the Kimberly-Clark spokesman. “The proposed model would envisage a complete reworking of the value chain to drive costs down. The intent is for the project to be self sustainable over a period of time. The Indian government is in talks with all the major sanitary napkin manufacturers — and nothing is finalized as yet.”

Muruganantham doesn't see it that way.

“What I am telling is that if the government permits me we are able without subsidy to provide the napkins,” Murugantham said. “Already, we can make napkins for 1 rupee, 50 paise. If the government comes, we can reduce that by 50 percent.”

And if the government guarantees orders from rural women, the scheme won't cost the state a penny, Murugantham believes. With orders in hand, the women will be able to get small-business loans from local banks, enabling local entrepreneurs to set up 100,000 manufacturing units across India.

But can a grassroots invention really compete with some of the world's largest multinational companies?

Because of poverty and social stigmas surrounding menstruation, today, most Indian women use rags or even scraps of gunny sack instead of modern sanitary napkins — which are unavailable or too costly. For the government, this represents a public health crisis, raising the likelihood that millions of women will suffer reproductive tract infections or even cervical cancer. And for the big napkin makers, it represents a huge, untapped market that promises to keep the business growing for decades.

“Realizing the huge business potential of converting the homemade napkin users to branded napkins,” J&J launched its Stayfree Secure brand in India in 1997, and the low-cost product was the largest selling sanitary napkin in the Indian market within four years, according to the company's web site.

Riding on its Whisper brand, first launched here in 1989, P&G's feminine hygiene division notched growth of 26 percent last year, according to the company's annual report, generating sales of around $100 million.

The future lies in cracking the market comprising the urban and rural poor. Describing a partnership with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to teach rural women of Rajasthan about reproductive health — now set to be expanded in Muruganantham's home state of Tamil Nadu — P&G's annual report concludes, “Significantly, the program has been able to convert 85 percent of cloth users to sanitary pad users who used WHISPER.”

"P&G and Johnson and Johnson look at this issue merely in terms of sales turnover,” said PC Vinoj Kumar, a crusading journalist. “But as a social entrepreneur Muruganantham's business model has socio-economic objectives. It creates employment for thousands of rural women, apart from promoting use of sanitary napkins.”

One of the first to discover Muruganantham's invention, Kumar recently launched a Facebook campaign against the government's plan to subsidize sanitary napkins, which he suspects will be sourced from one of the three multinationals that control the world market. In March, one of his campaigners filed a Right to Information (RTI) request seeking “copies of all files related to this scheme right from the initiation of the scheme, to any consultations held with any external agencies, the basis on which the scheme was announced and any other relevant details.”

But according to Kumar, the government's reply simply stated the obvious: “This is to inform you that currently the Ministry, Health & Family Welfare does not have a scheme to provide free sanitary napkins for women living below poverty line. Further, discussions for formulation of the same as well as an assessment of various modalities is taking place in the ministry, after which, the scheme would be proposed.”

In case you're not fluent in the lingo, that's bureaucratese for buzz off: The ministry provided none of the files related to the plan or any other details requested under India's RTI law. Now Kumar plans a letter-writing campaign to approach the president, the prime minister, the health minister and the finance minister and ask them to consider Muruganantham's proposal before finalizing the free sanitary napkin scheme.

Meanwhile, Murugantham's not standing still.

His napkin machines are already in place in more than 200 locations across India, where they are empowering local women, and taking the stigma away from menstruation and feminine hygiene by turning it into a lucrative trade. Though many have flourished, some self-help groups have floundered without management expertise — raising doubts whether a legion of grassroots organizations could truly handle the mammoth job of supplying sanitary napkins to the country. But Murugantham argues that if the government supports him instead of P&G or J&J, his machines cannot only solve India's feminine hygiene crisis but also provide employment for a million women.
That's radical thinking from the bottom of the pyramid. The question is: Will the government squash it and make a mockery of the much ballyhooed “decade of innovation?”

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100519/tampons-india-health

India: Incest, or star-crossed love?

A north Indian caste wants laws changed to match honor-killing codes.
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
May 5, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — When a Haryana court handed down the death sentence to five family members this spring for murdering a young couple who'd married in violation of an arcane incest taboo, women's rights activists hailed the decision as a landmark judgment.

But now a new challenge from the village councils that order such killings threatens to bring more violence.

“They say those who marry despite blood and milk ties will be killed,” said Jagmati Sangwan, an activist with the local chapter of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA).

Following the capital sentence awarded March 30 to the five family members who hacked 23-year-old Manoj and 19-year-old Babli to death on the orders of the local khap panchayat, or caste council, groups of defiant leaders from similar councils across Haryana have rallied to protest. Members of the dominant Jat caste of agrarian land owners, they called for an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act to put it in accordance with their beliefs on incest.

The general population has little sympathy for the Jat cause, even though there are already separate sets of laws for marriage among Hindus, Muslims and Christians — some of which, like the provision for polygamy in the Muslim code, are often criticized as anti-women.

So there's little chance that the legislature will entertain Jat's call for a constitutional amendment. But in a country already divided on caste, religious and regional lines, the dispute threatens to throw gunpowder straight into one of the flash points of conflict over the modernization of India.

“If you look at both the khap panchayat violence and the intercaste violence, I think they're reaching a peak,” said Ravinder Kaur, a sociologist from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi).

The drive appears to be gathering momentum. On April 13, a group claiming to represent 36 khap panchayats from across Haryana, parts of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and even Delhi met in the city of Kurukshetra, where they pledged support to the men sentenced to death for murdering Manoj and Babli.

They promised to collect 10 rupees (about 25 U.S. cents) from every family in Haryana to pay for top lawyers for the death row inmates, vowed to block roads and highways with demonstrations, and threatened to surround the parliament and Haryana state assembly if action was not taken to amend the marriage act. A week later, a similar group met in Haryana's Jind district to serve an ultimatum to the state's parliamentarians and assemblymen: Introduce a bill in support of our call for a ban on marriages we deem to be incestuous, or face statewide protests.

Then, on May 2, Sarvjatiya Sarvkhap Maha Panchayat, an umbrella body of khap panchayats, decided to surround the residence of local member of parliament Naveen Jindal to force him to support their cause, even as former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala on Monday backed the demand of khap panchayats to ban same gotra marriages — suggesting that the proposed change to the Hindu Marriage Act could become a compelling issue for state polls.

“It's very funny that the [marriage] law was passed in 1955, and they are now demanding a change,” said sociologist Prem Chowdhry, author of a seminal book on honor killings in Haryana. “Obviously, all these years they have gotten away with murder, and the state and the judiciary have not been able to do anything. For once the judiciary acts, and they cannot take it: they want to change the law itself.”

For the Jat caste of rural north India, the rapid social changes that have accompanied India's economic rise represent a terrifying threat to their traditional dominance. Political reforms have introduced democratically elected councils to replace the traditional leaders — reserving places for women at the helm. Job and education quotas for lower castes have helped young people from erstwhile untouchable castes to earn more money than their onetime betters. The supremacy associated with owning farmland is fast being eroded by industrialization and urbanization. And by fighting to prevent women from marrying better educated partners instead of ignorant ones from clans with traditionally higher status, the khaps are fighting a rearguard action to preserve the static value system that for centuries has prevented upward mobility by tying status to land.

“Many of these marriages have been regular arranged marriages. The parents know they are violating these gotra [clan] rules, but they're doing it because there is obviously a shift in Indian society from [valuing] land to education and employment of a different kind,” explained Kaur. “The khaps want land to remain the basis of social negotiations and social rankings.”

The backlash can be violent.

In states like Haryana, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh, AIDWA estimates that was many as 10 percent of all murders are so-called “honor killings,” in which families execute young men and women for violating the marriage rules set down by these khap panchayats. Screamer headlines like, “DAD KILLS PREGNANT DAUGHTER AND LOVER,” have grown commonplace in the vernacular press.

But the blood runs for other reasons, too.

In typical incidents this month, five people, including two children, supposedly jumped under the wheels of a speeding train because the local council had ordered the man to pay a fine tantamount to a year's wages as punishment for an extramarital affair. And a few hundred kilometers away, a father and daughter from one of the Dalit castes once considered untouchable were allegedly burned alive — along with 25 empty huts — following an argument between a Dalit and a Jat who threw stones at his dog.

“They are trying to make their presence felt in a context where they are increasingly becoming irrelevant,” said Surindher Jodhka, professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Basically the patriarchal caste elders do not have much authority in the village, but within their community the patriarchy wants to exert its will by controlling the sexuality of their women.”

At least some of the khaps' problems may be self-created. According to sociologists, the khaps comprise rich landowners who use their power to suppress women, Dalits and the poor. But in perpetuating and reinforcing cultural obsessions with masculinity and the purity of their blood, the unsanctioned councils are virtually compelling the younger generation to rebel. Thanks to the skewed sex ratio stemming from female feticide, marriageable women are few and far between.

But the khaps' blind allegiance to ancient incest taboos makes marriage nearly impossible. Under traditional law, it is forbidden to marry someone from the same village on the theory that somewhere in the forgotten past you might have a common ancestor; it's forbidden to marry anyone from the same gotra, or clan; and it's forbidden to marry anyone from neighboring villages with whom your mob has formed a brotherhood pact, called bhaichara. In today's more mobile society, that makes getting married almost impossible. As many as a fourth of the region's men remain bachelors. Some go as far afield as Kerala, in India's deep south, to import short-term, child-bearing brides. Others risk death to defy an incest taboo they see as outdated.

