Take a Boeing 757, remove 40% of the seats and give customers lots more room, better food and flat beds. Does that sound like a typical recipe at a US airline these days? Hardly, but that’s exactly what United Airlines did with two of its busiest, most important routes, and last year they were the best routes financially for the airline in the country.
In late 2004, United launched an experiment converting all its flights between New York and Los Angeles and New York and San Francisco into a premium service it calls United p.s. With p.s. flights, half of the entire cabin is devoted to first- and business-class seats, and the space offered to passengers is close to what you get on premium international offerings (p.s. has the only domestic lie-flat bed in first class). “It’s been a home run in all perspectives,” says John Tague, United’s chief operating officer.
Many passengers love it. After visiting clients in San Diego, Carol Ruth took a commuter flight to Los Angeles to catch a p.s. flight back to New York rather than fly directly home from San Diego on Delta Air Lines Inc. or AMR Corp.’s American Airlines. A recent flight in first class on Delta didn’t come close to what she enjoys about p.s. business class.
“On Delta, I was complaining, ‘Where are my headphones? Where is my legroom?’” says Ruth, president of a PR firm (p.s. business-class seats have 16 inches more legroom than Delta’s domestic first class).
“P.s.” shows that at least on some routes, domestic US travellers will pay extra for very nice service, and not just chase the cheapest fare (p.s. fares go as high as $3,235 or Rs1.36 lakh round trip for business class, and $5,167 for first class). That may become an important lesson as airlines struggle with high oil prices and push up ticket prices. To get business travellers to pay more and not simply shift to discount airlines, big airlines may have to find ways to offer premium service that travellers will value—something different from what they can get on the cheapest ticket, and yet better value than sky-high domestic first-class tickets.
Andrew Watterson, a partner at the airline practice of Oliver Wyman, says that to weather the current crisis, airlines are going to have to find more ways to simultaneously cut costs and boost revenue—what United did with p.s.
“It’s a great example of finding a situation where people will pay more for a better seat,” he says. “There are select markets around the world where you can have these kinds of products.”
The number of markets in the US is probably small, however. Airlines need long flights and lots of business travellers to make premium service offerings work. And in the midst of the current financial crisis, officials say it is unlikely airlines will be investing in new products.
Yet p.s. itself was born out of bankruptcy cost-cutting. United had to ground some of its Boeing 767 wide-bodies coming out of bankruptcy reorganization, but it didn’t want to lose “premium” transcontinental customers—travellers from entertainment, finance and technology companies, who frequently jet back and forth between New York and California and are willing to pay for international-type business-class and first-class seats.
So, United designed a 757 with roughly the same number of premium seats as in the 767. That left room for only 72 coach seats. The airline made those seats all “Economy Plus” with 34 inches of space for each row, three more inches than United’s standard coach seating.
Because of the dominance of business-class and first-class seats, and because customers are more willing to pay for premium cabins on p.s., United averages significantly higher average fares on those flights than other domestic trips. In the fourth quarter, according to government data, United’s average ticket between New York and Los Angeles was $884 round trip, while regular United service between Newark, New Jersey, and Los Angeles averaged about half that—only $448 round trip.
That means that the United p.s. flight on a 757 generated about 20% more revenue per trip than the United 757s flying between Newark and Los Angeles, even though Newark flights had many more seats. Tague says the two p.s. markets last year had “much stronger margins than the rest of our domestic system”.
Indeed, aviation consulting firm Simat Helliesen and Eichner Inc. estimated that last year United had operating profits in Asia, Europe and its transcontinental markets. All other domestic routes and Latin America had operating losses.
For many coach customers, there’s not much premium about the coach cabin on p.s. flights, except for the extra legroom. United launched p.s. with free meals in coach, but has cut that to save money and now sells snacks, sandwiches and salads. Entertainment in coach consists of low-tech video shown on small ceiling-mounted TVs, a far cry from JetBlue Airways Corp.’s free satellite television.
Kay Grogan of Connecticut was surprised not to be offered a meal on a 6-hour flight sold as “premium service”, and she was unhappy with the Mediterranean chicken salad she purchased. “It was horrible. It hardly had any greens in it,” she says. ”What does this p.s. mean? This is premium? It’s a cattle car in the back.”
Both routes—New York-Los Angeles and New York-San Francisco—have long had “quasi-international airplanes”. American flies wide-body 767s on its transcontinental routes with three classes of service, the only domestic markets where it offers business class and first class in addition to coach.
American, which carries more passengers than United in transcon markets, launched a $20 million upgrade of its domestic 767s that compete head-to-head with p.s., refurbishing the interiors, installing fully motorized first-class seats and expanding the menus in the front two cabins.
American contends customers prefer its wide-body, twin-aisle jets to United’s single-aisle, narrow-body planes because there’s more room for passengers to move about the cabin. United says its p.s. jets give customers more room at their seats than American. United’s first-class seats in p.s. are set in 68 inches of room, are 21.5 inches wide and lie flat, though at an angle. American’s first-class seats on its transcon jets have 6 inches less space and are 2.5 inches narrower. American’s business class seats have less legroom and are narrower as well.
Kendrick Bales, a frequent business traveller from New York, says he’ll pay more for United’s p.s. business class than a first-class ticket on other airlines. With only 100 passengers, getting on and off the plane is faster and luggage delivery is often swifter on p.s. flights, and extra space allows him to conduct meetings with colleagues in flight.
When he upgrades to first class, it’s the VIP treatment in Los Angeles, where United lets him wait in the international first-class lounge, then escorts him to the plane right before the door closes.
International air service has drawn sharp lines between those who want the cheapest ticket and passengers willing to pay for comfort, and Bales, for one, would like to see more options for consumers on domestic flights. “Maybe that split will happen here so that people willing to pay have something nicer,” he says.
Aug 9, 2008
Lifestyle - E-xistence:What's your cyber personality?
Emails have become the new scented letters. Victorian maidens who wanted to impress suitors used to sign off with a flourish on scented letters that were hand-delivered by coach boys. Now, we are left with intangible airwaves that carry our missives to friends and enemies. Today, we use email for birth announcements, birthday parties, thank-you notes and occasionally, to send stinkers. The “what-the-hell” messages and the “just-where-do-you-get-off-speaking-to-me-like-that” communiqués that used to be delivered by phone or in person have become the purview of email. Naturally, how we appear online is in some cases, more important than how we are in person. As for me, I think I have better online relationships than real-life ones. My kids might think I am Frankenstein, but on email, I can be polite, charming, even gay, without gritting my teeth, tapping my toes and looking at my watch. I can wait till I think of a witty response before hitting the reply button.
One thing I’ve noticed with email is how people sign off. The Aussies and the Brits prefer the impersonal yet cheery “Cheers,”; Indians like “Regards,” or “Warm regards,” which seems a lot more pleasant than the American “Best,” which has to be the coldest sign-off amongst nationalities.
Some people have quotations attached to their signatures. Most of them are forgettable. The only one I remember is, “Character is what you do when no one is looking”. I thought that was pretty cool. For a while I considered appending it to my emails. Then I thought it would be totally out of character, considering that most of the things I do are purely for the benefit of people who are watching. I don’t mind appearing like a shallow two-faced hypocrite but I draw the line at being a pseudo.
The body of the email draws on different styles of writing. My friend, Ann La Rue, writes the most plaintive emails: no hello, no greeting, and no sign-off. Just succinct messages sans segue as in, “Did you book the train tickets from Delhi to Agra? What do you think of the Obama cartoon in The New Yorker? I found the pink slipper you left behind in my house years ago.”
One corporate head honcho I know writes very civilized emails, complete with quaint paragraph indents, cordial greeting and warm sign-off. Most people write the first email with all the requisite civility and then resort to tapped-out replies. This is, as it should be, I think. It would be very boring to do the “Dear Sheela,” and “Warm regards,” each time.
When I reply to people I don’t know, I usually copy their format, especially when it comes to superiors. When an editor who I haven’t met writes to me, I basically mimic their approach. If they say, “Hi Shoba,” I say it right back. If they prefer a “Dear Shoba,” I’ll repeat it. If they sign off with the “Best” I detest, so be it from me.
Brand managers say that mimicking is a great way to suck up to clients. The theory is simple: You basically mimic the gestures of the person in front of you a few seconds later. If they gesture expansively with their hands, you do the same thing; if they nod in a certain way, you follow; if they scratch their ear, you echo the gesture. A few minutes of this and the person will take an inexplicable liking to you without realizing why. At least, that’s what the theory says. I haven’t tried practising it. I would like to do this but I am afraid nothing cogent will come out of my mouth if I am so caught up with the gesture-mimicry.
The thing I hate is stationery. Fonts I can handle; paragraph formatting is fine by me. But every now and then I will get an email using the “Sunshine splash” in-built stationery that Windows supplies. I was an offender too. For a while, all my emails went out with “Ivy” crawling up the left corner. I squirm now but I was trying way too hard to be cool, you see.
Fonts are another matter, especially the ones on my Apple OS X. I read Steve Jobs’ commencement address for Stanford’s graduating class and he talked about taking a calligraphy class, which came in handy when designing fonts for the computer. I personally like Apple Chancery and pretty much every font that looks like a Victorian maiden’s writing: Edwardian Script, for instance, is how I wish I could write. So occasionally, when I am composing stuff such as this, I compensate for the drivel by upping the ante with the font. Even though you, dear reader, are perusing these pages in the standard news print font, the words as they appear on my computer are full of flourish and up-curved brushstrokes. Again, much as I love them, I don’t try these fonts on email because they fall under the “trying too hard” category.
The worst thing about my current email existence is that people are continuously prodding, bumping, or throwing things at me. My niece registered me on Facebook and LinkedIn and we have both forgotten the password. So I routinely get emails stating that Anjali has written on my wall when I didn’t even build a wall, even online. I am amazed by the number of people who want to be my friend. What amazes me even more is that most of them are strangers. The only thing is that when I try to “approve” them, the darn thing doesn’t let me because I can’t remember the password. So for now, I am like a free-floating amoeba in cyberspace, gathering plankton and the odd moss, but unable and unwilling to commit.
Shoba Narayan has 73 connections that she is trying to approve Not. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com
One thing I’ve noticed with email is how people sign off. The Aussies and the Brits prefer the impersonal yet cheery “Cheers,”; Indians like “Regards,” or “Warm regards,” which seems a lot more pleasant than the American “Best,” which has to be the coldest sign-off amongst nationalities.
Some people have quotations attached to their signatures. Most of them are forgettable. The only one I remember is, “Character is what you do when no one is looking”. I thought that was pretty cool. For a while I considered appending it to my emails. Then I thought it would be totally out of character, considering that most of the things I do are purely for the benefit of people who are watching. I don’t mind appearing like a shallow two-faced hypocrite but I draw the line at being a pseudo.
The body of the email draws on different styles of writing. My friend, Ann La Rue, writes the most plaintive emails: no hello, no greeting, and no sign-off. Just succinct messages sans segue as in, “Did you book the train tickets from Delhi to Agra? What do you think of the Obama cartoon in The New Yorker? I found the pink slipper you left behind in my house years ago.”
One corporate head honcho I know writes very civilized emails, complete with quaint paragraph indents, cordial greeting and warm sign-off. Most people write the first email with all the requisite civility and then resort to tapped-out replies. This is, as it should be, I think. It would be very boring to do the “Dear Sheela,” and “Warm regards,” each time.
When I reply to people I don’t know, I usually copy their format, especially when it comes to superiors. When an editor who I haven’t met writes to me, I basically mimic their approach. If they say, “Hi Shoba,” I say it right back. If they prefer a “Dear Shoba,” I’ll repeat it. If they sign off with the “Best” I detest, so be it from me.
Brand managers say that mimicking is a great way to suck up to clients. The theory is simple: You basically mimic the gestures of the person in front of you a few seconds later. If they gesture expansively with their hands, you do the same thing; if they nod in a certain way, you follow; if they scratch their ear, you echo the gesture. A few minutes of this and the person will take an inexplicable liking to you without realizing why. At least, that’s what the theory says. I haven’t tried practising it. I would like to do this but I am afraid nothing cogent will come out of my mouth if I am so caught up with the gesture-mimicry.
The thing I hate is stationery. Fonts I can handle; paragraph formatting is fine by me. But every now and then I will get an email using the “Sunshine splash” in-built stationery that Windows supplies. I was an offender too. For a while, all my emails went out with “Ivy” crawling up the left corner. I squirm now but I was trying way too hard to be cool, you see.
Fonts are another matter, especially the ones on my Apple OS X. I read Steve Jobs’ commencement address for Stanford’s graduating class and he talked about taking a calligraphy class, which came in handy when designing fonts for the computer. I personally like Apple Chancery and pretty much every font that looks like a Victorian maiden’s writing: Edwardian Script, for instance, is how I wish I could write. So occasionally, when I am composing stuff such as this, I compensate for the drivel by upping the ante with the font. Even though you, dear reader, are perusing these pages in the standard news print font, the words as they appear on my computer are full of flourish and up-curved brushstrokes. Again, much as I love them, I don’t try these fonts on email because they fall under the “trying too hard” category.
The worst thing about my current email existence is that people are continuously prodding, bumping, or throwing things at me. My niece registered me on Facebook and LinkedIn and we have both forgotten the password. So I routinely get emails stating that Anjali has written on my wall when I didn’t even build a wall, even online. I am amazed by the number of people who want to be my friend. What amazes me even more is that most of them are strangers. The only thing is that when I try to “approve” them, the darn thing doesn’t let me because I can’t remember the password. So for now, I am like a free-floating amoeba in cyberspace, gathering plankton and the odd moss, but unable and unwilling to commit.
Shoba Narayan has 73 connections that she is trying to approve Not. Write to her at thegoodlife@livemint.com
Columnists - Vir Sanghvi
Heath Ledger - The most convincing joker ever
I know that Lounge has already devoted an entire issue to the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight). So forgive me for going over some of the same territory again. My defence is that I’m not writing about Batman but about his most famous enemy: The Joker. Of course you know who The Joker is. The hype surrounding the release of The Dark Knight has focused less on Christian Bale, the British actor who makes an excellent Batman and more on Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. Partly, this is because Ledger died some months before the film was released. His sudden demise in dramatic circumstances led to a long and tedious debate about the ethics of using his likeness in the movie’s publicity campaign.
And partly, this is because Ledger is very good in the movie. He has a menacing, compelling presence and his performance is so brilliant that he outshines such actors as Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Bale (all Brits, oddly enough). Only Aaron Eckhart seems to hold his own.
But even before The Dark Knight, The Joker was hot property. The publicity campaign for the first of the Tim Burton Batman movies, released way back in 1989, ignored Michael Keaton (who made a so-so Batman) and concentrated on Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Of course, Nicholson was a far bigger star than Keaton but he also effortlessly stole the movie.
If you are as old as I am, then your memories of The Joker will go even further back in time. There was the Batman TV show (which ran from 1966 to 1968 but is still repeated) in which veteran Latin seducer Cesar Romero made a very bad Joker (the old rogue refused to shave off his moustache so they had to smear the white Joker make-up over it). There was the movie version of the show (also featuring Romero’s Joker) and there were rumours to the effect that Frank Sinatra had wanted to play The Joker.
And if you are a fan of comics/graphic novels—which I guess many of you are, given that Lounge features such an excellent column devoted to the genre—then you’ll know the original Joker, the guy who fought Batman in the comic books.
What makes The Joker so special that he is regarded as Batman’s No. 1 enemy, that Sinatra and Nicholson wanted to play him, and that Ledger will probably get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal?
My guess is that it is the relative credibility of the character. Of course, when you talk about Batman, the word “credibility” seems strangely inappropriate (a man who dresses up as a bat? That’s real?). Part of the problem with comic book heroes is that you can’t have them fighting normal criminals. Do we really need Batman (or Superman or Spiderman, for that matter) to foil a bank robbery, to catch a smuggler or arrest a murderer? These are things that normal people—policemen, detectives, etc—can easily do.
A superhero needs a super-villain, somebody who is his equal, if the story is to have any dramatic balance. So Spiderman fights the Green Goblin; Superman has General Zod. And Batman fights people in costumes (Catwoman, The Riddler etc.) or with special powers (Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy etc.)
Once you enter the realm of super-fantasy, of men and women in tights beating each other up, it becomes difficult to imagine the action as occurring in the real world. Jim Carrey’s Riddler was ridiculous. Tommy Lee Jones’ Two Face was a joke. And when Danny DeVito tried to make the Penguin seem darker, he made him too repulsive for us to care.
Originally, The Joker was a mere cartoon character. He first appeared in 1940 with crimson lips, green hair and a purple suit. As time went on, he got even more cartoonish, telling silly jokes, wanting to be regarded as the world’s greatest comedian, driving a Jokermobile (like the Batmobile) etc.
It wasn’t till 11 years later that the comic book explained his origin: He was a crooked lab worker who had fallen into a vat of chemical waste while robbing a playing card company. This explained both, his complexion and, why he called himself The Joker.
Of course this explanation was totally unrealistic. Who gets white skin and a silly grin from falling into chemical waste? But it was in keeping with the tone of the comic books of that era.
The conventional wisdom is that Batman was reinvented in 1986 by British writer Frank Miller who wrote a story set in the future called The Dark Knight Returns. But almost as influential was Miller’s Batman: Year One series dealing with the character’s origins which also came out in 1986. Miller’s conception of Batman as a lonely, driven figure who appears only at night became the basis for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie.
The Joker, however, was really reinvented by two other British writers. Alan Moore made him a psychopath in The Killing Joke, a theme further developed by Grant Morrison in Arkham Asylum in 1989. This version differed substantially from Miller’s —his Joker was gay and called Batman “darling”. The Nicholson portrayal preserved the traditional vat-of-chemicals origin but emphasized the lunatic nature of The Joker’s criminality.
Now, in The Dark Knight, Ledger has given us our most convincing Joker yet. He is not a cartoon in a costume. He is a psychotic murderer whose madness makes him act randomly. The funny skin colour does not come from a chemical accident. It is make-up, the sort of war paint that a psychopath might wear before a massacre. The motivation for Ledger’s Joker is not criminal greed. He wants to fight Batman because in his mad way, he enjoys it so much. More than any other Batman villain, The Joker seems like a real person.
My concern now is with the proposed third Batman movie (of the Christian Bale series). In the first one, they dealt with Batman’s origin. In the second, they made him fight a psychopath. But what will they do for a plot in the third?
If Batman goes back to fighting costumed, cartoon villains then, that’s it for the credibility and tone of the series. Sadly for all fans of the series, both Heath Ledger and The Joker are now dead.
I know that Lounge has already devoted an entire issue to the new Batman movie (The Dark Knight). So forgive me for going over some of the same territory again. My defence is that I’m not writing about Batman but about his most famous enemy: The Joker. Of course you know who The Joker is. The hype surrounding the release of The Dark Knight has focused less on Christian Bale, the British actor who makes an excellent Batman and more on Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker. Partly, this is because Ledger died some months before the film was released. His sudden demise in dramatic circumstances led to a long and tedious debate about the ethics of using his likeness in the movie’s publicity campaign.
And partly, this is because Ledger is very good in the movie. He has a menacing, compelling presence and his performance is so brilliant that he outshines such actors as Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Bale (all Brits, oddly enough). Only Aaron Eckhart seems to hold his own.
But even before The Dark Knight, The Joker was hot property. The publicity campaign for the first of the Tim Burton Batman movies, released way back in 1989, ignored Michael Keaton (who made a so-so Batman) and concentrated on Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Of course, Nicholson was a far bigger star than Keaton but he also effortlessly stole the movie.
If you are as old as I am, then your memories of The Joker will go even further back in time. There was the Batman TV show (which ran from 1966 to 1968 but is still repeated) in which veteran Latin seducer Cesar Romero made a very bad Joker (the old rogue refused to shave off his moustache so they had to smear the white Joker make-up over it). There was the movie version of the show (also featuring Romero’s Joker) and there were rumours to the effect that Frank Sinatra had wanted to play The Joker.
And if you are a fan of comics/graphic novels—which I guess many of you are, given that Lounge features such an excellent column devoted to the genre—then you’ll know the original Joker, the guy who fought Batman in the comic books.
What makes The Joker so special that he is regarded as Batman’s No. 1 enemy, that Sinatra and Nicholson wanted to play him, and that Ledger will probably get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal?
My guess is that it is the relative credibility of the character. Of course, when you talk about Batman, the word “credibility” seems strangely inappropriate (a man who dresses up as a bat? That’s real?). Part of the problem with comic book heroes is that you can’t have them fighting normal criminals. Do we really need Batman (or Superman or Spiderman, for that matter) to foil a bank robbery, to catch a smuggler or arrest a murderer? These are things that normal people—policemen, detectives, etc—can easily do.
A superhero needs a super-villain, somebody who is his equal, if the story is to have any dramatic balance. So Spiderman fights the Green Goblin; Superman has General Zod. And Batman fights people in costumes (Catwoman, The Riddler etc.) or with special powers (Mr Freeze, Poison Ivy etc.)
Once you enter the realm of super-fantasy, of men and women in tights beating each other up, it becomes difficult to imagine the action as occurring in the real world. Jim Carrey’s Riddler was ridiculous. Tommy Lee Jones’ Two Face was a joke. And when Danny DeVito tried to make the Penguin seem darker, he made him too repulsive for us to care.
Originally, The Joker was a mere cartoon character. He first appeared in 1940 with crimson lips, green hair and a purple suit. As time went on, he got even more cartoonish, telling silly jokes, wanting to be regarded as the world’s greatest comedian, driving a Jokermobile (like the Batmobile) etc.
It wasn’t till 11 years later that the comic book explained his origin: He was a crooked lab worker who had fallen into a vat of chemical waste while robbing a playing card company. This explained both, his complexion and, why he called himself The Joker.
Of course this explanation was totally unrealistic. Who gets white skin and a silly grin from falling into chemical waste? But it was in keeping with the tone of the comic books of that era.
The conventional wisdom is that Batman was reinvented in 1986 by British writer Frank Miller who wrote a story set in the future called The Dark Knight Returns. But almost as influential was Miller’s Batman: Year One series dealing with the character’s origins which also came out in 1986. Miller’s conception of Batman as a lonely, driven figure who appears only at night became the basis for Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie.
The Joker, however, was really reinvented by two other British writers. Alan Moore made him a psychopath in The Killing Joke, a theme further developed by Grant Morrison in Arkham Asylum in 1989. This version differed substantially from Miller’s —his Joker was gay and called Batman “darling”. The Nicholson portrayal preserved the traditional vat-of-chemicals origin but emphasized the lunatic nature of The Joker’s criminality.
Now, in The Dark Knight, Ledger has given us our most convincing Joker yet. He is not a cartoon in a costume. He is a psychotic murderer whose madness makes him act randomly. The funny skin colour does not come from a chemical accident. It is make-up, the sort of war paint that a psychopath might wear before a massacre. The motivation for Ledger’s Joker is not criminal greed. He wants to fight Batman because in his mad way, he enjoys it so much. More than any other Batman villain, The Joker seems like a real person.
My concern now is with the proposed third Batman movie (of the Christian Bale series). In the first one, they dealt with Batman’s origin. In the second, they made him fight a psychopath. But what will they do for a plot in the third?
If Batman goes back to fighting costumed, cartoon villains then, that’s it for the credibility and tone of the series. Sadly for all fans of the series, both Heath Ledger and The Joker are now dead.
India - No child's play
Who thought bringing up a baby — or even bringing one into the world — was a matter so fraught with heartache, legal tangles and tasteless jokes. More so in a country acknowledged among the world’s record-holders in ill-treating its children: starving them for want of essential nutrition, enslaving them into labour and killing or giving them away at birth because they are unwanted burdens.
Nikita Mehta’s unborn child, which the Mumbai court said could not be aborted despite its damaged heart condition, has split opinion vertically down the middle on an old, thorny debate about abortion: pro-choice vs. pro-life, or when precisely does a foetus acquire “life”, and all the medical, legal and social ramifications that go with it. Then there is Manji Yamada, the Japanese baby born of an Indian womb in Jaipur, whose future also hangs in the balance, her situation made more heartrending because she is alive and kicking, but hinges on the equally thorny issue of divorce and the parameters of parenthood. And, capping the controversies, we have a seriously bad joke from the acting principal of Delhi’s snobbish St Stephen’s College, which has set the cat among the pigeons in the Groves of Academe. Asked by the college magazine about the possibility of co-ed hostels, M S Frank replied: “If that comes to pass, I’ll have to create a maternity centre alongside.”
Are these rites of passage stories or just teething troubles? They may appear Indian in their context but they are universal in the debatable worth of their arguments. (Except for the college principal’s retrograde sexist remark, which confuses co-ed hostels for co-habitation and sounds like an advert for unprotected sex.)
Many medical and legal experts believe that by international standards the Indian Termination of Pregnancy Act is liberal, allowing women a choice of abortion up to 20 weeks — on a par with the US and ahead of most European countries. In dominantly Catholic countries like Ireland or Italy, abortion is still illegal or allowed only under certain conditions — and up to 12 or 13 weeks. The conditions depend on medical diagnosis. As a result, illegal abortions are common and women often cross frontiers in search of a liberal regime; in India village quacks and illegal neighbourhood clinics are the norm. So Nikita and Haresh Mehta’s decision to seek the court’s sanction because of diagnostic delay was an honest and brave act. It could have set a legal precedent. Could the court have been more generous in its dispensation? From the judges’ viewpoint it would have set a bad example. The Mehtas tested the law and failed; but they have generated a debate which could result in redefining the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.
Their future and that of their child won’t be easy and it must be as stressful a situation for Ikufumi Yamada, the father of the Japanese baby, whom he can claim biologically but not legally. Here, again, it is India’s proactive child adoption laws that are blocking his path. Yamada’s wife has divorced him and adoption by a single parent is much harder than by a couple. Yamada’s 70-year-old mother, who is looking after the child, is no advantage, either. Indian adoption experts believe that Indians should have precedence over foreigners in the adoption queue but that an adoptive couple’s age, compatibility and emotional stability are more important than financial security. They would rather give a child to a local bus conductor than to a rich but divorced Japanese. They have a point.
The only irony is that vocal, argumentative and liberal opinion about such matters is voiced in a country with amongst the highest number of children in distress.
Nikita Mehta’s unborn child, which the Mumbai court said could not be aborted despite its damaged heart condition, has split opinion vertically down the middle on an old, thorny debate about abortion: pro-choice vs. pro-life, or when precisely does a foetus acquire “life”, and all the medical, legal and social ramifications that go with it. Then there is Manji Yamada, the Japanese baby born of an Indian womb in Jaipur, whose future also hangs in the balance, her situation made more heartrending because she is alive and kicking, but hinges on the equally thorny issue of divorce and the parameters of parenthood. And, capping the controversies, we have a seriously bad joke from the acting principal of Delhi’s snobbish St Stephen’s College, which has set the cat among the pigeons in the Groves of Academe. Asked by the college magazine about the possibility of co-ed hostels, M S Frank replied: “If that comes to pass, I’ll have to create a maternity centre alongside.”
Are these rites of passage stories or just teething troubles? They may appear Indian in their context but they are universal in the debatable worth of their arguments. (Except for the college principal’s retrograde sexist remark, which confuses co-ed hostels for co-habitation and sounds like an advert for unprotected sex.)
Many medical and legal experts believe that by international standards the Indian Termination of Pregnancy Act is liberal, allowing women a choice of abortion up to 20 weeks — on a par with the US and ahead of most European countries. In dominantly Catholic countries like Ireland or Italy, abortion is still illegal or allowed only under certain conditions — and up to 12 or 13 weeks. The conditions depend on medical diagnosis. As a result, illegal abortions are common and women often cross frontiers in search of a liberal regime; in India village quacks and illegal neighbourhood clinics are the norm. So Nikita and Haresh Mehta’s decision to seek the court’s sanction because of diagnostic delay was an honest and brave act. It could have set a legal precedent. Could the court have been more generous in its dispensation? From the judges’ viewpoint it would have set a bad example. The Mehtas tested the law and failed; but they have generated a debate which could result in redefining the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act.
Their future and that of their child won’t be easy and it must be as stressful a situation for Ikufumi Yamada, the father of the Japanese baby, whom he can claim biologically but not legally. Here, again, it is India’s proactive child adoption laws that are blocking his path. Yamada’s wife has divorced him and adoption by a single parent is much harder than by a couple. Yamada’s 70-year-old mother, who is looking after the child, is no advantage, either. Indian adoption experts believe that Indians should have precedence over foreigners in the adoption queue but that an adoptive couple’s age, compatibility and emotional stability are more important than financial security. They would rather give a child to a local bus conductor than to a rich but divorced Japanese. They have a point.
The only irony is that vocal, argumentative and liberal opinion about such matters is voiced in a country with amongst the highest number of children in distress.
India - Real Estate Blues
Is real estate the answer to India’s infrastructure problems? So it would seem, judging by some recent examples. The Delhi Metro in 2006-07 got more revenue from real estate than from its transport operations (Rs 252 crore, against Rs 223 crore). The previous year, the metro had raised even more (Rs 296 crore) from real estate selling and leasing. The Hyderabad metro, which is to be built by private concessionaires at zero cost to the state government, will get a couple of million square feet of space to use commercially. The Delhi airport project too will see a substantial part of its project cost financed by selling or leasing land that has been handed over to the project, for housing hotels, offices and airport-related companies.
The risks inherent in this are obvious, especially when real estate deals do not always have the full value paid by cheque. Or, as happened with the Bangalore-Mysore highway, which was given out to a private company, critics created a controversy by alleging that too much land had been handed over along the length of the highway, together with the rights to develop the real estate. Or, land prices crash and so the assumptions made at bidding time no longer hold true.
Still, the trend is catching on. The Delhi Transport Corporation hopes to dig itself out of its financial hole by re-developing its bus depots into multi-purpose centres — using the real estate for hotels, shopping malls and the like. The 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi are being part-financed by taking the Yamuna’s flood plain and selling apartments built on it (to house athletes during the games) to subsequent owners. Some of the more important special economic zones that are planned in the vicinity of the big towns and cities are more in the way of real estate developments than the term SEZ would lead you to believe — but that seems to be the price to pay for getting functioning IT parks and industrial estates.
Indeed, the primary attraction of many industrial locations would also appear to be the amount of land made available — Tata Motors’ Singur project in West Bengal, for instance, has been given about 1,000 acres at nominal charge. Why, even the large software companies have taken land at throwaway prices on a scale that would seem far in excess of their business needs. Everyone, it seems, is either a disguised real estate developer or sees the virtue of having land banks — even if they are not in the same line of business as DLF and Unitech.
It is possible to defend this, of course. After all, everyone knows that metros are not viable in most parts of the world, so why not allow them to develop shops and offices above their depots and stations so that they become self-sustaining enterprises? The alternative would be for the government to fork out the capital cost and then recurring running costs as well. In the case of the Hyderabad metro, for instance, the project concessionaires are being allowed to build and lease shops at stations, and offices above the terminal depots; indeed, it is explained that no extra land is being given for this (as has been done for the Delhi metro, though); the project concessionaires have to build above ground, within the existing floor-area ratio.
This then is the flip side to India’s real estate story. Everyone is familiar with the fact that governments and developers have taken land prices so high that it makes it very difficult for ordinary working people to afford for themselves even a small flat. But it is those same high prices for land that help subsidise so many infrastructural projects, and indeed make them possible in the cities.
The risks inherent in this are obvious, especially when real estate deals do not always have the full value paid by cheque. Or, as happened with the Bangalore-Mysore highway, which was given out to a private company, critics created a controversy by alleging that too much land had been handed over along the length of the highway, together with the rights to develop the real estate. Or, land prices crash and so the assumptions made at bidding time no longer hold true.
Still, the trend is catching on. The Delhi Transport Corporation hopes to dig itself out of its financial hole by re-developing its bus depots into multi-purpose centres — using the real estate for hotels, shopping malls and the like. The 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi are being part-financed by taking the Yamuna’s flood plain and selling apartments built on it (to house athletes during the games) to subsequent owners. Some of the more important special economic zones that are planned in the vicinity of the big towns and cities are more in the way of real estate developments than the term SEZ would lead you to believe — but that seems to be the price to pay for getting functioning IT parks and industrial estates.
Indeed, the primary attraction of many industrial locations would also appear to be the amount of land made available — Tata Motors’ Singur project in West Bengal, for instance, has been given about 1,000 acres at nominal charge. Why, even the large software companies have taken land at throwaway prices on a scale that would seem far in excess of their business needs. Everyone, it seems, is either a disguised real estate developer or sees the virtue of having land banks — even if they are not in the same line of business as DLF and Unitech.
It is possible to defend this, of course. After all, everyone knows that metros are not viable in most parts of the world, so why not allow them to develop shops and offices above their depots and stations so that they become self-sustaining enterprises? The alternative would be for the government to fork out the capital cost and then recurring running costs as well. In the case of the Hyderabad metro, for instance, the project concessionaires are being allowed to build and lease shops at stations, and offices above the terminal depots; indeed, it is explained that no extra land is being given for this (as has been done for the Delhi metro, though); the project concessionaires have to build above ground, within the existing floor-area ratio.
This then is the flip side to India’s real estate story. Everyone is familiar with the fact that governments and developers have taken land prices so high that it makes it very difficult for ordinary working people to afford for themselves even a small flat. But it is those same high prices for land that help subsidise so many infrastructural projects, and indeed make them possible in the cities.
India - Mumbaikars spend the least on education
Spend 2.8% of income versus 6.7% for Delhi.
Due to the vastly different size of population (79 million in megacities versus 20 million in boom towns and 8 million in niche cities), the average size of various markets differs widely.
So, while Mumbaikars spend a smaller proportion of their incomes on food, beverages and tobacco (33.2 per cent) than Surat-ites (37.5 per cent), the total market for food, beverages and tobacco products in Mumbai in 2007-08 was Rs 28,590 crore as compared to a much smaller Rs 6,600 crore in Surat.
In education and recreation, similarly, Mumbaikars spent just 2.8 per cent of household expenditure versus 5.4 per cent in Surat — the size of this market, however, was Rs 2,420 crore in Mumbai in 2007-08 versus Rs 940 crore in Surat. Delhi had the largest market in this segment at Rs 4,480 crore.
On an average, niche city households spend around a fourth more than their megacity counterparts on housing, 18 per cent more on education, 23 per cent more on health and 27 per cent more on social spending.As a result, 40 per cent of households in niche cities own a washing machine as compared to 33 per cent in megacities and 22 per cent in boom towns.
More than a quarter of niche city households own a car, marginally higher than that in megacities and much higher than the 15 per cent in boom towns.Interestingly, niche cities fare the worse when it comes to the usage of financial products like credit cards (under five per cent of the population in towns like Amritsar, Ludhiana and Jalandhar have credit cards) and insurance policies (35 per cent for niche cities versus 47 per cent in boom towns).
As in all such cases, what drives consumption is a combination of rising income levels (reported yesterday) and changing consumption patterns across income groups as well as across cities for the same income groups.
While just 4.3 per cent of those with an annual household income of under $3,000 (Rs 1,20,000) own a car in the top 20 cities, this almost doubles as households reach the next group of aspirants (with maximum incomes doubling to Rs 2,40,000) and then again by almost seven times to 55 per cent in the case of the middle classes (where incomes range between Rs 2,40,000 and Rs 12,00,000).
In the case of mobile phones, around 16 per cent of low-income households own such modes of communication and this jumps to 53 per cent in the case of aspirant households and then to 77 per cent in the case of middle-class households. In the case of high-income households (who earn more than Rs 12,00,000 per year), this rises to nearly 90 per cent.
The combination of increasing income levels (more than half the population in niche cities is middle class as compared to 29 per cent in boom towns) and changing consumption patterns mean that the drivers of consumption are quite different across the cities.
Thus, over 70 per cent of car ownership in megacities like Delhi and Mumbai emanates from middle class households, it is just around 50 per cent in the case of the boom towns and almost as high as 80 per cent in niche cities.
In the case of mobile phones, while both aspirant and middle class households account for roughly the same proportion (45 per cent each) of ownership in megacities, the figure is 52 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively, in the case of boom towns.
In the case of air-conditioners, aspirants account for around seven per cent of ownership in megacities while this rises to nearly 30 per cent in the case of boom towns. In DVD players, similarly, the market is evenly divided among aspirant and middle class households (45 per cent each) in megacities; in the case of boom towns, however, aspirants account for around half the market while middle class households account for just around a fourth.
These are the findings of The Next Urban Frontier: Twenty Cities to Watch, an NCAER-Future Capital Research (of the Future Group) jointly written by Rajesh Shukla and Roopa Purushothaman.
Eight megacities like Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata are the largest cities in terms of population and consumer markets, seven boom towns like Surat/Kanpur/Coimbatore represent the next set of large population cities with high expenditure levels; and five niche towns like Faridabad/Ludhiana/Jalandhar have smaller population but spend much more than cities of comparative size.
