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30 November
2006 - News Updates
Stars of India - The Observer (UK)
The unexpected is expected in India - San Francisco
Chronicle
Back towards Beijing - Washington Post
Stars of India - the new India elite
26 November 2006, The
Observer (UK),
By Amelia Gentleman
Vijay Mallya, 50 - Liquor and airline baron
India's answer to
Richard Branson, Mallya branched out from family brewery business into the
rapidly expanding airline industry last year. Dispensing with saris, Mallya
made his air hostesses (or 'walking models in the air') wear tight red
skirts and high heels. Entreats India to come and 'Fly the Good Times'. This
billionaire's exuberant optimism made Kingfisher India's fastest-growing
private airline this year. Mallya plans to start a New York-style helicopter
taxi service in
India's biggest cities so the rich can escape the horrendous
traffic.
Mukesh, 49, and Anil
Ambani, 47 - Industrial tycoons
The two warring heirs to the Ambani empire split India's largest private
company - the $23bn Reliance Industries - into two. This year their bitter
inheritance dispute was resolved with a peace deal brokered by their mother.
Brash and aggressive, Anil (recently named the number one business icon
among Indian youth) took over the exploding mobile-phone industry, financial
services and power-generation sector. Mukesh, dubbed 'Mr Big' by the media,
retained the petrochemical side. Projects include bringing supermarket
shopping to India, with Reliance Fresh set to open 4,000 branches in three
years, and building a massive second city across the bay from Mumbai to
accommodate the overflow from the business capital. Recently listed as
India's richest man, with a net worth of around pounds 8.2bn. Anil comes in
at number three, with a personal fortune of more than pounds 7bn.
Tarun Tejpal, 43 -
Magazine editor
Pioneer of a brand of sting journalism which has transformed Indian
media. Already well-established as editor of a couple of India's leading
news magazines (including Outlook ), he set up a news website in 2000,
breaking new ground with hard-hitting investigations into political
corruption.
Vikram Chandra, 45 -
Novelist
Chandra's 900-page epic crime novel Sacred Games is this year's
publishing sensation in India. Exposing the corruption and casual ethics of
India's police and the bandit-ridden underworld of Mumbai through the eyes
of inspector Sartaj Singh - the archetypal depressed, alcoholic-hero
detective - the book feels like Raymond Chandler goes to Bollywood. It is
also a powerful evocation of the uglier realities of modern India, and
promises to make a new audience of readers fluent in crude Hindi slang.
Already well known for his prize-winning first novel Red Earth and Pouring
Rain, Chandra is basking in the international excitement generated by this
book. He divides his time between Mumbai and the University of
California, where he teaches creative writing.
Naresh Trehan, 60 -
Heart surgeon
Medical travel is forecast to become a $2.3bn business for India by 2012 and
possibly the next major driver of the economy after the IT industry. Trehan
performs heart surgery and works with the government to encourage more
foreigners to come to India for treatment. Call it medical tourism or, as he
prefers, 'medical value travel', he is championing the trend, pointing out
that surgery in India can cost as little as 10 per cent what it would in the
US.
Ratan Tata, 68 -
Chairman of Tata Group
When Tata Tea bought
Britain's
top tea-bag brand, Tetley Tea, for $407m in 2000, Indian newspapers were
exultant, declaring: 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Tata inspired new patriotic
delight in October when he made a pounds 5.1bn offer for the Anglo-Dutch
steelmaker Corus, heralding a reverse of globalisation, the beginning of
payback. Founded in 1868, Tata is the most powerful Indian brand, from
buses, trucks and cars to telephone networks, hotels and tea. The
publicity-shy billionaire scion of the Tata dynasty is an architect and
Harvard MBA who has headed the family company since 1991: last year it had
sales of $21.9bn, or about 2.8 per cent of India's GDP.
Sunita Narain, 44-
Environmental activist
Narain demonstrated this summer the damage her
tiny research institution Centre for Science and Environment can inflict on
the combined might of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Her campaign to expose
dangerously high pesticide levels on average more than 24 times the safe
limit of pesticides in drinks made by both companies in
India triggered a PR fiasco for both companies in this
crucial emerging market.
