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
Monday, March 08, 2010
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
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
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
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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
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
Thursday, February 18, 2010
from worst to near first
How India's most desperate state transformed itself to become a model for the rest of the country.
By Jason Overdorf | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 22, 2010
For centuries, it seems, the northern Indian state of Bihar has been plunging downhill. Once the seat of one of the world's most glorious empires, the state was first devastated by colonial policies that enshrined feudal landlords, then shunned by a succession of Indian governments, and finally riven and destroyed when the seeds of caste and class conflict matured into a small-scale civil war in the 1970s. As the militias of upper-caste landlords clashed with revolutionary guerrillas fighting for the oppressed, and caste-based political agitations threw up a series of incompetent and allegedly corrupt governments, state services ground to a halt, highways disintegrated, bridges crumbled, and career criminals ascended from the back rooms of party offices to take seats in the state legislative assembly, and even the Indian Parliament itself. By the 1990s, brazen and deadly highway robberies put an end to traveling after nightfall, and as business activity plummeted, kidnapping for ransom was declared the state's only growth industry. The so-called Republic of Bihar—viewed as a criminal fiefdom beyond the purview of the government of India—was effectively a failed state. "Institutions had collapsed," says Nand Kishore Singh, a member of the upper house of Parliament. "Law and order had come to a grinding halt."
This January, however, Bihar posted some stunning statistics that go a long way toward confirming that, since taking office in 2005, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has done the impossible. Despite the economic crisis and three years of droughts and floods, Bihar posted 11 percent average annual economic growth over Kumar's five years in office, making it the second-fastest-growing state in India, the second-hottest major economy in the world after China. In what were once impassable badlands, the administration laid 6,800 kilometers of roads, built 1,600 bridges and culverts, and cut journey time in half in many areas. Car sales eclipsed kidnappings, as crimes by roving bandits fell steadily from 1,297 to 640 and kidnappings for ransom dropped from 411 to 66 between 2004 and 2008. In a state that many Delhi residents once feared to visit—despite its allure as home to Bodh Gaya, the site where the Buddha attained his enlightenment—the number of foreign tourists shot up from 95,000 to 356,000 over the past two years.
These figures were so astounding that critics lost no time in belittling them. How could backward Bihar be growing nearly as rapidly as booming Gujarat, a longstanding leader in industries ranging from textiles to pharmaceuticals? The economic growth in Bihar stems from state spending, not investment, many pointed out. All Indian states collect and report their own economic figures to the Central Statistical Organization, and Kumar must have cooked the books in Bihar, others alleged. Those charges are almost certainly wrong. There's a small margin for error. But large-scale reporting fraud is unlikely, and things have indeed changed dramatically in Bihar. "We never had a functioning state—neither before independence nor after independence," says economist Shaibal Gupta, who heads the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, the state capital. "Under Nitish Kumar, for the first time the state started functioning marginally. And with the improved functioning of the state, things have dramatically improved."
Kumar's nascent success represents more than just the light at the end of the tunnel for one failed state. It could be a guide for other states that are struggling with many of the same issues. Almost 20 years ago, after a visit to a site in Bihar where a guerrilla army of untouchables had slaughtered a village of landlords with harvesting sickles, the travel writer William Dalrymple bemoaned the collapse of Bihar. But he also suggested that the state was not so much backward, as India's newspapers often described it, as it was forward: a trendsetter for the rest of India that presaged ballot-rigging, caste-based social upheaval, and the criminalization of politics as national phenomena. This dismal view appeared to be correct, as India's vaunted democracy descended into simple caste-based gerrymandering, knee-jerk -"anti--incumbency" made mockery of the accountability that free elections are meant to enshrine, and an ever-increasing number of alleged gangsters made their way into the national legislature. "In the '80s and '90s, there was a wave of caste-related politics, where development didn't seem to matter," says Baijayant "Jay" Panda, a member of Parliament from Orissa, a state that has faced similar problems. "But I think that was a phase. We have matured as a democracy. Voters today are going beyond those concerns and looking at issues like good governance and development and electoral promises being kept."
Like his main rivals, Kumar, 58, is a career politician, who served three terms as a minister in the central government since the late 1980s. A teetotaler known for his simple lifestyle, he has a reputation for probity that propelled him to the helm of Bihar's government in 2005. Because he did not appear to have amassed any fortune or to have used his position to bring any family members into the usually lucrative business of politics, voters perceived him as outside the established patronage system. In a state that had been dominated by politicians catering to an alliance of the Muslim and middle-caste Yadav vote, Kumar set out to build a "coalition of extremes" that includes the high-priest and warrior castes and voters from among the erstwhile untouchables. Even as he did so, however, he sent voters a message that he was more committed to developing the state than protecting his caste fellows, and that he would end the 15 years of increasingly hostile class war under Lalu Prasad Yadav, a charismatic demagogue who as chief minister exploited lower-caste hatred for the state's unreformed feudal landlords. With a brio worthy of Falstaff, Yadav had enshrined his relatives and caste fellows in positions of power, and observers blamed him for his cronies' excesses. His brothers-in-law, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, for instance, have figured in police investigations of the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars in flood-relief funds and the alleged abduction and torture of an official of one of India's state-owned banks. Neither has been convicted of any crime. Lalu himself was accused of complicity in the embezzlement of millions of dollars in state funds intended for fodder, livestock, and farm equipment, for which he was in and out of jail several times before he was acquitted of amassing "disproportionate assets" for a man of his position in 2006.
Kumar changed the rules. He reversed Bihar's plunge into chaos by doing something that was highly unusual in the state—and indeed in all of India: he focused on competence over patronage. To improve delivery of government services, Kumar broke the long trend of overcentralizing state powers, and delegated more financial and administrative powers to officials in the field. He updated archaic rules that made civil engineers seek minister-level approval to spend absurdly low amounts of money. These moves eliminated the huge backlogs of simple matters piled up on senior officials' desks. He also reestablished the cabinet meeting as a weekly event, held every Tuesday, where in years past the cabinet sometimes did not meet for months.
Kumar then redefined the basic functions of institutions, essentially requiring offices to do the work they'd been assigned. He ended the widespread "transfer industry," which sold coveted bureaucratic posts to the highest bidders, and handpicked bureaucrats known for their competence. He ensured them that he would honor the set three-year tenure of postings rather than shuffling them around before they could deliver. One such official built 259 bridges and turned around a loss-making state-owned infrastructure firm during his three-year watch; as a reward, he's been charged with building the state's new roads and hospitals. To speedily fill thousands of vacancies in the police force that had left the state at the mercy of criminals, he tapped already trained personnel from among the state's ex-soldiers—who in India retire in their 40s. He publicly supported the police after they made high-profile arrests of criminals who had previously enjoyed political protection. Those jailed included not only a member of Parliament from the state's main rival political faction (who had dared the state police chief to arrest him on live television) but also an assemblyman from Kumar's own party who had made his own TV spectacle, threatening to have a group of reporters killed for filming his drunken altercation with the staff of a local hotel. Kumar managed to redress the state courts' abysmal conviction rate by instituting fast-track courts and working with the judiciary to focus on career criminals' most easily prosecuted offenses to ensure that they swiftly found themselves behind bars. The moves resulted in nearly 39,000 convictions between 2006 and 2009, compared with an average of less than 10,000 in previous decades. Those convicted included a dozen state legislators and members of Parliament like Mohammad Shahabuddin, Pappu Yadav, and Munna Shukla, all three of whom are now serving life sentences for crimes including kidnapping, intended murder, and murder.
Rebuilding the police and courts has reaped clear economic benefits. Now rickshaw drivers say they earn more money because people are traveling after 8 p.m. Shopkeepers say their take has increased because they no longer have to bribe the police or pay off local thugs. By retooling the bureaucracy in charge of implementing state projects, Kumar has been able to boost spending on government programs. Bihar's outlays on projects ranging from building roads to training new primary-school teachers rose from $320 million in 2001 to $3.5 billion last year, significantly outpacing the growth in central government funding for Bihar. "Earlier, the funds were not even reaching to the district level," says Manoj Rai, Delhi director of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia. "If you take the old quote that out of one rupee, only 15 paise reaches to the people, in Bihar, it was not even reaching to the district [administrators] from the state." Among other things, that increase meant more -teachers—more than 100,000 added in the primary schools since Kumar took office—and better oversight of doctors and staff working at rural health centers. Primary-care centers that used to see 30 patients a month now see 3,600—because people have a reasonable expectation that the doctors have shown up for work.
Still, Bihar continues to rank dismally on every major social indicator, and there are few signs that the poorest of the poor have benefited much from the new economic growth. More than half of Bihar's 82 million people live below the poverty line, compared with about 40 percent for the rest of India; both the infant-mortality rate and -maternal-mortality rate are higher than the national average; and some 70 percent of the state's inhabited areas are not linked by motorable roads.
Bihar's course correction may well mark a watershed moment for India. At a time when coalition politics limits centralized control, the nation needs competent, accountable provincial governments to continue its emergence as a global power. There are similarly encouraging signs from other local and regional leaders. Delhi's Sheila Dikshit has staved off her opponents by successfully tackling pollution and improving city infrastructure; Gujarat's Narendra Modi has retained power by attracting investment and creating jobs, despite his alleged role in deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002; and Orissa's Naveen Patnaik has won an unprecedented third term in one of India's laggard states by improving law and order, stimulating industry, and cracking down on corruption. The common thread is that political leaders are realizing that anti-incumbency and gerrymandering aren't insurmountable: they can win reelection by delivering economic development and ousting the corrupt or incompetent from their parties' dockets.