Due to the vastly different size of population (79 million in megacities versus 20 million in boom towns and 8 million in niche cities), the average size of various markets differs widely.
So, while Mumbaikars spend a smaller proportion of their incomes on food, beverages and tobacco (33.2 per cent) than Surat-ites (37.5 per cent), the total market for food, beverages and tobacco products in Mumbai in 2007-08 was Rs 28,590 crore as compared to a much smaller Rs 6,600 crore in Surat.
In education and recreation, similarly, Mumbaikars spent just 2.8 per cent of household expenditure versus 5.4 per cent in Surat — the size of this market, however, was Rs 2,420 crore in Mumbai in 2007-08 versus Rs 940 crore in Surat. Delhi had the largest market in this segment at Rs 4,480 crore.
On an average, niche city households spend around a fourth more than their megacity counterparts on housing, 18 per cent more on education, 23 per cent more on health and 27 per cent more on social spending.As a result, 40 per cent of households in niche cities own a washing machine as compared to 33 per cent in megacities and 22 per cent in boom towns.
More than a quarter of niche city households own a car, marginally higher than that in megacities and much higher than the 15 per cent in boom towns.Interestingly, niche cities fare the worse when it comes to the usage of financial products like credit cards (under five per cent of the population in towns like Amritsar, Ludhiana and Jalandhar have credit cards) and insurance policies (35 per cent for niche cities versus 47 per cent in boom towns).
As in all such cases, what drives consumption is a combination of rising income levels (reported yesterday) and changing consumption patterns across income groups as well as across cities for the same income groups.
While just 4.3 per cent of those with an annual household income of under $3,000 (Rs 1,20,000) own a car in the top 20 cities, this almost doubles as households reach the next group of aspirants (with maximum incomes doubling to Rs 2,40,000) and then again by almost seven times to 55 per cent in the case of the middle classes (where incomes range between Rs 2,40,000 and Rs 12,00,000).
In the case of mobile phones, around 16 per cent of low-income households own such modes of communication and this jumps to 53 per cent in the case of aspirant households and then to 77 per cent in the case of middle-class households. In the case of high-income households (who earn more than Rs 12,00,000 per year), this rises to nearly 90 per cent.
The combination of increasing income levels (more than half the population in niche cities is middle class as compared to 29 per cent in boom towns) and changing consumption patterns mean that the drivers of consumption are quite different across the cities.
Thus, over 70 per cent of car ownership in megacities like Delhi and Mumbai emanates from middle class households, it is just around 50 per cent in the case of the boom towns and almost as high as 80 per cent in niche cities.
In the case of mobile phones, while both aspirant and middle class households account for roughly the same proportion (45 per cent each) of ownership in megacities, the figure is 52 per cent and 33 per cent, respectively, in the case of boom towns.
In the case of air-conditioners, aspirants account for around seven per cent of ownership in megacities while this rises to nearly 30 per cent in the case of boom towns. In DVD players, similarly, the market is evenly divided among aspirant and middle class households (45 per cent each) in megacities; in the case of boom towns, however, aspirants account for around half the market while middle class households account for just around a fourth.
These are the findings of The Next Urban Frontier: Twenty Cities to Watch, an NCAER-Future Capital Research (of the Future Group) jointly written by Rajesh Shukla and Roopa Purushothaman.
Eight megacities like Delhi/Mumbai/Kolkata are the largest cities in terms of population and consumer markets, seven boom towns like Surat/Kanpur/Coimbatore represent the next set of large population cities with high expenditure levels; and five niche towns like Faridabad/Ludhiana/Jalandhar have smaller population but spend much more than cities of comparative size.
Sports - The Mittal Football Club
Amit Bhatia, vice-chairman of soccer’s Queens Park Rangers (QPR), says the team’s new billionaire owners plan to lift the second-tier club to the level of west London rival Chelsea with sound business practices, not buckets of cash.
“Throwing money is not the right way to do it,” said Bhatia, 28. “Will we spend enough money to make sure we are competitive because it’s a sport where money needs to be spent? Of course and that’s what we are committed to doing.”
Bhatia, the son-in-law of billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, oversees his family’s investment in QPR from his office in London’s Mayfair, where he runs his private equity and hedge fund businesses, Swordfish Investments and Swordfish Capital Management LLP.
QPR starts its first full season tomorrow under new owners Mittal, chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker; Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive officer of the commercial arm of Formula One; and Flavio Briatore, managing director of the Renault F-1 team. The club finished 14th in the 24-team Championship league last season, yet it was 9-1 second- favorite with UK bookmaker Ladbrokes to finish first and win promotion to the Premier League. QPR hosts Barnsley tomorrow.
The new owners have focused in the offseason on adding players with potential rather than proven stars. Their acquisitions included 19-year-old Spanish youth international Dani Parejo on a season-long loan from Real Madrid and Argentine-born Emmanuel Jorge Ledesma, 20, on loan from Genoa.
They hired a coach with experience getting a team promoted to the Premier League: Iain Dowie, who led London’s Crystal Palace to the top division in 2004.
No Chelsea: It’s a different strategy than the one followed by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who made the Blues a European powerhouse 3.5 miles away by spending more than $1 billion on players since buying the club in July 2003.
Ecclestone and Briatore bought QPR in September for £14 million, including 13 million pounds of debt. Mittal, their friend, bought a 20 per cent stake three months later.
Mittal is Britain’s richest man, according to the Sunday Times; he and his family have a fortune of £27.7 billion, the paper said in April. The paper has reported that the three owners together are worth about £30 billion.
Reaching the Premier League would provide an immediate return. It’s soccer’s richest circuit, with revenue topping £1.5 billion. Teams are guaranteed £30 million a year each in television money, according to accountant Deloitte & Touche LLP.
Record Sponsorship: The new owners already have revenue gushing in at an unprecedented rate for the second echelon. Bahrain-based Gulf Air agreed to a three-year jersey sponsorship deal, which the Sunday Times says is worth £7 million — more than four times the previous record for a second-tier club of £500,000 a year. Lotto Sport Italia SpA signed a £20 million, five-year contract to provide the team’s uniform.
The profile and wealth of Mittal, Briatore and Ecclestone have driven the new sponsorship agreements, says Gareth Moore, international sales director for Cologne, Germany-based sports marketing consultant Sport+Markt AG.
“The aura that comes with them is going to have significant interest for investors,” he said.
Images of Bhatia’s 2004 wedding to Mittal’s daughter Vanisha — the ceremony cost $55 million, according to the BBC — were beamed around the world. Briatore, 58, is married to 28- year-old model Elisabetta Gregoraci and has dated models Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, with whom he has a child. Briatore says his friendship with Real Madrid President Ramon Calderon helped the club land Parejo.
In Administration: The changes may mean the end of a 13-year absence from the top league. In 1993, QPR was the highest ranked of six London clubs then in the Premier League, and was relegated in 1996. By 2001, it skidded to the third tier and was under administration, a form of protection from creditors.
“Rangers looked like going out of business before the money men came in,” says Michael Lynagh, a 56-year-old fan who’s lived his whole life in the White City housing project next to the club’s Loftus Road stadium. “I think every QPR supporter is overjoyed with it.”
As painters apply the club’s royal blue and white colours to the 104-year-old stadium, fans’ expectations are high. Season- ticket sales are up 40 per cent even after a 30 per cent rise in prices. The most expensive cost £699; the cheapest £450.
Lynagh, an unemployed electrician, still found the money to pay for his seat.
“I’d like to see them put us in the Premier League,’’ he says, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the Springbok, a pub festooned in Rangers memorabilia about 50 yards from the stadium. “I’m born and bred here, and I’ve been coming since I was a kid when I used to sneak in.”
Bhatia said his family sees QPR as a value investment.
“If we thought it was a second-tier club we would never have been involved in it,” Bhatia says, rolling up the sleeves of his starched white Oxford shirt. “One day QPR is going to be a romantic story. That romantic story just happens to begin with the club where it is today.”
“Throwing money is not the right way to do it,” said Bhatia, 28. “Will we spend enough money to make sure we are competitive because it’s a sport where money needs to be spent? Of course and that’s what we are committed to doing.”
Bhatia, the son-in-law of billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, oversees his family’s investment in QPR from his office in London’s Mayfair, where he runs his private equity and hedge fund businesses, Swordfish Investments and Swordfish Capital Management LLP.
QPR starts its first full season tomorrow under new owners Mittal, chairman of ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker; Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive officer of the commercial arm of Formula One; and Flavio Briatore, managing director of the Renault F-1 team. The club finished 14th in the 24-team Championship league last season, yet it was 9-1 second- favorite with UK bookmaker Ladbrokes to finish first and win promotion to the Premier League. QPR hosts Barnsley tomorrow.
The new owners have focused in the offseason on adding players with potential rather than proven stars. Their acquisitions included 19-year-old Spanish youth international Dani Parejo on a season-long loan from Real Madrid and Argentine-born Emmanuel Jorge Ledesma, 20, on loan from Genoa.
They hired a coach with experience getting a team promoted to the Premier League: Iain Dowie, who led London’s Crystal Palace to the top division in 2004.
No Chelsea: It’s a different strategy than the one followed by Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who made the Blues a European powerhouse 3.5 miles away by spending more than $1 billion on players since buying the club in July 2003.
Ecclestone and Briatore bought QPR in September for £14 million, including 13 million pounds of debt. Mittal, their friend, bought a 20 per cent stake three months later.
Mittal is Britain’s richest man, according to the Sunday Times; he and his family have a fortune of £27.7 billion, the paper said in April. The paper has reported that the three owners together are worth about £30 billion.
Reaching the Premier League would provide an immediate return. It’s soccer’s richest circuit, with revenue topping £1.5 billion. Teams are guaranteed £30 million a year each in television money, according to accountant Deloitte & Touche LLP.
Record Sponsorship: The new owners already have revenue gushing in at an unprecedented rate for the second echelon. Bahrain-based Gulf Air agreed to a three-year jersey sponsorship deal, which the Sunday Times says is worth £7 million — more than four times the previous record for a second-tier club of £500,000 a year. Lotto Sport Italia SpA signed a £20 million, five-year contract to provide the team’s uniform.
The profile and wealth of Mittal, Briatore and Ecclestone have driven the new sponsorship agreements, says Gareth Moore, international sales director for Cologne, Germany-based sports marketing consultant Sport+Markt AG.
“The aura that comes with them is going to have significant interest for investors,” he said.
Images of Bhatia’s 2004 wedding to Mittal’s daughter Vanisha — the ceremony cost $55 million, according to the BBC — were beamed around the world. Briatore, 58, is married to 28- year-old model Elisabetta Gregoraci and has dated models Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, with whom he has a child. Briatore says his friendship with Real Madrid President Ramon Calderon helped the club land Parejo.
In Administration: The changes may mean the end of a 13-year absence from the top league. In 1993, QPR was the highest ranked of six London clubs then in the Premier League, and was relegated in 1996. By 2001, it skidded to the third tier and was under administration, a form of protection from creditors.
“Rangers looked like going out of business before the money men came in,” says Michael Lynagh, a 56-year-old fan who’s lived his whole life in the White City housing project next to the club’s Loftus Road stadium. “I think every QPR supporter is overjoyed with it.”
As painters apply the club’s royal blue and white colours to the 104-year-old stadium, fans’ expectations are high. Season- ticket sales are up 40 per cent even after a 30 per cent rise in prices. The most expensive cost £699; the cheapest £450.
Lynagh, an unemployed electrician, still found the money to pay for his seat.
“I’d like to see them put us in the Premier League,’’ he says, smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the Springbok, a pub festooned in Rangers memorabilia about 50 yards from the stadium. “I’m born and bred here, and I’ve been coming since I was a kid when I used to sneak in.”
Bhatia said his family sees QPR as a value investment.
“If we thought it was a second-tier club we would never have been involved in it,” Bhatia says, rolling up the sleeves of his starched white Oxford shirt. “One day QPR is going to be a romantic story. That romantic story just happens to begin with the club where it is today.”
India - Consumers postpone upgrades
Monetary tightening by the Reserve Bank of India to control the sharp rise in prices has checked the march of Indian consumers up the consumer electronics value chain.
Several dealers as well as manufacturers told Business Standard that there is a sharp fall in “repeat” customers that upgrade their buying choices by as much 40 to 50 per cent, it is learnt.
“Given the economic situation right now, it is natural that consumers have deferred their purchase or upgrade time,” said Godrej & Boyce Chief Operating Officer (appliances division) George Menezes.Last year the market for premium air-conditioners recorded a growth rate of nearly 60 per cent. This year, growth has dropped to around 27 per cent. For high-end frost-free refrigerators growth has slowed from 30 to 10 per cent over the past two years.
Premium consumer durables typically accounted for 25 to 30 per cent of sales last year; this year, the proportion has shrunk to 15 to 20 per cent.However, flat panel display(FPD) televisions, being an emerging category in India, still haven’t seen a significant slowdown.
“Many people have deferred their decision to upgrade to premium products,” confirmed Samsung India Managing Director Ravinder Zutshi, adding: “The sentiment to upgrade exists but the current economic conditions have led to a delay in purchases.”“Many second-time buyers who wish to upgrade come and inquire about the discount or finance schemes available but since neither option is available they choose not to buy,” said a Delhi-based dealer, unwilling to be identified, adding: “The sale of high-end products has suffered the most in this situation.”
Over the past few years, customers in the Rs 32,000-crore consumer durables market had been upgrading at a fast clip. In televisions, the market had moved from curved screens to flat screens and there were signals that it would now move to LCDs. Customers also rapidly migrated to high-end fridges, washing machines, microwave ovens and air-conditioners.But the speed of this upgrading has now decelerated. According to sector expert Harish Bijoor Consults Inc CEO Harish Bijoor, the inflation spiral and the lack of easy availability of consumer finance have created a definite “postponement of purchase syndrome” in the durables market.
Not only have interest rates gone up sharply in the last few months, several consumer finance companies have stopped lending for purchase of consumer durables. With GE Money, ICICI Bank and Citibank now out of the segment, only Bajaj and Shriram are left in the field, apart from the smaller in-house lending from dealers.Naturally, consumer durable makers are worried. “Fewer financing options will have a definite bearing on sales,” said LG Electronics India Director (marketing and sales) V Ramachandran.
“Manufacturers will definitely have to re-look their pricing if they want sales to pick up, otherwise they will have a big inventory pile-up to deal with. They will then also need to look at newer ways of liquidating inventories,” added Bijoor.Even as the industry gears up for the upcoming festival season, most companies are wary of what lies ahead. “The impact on the bottom line is evident but the top line is still not under stress. But we are concerned about the uncertainty that lies ahead,” said Ramachandran.
Several dealers as well as manufacturers told Business Standard that there is a sharp fall in “repeat” customers that upgrade their buying choices by as much 40 to 50 per cent, it is learnt.
“Given the economic situation right now, it is natural that consumers have deferred their purchase or upgrade time,” said Godrej & Boyce Chief Operating Officer (appliances division) George Menezes.Last year the market for premium air-conditioners recorded a growth rate of nearly 60 per cent. This year, growth has dropped to around 27 per cent. For high-end frost-free refrigerators growth has slowed from 30 to 10 per cent over the past two years.
Premium consumer durables typically accounted for 25 to 30 per cent of sales last year; this year, the proportion has shrunk to 15 to 20 per cent.However, flat panel display(FPD) televisions, being an emerging category in India, still haven’t seen a significant slowdown.
“Many people have deferred their decision to upgrade to premium products,” confirmed Samsung India Managing Director Ravinder Zutshi, adding: “The sentiment to upgrade exists but the current economic conditions have led to a delay in purchases.”“Many second-time buyers who wish to upgrade come and inquire about the discount or finance schemes available but since neither option is available they choose not to buy,” said a Delhi-based dealer, unwilling to be identified, adding: “The sale of high-end products has suffered the most in this situation.”
Over the past few years, customers in the Rs 32,000-crore consumer durables market had been upgrading at a fast clip. In televisions, the market had moved from curved screens to flat screens and there were signals that it would now move to LCDs. Customers also rapidly migrated to high-end fridges, washing machines, microwave ovens and air-conditioners.But the speed of this upgrading has now decelerated. According to sector expert Harish Bijoor Consults Inc CEO Harish Bijoor, the inflation spiral and the lack of easy availability of consumer finance have created a definite “postponement of purchase syndrome” in the durables market.
Not only have interest rates gone up sharply in the last few months, several consumer finance companies have stopped lending for purchase of consumer durables. With GE Money, ICICI Bank and Citibank now out of the segment, only Bajaj and Shriram are left in the field, apart from the smaller in-house lending from dealers.Naturally, consumer durable makers are worried. “Fewer financing options will have a definite bearing on sales,” said LG Electronics India Director (marketing and sales) V Ramachandran.
“Manufacturers will definitely have to re-look their pricing if they want sales to pick up, otherwise they will have a big inventory pile-up to deal with. They will then also need to look at newer ways of liquidating inventories,” added Bijoor.Even as the industry gears up for the upcoming festival season, most companies are wary of what lies ahead. “The impact on the bottom line is evident but the top line is still not under stress. But we are concerned about the uncertainty that lies ahead,” said Ramachandran.
India - Rangarajan resigns from EAC,replaced by tendulkar
C Rangarajan, 76, chairman, of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Economic Advisory Council (EAC), has resigned from the post.
He is expected to get a Parliamentary berth and may perhaps be elevated to the Union Cabinet with responsibility for an economic portfolio.
Economist Suresh Tendulkar, who is currently a member of the Council, is taking over as the new chairman. When contacted by Business Standard, Tendulkar confirmed that his elevation.
Tendulkar, a Ph. D in economics from Harvard University, is a part time member of the EAC since January 2005. He is also the part time chairman of the National Commission on Statistics from July, 2006. He is also on the central board of directors of the Reserve Bank of India from June 2006.
Rangarajan, an illustrious economist, who has also served as Andhra Pradesh governor and chairman of the Twelth Finance Commission, is believed to be headed for the Rajya Sabha, which saw a vacancy after the death of veteran Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande earlier this May.
Although there is no rule against the elevation of a nominated member to the Cabinet, Parlimentary experts say by convention they are not made ministers. In the past, only two nominated members had been so elevated. One of them was Maragatham Chandrasekhar in the 1970's and the other was Nurul Hassan in the 1960's. However, following an uproar both were made to resign and were reinducted into the council of ministers after they became elected members of the Rajya Sabha.
Rangarajan also served as Reserve Bank of India Governor between 1992 and 1997. He was instrumental in enhancing the bank’s autonomy and helped put in place a monetary policy regime to boost growth.
The EAC is preparing its annual review of the Indian economy for 2008-09, which is likely to be released here this Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Rangarajan had said the Indian economy is expected to grow 7.5 to 8.0 per cent in 2008-09, slower than the RBI’s estimate, while inflation would cool by the end of the financial year.
In its 2007-08 review of the economy, the Council had cautioned about several perceptible risks for the economy in 2008-09 and had predicted that there would be continued inflationary pressure.
He is expected to get a Parliamentary berth and may perhaps be elevated to the Union Cabinet with responsibility for an economic portfolio.
Economist Suresh Tendulkar, who is currently a member of the Council, is taking over as the new chairman. When contacted by Business Standard, Tendulkar confirmed that his elevation.
Tendulkar, a Ph. D in economics from Harvard University, is a part time member of the EAC since January 2005. He is also the part time chairman of the National Commission on Statistics from July, 2006. He is also on the central board of directors of the Reserve Bank of India from June 2006.
Rangarajan, an illustrious economist, who has also served as Andhra Pradesh governor and chairman of the Twelth Finance Commission, is believed to be headed for the Rajya Sabha, which saw a vacancy after the death of veteran Gandhian Nirmala Deshpande earlier this May.
Although there is no rule against the elevation of a nominated member to the Cabinet, Parlimentary experts say by convention they are not made ministers. In the past, only two nominated members had been so elevated. One of them was Maragatham Chandrasekhar in the 1970's and the other was Nurul Hassan in the 1960's. However, following an uproar both were made to resign and were reinducted into the council of ministers after they became elected members of the Rajya Sabha.
Rangarajan also served as Reserve Bank of India Governor between 1992 and 1997. He was instrumental in enhancing the bank’s autonomy and helped put in place a monetary policy regime to boost growth.
The EAC is preparing its annual review of the Indian economy for 2008-09, which is likely to be released here this Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Rangarajan had said the Indian economy is expected to grow 7.5 to 8.0 per cent in 2008-09, slower than the RBI’s estimate, while inflation would cool by the end of the financial year.
In its 2007-08 review of the economy, the Council had cautioned about several perceptible risks for the economy in 2008-09 and had predicted that there would be continued inflationary pressure.
Sport - Race for Gold
The gold rush at the Beijing Olympics has begun. “The most important thing in the Olympics is not to win but to take part,” its founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin said. However, for the next 17 days, the media will be tabulating the number of gold medals won by each country. And MNCs throughout the world will be identifying individual champions who can endorse their products. “You don’t win silver, you lose gold,” a Nike billboard said at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Now some 12 years later, China sees this as a golden opportunity to cash in on the advantage of competing at home to overtake the US as the country to win the maximum number of gold medals at the Beijing Olympics.
Forgotten in the race for medals is the fact that the Olympics is also about sportsmanship, as envisioned by Coubertin. When Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics, Hitler wanted to use the event to promote the myth of Aryan superiority over other races. However, the Afro-American Jesse Owens punctured that myth by winning four gold medals in the 100- and 200-metre sprints, the 4x100-m relay and the long jump, a feat equalled only 48 years later by Carl Lewis. Owens was on the verge of being disqualified in the long jump when he fouled his first two attempts.
It was then that his German rival Luz Long suggested that Owens make a mark several inches before the take-off board and jump from there. When Owens won the gold, the first to congratulate him was the blue-eyed, blond Long, who looked like a model Nazi but wasn’t. As Owens would himself acknowledge, “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy, watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War Two.” Long lost gold but won the respect of one of the greatest Olympic champions
Forgotten in the race for medals is the fact that the Olympics is also about sportsmanship, as envisioned by Coubertin. When Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics, Hitler wanted to use the event to promote the myth of Aryan superiority over other races. However, the Afro-American Jesse Owens punctured that myth by winning four gold medals in the 100- and 200-metre sprints, the 4x100-m relay and the long jump, a feat equalled only 48 years later by Carl Lewis. Owens was on the verge of being disqualified in the long jump when he fouled his first two attempts.
It was then that his German rival Luz Long suggested that Owens make a mark several inches before the take-off board and jump from there. When Owens won the gold, the first to congratulate him was the blue-eyed, blond Long, who looked like a model Nazi but wasn’t. As Owens would himself acknowledge, “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler. You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the 24-carat friendship I felt for Long at that moment. Hitler must have gone crazy, watching us embrace. The sad part of the story is I never saw Long again. He was killed in World War Two.” Long lost gold but won the respect of one of the greatest Olympic champions
Business - 3G in India
Following the guidelines for 3G issued by the department of telecommunications (DoT) on August 1, consumers can expect a new breed of services in the coming months. 3G services will make it faster and easier to access internet, download music or videos, mobile TV among other things. Although two years overdue, the guidelines are a good indicator of how far India has moved towards creating a coherent regulatory environment and the considerable distance still left.
The guidelines spell out how the government will allocate and price 3G spectrum or, more accurately, the radio frequencies required for such communication. Now, a company will have to procure 3G spectrum in an open auction. Unlike the case for 2G — where companies receive fixed amount of spectrum with the licence — 3G spectrum will need to be paid for explicitly. All 2G licensees — whether or not they have started operations — can bid. Prospective new entrants without 2G licences can also bid, provided they have 3G experience and pay an additional 2G entry fee of Rs 1,651 crore(US $400 million) for a nation-wide licence.
The guidelines explicitly separate entry fees for 3G licence from the amount bid in the spectrum auction. While we will return to the indefensibly huge amount proposed for entry fees, the conceptual separation between the two fees meets an important demand from experts for a change in India’s current rules, which include the price for spectrum in the licence fee. This has created several well-known distortions that prevent efficient use of a strategic scarce resource.
This will be the first time the price of spectrum is sought to be explicitly discovered through an auction. While the DoT bureaucrats have failed to say this unambiguously and some future mischief cannot be ruled out, it would be difficult to argue again that the price of spectrum allocated for commercial use can be determined administratively without a market-based process. Especially, since Trai too has recommended auction for all spectrum other than that for 2G operations. Current rules, where acquiring a set number of subscribers automatically entitles a licensed operator to additional spectrum, have drawn much deserved criticism for encouraging inefficiency. Acknowledging explicitly that the price of spectrum should be discovered in the market makes the current practice, which is economically indefensible, untenable. This is a plus.
But, the guidelines are also problematic. For a start, the claim that they promote competition is bogus. In a business where extensive infrastructure, large customer base, better market intelligence, etc., give incumbents massive advantages, it is absurd that new entrants will have to pay a whopping $400 million in addition to the bids for spectrum, expected to be in billions of dollars. New players need 3G experience to apply, not 2G players. This, when most regulators facilitate new entry by imposing additional restrictions on incumbents to prevent market abuse. New comers rarely pay any fees and are seldom regulated at all. To levy a large entry fee is then not to facilitate competition but to thwart it.
Indeed, the practice in most mature regulatory regimes — the European Union, US, Canada and Australia, for instance — is to have no licence (entry) fees at all. A prospective entrant to the market, typically, requires little beyond a virtually free ‘authorization’. It must, however, pay for spectrum at market prices.
The nine companies — largely telecom novices — who are currently trying to sell at a premium the over 100 telecom licences they recently got at bargain prices will surely welcome the ’tax’ on new players. As newspapers confirmed, 3G guidelines have driven up the value of these licences, more so since they now have some spectrum. This will be far more attractive to the new 3G players who will still need a 2G licence even if they win in the spectrum auctions than spending $400 million for licence that is veritably a piece of paper with few rights. So, high entry fees mean that private speculators, not the exchequer, get the money.
Moreover, recent norms for mergers and acquisition of telecom licences made it easier for new players to acquire existing players and difficult for existing ones to merge. So, the new players will need to pay up before they bid for 3G and seek a UASL (Unified Access Licence Seekers) licence when mergers would be almost impossible. So, both cost and regulation are pitted squarely against new players.
The DoT has resurrected the old ghost of subscriber-base linked allocation of spectrum by proposing that for spectrum for CDMA services in 800 MHz band “the seniority for allotment shall be the subscriber base in telecom service area.” It says elsewhere that in case of a tie between two existing players, “preference will be given to the bidder with the larger subscriber base”. The guidelines have no explanation why, when it has been decided to conduct an auction, the final winner in each such a case should simply not be the company that bids the highest. This has dented the credibility of the government’s landmark decision to price spectrum along global best practices.
The provision to disallow companies from lowering their bids in subsequent rounds of auctions and to insist that the highest bids in the first auction will become reserve price for subsequent auctions, is equally questionable and will prevent a genuine correction if speculators play havoc in the early phases. The priority for government should be to discover a fair market price of spectrum and not to artificially raise its pickings. It has a duty to deter speculators in a strategic sector and create conditions conducive for serious players willing to compete fairly.
The bureaucratic flaws in the guidelines notwithstanding, at least some of the existing 2G players seem poised to offer 3G services in the near future. The proposed auction of 3G spectrum will deter — if not prevent — bureaucrats’ current practice of giving away valuable spectrum at arbitrary prices. But, to expect them to embrace time honoured regulatory principles and forgo an opportunity for discretion is perhaps too much to ask.
The guidelines spell out how the government will allocate and price 3G spectrum or, more accurately, the radio frequencies required for such communication. Now, a company will have to procure 3G spectrum in an open auction. Unlike the case for 2G — where companies receive fixed amount of spectrum with the licence — 3G spectrum will need to be paid for explicitly. All 2G licensees — whether or not they have started operations — can bid. Prospective new entrants without 2G licences can also bid, provided they have 3G experience and pay an additional 2G entry fee of Rs 1,651 crore(US $400 million) for a nation-wide licence.
The guidelines explicitly separate entry fees for 3G licence from the amount bid in the spectrum auction. While we will return to the indefensibly huge amount proposed for entry fees, the conceptual separation between the two fees meets an important demand from experts for a change in India’s current rules, which include the price for spectrum in the licence fee. This has created several well-known distortions that prevent efficient use of a strategic scarce resource.
This will be the first time the price of spectrum is sought to be explicitly discovered through an auction. While the DoT bureaucrats have failed to say this unambiguously and some future mischief cannot be ruled out, it would be difficult to argue again that the price of spectrum allocated for commercial use can be determined administratively without a market-based process. Especially, since Trai too has recommended auction for all spectrum other than that for 2G operations. Current rules, where acquiring a set number of subscribers automatically entitles a licensed operator to additional spectrum, have drawn much deserved criticism for encouraging inefficiency. Acknowledging explicitly that the price of spectrum should be discovered in the market makes the current practice, which is economically indefensible, untenable. This is a plus.
But, the guidelines are also problematic. For a start, the claim that they promote competition is bogus. In a business where extensive infrastructure, large customer base, better market intelligence, etc., give incumbents massive advantages, it is absurd that new entrants will have to pay a whopping $400 million in addition to the bids for spectrum, expected to be in billions of dollars. New players need 3G experience to apply, not 2G players. This, when most regulators facilitate new entry by imposing additional restrictions on incumbents to prevent market abuse. New comers rarely pay any fees and are seldom regulated at all. To levy a large entry fee is then not to facilitate competition but to thwart it.
Indeed, the practice in most mature regulatory regimes — the European Union, US, Canada and Australia, for instance — is to have no licence (entry) fees at all. A prospective entrant to the market, typically, requires little beyond a virtually free ‘authorization’. It must, however, pay for spectrum at market prices.
The nine companies — largely telecom novices — who are currently trying to sell at a premium the over 100 telecom licences they recently got at bargain prices will surely welcome the ’tax’ on new players. As newspapers confirmed, 3G guidelines have driven up the value of these licences, more so since they now have some spectrum. This will be far more attractive to the new 3G players who will still need a 2G licence even if they win in the spectrum auctions than spending $400 million for licence that is veritably a piece of paper with few rights. So, high entry fees mean that private speculators, not the exchequer, get the money.
Moreover, recent norms for mergers and acquisition of telecom licences made it easier for new players to acquire existing players and difficult for existing ones to merge. So, the new players will need to pay up before they bid for 3G and seek a UASL (Unified Access Licence Seekers) licence when mergers would be almost impossible. So, both cost and regulation are pitted squarely against new players.
The DoT has resurrected the old ghost of subscriber-base linked allocation of spectrum by proposing that for spectrum for CDMA services in 800 MHz band “the seniority for allotment shall be the subscriber base in telecom service area.” It says elsewhere that in case of a tie between two existing players, “preference will be given to the bidder with the larger subscriber base”. The guidelines have no explanation why, when it has been decided to conduct an auction, the final winner in each such a case should simply not be the company that bids the highest. This has dented the credibility of the government’s landmark decision to price spectrum along global best practices.
The provision to disallow companies from lowering their bids in subsequent rounds of auctions and to insist that the highest bids in the first auction will become reserve price for subsequent auctions, is equally questionable and will prevent a genuine correction if speculators play havoc in the early phases. The priority for government should be to discover a fair market price of spectrum and not to artificially raise its pickings. It has a duty to deter speculators in a strategic sector and create conditions conducive for serious players willing to compete fairly.
The bureaucratic flaws in the guidelines notwithstanding, at least some of the existing 2G players seem poised to offer 3G services in the near future. The proposed auction of 3G spectrum will deter — if not prevent — bureaucrats’ current practice of giving away valuable spectrum at arbitrary prices. But, to expect them to embrace time honoured regulatory principles and forgo an opportunity for discretion is perhaps too much to ask.
Health - Cloning update
Scientists in South Korea have successfully cloned dogs, and a recent attempt has created five pit bulls from Booger, a pet dog's genetic material. The request was from an American woman who lost Booger to cancer and who sought to replicate him with his genetic material. Among animals that have been cloned successfully for commercial purposes are cows that produce higher yield and better quality milk, and racing horses known for their speed.
Scientists are also trying to clone genetically modified pigs that pose the least threat of rejection when their organs are used to replace human ones — in a procedure that is referred to as xeno-transplantation — to save patients' lives when
viable human organs are not available. However, the most useful application of animal cloning technology could be in the recreation of service animals that are trained to acquire special skills, some of which might get imprinted in their genes.
The police and customs officials often rely on the expertise of trained dogs that are capable of sniffing out dope or detecting bombs and so help retrieving them before causing threat to human lives. Even more promising is the life-saving application of animal cloning in recreating animals that have the capability to detect diseases like cancer through their sophisticated sense of smell. Marine, a retriever in Japan, could sniff out the scent that cancer cells give off from a patient's breath or urine samples.
Trained Labradors are known to have alerted patients an impending stroke. And who can deny the invaluable services of the friendly guide dog without whose assistance a visually challenged person might have to lead a very limited life? If these skills could be easily replicated in a cloned animal, the technique's commercial viability would increase manifold, helping to cut down costs that are high right now.
Could the technique of cloning to recreate a loved one move from pets to human beings? It needs to be said here that a clone is not a perfect photocopy of the original, as things like upbringing, environment and perhaps even volition conspire to produce the characteristics of an individual.
However, despite the current ban on efforts to clone human beings for reproductive purposes, the sheer desire to bring into being replicas of loved ones, coupled with advances in animal cloning, might one day make replication of the Booger experiment with human beings inevitable.
Scientists are also trying to clone genetically modified pigs that pose the least threat of rejection when their organs are used to replace human ones — in a procedure that is referred to as xeno-transplantation — to save patients' lives when
viable human organs are not available. However, the most useful application of animal cloning technology could be in the recreation of service animals that are trained to acquire special skills, some of which might get imprinted in their genes.
The police and customs officials often rely on the expertise of trained dogs that are capable of sniffing out dope or detecting bombs and so help retrieving them before causing threat to human lives. Even more promising is the life-saving application of animal cloning in recreating animals that have the capability to detect diseases like cancer through their sophisticated sense of smell. Marine, a retriever in Japan, could sniff out the scent that cancer cells give off from a patient's breath or urine samples.
Trained Labradors are known to have alerted patients an impending stroke. And who can deny the invaluable services of the friendly guide dog without whose assistance a visually challenged person might have to lead a very limited life? If these skills could be easily replicated in a cloned animal, the technique's commercial viability would increase manifold, helping to cut down costs that are high right now.
Could the technique of cloning to recreate a loved one move from pets to human beings? It needs to be said here that a clone is not a perfect photocopy of the original, as things like upbringing, environment and perhaps even volition conspire to produce the characteristics of an individual.
However, despite the current ban on efforts to clone human beings for reproductive purposes, the sheer desire to bring into being replicas of loved ones, coupled with advances in animal cloning, might one day make replication of the Booger experiment with human beings inevitable.
Fun - Inflatable Church
ROME: Catholic nuns and priests in Italy are following their flocks to the beach this summer, establishing an inflatable church and a beach-convent in the sands to lure sunbathers.
The 30-metre long blow-up church - staffed by priests ready to take confession - will debut on Saturday on the Adriatic coast in the Molise region, an organizer said.
"There will be four or five people singing, with music about God," said Chiara Facci with Catholic group Sentinelli del Mattino. Night time activities, which will not include Mass, will run from 10pm to 1am.
The first attempt to inaugurate the inflatable church last month on the holiday island of Sardinia failed after strong winds forced organizers to relocate, she said.
Big cities like Rome and Milan empty in August, when Italians head to the beach for summer holidays, leaving streets empty and many businesses closed. Churches are hardly immune, and also see their congregations thin.
On the Mediterranean coast, nuns from a convent near the southern Italian city of Naples have relocated to beach cabins to join holidaymakers saying the rosary. An adjoining altar was set up under two tents. "The concept of a beach-convent is something that is appreciated by vacationers and the nuns themselves," priest Antonio Rungi, who helped spearheaded the initiative, told Italian news agency ANSA.
The 30-metre long blow-up church - staffed by priests ready to take confession - will debut on Saturday on the Adriatic coast in the Molise region, an organizer said.
"There will be four or five people singing, with music about God," said Chiara Facci with Catholic group Sentinelli del Mattino. Night time activities, which will not include Mass, will run from 10pm to 1am.
The first attempt to inaugurate the inflatable church last month on the holiday island of Sardinia failed after strong winds forced organizers to relocate, she said.
Big cities like Rome and Milan empty in August, when Italians head to the beach for summer holidays, leaving streets empty and many businesses closed. Churches are hardly immune, and also see their congregations thin.
On the Mediterranean coast, nuns from a convent near the southern Italian city of Naples have relocated to beach cabins to join holidaymakers saying the rosary. An adjoining altar was set up under two tents. "The concept of a beach-convent is something that is appreciated by vacationers and the nuns themselves," priest Antonio Rungi, who helped spearheaded the initiative, told Italian news agency ANSA.