And now India's courts have begun to protect them.

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100428/india-incest

India health: spit and polish

At India's most renowned hospital spitting is ubiquitous and, potentially, dangerous.
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
April 29, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — New Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) is, arguably, India's best hospital.

But even though patients travel for hours – even days – to seek treatment here, they don't show the same respect inside its hallowed walls. A new survey shows that a whopping 90 percent of them spit inside the hospital buildings, raising the risks of dangerous hospital-acquired infections like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and swine flu.

Most hospital acquired infections are spread by indiscriminate spitting, concludes the survey, which was conducted by the Department of Neurosciences at AIIMS. The study found that attendants were even spitting in the corridors outside the ICU and isolation wards.

In other words, if you weren't sick when you got here, you might be when you leave.

“When we looked at the reason for spitting, about 80 percent said it was a habit, and about 16 percent said it was because they chew betel nut and tobacco,” said Dr. Manjari Tripathi.

Near the entrance to the outpatient department, as security guards move along the pavement, rousting patients camped here to await treatment, the challenge of keeping the premises clean becomes clear. Here and there patients and their families have set up impromptu picnics. In one corner, a man with a catheter restlessly shifts his bag of milky urine out of the sun next to a huge, blue signboard that is surely unintelligible to him. IMPORTANT NOTICE, it reads:

1. PLEASE PUT THE WASTES INTO THE DUSTBIN ONLY.
2. SMOKING USAGE OF TOBACCO, PAN MASALA ETC. ARE BANNED IN THE AIIMS HOSPITAL PREMISES AND IT IS PUNISHABLE IF FOUND GUILTY.
3. DO NOT SPIT IN THE HOSPITAL PREMISES.
4. GIVING FOOD TO MONKEYS AND DOGS IN THE HOSPITAL PREMISES IS STRICTLY NOT ALLOWED

Most of these people camped on the pavement are villagers. Uneducated and living hand to mouth, they've traveled for eight hours or more to get here, and after the guards kick them out they'll find a place on the median or beneath an overpass to spend the night until the hospital reopens in the morning.

“Of course the people are spitting here and there,” says 60-year-old Khajan, a villager who has traveled for five hours on local buses, only to face a long day of waiting for a doctor. “What difference does it make?”

That kind of apathy from patients who have bigger problems is only one of the challenges AIIMS faces.

While private institutes like Apollo and Escorts have earned the lion's share of headlines for attracting medical tourists from Britain, the United States and other developed countries, a typical 700-bed private hospital in Delhi treats only around 200,000 people a year, at fees that start around $25 a day for inpatients — nearly half the monthly salary of a lower middle class worker. Government-run AIIMS, with around 2,000 beds, treats 3.5 million people a year, charging only about $1 a day for in-patients and providing emergency care for free.

Even with government funding of around $100 million a year, budgets are strained. The student doctors who make up the bulk of the medical staff here earn only about $300 a month. The orderlies and cleaning crew are routinely asked to put in unpaid overtime to keep the place running. And the constant flow of nearly 10,000 people per day make the outdated building materials — which include rough concrete, cracked tile floors and windows that don't seal – almost impossible to keep clean.

“See, we are in India,” says one hospital employee, who asked not to be named. “We are Indians. We have our local standards. This is a public hospital, so the public will do what the public will do. We have to deal with it.”

To be fair to its beleaguered sanitation staff, though the ramshackle premises would come as a shock to a visitor from America or Europe, AIIMS deserves some credit for cleanliness. Inside the outpatient department, the floors show signs of recent mopping, and most corners are free of the blood red spit stains — the hallmark of the popularity of the betel nut-based stimulant known as paan — that are ubiquitous in most government buildings. One can only occasionally detect the faint scent of disinfectant. But that's leaps and bounds ahead of other Delhi institutions, like Lok Nayak Hospital, where the mysterious stink of seeping sewage is pervasive.

According to the hospital staff member who spoke to GlobalPost, lack of manpower is a bigger challenge than spitting. Showing us a contract for outsourcing the cleaning of toilets to a private firm for around $80,000, the worker laments the denial of a routine request for increasing the cleaning staff by a measly six people.

“We (the cleaning staff) have no authority, and no channel for promotions,” the employee says. “If a VIP is coming, we're called for duty in the middle of the night, with no pay for overtime. They want everything done right. But they don't do anything for us.”

And it's the poor people waiting to be shown off the premises for the night by the hospital guards who have to bear the brunt.

“Sure, people spit,” says 32-year-old Bhagwan, who has been making a seven-hour journey to bring his anemic wife here for treatment for the past three years. “People even take a crap if they have to. It's only because of that they lock us out at night.”

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india-health-hospitals

India: radioactive in Delhi

A mysterious radiation leak exposes the dangers of recycling.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
April 20, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — In the post-apocalyptic West Delhi junk market of Mayapuri, Ram Kumar sits with a group of laborers like himself in the scant shade provided by a ramshackle shed.

Due to a mysterious radiation leak that has sent seven neighborhood residents to the hospital with radiation poisoning over the past week, business is slow, and there's no work for these loaders. But Kumar says he has no choice but to wait.

“You can't see it (radiation), you can't feel it, you can only imagine how contaminated the air is here,” said Kumar. “Everyone thinks of leaving, but where would we go?”

Recycling is big business in India, which imports as much as 3 million tons of scrap metal each year. But this week's radiation poisonings have shifted focus, temporarily, to the flip side of the fortune: Along with the towering heaps of steel and copper comes a mountain of hazardous waste — asbestos, lead, mercury and, it turns out, potentially deadly radioactive materials.

“Under metal scrap, almost everything comes in — be it radioactive material, be it ammunition, be it e-waste, hazardous waste, toxic waste,” said Kushal Yadav, head of the toxins unit at New Delhi's Centre for Science and Environment, a non-government think tank. “We don't really know what's coming in. It's only when such incidents happen that we come to know.”

On April 7, shop owner Deepak Jain and four others were hospitalized with radiation sickness after they were exposed to what initial press reports described as a bright, shining metal object. Subsequent investigations by the country's atomic energy regulators identified the radioactive material as Cobalt 60 — a metal used in the sterilization of medical equipment and for radiotherapy.

Before long, the team of scientists discovered 11 different sources of radiation in Mayapuri's scrap heaps, and an anonymous source at one of the investigating bodies told India's Mail Today newspaper that the Cobalt 60 was believed to be part of a larger, yet undiscovered consignment of metal.

This is not the first such incident, and will by no means be the last. Last year, high levels of radioactive metal were found in a shipment of stainless steel elevator buttons which were exported to Germany. And not long ago, a railway worker was seriously irradiated when he pocketed a shining object he discovered on the job.

Radiation poisonings are just the tip of the iceberg. Exposure to other forms of hazardous medical, electronic and industrial waste is so commonplace that no one keeps statistics about the associated health problems.

“In this incident around 10 people have been affected, but this is only a case where you have seen acute exposure,” said Yadav. “In terms of chronic exposure, which is happening over long periods of time, there are hundreds of thousands of workers exposed to tiny amounts of toxins every day, and it's affecting their health. This is never documented anywhere.”

According to a recent study by the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, only half of the 400,000 kilograms of hospital waste that India generates each day is treated before its disposal. Toxic Links, an NGO, estimates that as much as 50,000 tons of electronic waste is illegally imported each month, bringing with it lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium and other hazardous materials, while Indian industry generates 6 million or 7 million tons of hazardous waste per year. On Indian shores, poor laborers — even children — climb its mountains in rubber sandals and tear it to pieces with their bare hands. And they do it for next to nothing.

Kumar and the other loaders in Mayapuri earn between $2 and $5 a day heaving clapped out drive shafts, truck tires, axles, steel pipe and all manner of scrap onto trucks and wagons. It's brutally hard work in one of the hottest Aprils on record — the mercury already nearing 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Even in the lee of the dilapidated warehouse, a hairdryer wind sandblasts the ragged workers with grit. The air smells of ozone and sweat and scorched metal. The danger is as bald-faced as the filth.

“Getting hurt is part of the job,” said Kumar.

Shop number DII-32, where the first pin made of radioactive Cobalt 60 was discovered, is now shuttered, a stack of Delhi Police barricades forgotten against the wall. But the scrap dealers on either side are still watching their workers sift and sort wire and pipe. Nobody seems unduly worried about being irradiated. The national Atomic Energy Regulatory Board has given the all-clear signal after repeated sweeps of the area. And, if anything, the shop owners are defensive about the safety of their trade.

“It's perfectly safe,” one dealer said. “Why should I be worried? I'm sitting in my shop. I don't have the hobby of going around with my notebook.”

With not a spot of grease on him, he's probably never in his life touched a piece of the scrap he sells.

Source URL (retrieved on April 21, 2010 02:19 ): http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100419/india-garbage-delhi-radiation

india: the good capitalist

Fabindia's William Bissell plans to reinvent India's companies.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
April 11, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — India's rural cooperatives helped save millions from starvation. But with little incentive to grow and invest, small farmers and cottage craftsmen stayed small. Fabindia's William Bissell offers a new solution.