Because of his state's longstanding reputation as a basket case, Kumar, perhaps more than any other, has shown that even India's darkest corners can make progress against crime, corruption, and caste- and creed-based demagoguery. In recent days, Kumar faced a rebellion from within his own party that may illustrate one of the costs of dismantling the patronage system. But if he can hold onto power in the state elections this fall, and perhaps even if he can't, the trendsetter state will confirm that India's democracy and its voters have reached a new stage of evolution.
"Whether he wins or loses, the signal has gone out very clearly," says PRIA's Rai. Kumar's predecessor, Lalu Yadav, "used to say development does not help you to win elections. Now the same man has started using development jargon." Whoever takes office next term will have to do it on the promise of electricity, roads, and jobs, and they'll be accountable for their promises now that Kumar has broken the perception that all politicians are the same and change is impossible. "Politically, Kumar has won," says Rai. "Electorally, he may lose. But that's not important."
What's vital is that India's most backward state is now finally moving forward.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233502
© 2010
By Jason Overdorf | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 22, 2010
For centuries, it seems, the northern Indian state of Bihar has been plunging downhill. Once the seat of one of the world's most glorious empires, the state was first devastated by colonial policies that enshrined feudal landlords, then shunned by a succession of Indian governments, and finally riven and destroyed when the seeds of caste and class conflict matured into a small-scale civil war in the 1970s. As the militias of upper-caste landlords clashed with revolutionary guerrillas fighting for the oppressed, and caste-based political agitations threw up a series of incompetent and allegedly corrupt governments, state services ground to a halt, highways disintegrated, bridges crumbled, and career criminals ascended from the back rooms of party offices to take seats in the state legislative assembly, and even the Indian Parliament itself. By the 1990s, brazen and deadly highway robberies put an end to traveling after nightfall, and as business activity plummeted, kidnapping for ransom was declared the state's only growth industry. The so-called Republic of Bihar—viewed as a criminal fiefdom beyond the purview of the government of India—was effectively a failed state. "Institutions had collapsed," says Nand Kishore Singh, a member of the upper house of Parliament. "Law and order had come to a grinding halt."
This January, however, Bihar posted some stunning statistics that go a long way toward confirming that, since taking office in 2005, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has done the impossible. Despite the economic crisis and three years of droughts and floods, Bihar posted 11 percent average annual economic growth over Kumar's five years in office, making it the second-fastest-growing state in India, the second-hottest major economy in the world after China. In what were once impassable badlands, the administration laid 6,800 kilometers of roads, built 1,600 bridges and culverts, and cut journey time in half in many areas. Car sales eclipsed kidnappings, as crimes by roving bandits fell steadily from 1,297 to 640 and kidnappings for ransom dropped from 411 to 66 between 2004 and 2008. In a state that many Delhi residents once feared to visit—despite its allure as home to Bodh Gaya, the site where the Buddha attained his enlightenment—the number of foreign tourists shot up from 95,000 to 356,000 over the past two years.
These figures were so astounding that critics lost no time in belittling them. How could backward Bihar be growing nearly as rapidly as booming Gujarat, a longstanding leader in industries ranging from textiles to pharmaceuticals? The economic growth in Bihar stems from state spending, not investment, many pointed out. All Indian states collect and report their own economic figures to the Central Statistical Organization, and Kumar must have cooked the books in Bihar, others alleged. Those charges are almost certainly wrong. There's a small margin for error. But large-scale reporting fraud is unlikely, and things have indeed changed dramatically in Bihar. "We never had a functioning state—neither before independence nor after independence," says economist Shaibal Gupta, who heads the Asian Development Research Institute in Patna, the state capital. "Under Nitish Kumar, for the first time the state started functioning marginally. And with the improved functioning of the state, things have dramatically improved."
Kumar's nascent success represents more than just the light at the end of the tunnel for one failed state. It could be a guide for other states that are struggling with many of the same issues. Almost 20 years ago, after a visit to a site in Bihar where a guerrilla army of untouchables had slaughtered a village of landlords with harvesting sickles, the travel writer William Dalrymple bemoaned the collapse of Bihar. But he also suggested that the state was not so much backward, as India's newspapers often described it, as it was forward: a trendsetter for the rest of India that presaged ballot-rigging, caste-based social upheaval, and the criminalization of politics as national phenomena. This dismal view appeared to be correct, as India's vaunted democracy descended into simple caste-based gerrymandering, knee-jerk -"anti--incumbency" made mockery of the accountability that free elections are meant to enshrine, and an ever-increasing number of alleged gangsters made their way into the national legislature. "In the '80s and '90s, there was a wave of caste-related politics, where development didn't seem to matter," says Baijayant "Jay" Panda, a member of Parliament from Orissa, a state that has faced similar problems. "But I think that was a phase. We have matured as a democracy. Voters today are going beyond those concerns and looking at issues like good governance and development and electoral promises being kept."
Like his main rivals, Kumar, 58, is a career politician, who served three terms as a minister in the central government since the late 1980s. A teetotaler known for his simple lifestyle, he has a reputation for probity that propelled him to the helm of Bihar's government in 2005. Because he did not appear to have amassed any fortune or to have used his position to bring any family members into the usually lucrative business of politics, voters perceived him as outside the established patronage system. In a state that had been dominated by politicians catering to an alliance of the Muslim and middle-caste Yadav vote, Kumar set out to build a "coalition of extremes" that includes the high-priest and warrior castes and voters from among the erstwhile untouchables. Even as he did so, however, he sent voters a message that he was more committed to developing the state than protecting his caste fellows, and that he would end the 15 years of increasingly hostile class war under Lalu Prasad Yadav, a charismatic demagogue who as chief minister exploited lower-caste hatred for the state's unreformed feudal landlords. With a brio worthy of Falstaff, Yadav had enshrined his relatives and caste fellows in positions of power, and observers blamed him for his cronies' excesses. His brothers-in-law, Sadhu Yadav and Subhash Yadav, for instance, have figured in police investigations of the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars in flood-relief funds and the alleged abduction and torture of an official of one of India's state-owned banks. Neither has been convicted of any crime. Lalu himself was accused of complicity in the embezzlement of millions of dollars in state funds intended for fodder, livestock, and farm equipment, for which he was in and out of jail several times before he was acquitted of amassing "disproportionate assets" for a man of his position in 2006.
Kumar changed the rules. He reversed Bihar's plunge into chaos by doing something that was highly unusual in the state—and indeed in all of India: he focused on competence over patronage. To improve delivery of government services, Kumar broke the long trend of overcentralizing state powers, and delegated more financial and administrative powers to officials in the field. He updated archaic rules that made civil engineers seek minister-level approval to spend absurdly low amounts of money. These moves eliminated the huge backlogs of simple matters piled up on senior officials' desks. He also reestablished the cabinet meeting as a weekly event, held every Tuesday, where in years past the cabinet sometimes did not meet for months.
Kumar then redefined the basic functions of institutions, essentially requiring offices to do the work they'd been assigned. He ended the widespread "transfer industry," which sold coveted bureaucratic posts to the highest bidders, and handpicked bureaucrats known for their competence. He ensured them that he would honor the set three-year tenure of postings rather than shuffling them around before they could deliver. One such official built 259 bridges and turned around a loss-making state-owned infrastructure firm during his three-year watch; as a reward, he's been charged with building the state's new roads and hospitals. To speedily fill thousands of vacancies in the police force that had left the state at the mercy of criminals, he tapped already trained personnel from among the state's ex-soldiers—who in India retire in their 40s. He publicly supported the police after they made high-profile arrests of criminals who had previously enjoyed political protection. Those jailed included not only a member of Parliament from the state's main rival political faction (who had dared the state police chief to arrest him on live television) but also an assemblyman from Kumar's own party who had made his own TV spectacle, threatening to have a group of reporters killed for filming his drunken altercation with the staff of a local hotel. Kumar managed to redress the state courts' abysmal conviction rate by instituting fast-track courts and working with the judiciary to focus on career criminals' most easily prosecuted offenses to ensure that they swiftly found themselves behind bars. The moves resulted in nearly 39,000 convictions between 2006 and 2009, compared with an average of less than 10,000 in previous decades. Those convicted included a dozen state legislators and members of Parliament like Mohammad Shahabuddin, Pappu Yadav, and Munna Shukla, all three of whom are now serving life sentences for crimes including kidnapping, intended murder, and murder.
Rebuilding the police and courts has reaped clear economic benefits. Now rickshaw drivers say they earn more money because people are traveling after 8 p.m. Shopkeepers say their take has increased because they no longer have to bribe the police or pay off local thugs. By retooling the bureaucracy in charge of implementing state projects, Kumar has been able to boost spending on government programs. Bihar's outlays on projects ranging from building roads to training new primary-school teachers rose from $320 million in 2001 to $3.5 billion last year, significantly outpacing the growth in central government funding for Bihar. "Earlier, the funds were not even reaching to the district level," says Manoj Rai, Delhi director of the Society for Participatory Research in Asia. "If you take the old quote that out of one rupee, only 15 paise reaches to the people, in Bihar, it was not even reaching to the district [administrators] from the state." Among other things, that increase meant more -teachers—more than 100,000 added in the primary schools since Kumar took office—and better oversight of doctors and staff working at rural health centers. Primary-care centers that used to see 30 patients a month now see 3,600—because people have a reasonable expectation that the doctors have shown up for work.