Mktg - Advertising for insurance products come of age
In a category where an emotional pitch is often made by the advertiser, here?s a turnaround of sorts. Life insurance, which was hitherto sold through a rather guilt-inducing ?buy me? proposition, is now being pushed differently.
Take for example Contract Advertising?s intrigue-building campaign for Aegon Religare Life Insurance, a new entrant in the life insurance category. Prior to its launch, the agency ran a week-long teaser campaign across the country. The ads featuring actor Irfan Khan warned people against KILB, an abbreviation which was later revealed was short for ?Kum Insurance Lene Ki Bimaari.?
Aegon Religare chose to use underinsurance as the differentiator, almost to the point of calling it a bimaari (disease). Raghu Bhat and Manish Bhatt, executive creative directors at Contract Advertising, said AIDS or cancer kills only the infected person. ?But underinsurance can ruin the entire family.?
Aegon Religare said their research provided an insight into how people usually didn?t remember their exact insured amount or how much they were paying as premium. Rajiv Jamkhedkar, CEO, Aegon Religare Life Insurance, said, ?There is usually a huge gap between the lifestyle that people lead and the lifestyle that their insurance covers.?
The Rs 10 crore campaign will be unveiled across the country over the next six weeks and will include television, radio, internet and outdoor ads.
The call-to-action TVCs and hoardings that were unveiled to the public on Friday urge people to call a toll-free-number to know about the ?right amount? that they should invest for getting a life insurance cover. Aegon will take into consideration the consumer?s current lifestyle, expenses, family size and other factors to determine the amount.
Like Aegon Religare, other insurers are also striving to be different in their brand communication.
Max New York Life and Sahara Life Insurance have also taken a different approach in their brand-building activities. Incidentally, both play on the common theme of fear in their ads, albeit in totally opposite ways.
Euro RSCG created a campaign called ?Sanju? for Max New York Life, wherein it stressed on the fact that problems always arrived unannounced and so one has to be prepared.
Percept/H, on the other hand, doesn?t make any attempt to sell Sahara Life Insurance?s products directly through its ads Aatm Vishvaas ki Nayi Taaqat. Instead, the ad shows a rather meek-looking man challenging Gabbar Singh, the meanest of Bollywood baddies. The agency?s aim was to convey that even an ordinary person could gain extraordinary confidence and fearlessness by taking an insurance cover.
?The message we wanted to convey was that whatever situation you are in life, your self-confidence will see you through,? Anurag Chhabra, VP, Percept/H Lucknow, said. ?Most insurance players target only metros. Our target audience is rural areas, especially the states like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, wherein penetration of top 10 insurance players is less. It is important to realise that insurance is generally sold over the table. Advertising is largely a brand building exercise.?
These new creative approaches summon a refreshing change from the conventional insurance pitches that only spoke about the importance of buying an insurance product, even to the point of making the audience guilty for not having bought one yet. In a category where product differentiators are hard to spot, ad agencies till now have only tweaked emotions to create campaigns for insurance firms.
Take for example Contract Advertising?s intrigue-building campaign for Aegon Religare Life Insurance, a new entrant in the life insurance category. Prior to its launch, the agency ran a week-long teaser campaign across the country. The ads featuring actor Irfan Khan warned people against KILB, an abbreviation which was later revealed was short for ?Kum Insurance Lene Ki Bimaari.?
Aegon Religare chose to use underinsurance as the differentiator, almost to the point of calling it a bimaari (disease). Raghu Bhat and Manish Bhatt, executive creative directors at Contract Advertising, said AIDS or cancer kills only the infected person. ?But underinsurance can ruin the entire family.?
Aegon Religare said their research provided an insight into how people usually didn?t remember their exact insured amount or how much they were paying as premium. Rajiv Jamkhedkar, CEO, Aegon Religare Life Insurance, said, ?There is usually a huge gap between the lifestyle that people lead and the lifestyle that their insurance covers.?
The Rs 10 crore campaign will be unveiled across the country over the next six weeks and will include television, radio, internet and outdoor ads.
The call-to-action TVCs and hoardings that were unveiled to the public on Friday urge people to call a toll-free-number to know about the ?right amount? that they should invest for getting a life insurance cover. Aegon will take into consideration the consumer?s current lifestyle, expenses, family size and other factors to determine the amount.
Like Aegon Religare, other insurers are also striving to be different in their brand communication.
Max New York Life and Sahara Life Insurance have also taken a different approach in their brand-building activities. Incidentally, both play on the common theme of fear in their ads, albeit in totally opposite ways.
Euro RSCG created a campaign called ?Sanju? for Max New York Life, wherein it stressed on the fact that problems always arrived unannounced and so one has to be prepared.
Percept/H, on the other hand, doesn?t make any attempt to sell Sahara Life Insurance?s products directly through its ads Aatm Vishvaas ki Nayi Taaqat. Instead, the ad shows a rather meek-looking man challenging Gabbar Singh, the meanest of Bollywood baddies. The agency?s aim was to convey that even an ordinary person could gain extraordinary confidence and fearlessness by taking an insurance cover.
?The message we wanted to convey was that whatever situation you are in life, your self-confidence will see you through,? Anurag Chhabra, VP, Percept/H Lucknow, said. ?Most insurance players target only metros. Our target audience is rural areas, especially the states like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, wherein penetration of top 10 insurance players is less. It is important to realise that insurance is generally sold over the table. Advertising is largely a brand building exercise.?
These new creative approaches summon a refreshing change from the conventional insurance pitches that only spoke about the importance of buying an insurance product, even to the point of making the audience guilty for not having bought one yet. In a category where product differentiators are hard to spot, ad agencies till now have only tweaked emotions to create campaigns for insurance firms.
Business - Skoda recalls Fabia
NEW DELHI: Czech automaker Skoda has recalled the petrol version of its Fabia hatchback for rectifying a technical glitch that was affecting fuel efficiency and performance of the car.
According to sources, the company has called back the 1200cc and 1400c variants of the Fabia petrol for a "technical upgradation". When contacted, the company confirmed that it had recalled the car, but blamed "inconsistent fuel quality" behind the step.
Due to inconsistent fuel quality in India, Skoda India has done minor change in the software to attain better fuel economy and driving performance, the company said.
Skoda is assembling the Fabia at its Aurangabad factory. Many of the critical components on the car are imported and may not be suitable for local conditions or available fuel quality. According to sources, several customers had experienced problems with the car and some even complained that the brake pedal became hard, while driving at a high speed.
Skoda officials said they would rectify the problem free of cost. "We are not charging anything for this and customers would just need to spend about 20-30 minutes at the dealerships," a company spokesperson said. All manufacturers do constant upgradations of their products so that the customer always enjoys the best quality and service, the company further said.
Fabia, which also has a diesel version, is expected to lead Skoda's charge in India and get volumes for the company. The company had launched the 1200cc version of the car only in May this year to compete with models like Suzuki Swift and Hyundai Getz.
Fuel efficiency is a very important factor in determining the success of cars not only in India, but even in developed markets like the US and Europe, considering high price of crude. Recalls for replacing faulty parts or rectifying technical glitches are not a common phenomenon in India as companies fear negative publicity would impact demand for the model. Globally it is not uncommon to see that companies are making recall announcements.
Last year, Honda India had recalled 2310 units of its luxury sedan Accord sold in 2005 and 2006 for replacement of a faulty relay in the fuel-pump of. This company had done this as part of a global recall. In 2005, Maruti had also recalled about 500 units of its Zen model for coolant leakage. Bajaj Auto had also recalled its scooter Kristal last year for a fuel pump problem.
Skoda has lined up an ambitious strategy for the Indian market. The company not only plans to bring in an all-new small car in the Rs 3-5 lakh range but will also introduce an all-new low-price "successor" to its Octavia sedan that would be priced below Rs 10 lakh. It also plans to bring in 'Greenline' Fabia range, currently sold in major European markets.
According to sources, the company has called back the 1200cc and 1400c variants of the Fabia petrol for a "technical upgradation". When contacted, the company confirmed that it had recalled the car, but blamed "inconsistent fuel quality" behind the step.
Due to inconsistent fuel quality in India, Skoda India has done minor change in the software to attain better fuel economy and driving performance, the company said.
Skoda is assembling the Fabia at its Aurangabad factory. Many of the critical components on the car are imported and may not be suitable for local conditions or available fuel quality. According to sources, several customers had experienced problems with the car and some even complained that the brake pedal became hard, while driving at a high speed.
Skoda officials said they would rectify the problem free of cost. "We are not charging anything for this and customers would just need to spend about 20-30 minutes at the dealerships," a company spokesperson said. All manufacturers do constant upgradations of their products so that the customer always enjoys the best quality and service, the company further said.
Fabia, which also has a diesel version, is expected to lead Skoda's charge in India and get volumes for the company. The company had launched the 1200cc version of the car only in May this year to compete with models like Suzuki Swift and Hyundai Getz.
Fuel efficiency is a very important factor in determining the success of cars not only in India, but even in developed markets like the US and Europe, considering high price of crude. Recalls for replacing faulty parts or rectifying technical glitches are not a common phenomenon in India as companies fear negative publicity would impact demand for the model. Globally it is not uncommon to see that companies are making recall announcements.
Last year, Honda India had recalled 2310 units of its luxury sedan Accord sold in 2005 and 2006 for replacement of a faulty relay in the fuel-pump of. This company had done this as part of a global recall. In 2005, Maruti had also recalled about 500 units of its Zen model for coolant leakage. Bajaj Auto had also recalled its scooter Kristal last year for a fuel pump problem.
Skoda has lined up an ambitious strategy for the Indian market. The company not only plans to bring in an all-new small car in the Rs 3-5 lakh range but will also introduce an all-new low-price "successor" to its Octavia sedan that would be priced below Rs 10 lakh. It also plans to bring in 'Greenline' Fabia range, currently sold in major European markets.
India - Surat Households most prosperous
SURAT: After the bombs were found in Surat last week, here is reason for a beaming smile. Surti households have been declared most prosperous in the country by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and Future Capital Research's Roopa Purushothaman in their latest study.
The average annual household income (AHI) in the diamond city is Rs 4.57 lakh - the highest in the country. It has displaced Chandigarh in a list of 20 cities because of its lower cost of living.
Gujarat, in fact, is the only state with two cities in the top five - Ahmedabad has been ranked fifth, ahead of Mumbai and Delhi. "The ranking is natural, given Gujarat's growth. Surat's employment generation is equal to many fast-growing cities of the world," says Dr YK Alagh, economist and former member of Planning Commission.
The study says Surat's AHI is almost equal to China's per capita income of 2007 and double the national per capita income. Even its GDP growth of 11.5 per cent for the last consecutive years is the fastest in the country. Here is why Surti households have bulging pockets. The city has become the heart of diamond polishing and textile manufacturing globally. It processes eight out of 10 diamonds polished in the world, accounts for 80 per cent of India's Rs 80,000 crore gems and jewellery exports and employs nearly seven lakh people in diamond cutting and polishing. Surat's Rs 45,000-crore textile industry accounts for 20 per cent of India's total textile output and provides employment to eight lakh people. Given the boom, people from across the country have been migrating to it.
The 2001 census showed that Surat had the fastest population growth nationally at 62 per cent. "The study has shown that Gujarat is more prosperous than 90 per cent of the country," says former IIM-A director Bakul Dholakia.
The average annual household income (AHI) in the diamond city is Rs 4.57 lakh - the highest in the country. It has displaced Chandigarh in a list of 20 cities because of its lower cost of living.
Gujarat, in fact, is the only state with two cities in the top five - Ahmedabad has been ranked fifth, ahead of Mumbai and Delhi. "The ranking is natural, given Gujarat's growth. Surat's employment generation is equal to many fast-growing cities of the world," says Dr YK Alagh, economist and former member of Planning Commission.
The study says Surat's AHI is almost equal to China's per capita income of 2007 and double the national per capita income. Even its GDP growth of 11.5 per cent for the last consecutive years is the fastest in the country. Here is why Surti households have bulging pockets. The city has become the heart of diamond polishing and textile manufacturing globally. It processes eight out of 10 diamonds polished in the world, accounts for 80 per cent of India's Rs 80,000 crore gems and jewellery exports and employs nearly seven lakh people in diamond cutting and polishing. Surat's Rs 45,000-crore textile industry accounts for 20 per cent of India's total textile output and provides employment to eight lakh people. Given the boom, people from across the country have been migrating to it.
The 2001 census showed that Surat had the fastest population growth nationally at 62 per cent. "The study has shown that Gujarat is more prosperous than 90 per cent of the country," says former IIM-A director Bakul Dholakia.
India - Free coffee/biscuits for Truck Drivers
KANCHEEPURAM: Bleary-eyed truck drivers on their way to Chennai wake up to piping hot coffee and crunchy biscuits these days.
Worried by the high number of road accidents on the highways leading to the city, the collector of the adjoining district of Kancheepuram has initiated a welfare programme aimed at heavy vehicle drivers.
Transport officials have been instructed to serve drivers undertaking perilous night drives with biscuits and coffee, besides handing out lessons on safe driving.
Truck drivers cruising down NH 4 (Bangalore-Chennai Highway) at daybreak are therefore being stopped at various points and asked to step out, stretch their legs and help themselves to refreshments. "Between 4 am and 5 am, the time when accidents usually happen, we stop the trucks and ask the drivers to wash their faces. We then give them water to drink, biscuits to munch and coffee or tea as they prefer," says T M Sampath Kumar, regional transport officer, Kancheepuram district.
The initiative comes at a time when the accident rate in and around Chennai as well as other urban centres in the state is on the rise. Across Tamil Nadu, the number of road fatalities rose to 12,036 in 2007, up from 11,009, making it one of the most accident-prone states in the country. Chennai, with a much lower vehicular population, currently ranks next to Delhi among all metros in road accidents and fatalities, and trucks are easily the biggest killers.
Worried by the high number of road accidents on the highways leading to the city, the collector of the adjoining district of Kancheepuram has initiated a welfare programme aimed at heavy vehicle drivers.
Transport officials have been instructed to serve drivers undertaking perilous night drives with biscuits and coffee, besides handing out lessons on safe driving.
Truck drivers cruising down NH 4 (Bangalore-Chennai Highway) at daybreak are therefore being stopped at various points and asked to step out, stretch their legs and help themselves to refreshments. "Between 4 am and 5 am, the time when accidents usually happen, we stop the trucks and ask the drivers to wash their faces. We then give them water to drink, biscuits to munch and coffee or tea as they prefer," says T M Sampath Kumar, regional transport officer, Kancheepuram district.
The initiative comes at a time when the accident rate in and around Chennai as well as other urban centres in the state is on the rise. Across Tamil Nadu, the number of road fatalities rose to 12,036 in 2007, up from 11,009, making it one of the most accident-prone states in the country. Chennai, with a much lower vehicular population, currently ranks next to Delhi among all metros in road accidents and fatalities, and trucks are easily the biggest killers.
World - Interpreter of Jihad
What is jihad? From an India-Pakistan perspective, few people can answer this question better than Pakistani-American writer and Mary Richardson professor of history at Tufts University, Ayesha Jalal.
Her latest book, Partisans of Allah: Meanings of Jihad in South Asia (2008), puts this core concept of Islam in perspective for the subcontinental audience.
Jalal began her India tour last week with a talk on the subject at New Delhi’s India International Centre.
This doubled up as her first book launch ever despite authoring as many as seven books. “Historians don’t need book launches,” she says, “politicians do.”
Diminutive and small-framed, but with good-looking angular features typical of Lahore women, Jalal hardly looks like one who can ruffle feathers. But you have to know who she is. Her ancestry is legendary: she is the grandniece of well-known Urdu writer Sadaat Hasan Manto. Her qualifications are thoroughbred: a BA from Wellesley; and PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge.
Jalal’s credentials earned her a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship worth $265,000. Many people found it strange that a Pakistani was teaching Indian history on a global platform.
History may be cast in stone, but historians are all about posturing. Jalal enraged her countrymen when she stated that Mohammed Ali Jinnah had “feet of clay” and that he never actually wanted a separate Muslim state.
Then another torrid saga played out. Jalal shocked the US academia when she sued Columbia University alleging bias after her tenure as professor there was discontinued. She alleged that a lobby of faculty members from India objected to a Pakistani woman teaching Indian history and had “blocked her tenure application”.
Jalal opposed Columbia’s decision to accept a windfall grant from the Hinduja group to set up an institute for India studies. A federal judge in New York’s Southern District dismissed her case because the evidence of bias was, though “suggestive”, rather “thin”.
As a historian, Jalal is a rarity out of Pakistan. In the West, most subcontinental historians focus on India instead and along with Gardiner professor of history at Harvard, Sugata Bose, Jalal forms a formidable duo whose works have thrown bright flashes of light on the cultures of India and Pakistan. Now, we have a historical chance to know Jalal’s partisans of Allah, with her as their chief interpreter.
“Muslims have distorted the normative concept of jihad. The concept of jihad has changed throughout history, from being a spiritual exercise to a temporal one,” she tells the HT during a brief interview. As an original concept, it was meant to be a philosophical jadd-o-jehed or literally a struggle to live an ethical life.
“You are never born a Muslim. You struggle to become one,” she says.
As an armed struggle, jihad could have been called only by the state, upon the advice of the clergy and it could only be fought when Muslims were prevented from practising their religion. “And even then,” Jalal says, “it was meant to be taken up only if there was a reasonable degree of success assured.”
Jalal enters jihad from South Asia rather than from the Arab world. And how. The battle of Balakot, she says, was one prominent example. Syed Ahmad Shaheed of Rai Bareilly in UP fought the Sikhs, who — as allies of the British — had taken the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Jalal uses instances from undivided India to show how the concept of jihad changed.
Now, “non-state actors” had entered the stage of jihad. It began to be fought for territorial purposes and would soon turn into a political weapon to wage war against perceived enemies of Islam. Finally, we would have self-styled jihadis. (Bin Laden?)
But then the two prominent figures who also took it up were Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a member of the Congress, and Maulana Mawdudi, the founder of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami. Even Mawdudi, considered a fountainhead of mujahideen-like organisations of today, maintained that jihad was duty of the state, and not any private individual or organisation. (al Qaida?)
Today’s jihad may be about the mujahideen and their bomb blasts, but this may change too. “As a historian, I cannot predict how,” she says and “it really depends on what actions we take today, which will determine the future.” Jihad, she argues, is an arrow that may well have missed its mark.
Her latest book, Partisans of Allah: Meanings of Jihad in South Asia (2008), puts this core concept of Islam in perspective for the subcontinental audience.
Jalal began her India tour last week with a talk on the subject at New Delhi’s India International Centre.
This doubled up as her first book launch ever despite authoring as many as seven books. “Historians don’t need book launches,” she says, “politicians do.”
Diminutive and small-framed, but with good-looking angular features typical of Lahore women, Jalal hardly looks like one who can ruffle feathers. But you have to know who she is. Her ancestry is legendary: she is the grandniece of well-known Urdu writer Sadaat Hasan Manto. Her qualifications are thoroughbred: a BA from Wellesley; and PhD from Trinity College, Cambridge.
Jalal’s credentials earned her a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship worth $265,000. Many people found it strange that a Pakistani was teaching Indian history on a global platform.
History may be cast in stone, but historians are all about posturing. Jalal enraged her countrymen when she stated that Mohammed Ali Jinnah had “feet of clay” and that he never actually wanted a separate Muslim state.
Then another torrid saga played out. Jalal shocked the US academia when she sued Columbia University alleging bias after her tenure as professor there was discontinued. She alleged that a lobby of faculty members from India objected to a Pakistani woman teaching Indian history and had “blocked her tenure application”.
Jalal opposed Columbia’s decision to accept a windfall grant from the Hinduja group to set up an institute for India studies. A federal judge in New York’s Southern District dismissed her case because the evidence of bias was, though “suggestive”, rather “thin”.
As a historian, Jalal is a rarity out of Pakistan. In the West, most subcontinental historians focus on India instead and along with Gardiner professor of history at Harvard, Sugata Bose, Jalal forms a formidable duo whose works have thrown bright flashes of light on the cultures of India and Pakistan. Now, we have a historical chance to know Jalal’s partisans of Allah, with her as their chief interpreter.
“Muslims have distorted the normative concept of jihad. The concept of jihad has changed throughout history, from being a spiritual exercise to a temporal one,” she tells the HT during a brief interview. As an original concept, it was meant to be a philosophical jadd-o-jehed or literally a struggle to live an ethical life.
“You are never born a Muslim. You struggle to become one,” she says.
As an armed struggle, jihad could have been called only by the state, upon the advice of the clergy and it could only be fought when Muslims were prevented from practising their religion. “And even then,” Jalal says, “it was meant to be taken up only if there was a reasonable degree of success assured.”
Jalal enters jihad from South Asia rather than from the Arab world. And how. The battle of Balakot, she says, was one prominent example. Syed Ahmad Shaheed of Rai Bareilly in UP fought the Sikhs, who — as allies of the British — had taken the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Jalal uses instances from undivided India to show how the concept of jihad changed.
Now, “non-state actors” had entered the stage of jihad. It began to be fought for territorial purposes and would soon turn into a political weapon to wage war against perceived enemies of Islam. Finally, we would have self-styled jihadis. (Bin Laden?)
But then the two prominent figures who also took it up were Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a member of the Congress, and Maulana Mawdudi, the founder of Pakistan's Jamaat-e-Islami. Even Mawdudi, considered a fountainhead of mujahideen-like organisations of today, maintained that jihad was duty of the state, and not any private individual or organisation. (al Qaida?)
Today’s jihad may be about the mujahideen and their bomb blasts, but this may change too. “As a historian, I cannot predict how,” she says and “it really depends on what actions we take today, which will determine the future.” Jihad, she argues, is an arrow that may well have missed its mark.
Business - Airtel,Vodafone have 3G edge over other players
Vodafone’s expertise in 3G and Bharti Airtel’s partnership with SingTel may them take lead over other operators. While Bharti Airtel will roll out its 3G services in Sri Lanka by year-end, thus having a six-month lead to test its services, Vodafone will look to bring its global 3G expertise to India.
While Bharti Airtel has already launched 3G in Seychelles, Jersey and Geurnsey, Vodafone is credited with rolling out 3G services in global markets like the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Spain and others. On the other hand SingTel, which owns a little over 30% in Bharti Airtel, is a major player in the 3G space as it has already rolled out such networks in several markets across Asia.
Bharti Airtel will also have a six-month advantage of testing its 3G services in the region as it rolls out services in Sri Lanka by December, 2008. Bharti Airtel plans to rollout 3G in India by mid-2009 only. Both Vodafone and Airtel may import their successful products and applications to India.
“We just gave the request for proposal to Ericsson and Nokia for 3G networks in Sri Lanka,” Bharti Airtel president for mobility Sanjay Kapoor told ET. “Most of the content will be Sri Lanka specific, but we can also share some content from our operations here. Over the last year, a bulk of the deals we have entered into with content developers have been done keeping 3G in mind. So most of this can be extended to our 3G platform easily,” Mr Kapoor added.
In contrast, Vodafone marketing head Harit Nagpal said that Vodafone has already rolled out 3G services in Egypt, parts of Africa and Turkey—markets similar to India. “With a global subscriber base of 280 million, Vodafone’s 3G expertise is unmatched. We have the capability of handling migration of customers from 2G to 3G in markets like Egypt and Turkey. We will also see such migration in India. Moreover a strong leadership presence in metro cities, will give us an advantage over others,” he said.
Interestingly, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel are competitors in India, but this has not stopped the companies from extending their alliance to markets abroad. Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, subsidiaries of Bharti Enterprises, last year entered into an agreement with Vodafone to jointly offer telecom services in Jersey and Guernsey (islands in Europe, close to UK). (Bharti was granted licenses to operate 2G and 3G mobile services in Jersey and Guernsey in 2006.)
While the two rivals have partnered globally, they may not replicate the same model in India. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will begin selling the new generation 3G-enabled iPhone from August 22. This will also give them an additional edge over other operators.
Bharti and Vodafone, which account for a significant number of the high ARPU (average revenue per user) subscribers in India, will have a further edge as a large segment of their high end users already have 3G compatible handsets.
Interestingly, the move to partner Airtel and Vodafone marks a major shift in Apple’s global strategy of ‘one country-one operator’. With India emerging as the fastest-growing cellular market, Apple wanted to maximize its exposure here as Airtel and Vodafone have a combined subscriber base of over 120 million.
While Bharti Airtel has already launched 3G in Seychelles, Jersey and Geurnsey, Vodafone is credited with rolling out 3G services in global markets like the UK, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, Spain and others. On the other hand SingTel, which owns a little over 30% in Bharti Airtel, is a major player in the 3G space as it has already rolled out such networks in several markets across Asia.
Bharti Airtel will also have a six-month advantage of testing its 3G services in the region as it rolls out services in Sri Lanka by December, 2008. Bharti Airtel plans to rollout 3G in India by mid-2009 only. Both Vodafone and Airtel may import their successful products and applications to India.
“We just gave the request for proposal to Ericsson and Nokia for 3G networks in Sri Lanka,” Bharti Airtel president for mobility Sanjay Kapoor told ET. “Most of the content will be Sri Lanka specific, but we can also share some content from our operations here. Over the last year, a bulk of the deals we have entered into with content developers have been done keeping 3G in mind. So most of this can be extended to our 3G platform easily,” Mr Kapoor added.
In contrast, Vodafone marketing head Harit Nagpal said that Vodafone has already rolled out 3G services in Egypt, parts of Africa and Turkey—markets similar to India. “With a global subscriber base of 280 million, Vodafone’s 3G expertise is unmatched. We have the capability of handling migration of customers from 2G to 3G in markets like Egypt and Turkey. We will also see such migration in India. Moreover a strong leadership presence in metro cities, will give us an advantage over others,” he said.
Interestingly, Vodafone and Bharti Airtel are competitors in India, but this has not stopped the companies from extending their alliance to markets abroad. Jersey Airtel and Guernsey Airtel, subsidiaries of Bharti Enterprises, last year entered into an agreement with Vodafone to jointly offer telecom services in Jersey and Guernsey (islands in Europe, close to UK). (Bharti was granted licenses to operate 2G and 3G mobile services in Jersey and Guernsey in 2006.)
While the two rivals have partnered globally, they may not replicate the same model in India. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will begin selling the new generation 3G-enabled iPhone from August 22. This will also give them an additional edge over other operators.
Bharti and Vodafone, which account for a significant number of the high ARPU (average revenue per user) subscribers in India, will have a further edge as a large segment of their high end users already have 3G compatible handsets.
Interestingly, the move to partner Airtel and Vodafone marks a major shift in Apple’s global strategy of ‘one country-one operator’. With India emerging as the fastest-growing cellular market, Apple wanted to maximize its exposure here as Airtel and Vodafone have a combined subscriber base of over 120 million.
India - Buying sim cards may need 2 guarantors
NEW DELHI: If the home ministry has its way, a person wanting to buy a SIM card will have to provide the names of two existing mobile phone customers as guarantors - on the lines of opening a bank account - before he gets the connection. This will be in addition to other requirements like identity and residential address proof.
This is among several measures suggested by the home ministry to the department of telecommunications (DoT) in its bid to stop terrorists from using mobile phones to launch attacks in the country - by using it to trigger blasts and also to keep in touch with each other.
These and other issues were discussed at a meeting convened by the home ministry with chief secretaries and police chiefs of states here on Friday.
Mobile phones are being rampantly used by terrorists, who have not only been using phones to trigger IEDs - as they did to attack Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in May last year - but also to pass messages to their handlers across the border.
The home ministry has also suggested that DoT come out with guidelines that make it mandatory for SIM card vendors to take instant photographs of new customers using web cameras.
These should then be passed on to the service provider with reference number. Though the issue had come up before the ministry after the Mecca Masjid blast investigation, the matter has not been resolved as DoT is still in the process of consultations.
Incidentally, the CBI, which is investigating the Mecca blasts case, had hit a dead end when it found that the perpetrators of the crime had not only used fake address to get the SIM cards but they had also used photographs of a Noida-based yoga teacher to procure the connection.
"We wanted to have a mechanism where a common person can get a SIM card without any hassles and other security concerns are also met," home secretary Madhukar Gupta said after the meeting. To drive home his point, he cited a case where one person had been issued 50 SIM cards in a period of three months.
Besides expressing the need for strict guidelines for new mobile connections, the officials also discussed ways to strengthen the intelligence mechanism and modalities to pass on terror-related cases for investigation to central agencies like CBI at the earliest.
The meeting - chaired by the home secretary - also deliberated upon the suggestion of setting up a central committee comprising representatives from states to decided about the nature of specific cases which could be passed on to the CBI for investigation. Making it clear that the Centre had no intention of intruding into the jurisdiction of any state with a federal system in policing, Gupta said the Centre was looking for an enforcement agency which will have "power to investigate and ability to gather intelligence".
A committee could be constituted which could immediately look at a case and see whether it has any inter-state, international and other ramifications, he added.
"So institutionally, there will be an in built mechanism for consultations with the state through the representation of the state through these chief secretaries and the DGPs," Gupta said while replying to a question whether there was any discussion on forming a federal agency.
"We did have a discussion on federal agency. There are two things - federal crime and federal agency. There is no relevance of federal crime in India. This is a concept in the US where every state has its own definition of every crime. In India, every penal law is a federal law... so there is no question of federal crime," Gupta said.
"Investigation of any terrorism case is not possible though a single agency. So what we are really looking at is - the cases where there are inter-state and international linkages, arms and drugs smuggling, it is difficult for any state agency to get to the bottom of the case," he added.
This is among several measures suggested by the home ministry to the department of telecommunications (DoT) in its bid to stop terrorists from using mobile phones to launch attacks in the country - by using it to trigger blasts and also to keep in touch with each other.
These and other issues were discussed at a meeting convened by the home ministry with chief secretaries and police chiefs of states here on Friday.
Mobile phones are being rampantly used by terrorists, who have not only been using phones to trigger IEDs - as they did to attack Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad in May last year - but also to pass messages to their handlers across the border.
The home ministry has also suggested that DoT come out with guidelines that make it mandatory for SIM card vendors to take instant photographs of new customers using web cameras.
These should then be passed on to the service provider with reference number. Though the issue had come up before the ministry after the Mecca Masjid blast investigation, the matter has not been resolved as DoT is still in the process of consultations.
Incidentally, the CBI, which is investigating the Mecca blasts case, had hit a dead end when it found that the perpetrators of the crime had not only used fake address to get the SIM cards but they had also used photographs of a Noida-based yoga teacher to procure the connection.
"We wanted to have a mechanism where a common person can get a SIM card without any hassles and other security concerns are also met," home secretary Madhukar Gupta said after the meeting. To drive home his point, he cited a case where one person had been issued 50 SIM cards in a period of three months.
Besides expressing the need for strict guidelines for new mobile connections, the officials also discussed ways to strengthen the intelligence mechanism and modalities to pass on terror-related cases for investigation to central agencies like CBI at the earliest.
The meeting - chaired by the home secretary - also deliberated upon the suggestion of setting up a central committee comprising representatives from states to decided about the nature of specific cases which could be passed on to the CBI for investigation. Making it clear that the Centre had no intention of intruding into the jurisdiction of any state with a federal system in policing, Gupta said the Centre was looking for an enforcement agency which will have "power to investigate and ability to gather intelligence".
A committee could be constituted which could immediately look at a case and see whether it has any inter-state, international and other ramifications, he added.
"So institutionally, there will be an in built mechanism for consultations with the state through the representation of the state through these chief secretaries and the DGPs," Gupta said while replying to a question whether there was any discussion on forming a federal agency.
"We did have a discussion on federal agency. There are two things - federal crime and federal agency. There is no relevance of federal crime in India. This is a concept in the US where every state has its own definition of every crime. In India, every penal law is a federal law... so there is no question of federal crime," Gupta said.
"Investigation of any terrorism case is not possible though a single agency. So what we are really looking at is - the cases where there are inter-state and international linkages, arms and drugs smuggling, it is difficult for any state agency to get to the bottom of the case," he added.
Fun - Television Viewing
I’m still trying to catch my breath. I watched the opening of the Beijing Olympics (DD Sports) and was blown away. The sheer scale of the show, the spectacular mix of culture and technology was truly jaw-dropping. I wish DD’s commentators had kept quiet more often and allowed us to just enjoy the spectacle. But they insisted on talking pretty much non-stop (“This shows the harmony of man and nature… The little girl is holding a kite, we also fly kites in India, in fact, with our Independence Day coming up, there’s going to be a lot of kite-flying…” etc etc).
My latest attempt at catching a new soap (it’s no longer very new but it’s newer than Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) was something called Kis Desh Mein Hai Mera Dil (Star Plus). The name itself gave me the beginnings of a headache, but I persisted bravely. I seem to have caught a particularly dramatic episode where the cameraman, perhaps inspired by all that high drama, had decided to be very innovative. So instead of the standard zoom in-zoom out, the camera kept revolving around the scene of action. It went round and round, again and again, and the net result (once again): an acute attack of dizziness. Meanwhile, the actual action involved a patriarch-type gentleman shouting at a younger woman while all the other members of the family stood around like statues (they were also in a neat circle formation). But the moment the old gent yelled, “Tum aurat ke naam pe kalank ho!” (You are a blot on the face of womanhood) and slapped the younger woman, I hastily switched channels. There’s only this much I can take.
I’m not a fan of the new fad of ‘mean TV’ — basically programming where everyone is nasty to each other for no particular reason. There is a school of thought which believes that cruelty makes for great TV. Maybe that’s true for some viewers — there’s no accounting for people’s taste, is there — but personally, I find it revolting.
However, it’s hard to take something like Dadagiri seriously. This is television’s self-proclaimed “meanest game show” and it airs on a youth channel (Bindass). But more than the youth, the programme seems to be earnestly courting viewers with an IQ of minus zero. This is the deal: some poor misguided young men and women come to the studio to be bullied by three weirdos. One of the bullies kicks open the door in the manner of a Gestapo agent and lumbers into the studio. He then orders one of the contestants to lift a pair of dumbbells ten times and when he can’t, gives him a roll of toilet paper instead. He keeps talking, but you can’t follow much because it’s mostly expletives and they’re all beeped out. The couple of lines you can make out go something like this: “Style maar raha hai beep? Kya samajhta hai apne aap ko beep?”
The Gestapo type gives way to a fellow with spectacles who conducts a GK quiz. Every time a participant answers a question, he has to simultaneously pick up an egg and break it over his own head. The quizmaster offers his own share of abuse. Eventually, some poor sod loses, has to eat food kept inside a WC as a punishment and declares to us morosely, “I feel like such a loser.” True. Only a loser would agree to participate in a show like this.
And finally. I saw Zara Nachke Dikha on Star One with Malaika Arora and Chunky Pandey as the judges and while there was nothing wrong with the show, I have a question: just how many more times can we see men, women and children dancing, listen to the judges offering their expert opinions and watch the inevitable tears and tension and wardrobe malfunctions and…
My latest attempt at catching a new soap (it’s no longer very new but it’s newer than Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi) was something called Kis Desh Mein Hai Mera Dil (Star Plus). The name itself gave me the beginnings of a headache, but I persisted bravely. I seem to have caught a particularly dramatic episode where the cameraman, perhaps inspired by all that high drama, had decided to be very innovative. So instead of the standard zoom in-zoom out, the camera kept revolving around the scene of action. It went round and round, again and again, and the net result (once again): an acute attack of dizziness. Meanwhile, the actual action involved a patriarch-type gentleman shouting at a younger woman while all the other members of the family stood around like statues (they were also in a neat circle formation). But the moment the old gent yelled, “Tum aurat ke naam pe kalank ho!” (You are a blot on the face of womanhood) and slapped the younger woman, I hastily switched channels. There’s only this much I can take.
I’m not a fan of the new fad of ‘mean TV’ — basically programming where everyone is nasty to each other for no particular reason. There is a school of thought which believes that cruelty makes for great TV. Maybe that’s true for some viewers — there’s no accounting for people’s taste, is there — but personally, I find it revolting.
However, it’s hard to take something like Dadagiri seriously. This is television’s self-proclaimed “meanest game show” and it airs on a youth channel (Bindass). But more than the youth, the programme seems to be earnestly courting viewers with an IQ of minus zero. This is the deal: some poor misguided young men and women come to the studio to be bullied by three weirdos. One of the bullies kicks open the door in the manner of a Gestapo agent and lumbers into the studio. He then orders one of the contestants to lift a pair of dumbbells ten times and when he can’t, gives him a roll of toilet paper instead. He keeps talking, but you can’t follow much because it’s mostly expletives and they’re all beeped out. The couple of lines you can make out go something like this: “Style maar raha hai beep? Kya samajhta hai apne aap ko beep?”
The Gestapo type gives way to a fellow with spectacles who conducts a GK quiz. Every time a participant answers a question, he has to simultaneously pick up an egg and break it over his own head. The quizmaster offers his own share of abuse. Eventually, some poor sod loses, has to eat food kept inside a WC as a punishment and declares to us morosely, “I feel like such a loser.” True. Only a loser would agree to participate in a show like this.