A slim and bookish 41-year-old, Bissell's side parting and earnest manner give him the air of a boy scholar. But he doesn't keep his ideas locked up in an ivory tower. A curious mix of devout capitalist and social reformer, Bissell first turned the village-based textile export company he inherited into a multimillion-dollar retailer. Then he turned it into a laboratory for an idea that could transform rural India.

In 2007, Bissell hived off a substantial portion of Fabindia's assets to create a new firm dedicated to investing in and promoting community-owned companies comprising the retailer's rural artisan suppliers. The scheme is based on an innovative system that makes workers into shareholders and creates its own micro stock exchange. And if Fabindia can work out the kinks, it could translate the old idea of agrarian cooperatives into fast-growing firms capable of simultaneously unleashing capitalism's unrivaled energy and reigning in its destructive appetites.

“I'm a communitarian. That's where the philosophical underpinning comes from,” said Bissell. “What's interesting to me is how to use capitalism, the way it organizes capital and information and shares and distributes wealth – because it is a fairly comprehensive ideology – to produce beneficial outcomes for society.”

Founded in 1960 by William's father, John Bissell, an American who'd worked as a consultant for the Ford Foundation, Fabindia arose as an export firm that marketed India's rich heritage of handloom fabrics to the world. The company began to shift focus to the domestic market in 1976, when it opened its first retail outlet in Delhi.

But it was after William took over in 1998 that the firm really took off. In less than a decade, the young entrepreneur built Fabindia into a 112-store, $75 million retailer with outlets in Rome, Dubai and Guangzhou, expanding the product line to include designer clothes, jewelry, home furnishings, body care products and organic foods — all without straying from the company's socially conscious roots. Giving usually staid handicrafts a slick, modern spin, it's Pottery Barn meets The Body Shop meets Pier One — the company is incredibly popular with ordinary Indians, posh socialites and Western expatriates alike.

But Bissell isn't resting on his laurels. He is reinventing the company again.

The essentials of Fabindia's new business model are simple. Bissell first created Artisans Microfinance (AMFL), an investment company, which identified and helped fund 17 community-owned firms that Fabindia calls “supplier-region companies,” or SRCs. Many of these firms had at their core non-profits and cooperatives that had been Fabindia suppliers for two generations.

But when they were restructured, their artisan-workers bought shares in the future — and a guaranteed piece of Fabindia's pie. By tapping the locals and angel investors, Fabindia got a 50-percent boost in investment. More importantly, the SRC shares have already appreciated 50 percent and more, said Prableen Sabhaney, a Fabindia spokesperson. Returns like those – and the jobs they generate – could spell an end to rural poverty and the ills of urban migration.

Hiving off management responsibilities to shareholder-owned companies promises to make Fabindia more efficient, too. Now, instead of dealing with more than 700 individual suppliers, the corporation only deals with 17 SRCs. That already means it can handle larger volumes and theoretically gives smaller artisans and suppliers a better chance to showcase their products locally and break into the retailer's supply chain.

But there have been growing pains. In some cases, instead of looking for new sources for products, the SRCs took the easiest route — resting on their laurels and relying on supplier companies that were almost as large as the community-owned units themselves.

“We had too many carrots and not enough sticks,” Bissell said. “Now we've given some of their suppliers the ability to come to us directly to make the SRCs feel that they need to sing for their supper. Because just sitting around and expecting checks to roll in is not the model that we had in mind.”

Bissell's community-owned companies represent a marked change from the rural cooperative. Currently, Fabindia still owns about half the stock of the SRCs. But within five to seven years Bissell plans to reduce that to about a fourth, as artisans, employees and outside investors pick up more stock.

Unlike in traditional cooperatives, however, where members have equal voting rights regardless of their investment or productivity, SRCs will reward the artisans who hold larger stakes in the units with a larger say in how they are run. Shareholders also reap rewards from the company's growth in direct proportion to how much — and how early — they invested. That means that, like cooperatives, the SRCs provide a vehicle for small, cash-starved rural artisans to pool their money to expand and modernize their operations. But unlike cooperatives, they give the savviest and most successful of the bunch a very strong motive to invest.

“The person who uses the cooperative most benefits the most as well — not the person who started the cooperative and took the risk. So that basically means that nobody individually will take the risk,” said Vineet Rai, the founder of Aavishkaar. Unlike cooperatives, which also prohibit outside investors, the shareholder system of Fabindia's community-owned companies encourages entrepreneurial investment by promising a larger payoff to the early movers when the firm grows.

And that could mean rapid growth for rural India, too.

Source URL
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100329/india-economy-companies-fabindia

the great indian rope trick

How an Indian magician's quest for greatness trapped him in debt.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
March 28, 2010

NEW DELHI, India —On the roof of his house in West Delhi's Kathputli Colony, Ishamuddin tells the story of his life.

Like most life stories, it's a story about a dream. It's a story about striving for greatness, about success, and, ultimately, about failure. It's also the story of one of India's and the magic world's greatest mysteries — an Orientalist fantasy of fakirs and opium smoke and snake charmers, or the most astounding illusion that the world has ever known. It's the story of the Great Indian Rope Trick.

“Forget the trick!” said Ishamuddin. “Just you show me that long rope, which will go from the earth to the sky. Which company was making that rope in the 14th century? And suppose the rope was there, how would the poor magician carry that long rope? It would take the area of all Delhi!”

Though every cartoon-watching school kid in America has seen it done by Bugs Bunny, Ishamuddin first heard about the rope trick when American author Lee Siegel came to stay with him to do research for a book called "Net of Magic." According to Ishamuddin, Siegel told him that the trick still commanded huge fascination abroad.

“At that time I didn't know how to read and write and speak English and all — but he showed us one page [and from] that we see the Indian rope trick and whoever will do the trick will get $10,000 from American Magic Circle and 20,000 pounds from British Magic Circle,” Ishamuddin said.

A seasoned huckster, Ishamuddin should have known better. But the prize money was more than he could hope to make in three or four years of performing. He was hooked. For the next six years, he dedicated his heart and soul to discovering the secret of the trick. And, eventually, he pulled it off. Almost.

Claimed by some to date back 700 years and more, when it was witnessed by travelers like Marco Polo and Ibn Batuta, the Indian rope trick is by all accounts a breathtaking illusion. With nothing but a basket on the roadside and the turban on his head, the magician makes a long length of rope slither into the sky like a serpent rising to the tune of snake charmer's flute, explains Peter Lamont, author of “The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick.”

Miraculously, his boy assistant climbs to the top of the rope and disappears. The magician calls for him to come back, but the boy refuses to return. Angry, the magician picks up a sword and climbs after him. At the top, he also disappears. Suddenly, the boy's severed limbs tumble to the ground in front of the audience, and the magician climbs down. Then he puts the body parts into the basket and produces the boy whole again.

It would be an amazing, impossible trick, a feat to top Siegfried and Roy, David Blaine, and even David Copperfield, who bamboozled Claudia Schiffer into a six-year engagement (six years!). The only trouble is that the Great Indian Rope Trick was a hoax, a myth of exotic India invented by a reporter with the Chicago Tribune, as Lamont discovered.

“It's a pity that no Indian has written about it. Everything was written by Europeans, and they made lots of mistakes,” said Ishamuddin, who says the rope trick was one of many legends spread so that magicians could scare pennypinching crowds to give them alms. “It was just a story that was used to attract people. But I found that it was a big attraction for the world, so I invented it.”

On July 24, 1995, before an audience gathered beneath the open sky, Ishamuddin shook his magic drum above a roughly made basket. Slowly, a fat rope stiffened, uncoiling, and rose into the sky. Swaying a bit, the rope held firm as Ishamuddin's boy assistant climbed halfway up and then down again. Even if there was something mechanical about the trick – magic operating by hand crank – and the frayed end only reached a height of around 20 feet, this was still closer than anybody had come before. Flashbulbs popped. The crowd went wild. But the prize money that launched the magician on his quest turned out to be as mythical as the rope trick itself. The British Magic Circle's reward, for instance, offered in 1934, amounted to only 500 guineas, according to spokesman Nick Fitzherbert. To this day no one — not even Ishamuddin — has claimed it.

“When I did it, CNN, BBC, all the Hindi channels came,” said Ishamuddin. “It was front cover news. Then we called people in the U.S. and asked for the dollars and pounds. But they said this reward was announced very long ago, 200 years ago. The organizations that offered this reward have been dissolved. No one is there, so no reward.”

Thanks to the rope trick, Ishamuddin has appeared with some of the world's most renowned illusionists. He's been feted as the 20th best magician in the world and performed in Austria, France, Germany, Japan and the U.K.

But back in India, nobody knows him. He's just another street performer living in a slum full of street performers. Occasionally he gets a gig to perform at a party. Or maybe a friend among the magicians he's met abroad will float him a loan. But he's probably never had more than a couple hundred dollars to his name, and he's still in debt to a moneylender for the trick that was supposed to make his fortune.

“When I was spending time to research the trick, my mother and my wife used to go for rag picking, and I used to go for street performance and birthday party shows,” Ishamuddin said. “Still I have to pay back like $7,000 that I have spent for the rope trick.”

Nevertheless, the dream won't die. Ishamuddin is still working out the kinks, and he's not fool enough to believe he can make his assistant climb into the heavens and disappear. But he hasn't given up on the rope trick yet. As he demonstrates a bit of sleight of hand with a one-rupee coin, he describes how he can add the expected grand finale to the legendary trick — when he'll chop his son into bits and produce him whole again from his magic basket.

