Post-War Americans

By Jason Overdorf

India Today (February 2017)

The title of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s new collection of short stories, The Refugees, is a reminder that America once welcomed those displaced by foreign wars. Its brilliantly drawn characters illustrate how fully those immigrants-mainly Vietnamese-Americans but also Mexican-Americans living in his home state of California-have embraced their new home.

In ‘The Other Man’, for instance, a refugee fresh from war-torn Vietnam makes his way to San Francisco. There he discovers the freedom to acknowledge his homosexuality, along with the complexity of living “a civil, healthy and correct life”-as his father writes to him from communist Vietnam. Similarly, in ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’, an aging first generation Vietnamese-American woman wrestles with the meaning of love when senility prompts the French man she married decades before to begin calling her by another woman’s name.

In ‘The Transplant’, a hospital error prompts a Mexican-American gambling addict to search for the man who provided the liver for the transplant that saved his life-by calling all the people named Vu in the telephone directory. Finally, a charismatic seller of ‘better than genuine’ watches and handbags tells him, “I’m the man you’re looking for, Mr Arellano.” The two men forge an unlikely but life-affirming friendship that is doomed to destruction when the real donor appears, and Arellano learns ‘Louis Vu’ is not even really Vietnamese.

That subtle joke hints at Nguyen’s purpose in this collection-which eschews the stereotypes that can make what American publishers call ‘ethnic’ fiction so irritating. When he first learns the donor’s name, Nguyen notes that Arellano, who is “afflicted with a… common astigmatism wherein all Asians appeared the same”, had “fallen back on his default choice when confronted with [the] perplexing problem of [identifying] an Asian” to decide that Vu must be Chinese. Then, at the big reveal, Louis Vu tells him he was right, but that he’d “never been to China. I can barely speak Chinese. So what does that make me”?

The answer, of course, is American. And human.

"The Kohinoor did seem to leave havoc in its wake"

The world's most infamous diamond, as authors William Dalrymple and Anita Anand describe it, is believed to come accompanied with a curse that condemns its owner to an early and often grisly demise.
By Jason Overdorf -- INDIA TODAY
(December 2016)


Much that is known about the Kohinoor is myth, rumour or conjecture. The world's most infamous diamond, as authors William Dalrymple and Anita Anand describe it, is believed to come accompanied with a curse that condemns its owner to an early and often grisly demise. Before the Earl of Dalhousie extorted it from the Sikh Maharaja Duleep Singh and it made its way to Queen Victoria in 1851, it's thought to have numbered among the favourite baubles of Mughal emperor Babur. It's believed to have been plucked from the eye of a temple idol in Southern India by marauding Turks. And it's sometimes thought to be the legendary Syamantaka-a gem brought to earth when the sun god Surya removed it from a chain around his neck to bestow it on the Yadava king of Dwarka. Many think it's the largest or most valuable or at least the most beautiful diamond in the world. Yet many of those 'facts' are outright falsehoods, and few of the other stories that surround the Kohinoor can be verified, Anand and Dalrymple learned, even as they uncovered newly translated sources that deepen the sense of magic and bloody intrigue behind the diamond that once represented history's greatest conquest and now stands for its most infamous theft. In separate interviews excerpted below, they spoke with India Today's Jason Overdorf about their discoveries.
Overdorf: With William working on the early history of the Kohinoor and Anita covering its fate after the British finally defeated the Sikh empire in 1849, there's not a great deal of obvious crossover in this collaboration. How did you work together?

Anand: Right from the start, we were constantly pinging each other, saying, "William, I found this, this is amazing." And then he would say, "Look what I've just found from the Persian archive. Look at this translation." In that way, we were terribly in each other's business. Although there are two distinct halves, there are fingerprints of each of us on both.

Overdorf: The book is a bit of a historical detective story. What was the most surprising or interesting discovery that you made?

Dalrymple: There is, in fact, not a single reference to a diamond that is to a hundred per cent certainty the Kohinoor before 1750, which is very late. What's happened is that, retrospectively, because the Kohinoor's so famous, people assume that when a large diamond turns up in a Mughal source or another source that it must be the Kohinoor. We just don't know how the Mughals got the Kohinoor or where it came from. The probability is that it came from a Golconda mine; that seems almost certain, but you can't trace a diamond with crystallography. The strong possibility is that it's the stone referred to by Babur in the Baburnama, which Humayun took to Persia. All we know for certain, and the first reference to it is translated for the first time in this book, is that around 1740 Persian historian Muhammad Kazim Marvi says, "I saw the Kohinoor. It was at the head of one of the peacocks in the Peacock Throne." He saw it in Herat. All the great Mughal experts have known this, but I certainly hadn't.

Anand: I'm a journalist, not a historian, so I go looking for eyewitnesses. A European called John Martin Honigberger, who was there after the death of [Sikh Emperor] Ranjit Singh, was my eyewitness. He wrote about the committing of sati by the queens of Ranjit Singh. At first you hear his deep discomfort at the way in which these queens are burnt alive on the pyre of their husband, and then he sort of mentions in passing that these seven slave girls of Ranjit Singh are also burnt to death-but they're not even named. When you write such things, you just feel a little wiped out from the horror of it.

Overdorf: What was the most striking moment for you in the diamond's history?

Dalrymple: I think there are two incidents, just for the sheer mayhem that this diamond can cause wherever it goes. One is the story of Shah Rukh, the grandson of Nader Shah, who it turned out didn't have the Kohinoor, being tortured to surrender it. He has paste put on his head, and then they pour molten lead on him. It's just like the end of Daenerys Targaryen's brother in the first season of Game of Thrones. Then there's an extraordinary moment when the Medea takes the stone over to England in Anita's half of the book, and cholera breaks out on the ship. It's like another of my favorite movies, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, when the plague ship arrives in Amsterdam and rats pour off it. The diamond does seem to leave havoc in its wake.

Overdorf: The book covers a great deal of Indian history. What makes the Kohinoor an effective lens through which to view the rise and fall of empires?

Anand: That's the kind of thing I'm interested in anyway: looking at one person and how history radiates out from that one person. With the Kohinoor, it is this pivotal point with history teetering around it. It is a stone that is surrounded by stories of blood, intrigue and murder. It has divided empires. It has pitted empires against each other. And even now if the Kohinoor is mentioned, you will have extraordinarily hot passions running. The British may have cut it to almost half of its size but it still retains all of its power.

Overdorf: Shashi Tharoor re-energised the debate over the question of its possible return to India last year. How do you feel about that question lying in the backdrop to the book?

Dalrymple: It becomes a symbol for colonial loot, a touchstone for the whole question of what do you do about colonial history. Do you try and right the wrongs of the past, or do you just say that history is bloody? There's no question that Ranjit Singh got the Kohinoor by torturing Shah Shuja's son. Shah Shuja's ancestor got it on the bloody night of Nader Shah's assassination. Nader Shah got it by defeating the Mughals. So the diamond, whether or not you believe in the existence of a curse, certainly has the ability to create discord and discontent and division wherever it goes. It could potentially be a major issue in British-Indian relations in the future.

Overdorf: As your book makes clear, India isn't the only country with a claim to the jewel, either.

Anand: I am as interested as everybody else to see what happens next. India wants it back, Pakistan wants it back, Iran has asked for it back, the Taliban has asked for it back. Whatever legal moves will be made, William and I have done a lot of the casework, if you like. Do I think the British will give it back? They have said many times, "Not on your nelly," which is a peculiar British expression that means "No way." They don't want to set a precedent for giving things back. Once they give the Kohinoor back, then the Greeks are going to immediately want their Elgin marbles back and any number of claimants will want other artefacts back. The museums of Great Britain will empty.

How Narendra Modi's Cash Recall Gambit in India Has Backfired

By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek (November 2016)

On November 8, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a surprise recall of more than 80 percent of the country’s cash in circulation, his supporters hailed the measure as an ingenious “surgical strike” against corruption and tax evasion. Everyone else was too busy running to the ATM.

Before the move, Modi had made little progress in fulfilling his campaign promise to bring back billions in untaxed “black money” stashed abroad so he could deposit it in the bank accounts of India’s poor. Washington, D.C.–based corruption watchdog Global Financial Integrity recently estimated that an average of $50 billion a year in illicit funds flowed out of India from 2004 to 2013, while bureaucrats, politicians and business tycoons amassed huge fortunes from influence peddling, backroom deals and outright graft.

Some Indians were so disgusted by this corruption that, much like Donald Trump’s supporters in the U.S. or Britain’s Brexiteers, they applauded Modi’s radical gambit—believing any action would be better than continuing to do nothing. But as it becomes more and more clear that replacing old notes with new ones will, at best, result in a small loss for the biggest crooks and only a short hiccup in the bribery business, the scheme is rapidly looking less like a clever economic maneuver than a brilliant but potentially disastrous piece of political theater.

The idea behind the recall was simple. Overnight, India announced that anyone holding 500- and 1,000-rupee notes had to exchange them for new bills before December 31. After that date, the old money will become worthless. The catch: The government is allowing people to swap only 4,500 rupees (about $65) in the old notes for cash. Anything more than that has to be deposited, thus creating a paper trail. Theoretically, this would either force those hoarding cash to come forward and pay taxes or their money would be worthless. Plus, anyone caught with more than 250,000 rupees in canceled notes—about $3,500—is now subject to investigation.

To prevent word of the plan from getting out, which might have allowed the biggest violators to exchange their big notes in advance, Modi reportedly opted to make the radical move in secret. He apparently relied on the advice of a few top advisers.