And finally. I saw Zara Nachke Dikha on Star One with Malaika Arora and Chunky Pandey as the judges and while there was nothing wrong with the show, I have a question: just how many more times can we see men, women and children dancing, listen to the judges offering their expert opinions and watch the inevitable tears and tension and wardrobe malfunctions and…
India - Voice of the unheard
It has, indeed, been a long-drawn battle: one that started more than a decade ago, where lawmakers had to be convinced about the very existence of domestic violence.
This year, for the first time India will be represented on the panel of the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) — a crucial committee that extensively defines gender discrimination and sets up an agenda to end it.
But it’s really the ‘face’ of this battle — lawyer-activist Indira Jaising, the first representative — that’s the cause for all the heightened optimism. For, Jaising’s own track record is a testimony to the fight for legal rights for those who have been rendered as have-nots by the Indian legal system. The homeless, as in the Olga Tellis case; the OBCs as in the Ashok Kumar Thakur case; the victims of communal and domestic violence; of the Bhopal gas tragedy; and of sexual harassment at the workplace, as in the Rupan Deol Bajaj case.
Jaising hopes her appointment will “compel the Indian legal system to extend non-discrimination of women, in all spheres, more seriously”. “After all, we cannot send a representative to a world body to sit in judgement over the rights of women globally and continue discrimination at home,” says the senior advocate, also the first woman to be appointed judge in the Bombay High Court in 1986.
Jaising raised the bar as one of the few women to study law in 1962, after studying law at both Mumbai and Bangalore.
“Till this day, however, discrimination in the profession exists, albeit subtly. There is a tendency among judges and male colleagues to trivialise the contribution of women or patronise them. If a woman raises her voice to be heard she is ‘aggressive’. If a man does so, he is presenting his case forcefully and is admired.”
While Jaising may fret that the Supreme Court still has no women judges — “even when there are, it’s a token gesture” — and rue that the apex court has never had a woman senior law officer in all these years, the “biases” have not really held her back.
Not when she fought the Mary Roy case in 1986 for Christian women’s equal inheritance rights, the Daniel Latifi case for Muslim women’s maintenance rights after divorce and the Geetha Hariharan’s case for Hindu women’s guardianship rights. These are cases that have gone a long way in the fight against gender-specific discrimination.
It is, however, the ground-breaking Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 she drafted and campaigned for, that has now become the highpoint of her contribution to law.
Not only has the Act broadened the definition of ‘violence’, but it has also restored the victim’s right to reside. For Jaising, the need arose from the realisation that prosecution does not end a matter; women want shelter.
The Domestic Violence Act, 2005, perhaps, is one of the most creatively drafted laws, says Kamala Sankaran, Reader at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University. “It takes domestic violence beyond a criminal offence, and provides a civil remedy in terms of the victim’s right to reside,” says Sankaran.
But the 68-year-old Jaising now rues that this very right is in danger of being eroded by the courts.
“The SC has held that if the matrimonial home belongs to the mother-in-law, the daughter-in-law will have no right to reside, despite the definition making ownership irrelevant.”
With her appointment to the CEDAW, law experts like Sankaran hope that India will sign the optional protocol, where women can directly approach the committee with a complaint.
Much like this law then, Jaising is rather categorical in her critique of the Indian legal system.
“The Indian legal system is slow, period. We have known of women who have entered court rooms and killed a perceived rapist, such is the decay in the system. I am dealing with a case of the wife of a magistrate, who has got maintenance of Rs 55, and her case was adjourned for a year,” she says.
Having spent close to four decades in the legal profession, Jaising — who co-founded the Lawyers’ Collective in 1981 to address unmet legal needs — advocates speedy justice.
“The system responds only to those who have well-oiled lawyers and can leapfrog the system.” But then, with lawyers like Jaising, there’s hope yet.
This year, for the first time India will be represented on the panel of the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) — a crucial committee that extensively defines gender discrimination and sets up an agenda to end it.
But it’s really the ‘face’ of this battle — lawyer-activist Indira Jaising, the first representative — that’s the cause for all the heightened optimism. For, Jaising’s own track record is a testimony to the fight for legal rights for those who have been rendered as have-nots by the Indian legal system. The homeless, as in the Olga Tellis case; the OBCs as in the Ashok Kumar Thakur case; the victims of communal and domestic violence; of the Bhopal gas tragedy; and of sexual harassment at the workplace, as in the Rupan Deol Bajaj case.
Jaising hopes her appointment will “compel the Indian legal system to extend non-discrimination of women, in all spheres, more seriously”. “After all, we cannot send a representative to a world body to sit in judgement over the rights of women globally and continue discrimination at home,” says the senior advocate, also the first woman to be appointed judge in the Bombay High Court in 1986.
Jaising raised the bar as one of the few women to study law in 1962, after studying law at both Mumbai and Bangalore.
“Till this day, however, discrimination in the profession exists, albeit subtly. There is a tendency among judges and male colleagues to trivialise the contribution of women or patronise them. If a woman raises her voice to be heard she is ‘aggressive’. If a man does so, he is presenting his case forcefully and is admired.”
While Jaising may fret that the Supreme Court still has no women judges — “even when there are, it’s a token gesture” — and rue that the apex court has never had a woman senior law officer in all these years, the “biases” have not really held her back.
Not when she fought the Mary Roy case in 1986 for Christian women’s equal inheritance rights, the Daniel Latifi case for Muslim women’s maintenance rights after divorce and the Geetha Hariharan’s case for Hindu women’s guardianship rights. These are cases that have gone a long way in the fight against gender-specific discrimination.
It is, however, the ground-breaking Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005 she drafted and campaigned for, that has now become the highpoint of her contribution to law.
Not only has the Act broadened the definition of ‘violence’, but it has also restored the victim’s right to reside. For Jaising, the need arose from the realisation that prosecution does not end a matter; women want shelter.
The Domestic Violence Act, 2005, perhaps, is one of the most creatively drafted laws, says Kamala Sankaran, Reader at the Faculty of Law, Delhi University. “It takes domestic violence beyond a criminal offence, and provides a civil remedy in terms of the victim’s right to reside,” says Sankaran.
But the 68-year-old Jaising now rues that this very right is in danger of being eroded by the courts.
“The SC has held that if the matrimonial home belongs to the mother-in-law, the daughter-in-law will have no right to reside, despite the definition making ownership irrelevant.”
With her appointment to the CEDAW, law experts like Sankaran hope that India will sign the optional protocol, where women can directly approach the committee with a complaint.
Much like this law then, Jaising is rather categorical in her critique of the Indian legal system.
“The Indian legal system is slow, period. We have known of women who have entered court rooms and killed a perceived rapist, such is the decay in the system. I am dealing with a case of the wife of a magistrate, who has got maintenance of Rs 55, and her case was adjourned for a year,” she says.
Having spent close to four decades in the legal profession, Jaising — who co-founded the Lawyers’ Collective in 1981 to address unmet legal needs — advocates speedy justice.
“The system responds only to those who have well-oiled lawyers and can leapfrog the system.” But then, with lawyers like Jaising, there’s hope yet.
Columnists - Barkha Dutt
A hardwired dispute
Almost a decade ago Kashmir-watchers were startled and disturbed by the newest peace balloon to be pushed afloat — this time by a furniture magnate based in America. Farooq Kathwari, a Kashmiri-American, and the influential and controversial head of the upscale Ethan Allen company, was proposing the carving up of Jammu and Kashmir to create a “sovereign entity” without “an international personality” from the state’s Muslim-majority areas.
Kathwari, whose own son died fighting in Afghanistan, could have been dismissed as a lone maverick, except that his think-tank, the Kashmir Study Group, had several worthy diplomats (both American and Indian) on board, and seemed to have the ear of the US administration as well. His idea was a regurgitation of the so-called Dixon plan. In 1950, Owen Dixon, a UN mediator, had asked for cutting open J&K along the Chenab river, along its religious and ethnic faultlines. Now with groups like the Panun Kashmir also demanding a separate homeland for ousted Pandits, trifurcation suddenly became the ominous new buzzword bandied about in the state. It took the then Deputy Prime Minister, LK Advani, to formally rubbish the idea before the rumours got relegated to the dustbin of history.
But watching the tumultuous agitation within the state over the past month, one must stand face to face with a horrible new reality. An invisible line of hatred threatens to draw itself across the psychological map of Jammu and Kashmir, putting the two areas on different sides of the enemy line. And while the conflict is rooted more in historical divisions of region rather than religion, the coincidence of which side the state’s Hindus and Muslims stack up, is an inescapable truth.
India has always drawn comfort and confidence from the fact that the turmoil within the state of Jammu and Kashmir has never defined other national loyalties or agendas. Even the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley concede that the separatist sentiment has been largely political or ethnic, finding little or no resonance with Indian Muslims outside the state. And while the forced exile of the Kashmiri Pandits is one of most brutal human rights violations of our time, Indians have never really seen the conflict in the Valley through the Hindu-Muslim prism. But even that threatened to change this past week. With the Amarnath yatra at its centre, the upsurge of anger in Jammu was in definite danger of tapping into a simmering pan-Hindu discontent. Ironically, the anger in either region began feeding off each other, drawing sharp boundary lines across geographies, religions and, sadly, even political parties.
So, how did a few hectares of land come to divide an entire people?
To read the divisions within J&K as a dispute about land is to misread the situation entirely. In both Jammu and in the Kashmir Valley, the land has come to be a symbol of political and psychological alienation. In both cases it is more about identity and neglect and the explosion of a once-subliminal but always abiding anger. And in both cases, not just did the governments (both Centre and state) misdiagnose the disease; they were too late with the medical treatment as well.
In the Valley, giving the former Governor control of the land amid reports that permanent structures would be erected on it, played into a larger suspicion about military presence and control. Remember that the earlier Governor was a General famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for his sledgehammer style. Peace-hawkers also mistook the tulip bloom and the tourist flood for tranquillity. And rabble-rousing statements about “changing demographics” didn’t help either.
In Jammu, the protests have been emblematic of a bitterness that comes with living in the constant shadow of Kashmir. The perception that the Valley’s temperature always sets the season for both domestic intervention and international focus has grown into a fierce resentment over the years. Despite several proposals of regional autonomy for Jammu and Ladakh, equitable attention across the state remains a myth. It is this deeper anger at being pushed to the margins of public energy that has drawn doctors and homemakers onto the streets of a once-quiet city.
In both cases, an inordinate length of time lapsed before the government reacted. It took ten days of violence in the Valley and 39 days of stormy protests in Jammu for New Delhi to sound the alarm.
Tragically, while we lament the communal polarisation underlining these demonstrations, the law itself is tainted by religious divisions. According to the state’s Shrine Bill, the Governor, ‘if Hindu’ shall manage the Amarnath and the Vaishno Devi shrines. And the Chief Minister, ‘if Muslim’ gets to or control the wakf land. In a state where Muslims and Hindus alike agree that the yatra is a proud symbol of an essentially syncretic tradition, why should political control be categorised by religion? In fact, why should there be any political control at all?
In a crippled little limp towards peace, an all-party delegation will be in Jammu by the time this column goes to print. Its task is clear — to make sure that the divisions don’t deepen and leave a wounded state split wide open. But after that, the politicians have to get out the way. An election season notwithstanding, Jammu and Kashmir’s parties have to agree to amend the current law. A multi-religious body of independent state residents should be entrusted with the job of managing the religious bodies on either side of the divide.
Governor NN Vohra inherited a problem he did not create. But as someone who has been a peace mediator in his earlier avatar, let him lead the way by surrendering his own seat on the Amarnath Shrine Board. This will make way for an entirely homegrown team of people from both Jammu and Kashmir to look after the yatra. That should be the first step towards ending the insidious and illicit relationship between politics and religion.
Otherwise, the siege within will prove to be much more fatal than the opponent across the border.
Barkha Dutt is Group Editor, English News, NDTV
Almost a decade ago Kashmir-watchers were startled and disturbed by the newest peace balloon to be pushed afloat — this time by a furniture magnate based in America. Farooq Kathwari, a Kashmiri-American, and the influential and controversial head of the upscale Ethan Allen company, was proposing the carving up of Jammu and Kashmir to create a “sovereign entity” without “an international personality” from the state’s Muslim-majority areas.
Kathwari, whose own son died fighting in Afghanistan, could have been dismissed as a lone maverick, except that his think-tank, the Kashmir Study Group, had several worthy diplomats (both American and Indian) on board, and seemed to have the ear of the US administration as well. His idea was a regurgitation of the so-called Dixon plan. In 1950, Owen Dixon, a UN mediator, had asked for cutting open J&K along the Chenab river, along its religious and ethnic faultlines. Now with groups like the Panun Kashmir also demanding a separate homeland for ousted Pandits, trifurcation suddenly became the ominous new buzzword bandied about in the state. It took the then Deputy Prime Minister, LK Advani, to formally rubbish the idea before the rumours got relegated to the dustbin of history.
But watching the tumultuous agitation within the state over the past month, one must stand face to face with a horrible new reality. An invisible line of hatred threatens to draw itself across the psychological map of Jammu and Kashmir, putting the two areas on different sides of the enemy line. And while the conflict is rooted more in historical divisions of region rather than religion, the coincidence of which side the state’s Hindus and Muslims stack up, is an inescapable truth.
India has always drawn comfort and confidence from the fact that the turmoil within the state of Jammu and Kashmir has never defined other national loyalties or agendas. Even the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley concede that the separatist sentiment has been largely political or ethnic, finding little or no resonance with Indian Muslims outside the state. And while the forced exile of the Kashmiri Pandits is one of most brutal human rights violations of our time, Indians have never really seen the conflict in the Valley through the Hindu-Muslim prism. But even that threatened to change this past week. With the Amarnath yatra at its centre, the upsurge of anger in Jammu was in definite danger of tapping into a simmering pan-Hindu discontent. Ironically, the anger in either region began feeding off each other, drawing sharp boundary lines across geographies, religions and, sadly, even political parties.
So, how did a few hectares of land come to divide an entire people?
To read the divisions within J&K as a dispute about land is to misread the situation entirely. In both Jammu and in the Kashmir Valley, the land has come to be a symbol of political and psychological alienation. In both cases it is more about identity and neglect and the explosion of a once-subliminal but always abiding anger. And in both cases, not just did the governments (both Centre and state) misdiagnose the disease; they were too late with the medical treatment as well.
In the Valley, giving the former Governor control of the land amid reports that permanent structures would be erected on it, played into a larger suspicion about military presence and control. Remember that the earlier Governor was a General famous (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for his sledgehammer style. Peace-hawkers also mistook the tulip bloom and the tourist flood for tranquillity. And rabble-rousing statements about “changing demographics” didn’t help either.
In Jammu, the protests have been emblematic of a bitterness that comes with living in the constant shadow of Kashmir. The perception that the Valley’s temperature always sets the season for both domestic intervention and international focus has grown into a fierce resentment over the years. Despite several proposals of regional autonomy for Jammu and Ladakh, equitable attention across the state remains a myth. It is this deeper anger at being pushed to the margins of public energy that has drawn doctors and homemakers onto the streets of a once-quiet city.
In both cases, an inordinate length of time lapsed before the government reacted. It took ten days of violence in the Valley and 39 days of stormy protests in Jammu for New Delhi to sound the alarm.
Tragically, while we lament the communal polarisation underlining these demonstrations, the law itself is tainted by religious divisions. According to the state’s Shrine Bill, the Governor, ‘if Hindu’ shall manage the Amarnath and the Vaishno Devi shrines. And the Chief Minister, ‘if Muslim’ gets to or control the wakf land. In a state where Muslims and Hindus alike agree that the yatra is a proud symbol of an essentially syncretic tradition, why should political control be categorised by religion? In fact, why should there be any political control at all?
In a crippled little limp towards peace, an all-party delegation will be in Jammu by the time this column goes to print. Its task is clear — to make sure that the divisions don’t deepen and leave a wounded state split wide open. But after that, the politicians have to get out the way. An election season notwithstanding, Jammu and Kashmir’s parties have to agree to amend the current law. A multi-religious body of independent state residents should be entrusted with the job of managing the religious bodies on either side of the divide.
Governor NN Vohra inherited a problem he did not create. But as someone who has been a peace mediator in his earlier avatar, let him lead the way by surrendering his own seat on the Amarnath Shrine Board. This will make way for an entirely homegrown team of people from both Jammu and Kashmir to look after the yatra. That should be the first step towards ending the insidious and illicit relationship between politics and religion.
Otherwise, the siege within will prove to be much more fatal than the opponent across the border.
Barkha Dutt is Group Editor, English News, NDTV
Entertainment - Deepika chosen India's hottest by Maxim
Bollywood's new entrant Deepika Padukone, whose second film Bachna Ae Haseeno is due for release Aug 15, is considered the hot favourite actress by Indian audiences across the globe. She tops the popular Maxim Hot 100 girls worldwide list.
The Maxim Hot list makes its debut in India and the Om Shanti Om star, Deepika, is winner of the first edition.
"To be honest, personally I never thought of myself as 'sexy' or 'hot' but if that's the call that people have taken, then I hope I live up to it. I am so excited about this," Deepika said in a press statement.
She joins the likes of previous Bollywood celebrity-winners like Bipasha Basu, Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor.
"Deepika was our choice as the winner because apart from her huge fan following with the new generation of Indians, she also has the potential to be an international face. This calls for a huge party," said Anup Kutty, editor of Maxim-India.
Deepika will be felicitated August end in Mumbai
The Maxim Hot list makes its debut in India and the Om Shanti Om star, Deepika, is winner of the first edition.
"To be honest, personally I never thought of myself as 'sexy' or 'hot' but if that's the call that people have taken, then I hope I live up to it. I am so excited about this," Deepika said in a press statement.
She joins the likes of previous Bollywood celebrity-winners like Bipasha Basu, Katrina Kaif and Kareena Kapoor.
"Deepika was our choice as the winner because apart from her huge fan following with the new generation of Indians, she also has the potential to be an international face. This calls for a huge party," said Anup Kutty, editor of Maxim-India.
Deepika will be felicitated August end in Mumbai
Columnists - Ravi Shastri
Another horror show with bat
India would be disappointed by their effort on the first day of the final Test. An important toss was won, the start was fabulous but then the story of this tour repeated itself.
The Fab Four have one more innings to redeem themselves but it seems the Sri Lankan spinners have tied them in knots.
Only, it was not the spinners but a rookie pacer who added to their misery. Dammika Prasad isn’t genuinely quick but he moves the ball off the seam.
He claimed Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar with deliveries that moved in sharply, both in the air and off the wicket.
That he also accounted for Virender Sehwag, clearly tells his potential. Ajantha Mendis added to another of his now trademark five-wicket hauls. His has been the most impressive debut for a while now. He has been the reason India have consistently struggled to put 250 runs. The fact that he could spin the ball both ways with disguise even on a first day track makes him special.
Then there was Muttiah Muralitharan, who at the moment, is having a complete hold on Sourav Ganguly. Murali is forcing the left-hander to chase his prodigiously turning off-spin and Ganguly is like a moth drawn to his doom.
One wouldn’t be exaggerating in stating that the Indian middle order greats are probably low on confidence. I detect an extravagant movement of the front foot across the off-stump by Dravid and Tendulkar, which is making them prime candidates for lbws. This usually happens when you are not sure of your off-stump or haven't spent too much time at the crease.
It isn’t the first time they have been dismissed so in this series. But you dismiss them at your own peril.
There is too much class in these men to doubt them.
The last wicket pair of Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma showed what common sense could still achieve and their last wicket stand of 51 runs could turn out to be priceless. They also inflicted a dent in the Lankan innings by close, which should allow the tourists to approach the second day with more hope than trepidation.
Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene hold the key to their response. The fate of this series lies squarely in the success and failure of these two men tomorrow.
India would be disappointed by their effort on the first day of the final Test. An important toss was won, the start was fabulous but then the story of this tour repeated itself.
The Fab Four have one more innings to redeem themselves but it seems the Sri Lankan spinners have tied them in knots.
Only, it was not the spinners but a rookie pacer who added to their misery. Dammika Prasad isn’t genuinely quick but he moves the ball off the seam.
He claimed Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar with deliveries that moved in sharply, both in the air and off the wicket.
That he also accounted for Virender Sehwag, clearly tells his potential. Ajantha Mendis added to another of his now trademark five-wicket hauls. His has been the most impressive debut for a while now. He has been the reason India have consistently struggled to put 250 runs. The fact that he could spin the ball both ways with disguise even on a first day track makes him special.
Then there was Muttiah Muralitharan, who at the moment, is having a complete hold on Sourav Ganguly. Murali is forcing the left-hander to chase his prodigiously turning off-spin and Ganguly is like a moth drawn to his doom.
One wouldn’t be exaggerating in stating that the Indian middle order greats are probably low on confidence. I detect an extravagant movement of the front foot across the off-stump by Dravid and Tendulkar, which is making them prime candidates for lbws. This usually happens when you are not sure of your off-stump or haven't spent too much time at the crease.
It isn’t the first time they have been dismissed so in this series. But you dismiss them at your own peril.
There is too much class in these men to doubt them.
The last wicket pair of Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma showed what common sense could still achieve and their last wicket stand of 51 runs could turn out to be priceless. They also inflicted a dent in the Lankan innings by close, which should allow the tourists to approach the second day with more hope than trepidation.
Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene hold the key to their response. The fate of this series lies squarely in the success and failure of these two men tomorrow.
Health - WB girl has 'world's 1st' VHL liver transplant
Payel Bhattacharya is doing well after an 18-hour surgery at Sir Gangaram Hospital, Delhi
KOLKATA: Almost a year of agony hopefully ended for Kolkata girl Payel Bhattacharya when she became, doctors claimed, the first von Hippel-Landau (VHL) case in the world to undergo a liver transplant.
After an 18-hour marathon surgery at Sir Gangaram Hospital, Delhi, on Thursday, Payel is doing well, the doctors said.
Payel’s story is one of indomitable courage in the face of stern adversity. VHL is a rare genetic disorder. Shibajyoti Ghosh, associate professor of surgery at RG Kar Hospital, Kolkata, said only 3-4 cases per million are detected worldwide. Payel’s is said to be the only recorded case in India.
The disease is characterised by the formation of tumours in blood-rich organs of the body such as brain, liver and pancreas. As such, a fine needle biopsy is not possible since the tumours could burst.
After undergoing a major brain surgery in December 2006, Payel was diagnosed with several tumours in her liver last year. Doctors advised immediate liver transplant last August.
However, there was a problem. The transplant cost a whopping Rs30 lakh. For the last one year, Payel ran from pillar to post to raise funds but never lost hope. She had to rush to Delhi earlier this year after the tumours began to bleed and since Kolkata has no history of liver transplants.
Help came only from strangers, including a group of hospital staff in a Bengal village – poor but generous, the group sent her a money order of Rs150.
On Wednesday night, Payel needed an emergency transplant. Her brother could not be the donor since he too is in danger of becoming a VHL patient. Hope was almost lost till Kolkata boy Kingshuk Bhattacharya came forward.
AS Soin, head of liver transplant at Sir Gangaram Hospital, who conducted the surgery, told DNA over phone: “It was like any other liver transplant, but the challenge was removing the rather large tumours without bursting them.
“Payel’s is a rare case because only 5% of VHL cases have liver tumours.”
KOLKATA: Almost a year of agony hopefully ended for Kolkata girl Payel Bhattacharya when she became, doctors claimed, the first von Hippel-Landau (VHL) case in the world to undergo a liver transplant.
After an 18-hour marathon surgery at Sir Gangaram Hospital, Delhi, on Thursday, Payel is doing well, the doctors said.
Payel’s story is one of indomitable courage in the face of stern adversity. VHL is a rare genetic disorder. Shibajyoti Ghosh, associate professor of surgery at RG Kar Hospital, Kolkata, said only 3-4 cases per million are detected worldwide. Payel’s is said to be the only recorded case in India.
The disease is characterised by the formation of tumours in blood-rich organs of the body such as brain, liver and pancreas. As such, a fine needle biopsy is not possible since the tumours could burst.
After undergoing a major brain surgery in December 2006, Payel was diagnosed with several tumours in her liver last year. Doctors advised immediate liver transplant last August.
However, there was a problem. The transplant cost a whopping Rs30 lakh. For the last one year, Payel ran from pillar to post to raise funds but never lost hope. She had to rush to Delhi earlier this year after the tumours began to bleed and since Kolkata has no history of liver transplants.
Help came only from strangers, including a group of hospital staff in a Bengal village – poor but generous, the group sent her a money order of Rs150.
On Wednesday night, Payel needed an emergency transplant. Her brother could not be the donor since he too is in danger of becoming a VHL patient. Hope was almost lost till Kolkata boy Kingshuk Bhattacharya came forward.
AS Soin, head of liver transplant at Sir Gangaram Hospital, who conducted the surgery, told DNA over phone: “It was like any other liver transplant, but the challenge was removing the rather large tumours without bursting them.
“Payel’s is a rare case because only 5% of VHL cases have liver tumours.”
Business - Bharti Wal-mart to start operations in 2009
CHANDIGARH: Bharti Wal-Mart, a joint venture between Bharti Enterprises and US-based retail giant Wal-Mart stores, on Friday said it will commence its wholesale cash and carry operations by early next year from the northern region.
"We will be starting our operations from from the first quarter calendar 2009," Bharti Wal-Mart CEO and Managing Director Raj Jain said.
Bharti Wal-Mart has set up a distribution centre of one-lakh square feet in Banaur near Chandigarh for facilitating its operations.
At a conference organised by industry body CII, Bharti Wal-Mart CEO and Managing Director Raj Jain said over 80 per cent of the goods including perishable items would be sourced locally to cater to small business enterprises.
Jain said, under the venture, efforts would also be made to facilitate credit to small stores from banks to run their operations.
Wholesale cash-and-carry operations would provide small retailers and business owners a wide range of products at the wholesale prices. This would help them to enhance their businesses and profitability, Bharti-Walmart said.
It would also serve kirana stores, fruit and vegetable resellers, restaurants and other business owners, the company added.
"We will be starting our operations from from the first quarter calendar 2009," Bharti Wal-Mart CEO and Managing Director Raj Jain said.
Bharti Wal-Mart has set up a distribution centre of one-lakh square feet in Banaur near Chandigarh for facilitating its operations.
At a conference organised by industry body CII, Bharti Wal-Mart CEO and Managing Director Raj Jain said over 80 per cent of the goods including perishable items would be sourced locally to cater to small business enterprises.
Jain said, under the venture, efforts would also be made to facilitate credit to small stores from banks to run their operations.
Wholesale cash-and-carry operations would provide small retailers and business owners a wide range of products at the wholesale prices. This would help them to enhance their businesses and profitability, Bharti-Walmart said.
It would also serve kirana stores, fruit and vegetable resellers, restaurants and other business owners, the company added.
World - Paying the price for neglect
Cyclone Sidr, Cyclone Nargis, the Indian Ocean tsunami. Natural disasters are striking with greater frequency today than at any time in recent memory. Yet disasters are still not recognised for what they are: a growing threat to development and the painstakingly-built lives and livelihoods of millions of people. Unless policy leaders see how the rising incidence of natural calamities hurt the growth of their economies, actions will continue to fall short, leaving nations and peoples progressively vulnerable to devastation and loss.
Increasingly, disasters stem from man-made causes. It has been weather and water-related events such as floods and windstorms that have risen sharply, rather than geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanoes. And, it’s ever more evident that the severity of these floods and storms and their damages are linked to human actions such as deforestation, soil degradation, and the emission of pollutants that affect the climate.
If in the past, policymakers thought that safeguarding the environment is a drag on growth, the story now is clearly the opposite. Neglecting the environment and suffering the damages from natural disasters and other consequences is emerging as the central threat to long-term growth.
The data tell a startling story. Between 1980 and 1984, some 800 natural disasters were reported worldwide, affecting the lives and livelihoods of some 400 million people. Twenty years later, this number had soared to over 2,300, affecting almost four times as many — or some 1.4 billion people. The losses incurred after each disaster have shot up even more. In the past decade alone, the direct losses from natural disasters may have reached a trillion dollars, 20 times higher than five decades earlier. Clearly, disaster-prone countries are losing a growing share of their GDP to natural catastrophes.
India, like many other densely populated developing countries, is especially vulnerable. The Bay of Bengal’s warm shallow seas and still air provide ideal conditions for cyclones to rise. The young mountains of the northern Himalayas and the plains that border them are prone to devastating earthquakes. Floods used to occur only in the Indo-Gangetic belt, but over the past 50 years they have spread further afield to Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and even to regions of Rajasthan. The Indian Ocean tsunami left more than 10,000 people dead and about 5,600 missing in India alone, with damages estimated at 0.18 per cent of GDP.
By one estimate, one third of India’s 603 districts are hazard prone, placing about half the country’s economy potentially at risk. In all this, the poor, who are most likely to live and work in harm’s way without adequate protection, are often the hardest to be hit.
A top priority is to prevent natural disasters by dealing with their man-made causes. Wetlands, for example, have always provided a buffer against storm surges. But over the past century, half the world’s wetlands have been lost due to their draining for agriculture, the channelising of rivers, and the turning of floodplains into aquaculture zones. Forests, too, are a key source of protection against flash floods and landslides. But they are also shrinking because of their conversion into agricultural land, expansion of human habitat, and illegal logging.
Fortunately, appropriate and timely actions can make a difference. When typhoon Wukong ravaged Vietnam’s coast in 2000, communities that had replanted lost mangroves remained relatively unharmed whereas neighbouring provinces suffered significant loss of life and property. Mangrove forests provided similar protection from the ravages of a cyclone in Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2002. Clearly, the restoration of degraded environments in these vulnerable areas made the critical difference.
Equally important is being prepared for disaster. “Be Prepared” has long been the Boy Scouts’ motto — and Bangladesh provides a striking example of how true this is. In the early 1970s, a cyclone killed more than 300,000 people. But after the country put in an extensive early warning system and prepared communities for a possible disaster, a recent cyclone of similar intensity did far less damage, taking over 3,000 — not 300,000 — lives.
But, while the payoffs to prevention are high — by some estimates providing a return of $4 to $12 to a dollar invested — our actions fall short as they don’t carry the same visibility and political appeal as immediate post-disaster reconstruction.
India has a good record in the area of recovery and reconstruction. That same capability now needs to be extended to prevention and preparedness, including investment in early warning systems, better land-use planning, the adoption of appropriate building standards, and the development of risk transfer mechanisms, including insurance schemes.
Finally, better links need to be established between planning and budgeting, and coordination improved between government agencies themselves as well as with civil society and communities. Local government units need to be empowered with information, capacity and resources, and calamity funds increased both at national and local levels.
In the end, preventive measures and disaster preparedness will not end up diverting resources from efforts to generate economic growth. Instead, they will reduce the risk of natural disasters — without which sustained growth will remain an elusive goal.
(Vinod Thomas is the Director-General of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group.)
Increasingly, disasters stem from man-made causes. It has been weather and water-related events such as floods and windstorms that have risen sharply, rather than geophysical phenomena such as earthquakes and volcanoes. And, it’s ever more evident that the severity of these floods and storms and their damages are linked to human actions such as deforestation, soil degradation, and the emission of pollutants that affect the climate.
If in the past, policymakers thought that safeguarding the environment is a drag on growth, the story now is clearly the opposite. Neglecting the environment and suffering the damages from natural disasters and other consequences is emerging as the central threat to long-term growth.
The data tell a startling story. Between 1980 and 1984, some 800 natural disasters were reported worldwide, affecting the lives and livelihoods of some 400 million people. Twenty years later, this number had soared to over 2,300, affecting almost four times as many — or some 1.4 billion people. The losses incurred after each disaster have shot up even more. In the past decade alone, the direct losses from natural disasters may have reached a trillion dollars, 20 times higher than five decades earlier. Clearly, disaster-prone countries are losing a growing share of their GDP to natural catastrophes.
India, like many other densely populated developing countries, is especially vulnerable. The Bay of Bengal’s warm shallow seas and still air provide ideal conditions for cyclones to rise. The young mountains of the northern Himalayas and the plains that border them are prone to devastating earthquakes. Floods used to occur only in the Indo-Gangetic belt, but over the past 50 years they have spread further afield to Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu and even to regions of Rajasthan. The Indian Ocean tsunami left more than 10,000 people dead and about 5,600 missing in India alone, with damages estimated at 0.18 per cent of GDP.
By one estimate, one third of India’s 603 districts are hazard prone, placing about half the country’s economy potentially at risk. In all this, the poor, who are most likely to live and work in harm’s way without adequate protection, are often the hardest to be hit.
A top priority is to prevent natural disasters by dealing with their man-made causes. Wetlands, for example, have always provided a buffer against storm surges. But over the past century, half the world’s wetlands have been lost due to their draining for agriculture, the channelising of rivers, and the turning of floodplains into aquaculture zones. Forests, too, are a key source of protection against flash floods and landslides. But they are also shrinking because of their conversion into agricultural land, expansion of human habitat, and illegal logging.
Fortunately, appropriate and timely actions can make a difference. When typhoon Wukong ravaged Vietnam’s coast in 2000, communities that had replanted lost mangroves remained relatively unharmed whereas neighbouring provinces suffered significant loss of life and property. Mangrove forests provided similar protection from the ravages of a cyclone in Andhra Pradesh, India, in 2002. Clearly, the restoration of degraded environments in these vulnerable areas made the critical difference.
Equally important is being prepared for disaster. “Be Prepared” has long been the Boy Scouts’ motto — and Bangladesh provides a striking example of how true this is. In the early 1970s, a cyclone killed more than 300,000 people. But after the country put in an extensive early warning system and prepared communities for a possible disaster, a recent cyclone of similar intensity did far less damage, taking over 3,000 — not 300,000 — lives.
But, while the payoffs to prevention are high — by some estimates providing a return of $4 to $12 to a dollar invested — our actions fall short as they don’t carry the same visibility and political appeal as immediate post-disaster reconstruction.
India has a good record in the area of recovery and reconstruction. That same capability now needs to be extended to prevention and preparedness, including investment in early warning systems, better land-use planning, the adoption of appropriate building standards, and the development of risk transfer mechanisms, including insurance schemes.
Finally, better links need to be established between planning and budgeting, and coordination improved between government agencies themselves as well as with civil society and communities. Local government units need to be empowered with information, capacity and resources, and calamity funds increased both at national and local levels.
In the end, preventive measures and disaster preparedness will not end up diverting resources from efforts to generate economic growth. Instead, they will reduce the risk of natural disasters — without which sustained growth will remain an elusive goal.
(Vinod Thomas is the Director-General of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group.)
World - The mysetery of Aafia Siddiqui
Last week, the U.S. government acknowledged that Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT-educated Pakistani neuroscientist, missing since March 2003, was in its custody. But it said Ms Siddiqui, who was wanted by the FBI for her alleged links to Al Qaeda, was arrested only in July this year.
The U.S. acknowledgement came almost exactly a month after Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who spent 11 days as a Taliban captive in 2001 and has since converted to Islam, held a press conference in Islamabad at which she claimed that an unidentified Pakistani woman was being held in solitary confinement at the U.S.-run detention centre at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan since 2004.
The journalist said the woman was Bagram’s prisoner number 650, adding that other prisoners had spoken of hearing a woman’s screams in the prison.
“I call her the Grey Lady of Bagram because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said. “We don’t know her identity, we don’t know her state of mind and we don’t know the extent of the abuse or torture she has been subjected to.”
Appearing with Ms Ridley, Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, said the woman could be Aafia Siddiqui, last seen by her mother in March 2003 as she left home in Karachi with her three children, one of them an infant, to board a plane to Islamabad.
The claim created ripples in Pakistan. As questions arose, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry was emphatic about its information from the U.S. government that it was not holding any Pakistani woman at Bagram. But the issue refused to die down, reappearing again and again as Pakistanis began voicing their concern for the safety of the woman. There were demonstrations in Karachi calling for her release. People protested through letters to the editor columns of newspapers, and more intensely, on blogs. International human rights organisations such as the Amnesty International, on whose list of missing she already was, and the Asian Human Rights Watch, joined in the calls for her release.
Last Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation informed Ms Siddiqui’s brother in Houston that she was in U.S. custody. Earlier this week, she was produced in a New York court, charged with attempting to kill American soldiers. She had a fresh bullet wound and media reports said she looked frail and “ghostly.”
FBI version
The FBI version is that Ms Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police in July along with her son — the date is unclear — after they found them loitering outside the compound of the Governor’s house in Ghazni. They questioned her, and on suspicion, checked her bag, in which they allegedly found “suspicious” liquids in glass containers, a bomb-making manual, and some material on New York and its landmarks. She was handed over to the U.S. authorities on July 17.
On July 18 , Ms Siddiqui is said to have fired at American soldiers who were present at the Afghan facility where she was being held, with a rifle that one of the soldiers had left lying around. A soldier fired back, wounding her. Charged in a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York with one count of attempting to kill U.S. officers and employees and one count of assaulting U.S. officers and employees, Ms Siddiqui faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each charge if convicted. Significantly, the charges do not mention her alleged Al Qaeda links.