Still, Bihar continues to rank dismally on every major social indicator, and there are few signs that the poorest of the poor have benefited much from the new economic growth. More than half of Bihar's 82 million people live below the poverty line, compared with about 40 percent for the rest of India; both the infant-mortality rate and -maternal-mortality rate are higher than the national average; and some 70 percent of the state's inhabited areas are not linked by motorable roads.
Bihar's course correction may well mark a watershed moment for India. At a time when coalition politics limits centralized control, the nation needs competent, accountable provincial governments to continue its emergence as a global power. There are similarly encouraging signs from other local and regional leaders. Delhi's Sheila Dikshit has staved off her opponents by successfully tackling pollution and improving city infrastructure; Gujarat's Narendra Modi has retained power by attracting investment and creating jobs, despite his alleged role in deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002; and Orissa's Naveen Patnaik has won an unprecedented third term in one of India's laggard states by improving law and order, stimulating industry, and cracking down on corruption. The common thread is that political leaders are realizing that anti-incumbency and gerrymandering aren't insurmountable: they can win reelection by delivering economic development and ousting the corrupt or incompetent from their parties' dockets.
Because of his state's longstanding reputation as a basket case, Kumar, perhaps more than any other, has shown that even India's darkest corners can make progress against crime, corruption, and caste- and creed-based demagoguery. In recent days, Kumar faced a rebellion from within his own party that may illustrate one of the costs of dismantling the patronage system. But if he can hold onto power in the state elections this fall, and perhaps even if he can't, the trendsetter state will confirm that India's democracy and its voters have reached a new stage of evolution.
"Whether he wins or loses, the signal has gone out very clearly," says PRIA's Rai. Kumar's predecessor, Lalu Yadav, "used to say development does not help you to win elections. Now the same man has started using development jargon." Whoever takes office next term will have to do it on the promise of electricity, roads, and jobs, and they'll be accountable for their promises now that Kumar has broken the perception that all politicians are the same and change is impossible. "Politically, Kumar has won," says Rai. "Electorally, he may lose. But that's not important."
What's vital is that India's most backward state is now finally moving forward.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/233502
© 2010
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
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
Thursday, February 04, 2010
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
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
Monday, February 01, 2010
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
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
Monday, January 25, 2010
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.”
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.”
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
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.”
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.”
Friday, January 08, 2010
raped by the law
A controversial case shakes India's faith in the rule of law.
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
January 8, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Nearly 20 years after he was accused of using his position of power to molest a teenage girl, and 16 years after his victim's suicide, a high-ranking Indian police official was last month finally brought to justice.
Shambhu Pratap Singh Rathore, a state police inspector general, was convicted of molesting Ruchika Girhotra, a rising tennis star, in 1990. On Dec. 21, the court handed down a sentence of just six months jail time and a $25 fine.
What many in India feel is a miscarriage of justice has prompted a re-evaluation of the widely held belief that India, while it lags behind China by many other parameters, remains morally superior to its economic rival not only because it is a functioning democracy but also because it sees itself as a society governed by the rule of law.
The trial follows close on the heels of a similar breakdown of the legal system involving the murder of fashion model Jessica Lal.
Her killer, the son of a prominent politician, was acquitted in 2006, only to be retried and sentenced to life imprisonment after intense public pressure. The Ruchika case has been splashed across the front pages here since the first verdict was delivered on Dec. 21.
“It shows deep infirmities in our system, which is supposed to bring justice to victims,” said member of parliament Brinda Karat, who is vice president of the All India Democratic Women's Association. “It highlights a systemic failure.”
Under intense public pressure, this week the state of Haryana, where the original incident occurred, registered fresh charges against Rathore that allege he abused his power to scuttle the original investigation, delay his prosecution and harass the victim's family, eventually driving Ruchika herself to commit suicide. But as television channels and newspapers continue to throw light onto more and more incidents in which police, politicians and other powerful people allegedly used money and influence to subvert justice, the citizenry's faith in the country's brilliantly penned, but poorly enforced, laws is at an all-time low.
Molested by Rathore, who was both the inspector general of the Haryana state police and the head of the state tennis association at the time, 14-year-old tennis player Ruchika Girhotra sought to punish him by lodging an official complaint.
Investigations stagnated for years after the complaint was filed, during which time Girhotra's family allegedly suffered constant police harassment, according to new charges leveled by the family on Jan. 5. Rathore allegedly hired goons to vandalize the Girhotras' home, pressured Ruchika's school to have her expelled, and got his police cronies to arrest her brother for car theft, according to Pankaj Bhardwaj, the Girhotras' lawyer. After just three years of this treatment, Ruchika killed herself. She was 17 years old.
“[Rathore] was the person who was driving everybody,” Bhardwaj told GlobalPost. “He was the mastermind behind the total conspiracy.”
But the punishment wasn't over for the victim's family. Rathore apparently suffered no difficulties because of the criminal charges pending against him. Though technically under investigation for molesting a minor, Rathore was promoted to director general of police in 1994. And over the next 15 years, the Girhotras alleged that Rathore used his position to corrupt the inquest into Ruchika's death and attempted to bribe the country's main investigative agency.
In what Bhardwaj says is a first for India, a former joint director in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has publicly accused Rathore of trying to corrupt the probe into the crime. "He used to come to my chamber and even call up at my residence. He used to offer me favors at various joints. He also tried to influence my investigation team," R. M. Singh, who headed the probe, told reporters at a recent press conference.
When Rathore was convicted, the victim's family, and the whole country, was outraged by the short duration of the sentence — and Rathore's beaming smile as he exited the court. But the worst tragedy is that Ruchika's fate is stunningly common — and the problem appears to be growing worse.
A 19-year delay is nothing to India's supposed rule of law. At last count, there were nearly 4 million cases pending in India's 21 high courts, a backlog that means thousands of perpetrators roam free for years and others who are denied bail rot away behind bars — sometimes for longer than the maximum sentence possible for their alleged crimes.
For the fairer sex, it's even less fair. According to official statistics, crimes against women are rising faster than other offenses, while police continue to go slow in investigating them. “There is 100 percent negligence by the police in cases where women go to them to report an abuse,” said Yasmeen Abrar, a member of India's National Commission for Women. “The law is strong, but the implementation is weak and ultimately because of the lengthy procedure the law is misused.”
Official records show that it takes the police more than a year to begin investigating nine out of 10 sexual harassment cases, eight out of 10 cases of molestation or cruelty by husbands and relatives, and seven out of 10 rapes and dowry deaths. According to supreme court lawyer Mayank Misra, these delays often give the accused the opportunity to intimidate witnesses, harass his accuser, call in political favors and eventually quash the case entirely. Especially, when the perpetrator occupies a position of power.
“There is a nexus between criminals, politicians and the police and bureaucrats,” said Ashok Agarwal, president of the Delhi unit of the All India Lawyers' Union. “It is very easy for the people in positions to manipulate the legal process through abuse of their position.”
In many instances, the police refuse to register cases against politicians, police officials and even powerful criminals, says Agarwal, a prominent public interest litigator. Complainants and witnesses are threatened. Medical evidence is tampered with. Statements of witnesses are wrongly recorded. Cases are delayed in courts, and relevant witnesses are prevented from appearing. All this in the name of the supposed rule of law.
Thanks to a crusading media and an outraged public, Ruchika may, in the end, get justice of sorts. The fresh case filed against Rathore on Jan. 5 reintroduces the charge that Rathore abetted Ruchika's suicide by harassing her and her family — an offense that carries a much more serious penalty than molestation. But even if he has been convicted of molestation, Rathore — who says his accusers are using the media to harass him — has rights, too. And this arbitrary solution is as much an indictment of the system as the court's original judgment. It is not the rule of law, but rather another subversion of the legal process — this time by the media, the voters, and politicians.
The shame is that the last ditch move to render justice at the expense of the law may just convince India's outraged citizens that they can continue to muddle along.
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
January 8, 2010
NEW DELHI, India — Nearly 20 years after he was accused of using his position of power to molest a teenage girl, and 16 years after his victim's suicide, a high-ranking Indian police official was last month finally brought to justice.
Shambhu Pratap Singh Rathore, a state police inspector general, was convicted of molesting Ruchika Girhotra, a rising tennis star, in 1990. On Dec. 21, the court handed down a sentence of just six months jail time and a $25 fine.
What many in India feel is a miscarriage of justice has prompted a re-evaluation of the widely held belief that India, while it lags behind China by many other parameters, remains morally superior to its economic rival not only because it is a functioning democracy but also because it sees itself as a society governed by the rule of law.
The trial follows close on the heels of a similar breakdown of the legal system involving the murder of fashion model Jessica Lal.
Her killer, the son of a prominent politician, was acquitted in 2006, only to be retried and sentenced to life imprisonment after intense public pressure. The Ruchika case has been splashed across the front pages here since the first verdict was delivered on Dec. 21.
“It shows deep infirmities in our system, which is supposed to bring justice to victims,” said member of parliament Brinda Karat, who is vice president of the All India Democratic Women's Association. “It highlights a systemic failure.”