Using back of a napkin math he reckons that all he needs is a loan of another $10,000.

nepal: the big one?

A looming catastrophic earthquake in Nepal could unleash devastation that surpasses that of Haiti or Chile.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
March 22, 2010

KATHMANDU, Nepal — When disaster specialist Amod Dixit looks out his window in Kathmandu, he sees collapsed bridges, demolished hospitals, schools reduced to rubble and dusty corpses lying in the street, the nightmare of Port-au-Prince revisited on his Himalayan home.

“Unfortunately, that is the reality (of what we are facing), if not worse,” said Dixit. “If Kathmandu is impacted with a shaking of an intensity IX on the Mercalli intensity scale, the aftermath is going to be much worse than in Haiti.”

Unlike the more commonly known Richter scale, which measures the magnitude of an earthquake at its epicenter, the Mercalli scale measures the intensity of shaking in specific locations — basically by measuring the destruction of buildings and natural structures.
Dixit has every reason to be worried. The climax of the collision between tectonic plates that thrust up the Himalayas, Nepal is criss-crossed by geologic fault lines — some of which have been building up pressure for centuries. Even if it happens 185 miles away, an earthquake that measures 6 or 7 in magnitude on the Richter scale at its epicenter could generate level VIII, IX or even X level shaking on the Mercalli scale in Kathmandu.

In other words, many believe Kathmandu is overdue for more devastating shaking than the IX level disaster that flattened Haiti this January. The last time a quake like that struck here, in 1934, a quarter of all the homes in the country were destroyed, dozens of revered ancient monuments collapsed and more than 20,000 people lost their lives. The next “big one” could be much worse — especially here in the Kathmandu Valley, a bowl that will trap and amplify the wave of energy.

“Chile has had a huge magnitude earthquake in the past, and as a medium income country it has the resources and institutions in place that have built earthquake-resistant housing and infrastructure,” said Saurabh Dani, disaster management specialist for the World Bank's South Asia team. “Haiti and Nepal are both low income countries, with poor building standards, (and) even if the magnitude of the earthquake is less than the one in Chile, the impact in loss of life would be catastrophic.”

Since 1997, the population of the Kathmandu Valley has doubled, from about 1.5 million people to more than 3 million. Of more serious concern, the population density has also increased dramatically. Each year, between 10,000 and 20,000 new buildings mushroom, most of them constructed with little more than a wink and a nod to the building code, with higher floors built off the books, concrete watered down to save on material, structural columns eliminated and emergency exits ignored. When the big one comes, two-thirds of them will collapse, and the casualty rate will be high.

“The density of the population in each household has seen dramatic growth, so the lethality of the earthquake will be much higher (than we once expected),” said Dixit. “Our estimate (of 10 years ago) of 40,000 dead and 100,000 people injured and requiring hospitalization could easily be doubled — or make it two-and-a-half times or three times.”

And that's only the beginning. Unlike Haiti, Nepal is a landlocked country, with the high peaks of the Himalayas separating it from neighbors, like India and China, that could aid in relief efforts. The only lifeline for supplies and rescue teams for Kathmandu will likely be the small, single-runway airport. And there are no guarantees that its air traffic control system, or its water, electricity and fuel supply will survive the first wave of tremors.

“There is no emergency response plan for the airport,” said Dixit. “There's a plan for emergency landings, but I've not seen or been told about any earthquake emergency contingency plan for airport operation.”

As witnessed in Haiti, managing the relief effort for a disaster on the scale of the one expected here presents a tremendous challenge — even with the U.S. military's Southern Command only 700 miles away in Miami. The conventional wisdom is that rescuers have just 72 hours to pull people out of the rubble, after which any survivor is considered a fluke. And despite the herculean efforts deployed in Port-au-Prince, relief workers were only able to save about 130 people from among a hundred thousand who were buried alive. The answer clearly lies in prevention — or mitigation — rather than rescue. There, too, Nepal's situation is grim.

“My preoccupation is how do we reduce the number of people we have to extract from the rubble,” said Robert Piper, the head of the United Nations' humanitarian effort in Nepal. “That's the mitigation measures, and that's where our preparedness is nothing short of pathetic.”

Piper is one of the driving forces behind a pioneering effort to change that. Bringing together a consortium including the U.N., the Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, the $130 million project aims simultaneously to ramp up Nepal's ability to respond to a major earthquake and mitigate its effects by improving the structures of schools and hospitals — potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

“It's not going to save every life,” said Piper. “We can't retrofit every building in the Kathmandu Valley. But if we retrofit all the schools, if we fix the hospitals, if we shift the bridges, if we put water sources in where people are going to be evacuated ... we're going to have an impact.”

It's Dixit's NSET that's shown the way forward, or at least the first step. Realizing that demolishing and rebuilding 32,000 public schools would be impossible for a country with a per capita income of less than $500, the local organization has shown that it's feasible to retrofit schools to prevent loss of life — if not always the loss of the building — for as little as $30,000. And in outlying areas where costs escalate dramatically for concrete and rebar, almost any material, including traditional adobe, can be adapted to earthquake-safe designs. So far NSET has retrofitted some 200 schools, providing a strong proof of concept.

Dixit says that over the last decade, NSET has shown that preparing for disaster is not as costly as once imagined, that the knowledge and technology to make a difference is available, and developing countries don't have to be distressed that only rich nations can afford safety. But proving that is far from enough.

“Our school program is very famous, and everybody likes it, and we have been invited to other countries to talk about it, but there's a tremendous sense of guilt with us that we have only been able to go out to 200 schools,” said Dixit. “That is a gloomy picture.”

Even for stopgap measures like retrofitting, the challenges are enormous. Awareness of the risks is high, but poor people are still inclined to cut corners to save construction costs. Kathmandu has no mayor to ride herd on building inspectors, fire chiefs and other officials responsible for making the city safe. And national politicians — notoriously reluctant to focus on issues that won't gain them any political capital until years down the road, if at all — are now wrapped up in a complex peace process following a decade-long civil war.

So although everyone knows that if the big one were to hit tomorrow, the loss of life would be nothing short of catastrophic, in Dixit's words it's up to the banks, the ambassadors and the U.N. to take up the baton now.

“It's a crime not to have an earthquake resistant building in Kathmandu. It's a gross crime,” said Dixit.

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/asia/100316/earthquake-disaster-Haiti-Chile

delhi's endangered heritage

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
March 8, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — In the crowded neighborhood of Nizamuddin West, the 16th century Do Siriya tomb stands, crumbling, amid a hodgepodge of apartment buildings. Like the rest of this bustling residential area, the streets here throng with men in skullcaps. Here and there a goat or sheep is tethered to the wall. And if anybody knows that there's a supposed archaeological wonder to be preserved, he's more than likely to resent the claim on his property.

“These buildings aren't registered as archaeological monuments, and most of them are private property,” complains Feroz, a white-bearded resident who preferred not to give his real name. “People have been living here for centuries — inside of the very monuments that are now protected. And now the government wants to displace them. What is a monument? If some government minister comes and stays in the hotel over there, will it become a monument?”

First settled more than 2,000 years ago, Delhi boasts a wealth of ancient architecture. Tucked into residential and commercial neighborhoods, its so-called “monuments” give the city a historical richness to rival Rome's. But due to the frustration of citizens like Feroz and the combined pressures of India's huge population, poverty and rural-urban migration, many of Delhi's historical structures may soon be absorbed by a city that's growing out of control. According to the ministry of culture, 12 of Delhi's most important monuments have already been virtually wiped out, and experts say many others are slowly being dismantled or taken over by land-starved citizens.

A center of Indian civilization since before Christ, Delhi has been the capital of many empires — all of which left their mark on the city. From the 12th century Slave Dynasty through a succession of Mughal emperors and the British Raj, Delhi's conquerors left behind an incredible legacy in stone: towering minarets, echoing tombs, crumbling madrasas and — on the modern city's outskirts — entire ruins of centuries-old civilizations. Most have been forgotten.

“All together, in Delhi we have near about 1,200 monuments, but out of those the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has protected only 176,” said K.K. Mohammed, the ASI's superintending archaeologist (Delhi).

All manner of ills threaten Delhi's history. Not long ago, Mohammed was fighting to evict religious leaders who had laid false claim to four ancient Muslim structures in the outlying neighborhood of Mehrauli. In the ruined 14th century fort of Tughlaqabad, rural migrants to the city have set up camp.

But that's not all.

In recent weeks, the ASI has filed a court case against the Indian railways for beginning work on a five-story building within the protective buffer zone of Nila Gumbad, an early Mughal-era monument. It will soon issue show cause notices to 92 more properties throughout Delhi — including two Commonwealth Games projects and a stretch of the Delhi Metro — for violating the 100-meter buffer zone for other protected monuments. And even at the Red Fort itself, where the ASI's headquarters are located, the ASI has identified for demolition 100 tin sheds and toilets built by the Indian army during the period from 1947 to 2003, in which it used the fort as a military building.

The reasons for this chaos are manifold.

With government coffers stretched by so many other pressing problems, the ASI doesn't receive nearly enough funding to protect even the city's most important monuments. Indian governments are notoriously slipshod when it comes to implementing plans for urban development, which not only leaves thousands homeless but also creates a general atmosphere of lawlessness when it comes to publicly owned property. Politicians are reluctant to alienate segments of the population they consider “vote banks” to protect ancient stones. And, overall, India's citizens are more focused on the future's promised prosperity than the past's stories of lost grandeur.