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

He would have done well to seek further counsel, because his plan has now thrown India’s economy into chaos. The secrecy meant the country’s mint couldn’t print or distribute new notes until the announcement—so banks are struggling to meet demand. Even worse: Indians are standing in long lines to exchange or deposit their old notes, or withdraw cash just to buy groceries.

Black money—cash hidden to avoid taxes—is pervasive in India. Yet it’s not only that police officers, tax collectors and politicians demand bribes to do their jobs or look the other way, says Surjit Bhalla, senior India analyst at the New York–based Observatory Group, an advisory company specializing in monetary and fiscal policy. Virtually anyone who buys real estate in India pays for it at least partly under the table, and even the poorest Indians routinely forgo receipts to avoid paying sales tax. “Everybody,” says Bhalla, “has been made to commit this crime.”  

Black money can also represent proceeds from legitimate business, while illegal income from bribes or conflicts of interest can be “white”—as long as someone has paid taxes on it. So the politicians in Parliament or various state assemblies, many of whom have somehow earned tens of millions, if not more, after taking office, can pay taxes on their bribes and still get away with it. Recalling and replacing big bills won’t do much to stop this malfeasance, Bhalla says. As long as bribery continues, the new clean notes will swiftly turn into dirty ones. Corruption, it seems, has little to do with the denominations of the bills—except that large notes take up less storage space.

Meanwhile, violators keep as little as 6 percent of their hidden income in cash, according to some estimates. They invest the rest in property or gold—of which Indians hold some 15,000 tons, according to a conservative 2011 estimate from Citigroup, or they wash it by sending it abroad and bringing it back again as foreign investment.

Then there’s the question of legality. Lawyers from India’s political opposition have questioned whether some elements of Modi’s plan—such as denying people access to their own money—are against the law. Others see the move as an exercise in propaganda. “This is politics as a vast morality play,” wrote Indian political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express, a left-of-center daily. “Literally every citizen is being enlisted (or conscripted, if you prefer) in a policy cause.”

This isn’t the first time a charismatic nationalist has used a simple, good-vs.-evil narrative to push a radical economic measure. In 1958, China’s Mao Zedong called upon millions of citizens to wipe out the country’s rats, sparrows, mosquitoes and flies to fight disease and prevent crop losses. And like Mao’s campaign, which engendered a plague of locusts by wiping out the sparrows that ate them, Modi’s strike against corruption has led to some unexpected and painful consequences.

Around 400,000 trucks were stranded around the country as of November 14 because their drivers had no valid bills to pay for incidentals (including bribes) on the road, according to the All India Motor Transport Congress—suggesting there may be shortages of essential supplies in the near future. Sugar processors have reportedlymade only partial payments to workers, reserving whatever valid bills they had to pay for fuel needed to run their cane-mashing machines, while other factory owners have given workers several months’ salary in canceled notes to get rid of the old denominations. Critics say Modi’s move could even lead to a significant economic slowdown. As K.C. Chakrabarty, a former deputy governor of the central bank, warned, “You have stopped market transactions for 70 percent of the economy.”

Yet Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have deflected any criticism of the pain and suffering resulting from the move by saying only people sitting on stacks of black money have reason to complain—recasting the serpentine lines at bank branches nationwide as a vast people-laundering machine: Criminals go in, and patriots come out.

By making or at least seeming to make the rich suffer alongside the poor, recalling the big notes could give Modi room to execute other measures that would otherwise be rejected as favoring the rich—such as lowering property taxes to reduce the incentive to evade them, Bhalla adds, “This gives them a certain credibility [with the poor].”

At least in theory. Lines at the bank are getting shorter in cities, while wealthy and middle-class Indians have adjusted by using debit and credit cards for more purchases—as well as downloading payment apps in record numbers. But such workarounds are not available to hundreds of millions of citizens who have also seen their salaries withheld or their sales drop because of the sudden lack of cash. Small shopkeepers who cater to the poor say business has plunged by as much as 80 percent (even in the capital, vegetable vendors, casual laborers and countless others operate entirely in cash). In rural India, there are fewer than 10 bank branches for every 100,000 people, and many open for business only two days a week.

Though Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has promised everything will be sorted out within 21 days, a local newspaper recently estimated it could take as long as six months to replace all the canceled notes with new ones, based on the speed at which the mint is working. Such reports are no easier to verify than the opposition claims that BJP insiders and big donors were given advance warning so they could convert their big notes into gold, jewelry and real estate. Other reports suggest some of the worst hit among the rural poor still support the measure—which they believe will not only punish the corrupt but also lead to a more equal society.

If the chaos does continue, Modi’s BJP will pay dearly in a series of upcoming state elections early next year. However, like other populist leaders around the world, he may have a better grasp on public opinion than his opponents.

Sorry, tiger dudes: your ladies are faking it

India’s tigresses may be feigning interest in sex as the result of shrinking habitat and overlapping territories

By Jason Overdorf
Smithsonian.com
July 8, 2016

When Maya, a much-adored tigress in India’s Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, abandoned her equally adored young cubs this June, park officials feared the worst. Soon after, Maya was spotted mating with some roving males, seemingly unconcerned about her one-year-old litter. But now local naturalists think Maya’s behavior is actually evidence of a crafty new strategy to help ensure her cubs’ survival: “false mating.”

Like many mammals—including bears, lions and bottlenose dolphins—male tigers will kill the cubs of their rivals whenever they can, so as to precipitate a new estrus cycle and impregnate the tigress with their own offspring. Tiger moms typically seek to protect their cubs from such a fate for 18 to 24 months, before pushing them out to establish their own territories. (Tiger fathers have no role in raising the young, so no help there.)

But the crowded conditions in Tadoba and other Indian national parks are making that increasingly difficult. The ranges of several roving rivals frequently overlap with the dominant male’s, bringing danger precariously close to vulnerable cubs, says Bilal Habib, a carnivore researcher at the Wildlife Institute of India.

“In high-density areas, where there are more males, the best strategy for a female is to try to leave the cubs early, go with the males, and then go back and look for her litter again,” Habib explains. “If she tries to fight with the males, that may be fatal for her and fatal for the cubs.”

The name “false mating”—which occurs among lions and other species—is a little misleading. It refers to actual sex, just not at the time when a female is able to conceive. (Typically, tigresses go into estrus once every three to nine weeks, and are most likely to conceive during three to six days within that period.) Habib’s theory is that Maya is using sex not to conceive, but to placate roving male tigers and perhaps make them think they have successfully impregnated her.

Afterwards, she returns back to her cubs, leaving the appeased male none the wiser.

Nobody will know if he is right for at least another six weeks. “We don’t know as of now if it’s real mating or false mating. She’s probably not conceiving, but it’s not clear yet,” Habib says. “If it was real mating, we will expect to see cubs in 90 to 120 days.”

Other tiger researchers say Maya’s seemingly strange mating habits are just the tip of the iceberg. Overlapping territories have bred all sorts of unusual tiger behaviors, including more frequent fighting and dominant males apparently tolerating rivals. In some crowded ranges, serial mating with different males suggests the possibility that tiger litters—like those of domestic cats—may even have multiple fathers.

Though scientists have a wealth of data from captive breeding programs, surprisingly little is known about the finer points of tiger reproduction in the wild because there have been very few long-term breeding studies, says Raghunandan Singh Chundawat, a conservation biologist in India who has published papers on tiger mating behavior.

For instance, in some cases, tigresses have failed to conceive after as many as 30 couplings and then inexplicably become pregnant. It's known that friction from the sharp spines of the male's penis are required to induce ovulation. But the variance in how many matings are required for conception has led to the speculation that tigresses, like several other mammals, may be able to control whether or not they ovulate.

“We know very little about the biology,” Chundawat says.

That’s daunting, considering the stakes. According to the latest population survey, India boasts around 2,226 tigers, or about 70 percent of the world’s total—nearly a third more than believed at the time of the last count (which used a less accurate method). That’s great, but it also means that India’s 13 tiger reserves are more crowded than we thought, even as highways, factories and towns eat away at the rest of the country’s forests.

Many of the tiger reserves are too small for the tigers they contain, so animals end up overlapping territories and coming into conflict with each other and with people. In a ten-year study that tracked tigers in the Panna Tiger Reserve of central India using radio collars, Chundawat and his colleagues found that roving males “floated” in and out of the territories of dominant males, often managing to mate with females on the sly.

The researchers found that radio-collared females mated with the territorial males on 14 occasions, and mating with the floater males on six occasions. Meanwhile, three out of four radio-collared females mated with more than one male during the same estrus cycle. "Because in dry forests the ranges are very large, the dominant male cannot keep all the other males out," Chundawat says. "He will tolerate them, as long as he has first access to the females."

While that shared access might result in greater genetic diversity and prevent rival males from killing strange cubs, it could also prove problematic. High-density areas see more frequent infighting between rival males and territorial females alike, Habib says. And the imperative for mothers like Maya to leave their cubs early could itself have dire implications.

“What we suspect is if tiger cubs in high-density areas are forced to disperse early—at 12, 14 months—that makes their chances for survival very low,” he says. Danger, it seems, comes in many stripes.

Could India's auto rickshaw become obsolete?

By Jason Overdorf

USAToday (April 2016)

NEW DELHI — They're one of the most recognizable icons of modern India.

The auto rickshaw, a sputtering motorized three-wheeler that's less than half the cost of a regular taxi, is the backbone of urban transit for millions of Indians.

With the vehicle’s soft top, open sides and lack of seat belts, passengers rely on little more than good karma to keep them safe from crazed drivers on India’s congested roads.