Under intense public pressure, this week the state of Haryana, where the original incident occurred, registered fresh charges against Rathore that allege he abused his power to scuttle the original investigation, delay his prosecution and harass the victim's family, eventually driving Ruchika herself to commit suicide. But as television channels and newspapers continue to throw light onto more and more incidents in which police, politicians and other powerful people allegedly used money and influence to subvert justice, the citizenry's faith in the country's brilliantly penned, but poorly enforced, laws is at an all-time low.
Molested by Rathore, who was both the inspector general of the Haryana state police and the head of the state tennis association at the time, 14-year-old tennis player Ruchika Girhotra sought to punish him by lodging an official complaint.
Investigations stagnated for years after the complaint was filed, during which time Girhotra's family allegedly suffered constant police harassment, according to new charges leveled by the family on Jan. 5. Rathore allegedly hired goons to vandalize the Girhotras' home, pressured Ruchika's school to have her expelled, and got his police cronies to arrest her brother for car theft, according to Pankaj Bhardwaj, the Girhotras' lawyer. After just three years of this treatment, Ruchika killed herself. She was 17 years old.
“[Rathore] was the person who was driving everybody,” Bhardwaj told GlobalPost. “He was the mastermind behind the total conspiracy.”
But the punishment wasn't over for the victim's family. Rathore apparently suffered no difficulties because of the criminal charges pending against him. Though technically under investigation for molesting a minor, Rathore was promoted to director general of police in 1994. And over the next 15 years, the Girhotras alleged that Rathore used his position to corrupt the inquest into Ruchika's death and attempted to bribe the country's main investigative agency.
In what Bhardwaj says is a first for India, a former joint director in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has publicly accused Rathore of trying to corrupt the probe into the crime. "He used to come to my chamber and even call up at my residence. He used to offer me favors at various joints. He also tried to influence my investigation team," R. M. Singh, who headed the probe, told reporters at a recent press conference.
When Rathore was convicted, the victim's family, and the whole country, was outraged by the short duration of the sentence — and Rathore's beaming smile as he exited the court. But the worst tragedy is that Ruchika's fate is stunningly common — and the problem appears to be growing worse.
A 19-year delay is nothing to India's supposed rule of law. At last count, there were nearly 4 million cases pending in India's 21 high courts, a backlog that means thousands of perpetrators roam free for years and others who are denied bail rot away behind bars — sometimes for longer than the maximum sentence possible for their alleged crimes.
For the fairer sex, it's even less fair. According to official statistics, crimes against women are rising faster than other offenses, while police continue to go slow in investigating them. “There is 100 percent negligence by the police in cases where women go to them to report an abuse,” said Yasmeen Abrar, a member of India's National Commission for Women. “The law is strong, but the implementation is weak and ultimately because of the lengthy procedure the law is misused.”
Official records show that it takes the police more than a year to begin investigating nine out of 10 sexual harassment cases, eight out of 10 cases of molestation or cruelty by husbands and relatives, and seven out of 10 rapes and dowry deaths. According to supreme court lawyer Mayank Misra, these delays often give the accused the opportunity to intimidate witnesses, harass his accuser, call in political favors and eventually quash the case entirely. Especially, when the perpetrator occupies a position of power.
“There is a nexus between criminals, politicians and the police and bureaucrats,” said Ashok Agarwal, president of the Delhi unit of the All India Lawyers' Union. “It is very easy for the people in positions to manipulate the legal process through abuse of their position.”
In many instances, the police refuse to register cases against politicians, police officials and even powerful criminals, says Agarwal, a prominent public interest litigator. Complainants and witnesses are threatened. Medical evidence is tampered with. Statements of witnesses are wrongly recorded. Cases are delayed in courts, and relevant witnesses are prevented from appearing. All this in the name of the supposed rule of law.
Thanks to a crusading media and an outraged public, Ruchika may, in the end, get justice of sorts. The fresh case filed against Rathore on Jan. 5 reintroduces the charge that Rathore abetted Ruchika's suicide by harassing her and her family — an offense that carries a much more serious penalty than molestation. But even if he has been convicted of molestation, Rathore — who says his accusers are using the media to harass him — has rights, too. And this arbitrary solution is as much an indictment of the system as the court's original judgment. It is not the rule of law, but rather another subversion of the legal process — this time by the media, the voters, and politicians.
The shame is that the last ditch move to render justice at the expense of the law may just convince India's outraged citizens that they can continue to muddle along.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
india's new license to rock
Forget Bollywood. India's independent music scene is headed in entirely new directions.
By Jason Overdorf / Global Post
NEW DELHI, India — Vijay Nair, would-be Richard Branson of Indian rock, was still a kid when he floated the country's first artist management company, Only Much Louder, back in 1999. All he really wanted to do was tour with some of the garage bands he loved. Now he's almost famous.
Here's what happened. Nair was a normal 16-year-old South Indian geek living (and rocking) in Mumbai and trying to fly under the radar of parents intent on turning him into an engineer, when he got a gig working for a web design company that was making sites for Indian bands. Then one day the members of Pentagram, an up-and-coming rock act, asked him if he'd like to be their manager. Bye bye, engineering school.
"Basically, what 17-year-old kid wouldn't jump at the chance to travel and hang out with a rock band," said Nair in a phone interview with GlobalPost.
His parents bought the story that it would only be a year “break” from studying before he went to college. But Nair soon had much bigger plans. Within a year he was managing two more acts, and he'd booked gigs for Pentagram in Glastonbury and Estonia — breaking the group into the “mainstream” world of European rock. And that was just the beginning.
Fast forward 5 years, and Only Much Louder has 14 employees, reps three bands exclusively as their official manager and arranges gigs for a bunch more. The company books about 200 gigs a year these days, and recently set up Counter Culture Records, its own record label and distribution arm — releasing more than 10 albums in the first year.
“The biggest thing that has changed is that artists now are only performing their own music, as opposed to covers,” said Nair. “That changes many things, because once you have your own material, then you can do albums, concerts with only your stuff playing — it changed the whole value chain in that sense.”
With $500,000 in annual revenue, OML isn't exactly poised to break into the Fortune 500. But as AC/DC's Angus Young will tell you, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. And with the British Council's selection of Nair for its International Young Music Entrepreneur award in 2010 and the naming of OML as one of India's coolest companies by a top business magazine, OML's already making waves.
More importantly, along with a handful of other startups, Nair's brainchild is giving the country's indie music scene license to, well, rock.
“Artist management as a concept never existed in India,” said Arjun S. Ravi, the founder and editor of the online music magazine indiecision. “The bands would either manage themselves or they'd have a friend who'd book them gigs. [OML] is creating a business model of the way things can be done in India. It's not the way things should be done, or how things can be done abroad, but it's how things can be done here. India is a very specific market.”
India's music industry has always been dominated by the soundtracks churned out by Bollywood. Penned and recorded by side musicians and so-called “playback singers,” this bouncy, upbeat pop music is then lip-synced by the film industry's mega stars and receives nearly limitless promotion through TV trailers and the country's dozen-odd music video channels. But even though famous playback singers and singer-composers like Slumdog Millionaire's A.R. Rahman occasionally perform at socialite weddings and awards ceremonies, the combination of Bollywood's heavily produced studio sound and the dominant role of side musicians rather than bands has until recently prevented the evolution of any real live music scene.
“Even in Bombay four or five years ago we did not have many venues that would have live music performances regularly,” said Ravi. “For awhile we only had one venue, and bands could not play anywhere.”
Now, however, with the emergence of Only Much Louder and similar companies, peer-to-peer file sharing and new internet-savvy bands, India's independent music scene is in the midst of an unprecedented boom.
“Over the last four years a huge number of venues have opened,” said Ravi. “Now when I sit down to list gigs in Bombay every week I list 20 to 25 gigs in just one week.”
Sales are climbing, too. According to a website devoted to the Indian music industry, non-Bollywood pop music now accounts for as much as 8 percent of the market — a dramatic change from yesterday's complete dominance of film and devotional music. And more radical changes are in the offing. According to consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, India's radio industry grew nearly 40 percent from 2004 to 2008. But, just as in the rest of the world, music industry revenues dipped almost 15 percent last year. PwC says that means digital music will be the key driver of growth for India's music industry in the future — with digital's share of the pie growing to 60 percent in 2013 from 16 percent last year. That could be the web-savvy indie bands' chance to shine.
“The Internet has been the biggest boon,” said Nair. “Before that it was more or less impossible to reach out to people across the country, and now it's become fairly easy.”
Already, indie bands like Pentagram, the Raghu Dixit Project and Indian Ocean are breaking through into the mainstream music market. And as Bollywood seeks to reinvent its evergreen genre flicks, the fringes of the film business are beginning to look to the indies for source music instead of purpose-built studio tracks. Director Anurag Kashyap, for instance, tapped Indian Ocean for the soundtrack to his 2004 film "Black Friday," about the investigations following the 1993 serial Bombay bomb blasts. Though Anurag Basu selected Bollywood veterans Pritam Chakraborty and Sayeed Quadri for the soundtrack to his 2007 "Life in a Metro," for the first time instead of lip-syncers Pritam himself appeared in music video-style interludes within the film as the front man to a real-life rock band. And then last year Bollywood insider Farhan Akhtar created a real, though fictional, band for the surprise hit "Rock On!"
“People are getting bored of Bollywood, to be frank,” said Ravi. “Over the next four or five years, or maybe the next 10 years, we're going to get into a mindset where we're open to far more entertainment options.” And indie music will be a driving force through that transition, Ravi believes.