“This is a country where large portions of the population believe that the past is a dark place, a time of colonialism and oppression, and they look forward to an exciting and ultramodern future,” said author William Dalrymple.

Perhaps that's why Delhi has not been able to capitalize on its historical riches. Tourists flock to the Red Fort, Humayun's Tomb and the Qutab Minar — all three of which are designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. But many more sites lie anonymous and forgotten, and even at the striking and famous monuments the city has failed to develop the associated programs needed to earn Delhi a place in travelers' minds alongside Cairo, Athens and Rome.

Restricted by rules designed to eliminate graft, the contracts for promoting these monuments must be awarded by government tender to the lowest bidder, leaving little scope for a visionary revolution. Worse still, for the most part the concerned agencies are infected by the same bureaucratic malaise that paralyzes the rest of the country's government-run institutions. The best a tourist can hope for are a few turgid signboards and a gregarious but formulaic (and sometimes misinformed) guide.

“I call it architectural bones without historical flesh,” said Mohammed. “Without historical flesh it is very bare. A historian is able to visualize, but not an individual. It should be a thrilling experience.”

If nothing changes, even Delhi's ancient skeleton may soon be gone.

Source URL http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091228/delhis-endangered-heritage

the michael jordan of india

Meet Sachin Tendulkar: the best athlete (and corporate sponsor) you've never heard of.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
March 2, 2010

NEW DELH, India — At 7:30 on a sunny Saturday morning, most of the city is still fast asleep. Rush hour won't begin until 10. But three separate cricket matches are already underway at New Delhi's Africa Avenue sports field.

There's a chill in the air as one portly bowler runs up, windmills his throwing arm and fires the ball at the wicket. Then, thwack!, shouts erupt as the batsman swats the delivery high into the sky toward the car park. It's a “six,” cricket's version of the home run.

“Now we play twice in a week,” said 26-year-old Sunil Kumar, who was keeping wickets. “In younger days, we used to play every single day. We come early in the morning, at 6 or 7, so we can play at least four matches before people have to go to work.”

A quick glance at the players tells you everything you need to know about the reason they're here. By turns spindly, pot-bellied, pigeon-toed and bow-legged, these are no fitness freaks. They're not up on the sports field at the crack of dawn out of some misplaced obsession with the peak of their biceps or the cut of their abs.

They're here because, like millions upon millions of Indians, they're mad about the one maddening sport at which this dismally unathletic country excels. And, again like millions upon millions more, they all worship the same hero: a 5-foot, 5-inch tall, curly-haired, 37-year-old cricketer with a reedy, teenager's voice who just might be the Greatest Of All Time — and the best athlete you've never heard of. His name is Sachin Tendulkar. But here in India, he's simply Sachin.

“The only name that we think of when we think of cricket is Sachin,” said Kumar. “Every single record of batting is Sachin. Whatever — centuries, half centuries, sixers, fours, boundaries, runs, test matches, one days — he is the one.”

As Kumar's passion and these early morning games suggest, India's love for cricket verges on the pathological. Walk through any neighborhood at any time of the day, and there's bound to be a match on in an alley (or “gulley,” as it's called here). Drive from Delhi to Agra or Lucknow, and with every sign of civilization you'll find a tea stall and a cricket match. Everything from the schoolyard to the cemetery doubles as a “pitch,” or field, and everybody from the lowliest cowherds to the poshest scions of snooty South Delhi seems to carry a bat and ball.

Maybe it's popular because its gentlemanly style recalls the British benchmarks for native upward mobility — in its classic five-day form, after all, the game is still played in starched white uniforms. Maybe it is that it doesn't require huge muscles or tremendous stamina. Or maybe it is simply that Indians are good at it. But everyone agrees to one thing. Cricket is the one religion that unites Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian and Jain.

And Sachin?

“They call him 'god of cricket,' and I think he is god of cricket,” said Vijay Lokpally, cricket correspondent for the Hindu newspaper.

Last month, Sachin staked perhaps his strongest claim yet to the title of the greatest batsman of all time with a brilliant performance against South Africa. Parrying and slashing the ball all over the field, he became the first player in the 39-year history of that form of the game to score 200 runs in a one day international, or ODI. But even though it was the cricketing equivalent to Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game in the NBA, it was not the statistical milestone — which joins Sachin's long and growing list — so much as the bold and seemingly effortless grace of the “knock” that converted nay-sayers. That's because unlike baseball, which it resembles in other ways, cricket does not reward power and bat speed so much as cleverness and control.

“In the history of cricket, four individuals have had a definitive impact on the game; the Englishman W. G. Grace, the Australian Don Bradman, the West Indian Garfield Sobers and the Indian Sachin Tendulkar,” said historian Ram Guha, the author of "A Corner of a Foreign Field." “He is certainly one of the four greatest cricketers ever.”

Wedge-shaped and flat on one side, the cricket bat is more like a paddle or broadsword than a club. And the gold standard of batting is the ability to wield its blade to slice and steer the ball at will to the spots in the field where there are no defenders — employing a daring and creative variety of swings, cuts, chops and blocks that commentators evocatively describe as “swashbuckling.” Sachin was arguably the first Indian player to embrace this free-flowing and aggressive style of play — emerging at a time when India was a puny, Third World-upstart vying for respect.

“India suffered from a combination of self-loathing and a feeling that it was not getting its due recognition,” said Santosh Desai, CEO of FutureBrands.

Sachin changed that. India's Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali rolled into one, Sachin's rise prefigured and paralleled that of the country. When he first walked onto the pitch against Pakistan in hostile Karachi in 1989, Sachin was a pint-sized 16-year-old with a squeaky voice and a wild 'fro. More Harry Potter than LeBron James, he was David facing Goliath, and a nation of mothers held their breath when Waqar Younis rushed toward him to fire a 100-kilometer fastball at his skull. Watching him beaned repeatedly and then unceremoniously bowled out for a mere 15 runs, many softhearted souls cried out that the boy batsman had been brought along too fast.

“The general impression was that he was being pushed too early,” said Lokpally.

But on the last day of the match, again against Younis, a legend was born. Decked by a fastball to the face, Sachin picked himself up, dusted himself off, and went on to post 57 runs with blood streaming from his nose. “That convinced everybody that this boy was different,” said Lokpally.

A fan club soon followed. Then accolades, then unprecedented riches, and, finally, as the years marched on, a cascade of statistical records.

Begun around the same time that India liberalized its economy and allowed the introduction of private television channels (in 1991), Sachin's career drove an “economic renaissance” in a sport that had never been lucrative, according to Desai. When Sachin first signed an endorsement deal worth about $5 million at today's exchange rate, he changed the scale of cricketing — and Indian — economics by several orders of magnitude.

Before long, he was selling everything from laundry detergent to Pepsi, and on the way to an estimated net worth of about $60 million today, he'd help make the celebrity endorsement a vital part of the marketing strategy for any brand that wanted to compete. The key to his appeal was simple. To Indians, he showed that the fearless underdog — no matter how small — was not only capable of standing up to the larger players from swaggering England, South Africa and Australia, but was also able to dominate them.

“What Sachin did was for the first time he gave India a sense of domination. Sunil Gavaskar played a defensive role. He proved that Indians could face up to the fastest bowlers in the world. But it was about facing up, navigating and negotiating, rather than dominating,” said Desai. “In Sachin's case, he was this cherubic 16-, 18-year-old boy with a reedy voice, and that only made it more distinctive and more magical. When you had very little to back and look up to, Sachin became something that everyone could feed off.”

For a long time, he was virtually India's only hero. And his career suffered as a result. Through his long innings he has amassed more than 12,000 runs in Test (or five-day) cricket and more than 30,000 runs in international cricket — thousands more than any player in history. He holds the record for the highest number of “centuries” (100-run games) in both Test and One Day cricket, and his tally is still rising.

As of last week, he's the only man to score 200 runs in a single one-day match. And he did it all despite adverse conditions. In the '80s and '90s Sachin labored like the proverbial Casey at the Bat. India's batting lineup was compared disparagingly to a bicycle stand: When one falls, they all fall. Sachin carried the heavy burden of the hopes and dreams of a billion Indians on his shoulders. And as he grew and became one of the team's senior players, sometimes he could not help but temper his naturally aggressive and inventive style of play.

That's why last week's performance was especially exhilarating for so many Indians. Over the past five years, Sachin's team has been transformed by an infusion of brash, young players from the new, booming India. The pressure is as great as ever. But their level of confidence is unprecedented.

Today India's giant, growing consumer market provides the advertising dollars that fund the game — giving India more muscle than England or Australia when it comes to the business of the sport. And just as India's entrepreneurs are now acquiring companies like Jaguar and Land Rover and threatening to overtake the biggest markets in the world, India's cricketers no longer play “not to lose.” That means that even at 37 years old, with his best days as an athlete behind him, Sachin has been freed to play like he was meant to do since he was 17.

And India can't get enough.

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100301/cricket-sachin

the lepers of india: still untouchable

A new generation of lepers has never been infected with leprosy.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
February 21, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — When 20-year-old Arjun Nair's father discovered that he had contracted leprosy, he was so afraid of transmitting the disease to his sons that he immediately sent Arjun and his brother away to a hostel school run by missionaries.
Some 10 years later, Arjun is back in Delhi, his education still incomplete, and his job prospects dim. “Originally, the school offered classes up to 12th standard,” said Arjun. “But they had a lot of problems with fights breaking out between the older kids, so they sent the older kids back home.”