Despite a top speed of only 30 mph, auto rickshaws accounted for 6,300 of the 140,000 traffic fatalities in 2014 in the country. It’s one reason the industry is in tumult.

Sensing a market poised for a revolution, a host of corporations are vying to replace the rattling workhorse of India’s transportation system with the next generation of cheap taxis to ferry 1.2 billion people around the country’s cities.

The bare-knuckle competition over the future of India’s taxicabs has bred legal conflicts.

The first mover in the race to replace the rickshaw, India’s Bajaj Auto, has been locked in a four-year battle over whether the company’s four-wheeled buggy is safer than the three-wheeler.

First unveiled in 2012, Bajaj Auto’s vehicle, a quadricycle called the Qute that already is exported to 16 markets from Egypt to Mexico, offers a fully enclosed steel cab, a fuel-injected engine, seat belts for passengers and head and taillights that are much brighter than those in current rickshaws.

"We’re the world leader in small, three-wheeler taxis — we’re making a lot of money in that segment," said S. Ravikumar, Bajaj Auto's president of business development and assurance who, like many Indians, uses only an initial rather than a first name. "We wanted to upgrade (those taxis) and create a much better product that will serve the same purpose."

Bajaj Auto’s competitors, including automaker Tata Motors, voiced safety concerns about the quadricycle. The government drafted new regulations for four-wheelers that delayed approval of the new category of lightweight vehicles until February 2014.

Auto rickshaw drivers’ associations and others then filed a unique Indian form of class action called "public interest litigation" that challenged that approval, keeping the Qute off the roads again.

“No crash test has been attempted here in India,” said former Indian solicitor general Gopal Subramanium, who is representing the plaintiffs. “The information we have from Europe with regard to a crash test is abysmal. This is the reason why quadricycles are not used as a vehicle for transport in any European countries.”

Unlike class action lawsuits in the United States, any concerned citizen can file public interest litigation in India. In theory, courts are supposed to dismiss suits filed solely for financial or political gain. But dismissing the litigation can take years in the Indian legal system, so competing companies often stymie their rivals using the legal maneuver.

"Business exigencies are definitely sometimes at the root of (public interest litigations)," said Delhi-based attorney Navin Syiem of IndusLaw, a major firm in India.

As Bajaj Auto's court case dragged on, Tata unveiled its own low-cost rickshaw replacement, the four-wheeled Magic Iris, which it began pitching to state governments last year. Tata also reportedly has its own quadricycle, the Bravo, under development.

Other makers of electric three-wheelers have gathered steam in the Indian auto-rickshaw market.

Japan’s Terra Motors recently announced that it will have 30,000 electric rickshaws on India’s streets by the end of the year, and that many companies from China already are selling electric rickshaws in India without regulatory approvals, Chief Executive Toru Tokushige said in a news release.

The Indian automobile and farm equipment conglomerate Mahindra & Mahindra was reported to have a quadricycle in the works in 2014, aiming to hit the market next year. And U.S.-based all-terrain vehicle maker Polaris Industries, which entered the Indian market in 2011, has said it is considering the launch of a quadricycle here.

Italy’s Piaggio, which sells quadricycles in Europe and is the biggest player in India’s three-wheeler segment after Bajaj, also has said it is looking at the Indian market.

"We appreciate that some of our competitors are getting their products ready," said Ravikumar, lamenting the inefficiencies of the Indian courts. "Our hands are tied. This is the legal system."

Richshaw driver Jeevan Mishra, 50, is concerned about competitors because he could stand to lose his current investment.

Mishra said drivers such as he have taken out loans and sunk their life savings into their three-wheelers and licenses, which run about four times the cost of the vehicle itself.

Mishra wondered what would happen if his three-wheeler became obsolete?

“Already, we’re getting fewer and fewer customers because there are too many rickshaws,” Mishra said.

American tourist Joyce Kim, 37, said she would be sad if auto rickshaws disappeared from India’s streets, but she understood why perhaps they should go.

"Riding an auto rickshaw is like jumping on an older carnival ride — terrifying for some, but fun for me," she said. "But rickshaws are not why tourists come to Delhi, nor are they the city's only charm."

India’s e-commerce boom breeds drama for deliverymen

By Jason Overdorf 

The Washington Times (March 2016)

NEW DELHI, India — Every morning Manzar Imam buckles his helmet and straps on a backpack that’s almost as big as a washing machine, girding for the battle ahead.

The 45-year-old is a kind of modern-day gladiator, one of tens of thousands of “last-mile” motorbike deliverymen in India’s cutthroat and chaotic e-commerce industry.
Zigzagging through New Delhi’s testosterone-infused traffic on his 100cc Hero Honda motorcycle, he ferries clothes, electronics and household goods to homes and offices around the city, the last — and indispensable — link in a global chain of mostly Internet-directed commerce.

It’s not an easy job.

“It depends on the customer’s mood,” said Mr. Imam, a potbellied man with long sideburns and a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache. “Some customers are very angry.”

Delivery calls can be truly dangerous in India. Tales abound in the Indian press of couriers assaulted, even locked in bathrooms, over trivial disputes such as not being able to make change for an order. In Indiacash on delivery is common, which brings its own dangers for couriers.

Last month, two former Amazon deliverymen allegedly ordered a hair trimmer online, then beat up the motorcyclist who delivered it and stole his cellphone and 23 packages intended for other customers, according to Hyderabad police.

Last year a story went viral in the Indian media about armed robbers who stole three MacBooks from a Flipkart delivery boy in Uttar Pradesh, luring him to peril by giving him an address that turned out to be a field in the middle of nowhere.

Even so, in a nation where Internet startups are legion and e-commerce is booming, the streets of India’s capital teem with delivery vans and motorcycles.

Local would-be Amazon.coms and eBay-style online marketplace companies attracted more than $500 million in investments over the first three months of 2016 in India, according to startup tracker Trak.in. Flipkart is one of the Indian sector’s four “unicorns” valued at more than $1 billion. In 2014 Amazon announced plans to invest $2 billion to expand its India operations.

A recent Goldman Sachs forecast predicts that India’s e-commerce sector, already one of the largest in the world, will triple from an estimated $23 billion to $69 billion by 2020.

India’s PayTM, which entered the e-commerce sphere in 2014, sold $2.5 billion worth of merchandise last year, not including discounts and returns, according to founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma. This year he projects that the company will surpass $10 billion in sales — the same amount targeted by Amazon and Flipkart.

Sustainability doubts
Much of that money is flowing back to customers in the form of deep discounts and unsustainable perks, including free or discounted delivery, cash on delivery and free returns, in a bid to expand and attract new orders. Companies are slashing prices to gain market share and scare off competitors. It’s not uncommon for some sites to sell products at a 20 percent discount to wholesale prices, leading some to predict a reckoning in the months to come.

“I think that Indian e-commerce is near the peak of an investment bubble,” said Porter Erisman, a tech entrepreneur who wrote a book about his experience as an executive in the early days of massive Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba.com. “The rush of money has led to a lot of e-commerce companies chasing market share at all costs.”

Some companies are riding the wave. Online retailer Infibeam — which posted its first profits in 2014 — has pegged its value at $334 million as it readies its first public stock offering of an Indian e-commerce company on March 21. Former Amazon executive Vishal Mehta founded Infibeam in Ahmedabad in 2007.

Some companies are indulging in bubblelike behavior. Online clothing retailer Jabong.com hired writers and launched a fashion magazine with a print run of nearly 200,000 copies — copies that were never distributed. “They were just lying around,” said Sharin Bhatti Nair, a former staff writer for the magazine who now runs a co-working space for entrepreneurs in Mumbai.

Another shadow over the industry is being cast by Indian states looking to capture some of the revenues as Web-based sales boom.

The Mumbai-based Economic Times reported this week that three states — Uttarakhand, Bihar and Assam — have imposed an “entry tax” on goods purchased online from outside their borders, and more states are looking to follow suit. E-sellers complain this amounts to a double sales tax on their goods and could leave them uncompetitive against traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.

“The practice smacks of some kind of predatory tax regime which is being promoted by some states,” Subho Ray, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, told the newspaper.

Fraud is also increasingly commonplace on Indian e-marketplaces too, said a former investor with a major firm that worked with Indian startups. Mobile phone peddlers can hock high-value phones to relatives or accomplices to score incentives again and again for reselling the same item, for example, he said, under most vendor arrangements.

“The burn rates were very high and continue to be high,” said the investor. “We’ve heard numbers as high as $1 million a day being burned.”

Couriers like Mr. Imam feel the brunt of the companies’ unsustainable choices, as customers complain and pressures mount.

Jabong.com offers free delivery and free returns on items that cost less than $5, according to the company’s website. Customers often return delivered items, take store credit and then buy something else online for delivery the next day with that credit. As a result, couriers repeatedly visit the same house to bring products paid for with the same store credit many times over.

The companies most exposed to the unsustainable business models won’t survive when the bubble bursts, said Mr. Erisman, who was an executive at Alibaba in the early 2000s.

“The same thing happened in the early days of China’s e-commerce boom,” he said. “I would advise the heads of e-commerce companies inIndia to focus on saving the money they raised and prepare for winter.”

Hopes of business-friendly reforms in India fade

By Jason Overdorf, Special for USA TODAY(February 29, 2016)

NEW DELHI — Even as India shines as a rare bright spot in a sluggish global economy, the country’s business-savvy prime minister is watching his popularity wane.