For OML, one day that could mean big bucks. The company has already begun to get nibbles from international players in the music business. But for now Nair is looking to take it slow and build a domestic music scene organically. That's why in November OML organized a conference for independent musicians in Mumbai called Unconvention — not for the artists they promote, but for the whole industry.
“They know that for them to grow as a company, the scene needs to grow, so it's not just about the bands that are there on their roster,” said Nair. “And I think people recognize that. Vijay [Nair] got a standing ovation at the end of Unconvention, and it wasn't one of those standing ovations that you're almost forced to give. It was a very genuine feeling.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091201/indias-license-rock
By Jason Overdorf / Global Post
NEW DELHI, India — Vijay Nair, would-be Richard Branson of Indian rock, was still a kid when he floated the country's first artist management company, Only Much Louder, back in 1999. All he really wanted to do was tour with some of the garage bands he loved. Now he's almost famous.
Here's what happened. Nair was a normal 16-year-old South Indian geek living (and rocking) in Mumbai and trying to fly under the radar of parents intent on turning him into an engineer, when he got a gig working for a web design company that was making sites for Indian bands. Then one day the members of Pentagram, an up-and-coming rock act, asked him if he'd like to be their manager. Bye bye, engineering school.
"Basically, what 17-year-old kid wouldn't jump at the chance to travel and hang out with a rock band," said Nair in a phone interview with GlobalPost.
His parents bought the story that it would only be a year “break” from studying before he went to college. But Nair soon had much bigger plans. Within a year he was managing two more acts, and he'd booked gigs for Pentagram in Glastonbury and Estonia — breaking the group into the “mainstream” world of European rock. And that was just the beginning.
Fast forward 5 years, and Only Much Louder has 14 employees, reps three bands exclusively as their official manager and arranges gigs for a bunch more. The company books about 200 gigs a year these days, and recently set up Counter Culture Records, its own record label and distribution arm — releasing more than 10 albums in the first year.
“The biggest thing that has changed is that artists now are only performing their own music, as opposed to covers,” said Nair. “That changes many things, because once you have your own material, then you can do albums, concerts with only your stuff playing — it changed the whole value chain in that sense.”
With $500,000 in annual revenue, OML isn't exactly poised to break into the Fortune 500. But as AC/DC's Angus Young will tell you, it's a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll. And with the British Council's selection of Nair for its International Young Music Entrepreneur award in 2010 and the naming of OML as one of India's coolest companies by a top business magazine, OML's already making waves.
More importantly, along with a handful of other startups, Nair's brainchild is giving the country's indie music scene license to, well, rock.
“Artist management as a concept never existed in India,” said Arjun S. Ravi, the founder and editor of the online music magazine indiecision. “The bands would either manage themselves or they'd have a friend who'd book them gigs. [OML] is creating a business model of the way things can be done in India. It's not the way things should be done, or how things can be done abroad, but it's how things can be done here. India is a very specific market.”
India's music industry has always been dominated by the soundtracks churned out by Bollywood. Penned and recorded by side musicians and so-called “playback singers,” this bouncy, upbeat pop music is then lip-synced by the film industry's mega stars and receives nearly limitless promotion through TV trailers and the country's dozen-odd music video channels. But even though famous playback singers and singer-composers like Slumdog Millionaire's A.R. Rahman occasionally perform at socialite weddings and awards ceremonies, the combination of Bollywood's heavily produced studio sound and the dominant role of side musicians rather than bands has until recently prevented the evolution of any real live music scene.
“Even in Bombay four or five years ago we did not have many venues that would have live music performances regularly,” said Ravi. “For awhile we only had one venue, and bands could not play anywhere.”
Now, however, with the emergence of Only Much Louder and similar companies, peer-to-peer file sharing and new internet-savvy bands, India's independent music scene is in the midst of an unprecedented boom.
“Over the last four years a huge number of venues have opened,” said Ravi. “Now when I sit down to list gigs in Bombay every week I list 20 to 25 gigs in just one week.”
Sales are climbing, too. According to a website devoted to the Indian music industry, non-Bollywood pop music now accounts for as much as 8 percent of the market — a dramatic change from yesterday's complete dominance of film and devotional music. And more radical changes are in the offing. According to consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers, India's radio industry grew nearly 40 percent from 2004 to 2008. But, just as in the rest of the world, music industry revenues dipped almost 15 percent last year. PwC says that means digital music will be the key driver of growth for India's music industry in the future — with digital's share of the pie growing to 60 percent in 2013 from 16 percent last year. That could be the web-savvy indie bands' chance to shine.
“The Internet has been the biggest boon,” said Nair. “Before that it was more or less impossible to reach out to people across the country, and now it's become fairly easy.”
Already, indie bands like Pentagram, the Raghu Dixit Project and Indian Ocean are breaking through into the mainstream music market. And as Bollywood seeks to reinvent its evergreen genre flicks, the fringes of the film business are beginning to look to the indies for source music instead of purpose-built studio tracks. Director Anurag Kashyap, for instance, tapped Indian Ocean for the soundtrack to his 2004 film "Black Friday," about the investigations following the 1993 serial Bombay bomb blasts. Though Anurag Basu selected Bollywood veterans Pritam Chakraborty and Sayeed Quadri for the soundtrack to his 2007 "Life in a Metro," for the first time instead of lip-syncers Pritam himself appeared in music video-style interludes within the film as the front man to a real-life rock band. And then last year Bollywood insider Farhan Akhtar created a real, though fictional, band for the surprise hit "Rock On!"
“People are getting bored of Bollywood, to be frank,” said Ravi. “Over the next four or five years, or maybe the next 10 years, we're going to get into a mindset where we're open to far more entertainment options.” And indie music will be a driving force through that transition, Ravi believes.
For OML, one day that could mean big bucks. The company has already begun to get nibbles from international players in the music business. But for now Nair is looking to take it slow and build a domestic music scene organically. That's why in November OML organized a conference for independent musicians in Mumbai called Unconvention — not for the artists they promote, but for the whole industry.
“They know that for them to grow as a company, the scene needs to grow, so it's not just about the bands that are there on their roster,” said Nair. “And I think people recognize that. Vijay [Nair] got a standing ovation at the end of Unconvention, and it wasn't one of those standing ovations that you're almost forced to give. It was a very genuine feeling.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091201/indias-license-rock
Monday, November 30, 2009
bollywood gets real
By Jason Overdorf | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 27, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Dec 7, 2009
Midway through Vishal Bhardwaj's 2009 movie Kaminey (Scoundrels), the hero is captured by thugs looking to recover $2 million in stolen cocaine. As the goons torture him to find out where he's hidden the drugs, they run into a problem: he stammers so badly that they can't get a word out of him. So sing, they say. Out come his answers, to the tune of a popular song. Problem solved. Except the hero the thugs have captured isn't the thief. His twin brother, who lisps, stole the dope. And the twins haven't spoken to each other for years.
For those unfamiliar with Bollywood films, the scene, like the rest of Kaminey, plays as if it were directed by Guy Ritchie. From the tortuous plot twists to the ludicrous double speech impediment, Bhardwaj treads the tightrope between comedy and camp—keeping it just straight enough for the audience to suspend disbelief. But for aficionados of the Hindi-language genre, Kaminey is a revolutionary manifesto. It takes classic Bollywood tropes—estranged brothers, a case of mistaken identity, high drama approaching slapstick comedy—and presents them with Hollywood-style realism instead of Bollywood's wink-nudge mix of melodrama and posturing. At the same time, Bhardwaj makes clear that he sees Kaminey as a counterpoint to the terrible films Bollywood has churned out over the past two decades. The song that the stutterer uses to answer his interrogators, for instance, comes from Karan Johar's schlocky 1998 romantic comedy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens). To Bollywood fans, the message is clear: Bhardwaj is staking a claim as the true heir to the industry's classic legacy. "I have grown up on these kinds of films," the director says. "They are there in me, and there is nothing wrong with them. They have high kitsch value. It's just a matter of presentation."
For years, as competition from satellite television and Hollywood has hardened audiences to the old formulas, Bollywood producers and directors have been striving to create a new idiom that retains the charm of the genre's classics but is fresh enough to pack thea-ters. With a few exceptions, they've failed. But now a new crop of young directors, led by Bhardwaj, is reinventing the Bollywood film. Their movies still have songs, but the characters no longer lip-sync, and the dance sequences have a natural, unchoreographed feel. They've scrapped the cheesy multicolored costumes and are more likely to set their films on gritty streets than in glamorous mansions. "Kaminey would be able to compete with any film in the world in terms of its design, per-form-ances, inherent narratives, editing, pace—everything," says the Indian-born Hollywood director Shekhar Kapur, whose 1998 film Elizabethwas nominated for seven Academy Awards.
The stakes are higher than ever. The Indian entertainment and media industry is projected to grow 11 percent a year from 2009 to 2013, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers—well above the global average of 2.7 percent. Hollywood studios, encouraged by the global success of India-inspired projects like The Namesake and Slumdog Millionaire, want a piece of that pie. This year UTV inked an agreement to distribute movies for Walt Disney Pictures in India, following Disney's $200 million investment in UTV in 2008. With the release of this year's Chandni Chowk to China, Warner Bros. became the third major Hollywood studio to produce a Bollywood film. Indian billionaire industrialist Anil Ambani recently formed an $825 million joint venture to produce films with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. And early next year Ambani's film company, Reliance Big Entertainment, will release the multicultural romance Kites. Starring Bollywood hunk Hrithik Roshan and set in Las Vegas, Kites—purported to be India's costliest film ever—will get a heavy push in the U.S. market. "Indian companies are starting to realize that there's a world outside India, and you can make a difference by looking at the global market," says Timmy Kandhari, who heads Price-water-house-Coopers's India Entertainment and Media practice.