Her lawyer, Elaine Sharp, has questioned the government version, considering that Ms Siddiqui weighs barely 50 kg and appears too frail to be able to lift a rifle. Defence lawyers have also asked under what jurisdiction she was held between July 18 and August 3, when she was extradited to the U.S. and formally arrested. Ms Sharp told The Guardian that her client had told her of being detained “for years” and tortured. From her description of the place where she was detained, Ms Sharp said she was convinced it was Bagram.
The lawyer suggested the upcoming U.S. election had forced the authorities to produce Ms Siddiqui in a court rather than sending her to Guantánamo, like other Al Qaeda suspects.
Ms Siddiqui, who studied at MIT, and later at Brandeis was married to a U.S.-based Pakistani doctor. Her father was a doctor. Her architect brother is based in Houston, and her sister is a Harvard-trained neurologist who now lives in Karachi. Those who knew her as a student said she was religious, but were not able to reconcile the “sweet” young student with the image of an Al Qaeda suspect.
She and her husband moved to Pakistan after 9/11, citing the difficulties of living as Muslims in the U.S., but were divorced soon after their return. By then, she already had three children. Ms Siddiqui went back to the U.S. in December 2002. According to her family, she went back to look for a job. Three months later, she was back in Pakistan with her children, and vanished soon after.
The Pakistani press reported then that she had been taken into custody by intelligence agencies. But reports in the American press in 2004 — around the same time that she appeared on the FBI’s wanted list of seven people with links to Al Qaeda — suggested she had gone underground after the arrest in Karachi of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, who reportedly gave out her name during interrogation.
According to those reports, she was a “high-profile” Al Qaeda operative, who made several trips to the Liberian capital Monrovia in 2001 from where she smuggled out blood diamonds that were used to finance the terror group’s operations.
On Thursday, her sister Fauzia alleged at a press conference in Islamabad that Ms Siddiqui was “abducted” and taken into custody by the U.S. secret services in 2003. Appearing with Iqbal Haider, the co-chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Dr. Fauzia alleged her sister had been repeatedly raped and tortured in custody. She demanded the formation of an independent medical board consisting of U.S. and Pakistani doctors to examine her. She asked U.S. authorities to allow their U.S.-based brother access to Ms Siddiqui.
“My sister’s only crime was that she used to wear a hijab and believe in Allah,” she said. “It is always believed one is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.”
Several questions remain unanswered about the circumstances of Ms Siddiqui’s disappearance and her arrest, but chief among them is the whereabouts of her three children, including Ahmed who was arrested along with her.
The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that while it had sought consular access and medical assistance for Dr. Siddiqui, and would do everything to help her, the Pakistan government was still trying to get to the full facts of the case.
Whatever the truth about Aafia Siddiqui, there are few takers in Pakistan for the FBI version that the 36-year-old MIT-educated neuroscientist was taken into custody by the U.S. only last month. Instead, it is widely suspected, as alleged by her sister, that the mother of three was in U.S. custody all along, another victim of Pakistan’s collaboration in the American “war on terror.”
The issue has once again focused attention and anger on the role of the Musharraf regime in the disappearance of hundreds of people in this country picked up as terror suspects by intelligence agencies and “sold” to the U.S. for a bounty, with no trace yet of most of them. Ms Siddiqui’s case renews the pressure on the new government to trace the remaining missing persons. Forced on the backfoot by the sudden surfacing of Ms Siddiqui, the Pakistan government has said it was committed to bringing back home “all detained Pakistanis” from “all parts of the world.”
Commentators have pointed that the Aafia Siddiqui case also re-underlines the need for an independent judiciary that could enforce the rule of law. The deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary played an active role in prodding the intelligence agencies to track down some of them, threatening to put senior officials of the ISI and other spy organisations in the dock if they failed to do, one reason cited for his removal by President Musharraf.
The U.S. acknowledgement came almost exactly a month after Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who spent 11 days as a Taliban captive in 2001 and has since converted to Islam, held a press conference in Islamabad at which she claimed that an unidentified Pakistani woman was being held in solitary confinement at the U.S.-run detention centre at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan since 2004.
The journalist said the woman was Bagram’s prisoner number 650, adding that other prisoners had spoken of hearing a woman’s screams in the prison.
“I call her the Grey Lady of Bagram because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said. “We don’t know her identity, we don’t know her state of mind and we don’t know the extent of the abuse or torture she has been subjected to.”
Appearing with Ms Ridley, Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician, said the woman could be Aafia Siddiqui, last seen by her mother in March 2003 as she left home in Karachi with her three children, one of them an infant, to board a plane to Islamabad.
The claim created ripples in Pakistan. As questions arose, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry was emphatic about its information from the U.S. government that it was not holding any Pakistani woman at Bagram. But the issue refused to die down, reappearing again and again as Pakistanis began voicing their concern for the safety of the woman. There were demonstrations in Karachi calling for her release. People protested through letters to the editor columns of newspapers, and more intensely, on blogs. International human rights organisations such as the Amnesty International, on whose list of missing she already was, and the Asian Human Rights Watch, joined in the calls for her release.
Last Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation informed Ms Siddiqui’s brother in Houston that she was in U.S. custody. Earlier this week, she was produced in a New York court, charged with attempting to kill American soldiers. She had a fresh bullet wound and media reports said she looked frail and “ghostly.”
FBI version
The FBI version is that Ms Siddiqui was arrested by Afghan police in July along with her son — the date is unclear — after they found them loitering outside the compound of the Governor’s house in Ghazni. They questioned her, and on suspicion, checked her bag, in which they allegedly found “suspicious” liquids in glass containers, a bomb-making manual, and some material on New York and its landmarks. She was handed over to the U.S. authorities on July 17.
On July 18 , Ms Siddiqui is said to have fired at American soldiers who were present at the Afghan facility where she was being held, with a rifle that one of the soldiers had left lying around. A soldier fired back, wounding her. Charged in a criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York with one count of attempting to kill U.S. officers and employees and one count of assaulting U.S. officers and employees, Ms Siddiqui faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each charge if convicted. Significantly, the charges do not mention her alleged Al Qaeda links.
Her lawyer, Elaine Sharp, has questioned the government version, considering that Ms Siddiqui weighs barely 50 kg and appears too frail to be able to lift a rifle. Defence lawyers have also asked under what jurisdiction she was held between July 18 and August 3, when she was extradited to the U.S. and formally arrested. Ms Sharp told The Guardian that her client had told her of being detained “for years” and tortured. From her description of the place where she was detained, Ms Sharp said she was convinced it was Bagram.
The lawyer suggested the upcoming U.S. election had forced the authorities to produce Ms Siddiqui in a court rather than sending her to Guantánamo, like other Al Qaeda suspects.
Ms Siddiqui, who studied at MIT, and later at Brandeis was married to a U.S.-based Pakistani doctor. Her father was a doctor. Her architect brother is based in Houston, and her sister is a Harvard-trained neurologist who now lives in Karachi. Those who knew her as a student said she was religious, but were not able to reconcile the “sweet” young student with the image of an Al Qaeda suspect.
She and her husband moved to Pakistan after 9/11, citing the difficulties of living as Muslims in the U.S., but were divorced soon after their return. By then, she already had three children. Ms Siddiqui went back to the U.S. in December 2002. According to her family, she went back to look for a job. Three months later, she was back in Pakistan with her children, and vanished soon after.
The Pakistani press reported then that she had been taken into custody by intelligence agencies. But reports in the American press in 2004 — around the same time that she appeared on the FBI’s wanted list of seven people with links to Al Qaeda — suggested she had gone underground after the arrest in Karachi of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, who reportedly gave out her name during interrogation.
According to those reports, she was a “high-profile” Al Qaeda operative, who made several trips to the Liberian capital Monrovia in 2001 from where she smuggled out blood diamonds that were used to finance the terror group’s operations.
On Thursday, her sister Fauzia alleged at a press conference in Islamabad that Ms Siddiqui was “abducted” and taken into custody by the U.S. secret services in 2003. Appearing with Iqbal Haider, the co-chairman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Dr. Fauzia alleged her sister had been repeatedly raped and tortured in custody. She demanded the formation of an independent medical board consisting of U.S. and Pakistani doctors to examine her. She asked U.S. authorities to allow their U.S.-based brother access to Ms Siddiqui.
“My sister’s only crime was that she used to wear a hijab and believe in Allah,” she said. “It is always believed one is innocent until proven guilty, not the other way around.”
Several questions remain unanswered about the circumstances of Ms Siddiqui’s disappearance and her arrest, but chief among them is the whereabouts of her three children, including Ahmed who was arrested along with her.
The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that while it had sought consular access and medical assistance for Dr. Siddiqui, and would do everything to help her, the Pakistan government was still trying to get to the full facts of the case.
Whatever the truth about Aafia Siddiqui, there are few takers in Pakistan for the FBI version that the 36-year-old MIT-educated neuroscientist was taken into custody by the U.S. only last month. Instead, it is widely suspected, as alleged by her sister, that the mother of three was in U.S. custody all along, another victim of Pakistan’s collaboration in the American “war on terror.”
The issue has once again focused attention and anger on the role of the Musharraf regime in the disappearance of hundreds of people in this country picked up as terror suspects by intelligence agencies and “sold” to the U.S. for a bounty, with no trace yet of most of them. Ms Siddiqui’s case renews the pressure on the new government to trace the remaining missing persons. Forced on the backfoot by the sudden surfacing of Ms Siddiqui, the Pakistan government has said it was committed to bringing back home “all detained Pakistanis” from “all parts of the world.”
Commentators have pointed that the Aafia Siddiqui case also re-underlines the need for an independent judiciary that could enforce the rule of law. The deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary played an active role in prodding the intelligence agencies to track down some of them, threatening to put senior officials of the ISI and other spy organisations in the dock if they failed to do, one reason cited for his removal by President Musharraf.
Columnists - Siddharth Varadarajan
Eleventh hour for the Nuclear Suppliers Group
Siddharth Varadarajan
Though the Nuclear Suppliers Group was set up as a response to India’s 1974 nuclear test, its seven founding members today support the idea of allowing nuclear trade with the country. Surely, the time has come for the cartel to stop looking at India as a non-nuclear weapon state.
As international cartels go, the Nuclear Suppliers Group is perhaps unique in having a DNA structure that is schizophrenic. One-part exporters’ club and two-parts recruiting sergeant for the international non-proliferation system, the NSG can certainly take credit for helping some fence-sitters make up their mind over the years about joining the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). But with the number of holdouts now down to three — includi ng India — a form of natural selection is leading to the ‘export’ part of the group’s genetic code slowly triumphing over the non-proliferationist part.
By September 8, we shall see whether this process is allowed to reach its logical end — the lifting of the group’s anachronistic ban on nuclear sales to India — or whether a last ditch effort by the non-proliferationists within produces a mutation that will only end up harming the NSG in the long run. That is the date by which the United States hopes to shepherd through an amendment to the NSG’s highly restrictive export guidelines. Will the waiver India is given be clean and unconditional, thereby allowing the country to participate in full civil nuclear cooperation? Or will a partial, conditional waiver force India to walk away from the nuclear deal and free us of our commitment to place a number of indigenous reactors under international safeguards? This is the stark choice the 45-nation nuclear cartel must make in the next four weeks.
Set up in 1975 as an ad hoc body, the purpose behind the ‘London Club’ as it was known then was to tighten export controls to ensure that nuclear facilities and materials sold exclusively for peaceful use were not diverted to military purposes. Though a control regime in the form of the Zangger Committee and its ‘trigger list’ had existed from 1971 and 1974 respectively, its applicability was confined to states that were party to NPT. The London Club — whose seven founding members were the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada — incorporated the Zangger trigger list of nuclear items and export guidelines, and made them applicable to all ‘non-nuclear weapon states,’ that is, the whole world other than the five countries that had nuclear weapon state status under the NPT.
Despite being provoked by India’s alleged misuse of Canadian equipment in its ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ of 1974, the NSG’s first guidelines did not prohibit nuclear sales to the country or to others that were not members of the NPT. Of course, individual NSG members like Canada and the U.S. quickly adopted national export rules requiring full-scope safeguards of recipient states. But the group’s guidelines merely demanded an assurance of non-explosive use, the acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on the items to be sold, physical protection and controls on any re-transfer of imported material to a third party. That is why India and Russia could go ahead and sign the Kudankulam agreement of 1988 for the supply of reactors. On the so-called sensitive nuclear technologies such as enrichment and reprocessing equipment, the NSG went beyond Zangger by calling on its members to exercise restraint on sales but did not bar their sale.
By the start of the 1990s, the number of countries that remained outside the NPT was down to under 20, excluding the successor states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Apart from several Arab and African nations, the major nuclear-capable countries that had yet to join the treaty as non-nuclear weapon states were Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa. Mainly in order to push these states towards explicitly renouncing the weapons option once and for all, the NSG in 1990 began discussing the possibility of requiring the acceptance of comprehensive, or full-scope, safeguards on all nuclear facilities in a country as a condition for making any nuclear sales to it. This suggestion had first been mooted in the 1970s and 1980s but resisted by suppliers for commercial reasons. The end of the Cold War and the discovery that Iraq — an NPT signatory — had developed a clandestine nuclear weapons programme prompted the NSG to adopt two major new guidelines. The first guideline, finalised in May 1992, adopted the full-scope safeguards requirement and was intended as a means of pushing NPT holdouts towards accepting the treaty. The second set of guidelines was aimed at tightening export controls on “dual use” items so that non-nuclear weapon states would not be able to divert them towards a military purpose. Linked to this was the push at the IAEA for a more stringent set of safeguard controls known as the Additional Protocol.
After the NSG adopted the full-scope safeguards requirement for nuclear sales, key holdouts like Brazil and Argentina eventually acceded to the NPT. Today, the only countries left outside are India, Pakistan and Israel. All three countries possess nuclear weapons, though Tel Aviv has not officially declared this to be the case. In the case of India, the decision formally to embrace nuclear weapons was prompted in part by the efforts of America and its NSG allies to force the country to give up its nuclear option through a tightening of international restrictions. Once India tested its nuclear weapons in May 1998, Pakistan had no option but to follow. The fact that the two countries became de facto nuclear weapon states, then, is proof of the failure of the NSG’s strategy towards them.
As the NSG reviews its achievements, it is worthwhile asking what possible utility the full-scope safeguards guideline can have in today’s world. India and Pakistan will never accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states and Israel’s status cannot be resolved without the Middle East peace process reaching a definitive stage. Thus, if retention of the guideline is intended as an incentive for accession to the NPT, there is no question of it working in the case of the remaining three holdouts. But what about the guideline’s use as a means of curbing the risk of further proliferation? It is clear that supplying nuclear material to Pakistan, given Islamabad’s abysmal proliferation record, will entail significant proliferation risks. Similarly, allowing Israel to access civil nuclear cooperation will surely place stress on the acceptability of the NPT in West Asia. For these two countries, then, there is considerable merit in retaining the NSG’s guideline for the time being. In the case of India, however, there is no reason to assume that allowing the country to engage in safeguarded nuclear commerce with NSG members will increase the danger of proliferation. Not only has India demonstrated responsibility and restraint in its nuclear and dual-use export policies, but it has also additionally committed itself to placing a number of its indigenous reactors under IAEA safeguards in exchange for imported fuel, thereby reducing the potential size of its military nuclear sector.
Meaningless
The NSG’s guidelines were intended to deal with the problem of proliferation in a world where the potential number of countries that could go down the nuclear weapons route was much larger. Its emphasis on regulating the access of non-nuclear weapon states to supplies had a certain relevance in the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s. But today, it is meaningless for the cartel to continue to treat India as if it does not possess nuclear weapons. If one reviews the national position of NSG states, it is evident that the seven founding members and all members with a significant nuclear export industry are in favour of recognising the reality of India’s status. Those members most opposed to waiving the NSG’s rules for India are those who either have a theological position against nuclear energy (eg. Austria and New Zealand) or who are not major players in the international nuclear industry. When India has been able to negotiate unconditional supply agreements with large nuclear vendors like Russia and France and also with the U.S. after a fashion, it doesn’t make sense for the NSG as a whole to impose conditions based on the false assumption that the country is somehow a non-nuclear weapon state.
If the U.S. is serious about delivering its side of the July 2005 bargain with India, it must drive home this fundamental point to the NSG members. To the extent to which Russia and France will be major beneficiaries of the proposed exemption for India, they too need to stress the importance of the waiver being clean and unconditional. Adding NSG-wide conditions — such as mandating a supply cut-off in case India tests a nuclear weapon — will only eat into the autonomy of decision-making of individual countries. Every individual member is free to adopt its own export rules but should not seek to impose its national standards on NSG states.
India has come this far despite the serious misgivings that exist within the country about the nuclear deal because it believes the NSG would be prepared to look at the matter coolly and rationally. If, however, the suppliers group insists on living in the past and pursuing extraneous agendas, New Delhi will have no option but to walk away.
Siddharth Varadarajan
Though the Nuclear Suppliers Group was set up as a response to India’s 1974 nuclear test, its seven founding members today support the idea of allowing nuclear trade with the country. Surely, the time has come for the cartel to stop looking at India as a non-nuclear weapon state.
As international cartels go, the Nuclear Suppliers Group is perhaps unique in having a DNA structure that is schizophrenic. One-part exporters’ club and two-parts recruiting sergeant for the international non-proliferation system, the NSG can certainly take credit for helping some fence-sitters make up their mind over the years about joining the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). But with the number of holdouts now down to three — includi ng India — a form of natural selection is leading to the ‘export’ part of the group’s genetic code slowly triumphing over the non-proliferationist part.
By September 8, we shall see whether this process is allowed to reach its logical end — the lifting of the group’s anachronistic ban on nuclear sales to India — or whether a last ditch effort by the non-proliferationists within produces a mutation that will only end up harming the NSG in the long run. That is the date by which the United States hopes to shepherd through an amendment to the NSG’s highly restrictive export guidelines. Will the waiver India is given be clean and unconditional, thereby allowing the country to participate in full civil nuclear cooperation? Or will a partial, conditional waiver force India to walk away from the nuclear deal and free us of our commitment to place a number of indigenous reactors under international safeguards? This is the stark choice the 45-nation nuclear cartel must make in the next four weeks.
Set up in 1975 as an ad hoc body, the purpose behind the ‘London Club’ as it was known then was to tighten export controls to ensure that nuclear facilities and materials sold exclusively for peaceful use were not diverted to military purposes. Though a control regime in the form of the Zangger Committee and its ‘trigger list’ had existed from 1971 and 1974 respectively, its applicability was confined to states that were party to NPT. The London Club — whose seven founding members were the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada — incorporated the Zangger trigger list of nuclear items and export guidelines, and made them applicable to all ‘non-nuclear weapon states,’ that is, the whole world other than the five countries that had nuclear weapon state status under the NPT.
Despite being provoked by India’s alleged misuse of Canadian equipment in its ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’ of 1974, the NSG’s first guidelines did not prohibit nuclear sales to the country or to others that were not members of the NPT. Of course, individual NSG members like Canada and the U.S. quickly adopted national export rules requiring full-scope safeguards of recipient states. But the group’s guidelines merely demanded an assurance of non-explosive use, the acceptance of International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on the items to be sold, physical protection and controls on any re-transfer of imported material to a third party. That is why India and Russia could go ahead and sign the Kudankulam agreement of 1988 for the supply of reactors. On the so-called sensitive nuclear technologies such as enrichment and reprocessing equipment, the NSG went beyond Zangger by calling on its members to exercise restraint on sales but did not bar their sale.
By the start of the 1990s, the number of countries that remained outside the NPT was down to under 20, excluding the successor states of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Apart from several Arab and African nations, the major nuclear-capable countries that had yet to join the treaty as non-nuclear weapon states were Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan and South Africa. Mainly in order to push these states towards explicitly renouncing the weapons option once and for all, the NSG in 1990 began discussing the possibility of requiring the acceptance of comprehensive, or full-scope, safeguards on all nuclear facilities in a country as a condition for making any nuclear sales to it. This suggestion had first been mooted in the 1970s and 1980s but resisted by suppliers for commercial reasons. The end of the Cold War and the discovery that Iraq — an NPT signatory — had developed a clandestine nuclear weapons programme prompted the NSG to adopt two major new guidelines. The first guideline, finalised in May 1992, adopted the full-scope safeguards requirement and was intended as a means of pushing NPT holdouts towards accepting the treaty. The second set of guidelines was aimed at tightening export controls on “dual use” items so that non-nuclear weapon states would not be able to divert them towards a military purpose. Linked to this was the push at the IAEA for a more stringent set of safeguard controls known as the Additional Protocol.
After the NSG adopted the full-scope safeguards requirement for nuclear sales, key holdouts like Brazil and Argentina eventually acceded to the NPT. Today, the only countries left outside are India, Pakistan and Israel. All three countries possess nuclear weapons, though Tel Aviv has not officially declared this to be the case. In the case of India, the decision formally to embrace nuclear weapons was prompted in part by the efforts of America and its NSG allies to force the country to give up its nuclear option through a tightening of international restrictions. Once India tested its nuclear weapons in May 1998, Pakistan had no option but to follow. The fact that the two countries became de facto nuclear weapon states, then, is proof of the failure of the NSG’s strategy towards them.
As the NSG reviews its achievements, it is worthwhile asking what possible utility the full-scope safeguards guideline can have in today’s world. India and Pakistan will never accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states and Israel’s status cannot be resolved without the Middle East peace process reaching a definitive stage. Thus, if retention of the guideline is intended as an incentive for accession to the NPT, there is no question of it working in the case of the remaining three holdouts. But what about the guideline’s use as a means of curbing the risk of further proliferation? It is clear that supplying nuclear material to Pakistan, given Islamabad’s abysmal proliferation record, will entail significant proliferation risks. Similarly, allowing Israel to access civil nuclear cooperation will surely place stress on the acceptability of the NPT in West Asia. For these two countries, then, there is considerable merit in retaining the NSG’s guideline for the time being. In the case of India, however, there is no reason to assume that allowing the country to engage in safeguarded nuclear commerce with NSG members will increase the danger of proliferation. Not only has India demonstrated responsibility and restraint in its nuclear and dual-use export policies, but it has also additionally committed itself to placing a number of its indigenous reactors under IAEA safeguards in exchange for imported fuel, thereby reducing the potential size of its military nuclear sector.
Meaningless
The NSG’s guidelines were intended to deal with the problem of proliferation in a world where the potential number of countries that could go down the nuclear weapons route was much larger. Its emphasis on regulating the access of non-nuclear weapon states to supplies had a certain relevance in the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s. But today, it is meaningless for the cartel to continue to treat India as if it does not possess nuclear weapons. If one reviews the national position of NSG states, it is evident that the seven founding members and all members with a significant nuclear export industry are in favour of recognising the reality of India’s status. Those members most opposed to waiving the NSG’s rules for India are those who either have a theological position against nuclear energy (eg. Austria and New Zealand) or who are not major players in the international nuclear industry. When India has been able to negotiate unconditional supply agreements with large nuclear vendors like Russia and France and also with the U.S. after a fashion, it doesn’t make sense for the NSG as a whole to impose conditions based on the false assumption that the country is somehow a non-nuclear weapon state.
If the U.S. is serious about delivering its side of the July 2005 bargain with India, it must drive home this fundamental point to the NSG members. To the extent to which Russia and France will be major beneficiaries of the proposed exemption for India, they too need to stress the importance of the waiver being clean and unconditional. Adding NSG-wide conditions — such as mandating a supply cut-off in case India tests a nuclear weapon — will only eat into the autonomy of decision-making of individual countries. Every individual member is free to adopt its own export rules but should not seek to impose its national standards on NSG states.
India has come this far despite the serious misgivings that exist within the country about the nuclear deal because it believes the NSG would be prepared to look at the matter coolly and rationally. If, however, the suppliers group insists on living in the past and pursuing extraneous agendas, New Delhi will have no option but to walk away.
India - Improving Sanitation
The world is not on track to meet one of its key millennium development goals — access to improved sanitation — cautions a joint report published recently by UNICEF and the WHO. Many countries, including rising India, face a “large sanitation deficit.” At present, 1.2 billion people worldwide defecate in the open and India has the uncomfortable distinction of leading the list with 665 million (2006). Lack of sanitation seriously compromises the heal th of people, endangering lives in many cases. It also contributes to the pollution of water bodies and the spread of water-borne diseases. The Economist, in a recent report, stated that “about 1,000 children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day in India.” A simple improvement in sanitation, as another study points out, can “decrease the rate of waterborne diseases like diarrhoea in the order of 25 per cent.” In all fairness to the government, investments on improving sanitation are periodically increased and programmes such as total sanitation campaign have been launched. But progress has been abysmally slow. The government fixed a target of building 108.5 million individual household toilets by 2007; but against this, the Eleventh Plan notes, only 29. 9 million were built. The official commitment now is to achieve the target by 2012.
Achieving sanitary goals will increase the demand for water, especially in rural areas. It will also mean treating a huge volume of sewage. Ballpark estimates suggest that Indian cities can treat only about 18 per cent of the 33,200 million litres of sewage produced daily. Conventional flush and discharge toilets use about 15,000 litres of clean water to flush 400-500 litres of urine and 50 litres of faeces per capita annually. Ecological sanitation (ecosan) on the other hand, through design and technological innovation, separates urine and faecal matter at source and treats them at site before discharging them for further treatment. This reduces water usage, and the quantity of sewage to be treated. It also prescribes the recycling of sewage and the creation of neighbourhood facilities. While the government is considering alternatives like pit toilets for rural areas, there have been significant advances in ecosan, which has been effectively used in both rural and urban areas in other countries. By themselves, governments in India may not be able to achieve the sanitation targets. They need to partner with organisations such as Sulabh International, which has demonstrated, along with self-help groups, how sanitary conditions can be promoted and established in slums. Such efforts need to be scaled up massively.
Achieving sanitary goals will increase the demand for water, especially in rural areas. It will also mean treating a huge volume of sewage. Ballpark estimates suggest that Indian cities can treat only about 18 per cent of the 33,200 million litres of sewage produced daily. Conventional flush and discharge toilets use about 15,000 litres of clean water to flush 400-500 litres of urine and 50 litres of faeces per capita annually. Ecological sanitation (ecosan) on the other hand, through design and technological innovation, separates urine and faecal matter at source and treats them at site before discharging them for further treatment. This reduces water usage, and the quantity of sewage to be treated. It also prescribes the recycling of sewage and the creation of neighbourhood facilities. While the government is considering alternatives like pit toilets for rural areas, there have been significant advances in ecosan, which has been effectively used in both rural and urban areas in other countries. By themselves, governments in India may not be able to achieve the sanitation targets. They need to partner with organisations such as Sulabh International, which has demonstrated, along with self-help groups, how sanitary conditions can be promoted and established in slums. Such efforts need to be scaled up massively.
Sports - Hu Jintao's speech (Olmypics)
BEIJING: This is the text of the toast by Chinese President Hu Jintao at the welcoming luncheon of the Beijing Olympic Games.
“Your Excellency Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, Your Excellency Juan Antonio Samaranch, Honorary President of the International Olympic Committee, Distinguished Heads of State and government and representatives of royal families, distinguished members of the International Olympic Committee, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the grand opening of the Beijing Olympic Games will be held this evening. The historic moment we have all been waiting for will soon arrive. On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I wish to extend a warm welcome to all the distinguished guests who have come to Beijing for the Games.
“In the course of bidding and preparing for the Olympic Games, the Chinese government and people received sincere help from governments and people of various countries and strong support from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic family. I would like to express heartfelt thanks to you and, through you, to all those who have contributed to the Beijing Olympic Games.
“I also wish to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the international community for the warm support and valuable assistance given to China in our rescue and relief efforts after the devastating Wenchuan earthquake. The Chinese people will remember forever the profound friendship of people throughout the world. “Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, The Olympic movement, which started over 2,800 years ago in the sacred Olympia, is a valuable spiritual and cultural asset offered to humanity by the people of ancient Greece. The modern Olympic movement, born in 1896, has built on the ancient Olympic heritage and grown into a cultural and sporting event with the broadest participation and greatest impact in today’s world. At successive Olympic Games over the years, athletes from across the world, committed to the motto of “Citius - Altius - Fortius”, have made their utmost efforts in quest of sporting excellence and set one record after another, leading to the rapid development of athletic sports. “The Olympic Games is a great sporting event and it also offers a platform for cultural exchanges. By bringing together people of different countries, ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds, the Olympic movement has helped enhance mutual understanding and friendship among all peoples and made significant contribution to the noble cause of peace and development.
Opportunities
“Today, the international community faces both development opportunities and grave challenges unprecedented in history. There has never been a greater need for us to understand, accommodate and cooperate with each other. The Olympic Games is an opportunity not only for China but also for the whole world. By participating in the Games, we should carry forward the Olympic spirit of solidarity, friendship and peace, facilitate sincere exchanges among people from all countries, deepen mutual understanding, enhance friendship and rise above differences, and promote the building of a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity.
“Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, to host the Olympic Games is a century-old dream of the Chinese nation and the shared aspiration of all the Chinese people. Since Beijing won the bid in 2001, the Chinese government and people have been working earnestly to honour the solemn commitment we have made to the international community. Guided by the concept of “green Olympics, high-tech Olympics and people’s Olympics”, we have done our utmost in the preparations for the Games. I am confident that, with the support of the IOC and the Olympic family, and together with you, we will deliver a high-standard Olympic Games with distinctive features.
“I now propose a toast, to the strong growth of the Olympic movement, to greater solidarity and friendship among people from all over the world, and to the health of all the distinguished guests and your families. Cheers!” — Xinhua
“Your Excellency Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee, Your Excellency Juan Antonio Samaranch, Honorary President of the International Olympic Committee, Distinguished Heads of State and government and representatives of royal families, distinguished members of the International Olympic Committee, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, the grand opening of the Beijing Olympic Games will be held this evening. The historic moment we have all been waiting for will soon arrive. On behalf of the Chinese government and people, I wish to extend a warm welcome to all the distinguished guests who have come to Beijing for the Games.
“In the course of bidding and preparing for the Olympic Games, the Chinese government and people received sincere help from governments and people of various countries and strong support from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Olympic family. I would like to express heartfelt thanks to you and, through you, to all those who have contributed to the Beijing Olympic Games.
“I also wish to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the international community for the warm support and valuable assistance given to China in our rescue and relief efforts after the devastating Wenchuan earthquake. The Chinese people will remember forever the profound friendship of people throughout the world. “Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, The Olympic movement, which started over 2,800 years ago in the sacred Olympia, is a valuable spiritual and cultural asset offered to humanity by the people of ancient Greece. The modern Olympic movement, born in 1896, has built on the ancient Olympic heritage and grown into a cultural and sporting event with the broadest participation and greatest impact in today’s world. At successive Olympic Games over the years, athletes from across the world, committed to the motto of “Citius - Altius - Fortius”, have made their utmost efforts in quest of sporting excellence and set one record after another, leading to the rapid development of athletic sports. “The Olympic Games is a great sporting event and it also offers a platform for cultural exchanges. By bringing together people of different countries, ethnic groups and cultural backgrounds, the Olympic movement has helped enhance mutual understanding and friendship among all peoples and made significant contribution to the noble cause of peace and development.
Opportunities
“Today, the international community faces both development opportunities and grave challenges unprecedented in history. There has never been a greater need for us to understand, accommodate and cooperate with each other. The Olympic Games is an opportunity not only for China but also for the whole world. By participating in the Games, we should carry forward the Olympic spirit of solidarity, friendship and peace, facilitate sincere exchanges among people from all countries, deepen mutual understanding, enhance friendship and rise above differences, and promote the building of a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity.
“Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, to host the Olympic Games is a century-old dream of the Chinese nation and the shared aspiration of all the Chinese people. Since Beijing won the bid in 2001, the Chinese government and people have been working earnestly to honour the solemn commitment we have made to the international community. Guided by the concept of “green Olympics, high-tech Olympics and people’s Olympics”, we have done our utmost in the preparations for the Games. I am confident that, with the support of the IOC and the Olympic family, and together with you, we will deliver a high-standard Olympic Games with distinctive features.
“I now propose a toast, to the strong growth of the Olympic movement, to greater solidarity and friendship among people from all over the world, and to the health of all the distinguished guests and your families. Cheers!” — Xinhua
Sports - Li Ning Update
BEIJING (Reuters) - Li Ning, who lit the cauldron at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics after a daredevil highwire act, earned the nickname "Prince of Gymnastics" and won three gold medals before finding success in business.
Through his achievements in the two fields, Li represents the strength of China's Soviet-style sports system as well as the entrepreneurship and wealth of the country's new capitalism.
On Friday night, the 44-year-old was lifted high above the 91,000 spectators in Beijing's Birds Nest stadium, suspended from wires. He circled above their heads, simulating a runner racing around a track in slow motion, before igniting the cauldron with a streak of flame.
He won the most medals of any athlete at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, returning home from China's first participation in a Summer Games for 32 years with three golds, two silvers and a bronze.
He retired after failing to win a medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 but was not idle for long, founding the sportswear company that bears his name. He put 20 million shares in the company up for sale earlier this year for around $50 million.
Li was born in the southern region of Guangxi and is a member of one of China's 55 ethnic minorities, the Zhuang.
He took up gymnastics at the age of seven and soon found his way into the national sports system, joining the national team at the age of 17.
Having been deprived of a shot at Olympic glory at the Moscow Olympics by China's decision to join the boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Li shot to fame at the 1982 World Cup in Zagreb.
Claiming the men's all around title with an average score of 9.9, he also won gold in five of the other six events. The only event he failed to win was the parallel bars, in which he snared a bronze.
Over his career, he won 13 major individual titles at international level and one team gold at the 1983 world championships. He joined the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2000 and was named China's male athlete of the 20th century.
After retiring, he became an international gymnastics judge and earned a law degree from the prestigious Peking University. He also holds an MBA from the same institution.
The company he founded, China's first national sports goods brand, has around 10 percent of the Chinese market and has also been involved in some controversy.
The brand's logo is similar to the Nike swoosh, although the company says it represents Li Ning's initials and his dynamism on gymnastics apparatus.
It was also accused of ambush marketing when, despite not having paid out to sponsor the Beijing Games, it struck a deal that resulted in staff on state broadcaster CCTV wearing the company's logo during Olympic broadcasts.
(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen, editing by Keith Weir and Alex Richardson)
Through his achievements in the two fields, Li represents the strength of China's Soviet-style sports system as well as the entrepreneurship and wealth of the country's new capitalism.
On Friday night, the 44-year-old was lifted high above the 91,000 spectators in Beijing's Birds Nest stadium, suspended from wires. He circled above their heads, simulating a runner racing around a track in slow motion, before igniting the cauldron with a streak of flame.
He won the most medals of any athlete at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, returning home from China's first participation in a Summer Games for 32 years with three golds, two silvers and a bronze.
He retired after failing to win a medal at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 but was not idle for long, founding the sportswear company that bears his name. He put 20 million shares in the company up for sale earlier this year for around $50 million.
Li was born in the southern region of Guangxi and is a member of one of China's 55 ethnic minorities, the Zhuang.
He took up gymnastics at the age of seven and soon found his way into the national sports system, joining the national team at the age of 17.
Having been deprived of a shot at Olympic glory at the Moscow Olympics by China's decision to join the boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Li shot to fame at the 1982 World Cup in Zagreb.
Claiming the men's all around title with an average score of 9.9, he also won gold in five of the other six events. The only event he failed to win was the parallel bars, in which he snared a bronze.
Over his career, he won 13 major individual titles at international level and one team gold at the 1983 world championships. He joined the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2000 and was named China's male athlete of the 20th century.
After retiring, he became an international gymnastics judge and earned a law degree from the prestigious Peking University. He also holds an MBA from the same institution.
The company he founded, China's first national sports goods brand, has around 10 percent of the Chinese market and has also been involved in some controversy.
The brand's logo is similar to the Nike swoosh, although the company says it represents Li Ning's initials and his dynamism on gymnastics apparatus.
It was also accused of ambush marketing when, despite not having paid out to sponsor the Beijing Games, it struck a deal that resulted in staff on state broadcaster CCTV wearing the company's logo during Olympic broadcasts.
(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen, editing by Keith Weir and Alex Richardson)
India - If UK is worried,we have a bigger reason to worry
Bangalore: The world could see a potentially catastrophic four-degree Celsius rise in temperature by the end of the century, a Guardian report on Thursday has said, and quoted top scientists urging the United Kingdom to “prepare” for such an eventuality.
“If the U.K. is worried, we have far greater reason to be worried,” N.H. Ravindranath, Chairman, Centre for Sustainable Technology, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) told The Hindu. “The implications for India could be catastrophic even if the temperature were to rise by as much as two degrees Celsius because our adaptive capacity is so low,” he said.