Narendra Modi swept into power in May 2014 on the strength of a charismatic personality and a promise to eliminate India's legendary bureaucratic barriers to business. Today, India’s corporate leaders are losing faith that he can remove those obstacles. And public support has fallen as well: If elections were held today, Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party would lose its majority in parliament, according to a recent poll by Karvy Insights.

“Expectations were high and people wanted to see a quick turnaround (of the economy),” said Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist at Crisil, the Indian arm of Standard & Poor’s. “But big ticket reforms ... have been delayed and diluted.”

By some numbers, Modi’s performance looks stellar:

• Despite a global slowdown, India’s economy is expected to grow 7% to 7.5% for the year ending in March, just above the 6.9% rate recorded the year before he took office.

• Foreign direct investment from October 2014 through June 2015 increased 40% compared with the same period a year earlier, thanks to his “Make in India” program, which eliminated or reduced restrictions on foreign investment in many manufacturing sectors.

• Foreign exchange reserves now top $350 billion, India’s highest level ever.

“A lot of confidence and hope continues to be built around India,” Finance MinisterArun Jaitley said Monday, as he outlined a $288 billion spending program for the fiscal year ending March 2017.

Nevertheless, long-awaited moves to loosen restrictions on land acquisition and a tax overhaul sought by corporations to boost business have yet to materialize.

That’s because opposition parties that control the upper house have blocked his boldest policies, thwarting the strong majority his party holds in the lower house of parliament

Eliminating the red tape also has proved daunting. India jumped 12 places on theWorld Bank’s ease of doing business index during Modi’s first year in office — from 142 to 130 — but many complex regulations and paperwork requirements have not been reduced.

Corporate leaders also note that a lack of skilled workers in India prevent Modi's “Make in India” program from becoming reality. “Some low scale manufacturing may move to India. But if you want to build Brand India, you have to first build global Indian brands,”Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra group, which makes cars, farm equipment and other products, told India Today newspaper.

Other business leaders praise Modi's accomplishments in a country where making any major change in how things are done is exceedingly difficult.

Binod Agarwal, CEO of a small auto-parts manufacturer, New Engineering Works, cites an increase in government services available online, and says his company has seen a 30% to 40% increase in sales since 2014. Government "has become more efficient and more transparent, and less dependent on government officials,” Agarwal said.

In his budget speech Monday, Jaitley unveiled measures designed to rekindle Modi’s popularity. Tripling outlays for rural development, he promised to double farmers’ incomes over the next five years, an ambitious goal many economists consider impossible.

Reacting to the early portion of Jaitley’s speech on Twitter, veteran political commentator Shekhar Gupta suggested its tone “echoes a hard Agro-povertarian swing,” indicating the government was “losing nerve early” on reform.

With the global economy in the doldrums, India cannot rely on export growth, so it must focus on stimulating domestic demand. While urban consumers are already spending, the real potential lies in rural India, where measures such as massive spending increases on roads and tax exemptions for food processors can simultaneously create jobs and new consumers.

Notably, the outlay for rural Indians does not come in the form of free money or other market-distorting measures, such as an increase in minimum support prices for crops, Shubhada Rao, chief economist at Mumbai-based Yes Bank, pointed out. There’s also $33 billion in funds for infrastructure development and a plan to lower corporate tax rates to 25% from 30% over the next five years.

“The budget looks to address the weakest link in India’s growth, which is the rural and farm economy,” Rao said.

Indian Craft Beer ‘Bira 91’ Gets Venture Backing After Viral Success

BY JASON OVERDORF 

International Business Times (January 2016)

NEW DELHI —Just a decade ago, practically the only bars in India were dark, male-only dens where red-eyed drinkers glowered over glasses of so-called Indian-made foreign liquor, aka IMFL. But rising incomes and a new generation of hip, young drinkers have changed all that. These days, the key Indian demographic for a host of alcohol brands and bars is the under-30 set, and craft beer is fast becoming the cutting-edge offering in the premium segment. Just ask Ankur Jain, who’s pioneering the adoption of bottled craft beers in bars and liquor shops, including his own Bira 91.

“We did not spend a dollar on traditional marketing,” Jain said, noting that sales of the locally branded, and soon to be locally made, Bira 91 have rocketed past 35,000 cases a month in less than a year. “People started recommending our product to their friends. It’s amazing how quickly we were able to dislodge some of the other beers in the premium segment.”

Launched in February 2015, Bira 91’s rapid viral success caught the eye of Sequoia Capital, the Silicon Valley firm best known for backing Apple, Google, LinkedIn and Whatsapp. This month, in its first alcoholic beverages play in India, the firm bet $6 million on Bira 91. Jain’s B9 Beveragesplans to use the cash to put some marketing muscle behind the brand and set up a local brewing facility in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Does that mean that craft beer is about to take off?

Market leader Kingfisher and other local mass-market brands needn’t worry yet, according to a recent “Beer Market in India” report from London-based Technavio Research. But mushrooming microbreweries, together with increasing sales of imports like Stella Artois and Guinness, prompt the research firm to forecast 10 percent growth in craft beer sales through 2020, compared with 8 percent growth for the Indian beer market as a whole.

“Although craft beer forms a very small chunk of the overall beer industry, it started very modestly at just two microbreweries in 2008 [and grew] to approximately 45 by 2015,” according to Technavio’s lead food and beverages analyst, Vijay Sarathi. “We believe it is the right time for craft- [and] microbreweries to enter the Indian market.”

Compared with the volume of a giant like Kingfisher — the flagship beer brand of the Bangalore-based United Breweries Group — Bira 91’s million-odd cases a year is a drop in the barrel. But Jain, and presumably Sequoia, expect sales to grow much faster in India than they did in the U.S.

“It’s a generational project. The American craft beer industry took about 30 years to evolve,” Jain said, noting the time it took Boston-based Sam Adams to reach sales volumes of around 50,000 barrels a year. “I think it’s a 5-to-10-year story where India is concerned.”

The growth of microbreweries will help open up the category and introduce consumers to different beer styles, Technavio Research suggests. And new “beers-of-the-world” bars like the New Delhi-based Beer Café offer ready access to the target demographic.

“Our brewery started about 16 months ago, and over the last seven to eight months we’ve seen a lot of growth,” said Shailendra Bist, Pune-based Independence Brewing Company’s co-founder and head brewer. Over the next year or so, the microbrewery plans to open at least two taprooms, locally known as “beer bars,” in Mumbai, he said.

The main beneficiary of India’s nascent wine-making industry, Maharashtra, where Pune and Mumbai are located, was one of the first Indian states to permit such microbreweries, which are (for now) only allowed to sell beer on tap or by the keg. According to Technavio, midsized Pune alone has at least six microbreweries. Many more have mushroomed in Gurgaon, Haryana, and Bangalore, Karnataka.

“We as microbrewers in Maharashtra keep lobbying the government to be more progressive with their beer brewing policy,” said Bist, who boasts California-based Stone Brewing’s co-founder Greg Koch as one of his partners. Take-away jugs known in the industry as “growlers” may be on the horizon, and maybe more.

“Hopefully, the government may soon allow us to do a small bottling run,” Bist said.

But that’s where the big challenges will begin, he added. India’s distribution chain is both cutthroat and chaotic, with the big players offering serious kickbacks to drive sales. That could prove a tough nut to crack, he said. But he believes those same conditions give local craft beers a better-than-even shot at more famous-imports.

“Competing with imports is not a problem,” he said. “There’s no cold chain [i.e., refrigerated transport], so imports are 100 percent oxidized by the time you get them. And import duties are so high you pay 900 rupees [$14] for a can of Guinness.”

In comparison, Bira 91 retails at 100 rupees ($1.50) for a 330 ml bottle, while its nearest competitor, Carlsberg, is 85 rupees ($1.30) per 330 ml bottle.

A second-time entrepreneur (he co-founded a healthcare revenue cycle management firm called ReliantMD in 2002), Jain started Cerana Beverages and began importing famous craft beers from around the world in 2008. He believes the market savvy and distributor relationships he's earned will help Bira 91 leap the same hurdles.

“We’ve had relationships with these distributors for four or five years now from our import business,” said Jain, whose company has exclusive import and marketing rights from seven breweries and a retail presence in all of India’s major urban centers. “It’s a slow-burn process.”

In terms of product selection and branding, Jain zeroed in on two distinct-but-familiar styles, a wheat-based Belgian white and an aromatic craft lager. By design, neither style is as radically different from India’s mass-market lager as a stout or a pale ale. Theorizing that other “premium” beers, such as Budweiser and Carlsberg, were essentially asking consumers to “ drink me because I’m extremely respected abroad,” he also made sure that Bira 91 was “unapologetically Indian” yet appealed to upwardly mobile youth, he said.

The name Bira has an Indian sound, and 91 is a reference to the international country code used to dial India. Meanwhile, the punk rock monkey chosen for the brand’s logo is Indian enough, yet not too Indian.

“We tried to stay away from elephants and spices and so forth” because young Indians are resistant to hackneyed images of “exotic” India, he said.

Exotic beer, on the other hand, they drink right up.

http://www.ibtimes.com/indian-craft-beer-bira-91-gets-venture-backing-after-viral-success-2270594

India embraces clutch-free driving, thanks to Suzuki

AMTs, using a decades-old technology, are taking the Indian market by storm. 

By Jason Overdorf

International Business Times (January 2016)
NEW DELHI — When 39-year-old Raj and his partner were shopping for a second car last year, it wasn’t a hybrid or an ultra-clean vehicle running diesel that caught their eye. It was a decades-old innovation that never really took off anywhere else in the world: the automated manual transmission, or AMT.