A resident of a modern-day leper colony in East Delhi comprising the neighborhoods of Tahirpur and New Seemapuri, Arjun is part of a curious group of second-generation Indian lepers. These youths have never been infected with leprosy, but remain trapped in an ostracized welfare community because of the dreaded disease's assault on their parents.

Subsidized by the government and often educated by Christian missionaries, they suffer from all the social problems that affect the marginalized around the world, from India's transgender hijras to Europe's Roma, said Vineeta Shanker, executive director of the New Delhi-based Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation (SILF).

“They have internalized the societal rejection,” said Shanker. “They say, 'Even when we go to government schools, the teacher puts us in a corner. She doesn't put us in the first row. We have no friends except girls from our own colony.'”

Leprosy is today curable and it is far less infectious than once believed — 95 percent of people are immune and it cannot be transmitted by casual contact, as many people fear. Though its complete eradication is considered to be medically impossible, India officially “eliminated” the disease in 2005, after a targeted program reduced the level of incidence to fewer than one case per 10,000 people. So the only real reason for isolation colonies like Tahirpur and New Seemapuri is ignorance. Sadly, India has that in abundance, which is perhaps why the country still has more than a thousand leper colonies.

For second-generation “lepers” isolation cuts deeply. Feelings of alienation strain the relationships between parents and children, who depend on their parents' government stipends and income from begging for survival, but also resent the social stigma that comes along with that money. And at the same time, their understanding of the working world is perhaps even more limited than their opportunities.

“The kids want to do well. They have high aspirations. Everybody we talk to says, 'We don't want an ordinary, low-paying job. We want at least 10,000 rupees a month; otherwise we aren't interested,'” said Shanker. “But they have very little to enable them to achieve their goals.”

India declared treating certain castes as untouchable in 1950 and the constitution reserves around 20 percent of government jobs for people from those backgrounds. But even today lepers, and their children, are virtual untouchables, regardless of their caste.

According to a 2007 survey conducted by the International Association for Integration, Dignity and Advancement, leprosy-affected families across India face serious discrimination. Of 4,512 leprosy-affected persons surveyed, 1,259 were illiterate. Most of the children were not in school, and only 30 were in college. The job market was tough on them, too, with 712 people begging for a living and another 994 unemployed.

Despite the discouraging statistics, Arjun and the several other young men I met in New Seemapuri put a brave face on things, downplaying the handicap that living in a known leper colony places on them. Older men, like 28-year-old Kaimuddin Khan and 32-year-old Bhupender Kumar, have resigned themselves to the idea that their lives will likely be circumscribed by the boundaries of the leper community. But they focus on the positive.

“We have opened a small shop with the help of a government scheme for leprosy-affected people,” said Kumar. “We're actually squatting illegally on the property, but because this is a lepers' area nobody bothers us.”

However, youngsters like 17-year-old Tipu Sultan, who is studying in ninth class, still dream that one day they can live integrated lives. “As long as I keep studying, everything is fine,” said Sultan. “I don’t think I have any problems now because my Mom and Dad have leprosy. But I can't say what will happen in the future. I do feel I will be able to get a job, but I don't know where. My wish is to get a job outside of the colony, but I don't know if I can.”

Source URL (retrieved on February 22, 2010 02:03 ): http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100219/leprosy-india-health-lepers

going greens: india's golf boom

Half a billion Indians live in poverty. The other half lives to golf.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
February 13, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — Germany's Marcel Siem took advantage of a last-minute putting tutorial from India's top-ranked women's amateur to take the lead on opening day of the country's newest international golf tournament this week. Tipped to slow greens that foxed other European players, Siem notched an eagle and several birdies by stiffening his stroke to avoid leaving his putts short. But fans still hold out hope for local favorite Jeev Milkha Singh, ranked 59th in the world.

Underway this week at the Indian capital's new DLF Golf & Country Club — a plush course built by one of the country's largest real estate developers — the Avantha Masters is the highest paying professional tournament ever played in India, offering prize money of $2 million.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Known internationally for its slums, India is going green. Putting green. Aided by corporate support and a rising middle class, golf is fast becoming big business in India. Over the past five years, new courses have mushroomed all over the country, and golf-related retailers and manufacturers are beginning to set up shop here to exploit a potentially vast future market.

Meanwhile, the number of amateur tournaments and the prize money for winning has increased manifold, while a number of professional events are also springing up — 24 pro tournaments alone in 2010. And golf tourism is emerging as a lucrative travel business, as players from Japan and Southeast Asia fly in on charter weekends to take advantage of India's bargain basement greens fees.

“We are just short of 200 courses, and we expect that we will put up in the next decade more than 100 courses,” said Ashit Luthra, chairman of the Indian Golf Union. “It is becoming a corporate sport.”

India's skyrocketing residential real estate market has played a big part in the boom. Designed by Arnold Palmer, whose name has become synonymous with beautiful courses, the DLF Golf & Country Club opened for play in 1999, at the beginning of a decade-long burst of activity in the Indian golf scene. Located in Gurgaon, Haryana, a satellite city close to New Delhi that plays host to a large number of multinationals, the golf club was built to attract wealthy Delhi residents to the city's hinterland.

Now virtually every major real estate developer in India is turning to golf as a way of marketing their properties to an elite that once valued an address in the urban center above all. Jaypee Greens, for instance, focused its recently completed 452-acre development in Greater Noida — the latest of Delhi's increasingly far-flung suburbs — on an 18-hole course designed by Canada's Graham Cooke. For an encore, the company is building a top-end residential project around a 2500-acre “sports city” that will feature golf courses as well as a motor-racing track and other facilities. According to the company, golf helps it attract elite customers and sell its properties for more than double the price of neighboring residential projects.

“Golf is actually a major driver for our business,” said Manu Goswami, head of business development at real estate developer Jaypee Greens. “It's pretty amazing the number of people who are getting into it.”

Retailers are also beginning to see India's potential. This January, Callaway Golf, the billion dollar company known for creating the “Big Bertha” driver, launched a wholly owned subsidiary to tap the local Indian market and penned a marketing deal with Jeev Mikkha Singh, the top-ranked Indian player in the world. The launch follows the entry of TaylorMade Golf, a division of adidas, in 2003.

"Callaway Golf's international business spans more than 110 countries and accounts for over half of the Company's annual revenue," George Fellows, Callaway's chief executive, was quoted as saying in a press release. "We see great potential in the Indian market and are looking forward to introducing our products.”

It's been a long road. India's Royal Calcutta Golf Club was the first such club outside Great Britain when it was built, in 1829, five years before the construction of Scotland's St. Andrews and 60 years before the game made its way to America. But even though the sport continued among India's elite throughout the 20th century, its strong associations with capitalism and colonialism prevented golf from breaking out of the competitive sports arena to become a top leisure activity. Until now.

“India is not active enough in the 30-plus age group to get into racket ball or tennis, so the 30-plus segment is looking for a softer game like golf,” said Jaypee Greens' Goswami.

Though the market is still tiny compared with the U.S., about half a million Indians play golf today, and Callaway forecasts that number will grow at an annual rate of 25 to 30 percent for the next few years, compared with 2 to 3 percent in America.

What's more, as an increasing number of Indian pros break into the big money and sports in general attain greater acceptance among the middle class with the success of athletes like tennis player Sania Mirza, the new players taking up golf are no longer limited to Indians who can trace their wealth to the days of the British Raj.

Earlier this year, a former caddie whose father worked as a laborer took home $200,000 by winning the Indian Open. And in Kolkata, Indrajit Bhalotia's Protouch golf academy has teamed up with a school for slum children to teach some of the poorest kids in India the proverbial rich man's game.

One reason is that apart from the posh courses that real estate developers are hiring the world's best designers to build, India is also beginning to witness growth in the cheap, open-access public courses that can democratize the game. Greens fees at most courses run less than $11 and many courses charge as little as $1. But even at the top courses fees are a fraction of the rates charged elsewhere in Asia.

And that makes golf tourism a potentially lucrative proposition for India's travel sector. Thanks to colonial-era courses located in the Himalayan hills and tea estates, and others sprinkled with historical monuments, India boasts some unusual attractions for the golf tourist. The greens of the Agra Golf Club boast a stunning view of the Taj Mahal, the links of Delhi's Qutub Golf Course lie in the shadow of the 12th-century Qutub Minar, and courses across the country promise everything from stunning desert landscapes to lush coffee plantations. Several travel agents are already marketing Indian golf holidays to tourists from Japan and Southeast Asia — who have already made Malaysia and Thailand popular haunts.

“If we market it well, we can get a flood of tourists coming in,” said Luthra. “But for that, we need more and more courses.”

Source URL
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100212/india-golf-boom

adventure travel: the great himalaya trail?

Why walk Everest, K2, and other mountain giants? Because they are there.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
February 4, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — The Himalayan range — home to Everest, K2 and more than 100 peaks exceeding 21,000 feet in height — is without question the most well-known and most awe-inspiring set of mountains in the world. But as a trekking destination, the majestic snow-capped range has a long way to go.