Prof. Ravindranath is also member of an expert committee on climate change formed by the Ministry of Environment and Forest in 2007, and one of the lead authors of the reports of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the Nobel Peace Prize along with the former United States Vice-President, Al Gore, in 2007.
“Unlike a developed country such as the U.K. which can mobilise adaptation strategies like building barriers against sea level rise, India does not have the financial, technological or institutional capacity to cope even with existing natural disasters, let alone climate change which would trigger an increase in extreme weather events like droughts and floods,” he said.
Citing the example of the tsunami, Prof. Ravindranath said, “Even though vast resources were made available for tsunami relief and rehabilitation, not even one-third of those who lost their homes have been rehabilitated. And only a fraction of houses built for the victims have been occupied because they were either found to be architecturally inappropriate or sociologically incompatible.”
The most vulnerable will be those who depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood, he said. “Communities who depend on climate sensitive sectors such as dryland farming, fisheries and forest resources will be worst affected,” he said.
The rise in temperature may not be as severe in India as warming in the tropics will be less than it is in the mid-latitude — but even a three-degree rise in temperature would be of severe consequences for India, said J. Srinivasan, Chairman of the Mechanical Science Division and Professor at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at IISc. He was also one of the lead authors of IPCC’s reports.
“For instance, parts of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh could begin to see temperatures going up to 50 degrees, and cities like Bangalore will begin to experience temperatures of 40 degrees by the end of the century.”
Can India play a role in countering climate change? “India contributes less than five per cent of the total global carbon emissions, so we have little influence over global climate change. But as our energy requirements increase, it would more sensible to look at renewable energy such as solar energy – rather than coal or oil,” Prof. Srinivasan said.
“If the U.K. is worried, we have far greater reason to be worried,” N.H. Ravindranath, Chairman, Centre for Sustainable Technology, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) told The Hindu. “The implications for India could be catastrophic even if the temperature were to rise by as much as two degrees Celsius because our adaptive capacity is so low,” he said.
Prof. Ravindranath is also member of an expert committee on climate change formed by the Ministry of Environment and Forest in 2007, and one of the lead authors of the reports of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which shared the Nobel Peace Prize along with the former United States Vice-President, Al Gore, in 2007.
“Unlike a developed country such as the U.K. which can mobilise adaptation strategies like building barriers against sea level rise, India does not have the financial, technological or institutional capacity to cope even with existing natural disasters, let alone climate change which would trigger an increase in extreme weather events like droughts and floods,” he said.
Citing the example of the tsunami, Prof. Ravindranath said, “Even though vast resources were made available for tsunami relief and rehabilitation, not even one-third of those who lost their homes have been rehabilitated. And only a fraction of houses built for the victims have been occupied because they were either found to be architecturally inappropriate or sociologically incompatible.”
The most vulnerable will be those who depend directly on natural resources for their livelihood, he said. “Communities who depend on climate sensitive sectors such as dryland farming, fisheries and forest resources will be worst affected,” he said.
The rise in temperature may not be as severe in India as warming in the tropics will be less than it is in the mid-latitude — but even a three-degree rise in temperature would be of severe consequences for India, said J. Srinivasan, Chairman of the Mechanical Science Division and Professor at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at IISc. He was also one of the lead authors of IPCC’s reports.
“For instance, parts of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh could begin to see temperatures going up to 50 degrees, and cities like Bangalore will begin to experience temperatures of 40 degrees by the end of the century.”
Can India play a role in countering climate change? “India contributes less than five per cent of the total global carbon emissions, so we have little influence over global climate change. But as our energy requirements increase, it would more sensible to look at renewable energy such as solar energy – rather than coal or oil,” Prof. Srinivasan said.
India - Aamir Khan to be face of Incredible India Campaign
New Delhi, Aug 8 (IANS) It's now Aamir Khan's turn to sell India to the world! The Bollywood hero has been roped in by the tourism ministry to be the face of its brand campaign 'Incredible India' to showcase the country's rich heritage and culture and the message, 'Athithi Devo Bhava' (guest is god).
Khan, who met Tourism Minister Ambika Soni personally to receive the offer officially in the national capital Friday, said he was more than happy to be part of the campaign.
"I have accepted the invitation. I am very happy to be part of it. It is a wonderful country and 'incredible' is the fitting word for it," Khan, who was wearing a black T-shirt over rugged and torn jeans, told reporters at Soni's residence here.
However, the ministry is yet to finalise the type of campaign it wants to do for the coming year.
"We will be coming out with an ad campaign and a road show to promote India's tourism. It will highlight the culture and heritage of the country, which are the USPs of our country," the minister said.
The actor, who said he would be working free of cost for the campaign, appeared to have a fair idea about what he was going to do.
"We should show our hospitality. India is famous for it. Even if there are some incidents, we should take steps to sensitise people," he said.
"Each social work is different. Through this, I want to remind people how great is our country and want to sensitize our people. I want to tell them what we are -- we are warm and hospitable people. We have to protect those who are visiting our country. We must ensure that they have a good time and come back again."
The 'Incredible India' campaign launched in 2002, showcasing the country's unique heritage and cultural aspects, has been a major hit and made considerable impact on its tourism sector.
Khan made it clear that his participation was a part of his social commitments and he had no plans to enter politics.
"I am an entertainer and will continue to do good work. I am part of it because I want to spread social message."
Earlier, Shah Rukh Khan was a part of the campaign for creating awareness on garbage disposal.
According to Aamir, films are good way to showcase India. "After the movie 'Lagan', wherever I go, I used to meet people who were interested in visiting India."
Asked if the recent terror attacks - in Bangalore and Ahmedabad - would damage the country's aspirations in the tourism sector, Aamir said: "Terrorism is against everyone. We should be united. We are for peace and if there is one bomb blast, we should light a billion candles."
"If they (terrorists) are spreading poison, we should spread the message of love and peace," he said.
Bollywood director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and lyricist Prasoon Joshi were also present.
Khan, who met Tourism Minister Ambika Soni personally to receive the offer officially in the national capital Friday, said he was more than happy to be part of the campaign.
"I have accepted the invitation. I am very happy to be part of it. It is a wonderful country and 'incredible' is the fitting word for it," Khan, who was wearing a black T-shirt over rugged and torn jeans, told reporters at Soni's residence here.
However, the ministry is yet to finalise the type of campaign it wants to do for the coming year.
"We will be coming out with an ad campaign and a road show to promote India's tourism. It will highlight the culture and heritage of the country, which are the USPs of our country," the minister said.
The actor, who said he would be working free of cost for the campaign, appeared to have a fair idea about what he was going to do.
"We should show our hospitality. India is famous for it. Even if there are some incidents, we should take steps to sensitise people," he said.
"Each social work is different. Through this, I want to remind people how great is our country and want to sensitize our people. I want to tell them what we are -- we are warm and hospitable people. We have to protect those who are visiting our country. We must ensure that they have a good time and come back again."
The 'Incredible India' campaign launched in 2002, showcasing the country's unique heritage and cultural aspects, has been a major hit and made considerable impact on its tourism sector.
Khan made it clear that his participation was a part of his social commitments and he had no plans to enter politics.
"I am an entertainer and will continue to do good work. I am part of it because I want to spread social message."
Earlier, Shah Rukh Khan was a part of the campaign for creating awareness on garbage disposal.
According to Aamir, films are good way to showcase India. "After the movie 'Lagan', wherever I go, I used to meet people who were interested in visiting India."
Asked if the recent terror attacks - in Bangalore and Ahmedabad - would damage the country's aspirations in the tourism sector, Aamir said: "Terrorism is against everyone. We should be united. We are for peace and if there is one bomb blast, we should light a billion candles."
"If they (terrorists) are spreading poison, we should spread the message of love and peace," he said.
Bollywood director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and lyricist Prasoon Joshi were also present.
Aug 8, 2008
Lifestyle - Women only hotel floors - relaunched
Women-only floors in hotels are palatable once again — after a roughly 25-year drought.
But the floors are a variation on the originals — which were intended to provide a safe haven for women traveling alone on business but ended up being considered "a kind of sexist thing," as one hotel analyst put it.
Instead, the new Crowne Plaza Milwaukee-Wauwatosa says it has set up a "female-friendly" enclave. Anyone booking a room on the Women's Executive Level — the seventh floor — has access to a variety of amenities like a Victoria's Secret robe, a blow dryer and vanity mirrors. But, and here is the difference, male guests can book a room on the floor, too.
The strategy is sort of the same on the King Executive Level one floor above, what most hotels refer to as the concierge or club floor. Guests receive perks including free cocktails and concierge services, like making reservations at restaurants. But while those services have traditionally been aimed at men, women can book a room on that floor and relax in the lounge.
What many traveling women want — privacy — does not mean isolation, Crowne Plaza executives say. So they have created a hybrid that avoids fencing off a floor for female travelers.
"That Women's Level isn't really an exclusive woman's floor," said Bill DeForrest, president of Lane Hospitality, which manages three Crowne Plazas. "It's simply designed to cater to the needs of women travelers, who are growing faster in numbers than male travelers. One of the things we've changed is to keep our fitness facilities open 24/7. So much of what we do, by the way, is applicable to both men and women."
The Crowne Plaza Milwaukee is not alone in playing to niche preferences. The Millennium chain's Premier Hotel in Times Square has a "Woman Travelers Floor" that includes yoga mats, wash mitts, bath salts and a spa-style room-service menu.
In Albany, the downtown Hampton Inn just introduced a floor for female guests that offers cookies, flavored coffees, skin moisturizers and extra-soft socks, plus a half-hour session in the hotel's massage chair. The Albany program does permit men on the women's floor on weekends.
So far, the Crowne Plaza brand is the standout among a handful of chains in the United States reviving special women's floors. It has done well with its Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington and a new streamlined Crowne Plaza in Bloomington, Minnesota, close to the Twin Cities airport. It opened a Crowne Plaza in Toledo, Ohio, last month, but has not yet decided whether to have a women's level.
"It's up to the hotels," said Gina LaBarre, Crowne Plaza vice president for brand management. "All we want is to go the extra mile to make women feel welcome."
It is often the employers rather than the travelers that ask hotels to put women in adjoining rooms. And it makes some practical sense. If a company has many women traveling the same route — Mary Kay, for instance — and wants to strike a deal with a hotel, it may make sense to put the women near one another to socialize and talk about business.
But, said Cary Broussard, a former vice president of Wyndham Hotels, "Women don't aspire to be isolated after working years to be assimilated."
Many older female travelers with long memories have few kind words for those well-meaning floors of the past. Both Gloria Allred, a feminist lawyer, and the blogger Gina Hughes see them as a form of special treatment and, therefore, a form of discrimination.
Lalia Rach, a divisional dean and hotel specialist at New York University's Tisch Center, described the concept of women's floors as "19th-century thinking." Back then, she said, "women couldn't stay in a hotel unless their fathers or husbands checked them in." Later, the Palmer House in Chicago had what were called "Lady Hilton" rooms.
After World War II, most women entering the work force were business-travel neophytes, and safety on the road was their first priority. Out of this concern grew prohibitions to protect women, like not assigning guest rooms for women along dark hallways and not barking out names and room numbers at check-in counters.
And New York's all-woman Barbizon Plaza became an emblem of female independence.
"By the mid-'80s, separate floors in hotels offended many women who were traveling on business," said Bjorn Hanson, hotel analyst and faculty member at the Tisch Center. "They were trying to be CEO's but were looked on as the weaker sex. Women's floors became a kind of sexist thing instead of a polite offer."
On the practical side, hotels had problems with separate floors for women. "Management couldn't sell any empty women's rooms to male travelers, even when they were full up elsewhere in the hotel," Hanson said. "And if a hotel made, say, the second floor for women only, there were complaints about not having a better view on a higher floor."
Women also cared as much about amenities as they did about dark hallways. The hotel industry listened. The wish list included more tasteful décor, better shower curtains, full-length mirrors, in-room coffee makers and nutritional room-service choices.
It turned out that male business travelers also liked some of these amenities, a Hilton spokeswoman, Kendra Walker, said. Men, for instance, use the vanity mirrors for shaving and dressing.
But women's floors remain a delicate topic among business travelers. In a survey of women's attitudes before opening last September, the JW Marriott in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found "some 90 percent favored the women's floor concept," said Chad LeRoux, corporate director of marketing. "But the 10 percent who panned the idea led us to back off."
As an alternative, the hotel offers women a luxurious room on one of the four concierge floors for an extra $40.
It has found plenty of takers.
But the floors are a variation on the originals — which were intended to provide a safe haven for women traveling alone on business but ended up being considered "a kind of sexist thing," as one hotel analyst put it.
Instead, the new Crowne Plaza Milwaukee-Wauwatosa says it has set up a "female-friendly" enclave. Anyone booking a room on the Women's Executive Level — the seventh floor — has access to a variety of amenities like a Victoria's Secret robe, a blow dryer and vanity mirrors. But, and here is the difference, male guests can book a room on the floor, too.
The strategy is sort of the same on the King Executive Level one floor above, what most hotels refer to as the concierge or club floor. Guests receive perks including free cocktails and concierge services, like making reservations at restaurants. But while those services have traditionally been aimed at men, women can book a room on that floor and relax in the lounge.
What many traveling women want — privacy — does not mean isolation, Crowne Plaza executives say. So they have created a hybrid that avoids fencing off a floor for female travelers.
"That Women's Level isn't really an exclusive woman's floor," said Bill DeForrest, president of Lane Hospitality, which manages three Crowne Plazas. "It's simply designed to cater to the needs of women travelers, who are growing faster in numbers than male travelers. One of the things we've changed is to keep our fitness facilities open 24/7. So much of what we do, by the way, is applicable to both men and women."
The Crowne Plaza Milwaukee is not alone in playing to niche preferences. The Millennium chain's Premier Hotel in Times Square has a "Woman Travelers Floor" that includes yoga mats, wash mitts, bath salts and a spa-style room-service menu.
In Albany, the downtown Hampton Inn just introduced a floor for female guests that offers cookies, flavored coffees, skin moisturizers and extra-soft socks, plus a half-hour session in the hotel's massage chair. The Albany program does permit men on the women's floor on weekends.
So far, the Crowne Plaza brand is the standout among a handful of chains in the United States reviving special women's floors. It has done well with its Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington and a new streamlined Crowne Plaza in Bloomington, Minnesota, close to the Twin Cities airport. It opened a Crowne Plaza in Toledo, Ohio, last month, but has not yet decided whether to have a women's level.
"It's up to the hotels," said Gina LaBarre, Crowne Plaza vice president for brand management. "All we want is to go the extra mile to make women feel welcome."
It is often the employers rather than the travelers that ask hotels to put women in adjoining rooms. And it makes some practical sense. If a company has many women traveling the same route — Mary Kay, for instance — and wants to strike a deal with a hotel, it may make sense to put the women near one another to socialize and talk about business.
But, said Cary Broussard, a former vice president of Wyndham Hotels, "Women don't aspire to be isolated after working years to be assimilated."
Many older female travelers with long memories have few kind words for those well-meaning floors of the past. Both Gloria Allred, a feminist lawyer, and the blogger Gina Hughes see them as a form of special treatment and, therefore, a form of discrimination.
Lalia Rach, a divisional dean and hotel specialist at New York University's Tisch Center, described the concept of women's floors as "19th-century thinking." Back then, she said, "women couldn't stay in a hotel unless their fathers or husbands checked them in." Later, the Palmer House in Chicago had what were called "Lady Hilton" rooms.
After World War II, most women entering the work force were business-travel neophytes, and safety on the road was their first priority. Out of this concern grew prohibitions to protect women, like not assigning guest rooms for women along dark hallways and not barking out names and room numbers at check-in counters.
And New York's all-woman Barbizon Plaza became an emblem of female independence.
"By the mid-'80s, separate floors in hotels offended many women who were traveling on business," said Bjorn Hanson, hotel analyst and faculty member at the Tisch Center. "They were trying to be CEO's but were looked on as the weaker sex. Women's floors became a kind of sexist thing instead of a polite offer."
On the practical side, hotels had problems with separate floors for women. "Management couldn't sell any empty women's rooms to male travelers, even when they were full up elsewhere in the hotel," Hanson said. "And if a hotel made, say, the second floor for women only, there were complaints about not having a better view on a higher floor."
Women also cared as much about amenities as they did about dark hallways. The hotel industry listened. The wish list included more tasteful décor, better shower curtains, full-length mirrors, in-room coffee makers and nutritional room-service choices.
It turned out that male business travelers also liked some of these amenities, a Hilton spokeswoman, Kendra Walker, said. Men, for instance, use the vanity mirrors for shaving and dressing.
But women's floors remain a delicate topic among business travelers. In a survey of women's attitudes before opening last September, the JW Marriott in Grand Rapids, Michigan, found "some 90 percent favored the women's floor concept," said Chad LeRoux, corporate director of marketing. "But the 10 percent who panned the idea led us to back off."
As an alternative, the hotel offers women a luxurious room on one of the four concierge floors for an extra $40.
It has found plenty of takers.
Lifestyle - Holidaying green
When Mitch Thomson began searching on the Internet for a vacation rental this summer, he never imagined his stay at Kaweah Cottage, a two-bedroom retreat in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, would end up changing his family's lifestyle.
"It was a work of serendipity," said Thomson, who was not specifically looking for a green home, though he happened to be taking a green building class at the time. "We wanted a week of peace and quiet and hiking with the kids, so I Googled 'Sequoia Cabins,' and then this house popped up that looked fantastic with close proximity to a river. In fact, you can hear the river from the house."
Thomson, his wife, Cheryl, and their two daughters and a son (ages 14, 11 and 8) ended up spending four days hiking in the mountains, swimming in the nearby ancient rock holes, and practicing what he called "off-the-grid living."
"We all unplugged," he explained. At night instead of watching television (there was no TV, only a video monitor with a DVD and VHS player) or surfing the Web (there was Wi-Fi but no computer), they played the board games provided at the house and sat under the stars talking as a family. "Since the trip we have decided to spend one week each month not using electronic devices," said Thomson, who lives in Orange County, California "It will be our attempt to relive the vibe from Kaweah."
Kaweah Cottage (www.KaweahCottage.com), with its American clay interior walls, formaldehyde-free plywood, dual-pane glazing and sustainably harvested wood, is just one of a growing number of green homes around the world now available for vacation rentals. Just as Kaweah Cottage is situated on a hillside near the Kaweah River with views of the Sierra peaks, most eco homes are built into breathtakingly natural settings, so guests can enjoy both an indoor and outdoor green experience. Kaweah Cottage even has an organic garden where guests can pick fresh arugula, squash and tomatoes.
James and Kathleen Seligman, with their now grown daughter, have lived on the property for the past 20 years in a house about 150 feet from Kaweah Cottage (a yurt stands in between). The couple built the cottage in 2006 as a two-bedroom overflow for family and friends but then decided to rent it out to offset some of the costs.
Dana Mayer, the owner with her husband, Stephen Carroll, of two eco-friendly vacation homes (one in Sedona, Arizona, and one in St. Augustine, Florida) and the founder of Ecoluxurylodging.com, a Web site that bills its properties as "healthy alternatives to big box condos and hotel gift shops," said clients get a "bigger space with a smaller footprint" when they rent a green home. Yet she does not want to market her properties only to what she calls "devotees" — hard-core green activists. "That's like preaching to the choir," said Mayer, a Florida resident.
"I offer a great place at the right price and the value added is that it is also eco-friendly," she said, adding that she will have another green rental available in 2009 — in Norway.
To educate her guests, Mayer stocks her houses with a library of green books, videos and resource information, just in case they did not sufficiently check out her Web site, which explains that both properties are solar powered, furnished with organic and natural materials, landscaped with local plants and completely hypoallergenic. In addition, all appliances and fixtures are designed to reduce energy, waste and water use.
Linda Moss, the author of "Organic Places to Stay in the U.K.," in 1999 founded a Web site, www.organicholidays.co.uk, with links to green rental homes and small inns in nearly 60 countries from Bali to Bulgaria. She said she has seen a huge increase in her Web traffic this past year. "I think people are becoming nostalgic in this crazy age of technology," she said, "searching for life as it used to be — more simple, more thoughtful about the way we treat the land we live on and more sensitive about the food we eat."
One simple but stunning property on her Web site is Ravens Havens in Paradise Valley, British Columbia (www.ravenshavens.com), a 40-minute drive from Whistler in what is called the Sea to Sky Corridor, an area that includes two historic routes, the Pemberton Trail and the Gold Rush Heritage Trail. The two-bedroom cabin with salvaged hardwood floors and hand-hewn timbers has both modern amenities and rustic features: a gas oven as well as a woodstove, a shower and a claw-foot tub.
Claudia Annett and her husband, Ian (not coincidentally in the timber-framing business), along with their daughter, Tanisha, began homesteading the heavily forested land the cottage now sits on in 1992. They created a number of vegetable, herb and flower gardens, as well as the cottage, on the property adjacent to her father's farm. Below is a river within hiking distance and a forest path where guests can join Annett, who has two horses, on evening rides. "People come here to connect to nature and eat better," she said. "We offer them fresh eggs, free-range chicken and produce from the garden, all organically farmed."
Those looking for a more boutique eco experience might want to check out Natural Retreats, 18 luxurious yet environmentally sensitive homes that have just been built within the Yorkshire Dales National Park in England (www.naturalretreats.com).
"In the U.K. there is a back-to-basics trend occurring," said Ewan Kearney, one of the directors of Natural Retreats, which plans in 2009 to have more residences open in the Lake District, Snowdonia and the North York Moors. "People want to go walking in beautiful landscapes rather than lie on a beach boiling in the Mediterranean."
"My background is in the luxury travel industry," he said, "and these residences, because they are all made with natural materials, are very high quality."
A portion of the rental proceeds goes toward supporting the local Wildlife Trust, he said, and the "Welcome Hamper" of cheeses and vegetables all comes from nearby farms. "But," Kearney said, "our goal is not to rub guests down with all the sustainability issues. Better for them to just come and enjoy it and see the difference."
Dana Mayer agreed, and said she thought the whole green marketing movement could become too aggressive. "The truth is," she said, "who doesn't want to be green, breathing clean air, eating fresh food and sleeping in a non-toxic environment? Once they are here, they learn about it and see the added benefit."
"It was a work of serendipity," said Thomson, who was not specifically looking for a green home, though he happened to be taking a green building class at the time. "We wanted a week of peace and quiet and hiking with the kids, so I Googled 'Sequoia Cabins,' and then this house popped up that looked fantastic with close proximity to a river. In fact, you can hear the river from the house."
Thomson, his wife, Cheryl, and their two daughters and a son (ages 14, 11 and 8) ended up spending four days hiking in the mountains, swimming in the nearby ancient rock holes, and practicing what he called "off-the-grid living."
"We all unplugged," he explained. At night instead of watching television (there was no TV, only a video monitor with a DVD and VHS player) or surfing the Web (there was Wi-Fi but no computer), they played the board games provided at the house and sat under the stars talking as a family. "Since the trip we have decided to spend one week each month not using electronic devices," said Thomson, who lives in Orange County, California "It will be our attempt to relive the vibe from Kaweah."
Kaweah Cottage (www.KaweahCottage.com), with its American clay interior walls, formaldehyde-free plywood, dual-pane glazing and sustainably harvested wood, is just one of a growing number of green homes around the world now available for vacation rentals. Just as Kaweah Cottage is situated on a hillside near the Kaweah River with views of the Sierra peaks, most eco homes are built into breathtakingly natural settings, so guests can enjoy both an indoor and outdoor green experience. Kaweah Cottage even has an organic garden where guests can pick fresh arugula, squash and tomatoes.
James and Kathleen Seligman, with their now grown daughter, have lived on the property for the past 20 years in a house about 150 feet from Kaweah Cottage (a yurt stands in between). The couple built the cottage in 2006 as a two-bedroom overflow for family and friends but then decided to rent it out to offset some of the costs.
Dana Mayer, the owner with her husband, Stephen Carroll, of two eco-friendly vacation homes (one in Sedona, Arizona, and one in St. Augustine, Florida) and the founder of Ecoluxurylodging.com, a Web site that bills its properties as "healthy alternatives to big box condos and hotel gift shops," said clients get a "bigger space with a smaller footprint" when they rent a green home. Yet she does not want to market her properties only to what she calls "devotees" — hard-core green activists. "That's like preaching to the choir," said Mayer, a Florida resident.
"I offer a great place at the right price and the value added is that it is also eco-friendly," she said, adding that she will have another green rental available in 2009 — in Norway.
To educate her guests, Mayer stocks her houses with a library of green books, videos and resource information, just in case they did not sufficiently check out her Web site, which explains that both properties are solar powered, furnished with organic and natural materials, landscaped with local plants and completely hypoallergenic. In addition, all appliances and fixtures are designed to reduce energy, waste and water use.
Linda Moss, the author of "Organic Places to Stay in the U.K.," in 1999 founded a Web site, www.organicholidays.co.uk, with links to green rental homes and small inns in nearly 60 countries from Bali to Bulgaria. She said she has seen a huge increase in her Web traffic this past year. "I think people are becoming nostalgic in this crazy age of technology," she said, "searching for life as it used to be — more simple, more thoughtful about the way we treat the land we live on and more sensitive about the food we eat."
One simple but stunning property on her Web site is Ravens Havens in Paradise Valley, British Columbia (www.ravenshavens.com), a 40-minute drive from Whistler in what is called the Sea to Sky Corridor, an area that includes two historic routes, the Pemberton Trail and the Gold Rush Heritage Trail. The two-bedroom cabin with salvaged hardwood floors and hand-hewn timbers has both modern amenities and rustic features: a gas oven as well as a woodstove, a shower and a claw-foot tub.
Claudia Annett and her husband, Ian (not coincidentally in the timber-framing business), along with their daughter, Tanisha, began homesteading the heavily forested land the cottage now sits on in 1992. They created a number of vegetable, herb and flower gardens, as well as the cottage, on the property adjacent to her father's farm. Below is a river within hiking distance and a forest path where guests can join Annett, who has two horses, on evening rides. "People come here to connect to nature and eat better," she said. "We offer them fresh eggs, free-range chicken and produce from the garden, all organically farmed."
Those looking for a more boutique eco experience might want to check out Natural Retreats, 18 luxurious yet environmentally sensitive homes that have just been built within the Yorkshire Dales National Park in England (www.naturalretreats.com).
"In the U.K. there is a back-to-basics trend occurring," said Ewan Kearney, one of the directors of Natural Retreats, which plans in 2009 to have more residences open in the Lake District, Snowdonia and the North York Moors. "People want to go walking in beautiful landscapes rather than lie on a beach boiling in the Mediterranean."
"My background is in the luxury travel industry," he said, "and these residences, because they are all made with natural materials, are very high quality."
A portion of the rental proceeds goes toward supporting the local Wildlife Trust, he said, and the "Welcome Hamper" of cheeses and vegetables all comes from nearby farms. "But," Kearney said, "our goal is not to rub guests down with all the sustainability issues. Better for them to just come and enjoy it and see the difference."
Dana Mayer agreed, and said she thought the whole green marketing movement could become too aggressive. "The truth is," she said, "who doesn't want to be green, breathing clean air, eating fresh food and sleeping in a non-toxic environment? Once they are here, they learn about it and see the added benefit."
Tech - Xray friendly bag
The Transportation Security Administration had planned to brief and train screeners by September to recognize and handle newly designed luggage bags that would enable travelers to keep laptops in their cases at airport security checkpoints.
But that has changed. Because at least one company already has the new bags on the market, the agency accelerated the timetable and will have its officers up to speed by Aug. 16, a spokeswoman for the agency, Ellen Howe, said.
Initially, September had seemed about right. After all, once the agency gave the green light to the concept, various manufacturers needed time to design new "checkpoint friendly" cases that met agency's specifications and get them into production.
The specifications require a bag design that allows the X-ray equipment to have a clear view of the laptop itself, unobstructed by pockets, flaps or extra gear like power cords.
Several big manufacturers said they expected to have products available by late September or mid-October. So agency officials thought they had until after the U.S. Labor Day to get ready.
"I guess they underestimated the American entrepreneur," said Ben Bosma, general manager of a small aviation and travel accessories company, Aerovation Products, in Tipp City, Ohio.
Bosma's company, which he operates with his wife, Ginny, already has checkpoint-friendly bags on the market. Bosma said he has sold (and in some cases given away as promotions) about 1,100 bags.
"It's very important to be first in the marketplace," said Bosma, a former Air Force pilot. Before it joined the rush to produce checkpoint-friendly bags, Aerovation specialized in specialty baseball caps for pilots to wear comfortably under bulky headsets.
The Chinese factory that makes Aerovation's caps promptly took the designs for the new laptop bags and began turning them out, he said. The bags were snapped up as soon as they arrived in the United States by travelers who did not want to deal with removing laptops from cases and placing them on the X-ray belt at security gates, he said.
It is not laziness that makes travelers want to circumvent the rule, which is right up there with having to remove shoes as checkpoint irritations. They see their unprotected laptops trundle along the checkpoint belt to be rudely deposited into a pileup at the other end. In the commotion, there is the potential for damage, theft and misplacement.
"I'm extremely paranoid about my laptop when I come to the checkpoint," said Jim Lahren, the vice president for marketing at Briggs & Riley, a big travel luggage company. Briggs & Riley announced last week that it would be the "first to market" with new laptop bags, which it expects to have available in retail stores on Aug. 15.
But Bosma's little company had already quietly claimed the title. Being first, of course, can have a price. Some customers complained to Bosma that some airport screeners had told them they knew nothing about the new rule and required owners of checkpoint-friendly bags to remove their laptops just like everyone else.
So Bosma posted a disclaimer on the Aerovation Web site (www.aerovation.com) that says, in part: "We've had customers who've been told to remove their laptops from the bag for screening. This isn't the fault of the bag. TSA is moving as quickly as possible to deploy signage and new standard operating procedures to their screeners."
Agency officials were amazed that a retailer could get the bags produced so quickly. "We'll get the word out," Kip Hawley, director of the agency, told me the other day. The agency is now accelerating training and other procedures to be ready by mid-August.
The bags come in various styles. The most basic design is a protective sleeve that can be slipped out from a carry-on bag. More complex designs include a laptop compartment that unzips and can be folded down flat on the belt.
Most big travel luggage manufacturers are rushing to get new models of checkpoint bags out. Targus, the largest maker of cases for laptops and notebooks, began production in China early last month, and says that the first of its new models will be available by October
But that has changed. Because at least one company already has the new bags on the market, the agency accelerated the timetable and will have its officers up to speed by Aug. 16, a spokeswoman for the agency, Ellen Howe, said.
Initially, September had seemed about right. After all, once the agency gave the green light to the concept, various manufacturers needed time to design new "checkpoint friendly" cases that met agency's specifications and get them into production.
The specifications require a bag design that allows the X-ray equipment to have a clear view of the laptop itself, unobstructed by pockets, flaps or extra gear like power cords.
Several big manufacturers said they expected to have products available by late September or mid-October. So agency officials thought they had until after the U.S. Labor Day to get ready.
"I guess they underestimated the American entrepreneur," said Ben Bosma, general manager of a small aviation and travel accessories company, Aerovation Products, in Tipp City, Ohio.
Bosma's company, which he operates with his wife, Ginny, already has checkpoint-friendly bags on the market. Bosma said he has sold (and in some cases given away as promotions) about 1,100 bags.
"It's very important to be first in the marketplace," said Bosma, a former Air Force pilot. Before it joined the rush to produce checkpoint-friendly bags, Aerovation specialized in specialty baseball caps for pilots to wear comfortably under bulky headsets.
The Chinese factory that makes Aerovation's caps promptly took the designs for the new laptop bags and began turning them out, he said. The bags were snapped up as soon as they arrived in the United States by travelers who did not want to deal with removing laptops from cases and placing them on the X-ray belt at security gates, he said.
It is not laziness that makes travelers want to circumvent the rule, which is right up there with having to remove shoes as checkpoint irritations. They see their unprotected laptops trundle along the checkpoint belt to be rudely deposited into a pileup at the other end. In the commotion, there is the potential for damage, theft and misplacement.
"I'm extremely paranoid about my laptop when I come to the checkpoint," said Jim Lahren, the vice president for marketing at Briggs & Riley, a big travel luggage company. Briggs & Riley announced last week that it would be the "first to market" with new laptop bags, which it expects to have available in retail stores on Aug. 15.
But Bosma's little company had already quietly claimed the title. Being first, of course, can have a price. Some customers complained to Bosma that some airport screeners had told them they knew nothing about the new rule and required owners of checkpoint-friendly bags to remove their laptops just like everyone else.
So Bosma posted a disclaimer on the Aerovation Web site (www.aerovation.com) that says, in part: "We've had customers who've been told to remove their laptops from the bag for screening. This isn't the fault of the bag. TSA is moving as quickly as possible to deploy signage and new standard operating procedures to their screeners."
Agency officials were amazed that a retailer could get the bags produced so quickly. "We'll get the word out," Kip Hawley, director of the agency, told me the other day. The agency is now accelerating training and other procedures to be ready by mid-August.
The bags come in various styles. The most basic design is a protective sleeve that can be slipped out from a carry-on bag. More complex designs include a laptop compartment that unzips and can be folded down flat on the belt.
Most big travel luggage manufacturers are rushing to get new models of checkpoint bags out. Targus, the largest maker of cases for laptops and notebooks, began production in China early last month, and says that the first of its new models will be available by October
India - Mobile Banking
It can scale mountains in a single bound and wend its way down the most wretched roads. It is the mighty cellphone signal - and the latest hope for bringing financial services to the world's masses who do not have access to banks.
Grameen Solutions, an affiliate of the Grameen Bank that was created by the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, this week teamed with Obopay, a mobile payment company based in California, to provide banking to a billion poor people using cellphones.
"Today, it's difficult to reach these people," Aditya Menon, Obopay's executive director for India, said at a news conference in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. "If you solve that problem, you are enabling them to enter the economy."
The joint venture plans to introduce pilot programs in India and Bangladesh in October and aims to reach a billion people globally by 2018, in large part by keeping costs ultra low - possibly through the help of charitable foundations.
Obopay, whose partners include Verizon Wireless, Citigroup, the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and AT&T, is already active in the United States, where customers who want to send money pay 10 cents for every transaction. After opening an Obopay account, you can transfer money between bank accounts, credit cards and phones via text messages.
Carol Realini, Obopay's founder and chief executive, did not say what the transaction fees would be for India and Bangladesh.
The announcement comes at a time of increasing convergence between telecom and financial services, especially in the developing world, where far more people have access to cellphones than banks. Mobile banking services have already proven popular in countries like the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa.
The payoff could be big for companies providing these services. People who are now "unbanked" in China, India and Brazil alone could generate $85 billion in banking revenue by 2015, according to an estimate by Boston Consulting Group.
In January, ICICI Bank of India, one of the country's largest banks, presented a mobile banking system. The State Bank of India, which has more than 100 million customers, many of whom do not have Internet access, has tapped the Indian telecom company Spanco Telesystems & Solutions to set up its mobile banking systems.
The Bank of India, another public sector bank, also plans to introduce mobile services soon, allowing customers to transfer funds, pay bills and even buy movie tickets over the phone.
All, however, have to wait for the finalization of national mobile banking guidelines, which the Reserve Bank of India says will happen soon. A Reserve Bank spokeswoman, Alpana Killawala, said she could provide a more specific timeframe.
For now, Indian banks are restricted to offering informational services, like account balances and ATM locations.
Killawala emphasized that the Reserve Bank supported the nascent technology. She cited a pilot project with a women's group in a remote district of Andhara Pradesh, a largely rural state in southern India, where the participants, most of whom could not read and write, found the technology "convenient to use."
Dean Tong, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, said the idea began to accelerate about four years ago, partially by accident. When Globe Telecom let cellphone users in the Philippines transfer wireless minutes to each other, the mostly poor consumers turned the minutes into a currency.
Globe followed by introducing G-Cash, which lets customers transfer funds by text message.
Mobile banking could be another area where the developing world leapfrogs the developed world, which is often constrained by expensive, pre-existing infrastructure. For example, countries like India and Cambodia have often skipped the construction of land lines in favor of installing only mobile phone technology.
Similarly, it is far easier to improve rural cellphone coverage than it is to build countless bank branches to serve a billion people tucked away in remote areas. Already more than three billion people around the world have mobile access, with emerging markets responsible for 85 percent of new connections, according to the GSM Association, a mobile phone trade group.
Still, hurdles remain before mobile banking becomes widely used. Network operators must have broad enough coverage to connect urban and rural users, as many remittances come from urban migrants sending money back to their family villages. It can also be hard to convince villagers, many of whom are new to the concept of banking, that a virtual bank is a safe place to stash their hard-earned cash.
"The trust must be there," Tong said. "'Put your money here, and oh, by the way, there's nothing actually there.' That's a bit of a hard sell."
Grameen Solutions, an affiliate of the Grameen Bank that was created by the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, this week teamed with Obopay, a mobile payment company based in California, to provide banking to a billion poor people using cellphones.