“My partner had just learned to drive, and she still faced the problem of stalling with a manual,” said Raj, who works as a web developer in the western Indian city of Surat, in Gujarat. “When we test drove the [Maruti Suzuki] Celerio and there was no clutch involved she just fell in love with it.”

It didn’t take long for Raj to fall in love, too. Although Surat is less congested than larger cities like Delhi and Mumbai, it’s routine for him to spend an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic during his daily commute. And even outside of rush hour, there’s always a traffic jam someplace.

“I still drive it at least once a day,” Raj said. “The driving experience is amazing.”

A cheaper and less sophisticated alternative to the hydraulic system used in developed markets, AMTs are taking the Indian market by storm, says Ashwin Kumar, South Asia and Middle East head of Frost & Sullivan’s automotive and transportation practice.

“Automatic transmission, which includes a host of technologies, should account for about 15-20 percent of the Indian market by 2020,” Kumar said. That’s a compound annual growth rate of more than 60 percent, most of which will come from AMT, he added.

The upshot: “One in 10 cars sold in India will have an AMT transmission.”

Unlike hydraulics, the AMT system uses a friction clutch. There’s no clutch pedal, and in “drive” mode a computer does the clutch work. Critics say that makes the driving experience a little jerkier, but with Italy’s Magneti Marelli manufactured kits, which are easily added to factory assembly lines, the old technology allows first-mover Maruti Suzuki to bring the add-on cost of shift-free driving down to as little as $500 on models like its $6,400 Alto K10 AMT and $6,900 Celerio AMT.

“This is 50 percent cheaper than the other technologies,” Kumar said.

Whereas other carmakers previously bundled hydraulics and other more sophisticated automatic transmissions with costlier options in their top variants, the longtime market leader has scored by offering AMT as a mid-range option. Customers can now escape the clutch pedal in exchange for bells and whistles like a top-end stereo or anti-lock brakes — which are less important in stop-and-go city driving.

AMT also suits India’s penny-pinching drivers once they leave the dealership, says Gaurav Vangaal, a senior analyst with the research firm IHS Automotive.

Apart from the sticker price, one of the reasons Indian car buyers have been slow to embrace automatics is that they are very concerned about fuel economy and hydraulic transmissions reduce efficiency. With the same gearbox, but operated by a computer, an AMT typically performs the same as or a little better than a manual transmission.

“This technology fits best the Indian middle class,” Vangaal said. “That is the reason it is getting success in the Indian market. Price, efficiency, everything matters for Indian consumers.”

Since it unveiled its first AMT models at the 2014 Delhi Auto Expo, Maruti Suzuki has sold more than 50,000 AMT cars. In comparison, it sold only around a thousand or so hydraulic automatics the year before the AMT launch. Having already rolled out AMT variants in six models, the company now plans AMT variants across its full product range, according to a recent article in India’s Financial Express newspaper.

Other brands are rapidly following suit, says Vangaal.

An AMT model has helped rehabilitate moribund sales of the bargain-priced Nano for Tata Motors — accounting for a whopping 40 percent of sales. Mahindra Automotive, Renault, Ford India, and Hyundai have also introduced AMT variants.

As a result, Magneti Marelli expects its Indian revenue to more than double to $435 million over the next three years, from today’s $175 million, according to a report by India’s Economic Times. To meet the demand, it’s building a $25 million production facility in Haryana with a projected production capacity of 200,000 AMT units by the third quarter of 2016.

“Now everybody is jumping for this technology,” Vangaal said.

Because AMTs have a positive or neutral impact on fuel economy, there’s little risk of a clampdown due to environmental concerns like the one potentially poised to hit carmakers that have bet big on diesel. Instead, how long the boom lasts will depend on how swiftly the price difference between AMT and other automatic transmission technologies drops, and how quickly India lifts people from lower-middle to middle to upper-middle class.

A Chennai-based IT executive who purchased a Maruti Ritz hatchback with a more costly hydraulic transmission after test-driving several AMT models provides his viewpoint.

“There is a minor noticeable jerk in AMT-based vehicles, especially while changing into first and second gears,” he said, asking that his name not be published. “You are supposed to get used to it as you drive, but I wanted my first [shift-free car] to be a proper automatic and not a pseudo-automatic like AMT.”

Food for thought: In India regional brands gaining against bigger players in consumer goods

By Jason Overdorf
International Business Times (January 2016)

NEW DELHI — When India opened its market to international brands in the 1990s, many people expected that only the strongest national players would survive. After all, kids who had to settle for a local knockoff called Campa Cola were so thirsty for “the real thing” that they got jealous watching blurry TV commercials from Pakistan. But India’s regional brands have proven to be more resilient than expected, even as advertising spending has skyrocketed.

Regional brands have clawed back a 13 percent share of the $44 billion Indian packaged goods market, up from 12 percent two years ago, according to Nielsen India. And that trend is likely to continue despite or even because of the modernization of the retail business, say brand experts like P. Rajan Mathews, vice president of sales and marketing for the food division of Desai Brothers.

“Regional brands are here to stay,” he said. “This is something really unique to India. Every state is a different culture, [virtually] a different country, so there cannot be a single formula applied across the country.”

Smaller and more focused than their national and multinational competitors, brands like Gold Drop vegetable oil, Jivraj tea and Balaji chips can react to the demands of their customers faster. Moreover, some of the changes first brought in by multinationals have begun to level the field, according to Santosh Desai, managing director of Futurebrands India.

“In earlier times, there were gross differences between regional brands and national or multinational brands in marketing and product development capability,” Desai said. “Now, the advantages of the big players are not as significant.”

While once the difference between a regional brand and its larger competitors was obvious from its packaging, the drive by multinationals to outsource that part of the business to local companies has made high-quality packaging available “off the shelf,” he says. The mushrooming of venture capital firms has made financing available for expansion, and the successful emergence of several regional companies as large national players has made it easier to attract top-level employees.

Regional brands are present across the country, but they’re increasingly competitive in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab in the north, Tamil Nadu in the south, and Gujarat and Rajasthan in the west, according to Nielsen. They’re usually strongest in packaged foods and home care products such as refined cooking oil, soap, detergent, tea, snacks, and condiments.

In packaged snacks, spices and condiments in particular, regional brands’ greater focus allows them to cater to the specific tastes of India’s many distinct cultures, says Mathews of the Desai Brothers conglomerate.

Reasonable Dates and Reasonable Rates

Micro-marketing initiatives like door-to-door sales help regional brands maintain close relationships with customers, he says. And the smaller firms have learned that offering better margins to distributors and shop owners can go a long way to compensate for the higher ad spends of national and multinational competitors.

“Every state or every region has a very focused regional player, which derives 80-90 percent of their revenues from that area,” Mathews said. “One result is they save on logistics and various other national costs, and as a result they’re able to give more credit, and they know the distributors in and out. It’s a personal touch they give to the business.”

There’s also an impact on the price paid by the consumer. Regional brands are about 40 percent cheaper than national and multinational brands, according to Nielsen’s data. Local shop owners like Sanjay Arora believe that’s the main secret to their continued success.

“There’s fresh stock daily and the prices are reasonable,” said Arora, who owns a mom-and-pop grocery called Pal Stores. “Reasonable dates and reasonable rates.”

With its clear plastic bag and only one flavor (salted), a regional brand like Kakaji potato chips, cannot compete with Lay’s for regular purchases, he says. But when people are buying in bulk for parties or seasonal festivals, the cheaper brand gets the nod.

It’s not clear whether regional brands are convincing customers to switch from national brands, or whether the gain in market share results from faster growth. Desai reckons it’s probably a mix of both, and Nielsen’s data does show that regional brands get as much as 50 percent of sales from urban markets — which suggests they’re competing well head to head.

Regional Brands Becoming National Players

A large number of regional brands such as MTR (spices), Vi-john (shaving gel/hair care), Wagh Bakri (tea), CavinKare (hair/skincare) and Kalyan Jewelers (jewelry) have already expanded to become major national players. Sometimes the transition can be lightning fast, as in the case of television yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali products, which swept India almost overnight due to his personal popularity. But the road can also be bumpy, says Mathews.

“For every regional player that becomes successful in their region or state, the ambition comes to spread geographically. That’s when the first hurdle happens,” he said. “Certain brands lose their focus and start losing money.”

When that happens, national or international firms that can otherwise find it hard to crack certain regions snap them up. According to a recent report in India’s Mint newspaper, big ticket buyouts like the $260-million acquisition of the hair and scalp care business Kesh King by Emami Ltd helped spur a fivefold increase in mergers and acquisitions in India's fast-moving consumer goods sector to a healthy $318 million last year, compared with $61 million in 2014.

But there are some unexpected successes, too, Desai says.

“There are new product categories where regional brands are actually faster to tap the market,” he said. “For instance, look at pasta. You’ll find local brands of [instant] macaroni [mixes], simply because they’ve understood that in India [pasta] has nothing to do with Italy. It’s just another excuse to get spices into your food.”

52,000 students and 1,050 classrooms: inside the world's largest school

Welcome to City Montessori school in Lucknow, India. Despite its vast size, no child is left behind, with nearly half of pupils scoring 90% or more in national tests
By Jason Overdorf
The Guardian (December 2015)

LUCKNOW, India --- At 7:15am in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, a stream of children flows through the gates of the Kanpur Road campus of City Montessori school. A dozen helpers pull school bags off roof racks and direct traffic to keep things moving. Every so often a chowkidar (gatekeeper) urges a laggard along: “Chalo, Beta, chalo.” Nearly an hour later, they’re still arriving.