The new wave of competent, realistic, story-driven films is already beginning to overshadow the big-budget projects at the box office. This year both Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D and Kaminey outperformed Chandni Chowk to China. In 2008, little, innovative flicks like the terror-plot drama A Wednesday and Rock On!, the story of a Mumbai rock band reuniting for one last gig, earned better returns than more conventional Bollywood fare like the superhero action flick Drona.
Some of the biggest stars of the old-style genre films—Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan, and Priyanka Chopra, among others—have begun to embrace the new medium. Even Johar, who as the director of the glitzy but vapid films Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham remains the poster boy of everything wrong with Bollywood, has begun to show interest in coherent stories and realistic acting. "We're doing three movies with Karan Johar right now, and all three are much more heavy on script," says Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures. "Every single emotion in there is real."
As Kaminey's playful use of classic Bollywood tropes suggests, the best of the new movies still have at heart a self-reflexive interest in the old films. Kashyap's Dev.D, for instance, is the 10th remake of one of Bollywood's most successful classics, Devdas. Kashyap plays off previous treatments, which depicted the title character as a doomed romantic, to explore modern India's ideas about female sexuality. In his version, the elegant courtesan Chanda becomes a sex worker in Delhi's grimy ghetto, and the dreamy Dev is a filthy drug addict. But where prior versions condemned them to a tragic end, Kashyap allows them to find redemption in sexual love. And by practically throwing the audience's beloved story in its face, he turned a movie with the whiff of the art house—ordinarily the kiss of death in India—into a box-office hit. "Everybody thinks they know what Bollywood cinema is, and they often [associate it with] commercial Hindi cinema," says Emmanuel Grimaud, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, who worked on the film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. "But nobody really knows what it is because it is changing so much. 'Bollywood' is just a label."
It's a label that still carries a lot of weight. Everyone is trying to lay claim to the new Bollywood, whether through feebly acted, poorly written films like A. R. Murugadoss's Ghajini or savvy hits like Kaminey. But the challenges remain great. "The headwind we got on Kaminey was incredible," says Screwvala. "It took everything we had to keep it going and market it and get it out there." It's the kind of triumphant ending that makes you want to break into song.
With Anita Kirpalani in New York
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/224587
Published Nov 27, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Dec 7, 2009
Midway through Vishal Bhardwaj's 2009 movie Kaminey (Scoundrels), the hero is captured by thugs looking to recover $2 million in stolen cocaine. As the goons torture him to find out where he's hidden the drugs, they run into a problem: he stammers so badly that they can't get a word out of him. So sing, they say. Out come his answers, to the tune of a popular song. Problem solved. Except the hero the thugs have captured isn't the thief. His twin brother, who lisps, stole the dope. And the twins haven't spoken to each other for years.
For those unfamiliar with Bollywood films, the scene, like the rest of Kaminey, plays as if it were directed by Guy Ritchie. From the tortuous plot twists to the ludicrous double speech impediment, Bhardwaj treads the tightrope between comedy and camp—keeping it just straight enough for the audience to suspend disbelief. But for aficionados of the Hindi-language genre, Kaminey is a revolutionary manifesto. It takes classic Bollywood tropes—estranged brothers, a case of mistaken identity, high drama approaching slapstick comedy—and presents them with Hollywood-style realism instead of Bollywood's wink-nudge mix of melodrama and posturing. At the same time, Bhardwaj makes clear that he sees Kaminey as a counterpoint to the terrible films Bollywood has churned out over the past two decades. The song that the stutterer uses to answer his interrogators, for instance, comes from Karan Johar's schlocky 1998 romantic comedy Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens). To Bollywood fans, the message is clear: Bhardwaj is staking a claim as the true heir to the industry's classic legacy. "I have grown up on these kinds of films," the director says. "They are there in me, and there is nothing wrong with them. They have high kitsch value. It's just a matter of presentation."
For years, as competition from satellite television and Hollywood has hardened audiences to the old formulas, Bollywood producers and directors have been striving to create a new idiom that retains the charm of the genre's classics but is fresh enough to pack thea-ters. With a few exceptions, they've failed. But now a new crop of young directors, led by Bhardwaj, is reinventing the Bollywood film. Their movies still have songs, but the characters no longer lip-sync, and the dance sequences have a natural, unchoreographed feel. They've scrapped the cheesy multicolored costumes and are more likely to set their films on gritty streets than in glamorous mansions. "Kaminey would be able to compete with any film in the world in terms of its design, per-form-ances, inherent narratives, editing, pace—everything," says the Indian-born Hollywood director Shekhar Kapur, whose 1998 film Elizabethwas nominated for seven Academy Awards.
The stakes are higher than ever. The Indian entertainment and media industry is projected to grow 11 percent a year from 2009 to 2013, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers—well above the global average of 2.7 percent. Hollywood studios, encouraged by the global success of India-inspired projects like The Namesake and Slumdog Millionaire, want a piece of that pie. This year UTV inked an agreement to distribute movies for Walt Disney Pictures in India, following Disney's $200 million investment in UTV in 2008. With the release of this year's Chandni Chowk to China, Warner Bros. became the third major Hollywood studio to produce a Bollywood film. Indian billionaire industrialist Anil Ambani recently formed an $825 million joint venture to produce films with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks. And early next year Ambani's film company, Reliance Big Entertainment, will release the multicultural romance Kites. Starring Bollywood hunk Hrithik Roshan and set in Las Vegas, Kites—purported to be India's costliest film ever—will get a heavy push in the U.S. market. "Indian companies are starting to realize that there's a world outside India, and you can make a difference by looking at the global market," says Timmy Kandhari, who heads Price-water-house-Coopers's India Entertainment and Media practice.
The new wave of competent, realistic, story-driven films is already beginning to overshadow the big-budget projects at the box office. This year both Anurag Kashyap's Dev.D and Kaminey outperformed Chandni Chowk to China. In 2008, little, innovative flicks like the terror-plot drama A Wednesday and Rock On!, the story of a Mumbai rock band reuniting for one last gig, earned better returns than more conventional Bollywood fare like the superhero action flick Drona.
Some of the biggest stars of the old-style genre films—Shah Rukh Khan, Amir Khan, and Priyanka Chopra, among others—have begun to embrace the new medium. Even Johar, who as the director of the glitzy but vapid films Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham remains the poster boy of everything wrong with Bollywood, has begun to show interest in coherent stories and realistic acting. "We're doing three movies with Karan Johar right now, and all three are much more heavy on script," says Ronnie Screwvala of UTV Motion Pictures. "Every single emotion in there is real."
As Kaminey's playful use of classic Bollywood tropes suggests, the best of the new movies still have at heart a self-reflexive interest in the old films. Kashyap's Dev.D, for instance, is the 10th remake of one of Bollywood's most successful classics, Devdas. Kashyap plays off previous treatments, which depicted the title character as a doomed romantic, to explore modern India's ideas about female sexuality. In his version, the elegant courtesan Chanda becomes a sex worker in Delhi's grimy ghetto, and the dreamy Dev is a filthy drug addict. But where prior versions condemned them to a tragic end, Kashyap allows them to find redemption in sexual love. And by practically throwing the audience's beloved story in its face, he turned a movie with the whiff of the art house—ordinarily the kiss of death in India—into a box-office hit. "Everybody thinks they know what Bollywood cinema is, and they often [associate it with] commercial Hindi cinema," says Emmanuel Grimaud, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, who worked on the film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. "But nobody really knows what it is because it is changing so much. 'Bollywood' is just a label."
It's a label that still carries a lot of weight. Everyone is trying to lay claim to the new Bollywood, whether through feebly acted, poorly written films like A. R. Murugadoss's Ghajini or savvy hits like Kaminey. But the challenges remain great. "The headwind we got on Kaminey was incredible," says Screwvala. "It took everything we had to keep it going and market it and get it out there." It's the kind of triumphant ending that makes you want to break into song.
With Anita Kirpalani in New York
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/224587
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
how can 39 million buffalo be wrong?
Indian farmers discover the beauty of mozzarella.
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
November 19, 2009
NEW DELHI, India — A few years ago, when my Midwestern parents visited me in India, my mother provided a running commentary as we navigated our way through a long traffic jam on the famous Grand Trunk Road, which runs through Delhi on its way to Peshawar from Bangladesh.
“Water buffalo,” she'd point out. “Another water buffalo ... another water buffalo.”
Uh. Yep. Are we there yet?
Turns out Mom was right. India — the world's largest producer of milk — is home to 70 percent of the world's buffalo. But until recently, the market for milk powder and ghee (clarified butter) was so huge that nobody ever thought of using the country's millions of liters of buffalo milk to make mozzarella di bufala, the glorious cheese for which some would say it was intended.
Now, though, as more Indians learn about Western cuisines and farmers explore the export market as a way to boost their incomes, your insalata caprese may soon come from the land of yoga.
“The total buffalo population in Italy is 300,000 buffaloes,” said Manmohan Malik, managing director of Himachal Pradesh-based food processing company Himalaya International Ltd. India has 39 million.