"Today, it's difficult to reach these people," Aditya Menon, Obopay's executive director for India, said at a news conference in the Indian financial capital of Mumbai. "If you solve that problem, you are enabling them to enter the economy."
The joint venture plans to introduce pilot programs in India and Bangladesh in October and aims to reach a billion people globally by 2018, in large part by keeping costs ultra low - possibly through the help of charitable foundations.
Obopay, whose partners include Verizon Wireless, Citigroup, the BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and AT&T, is already active in the United States, where customers who want to send money pay 10 cents for every transaction. After opening an Obopay account, you can transfer money between bank accounts, credit cards and phones via text messages.
Carol Realini, Obopay's founder and chief executive, did not say what the transaction fees would be for India and Bangladesh.
The announcement comes at a time of increasing convergence between telecom and financial services, especially in the developing world, where far more people have access to cellphones than banks. Mobile banking services have already proven popular in countries like the Philippines, Kenya and South Africa.
The payoff could be big for companies providing these services. People who are now "unbanked" in China, India and Brazil alone could generate $85 billion in banking revenue by 2015, according to an estimate by Boston Consulting Group.
In January, ICICI Bank of India, one of the country's largest banks, presented a mobile banking system. The State Bank of India, which has more than 100 million customers, many of whom do not have Internet access, has tapped the Indian telecom company Spanco Telesystems & Solutions to set up its mobile banking systems.
The Bank of India, another public sector bank, also plans to introduce mobile services soon, allowing customers to transfer funds, pay bills and even buy movie tickets over the phone.
All, however, have to wait for the finalization of national mobile banking guidelines, which the Reserve Bank of India says will happen soon. A Reserve Bank spokeswoman, Alpana Killawala, said she could provide a more specific timeframe.
For now, Indian banks are restricted to offering informational services, like account balances and ATM locations.
Killawala emphasized that the Reserve Bank supported the nascent technology. She cited a pilot project with a women's group in a remote district of Andhara Pradesh, a largely rural state in southern India, where the participants, most of whom could not read and write, found the technology "convenient to use."
Dean Tong, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, said the idea began to accelerate about four years ago, partially by accident. When Globe Telecom let cellphone users in the Philippines transfer wireless minutes to each other, the mostly poor consumers turned the minutes into a currency.
Globe followed by introducing G-Cash, which lets customers transfer funds by text message.
Mobile banking could be another area where the developing world leapfrogs the developed world, which is often constrained by expensive, pre-existing infrastructure. For example, countries like India and Cambodia have often skipped the construction of land lines in favor of installing only mobile phone technology.
Similarly, it is far easier to improve rural cellphone coverage than it is to build countless bank branches to serve a billion people tucked away in remote areas. Already more than three billion people around the world have mobile access, with emerging markets responsible for 85 percent of new connections, according to the GSM Association, a mobile phone trade group.
Still, hurdles remain before mobile banking becomes widely used. Network operators must have broad enough coverage to connect urban and rural users, as many remittances come from urban migrants sending money back to their family villages. It can also be hard to convince villagers, many of whom are new to the concept of banking, that a virtual bank is a safe place to stash their hard-earned cash.
"The trust must be there," Tong said. "'Put your money here, and oh, by the way, there's nothing actually there.' That's a bit of a hard sell."
Mktg - Coke campaign focuses on what's not in the coke
The famous Coca-Cola secret formula is becoming just a little less secret.
For more than a century, Coke has fiercely guarded its recipe, created in 1886 by John Pemberton, a druggist in Atlanta who was trying to concoct a health drink. In recent decades the company has spun an aura of mystery around the formula - partly for competitive reasons, but also as a marketing tool.
In a campaign introduced last month in Britain, Coke divulged a few factoids about the formula. It has "no added preservatives or artificial flavors." Its mastermind, Pemberton, selected "the best spices from around the world." And the recipe has not changed in 122 years.
That final detail has cut both ways for Coca-Cola, which faced near-insurrection in the 1980s when it attempted to tinker with the formula but now must confront public perceptions that its flagship drink is unhealthy or unnatural.
"When we talked to consumers about Coke, we realized they didn't know that it has no added preservatives or artificial flavors," said Cathryn Sleight, marketing director of Coca-Cola Great Britain. "We felt it was important to reassure Coke drinkers of this fact."
Coca-Cola Great Britain will print the line "no added preservatives or artificial flavors" on the tens of millions of cans and bottles of Coke it sells each year in Britain. It has also set up a Web site, letsgettogether.co.uk, where it answers questions about the formula - without giving away any secrets, of course.
One consumer put the question to the Web site bluntly: "What are the ingredients?" The answer was: "You'll find all the ingredients in Coke and all the other drinks we sell on their can or bottle." For Coca-Cola, the site explains, that means carbonated water, sugar, caffeine, phosphoric acid, caramel for color, and "natural flavorings."
The Web site, part of a campaign called "Pemberton," was created by Santo, an Argentine agency, and is being rolled out around the world throughout this year. The campaign, which has television and print components, hit Austria and Switzerland in April, then broke in Britain in July. In the United States, it began airing July 4 and will run through the Olympics on NBC.
"'Pemberton' is more fact-based, affirming for consumers that Coca-Cola never has had, and never will have, added preservatives or artificial flavors," said Cristina Bondolowski, global brand director for Coca-Cola.
Carbonated soft drinks have waned in popularity as people have turned to alternatives that they consider more natural, like waters and teas. Coca-Cola and other cola makers have also been under pressure from health lobbies and government officials about childhood obesity.
The "Pemberton" campaign is not aimed at depicting regular Coke as a diet drink. The Web site says that a 250 milliliter serving - about 8.5 ounces - has 105 calories, which represent 5 percent of the recommended daily intake for an adult.
The campaign is a bit of a departure for Coke, which usually tries to link its brand to the image of young, vibrant people having fun.
Jasmine Montgomery, managing director of FutureBrand U.K., a brand consulting division of McCann-Erickson WorldGroup, said Coca-Cola took a risk by deviating from its "long history of very entertaining, aspirational advertising." People rely on Coke to produce commercials that influence pop culture, she said.
"I'm very skeptical about whether a campaign about no additives or preservatives is the way to go," Montgomery said. "Coke's big strength has always been the lifestyle and the attitude of the brand - not its health credentials."
Many previous campaigns have celebrated the drink's taste, saying that it is "less sweet" than Pepsi, but this is the first time the company has focused squarely on the ingredients.
The change of tack may have something to do with a new drink, Pepsi Raw, that was introduced in Britain in February. PepsiCo says that by replacing corn syrup with cane sugar in Pepsi Raw, it has reduced the calorie content of a 300 milliliter serving - about 10 ounces - to 90 calories from 120.
For the time being, the drink has only been introduced in Britain, where it is the first new formulation Pepsi has added to its line in more than 10 years. Pepsi also boasts that Pepsi Raw is made from natural ingredients and contains no artificial preservatives, colors, flavorings or sweeteners.
Coke and Pepsi seem to be "responding to a global trend," Montgomery said. "Obesity, and health issues in general are hot topics at the moment, and they are not going to go away."
Companies that make sugared soft drinks "are having to work out what their future looks like in this very health and diet-obsessed world, and it is a source of considerable anxiety," she said.
While the "Pemberton" campaign highlights Coke's ingredients, a second campaign introduced last month in Britain, "Intrinsics," focuses on the taste.
A TV advertisement called "Share the Love" shows a man phoning a friend who is sitting on a crowded commuter train then opening a Coke, pouring it and drinking it, to make his friend jealous.
"Intrinsics" includes TV ads by Wieden + Kennedy, plus outdoor and radio components by Mother, a British agency. Mother has also contributed a series of so-called blipverts, or five-second TV ads, which depict the sounds and noises associated with drinking a Coke, together with images of the cap being taken off a bottle of Coke, for example, or ice being put into a glass.
Because they are so short, the blipverts themselves are an unusual departure. Coke has used them before to advertise Fanta, but they still represent a relatively new approach.
"The aim of the blipverts is not to try to tell a big story," said Andy Medd, a partner at Mother. "We're simply creating anticipation of desire. It's very simple."
Bondolowski, the Coke brand director, said that "Intrinsics" made a more emotional appeal than "Pemberton." The goal is "reminding consumers of the pleasure of enjoying an ice cold Coke, evoking positive feelings and memories about the brand and the product," she said.
For more than a century, Coke has fiercely guarded its recipe, created in 1886 by John Pemberton, a druggist in Atlanta who was trying to concoct a health drink. In recent decades the company has spun an aura of mystery around the formula - partly for competitive reasons, but also as a marketing tool.
In a campaign introduced last month in Britain, Coke divulged a few factoids about the formula. It has "no added preservatives or artificial flavors." Its mastermind, Pemberton, selected "the best spices from around the world." And the recipe has not changed in 122 years.
That final detail has cut both ways for Coca-Cola, which faced near-insurrection in the 1980s when it attempted to tinker with the formula but now must confront public perceptions that its flagship drink is unhealthy or unnatural.
"When we talked to consumers about Coke, we realized they didn't know that it has no added preservatives or artificial flavors," said Cathryn Sleight, marketing director of Coca-Cola Great Britain. "We felt it was important to reassure Coke drinkers of this fact."
Coca-Cola Great Britain will print the line "no added preservatives or artificial flavors" on the tens of millions of cans and bottles of Coke it sells each year in Britain. It has also set up a Web site, letsgettogether.co.uk, where it answers questions about the formula - without giving away any secrets, of course.
One consumer put the question to the Web site bluntly: "What are the ingredients?" The answer was: "You'll find all the ingredients in Coke and all the other drinks we sell on their can or bottle." For Coca-Cola, the site explains, that means carbonated water, sugar, caffeine, phosphoric acid, caramel for color, and "natural flavorings."
The Web site, part of a campaign called "Pemberton," was created by Santo, an Argentine agency, and is being rolled out around the world throughout this year. The campaign, which has television and print components, hit Austria and Switzerland in April, then broke in Britain in July. In the United States, it began airing July 4 and will run through the Olympics on NBC.
"'Pemberton' is more fact-based, affirming for consumers that Coca-Cola never has had, and never will have, added preservatives or artificial flavors," said Cristina Bondolowski, global brand director for Coca-Cola.
Carbonated soft drinks have waned in popularity as people have turned to alternatives that they consider more natural, like waters and teas. Coca-Cola and other cola makers have also been under pressure from health lobbies and government officials about childhood obesity.
The "Pemberton" campaign is not aimed at depicting regular Coke as a diet drink. The Web site says that a 250 milliliter serving - about 8.5 ounces - has 105 calories, which represent 5 percent of the recommended daily intake for an adult.
The campaign is a bit of a departure for Coke, which usually tries to link its brand to the image of young, vibrant people having fun.
Jasmine Montgomery, managing director of FutureBrand U.K., a brand consulting division of McCann-Erickson WorldGroup, said Coca-Cola took a risk by deviating from its "long history of very entertaining, aspirational advertising." People rely on Coke to produce commercials that influence pop culture, she said.
"I'm very skeptical about whether a campaign about no additives or preservatives is the way to go," Montgomery said. "Coke's big strength has always been the lifestyle and the attitude of the brand - not its health credentials."
Many previous campaigns have celebrated the drink's taste, saying that it is "less sweet" than Pepsi, but this is the first time the company has focused squarely on the ingredients.
The change of tack may have something to do with a new drink, Pepsi Raw, that was introduced in Britain in February. PepsiCo says that by replacing corn syrup with cane sugar in Pepsi Raw, it has reduced the calorie content of a 300 milliliter serving - about 10 ounces - to 90 calories from 120.
For the time being, the drink has only been introduced in Britain, where it is the first new formulation Pepsi has added to its line in more than 10 years. Pepsi also boasts that Pepsi Raw is made from natural ingredients and contains no artificial preservatives, colors, flavorings or sweeteners.
Coke and Pepsi seem to be "responding to a global trend," Montgomery said. "Obesity, and health issues in general are hot topics at the moment, and they are not going to go away."
Companies that make sugared soft drinks "are having to work out what their future looks like in this very health and diet-obsessed world, and it is a source of considerable anxiety," she said.
While the "Pemberton" campaign highlights Coke's ingredients, a second campaign introduced last month in Britain, "Intrinsics," focuses on the taste.
A TV advertisement called "Share the Love" shows a man phoning a friend who is sitting on a crowded commuter train then opening a Coke, pouring it and drinking it, to make his friend jealous.
"Intrinsics" includes TV ads by Wieden + Kennedy, plus outdoor and radio components by Mother, a British agency. Mother has also contributed a series of so-called blipverts, or five-second TV ads, which depict the sounds and noises associated with drinking a Coke, together with images of the cap being taken off a bottle of Coke, for example, or ice being put into a glass.
Because they are so short, the blipverts themselves are an unusual departure. Coke has used them before to advertise Fanta, but they still represent a relatively new approach.
"The aim of the blipverts is not to try to tell a big story," said Andy Medd, a partner at Mother. "We're simply creating anticipation of desire. It's very simple."
Bondolowski, the Coke brand director, said that "Intrinsics" made a more emotional appeal than "Pemberton." The goal is "reminding consumers of the pleasure of enjoying an ice cold Coke, evoking positive feelings and memories about the brand and the product," she said.
Lifestyle - Baghdad High
In the green glow of nighttime video, a young Iraqi tries to get his family's generator running again. "There's a battle going on," he says to the camera with which he's filming himself. "There's an airplane up above and shooting in the street. Should I go and film it? I may get shot." As gunfire echoes somewhere, frustration sets in.
"Is it my job to be an oil mechanic?" he asks. "I should be studying now."
"Baghdad High" is not the first documentary for which high school students have been handed cameras and asked to record their daily lives. But the stakes are different when driving to school in the morning could mean being shot at a checkpoint.
The film, which was shown on British television earlier this year and had its HBO premiere on Monday night, follows four Iraqis - a Sunni, a Shiite, a Kurd and a Christian - through their senior year in 2006-7, ending with the dreaded national exams that will determine if they can go on to college. That's assuming they're still in Baghdad; one of the film's refrains is the question of whether to stay, and during the school year Ali, the reluctant generator repairman, leaves with his family for Kurdish territory.
Ivan O'Mahoney, who produced and directed "Baghdad High" with Laura Winter, says in the press notes that it was fantastic to realize "that people do lead normal lives despite the mayhem." And you can see what he means: boys texting girlfriends, doing homework to the sound of Tupac, cutting Islamic studies to play soccer.
But of course it's the differences that make the film. The way the boys can tell without looking whether it's an Apache or a Chinook helicopter overhead. The way the curtains are always drawn. The level of physical contact and affection among the men, which would be alien to American sensibilities. And the seriousness with which these teenagers take their lives and responsibilities as filmmakers.
The mixture of adolescent high spirits and Baghdad pragmatism can be exhilarating and chilling. In one scene Ali kills time with his best friend, Mohammed, an irrepressible joker who emerges as the film's star. They argue over control of the television; they roughhouse on the couch. "If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north, he should have fired a rocket with Mohammed's socks in it," Ali says. Suddenly Ali is holding a large knife. "He's being naughty!" Mohammed says. Ali holds the knife near Mohammed and says, a little too unemotionally: "Allah! This is the first hostage. I'm going to slaughter him this way." Mohammed tells him to stop fooling around. Ali relents. "He just got a presidential pardon. He can live."
While the boys talk frequently about violence and despair, they rarely discuss politics or ethnic differences (with the exception of Anmar, the Christian) and they almost never directly address the American presence. Whether this reflects their mindset or is a result of editing 300 hours of tape into 90 minutes, we can't tell. We do hear some parental opinions, which are surprisingly neutral. One mother says: "We shouldn't blame the Americans for everything. There is something wrong with us too."
With exams over, Mohammed faces his camera and says, "I'm sorry for having bothered you and bored you and having made your life hell." The irony could be thick, but instead the tone is consistent with the rest of the film: sad and sweet, in equal measure.
"Is it my job to be an oil mechanic?" he asks. "I should be studying now."
"Baghdad High" is not the first documentary for which high school students have been handed cameras and asked to record their daily lives. But the stakes are different when driving to school in the morning could mean being shot at a checkpoint.
The film, which was shown on British television earlier this year and had its HBO premiere on Monday night, follows four Iraqis - a Sunni, a Shiite, a Kurd and a Christian - through their senior year in 2006-7, ending with the dreaded national exams that will determine if they can go on to college. That's assuming they're still in Baghdad; one of the film's refrains is the question of whether to stay, and during the school year Ali, the reluctant generator repairman, leaves with his family for Kurdish territory.
Ivan O'Mahoney, who produced and directed "Baghdad High" with Laura Winter, says in the press notes that it was fantastic to realize "that people do lead normal lives despite the mayhem." And you can see what he means: boys texting girlfriends, doing homework to the sound of Tupac, cutting Islamic studies to play soccer.
But of course it's the differences that make the film. The way the boys can tell without looking whether it's an Apache or a Chinook helicopter overhead. The way the curtains are always drawn. The level of physical contact and affection among the men, which would be alien to American sensibilities. And the seriousness with which these teenagers take their lives and responsibilities as filmmakers.
The mixture of adolescent high spirits and Baghdad pragmatism can be exhilarating and chilling. In one scene Ali kills time with his best friend, Mohammed, an irrepressible joker who emerges as the film's star. They argue over control of the television; they roughhouse on the couch. "If Chemical Ali really wanted to destroy the north, he should have fired a rocket with Mohammed's socks in it," Ali says. Suddenly Ali is holding a large knife. "He's being naughty!" Mohammed says. Ali holds the knife near Mohammed and says, a little too unemotionally: "Allah! This is the first hostage. I'm going to slaughter him this way." Mohammed tells him to stop fooling around. Ali relents. "He just got a presidential pardon. He can live."
While the boys talk frequently about violence and despair, they rarely discuss politics or ethnic differences (with the exception of Anmar, the Christian) and they almost never directly address the American presence. Whether this reflects their mindset or is a result of editing 300 hours of tape into 90 minutes, we can't tell. We do hear some parental opinions, which are surprisingly neutral. One mother says: "We shouldn't blame the Americans for everything. There is something wrong with us too."
With exams over, Mohammed faces his camera and says, "I'm sorry for having bothered you and bored you and having made your life hell." The irony could be thick, but instead the tone is consistent with the rest of the film: sad and sweet, in equal measure.
World - Vulnerable to HIV,Resistant to labels
The 29-year-old is not gay. He wants that known. He did have sex with a man once, but that was the result of loneliness and his hormones' being in overdrive, he said, not because of any attraction to men. He suspects that the one encounter was responsible for giving him the virus that causes AIDS. But he is not gay no matter what anybody may think.
"It was just once," said the man, who goes by the name Eduardo, recounting the sexual liaison he had when he was an illegal immigrant in New York City. He acknowledged that he went back to see the man a second time and noticed then that the man looked sickly.
"I have never felt that I am homosexual because I have never let them make love to me," said Eduardo, who lives an hour outside Mexico City, reflecting an oft-heard sentiment here. "It's the opposite. I penetrate. I have never liked it being done to me." Still, he did not want to be identified further because of the stigma attached.
Long ago, AIDS specialists the world over essentially shelved the terms "gay" and "homosexual" in connection with the epidemic and began referring instead to "men who have sex with men." No matter what label such men apply to themselves — gay, bisexual, transvestite or a heterosexual who experimented for a night or was forced into it — they remain an extremely high-risk group when it comes to HIV
Here in Mexico, where the 17th International AIDS Conference is taking place this week, some hombres que tienen sexo con hombres, or HSHs as they are called, consider themselves gay. Some swear up and down they are straight. Many fall into the gray area in between.
"Sexual identity is a very complex thing," said Hector Carrillo, a professor of human sexuality studies at San Francisco State University who has done research in Mexico. "We like to think that once someone figures out their sexual attraction, they will fit into the categories we've created. But life isn't like that."
HIV and AIDS are concentrated in Mexico among men, particularly those who have sex with other men. While the HIV prevalence in the general population is 0.3 percent, among men who have sex with men it approaches 15 percent.
But this is no homogenous population. Because machismo is pronounced in Mexico and homosexuality is far from accepted, social conditions in the country and in other parts of Latin America force much sexual behavior into the shadows. That increases the challenges that AIDS experts say they face in combating the risky sexual practices that fuel the disease.
For example, when Eduardo was first interviewed, more than a year ago, he referred to the person who gave him HIV as a woman. After months of counseling at a public clinic in connection with his antiretroviral treatments, he now acknowledges that it was a man he had sex with. But he professes no attraction to men.
Experts say that those who live lives of denial, a group that may or may not include Eduardo, frequently engage in high-risk behavior, but do not acknowledge it to anyone, often not even to themselves. Such men are particularly hard to reach in public education campaigns because they bolt or tune out if they sense the message is geared toward gay men.
"I'd say most of the men in Mexico who have sex with men will never recognize that they are gay or bisexual," said Jorge Saavedra, an HIV-positive gay man who directs Mexico's government program to fight AIDS. "Only if you go into in-depth interviews will the information slowly come out. It makes our job all the harder since there is so much shame involved."
Professor Carrillo, who has studied the issue, said that conducting comprehensive surveys on the issue is hard because it is inherently taboo. He said that even north of the border, where homosexuality is far more accepted, some people are uncomfortable with labels and men lead double lives, and he cited the case of James McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who had a wife and resigned in 2004 after revealing he had had an affair with a man.
And the same applies in the rest of the world. A survey in China showed that half the men who had sex with men also had sex with women, with a third of them reporting that they were married, according to Unaids, the United Nations agency. In Senegal, another study cited by Unaids found that 88 percent of men who reported having sex with men said they also had sex with women.
Those women, of course, also face risks. Mexico has promoted condom use and not stressed fidelity as the cornerstone of its anti-AIDS fight, Saavedra said, because if only the woman is faithful, the man could still acquire the virus by having sex with men on the side. Experts call this the "bisexual bridge."
These relationships can be complicated.
Take the case of a 69-year-old married man, who did not want to be identified, and who is in a relationship with a younger lover, Carlos. Carlos, who has a girlfriend and a child and dresses as a woman, prefers the name Yessica.
"It's a bit unusual," the older man acknowledged. His current wife is unaware of his secret life. A previous wife found out, divorced him and has kept their two children away from him for decades.
He arranges his visits to Yessica on one of two cellphones he carries to keep his life in order: one is for his wife, who lets out occasional homophobic comments and who he says would leave him in a minute if she discovered what was going on; the other is for his occasional lover, who is physically male but feels trapped inside a body that is not his own.
The older man and Yessica say they use condoms most of the time to reduce the risk of contracting the virus that causes AIDS. Both say they were tested for HIV a year ago and were negative.
As for his sexual orientation, the older man with the secret life declared, "I'm not the least bit gay."
Acceptance of gay relationships in Mexico has increased significantly, and that change is evident in the recent adoption of a law in Mexico City allowing civil unions for gay couples. The annual gay pride parade in the capital has grown over 30 years from a small group of people marching down a side street to tens of thousands celebrating on the city's main avenue.
All the same, gay slurs are still commonly heard, attacks on gays are regularly reported to the authorities and many gay people opt to live their lives in the closet.
"We have a culture that obliges us to marry," said Luis Manuel Arellano, an openly gay man who has been active in combating the spread of AIDS and has no plans to find a wife. "We grow up learning to be macho, no matter what we think inside."
Martín Márquez Chagoya, a gay man who has had HIV for 14 years and counsels other men, visits a park in central Puebla where men go to have sex with other men, but he said his efforts to promote condom use there often fell on deaf ears. The No. 1 response he hears from men there is that they are not gay and are therefore not at risk. They say they are merely having sex with gays.
Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Puebla, and Lawrence Altman from Mexico City.
"It was just once," said the man, who goes by the name Eduardo, recounting the sexual liaison he had when he was an illegal immigrant in New York City. He acknowledged that he went back to see the man a second time and noticed then that the man looked sickly.
"I have never felt that I am homosexual because I have never let them make love to me," said Eduardo, who lives an hour outside Mexico City, reflecting an oft-heard sentiment here. "It's the opposite. I penetrate. I have never liked it being done to me." Still, he did not want to be identified further because of the stigma attached.
Long ago, AIDS specialists the world over essentially shelved the terms "gay" and "homosexual" in connection with the epidemic and began referring instead to "men who have sex with men." No matter what label such men apply to themselves — gay, bisexual, transvestite or a heterosexual who experimented for a night or was forced into it — they remain an extremely high-risk group when it comes to HIV
Here in Mexico, where the 17th International AIDS Conference is taking place this week, some hombres que tienen sexo con hombres, or HSHs as they are called, consider themselves gay. Some swear up and down they are straight. Many fall into the gray area in between.
"Sexual identity is a very complex thing," said Hector Carrillo, a professor of human sexuality studies at San Francisco State University who has done research in Mexico. "We like to think that once someone figures out their sexual attraction, they will fit into the categories we've created. But life isn't like that."
HIV and AIDS are concentrated in Mexico among men, particularly those who have sex with other men. While the HIV prevalence in the general population is 0.3 percent, among men who have sex with men it approaches 15 percent.
But this is no homogenous population. Because machismo is pronounced in Mexico and homosexuality is far from accepted, social conditions in the country and in other parts of Latin America force much sexual behavior into the shadows. That increases the challenges that AIDS experts say they face in combating the risky sexual practices that fuel the disease.
For example, when Eduardo was first interviewed, more than a year ago, he referred to the person who gave him HIV as a woman. After months of counseling at a public clinic in connection with his antiretroviral treatments, he now acknowledges that it was a man he had sex with. But he professes no attraction to men.
Experts say that those who live lives of denial, a group that may or may not include Eduardo, frequently engage in high-risk behavior, but do not acknowledge it to anyone, often not even to themselves. Such men are particularly hard to reach in public education campaigns because they bolt or tune out if they sense the message is geared toward gay men.
"I'd say most of the men in Mexico who have sex with men will never recognize that they are gay or bisexual," said Jorge Saavedra, an HIV-positive gay man who directs Mexico's government program to fight AIDS. "Only if you go into in-depth interviews will the information slowly come out. It makes our job all the harder since there is so much shame involved."
Professor Carrillo, who has studied the issue, said that conducting comprehensive surveys on the issue is hard because it is inherently taboo. He said that even north of the border, where homosexuality is far more accepted, some people are uncomfortable with labels and men lead double lives, and he cited the case of James McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who had a wife and resigned in 2004 after revealing he had had an affair with a man.
And the same applies in the rest of the world. A survey in China showed that half the men who had sex with men also had sex with women, with a third of them reporting that they were married, according to Unaids, the United Nations agency. In Senegal, another study cited by Unaids found that 88 percent of men who reported having sex with men said they also had sex with women.
Those women, of course, also face risks. Mexico has promoted condom use and not stressed fidelity as the cornerstone of its anti-AIDS fight, Saavedra said, because if only the woman is faithful, the man could still acquire the virus by having sex with men on the side. Experts call this the "bisexual bridge."
These relationships can be complicated.
Take the case of a 69-year-old married man, who did not want to be identified, and who is in a relationship with a younger lover, Carlos. Carlos, who has a girlfriend and a child and dresses as a woman, prefers the name Yessica.
"It's a bit unusual," the older man acknowledged. His current wife is unaware of his secret life. A previous wife found out, divorced him and has kept their two children away from him for decades.
He arranges his visits to Yessica on one of two cellphones he carries to keep his life in order: one is for his wife, who lets out occasional homophobic comments and who he says would leave him in a minute if she discovered what was going on; the other is for his occasional lover, who is physically male but feels trapped inside a body that is not his own.
The older man and Yessica say they use condoms most of the time to reduce the risk of contracting the virus that causes AIDS. Both say they were tested for HIV a year ago and were negative.
As for his sexual orientation, the older man with the secret life declared, "I'm not the least bit gay."
Acceptance of gay relationships in Mexico has increased significantly, and that change is evident in the recent adoption of a law in Mexico City allowing civil unions for gay couples. The annual gay pride parade in the capital has grown over 30 years from a small group of people marching down a side street to tens of thousands celebrating on the city's main avenue.
All the same, gay slurs are still commonly heard, attacks on gays are regularly reported to the authorities and many gay people opt to live their lives in the closet.
"We have a culture that obliges us to marry," said Luis Manuel Arellano, an openly gay man who has been active in combating the spread of AIDS and has no plans to find a wife. "We grow up learning to be macho, no matter what we think inside."
Martín Márquez Chagoya, a gay man who has had HIV for 14 years and counsels other men, visits a park in central Puebla where men go to have sex with other men, but he said his efforts to promote condom use there often fell on deaf ears. The No. 1 response he hears from men there is that they are not gay and are therefore not at risk. They say they are merely having sex with gays.
Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting from Puebla, and Lawrence Altman from Mexico City.
Lifestyle - A few coffee facts
When Howard Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America's leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions.
Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.
But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.
Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.
Caffeine Myths
Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.
Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.
So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body's daily water needs.
Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.
"Contrary to common belief," concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is "little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk" of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.
In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women's Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.
Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.
Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.
In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.
And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.
Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.
Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine's negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine's effect on their bones.
Weight loss. Here's a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn't.
Health Benefits
Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.
Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.
For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.
Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee's popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease.
Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee's antioxidants and chlorogenic acid
Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.
But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.
Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.
Caffeine Myths
Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.
Hydration. It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.
So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body's daily water needs.
Heart disease. Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.
"Contrary to common belief," concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is "little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk" of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.
In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women's Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.
Hypertension. Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.
Cancer. Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.
In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.
And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.
Bone loss. Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.
Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine's negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine's effect on their bones.
Weight loss. Here's a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn't.
Health Benefits
Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.
Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.
For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.
Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee's popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease.
Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee's antioxidants and chlorogenic acid
World - German townfolk wonder ,how green is too green ?
This fairy-tale town is stuck in the middle of a utopian struggle over renewable energy. The town council's decision to require solar-heating panels has thrown Marburg into a vehement debate over the boundaries of ecological good citizenship and led opponents to charge that their genteel town has turned into a "green dictatorship."
The town council took the significant step in June of moving from merely encouraging citizens to install solar panels to making them an obligation. The ordinance, the first of its kind in Germany, would require solar panels not only on new buildings, which fewer people oppose, but also on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs.
To give the regulation teeth, a fine of €1,000, about $1,500, awaits those who do not comply.
Critics howled that the rule constituted an attack on the rights of property owners. The regional government in Giessen stepped in and warned that it would overturn the rule.
City officials in Marburg said, in turn, that they would take their case either to administrative court or all the way to the Hessian state capital, Wiesbaden, where they would try to get the state building code changed to protect their ordinance from officials in Giessen.
In the middle of this political chess match sit homeowners like Götz Schönherr.
From his deck, Schönherr can see the town's famous hilltop Gothic castle as well as two of its three power-generating windmills. On his roof, a solar panel glints in the sunlight. He uses the solar energy to heat his water, allowing him to turn off his boiler for roughly six months a year, a boon for his pocketbook but a decision he said he made for the sake of the environment.
And yet Schönherr opposes the new ordinance.
Schönherr had hoped to reinsulate his home, but to do so, and satisfy the solar regulation, he would have to install a larger solar panel. It would have cost him close to $8,000.
"That leads, in my case, and I would think in other cases as well, that people say, 'Well, let's just not reinsulate the roof,"' Schönherr said. "So it's absolutely counterproductive."
Officials in Giessen agree. "We have no problem with the use of solar energy," said Manfred Kersten, press spokesman for the regional government in Giessen, "but this was a poorly constructed ordinance."
Germany is one of the world's top champions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting renewable energy. Thanks to hefty federal subsidies, the country is by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity.
Marburg, a historic university town where the Brothers Grimm once studied, is a model of enlightened energy production and consumption.
In addition to the windmills and solar installations, the town's utility company buys hydroelectric power from Austria, is transitioning its fleet of buses and other vehicles to natural gas and even lights footpaths with solar-powered lamps.
As a result, the Marburg dispute sometimes feels like an argument between the enlightened environmentalists and the really enlightened environmentalists.
"Marburg is already a leader when it comes to the use of solar energy, but up until now they've always tried to convince people rather than forcing them," said Hermann Uchtmann, the opposition politician behind the "green dictatorship" charge who leads a local citizens political group, the Marburger Bürgerliste.
Like Schönherr, who is also a member of the group, Uchtmann hardly fits the predictable mold of the Luddite opponent of renewable energy.
He is a chemist at the local university who once built a solar-powered desalinization plant for the town's sister city of Sfax, Tunisia.
"It's unfortunate that they decided to compel people, because I think you breed opponents that way rather than friends of solar energy," Uchtmann said. He said he found the demands too invasive for existing homes, especially in the case of older citizens who might not live long enough to justify the upfront costs of installing the solar systems.
"I'm right up against the border myself," said Uchtmann, who is 64. But he said he could support a solar-heating requirement for new buildings.
Because the town of 80,000 has a level population and relatively few new homes are built here, restricting the measure to new construction would not go far enough for the politicians behind it.
"We have a serious energy problem with the older homes," Marburg's deputy mayor, Franz Kahle, said in an interview at the historic town hall on the city's colorful market square. To make a real leap forward, he said, a dramatic step was necessary.
"Before, solar installations were the exception, and their absence was the rule," Kahle said. "We want to get to the point where the opposite is the case." He pointed out that building codes constantly dictated what property owners could and could not do with their homes and said the solar regulation already offered exceptions for cases of hardship or alternatives for those living in the shadiest spots.
Marburg's proposal, which is to go into effect on Oct. 1, has attracted attention nationwide as a model for environmentally active politicians.
"What they are doing in Marburg is good and progressive, and we, and other cities, need to move forward with similar initiatives as well," said Birgit Simon, a member of the Green Party and deputy mayor of Offenbach am Main, a city just east of Frankfurt. She said she hoped a coalition of left-of-center parties in the state Parliament could change the building codes to make the Marburg ordinance sustainable and imitable.
Among Marburgers interviewed one sunny afternoon this week, there was near universal support for the goals of the ordinance but an almost equal level of confusion about its exact nature.
"In principle, it's a really good idea," said Cornelia Janus, 35, who works at the university. But she questioned whether the costs might be too high and whether historic buildings and monuments would be protected.
"For a city like Marburg," she said, gazing toward the churches and the castle arrayed along the hillside, which draw tourists from around the world, "that's pretty important, too."
The town council took the significant step in June of moving from merely encouraging citizens to install solar panels to making them an obligation. The ordinance, the first of its kind in Germany, would require solar panels not only on new buildings, which fewer people oppose, but also on existing homes that undergo renovations or get new heating systems or roof repairs.
To give the regulation teeth, a fine of €1,000, about $1,500, awaits those who do not comply.
Critics howled that the rule constituted an attack on the rights of property owners. The regional government in Giessen stepped in and warned that it would overturn the rule.
City officials in Marburg said, in turn, that they would take their case either to administrative court or all the way to the Hessian state capital, Wiesbaden, where they would try to get the state building code changed to protect their ordinance from officials in Giessen.
In the middle of this political chess match sit homeowners like Götz Schönherr.
From his deck, Schönherr can see the town's famous hilltop Gothic castle as well as two of its three power-generating windmills. On his roof, a solar panel glints in the sunlight. He uses the solar energy to heat his water, allowing him to turn off his boiler for roughly six months a year, a boon for his pocketbook but a decision he said he made for the sake of the environment.
And yet Schönherr opposes the new ordinance.
Schönherr had hoped to reinsulate his home, but to do so, and satisfy the solar regulation, he would have to install a larger solar panel. It would have cost him close to $8,000.
"That leads, in my case, and I would think in other cases as well, that people say, 'Well, let's just not reinsulate the roof,"' Schönherr said. "So it's absolutely counterproductive."
Officials in Giessen agree. "We have no problem with the use of solar energy," said Manfred Kersten, press spokesman for the regional government in Giessen, "but this was a poorly constructed ordinance."
Germany is one of the world's top champions of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting renewable energy. Thanks to hefty federal subsidies, the country is by far the largest market for photovoltaic systems, which convert sunlight into electricity.
Marburg, a historic university town where the Brothers Grimm once studied, is a model of enlightened energy production and consumption.
In addition to the windmills and solar installations, the town's utility company buys hydroelectric power from Austria, is transitioning its fleet of buses and other vehicles to natural gas and even lights footpaths with solar-powered lamps.
As a result, the Marburg dispute sometimes feels like an argument between the enlightened environmentalists and the really enlightened environmentalists.
"Marburg is already a leader when it comes to the use of solar energy, but up until now they've always tried to convince people rather than forcing them," said Hermann Uchtmann, the opposition politician behind the "green dictatorship" charge who leads a local citizens political group, the Marburger Bürgerliste.
Like Schönherr, who is also a member of the group, Uchtmann hardly fits the predictable mold of the Luddite opponent of renewable energy.
He is a chemist at the local university who once built a solar-powered desalinization plant for the town's sister city of Sfax, Tunisia.