It’s not easy to get more than 7,500 five- to 17-year-old students into a single school building, but that’s only a small piece of the puzzle for City Montessori (or CMS) – recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest school. The institution caters to some 52,000 pre-primary, primary and secondary students distributed across 20 campuses in the city.

“I wanted to come here for a better education,” says 11-year-old Mahsum Singh, who started at the Kanpur Road campus this year. “It helps us that many students are here. We can take help from anyone.”

Almost all of the school’s 1,050 classrooms are full to bursting, with more than 45 students to a class. But parents won’t take no for an answer. They pull in connections from business and politics to get another chair crammed in, says school president Geeta Kingdon. “Sometimes I invite them to come to the school, take them to the classroom and ask them, ‘Do you see any place for your child?’” says Kingdon, who is also the daughter of the school’s co-founders.

CMS, founded in 1959 by Jagdish Gandhi and his wife, Bharti, who has a doctorate in child psychology, is so popular because of its track record. In India’s equivalent of A-levels, a whopping 40% of the school score 90% or higher, making it one of the top colleges. The class average is above 80%.teacher network


With a new wave of “titan” schools in the UK, including Exmouth community college in Devon – which is set to grow from 2,500 to 2,860 students by 2018 – CMS has demonstrated that large campuses and crowded classrooms aren’t a bar to academic excellence. But the differences between CMS’s monster campuses and the UK’s “megaschools” are probably more instructive than their superficial similarities.What started as small school of originally five students, all from a single household has grown far beyond its humble beginnings.

Despite its huge size, CMS is not a school for the masses. Though it’s as much as 25% cheaper than some other elite schools in Lucknow, fees are between £300 and £700 a year, compared with an average per capita income of £1,080. (That’s comparable to a UK school charging £7,000-£16,000.)

This gives CMS all the classic advantages of an elite private school. There aren’t double-shifts or staggered classes (except at the pre-primary level) – just a lot of resources.

Ajay Madan, who teaches chemistry and conducts a remedial session after school, finds it inspiring that CMS challenges him to be innovative with the curriculum, presenting the lesson using multimedia, for example.

It helps that his salary stub matches his commitment. Teachers are paid a touch higher than the sum mandated for government school teachers, and earn a bonus of about 1% of their monthly salary for each student after the class size tops 45, as compensation for increased workload.

Principals earn double the salary of their government counterparts. To cope with the larger administrative burden, a large campus like Kanpur Road has sub-principals for the pre-primary, primary, junior and senior sections. To further aid administrators there are also two supervising teachers called class coordinators for every 35 regular faculty staff. Manjit Batra, senior principal of the Gomti Nagar II campus, says: “They teach and also evaluate teachers, making sure no child is lagging behind.”

To deal with larger class sizes, teachers have assistants or “notebook checkers”, who have bachelor of education degrees but lack higher qualifications. They help with grading, but also assist in monitoring students and answering questions during class time.

While systems like accounting, transportation and curriculum creation are centralised for efficiency, campus principals and teachers find their freedom to innovate motivational. The school doles out 10m rupees (£100,000) in cash rewards for teachers whose students perform well in nationwide exams. And apart from the usual conferences, every teacher visits the homes of five students every month in the role of “teacher guardian”. These visits allow teachers to make simple observations, suggesting that a child’s study table should not be in the same room as the television, for instance. Above all, it shows that they care.


“There’s a danger that any one child can get lost in this huge mass,” said Kingdon.

Such programmes might prove difficult to implement at the UK’s government-run megaschools. CMS’s relatively high fees mean that students tend to be the children of very involved parents. All its programmes are funded from revenue or, in the case of foreign trips and the like, from parents’ pockets. And unlike at government-run schools, its teachers and administrators aren’t asked to do more with less.

The intangibles behind CMS’s culture of success may be even harder to duplicate.

There is a festival atmosphere at school functions, which open with a song-and-dance performance called “the unity prayer” where students dressed as Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists etc extol the virtues of tolerance. Three times a year the mother of a student who has come first in class is called on stage and to sit on a giant balance beam to be “weighed in fruits” that then become her grand prize.

“There’s a whole department for writing congratulatory letters,” beams the school’s 79-year-old guru-like founder-manager, Gandhi.

Indeed, it’s Gandhi’s zeal, and his grandfatherly personal charisma, that ensures students feel allegiance to their school, despite its size – something that some UK educators fear might be lost at megaschools. His antidote includes a healthy dose of religion, albeit of the kind that acknowledges the equality of all the great prophets, regardless of denomination.


A slim, energetic man with an engaging smile, Gandhi wears a western-style suit that appears to be a half-size too large. Originally called Jagdish Agrawal, he changed his surname following the assassination of Mohandas K. Gandhi (or Mahatma Gandhi) in 1948, and he remains a fan of such leaders – as well as their slogans and quotations.


At the Kanpur Road campus, seemingly every flat surface features a handpainted exhortation of one kind or another – “Strong reasons make strong actions”, “Don’t be part of the problem, be part of the change”, “Children reinvent your world for you” and so on – and it is not easy to stop Gandhi from reading them aloud. “You find everywhere good quotations,” he says, without irony.


Along with the school’s constant attention to moral education, about a quarter of its students receive a 40% reduction in fees because their parents are poor. But that’s a far cry from UK government schools like Ashfield comprehensive, which must take all comers.

This year, Gandhi’s reputation took a hit when CMS went to court to avoid having to admit 31 children from the “economically weaker sections” free of charge (which is expected in law). Kingdon says the school resisted the move because the government violated its own regulations and came to them after the term had started, when all its classes were full. Eventually, the court compelled it to accept 13 out of 31 students who lived within the legally defined 1km radius of its Indira Nagar campus. CMS shoehorned them in.


“We are a law abiding school,” said Kingdon. “But the law must be applied properly. Should all private schools in the land really have to keep 25% of their seats vacant for six months?”

Despite these challenges, Gandhi remains steadfast in his ambition to “change the world” through his school. He insists his mission goes beyond academic success.

“Teaching of the three R’s is important. But at the same time we should not lose sight of the fact that man is also a human being, and that there is also a soul within him.”

India's Holy Cow Vigilantes

By Jason Overdorf

Newsweek (November 2015)

Outside the 150-year-old Tangra Slaughter House in Kolkata, India, a line of cows stretches down the lane alongside the arched, colonial-style building. There are no fixed prices for beef here, so the noise of a dozen shouted negotiations fills the air. But it's not all business as usual. Photography is prohibited, at least for today, and I'm allowed inside only after agreeing to keep my notebook in my pocket and not ask any questions. The beef-and-leather business is sensitive in the country where “holy cow” is not a throwaway phrase.

“People are scared,” says Syed Faiyazul Haque, a supervisor at a Kolkata tannery. “There’s an atmosphere of fear.”

That’s because at least three Muslims suspected of eating or transporting beef have been killed in recent weeks. Hindu nationalists have been campaigning for a countrywide ban on slaughtering cows, which they consider holy animals, and religious tensions are rising.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pushed the issue of cows to the center of its campaign for elections in the northeastern state of Bihar during October and November. The aim seems to have been to consolidate the Hindu vote by casting Muslims as the chief enemy, and thus counteract divisions among high- and low-caste Hindu voters who favored the party’s opponents. Yet Modi’s party suffered a crushing defeat. The BJP and its local allies took just 58 out of 243 assembly seats in the Bihar polls.

Muslims and many secular Hindus across India celebrated the election result, expressing hope that the prime minister who came to power preaching economic development, not Hindu triumphalism, would return to that message. But for beef and leather traders, and perhaps for India’s bid to attract more foreign investment, it may already be too late.

Traders involved in the leather and beef industry in Kolkata say vigilantes have stopped large numbers of trucks transporting cows, hides and carcasses since the anti-cow slaughter campaign accelerated last month. Many transporters are reluctant to take the risk, after a trucker accused of carrying cattle carcasses was killed in October by a Molotov cocktail in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. Because one carcass or hide looks much like another, not even the unrestricted buffalo trade is safe. And the charged atmosphere makes it all too easy for local police and inspectors to demand payoffs.Despite the cultural taboo on killing cows, slaughtering them for meat and hides is legal in five of 29 Indian states, including West Bengal, where Kolkata, the former capital of British India once known as Calcutta, is considered the center of the trade.

“This is a reflection of anti-Muslim propaganda in India,” Udayan Bandyopadhyay, a political scientist affiliated with the University of Calcutta, says of the recent attacks. “In order to gain mileage, the [Hindu nationalists] are making a partition in society between Hindus and Muslims.”

Even in ordinary times, the country’s meat-and-leather trade is a strange business. Last year, India, which is 80 percent Hindu, emerged as the largest beef exporter in the world. Combined with leather, the industry is worth some $10 billion. How's that possible?

It is partly because under a system drawn up by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the meat of Indian water buffaloes, which Hindus do not consider holy, is classified as “beef.” Exporting cow meat is banned, though cowhide accounts for around a third of India’s leather exports. Yet in Kolkata, tannery workers say the mix of buffalo hide to cowhide has fallen from 50-50 to 80 percent buffalo in recent weeks. Since the first attacks on transporters in September, buffalo-processing factories have also been facing shortages.

“Our drivers are stopped while they carry buffaloes. There is fear among drivers,” says DB Sabharwal, a Hindu, who's secretary of the All India Meat & Livestock Exporters Association.