Nandan Nilekani,
51 - CEO of Infosys
A titan of India's flagship IT industry, Nilekani is co-founder of
software company Infosys, now worth $20bn through its outsourcing
operations. Personal fortune: about $800m.
Sania Mirza, 20 -
Sporting icon
India's most successful female tennis player. Though her ranking has slipped
this year to 69th in the WTA chart, Mirza remains a powerful role model. Her
defiance and streetwise dress sense have endeared her to a generation and
made her the darling of the advertising industry. When Islamist extremists
ordered a fatwa on the young Muslim, declaring that she would be 'stopped
from playing' if she didn't wear more clothes on court, Mirza reacted with
impeccable composure. Her agent says: 'Sania personifies this emerging
India, this new confidence, this realisation that even though we are not
always going to win, we are going to do battle.'
Mira Nair, 49- Filmmaker
One of the few Indian film directors to win international critical acclaim.
Since her debut Salaam Bombay! (which won 27 international awards in 1988),
she has appealed equally to foreign and domestic audiences. Her Monsoon
Wedding was the highest-grossing Indian film ever released in the US.
Sunil Bharti Mittal, 49
- Telecom king
The phone was once a luxury in India; now the price of calls in India is
one of the lowest in the world. He is now a multi-billionaire. India's
mobile-phone market is one of the fastest-growing in the world and Bharti
Airtel is now India's largest mobile-phone provider: it grew 79 per cent
this year. It has 27.1m subscribers.
Ritu Kumar, 62 - Fashion
designer
Empress of Indian haute couture, a favourite with Bollywood stars and
celebrities around the world, Kumar has dressed actresses Aishwarya Rai and
Sushmita Sen as well as Princess Diana and Jemima Khan. Often cited as the
country's leading designer and listed among India's most powerful
businesswomen, Kumar prides herself on using traditional Indian craft
skills, updating them for modern tastes.
Ekta Kapoor, 31 -
Soap-opera producer
The creator of India's biggest soap opera, Because a Mother-In-Law Was
Once a Daughter-In-Law, Kapoor started her production company in her
parents' garage. Balaji Telefilms is now valued at $222m and her hit soap
has 47m viewers.
Maqbool Fida Husain, 91
- Artist
Like all of India's contemporary artists, Husain's fortunes have
experienced an extraordinary turnaround as India's economic success fuels a
rapacious rise in art prices.
Schauna Chauhan Saluja,
30 - Soft-drinks magnate
Her father says he knew when his eldest daughter took her first steps in
his office that one day she would run his soft-drinks company. Last year the
family-run Parle Agro, which began in 1959, controlled 85 per cent of the
Indian juice market. Saluja, who graduated from a Swiss business school in
2002 says. 'I'm like the eldest son in the family.'
Sri Sri Ravishankar, 50
– Spiritual Guru
Telegenic founder of India's smartest spiritual movement, the Art of
Living Foundation, which has updated India's image of the guru for the
corporate age. Campaigning for a 'crime-free and stress-free world', the
movement was founded in 1986. Based in a huge ashram in the IT hub of
Bangalore, Ravishankar raises large sums for charitable projects. He also
runs a 'corporate executive programme' aimed at helping senior man agement
in India's leading companies cope with stress and negativity, offering
relief by teaching employees how to improve their breathing techniques.
Barkha Dutt, 34 -
Television star
Equally at ease hosting Oprah Winfrey-style studio debates and
transmitting live reports from the Kashmir earthquake zone or the doorsteps
of Delhi's political elite. India's best-known reporter has become the face
of its leading 24-hour English-language news channel, NDTV.
Aamir Khan, 41 - Actor
and activist
Bollywood's social conscience, Khan combines a flourishing film career
with energetic campaigning against the oppression of the underdog.
Medha Patkar, 51 - Campaigner
India's most prominent environmental activist and champion of the
oppressed - from slum dwellers to tribal communities - Patkar is skilled at
getting under the government's skin.