Of the six countries that the Himalayan range crosses, only Nepal has succeeded in tapping the growing interest in adventure tourism, while nations like Afghanistan, Bhutan, China and Pakistan have failed to capitalize on their high-altitude potential due to strict regulations and internal strife. Even India has not made much progress, although it accounts for most of the main Himalayan range and offers a more or less safe and friendly, if not hassle-free, experience for tourists.

“Today, we are one-tenth of Nepal in adventure tourism,” said adventurer and guidebook author Depi Chaudhry, who says India doesn't track these numbers. “We have a substantial portion of the Himalayas. But we haven't been able to leverage that.”

As India's neighbor to the east prepares for a big marketing push with its “Visit Nepal” campaign in 2011, however, Chaudhry has thrown his lot in with a group of freelance trekkers, climbers and writers who are fighting their own battle to promote the Himalayan trekking industry — with guerrilla tactics.

Logging thousands of kilometers and hundreds of thousands of words, Chaudhry and fellow guidebook writers Robin Boustead, Gary Weare and Jamie McGuinness are struggling to map and promote a commercial trekking route that crosses the Himalayas from end to end.

Billed as The Great Himalaya Trail, or GHT, the traverse will cobble together dozens of marketable legs to draw some of the 30,000-plus tourists who do the popular Everest Base Camp and Annapurna Circuit treks in Nepal each year to other regions. The dream is that one day, a traverse of the entire route could be the life-long goal for every serious trekker in the world.

“I spend far too much time thinking about how to do it,” said Boustead, who recently completed a guidebook for the Nepal section of the GHT. “I have every intention of trying to do the first ever continuous walk — not taking a break for seasons, which is what has happened with the only other two attempted traverses. There's a very convincing case for creating a continuous trail that could be run over the course of a year or perhaps 14 months.”

Such long-distance trails are already popular in many other countries. The Appalachian Trail, which runs through the Eastern United States' Appalachian mountain range for 2,174 miles from Georgia to Maine, sees thousands of “sectioners” every year — and nearly 10,000 cult-hero “thru-hikers” have traversed the entire route in a single trekking season since the 1930s. The 220-mile Coast to Coast Walk across northern England boasts a similar following, as does the shorter Tour du Mont Blanc, which circles the famously sublime peak on a route that passes through parts of Switzerland, Italy and France.

But no long-distance hiking trail in the world has overcome the political and logistical obstacles that confront the GHT. High passes and inclement weather make traversing the Himalayas nearly impossible in a single season, much of the route is inaccessible by road, and many trailheads are hundreds of kilometers from the nearest airport.

But those obstacles to commercial trekking pale in comparison to the political barriers to establishing a difficult to monitor overland route crossing six countries at odds over territory, human rights violations, diplomatic bullying and even cross-border terrorism. Even in peaceful, liberal India, for example, substantial portions of arguably the most desirable high-altitude traverse are closed to foreign trekkers because they pass through sensitive border areas under dispute between India and China or India and Pakistan.

However, Boustead believes the time is ripe for pushing the envelope. Though many routes remain closed or permit-only, India has for many years used mountaineering feats as a political tool — most notably with Colonel Narinder “Bull” Kumar's 1978 race to claim a series of summits on Kashmir's Siachen Glacier, today the focus of India's standoff with Pakistan.

And in recent years India has apparently been exploring commercial trekking and mountaineering as a way of solidifying its claims on disputed territories. In January of this year, for instance, the government announced it was removing restrictions and opening to climbers 104 mountain peaks from the Leh and Ladakh regions along India's border with China and Pakistan.

“If you're going to assert your authority over a region, the best way to do that is by controlling access and allowing people to go there,” said Boustead, who bemoans the restrictions on trekking in some of India's most impressive mountains. “Why is there no Nanda Devi circuit? It's the most well known mountain in India. Why isn't there a Kanchenjunga circuit?”

So far, only the Nepal segment of the Great Himalaya Trail is officially open for business, with an established route map and nine well-defined legs serviced by various outfitters. But the team is working speedily to bring the rest of the trail online. According to Chaudhry, the map of the India route is “by and large” complete.
Having walked about 60 percent of the trails in the course of researching his book, "Trekking Guide to the Western Himalayas," he envisions splitting the GHT into about eight legs suitable for commercial trekking in India. And he thinks the trail can be up and running in 2010. “Most of these trails do exist historically, whether it was used by the shepherds to walk from one village to another, or for trading, or for marriage purposes,” Chaudhry said. “It's just that they've not really been popularized.”

In March, the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development will hold a conference in Kathmandu to bring together all the parties interested in the GHT, which the nonprofit organization views as a means “to attract repeat visitors to the Himalaya region, and to divert them into lesser visited rural mountain areas as a tool for poverty reduction in poorer mountain districts.” Bringing together stakeholders not only from Nepal and India but also from Bhutan, China and Pakistan, the conference aims to explore the viability of promoting the GHT as a region-wide project. Boustead, for one, believes that it represents a crucial opportunity.

“It's a watershed moment for adventure tourism in Asia,” he said. “There are long distance walking trails in Africa, South America, North America, Europe and Australia. But there are no formal long-distance walking trails in Asia.” The GHT could not only be Asia's first such route. It's a natural to be the most famous long-distance trail in the world.

“The Himalaya is an obvious choice,” Boustead said. “It's defined, it's well-known, it has the highest peaks on earth. There's lots of draw cards.”

Source URL: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100203/adventure-travel-great-himalaya-trail

goa's tourism boss links sexual assaults to bikinis

A shocking case provokes outrage. The local government blames swimwear.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
February 1, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — Once upon a time, the beaches of Goa were known for free love. But as a string of high-profile sexual assaults on tourists culminated in the alleged rape of a 9-year-old Russian girl last week, the idyllic strip of sand along the Arabian Sea is fast gaining a fearful reputation.

The answer? According to the state's ministry of tourism, those cute pre-teens in two-pieces are asking for it.

“You can't blame the locals; they have never seen such women. Foreign tourists must maintain a certain degree of modesty in their clothing. Walking on the beaches half-naked is bound to titillate the senses,” New Delhi's Mail Today newspaper quoted Pamela Mascarhenas, Goa's deputy director of tourism, as saying Friday.

GlobalPost could not reach Mascarhenas for comment. But a spokesman for the Goa tourism department confirmed that — far from marking a departure from official policy — the official's remark echoed previous statements by the tourism minister himself.

“I have not talked to her [Mascarhenas] on this issue directly,” said Swapnil Naik, director of the Goa tourism department. “But I think that sentiment has also been echoed by our minister in one or two statements. There is a degree of cultural shock for our native population when they see certain type of dressing.”

Goa has been on the boil since Jan. 28, when a 9-year-old Russian girl was allegedly raped by two Indian men. Following close on the heels of the alleged rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling, a British teenager, in 2008, the incident sparked an immediate media feeding frenzy, as local TV channels broadcast interviews with the victim's mother and the 9-year-old girl herself. The ongoing story culminated Jan. 30 with a scare headline reading, “No Bikinis On Goa Beaches.”

Naik said that there is no plan to ban bikinis. “It's totally false,” he said. “There was no such statement made.”

Earlier in January, Goa Tourism Minister Francisco Pacheco announced that the government would no longer feature women in bikinis in its advertisements. The state has not barred other tourism organizations for promoting fun in the sun, and it has not yet made any noises about imposing a dress code on the state's revelers.

But weeks before Mascarhenas' remark, the minister's statement irked many Indians, who felt it implied that rape victims invite assault by dressing in particular ways. “Goa is a family holiday destination and not a sex tourism destination,” Pacheco said Jan. 7. “We will make sure that bikini babes do not symbolize Goa tourism in future.”

“In India they still morally land the responsibility on the victim if the victim is a woman, because of cultural conditioning,” said 35-year-old Anurashi Shetty, a resident of Donapaula Goa. “[The impression is always that] she must have done something to provoke it. It's a national mindset.”

That mindset includes many government servants.

“The general impression that the government felt is going out to the domestic tourists and others is that Goa is a place where you can dress whichever way you want, and that may be one of the reasons for the rape cases and security problems we have been having recently,” Naik said.

On Jan. 29, Goa police arrested Aman Bharadwaj, prime suspect in the alleged rape, in Mumbai. The central government and Goa administration have reportedly both been under pressure from Russia's embassy in New Delhi. But the speedy apprehension of a suspect may not warm diplomatic relations for long as India's glacial court system grinds down victim and accused alike.

After the incident, the embassy criticized the Goa police for failing to protect tourists and threatened to recommend that Russians — the second-largest group of visitors to Goa — avoid the state in the future.

"We are shocked and deeply outraged by the reports about the disgusting incident in India's well-known resort in Goa when a 9-year-old child from Russia became another victim of a rapist," the Russian Embassy said in a statement.

Comments about the way the 9-year-old victim may have been dressed will not be a balm on Goa's troubled waters.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/100131/goa-sexual-assault-bikinis

india's comics boom: the pao collective

It may not be Savita Bhabhi, but a group of Indian artists is reinventing the medium.

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
January 19, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — Fifteen years ago, when artist Orijit Sen produced India's first graphic novel — a story about the Narmada valley dam protest movement — he was only able to print the book with the help of government funding, and distribution meant carrying copies of the book to stores and trying to explain why it didn't belong in the children's section.

“No publisher would consider publishing something like a comic book,” Sen said. “We were only able to publish it with the help of a small grant from the government, and the government didn't know what we were using it for, obviously.”

The scene is different now.