In most states, and sometimes even in Kolkata, that's technically illegal. Along with bans on cow slaughter and the consumption or possession of beef, various states have made it a crime to sell or transport cows out of their jurisdiction if they are destined for the butcher. In states where cow slaughter is legal, a “fit-for-slaughter” certificate is required to document that the animal in question is more than 12 to 14 years old or “permanently incapacitated for breeding, draft or milk due to injury, deformity or any other cause,” according to the Ministry of Agriculture. But that rule too is frequently flouted, according to people opposed to killing cows.The domestic market is more complicated. While cow slaughter is permitted in only five states, the animals are everywhere. There's no separate meat industry. But a mammoth dairy industry and the traditional use of draft animals means there are more than 190 million cattle in India, compared with about 90 million in the United States. As tractors replace bullocks in agriculture, around half of these animals are becoming a drain on the farmers' resources. And while Hindu nationalist organizations have set up nursing homes for hundreds of thousands of superannuated cows, it's no surprise that many farmers prefer to sell them rather than put them out to pasture.

The result is a tortuous path of payoffs, smuggling and don't ask, don't tell. The not-quite legal nature of the business means there are no large firms buying cows and shipping them to Kolkata—or smuggling them to Bangladesh. Animals pass through a chain of transporters before they’re sold for slaughter. Then middlemen collect meat and hides into the larger consignments needed by the leather businesses and other industries that rely on tallow and other by-products, says Shahid Akhtar, managing director of a leather goods manufacturer called Elrich International. “Those people will have problems now,” he says. “The police or vigilantes will confiscate the items, then corruption will increase. This has started to happen.”

It's not clear how devoted to the issue Modi is, or how beholden he'll be to the larger, parent organization of the BJP—a uniform-wearing cadre of activists called the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whose second “supreme leader,” Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, was an admirer of Adolph Hitler.

It's not all Hindus vs. Muslims. Middle-caste Hindu merchants dominate the leather export business. Some lower caste Hindus eat beef, though many have adopted high-caste food taboos in a bid to avoid discrimination. So do many of the country's dozens of indigenous tribes. Many self-declared secularists and atheists partake too—some viewing it as a badge of tolerance or rationalism. Yet Hindu nationalists and some ordinary Hindus look on killing cows much the way devout Muslims view drawing cartoons of Muhammad—something they say Indian secularists would never countenance.

Modi's critics still blame him for the tardy police response to the 2002 riots that killed at least 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus when he was chief minister of Gujarat, his home state, though he was exonerated in court. Opponents have taken him to task for delayed and wishy-washy public statements in response to attacks on churches, belligerent statements from Hindu nationalists and the recent cow-related violence. For instance, he waited 10 days to speak out against the September 28 lynching of a man wrongfully accused of eating beef.

Arun Shourie, once one of the BJP's most respected leaders but now marginalized under Modi, believes the prime minister’s silence was deliberate—and it was interpreted as a green light by rowdier sections of the movement. After an incident of inter-religious violence occurs, other members of the BJP and affiliated organizations keep it alive by making provocative statements, Shourie said in a televised interview with a national channel. Only after weeks pass does Modi comment, and then it is to say something cryptic. “It almost comes out as if it is by design,” said Shourie.

Supporters reject such criticism. “To defame Modi, a negative campaign is coming from the so-called secularists,” says Surendra Kumar Jain, All India Secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Hindu nationalist group leading the push for a national ban on cow slaughter. Vigilante action has to be understood in the context of the failure of law enforcement, he says. “Suppose a woman is being raped? Will you stand by and wait for the police?”

It's not only the beef and leather industry that is at stake. India has climbed in the World Bank's ease of doing business rankings and has replaced China as the most popular destination for foreign direct investment since Modi came to power in 2014. But both the devastating loss in Bihar and the flirting with sectarian strife could further derail his plans for the economy.

The vituperative atmosphere will make it more difficult to reach a consensus with the opposition. And the election loss itself means Modi is drifting further away from a majority in Parliament, where several proposals for big bang economic reforms have already withered and died.

“Along with a possible increase in violence, the government will face stiffer opposition in the Upper House as the debate turns away from economic policy,” Moody's Analytics said in a November report. “Modi must keep his members in check or risk losing domestic and global credibility.”

Blood, guts and glory: India's boxers hit pay dirt

They got India's first pro-boxing event off the ground. We go behind the scenes with the man who may well be the Don King of India
By Jason Overdorf

GQ India (November 2015)

An hour after the scheduled start time, Jaisingh Shekhawat, the 30-year-old chief organizer of India’s first professional boxing event, burst into the improvised pre-fight green room in a panic, his brow beaded with sweat. “What the hell’s going on?” he snapped at coach Mahavir Singh, busy supervising a last-minute briefing of the nine Indian match judges. Shekhawat caught me watching him and winced. “Mismanagement,” he said ruefully, juggling his portfolio and walkie-talkie.

All around the green room – repurposed from the drivers’ waiting area in the basement parking garage of Delhi’s Select Citywalk Mall – the fighters displayed a monastic calm. Punjabi heavyweight Gurlal Singh, to fight Haryana’s Vikas Hooda in the first of four scheduled matches, stood in the corner like a B-movie Hercules as three hangerson laced up his groin protector. Thai super bantamweight (55.3kg) Khunkhiri Wor Wisaruth was taping the hands of American super middleweight (76.2kg) Clinton Smith, while Smith’s opponent for the night, 13-time national champion Dilbag Singh, casually slipped on a glove and sunk a joke-hook into a friend’s belly to test it out, punctuating the punch with his devilish, 100-watt grin.

If anyone here had reason to sweat, it was Shekhawat, a slim, slicklooking guy with brushed-back hair and gold hoops in both ears. The delayed start put his newly formed North Indian Boxing Association (NIBA) at risk of failing to complete the programme before 10pm, when the permit for the outdoor plaza upstairs would expire. If the authorities shut them down before the end of the main event — a 12-round contest between Indian Neeraj Goyat and Filipino Nelson Gulpe, competing for the vacant World Boxing Council (WBC) Asian Welterweight Championship - the dream of bringing pro boxing to India would be confirmed a fiasco.

Already, one of the biggest news stories to emerge from the farcical pre-fight press conference the day before was a Hindustan Times article headlined “Nothing professional about pro boxing’s India debut”. And tonight, WBC Asia head Patrick Cusick was still fielding basic questions from the judges and referees about pro-level rules and scoring – which differ widely from the amateur game.

Maybe it didn’t show, but more than a year-and-a-half of work hung in the balance.

Jaisingh Shekhawat was always a boxing fan, and participated in a few state-level tournaments before getting into the marble business in his home state of Rajasthan. He had long thought there was a potential market for professional boxing in India, but it took the drive of his old trainer Mahavir Singh (best known as the coach of Olympic bronze medallist Mary Kom) and Neeraj Goyat (arguably India’s keenest pro) to get the idea off the ground. With six professional fights in China and Thailand, as well as a brief stint in India’s Mixed Martial Arts Super Fight League, 23-year-old Goyat had made connections with foreign managers and WBC officials while he was abroad. So when he emailed WBC head Cusick about a licence to hold events in India, he got a response.

Slowly, things came together. Ruling out a stadium – fearing nobody would turn up – the team decided on a free, open-air event that would draw a crowd from passersby. They convinced Cusick they weren’t just blowing smoke, and completed the paperwork to obtain the WBC licence. Handshakes were made with top boxers whose amateur careers were over and who wanted to go pro. Rahul Gokhale of Serendipity Marketing Solutions was pulled in to manage the event. Most importantly, Rakesh Naudiyal, a former international amateur boxer, convinced Kashmiri Marbles to come on board as their major sponsor, contributing around ₹10 lakh rupees – about a fifth of the event’s total budget.

Yet, when Naudiyal told me about it all, I was skeptical — not least because they were approaching me for advice.

I’ve been a hack boxer since learning the basics in a Beijing gym that doubled as a karaoke bar and brothel in 1998, picking up trainers in Boston, New York, Hong Kong and Delhi as I’ve moved around. I’d also venture I’m probably the biggest boxing fan on the Subcontinent. But that’s where my expertise ends. (Full disclosure: Naudiyal has been my friend and training partner since 2005.)

The idea wasn’t to get rich, everybody agreed. It was to give Indian boxers an opportunity to showcase their talent. Most of the team had volunteered their time, and apart from outside contractors like Gokhale, nobody expected to make a rupee off the event. Shekhawat certainly had no illusions he was going to be the next Don King — the notorious American promoter who dominated professional boxing from 1974’s “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman through the reign of Mike Tyson in the Eighties — known as much for his slimy business deals as his lightning shock of hair and hi-glint smile of pure evil.

“At the India [amateur] camp, there will be 40-some boxers in every weight class,” said trainer Mahavir Singh. “But only the top one gets the chance to compete in the Olympics. The second, third and fourth guys don’t ever get an opportunity. We want to provide a platform for them.”

My first meeting with Shekhawat, in April this year, was like a Chinese fire drill. Naudiyal was late, so Shekhawat, Mahavir and I stood around in the blazing sun outside the PVR Cinema hall in Basant Lok Community Centre. Neither was comfortable with English, so I was stuck with my “idhar se left, udharse right” taxi Hindi until Kamaljit and a few others turned up. Finally, we tramped up four flights of stairs to a stuffy office that was smaller than an aloo tikki cart. A steady string of beefy guys filled it up until Naudiyal arrived, whereupon we hit critical mass and moved downstairs again. Scouts were dispatched to find a more suitable spot, which turned out to be a McDonald’s. So I viewed the crew’s laptop PowerPoint presentation and dispensed my wisdom, such as it was, over fries and a Coke at a curvy first-floor banquet table.