Three years ago, Malik sensed an opportunity for Indian producers. After discovering from the National Dairy Research Institute that India's buffalo are the same variety as those that Italy has made famous for mozzarella di bufala, Malik pumped $2.5 million into a cheese-making project that he soon learned would require a nearly complete transformation of the processes used by local dairy farmers.
“We put up a big project, but we hit roadblocks in terms of the quality of milk available, and a lack of infrastructure,” Malik said.
The company had to invest in chilling systems, collection centers and training for its dairy farmer associates to ensure it got unadulterated, hygienic buffalo milk with the 4 percent-plus protein required to make top quality mozzarella.
“We are crossing the major hurdles in developing the proper milk system,” said Malik. “We realized that is the reason that more companies haven't ventured into this area — because the milk quality in India needs a big improvement.”
Nevertheless, today, with the help of Italian cheese expert Raffaele Cioffi, Himalaya International produces about $1.5 million worth of buffalo mozzarella annually, or about 5 tons a week. Most of that quantity is exported to the U.S. as frozen curd, then stretched at a Pennsylvania-based plant operated by Malik's joint venture partner. Shipping frozen curd from India is much cheaper than flying fresh mozzarella from Italy, and once the curds are thawed and stretched the resulting cheese is almost identical in quality. So India's export product can compete against not only America's domestic producers, but against the best Italy has to offer, Malik says. Top chefs (and Italians) may disagree with that claim, of course. But Himalaya's mozzarella has found a ready market.
“It is a specialty cheese used as fresh mozzarella in caprese and other salads, and by special, high-end pizzerias on the East Coast [of the U.S.],” said Malik. “A lot of Italian restaurants use it.”
Since Malik started making mozzarella, India has attracted several other cheesemakers, such as 27-year-old Italian Giuseppe Mozzillo, who runs Haryana-based Exito Gourmet. Mozzillo is still using cow's milk for his cheeses, but he is keen to switch to buffalo as soon as he can develop his supply chain, since buffalo mozzarella sells for about twice as much as cow milk cheese. Flanders Dairy, which operates a farm on the outskirts of Delhi not far from Mozzillo's, also produces bonconcini and Italian mozzarella. Even the Gujarat-based cooperative dairy giant Amul — a milk monolith that generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue — has dipped a toe into the water, making a bargain-basement mozzarella it markets as “pizza cheese.”
Their interest isn't hard to explain. Although there are big challenges to be overcome, the potential for Indian mozzarella is enormous. India produces about 100 million tons of milk a year, of which about 55 percent comes from the country's 40 million buffalo, according to the Animal Production and Health Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
Along with the export market, there's also a fast-growing domestic market for mozzarella and other cheeses. Over the past year or two, domestic cheesemakers like Flanders and Poshtick Foods — which operates a chain of Passion Cheese outlets — have found that their niche is expanding with the proliferation of local food boutiques and foreign specialty shops like Le Marche (a subsidiary of French retail group Geant Hypermarket) as well as the mushrooming of high-end hotels and restaurants.
Meanwhile, the general shortage of buffalo milk has compelled so many of the world's mozzarella makers to use sheep's or cow's milk that the Italian region most famous for its production sought and earned “Protection Designation of Origin” status — making Campania the Champagne of mozzarella — under European Union rules in 1993. India has already begun to put pressure on the EU to remove non-tariff barriers to its agricultural products in exchange for access to its own enormous, fast-growing market. But there soon may be an even more compelling reason for the world to sample India's buffalo mozzarella.
“If you go around the south of Italy, you'll see very few buffaloes,” said Sunil Bhu, who runs Flanders Dairy. “But buffalo mozzarella seems to be sold from Italy all over the world. It's a big question mark.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091118/indian-buffalo-mozzarella
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
November 19, 2009
NEW DELHI, India — A few years ago, when my Midwestern parents visited me in India, my mother provided a running commentary as we navigated our way through a long traffic jam on the famous Grand Trunk Road, which runs through Delhi on its way to Peshawar from Bangladesh.
“Water buffalo,” she'd point out. “Another water buffalo ... another water buffalo.”
Uh. Yep. Are we there yet?
Turns out Mom was right. India — the world's largest producer of milk — is home to 70 percent of the world's buffalo. But until recently, the market for milk powder and ghee (clarified butter) was so huge that nobody ever thought of using the country's millions of liters of buffalo milk to make mozzarella di bufala, the glorious cheese for which some would say it was intended.
Now, though, as more Indians learn about Western cuisines and farmers explore the export market as a way to boost their incomes, your insalata caprese may soon come from the land of yoga.
“The total buffalo population in Italy is 300,000 buffaloes,” said Manmohan Malik, managing director of Himachal Pradesh-based food processing company Himalaya International Ltd. India has 39 million.
Three years ago, Malik sensed an opportunity for Indian producers. After discovering from the National Dairy Research Institute that India's buffalo are the same variety as those that Italy has made famous for mozzarella di bufala, Malik pumped $2.5 million into a cheese-making project that he soon learned would require a nearly complete transformation of the processes used by local dairy farmers.
“We put up a big project, but we hit roadblocks in terms of the quality of milk available, and a lack of infrastructure,” Malik said.
The company had to invest in chilling systems, collection centers and training for its dairy farmer associates to ensure it got unadulterated, hygienic buffalo milk with the 4 percent-plus protein required to make top quality mozzarella.
“We are crossing the major hurdles in developing the proper milk system,” said Malik. “We realized that is the reason that more companies haven't ventured into this area — because the milk quality in India needs a big improvement.”
Nevertheless, today, with the help of Italian cheese expert Raffaele Cioffi, Himalaya International produces about $1.5 million worth of buffalo mozzarella annually, or about 5 tons a week. Most of that quantity is exported to the U.S. as frozen curd, then stretched at a Pennsylvania-based plant operated by Malik's joint venture partner. Shipping frozen curd from India is much cheaper than flying fresh mozzarella from Italy, and once the curds are thawed and stretched the resulting cheese is almost identical in quality. So India's export product can compete against not only America's domestic producers, but against the best Italy has to offer, Malik says. Top chefs (and Italians) may disagree with that claim, of course. But Himalaya's mozzarella has found a ready market.
“It is a specialty cheese used as fresh mozzarella in caprese and other salads, and by special, high-end pizzerias on the East Coast [of the U.S.],” said Malik. “A lot of Italian restaurants use it.”
Since Malik started making mozzarella, India has attracted several other cheesemakers, such as 27-year-old Italian Giuseppe Mozzillo, who runs Haryana-based Exito Gourmet. Mozzillo is still using cow's milk for his cheeses, but he is keen to switch to buffalo as soon as he can develop his supply chain, since buffalo mozzarella sells for about twice as much as cow milk cheese. Flanders Dairy, which operates a farm on the outskirts of Delhi not far from Mozzillo's, also produces bonconcini and Italian mozzarella. Even the Gujarat-based cooperative dairy giant Amul — a milk monolith that generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue — has dipped a toe into the water, making a bargain-basement mozzarella it markets as “pizza cheese.”
Their interest isn't hard to explain. Although there are big challenges to be overcome, the potential for Indian mozzarella is enormous. India produces about 100 million tons of milk a year, of which about 55 percent comes from the country's 40 million buffalo, according to the Animal Production and Health Commission for Asia and the Pacific.
Along with the export market, there's also a fast-growing domestic market for mozzarella and other cheeses. Over the past year or two, domestic cheesemakers like Flanders and Poshtick Foods — which operates a chain of Passion Cheese outlets — have found that their niche is expanding with the proliferation of local food boutiques and foreign specialty shops like Le Marche (a subsidiary of French retail group Geant Hypermarket) as well as the mushrooming of high-end hotels and restaurants.
Meanwhile, the general shortage of buffalo milk has compelled so many of the world's mozzarella makers to use sheep's or cow's milk that the Italian region most famous for its production sought and earned “Protection Designation of Origin” status — making Campania the Champagne of mozzarella — under European Union rules in 1993. India has already begun to put pressure on the EU to remove non-tariff barriers to its agricultural products in exchange for access to its own enormous, fast-growing market. But there soon may be an even more compelling reason for the world to sample India's buffalo mozzarella.
“If you go around the south of Italy, you'll see very few buffaloes,” said Sunil Bhu, who runs Flanders Dairy. “But buffalo mozzarella seems to be sold from Italy all over the world. It's a big question mark.”
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091118/indian-buffalo-mozzarella
meet india's organic tea king
By Jason Overdorf - GlobalPost
November 21, 2009 09:15 ET
DARJEELING, West Bengal — Swaraj Kumar “Rajah” Banerjee swept into his office wearing the khaki-colored, Raj-era planter's uniform that he has made his signature style since the 1980s. The outfit gives him an air that is at once aristocratic and vaguely military — and hints at a genius for marketing that has made him the driving force behind the organic movement on Darjeeling's famous tea plantations.
A London playboy of sorts in his 20s, Banerjee was lured back to India in 1970 by the promise of a colonial lord's idyll of riding and shooting on the family tea estate an hour's drive from Darjeeling. But when he was thrown from his horse, he had an experience that he describes as transcendent.
“Before I hit the ground, I had an out-of-body experience,” Banerjee tells me, deadpan. “I went to that zone where the soul goes when we cross over to another frequency — there is no death. And there was this beautiful cadenzas — light, music, no pathos, but melancholic — and the trees connected and transmitted this ululating chant, 'Save us, save us.'”