Amid a boom in publishing and contemporary art, India's comic book scene is undergoing a renaissance of its own. Once known only for the beloved Amar Chitra Katha series, which focused on Hindu mythology, today India's comic book industry includes homegrown superhero sagas, modernized versions of classic myths and even postmodern tales of urban angst.

Courting the global audience, self-help guru Deepak Chopra and Oscar winner Shekhar Kapur have teamed up to develop a library of India-inspired heroes for Liquid Comics, from which several potential Hollywood film projects have emerged. And domestically, upstarts like the Kolkata-based Kriyetic Comics and the Google group Project C are moving in on the territory of longtime leader Raj Comics. This is fomenting a much-needed revolution in a kids-only oriented industry that has become excessively formulaic over the past two decades.

“In the earlier part of the decade, in India, comics were still perceived as 'kids products,' whereas in the last five years a new generation of world-class Indian creators have begun expanding the boundaries of the medium and transforming its perception within India as a viable foundation to create compelling stories that are not defined by age or genre, just like other visual storytelling mediums such as film and television,” said Sharad Devarajan, co-founder and CEO of Liquid Comics.

The latest buzz is literary. Following in the footsteps of genre-pioneer Art Spiegelman (Maus) and recent sensation Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis), a new group of Indian comic book artists who call themselves “the Pao Collective” are fighting to make the Indian graphic novel a publishing phenomenon to rival so-called “Indian writing in English” — a virtual factory for Booker Prize winners.

“We are like the older guys who are somewhat known, who have been doing this for awhile, so publishers will listen to us,” said Sen. “We want to use our influence there to help bring out young people and their work.”

The Pao Collective joined forces about a year ago, inspired by painter and comic book scholar Amitabh Kumar, who was researching Indian popular culture at the Delhi-based Sarai Media Lab. Recognizing that the commercial houses were evolving on a studio model that to some degree stifled creativity, Kumar approached the country's small set of successful graphic novelists to form a group that could nurture young artists, promote the comic book medium, and further blur the lines between art, literature, and the comic book.

“We decided that we needed some kind of platform, or some kind of organized setup, that can promote comic book culture in India and bring out various different kinds of stories to look at the visual narrative device in the Indian context,” said Kumar.

Along with Kumar, the Pao (or “bread”) Collective comprises Sarnath Banerjee, Vishwajyoti Ghosh, Orijit Sen and Parismita Singh — each of whom has emerged as a pioneer of the Indian literary graphic novel. Sen, whose 1994 “River of Stories” was a compelling comic about a young activist confronting the tragedy of the Narmada Dam Project, is often credited with introducing the graphic novel in India.

The winner of a $33,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Banerjee in 2004 produced the first graphic novel, Corridor, to attract the attention of India's literary publishing industry — as well as the country's first graphic best seller. Ghosh has produced a number of works for international anthologies, and last year Singh's "The Hotel at the End of the World" reignited the interest of India's literati.

“Art is a vehicle for understanding ourselves, and for young people a medium like this could be a really strong creator of identity, a mirror for what we are, and a means of questioning our values,” said Sen.

The Pao Collective has embarked on an ambitious plan to promote interest in the Indian graphic novel by mentoring new artists, publishing compelling work and bringing the comic book form into spaces traditionally reserved for art and theater.
Already Pao is making a splash in the country's literary and art circles by writing reviews of graphic novels for daily newspapers like the Times of India, presenting its work at dramatic readings or “storytelling sessions” in cultural venues, and exhibiting comic book pages in art galleries. The launch of a Pao Collective blog featuring online editions of the members' work is imminent. And down the road, Pao plans comic book workshops across the country, which the members hope will inspire similar organizations in other cities and towns, and eventually a comic book convention.

“It's on the fringe of art and the fringe of literature, which is great,” said Banerjee. “Who wants to be in art, and who wants to be in literature? The time has come for the graphic novel to be looked into from outside the parameters of literature and outside the parameters of art.”

To start that process, Pao will soon bring out an anthology of new and veteran Indian comic book artists in conjunction with a major international publishing house. Though all the material has not yet been selected, the depth and variety of the work that has been chosen so far sounds promising.

In one story, for instance, a young Indian writer has collaborated with a Japanese expatriate to produce a sort of spoof of the epic Mahabharata — in Japan's much-admired “manga” style. In another, a medical doctor has collaborated with a graphic artist on a non-fiction comic, almost like an academic study, on the meat-eating habits of northern India. And in a third, a filmmaker has collaborated with a illustrator/animator on a gothic story set in 18th century Lucknow that obliquely addresses conflicts between women's self-realization and the bounds of tradition.

“It's fantastic to see these types of stories being told,” said Devarajan. “It further enhances the opportunity for Indian audiences to reassess what they perceived as a comic book and start taking the medium seriously.”

the secret behind "avatar" and twilight's "new moon"

Can you hear the Indian accent behind Hollywood's biggest hits?

By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
January 12, 2010

NEW DELHI, India — When 33-year-old Namit Malhotra started out in the special effects business with three of his buddies back in 1997, there was every reason to believe that these back-of-a-cocktail-napkin entrepreneurs would crash and burn.

Though his father was a successful cinematographer, Malhotra was just 19 years old. He and his pals didn't have an MBA or a year of experience between the bunch. And Malhotra himself had to enroll in a technical school to learn the basics of computer graphics.

“On the technology side, we were totally fresh, so it meant that we had to learn as a matter of survival,” Malhotra said.

Fifteen years later, Prime Focus Ltd., the company that Malhotra started with his friends, is more than surviving. The firm is steadily climbing the ladder to the top of the visual effects industry. Malhotra's staff has increased from four college-age kids to more than 1,200 post-production pros. After selling equity to a couple of top Indian entertainment firms to finance acquisitions, the company now boasts four studios in India, another in London, and two more in the U.S. And last year, the firm earned 3.67 billion rupees ($80 million) in revenue. But Malhotra's biggest strides have been creative.

Prime Focus played an essential behind-the-scenes role in two of the biggest Hollywood blockbusters of 2009 — Chris Weitz's "New Moon" and James Cameron's "Avatar." The company established itself as one of the cutting-edge firms in the visual effects business by producing about 10 percent of James Cameron's path-breaking 3D superhit and a whopping 80 percent of the shots for the second installment of the Twilight franchise.

“'Avatar' obviously is the biggest of all,” Malhotra said. “We've done some exemplary work in 'GI Joe' and 'New Moon' as well. But when you're working on 'Avatar' as one of the top five vendors you have got to a lot more credible space than working on just any movie.”

The London Stock Exchange-listed company's portfolio of work runs the gambit from "Avatar" to top Bollywood hits like the Amir Khan starrer "3 Idiots" to Splinter Films' DVD release of a live performance by Beyonce. The company already owns the lion's share of the Indian post-production and visual effects market, and the international business is expanding rapidly.

The future looks even more promising. Capitalizing on India's low cost base, Prime Focus aims to use its so-called “worldsourcing” model to grab an ever larger slice of the international visual effects market, as Hollywood simultaneously ramps up its use of computer-generated imagery to boost the global box office and tries to slash production costs to boost profits.

“We've gone out and set up the base for operating in all these developed markets, so now we find ourselves in the zone where we can push for building scale through our global operation,” Malhotra said.

While other entertainment sectors suffered a rough year, India's animation and visual effects industry grew more than 20 percent last year for the second year in a row. And according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, that growth is slated to continue. The consultancy's most recent report on the global entertainment industry forecasts that India's animation and visual effects industry will grow 22.2 percent a year between now and 2013, to reach Rs. 42.5 billion ($925 million) from a base of Rs. 13.0 billion ($283 million) in 2007.


“India has a talent pool for getting into these technology intensive businesses, and of course the cost is low,” said Smita Jha, associate director of the entertainment and media practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “That's one basic factor that's propelled the growth.”

Of the two fields, animation has received the lion's share of media attention because the number of video games and animated features produced every year makes it much larger than the VFX business. But VFX is growing in importance. Today, a host of Indian companies like Prime Focus, VCL, Crest and Rhythm & Hues are working on major Hollywood projects, and as much as 60 percent of animation and VFX revenues come from international projects. And while the biggest reason remains the conventional outsourcing model — whereby filmmakers slash costs by sending the grunt work of the special effects trade to Indian animators — Prime Focus' pioneering work on "Avatar" shows that's changing, too.

“Gradually over time, people have learned the ropes and they're not just operating on a low-cost, high-scale model, but they're actually creating IP [intellectual property] work,” said Jha.

Prime Focus created the holographic table on the Earth invasion force's mother ship, with which the main characters bring up a three-dimensional display of the planet's alien natives' “Home Tree.” Prime Focus also created computer-generated helicopters, buildings and natural terrain for several important sequences. About 90 designers from the company's Los Angeles, Vancouver and Winnipeg offices worked on the project, under the direction of top producers in the L.A. office.

Similarly, for "New Moon" Prime Focus contributed key visual effects, including various elements of the scenery and atmosphere and the "Diamond Skin" effect on Edward and the other vampire characters. About 45 designers from the Vancouver and L.A. studios worked on "New Moon," with Vancouver doing the heavy lifting to create the Forks High School, the cliffs and other computer-generated elements of the Washington State locale.

“We never wanted to be a low-end outsourcing company,” Malhotra said. “We haven't tried to be a low-cost supplier. We are working at the highest creative end of the business.”