“As they like to say in America, ‘styles make fights’. You don’t want two match technical boxers who’ll spend the whole night playing defence,” I told them, among other non-pearls.

With that meeting as context, my experience of the pre-event press conference was very different from that of the Hindustan Times writer. I was just gobsmacked that they had actually done anything. “With no money!” exclaimed Naudiyal’s friend Arun Kunal, owner of Add on Entertainment, who’d volunteered to handle public relations.

Patrick Cusick looked out over the audience of reporters gathered at The Lalit hotel. “We’ve been watching the development of boxing in Asia for the last 15 years,” he said. “Ten years ago, we went to China, and now they have their first world champion. We believe India can progress as quickly, if not faster.”

Ninety minutes after official fight time, after countless announcements that the first bout was going to start “in a few minutes,” the announcers were running out of material. “Hurry up and light the lamp,” said one, once they’d wrangled the obligatory-but- not-really-important VIPs onto the stage. When tapers were finally put to the aarti, Shekhawat looked like his doctor had just informed him that his biopsy was negative.

Despite the delays and the 40-degree heat, the crowd hadn’t given up. The 350 ringside chairs for invited guests were full. By the angles of their noses, seemingly every boxer in North India was in the house. Curious onlookers were lined up 20 rows deep in the plaza beyond the guest area, and another dozen rows packed the mall’s first floor balcony.

A hesitant cheer went up as the first fighter, Haryana heavyweight Vikas Hooda, was announced. A thin plume of fog sputtered from the smoke machine, then nothing, as Hooda jog-stepped through the archway and raised his fists in the air.

The thing was finally underway. Somebody must have told Hooda and Gurlal Singh that the fans wanted a knockout, because they hammered hooks to each other’s ribs with no more thought to defence than a couple guys chopping down trees. With the first big blows to the head – sweat flying like shooting stars under the lights – the crowd was hooked. After four workmanlike rounds, when Hooda, in his pro debut, was announced the winner, the emcee didn’t have to exhort the crowd to cheer.

Next up, 13-time All India amateur champion Dilbag Singh squared off against American Clinton Smith. It was the kind of mismatch typical for a top amateur’s debut in the pros – where the idea is to get your guy some easy wins and build up his reputation. Smith was listed in the programme as having 18 wins and 5 losses, but in fact he was a Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts fighter. A gristly, tattooed 39-year-old with a shaved head and goatee, he’d told me in the green room that he had five pro Muay Thai bouts, two MMA, but he’d “more or less never boxed before.” Once Dilbag figured that out, it was a matter of Smith being tough enough to avoid a knockout. By that measure, he acquitted himself well. Between rounds, a freshly mohawked Dilbag winked at the ring card girls and grinned at his buddies in the peanut gallery. Smith barely laid a glove on him.

By the time Delhi’s own Balbir Singh was introduced for his super bantamweight bout with Thailand’s Khunkhiri Wor Wisaruth, a veteran of 11 pro fights, the crowd had gotten into the swing of things. The loudest roar of the night rose as Balbir pranced out of the now functioning fog.

From the opening bell, it was clear Balbir didn’t think the stringy Wisaruth had the punching power to keep him off. He bullied the smaller Thai around the ring, winging wild punches and pushing Wisaruth to the ropes, until the Thai drew him into a clinch to get his bearings. When the Indian referee separated them, Balbir let go a hook that caught Wisaruth on the chin. The Thai stumbled back and dropped to the canvas, and the crowd went wild. Even by professional boxing’s more liberal rules, “hitting on the break” is illegal, and Balbir’s punch had the look of a premeditated, flagrant foul. But the Indian referee acted like nothing had happened and gave Wisaruth an eight count when he popped to his feet. For a second, disbelief passed over the Thai’s face, then the realization that he was in the stewpot for a bit of “home cooking” – a staple of professional boxing.

A minute later, Balbir floored him again, this time with a shoulder block, and again the referee pretended nothing was amiss. Wisaruth tried to stick and move after that, but Balbir put him on his back with a straight right in the second round, and seconds later, another right put Wisaruth down and out.

India’s first pro boxing card had its first KO.

Now for the main event: Neeraj Goyat vs Nelson Gulpe for the Asian welterweight championship.

A good-looking and charismatic kid with an easy smile and a mop of curly hair, Goyat was the reason the programme had come together. Unlike most Indian boxers, who quit the game as soon as they get a sports quota job, Goyat was hungry. Though he didn’t have the pedigree to match Dilbag and Balbir, at just 23 he had more years left in his prime. With six fights in China and Thailand, he was already India’s most experienced professional. And along with Dilbag, he’d inked a deal with Las Vegas-based Guilty Boxing to cover his living and training expenses. On the other hand, with two wins, two losses and two draws, he didn’t have the kind of record for people in the fight game to call him “a prospect”. And he hadn’t done anything to merit being invited to fight for the WBC’s vacant Asian welterweight title apart from being born in India. (At 8-4-0 and 3 KOs, Gulpe was a little more legit.)

“I’ve been fighting at super lightweight (63.5kg), but there was no vacant title in that weight class,” Goyat had told me a couple hours before fight time, tucked up to his chin under the blankets in his hotel room, Mujhse Dosti Karoge blaring from the TV. “That’s why I played welter weight this time.”

In the greater scheme of professional boxing, it’s a meaningless belt. The WBC Asia is to the WBC what Italian basketball is to the NBA, and even at boxing’s highest level, an alphabet soup of competing sanctioning bodies plague the sport (the World Boxing Association, the International Boxing Federation, the World Boxing Organization and on and on).

“It’s just to get India on the map,” said Kiwi referee Bruce McTavish, a veteran with more than 100 title fights on his resumé. “It’s showbiz.” But for Goyat, a win would mean an end to being treated like Smith or Wisaruth: “an opponent”, expected to lose. “After this event, people will come to me to fight,” Goyat told me. “Organizers will ask me to come to their countries. Sponsors will come to us.”

A victory might even earn Goyat a fight in Vegas. His promoter, Guilty Boxing chief executive Puneet Dureja, a non-resident Indian with 25 years experience in movie and television distribution, has purportedly signed a deal with America’s CBS Sports Network to stage a series of international fight cards featuring boxers from ten different countries over the next 12 months.

From the opening bell, Goyat took the fight to the taller Filipino, whose punches looked sluggish. Goyat pushed Gulpe back to negate his longer reach, but let Gulpe control the distance and ate a couple four-punch combinations for it. But in the end, he went back to crowding the Filipino, ducking and weaving when Gulpe tried to fire back. The strategy worked.

Compared to Balbir’s knockout, Goyat’s lopsided technical win, drawn out over 12 three-minute rounds, was an anti-climax. But in other respects, it was exactly what Shekhawat’s NIBA and the WBC needed.

When the scores were announced, Goyat’s supporters lifted him onto their shoulders in the centre of the ring and thrust a microphone into his hand.

“I’m India’s first professional boxing champion!” he shouted out in Hindi.

“If the fighters come prepared and the main event is handled in a professional manner, then it will be a success,” Cusick had told me the day before, and at that moment, a success is what it was. It was only a day or two later that the real cracks started to show. Rumours swirled that one of the main sponsors had reneged on a promise to provide ₹15 lakh and Shekhawat hadn’t been able to pay the fighters. Then Rahul Gokhale, of Serendipity Marketing, wrote me to accuse Shekhawat of stiffing him on two of the agreed ₹5 lakh fee for arranging the venue, promotional materials and managing the event.

“NIBA used my office infrastructure, manpower and consultation services for two months, and apart from that the event cost is also not paid. All commitments regarding the payment failed, and now everyone is absconding,” Gokhale wrote in an email.

Shekhawat took my call a few minutes later and assured me he was not absconding. He was very much in town, and had sent Gokhale a WhatsApp message offering to meet.

“I haven’t disappeared. I’m very near his home,” Shekhawat said.

He didn’t deny that they’d agreed on five lakhs. But he said he was withholding the final two lakhs because he wasn’t satisfied with the job Gokhale had done. Among the issues: Gokhale had promised an aluminium scaffold for the light system, but had provided an iron one; and the LED lights hadn’t been functioning for the first match. The crux of the matter, though, was the delay.

“The show was 90 minutes late. I was searching for him, where is Rahul, where is Rahul? He was nowhere to be found.”

Gokhale disagreed. “As far as I was concerned, the event was quite seamless,” he said. “Nothing went wrong.”

According to Cusick and McTavish, none of the foreign fighters complained that they had not received their money. However, it wasn’t clear if those amounts matched the sums that the team had bandied about in their discussions with me – which included match fees of as much as one lakh and post-fight bonuses ranging from₹50,000 to 5 lakh for the winner of the main event.

“As far as my purse I was given exactly what I was promised, no haggling,” Smith wrote in an email. “I am not at liberty to discuss [the] total... But I will say I hope they call me again.”

When I called Goyat, he was more cagey. The organizers had given a cheque for his match fee and the ₹5 lakh bonus for winning the title to a friend in Delhi. But he wasn’t bothered about cashing it, he claimed.

“I didn’t fight for the money. I fought to make history,” said Goyat. “This is the first professional boxing championship to be held in India. I don’t want it to be the last.”

Unpaid bills, dodgy match-ups, an incompetent-if-not-crooked referee — to the uninitiated, all that might sound a bit, well, unprofessional. But to the boxing cognoscenti, where this sort of scheming is more common than not, it may be a hint that Shekhawat and India’s newborn pro boxing industry may already be punching above their weight.

http://www.gqindia.com/get-smart/sports/indias-pro-boxing-gq-india