Samir,
52, and Vineet Jain, 40 - Media Barons
Owners of India's largest
English language newspapers, the Times of India, which sells around 2.4m
copies a day. The younger generation of the Jain family has transformed the
newspaper (set up by two Englishmen in 1838) into a middle-market,
celebrity-obsessed paper which has proved tremendously popular. Because
India has one of the healthiest newspaper markets in the world (circulation
rose by 8 per cent last year, while; the
UK's fell by 4.5 per cent),
business is booming.
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The unexpected is expected in
India
26 November 2006, San Francisco Chronicle, By Sue Dickman
Meandering along the Ganges
River, in
Varanasi, I'm minding my own business, when I am approached by an Indian
boy, perhaps 10 years old. On my river walks, I've often been approached --
by small children hoping to sell me a banana leaf filled with flowers and a
wick to light and set upon the river, by men wanting to know if I am
interested in a boat ride, very cheap. This boy, however, has a different
agenda. "Aap moti hai," he says. He has just told me that I am fat.
If my Hindi were better, I
might have told him there were more likely candidates for being called fat,
rather than my size 12, American self. Instead, I answer in kind: "Well,
you're very thin." He laughs and seems to consider our introductions made.
As I continue walking, he tags along with several of his friends, and we
chat of work and school and food.
I marvel at the shapes that
daily life takes in
India,
the fact that there is always something to surprise and -- usually --
delight. I am reminded of this a few weeks later, in Udaipur, where it is
wedding season. In five days, I watch a field behind my hotel transform
overnight from an informal cricket pitch and laundry drying venue into a
wedding site, complete with tandoors, tents, strings of fairy lights and a
very powerful sound system. The day after the wedding, all signs of
celebration have vanished.
One evening, I find myself
walking behind a wedding procession that includes the groom riding a white
horse and the wedding-goers en masse behind him. There is also a uniformed
marching band and an auxiliary group of people who carry elaborate light
fixtures attached to a generator -- what I have always called the "band of
chandeliers." Traffic behind the procession moves slowly, and I move slowly
with it. I smile and ask whose wedding it is, and the woman in red tells me
it is her brother's. "Come celebrate with us," she says.
While I decline her offer,
I'm pleased to have been asked. I love daily life in
India
for this very reason, the pleasure of the unexpected. I have been traveling
to
India
for more than 16 years now, and one thing that keeps bringing me back is the
way that daily life takes unforeseen turns. I love walking down the street
and never being sure of what I might see.
On the one hand, I know it
is just more likely that the unexpected will occur in
India.
When turning a corner at home in the United States, I can be pretty certain
that an elephant or a herd of water buffalo or a wedding procession led by a
marching band will not be coming in the opposite direction, but there is no
such certainty in
India.
An elephant (or water buffalo or marching band) might be coming toward me.
Usually not, but often enough to keep things interesting.
But I also wonder if I am
just more open to the unexpected happening, if being in a foreign country,
even one as familiar to me as
India,
allows me to open up, to see, to appreciate. I wonder what it would take for
me to have the same openness in my life here as I do when I am away.
Returning from
India
is always a letdown. I feel myself shrinking back to the size that is
comfortable here. I am grateful for the ease and familiarity of my life, but
I miss the sense of possibility I feel when I am traveling. And this, I
think, is my challenge -- not negotiating a different culture or trying to
make the foreign familiar, but remembering that finding delight in what is
around me isn't limited to my weeks abroad. Even without a band of
chandeliers before me, there are unexpected pleasures to be found closer to
home, as long as I am open to seeing them.
Top of the page
Back towards
Beijing
29 November 2006, Washington post editorial
As of 2005, the Chinese
consumed only 38 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) -- less than
in the 1990s and less than every other country, according to Nicholas R.
Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. By contrast,
India consumes 61 percent of GDP and the United States consumes an excessive
70 percent.
The path of
capital-intensive growth of China tends to be energy-intensive, which is one
reason China's coal consumption has shot up by two-thirds since 2000 and why
China is home to 16 of the 20 cities in the world that score worst for air
pollution.
The United States has an
interest in seeing the technocrats prevail. The environmental fallout from
capital-intensive growth affects global warming, and China's manipulation of
its currency and suppression of consumption undermine public faith in the
fairness of globalization. The question is whether China takes its global
responsibilities seriously enough to listen.
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