That evening, he told his parents he was moving back to the tea garden for good.
“They were delighted for the wrong reasons, and I was not going to tell them what I'd experienced earlier, because I'd have been certified insane,” Banerjee recalls. “But I knew I had to stay and bring the trees back. The voyage began then.”
Long before the organic movement took hold here, his mystical experience began to translate into monetary gains, both for the plantation and for its workers. To convert the tea estate to compost-based fertilizers, Banerjee created financial incentives for the tea workers to raise cattle and spread manure over the plantation's 550 acres of tea plants, and encouraged each household to raise five varieties of indigenous trees that he later purchased and used to reforest depleted areas of his land. The result is that today Makaibari has 1,070 acres of forest — including 300 acres of sub-tropical rain forest that are more than a thousand years old and play host to a greater variety of wildlife than many of India's national parks.
“His organics was a deeper organics than a lot of estates that would just follow the rules,” said Joseph Smilley, an organic certification expert with San Diego-based Quality Assurance International. “He created whole permaculture systems that allowed the people of the estate to benefit as well.”
Since earning organic certification in 1988, Banerjee has also built a biogas facility to convert surplus manure to cooking gas, a move that has stopped plantation workers from stripping the forests for their cook fires and also reduced indoor air pollution — which the World Health Organization estimates causes 1.6 million deaths a year worldwide, primarily among children and women. Meanwhile, though using organic methods costs as much as eight times more than using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the higher prices that the premium organic tea commands on the market — together with tea tourism and other initiatives — make up most of the difference. Makaibari's “single estate” tea has sold for world record prices at international auctions, for upwards of $400 a kilogram.
“It was approaches like that which differentiated him from some of the other organic growers who followed the rules but didn't do the big, transformational work to really make it successful both monetarily and ecologically,” said Smilley.
The success of the model is evident in the number of imitators, Banerjee says.
“The good news is that around 1988 to 1994 after we were certified organic, it was a very lonely time. People used to sneer at me,” Banerjee says. “[But] I'm happy to say that now 60 percent of the tea estates in the Darjeeling area are either under conversion or are certified organic.”
Featured in a documentary by French filmmaker Xavier de Lauzanne and countless travel and tea industry articles, Banerjee has emerged as the face of Darjeeling organics. And he's not quitting there. In neighboring Assam, tea gardens have been plagued by strikes by workers who allege that wages are pathetic and working conditions are inhumane. But in 2002, Makaibari became the world's first tea plantation to qualify under the Cologne, Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organization's standards, which allow producers of coffee, cocoa and (now) tea to charge customers a small premium to support a better standard of living for local workers. Under the scheme, the premium goes into an account managed by elected members — mostly women — from seven villages, who use the funds for development projects, such as setting up a computer center for the village children, creating a microcredit institution to finance medical care and education, and renovating village houses so they can be marketed to foreign tourists as “home stays.”
Though his success has driven his competitors to go organic, his love of the spotlight hasn't exactly endeared Banerjee to his rivals, who talk about his genius for marketing as though it hints at some inherent weakness in his tea. What they don't get is that by developing logos and distinctive packaging, Banerjee made Makaibari into the brand that stands for organic Darjeeling tea, as well as equitable treatment for his workers. And within the first five minutes of meeting the self-styled king of organic tea, it's clear that he could care less about detractors.
“It's difficult to give Raj too much credit, because he loves to take it anyhow,” said Smilley, chuckling. “You'd never use the word humble for Rajah, but basically the guy walks his talk.”
Banerjee's next step may be taking the organic movement off the plantation. Through Organic Ekta (or “Organic Union”), a joint project with U.S.-based Mercy Corps, Makaibari supports around 200 small organic farmers from local communities. Banerjee believes this could be the seed for something much bigger, and plans to branch out from tea and small farms to organic cotton fields and then on to pulses, rice and other Indian staple crops. He doesn't think it will take much. Some 80 percent of India's 800 million marginal farmers practice rain-fed agriculture — which means they have too little water to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In a sense, they're already organic, but they're too poor to capitalize.
“If we get networked strongly to enable the certification of these 640 million people and market their produce at a fair price,” says Banerjee, “then I think we're done: India will be the organic fruit bowl of the world.”
Let that steep for a few moments.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091102/the-man-who-took-darjeeling-tea-organic
November 21, 2009 09:15 ET
DARJEELING, West Bengal — Swaraj Kumar “Rajah” Banerjee swept into his office wearing the khaki-colored, Raj-era planter's uniform that he has made his signature style since the 1980s. The outfit gives him an air that is at once aristocratic and vaguely military — and hints at a genius for marketing that has made him the driving force behind the organic movement on Darjeeling's famous tea plantations.
A London playboy of sorts in his 20s, Banerjee was lured back to India in 1970 by the promise of a colonial lord's idyll of riding and shooting on the family tea estate an hour's drive from Darjeeling. But when he was thrown from his horse, he had an experience that he describes as transcendent.
“Before I hit the ground, I had an out-of-body experience,” Banerjee tells me, deadpan. “I went to that zone where the soul goes when we cross over to another frequency — there is no death. And there was this beautiful cadenzas — light, music, no pathos, but melancholic — and the trees connected and transmitted this ululating chant, 'Save us, save us.'”
That evening, he told his parents he was moving back to the tea garden for good.
“They were delighted for the wrong reasons, and I was not going to tell them what I'd experienced earlier, because I'd have been certified insane,” Banerjee recalls. “But I knew I had to stay and bring the trees back. The voyage began then.”
Long before the organic movement took hold here, his mystical experience began to translate into monetary gains, both for the plantation and for its workers. To convert the tea estate to compost-based fertilizers, Banerjee created financial incentives for the tea workers to raise cattle and spread manure over the plantation's 550 acres of tea plants, and encouraged each household to raise five varieties of indigenous trees that he later purchased and used to reforest depleted areas of his land. The result is that today Makaibari has 1,070 acres of forest — including 300 acres of sub-tropical rain forest that are more than a thousand years old and play host to a greater variety of wildlife than many of India's national parks.
“His organics was a deeper organics than a lot of estates that would just follow the rules,” said Joseph Smilley, an organic certification expert with San Diego-based Quality Assurance International. “He created whole permaculture systems that allowed the people of the estate to benefit as well.”
Since earning organic certification in 1988, Banerjee has also built a biogas facility to convert surplus manure to cooking gas, a move that has stopped plantation workers from stripping the forests for their cook fires and also reduced indoor air pollution — which the World Health Organization estimates causes 1.6 million deaths a year worldwide, primarily among children and women. Meanwhile, though using organic methods costs as much as eight times more than using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the higher prices that the premium organic tea commands on the market — together with tea tourism and other initiatives — make up most of the difference. Makaibari's “single estate” tea has sold for world record prices at international auctions, for upwards of $400 a kilogram.
“It was approaches like that which differentiated him from some of the other organic growers who followed the rules but didn't do the big, transformational work to really make it successful both monetarily and ecologically,” said Smilley.
The success of the model is evident in the number of imitators, Banerjee says.
“The good news is that around 1988 to 1994 after we were certified organic, it was a very lonely time. People used to sneer at me,” Banerjee says. “[But] I'm happy to say that now 60 percent of the tea estates in the Darjeeling area are either under conversion or are certified organic.”
Featured in a documentary by French filmmaker Xavier de Lauzanne and countless travel and tea industry articles, Banerjee has emerged as the face of Darjeeling organics. And he's not quitting there. In neighboring Assam, tea gardens have been plagued by strikes by workers who allege that wages are pathetic and working conditions are inhumane. But in 2002, Makaibari became the world's first tea plantation to qualify under the Cologne, Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organization's standards, which allow producers of coffee, cocoa and (now) tea to charge customers a small premium to support a better standard of living for local workers. Under the scheme, the premium goes into an account managed by elected members — mostly women — from seven villages, who use the funds for development projects, such as setting up a computer center for the village children, creating a microcredit institution to finance medical care and education, and renovating village houses so they can be marketed to foreign tourists as “home stays.”
Though his success has driven his competitors to go organic, his love of the spotlight hasn't exactly endeared Banerjee to his rivals, who talk about his genius for marketing as though it hints at some inherent weakness in his tea. What they don't get is that by developing logos and distinctive packaging, Banerjee made Makaibari into the brand that stands for organic Darjeeling tea, as well as equitable treatment for his workers. And within the first five minutes of meeting the self-styled king of organic tea, it's clear that he could care less about detractors.
“It's difficult to give Raj too much credit, because he loves to take it anyhow,” said Smilley, chuckling. “You'd never use the word humble for Rajah, but basically the guy walks his talk.”
Banerjee's next step may be taking the organic movement off the plantation. Through Organic Ekta (or “Organic Union”), a joint project with U.S.-based Mercy Corps, Makaibari supports around 200 small organic farmers from local communities. Banerjee believes this could be the seed for something much bigger, and plans to branch out from tea and small farms to organic cotton fields and then on to pulses, rice and other Indian staple crops. He doesn't think it will take much. Some 80 percent of India's 800 million marginal farmers practice rain-fed agriculture — which means they have too little water to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In a sense, they're already organic, but they're too poor to capitalize.
“If we get networked strongly to enable the certification of these 640 million people and market their produce at a fair price,” says Banerjee, “then I think we're done: India will be the organic fruit bowl of the world.”
Let that steep for a few moments.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/india/091102/the-man-who-took-darjeeling-tea-organic
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