"It's unfortunate that they decided to compel people, because I think you breed opponents that way rather than friends of solar energy," Uchtmann said. He said he found the demands too invasive for existing homes, especially in the case of older citizens who might not live long enough to justify the upfront costs of installing the solar systems.
"I'm right up against the border myself," said Uchtmann, who is 64. But he said he could support a solar-heating requirement for new buildings.
Because the town of 80,000 has a level population and relatively few new homes are built here, restricting the measure to new construction would not go far enough for the politicians behind it.
"We have a serious energy problem with the older homes," Marburg's deputy mayor, Franz Kahle, said in an interview at the historic town hall on the city's colorful market square. To make a real leap forward, he said, a dramatic step was necessary.
"Before, solar installations were the exception, and their absence was the rule," Kahle said. "We want to get to the point where the opposite is the case." He pointed out that building codes constantly dictated what property owners could and could not do with their homes and said the solar regulation already offered exceptions for cases of hardship or alternatives for those living in the shadiest spots.
Marburg's proposal, which is to go into effect on Oct. 1, has attracted attention nationwide as a model for environmentally active politicians.
"What they are doing in Marburg is good and progressive, and we, and other cities, need to move forward with similar initiatives as well," said Birgit Simon, a member of the Green Party and deputy mayor of Offenbach am Main, a city just east of Frankfurt. She said she hoped a coalition of left-of-center parties in the state Parliament could change the building codes to make the Marburg ordinance sustainable and imitable.
Among Marburgers interviewed one sunny afternoon this week, there was near universal support for the goals of the ordinance but an almost equal level of confusion about its exact nature.
"In principle, it's a really good idea," said Cornelia Janus, 35, who works at the university. But she questioned whether the costs might be too high and whether historic buildings and monuments would be protected.
"For a city like Marburg," she said, gazing toward the churches and the castle arrayed along the hillside, which draw tourists from around the world, "that's pretty important, too."
India - Everything is changing ,except treatment of the poor ( V.G.Read)
Here in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, the doyen of this city's hotels, what you think of the new India may depend on whether you are the person having soap squeezed onto your hands or the person squeezing the soap.
In every men's washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: "Right, sir. O.K., sir. Thank you, sir."
Step outside, and you see sedans reeking of new affluence. Sleeping inside are drivers, many of them asleep because they work 20-hour shifts, waking up at 6 a.m. to catch a train, taking the boss to and from work, then to his dinner, then to drinks, then dropping him home at 1 a.m. and taking a taxi back to the tenements.
At 1 a.m. back in the boss's apartment building, the hallways are often covered with bodies. They belong to servants and sweepers who work inside by day but sleep outside by night, who clean the toilets but would not dare use them. They learn to sleep on cold tile, with tenants stepping over them when returning from Champagne-soaked evenings out.
India is changing so fast that it is starting to look like someplace else. Skyscrapers are sprouting. Towns are ballooning. The young date, drink, smoke freely. But many of the people who are making the new India new - from the stockbrokers to the bedecked socialites - are responsible for preserving a certain gloomy element of the Indian past: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to taunt and humiliate and condescend to them, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served.
"Indians are perhaps the world's most undemocratic people, living in the world's largest and most plural democracy," as Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, two well-known scholars of Indian culture, put it in a recent book, "The Indians: Portrait of a People."
It is understandable that, in flush times, Indians would rather talk about something else.
But if a movie director in Mumbai has his way, before long they will be talking about servants. In an attempt to expose India's employer-servant relations in the way "Uncle Tom's Cabin" exposed American slavery, Raja Menon has made a provocative new film depicting India from a servant's-eye view.
The movie, "Barah Aana," which translates roughly as "shortchanged," is currently being judged by festival juries in Toronto and Venice.
It tells the story of three migrants to Mumbai from the ailing villages of northern India. They work as a chauffeur, a waiter and a security guard, sending most of their earnings home.
They are heroes to their villages; but in Mumbai, they are invisible men, enduring the callousness that comes with being an accessory to other people's boom times.
In one scene, a wealthy homemaker, plump and accessorized by Louis Vuitton, zips through the city in the back of her black SUV, pattering on her phone. Suddenly, her chauffeur slams on the brakes, jostling the woman and interrupting her conversation.
"That beggar child came in front of my car," she explains indignantly to her friend in English after resuming her call. "That idiotic driver just put the brake."
In another scene, a security guard discovers that his son is ill and, without a $150 treatment, will die. Yadav goes around in his building asking for loans from tenants who often drop $40 on pizza.
The tenants, glued to televisions, treat him like a puppy to be shooed away.
That night, as he sits with friends filling himself with drink, he contemplates what it would mean to bury a son. "Why is it," he wails, "that people can only feel their own pain, not others'?"
The director's answer is that India has something deeper than a poverty problem.
It has, in his view, a "dehumanization" problem. In an interview, he described India's employers and servants as living as "two different species."
The movie's first half chronicles India's small humiliations with a chilling realism. The second half prophesies an outbreak of violent revolts in a country whose elite has long comforted itself with the thought that the poor will stoically accept their lots.
Menon's belief is that such stoicism is drying up in an age when the rich are more visibly rich and the left-behind are ever more aware of their deprivation.
The poor were long told that their poverty was deserved, he said. But now they see wealth everywhere, and they are starting to believe that poverty is circumstantial and can be reversed
"That's when the dam bursts," he said, "the moment the person feels, 'It's not true that this is my place."'
Such a moment seemed to occur one recent evening. The movie was screened before an audience of young, middle-class Indians, representatives of the country's new prosperity.
But one of them, Mitesh Thakkar, a 30-year-old marketing manager, arrived with a taxi driver he often employs, and he injected diversity into the screening by inviting the driver in to watch the film.
Thakkar reacted as one might when one's social class has been indicted. The film was good but "one-sided," he said: "Maybe there are 70 percent of the people who treat them bad, but there are 30 percent who treat them good."
But for the taxi driver, Javed Ali, the movie was an instant classic.
"This story is the truth," he said. "Whatever was in my mind, the movie showed."
Ali is a 20-year-old migrant worker, and he knew the film's humiliations up close. Sometimes people take his taxi and refuse to pay; sometimes they are drunk and mistreat him; sometimes they scream at him and say, "You're no good."
After the screening, some audience members, including Thakkar and Ali, went out for dinner. (Perhaps it was the film's influence: To dine with a taxi driver in India is to cross a rarely traversed line.)
The other diners wanted to know what Ali, the only working-class man at the table, thought of the film. Ali answered, rather casually, that he saw where the characters were coming from, that he understood their hunger, after so many years of humiliation, for revenge.
"He said the part where the driver kidnaps his female boss - that he did the right thing," Thakkar said later, recalling Ali's comments. "Even though he got caught, she needed that kidnapping."
On that evening, at that unusually populated table, with prosperous and poor side by side, India's parallel realities fleetingly, ominously collided
In every men's washroom at the Taj is a helper. As you approach the sink, he salutes you. Before you can turn on the tap, he does it for you. Before you can apply soap, he presses the dispenser. Before you can get a towel, he dangles one. As you leave, he salutes you again and mutters: "Right, sir. O.K., sir. Thank you, sir."
Step outside, and you see sedans reeking of new affluence. Sleeping inside are drivers, many of them asleep because they work 20-hour shifts, waking up at 6 a.m. to catch a train, taking the boss to and from work, then to his dinner, then to drinks, then dropping him home at 1 a.m. and taking a taxi back to the tenements.
At 1 a.m. back in the boss's apartment building, the hallways are often covered with bodies. They belong to servants and sweepers who work inside by day but sleep outside by night, who clean the toilets but would not dare use them. They learn to sleep on cold tile, with tenants stepping over them when returning from Champagne-soaked evenings out.
India is changing so fast that it is starting to look like someplace else. Skyscrapers are sprouting. Towns are ballooning. The young date, drink, smoke freely. But many of the people who are making the new India new - from the stockbrokers to the bedecked socialites - are responsible for preserving a certain gloomy element of the Indian past: a tendency to treat the hired help like chattel, to taunt and humiliate and condescend to them, to behave as though some humans were born to serve and others to be served.
"Indians are perhaps the world's most undemocratic people, living in the world's largest and most plural democracy," as Sudhir Kakar and Katharina Kakar, two well-known scholars of Indian culture, put it in a recent book, "The Indians: Portrait of a People."
It is understandable that, in flush times, Indians would rather talk about something else.
But if a movie director in Mumbai has his way, before long they will be talking about servants. In an attempt to expose India's employer-servant relations in the way "Uncle Tom's Cabin" exposed American slavery, Raja Menon has made a provocative new film depicting India from a servant's-eye view.
The movie, "Barah Aana," which translates roughly as "shortchanged," is currently being judged by festival juries in Toronto and Venice.
It tells the story of three migrants to Mumbai from the ailing villages of northern India. They work as a chauffeur, a waiter and a security guard, sending most of their earnings home.
They are heroes to their villages; but in Mumbai, they are invisible men, enduring the callousness that comes with being an accessory to other people's boom times.
In one scene, a wealthy homemaker, plump and accessorized by Louis Vuitton, zips through the city in the back of her black SUV, pattering on her phone. Suddenly, her chauffeur slams on the brakes, jostling the woman and interrupting her conversation.
"That beggar child came in front of my car," she explains indignantly to her friend in English after resuming her call. "That idiotic driver just put the brake."
In another scene, a security guard discovers that his son is ill and, without a $150 treatment, will die. Yadav goes around in his building asking for loans from tenants who often drop $40 on pizza.
The tenants, glued to televisions, treat him like a puppy to be shooed away.
That night, as he sits with friends filling himself with drink, he contemplates what it would mean to bury a son. "Why is it," he wails, "that people can only feel their own pain, not others'?"
The director's answer is that India has something deeper than a poverty problem.
It has, in his view, a "dehumanization" problem. In an interview, he described India's employers and servants as living as "two different species."
The movie's first half chronicles India's small humiliations with a chilling realism. The second half prophesies an outbreak of violent revolts in a country whose elite has long comforted itself with the thought that the poor will stoically accept their lots.
Menon's belief is that such stoicism is drying up in an age when the rich are more visibly rich and the left-behind are ever more aware of their deprivation.
The poor were long told that their poverty was deserved, he said. But now they see wealth everywhere, and they are starting to believe that poverty is circumstantial and can be reversed
"That's when the dam bursts," he said, "the moment the person feels, 'It's not true that this is my place."'
Such a moment seemed to occur one recent evening. The movie was screened before an audience of young, middle-class Indians, representatives of the country's new prosperity.
But one of them, Mitesh Thakkar, a 30-year-old marketing manager, arrived with a taxi driver he often employs, and he injected diversity into the screening by inviting the driver in to watch the film.
Thakkar reacted as one might when one's social class has been indicted. The film was good but "one-sided," he said: "Maybe there are 70 percent of the people who treat them bad, but there are 30 percent who treat them good."
But for the taxi driver, Javed Ali, the movie was an instant classic.
"This story is the truth," he said. "Whatever was in my mind, the movie showed."
Ali is a 20-year-old migrant worker, and he knew the film's humiliations up close. Sometimes people take his taxi and refuse to pay; sometimes they are drunk and mistreat him; sometimes they scream at him and say, "You're no good."
After the screening, some audience members, including Thakkar and Ali, went out for dinner. (Perhaps it was the film's influence: To dine with a taxi driver in India is to cross a rarely traversed line.)
The other diners wanted to know what Ali, the only working-class man at the table, thought of the film. Ali answered, rather casually, that he saw where the characters were coming from, that he understood their hunger, after so many years of humiliation, for revenge.
"He said the part where the driver kidnaps his female boss - that he did the right thing," Thakkar said later, recalling Ali's comments. "Even though he got caught, she needed that kidnapping."
On that evening, at that unusually populated table, with prosperous and poor side by side, India's parallel realities fleetingly, ominously collided
Lifestyle - Can the rich buy respect ?
There comes a time in the life of an oligarch when spending money becomes more important than making it. And for Victor Pinchuk, who became a billionaire and the second richest man in Ukraine by cornering the market for steel pipes and cultivating ties with politicians, that time is now.
At his invitation, Paul McCartney recently played Kiev's independence square before 350,000 exultant Ukrainians in a thundering monsoon. "This is for Ukrainya," Pinchuk yelled after the June performance, his face dripping with sweat and rain.
For Ukraine it may well have been, but the concert, which cost him more than $5 million, also represents the latest, most lavish stage of Pinchuk's uneasy metamorphosis from a grasping, post-Soviet billionaire business executive to an international mover and shaker. His political and celebrity connections - he calls both the financier George Soros and former President Bill Clinton friends - seem to grow by the day.
The long boom in commodities - steel and minerals as well as oil - has created a growing number of billionaires in once destitute economics like Russia, India and Ukraine. Meanwhile, the global credit crunch has set back the ambitions of many of the wealthiest financiers of the West, opening the door to a new breed hungry for art, access and ultimately acceptance.
For Pinchuk, like many of his contemporaries in neighboring Russia, the prizes that they extracted from the ashes of the Soviet Union were a function of brute political calculation and ruthless business practice.
The son-in-law of Leonid Kuchma, the controversial former president, Pinchuk's wealth soared under the Kuchma regime. He has been accused of securing sweet deals on privatizations. It is a charge he hotly denies.
"My pipe business I created from scratch, my media assets and bank I bought from the secondary market," he said in his rough, Russian accented, English. "You count all my assets and you never see any gift from Kuchma. The only gift I get from Kuchma is my wife. I am trying to be transparent but nobody likes rich people."
In a truly global world, though, success for Pinchuk and others like him will be measured not as much by the raw size of their fortune but by their ability to use their billions to achieve recognition and sway far beyond the grimy precincts of their industrial triumphs.
In Russia, billionaire oligarchs like Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska have taken steps to present themselves as acceptable international figures. Abramovich has invested millions in art and soccer while Deripaska drew attention for a controversial meeting he had in 2006 with Senator John McCain, now the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
But few, if any, have been as bluntly aggressive and openly public in using art, global philanthropy, public policy and even rock and roll to advance their agenda as Pinchuk.
"What I am doing is not about image," said Pinchuk, 48, as he sat on the porch of his dacha outside of Kiev. "I just want to participate in the building of my country."
Pinchuk's outreach campaign features substantial philanthropy mixed with supercharged celebrity hobnobbing. He is one of the larger non-American donors to the foundation established by Bill Clinton, and has bankrolled a substantial AIDS awareness initiative in Ukraine. He is equally at home enjoying a night out with Elton John or a private showing of Jeff Koons's latest sculptures.
To sustain his quixotic dream of securing Ukraine's entry into the European Union, he has funded programs at major Washington-based policy organizations, The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has also recruited former President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Karl Rove, Bush's former top adviser, to give speeches in Yalta to support this cause.
None of this comes cheap of course. Such pursuits, along with his frenetic art purchases, have cost Pinchuk an estimated $200 million over the past four years out of a fortune estimated between $5 billion to $10 billion. In Ukraine, that leaves him second only to Rinat Akhmetov, a banking magnate.
But the dividends are already apparent. A Pinchuk luncheon at Davos drew 400 luminaries; he has attended Bill Clinton's 60th and George H.W. Bush's 80th birthday parties; and he can now call upon Damien Hirst, known for his formaldehyde sharks and $100 million diamond-decorated skull, to propose a color scheme for his new private jet (the suggestion was blue.)
Pinchuk's lineup of heavy hitting endorsers includes Soros, Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general. Pinchuk identified Soros as an early mentor and he has become a large benefactor to foundations backed by Soros.
"He is behaving like an enlightened capitalist," Soros said, "and there are not many in that part of the world."
Pinchuk was raised in a two-room, 36-square-meter, or 390-square-foot, apartment in Dniepropetrovsk, an industrial town 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Kiev.
An engineer out of college, he had modest goals - an apartment, a TV, and, with luck, a dacha. "This was my dream," he said.
"Then perestroika started," he added, using the term for economic reforms that began in 1987.
Armed with a patent for a specialized form of pipe production, Pinchuk persuaded his manager to let him market his services to pipe factories. Soon he had negotiated a profit cut and the rubles rolled in. In 1990 he formed Interpipe as an engineering consulting firm and positioned himself as a middleman ready to cash in.
"I wanted to be a rich guy," he said, recalling those early headlong days. And very soon he was. With companies cut off from Moscow's dictates and unschooled in the ways of marketing and entrepreneurship, Pinchuk created an industrial daisy chain, reconnecting coal to coke to pig iron to hot rolled coils and finally to steel pipes, taking his own cut at every stage.
When Ukraine began selling off its public assets in the early 1990s, Pinchuk built up stakes in two pipe companies for just a few million dollars that are now worth billions. He also got into real estate, television, banks and gas distribution.
Estimates of his net worth fluctuate: Forbes pegs him at $5 billion, a figure that Pinchuk says is low. He points to his newly formed holding company, called Eastone, (which he says he intends to take public soon) and claims that the value of its portfolio is $10 billion.
Whatever the size of his fortune, Pinchuk has attracted attention in the West and Bill Clinton in particular. Sharing a fondness for blending high policy with kitschier celebrity gambits, the two men have bonded. They connected most recently at a seminar in July at the Aspen Institute in Colorado.
"Viktor is motivated by the rare quality of inclusion and doing whatever he can to bring together those who can help with those in need," Clinton said in a statement responding to a request for comment.
Pinchuk makes scant effort to cloak his wealth - whether that be a $23 million purchase of a Koons sculpture or the $160 million he recently paid for a grand London estate. But such displays are not so easily digested in the Ukraine, a country ravaged by inflation, AIDS and an inchoate, rambunctiously democratic, political process.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who, like Pinchuk, is young, glamorous and a native of Dniepropetrovsk, has advanced a populist, anti-oligarch platform that has focused squarely on Pinchuk and his ties to Kuchma.
It is clear that the attacks have hurt Pinchuk - though when asked about her, he declines comment.
"Politicians love power, I love freedom," he replies. "That is why I am not a politician."
Already one of his privatization deals has been revoked. And another, his purchase of Nikopol, one of the world's largest iron alloy producers, resulted in a lawsuit that accused Pinchuk of paying bribes to government officials, receiving kickbacks and siphoning off $41 million in profits.
The case was settled in 2006 and Pinchuk brushes off the allegations, calling them "black PR," and says he has reached an accommodation with his accuser.
But his critics are undaunted. "I wouldn't mind getting paid what his PR people are getting paid to clean up his image," said Bruce Marks, a lawyer who represented the rival Ukrainian businessman who filed the lawsuit against Pinchuk over the Nikopol sale.
For all the controversy, Pinchuk enjoys celebrating his success. The day after the Paul McCartney concert, Pinchuk invited select guests to his sprawling Japanese garden.
McCartney showed up with his new girlfriend. William Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was in attendance, as was President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine; President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia; and Hirst, the artist, accompanied by Jay Jopling, the influential London art dealer.
It is in many ways a coming out party, with each power guest representing a swatch of the gaudy tapestry of legitimacy that Pinchuk craves.
Yushchenko, whose face still bears the scars that made him a symbol of democratic hope during the Orange Revolution, takes it all in - the shimmering garden, the rock star and in the distance, a nine-hole golf course that Pinchuk is building.
"The world has given it all to Mr. Pinchuk," he said. "Now it is time to give it back."
At his invitation, Paul McCartney recently played Kiev's independence square before 350,000 exultant Ukrainians in a thundering monsoon. "This is for Ukrainya," Pinchuk yelled after the June performance, his face dripping with sweat and rain.
For Ukraine it may well have been, but the concert, which cost him more than $5 million, also represents the latest, most lavish stage of Pinchuk's uneasy metamorphosis from a grasping, post-Soviet billionaire business executive to an international mover and shaker. His political and celebrity connections - he calls both the financier George Soros and former President Bill Clinton friends - seem to grow by the day.
The long boom in commodities - steel and minerals as well as oil - has created a growing number of billionaires in once destitute economics like Russia, India and Ukraine. Meanwhile, the global credit crunch has set back the ambitions of many of the wealthiest financiers of the West, opening the door to a new breed hungry for art, access and ultimately acceptance.
For Pinchuk, like many of his contemporaries in neighboring Russia, the prizes that they extracted from the ashes of the Soviet Union were a function of brute political calculation and ruthless business practice.
The son-in-law of Leonid Kuchma, the controversial former president, Pinchuk's wealth soared under the Kuchma regime. He has been accused of securing sweet deals on privatizations. It is a charge he hotly denies.
"My pipe business I created from scratch, my media assets and bank I bought from the secondary market," he said in his rough, Russian accented, English. "You count all my assets and you never see any gift from Kuchma. The only gift I get from Kuchma is my wife. I am trying to be transparent but nobody likes rich people."
In a truly global world, though, success for Pinchuk and others like him will be measured not as much by the raw size of their fortune but by their ability to use their billions to achieve recognition and sway far beyond the grimy precincts of their industrial triumphs.
In Russia, billionaire oligarchs like Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska have taken steps to present themselves as acceptable international figures. Abramovich has invested millions in art and soccer while Deripaska drew attention for a controversial meeting he had in 2006 with Senator John McCain, now the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
But few, if any, have been as bluntly aggressive and openly public in using art, global philanthropy, public policy and even rock and roll to advance their agenda as Pinchuk.
"What I am doing is not about image," said Pinchuk, 48, as he sat on the porch of his dacha outside of Kiev. "I just want to participate in the building of my country."
Pinchuk's outreach campaign features substantial philanthropy mixed with supercharged celebrity hobnobbing. He is one of the larger non-American donors to the foundation established by Bill Clinton, and has bankrolled a substantial AIDS awareness initiative in Ukraine. He is equally at home enjoying a night out with Elton John or a private showing of Jeff Koons's latest sculptures.
To sustain his quixotic dream of securing Ukraine's entry into the European Union, he has funded programs at major Washington-based policy organizations, The Brookings Institution and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He has also recruited former President George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Karl Rove, Bush's former top adviser, to give speeches in Yalta to support this cause.
None of this comes cheap of course. Such pursuits, along with his frenetic art purchases, have cost Pinchuk an estimated $200 million over the past four years out of a fortune estimated between $5 billion to $10 billion. In Ukraine, that leaves him second only to Rinat Akhmetov, a banking magnate.
But the dividends are already apparent. A Pinchuk luncheon at Davos drew 400 luminaries; he has attended Bill Clinton's 60th and George H.W. Bush's 80th birthday parties; and he can now call upon Damien Hirst, known for his formaldehyde sharks and $100 million diamond-decorated skull, to propose a color scheme for his new private jet (the suggestion was blue.)
Pinchuk's lineup of heavy hitting endorsers includes Soros, Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general. Pinchuk identified Soros as an early mentor and he has become a large benefactor to foundations backed by Soros.
"He is behaving like an enlightened capitalist," Soros said, "and there are not many in that part of the world."
Pinchuk was raised in a two-room, 36-square-meter, or 390-square-foot, apartment in Dniepropetrovsk, an industrial town 370 kilometers, or 230 miles, south of Kiev.
An engineer out of college, he had modest goals - an apartment, a TV, and, with luck, a dacha. "This was my dream," he said.
"Then perestroika started," he added, using the term for economic reforms that began in 1987.
Armed with a patent for a specialized form of pipe production, Pinchuk persuaded his manager to let him market his services to pipe factories. Soon he had negotiated a profit cut and the rubles rolled in. In 1990 he formed Interpipe as an engineering consulting firm and positioned himself as a middleman ready to cash in.
"I wanted to be a rich guy," he said, recalling those early headlong days. And very soon he was. With companies cut off from Moscow's dictates and unschooled in the ways of marketing and entrepreneurship, Pinchuk created an industrial daisy chain, reconnecting coal to coke to pig iron to hot rolled coils and finally to steel pipes, taking his own cut at every stage.
When Ukraine began selling off its public assets in the early 1990s, Pinchuk built up stakes in two pipe companies for just a few million dollars that are now worth billions. He also got into real estate, television, banks and gas distribution.
Estimates of his net worth fluctuate: Forbes pegs him at $5 billion, a figure that Pinchuk says is low. He points to his newly formed holding company, called Eastone, (which he says he intends to take public soon) and claims that the value of its portfolio is $10 billion.
Whatever the size of his fortune, Pinchuk has attracted attention in the West and Bill Clinton in particular. Sharing a fondness for blending high policy with kitschier celebrity gambits, the two men have bonded. They connected most recently at a seminar in July at the Aspen Institute in Colorado.
"Viktor is motivated by the rare quality of inclusion and doing whatever he can to bring together those who can help with those in need," Clinton said in a statement responding to a request for comment.
Pinchuk makes scant effort to cloak his wealth - whether that be a $23 million purchase of a Koons sculpture or the $160 million he recently paid for a grand London estate. But such displays are not so easily digested in the Ukraine, a country ravaged by inflation, AIDS and an inchoate, rambunctiously democratic, political process.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who, like Pinchuk, is young, glamorous and a native of Dniepropetrovsk, has advanced a populist, anti-oligarch platform that has focused squarely on Pinchuk and his ties to Kuchma.
It is clear that the attacks have hurt Pinchuk - though when asked about her, he declines comment.
"Politicians love power, I love freedom," he replies. "That is why I am not a politician."
Already one of his privatization deals has been revoked. And another, his purchase of Nikopol, one of the world's largest iron alloy producers, resulted in a lawsuit that accused Pinchuk of paying bribes to government officials, receiving kickbacks and siphoning off $41 million in profits.
The case was settled in 2006 and Pinchuk brushes off the allegations, calling them "black PR," and says he has reached an accommodation with his accuser.
But his critics are undaunted. "I wouldn't mind getting paid what his PR people are getting paid to clean up his image," said Bruce Marks, a lawyer who represented the rival Ukrainian businessman who filed the lawsuit against Pinchuk over the Nikopol sale.
For all the controversy, Pinchuk enjoys celebrating his success. The day after the Paul McCartney concert, Pinchuk invited select guests to his sprawling Japanese garden.
McCartney showed up with his new girlfriend. William Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was in attendance, as was President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine; President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia; and Hirst, the artist, accompanied by Jay Jopling, the influential London art dealer.
It is in many ways a coming out party, with each power guest representing a swatch of the gaudy tapestry of legitimacy that Pinchuk craves.
Yushchenko, whose face still bears the scars that made him a symbol of democratic hope during the Orange Revolution, takes it all in - the shimmering garden, the rock star and in the distance, a nine-hole golf course that Pinchuk is building.
"The world has given it all to Mr. Pinchuk," he said. "Now it is time to give it back."
World - For Beijing's rootless workers,olympic invitation is "Please Leave"
Li Tianchao is an itinerant worker who has spent his adult life toiling long hours, living in bleak worksite dormitories and chasing the next construction job from boom town to boom town. A no-nonsense, weatherworn man, he is not quick to grouse.
But as he waited for a train to take him back to his hometown north of the capital, Li, 50, could not help but feel wistful.
"The Olympics have finally come to China, and I won't even be here," he said, lounging on a woven plastic sack stuffed with his possessions. He glanced up at the "Participate in the Olympics, Enjoy the Fun" banner above his head and shrugged.
Like thousands of others who packed Beijing's main train station on Thursday, Li was prompted to leave town by a lack of work and an unwritten government policy encouraging migrant workers to clear out until the dignitaries and journalists have gone home.
As the city readied itself for the pageantry and the fireworks of Friday night's opening ceremony, its main train station was packed with truck drivers, food vendors and factory workers whose jobs had been sacrificed to the Olympics juggernaut. The atmosphere was a mix of expectation and boredom, but also disappointment and regret.
Construction has been banned since July 20; factories with noxious emissions were closed all across the city. The scores of unfinished buildings that dot the skyline, their facades cloaked in Olympian banners, are a testament to the boom interrupted.
No one knows for sure how many of Beijing's 17 million residents are migrants, but they are thought to number around 4 million. And no one disputes that their sweat has been essential to giving the city its glitzy new mien.
He Yanjun and his wife, Pang Chunlian, said that for two years they had earned a decent living installing tiles inside the homes of Beijing's newly moneyed class. Like many workers, they slept on the job site until the house was nearly complete, then moved into another shell.
"It's a rough life, but Beijing has been good to us," said He, 43, who said he had abandoned the economic stagnation of rural Sichuan Province nearly a decade ago. "If you work hard here you can do well."
When the work dried up last month, they rented an apartment and tried to stick it out. The jobs never came, and the rent was steep, so on Thursday the couple packed their cutting board, the electric cooking burner and a vase of plastic flowers and joined the throngs at the station. Their destination: Jiangxi Province, 24 hours away, where a relative said there was ample opportunity. He and Pang said they might come back next year, depending on whether Beijing's construction boom reignites after the Games.
"We can only hope," He said.
Some people said they were leaving out of fear. Li Ping, a 33-year-old seamstress from Sichuan, said co-workers at her suitcase factory insisted that anyone who remained in Beijing without a residency permit would face steep fines. She said she had scrambled to apply for the coveted document but too late.
"I should have paid attention sooner," she said.
Her boss, unsympathetic, docked her a month's pay, or about $140. He told her that by skipping town, she was violating her contract, even if she had never signed one.
"I should be happy for the Olympics, but I'm angry," she said. "These bosses can be so evil. I don't think I will be coming back."
A few rows away, Wang Yongsheng and his wife, Ma Ernu, sat in the waiting room's orange plastic chairs looking dazed. Two weeks earlier, the couple had come to the capital from their home in Inner Mongolia in the hopes of finding treatment for Ma's worsening kidney disease. The couple, retired farmers, said they could not find decent medical care back home.
But after spending all their money and being waved away from several hospitals, they realized their timing could not have been worse. "The doctors told us they were all too busy preparing for the Olympics," said Ma, whose skin was discolored and covered with marble-sized cysts. "The whole country is very distracted by the Olympics." She smiled as if to say she understood.
Not everyone was leaving Beijing with regret. Wang Cheng and Xiao Xinyan said they were initially annoyed to find themselves suddenly unemployed. But facing a month of idleness, the couple, both 22, decided to seize the moment and get married.
Next week, a few days after they arrive home in Shandong Province, they look forward to giving a party for family and friends.
But what about missing the Olympics excitement? Wang pondered, then said he was actually relieved to leave Beijing. "Besides," he added. "We'll get a better view by watching the Games on television."
But as he waited for a train to take him back to his hometown north of the capital, Li, 50, could not help but feel wistful.
"The Olympics have finally come to China, and I won't even be here," he said, lounging on a woven plastic sack stuffed with his possessions. He glanced up at the "Participate in the Olympics, Enjoy the Fun" banner above his head and shrugged.
Like thousands of others who packed Beijing's main train station on Thursday, Li was prompted to leave town by a lack of work and an unwritten government policy encouraging migrant workers to clear out until the dignitaries and journalists have gone home.
As the city readied itself for the pageantry and the fireworks of Friday night's opening ceremony, its main train station was packed with truck drivers, food vendors and factory workers whose jobs had been sacrificed to the Olympics juggernaut. The atmosphere was a mix of expectation and boredom, but also disappointment and regret.
Construction has been banned since July 20; factories with noxious emissions were closed all across the city. The scores of unfinished buildings that dot the skyline, their facades cloaked in Olympian banners, are a testament to the boom interrupted.
No one knows for sure how many of Beijing's 17 million residents are migrants, but they are thought to number around 4 million. And no one disputes that their sweat has been essential to giving the city its glitzy new mien.
He Yanjun and his wife, Pang Chunlian, said that for two years they had earned a decent living installing tiles inside the homes of Beijing's newly moneyed class. Like many workers, they slept on the job site until the house was nearly complete, then moved into another shell.
"It's a rough life, but Beijing has been good to us," said He, 43, who said he had abandoned the economic stagnation of rural Sichuan Province nearly a decade ago. "If you work hard here you can do well."
When the work dried up last month, they rented an apartment and tried to stick it out. The jobs never came, and the rent was steep, so on Thursday the couple packed their cutting board, the electric cooking burner and a vase of plastic flowers and joined the throngs at the station. Their destination: Jiangxi Province, 24 hours away, where a relative said there was ample opportunity. He and Pang said they might come back next year, depending on whether Beijing's construction boom reignites after the Games.
"We can only hope," He said.
Some people said they were leaving out of fear. Li Ping, a 33-year-old seamstress from Sichuan, said co-workers at her suitcase factory insisted that anyone who remained in Beijing without a residency permit would face steep fines. She said she had scrambled to apply for the coveted document but too late.
"I should have paid attention sooner," she said.
Her boss, unsympathetic, docked her a month's pay, or about $140. He told her that by skipping town, she was violating her contract, even if she had never signed one.
"I should be happy for the Olympics, but I'm angry," she said. "These bosses can be so evil. I don't think I will be coming back."
A few rows away, Wang Yongsheng and his wife, Ma Ernu, sat in the waiting room's orange plastic chairs looking dazed. Two weeks earlier, the couple had come to the capital from their home in Inner Mongolia in the hopes of finding treatment for Ma's worsening kidney disease. The couple, retired farmers, said they could not find decent medical care back home.
But after spending all their money and being waved away from several hospitals, they realized their timing could not have been worse. "The doctors told us they were all too busy preparing for the Olympics," said Ma, whose skin was discolored and covered with marble-sized cysts. "The whole country is very distracted by the Olympics." She smiled as if to say she understood.
Not everyone was leaving Beijing with regret. Wang Cheng and Xiao Xinyan said they were initially annoyed to find themselves suddenly unemployed. But facing a month of idleness, the couple, both 22, decided to seize the moment and get married.
Next week, a few days after they arrive home in Shandong Province, they look forward to giving a party for family and friends.
But what about missing the Olympics excitement? Wang pondered, then said he was actually relieved to leave Beijing. "Besides," he added. "We'll get a better view by watching the Games on television."
Business - Interview Ramaswamy Subramanian (Subhiksha)
With the competition emulating his neighbourhood store model, retail chain Subhiksha's chief shares some tips on which formats will work and which won't.
Ramaswamy Subramanian is a difficult customer — he never has time to spare and he’s not into food. Not the perfect candidate for Lunch with BS. But India’s most successful modern retailer (Subhiksha has the highest sales per square foot among modern retailers though it’s ranked Number 2 in terms of sales) is in Mumbai and we decide to try out the pasta at Spaghetti Kitchen in Phoenix Mills, the former textiles mills compound in Mumbai’s Lower Parel that is today home to some of the country’s top retail labels. The idea is to get Subramanian to walk around the stores of India’s largest retail chain, Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, and get his comments on the competition. Subramanian, however, is too smart to fall into the trap and refuses to do the walk-around, saying that he’s sure to say something politically incorrect. So, we have a polite lunch, while I try to bait him to talk about the competition, writes Shobhana Subramanian.
In true Tamil style, we’re having an early lunch; the rosemary potatoes we’ve ordered as starters are spicy enough for my guest. Subramanian, who’s just turned 42, believes in doing things fast — whether it’s rolling out stores or talking. And since he’s constantly on the phone, I ask if he’s always been so hyper. He has, he says — his mother had a tough time controlling him as a child. And he says he’s always been something of an anti-status quo person. He didn’t live on campus while in IIT Chennai, though he had no choice at IIM Ahmedabad. That, in retrospect, was a good thing because he was in good company: the class of ‘89 produced some really enterprising businessmen including Sanjeev Bikhchandani of naukri.com, Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss Capital and Nirmal Jain of India Infoline. In a class that also had Rahul Bhasin of Barings Private Equity, Subramanian was the topper, and by quite a distance.
Being the topper didn’t help him at Citibank — where he was at the money desk — which left him ‘cold’. “I expected some special treatment and that was probably not justified. But even otherwise, I didn’t see any kind of vision or attempt at team-building. What Citi did for me in the 15 days I was there was to show me the gap between what it could do for me and what I wanted to be.” His slightly-longer stint, of two years, with Enfield, then in dire financial straits, was a great learning experience — from dealing with vendors, making sales pitches and managing cash flows, the experience helped him at Subhiksha which he set up 1997. In between, he ran a finance company that did retail funding for IPOs.
We look for the most spicy pastas on the menu; my guest is missing curd rice. He opts for some fusili with a tomato-based sauce while I decide to try the spaghetti with pesto sauce. “I do try out other cuisines but like a true Tamil I never feel complete without thair shadam (curd rice),” admits Subramanian. Unlike most Tamils though, he’s not a Kamal Hasan fan and hasn’t seen Dashavatharam. Neither is he keen on music concerts though he does listen to a lot of Tamil film music on his Bose speakers — his one indulgence is electronic gadgets. He’s a newspaper addict and reads nine dailies every morning before his visit to the neighbourhood Ganesh temple.
The gruelling pace of work — Subhiksha has rolled out nearly 1,000 stores in the last three years — has left Subramanian little time to catch up with friends. He hasn’t been for a holiday in six years and his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Sumukhi, has to wait up for him till after nine every night. But she’s responsible for his much improved temper — it used to be terrible, he says, joking that he was close to digging pins into dolls. What could also have helped is that competition hasn’t done well as most expected. “Two years back, when all the big guns were setting up shop, we thought it would be tough but I don’t think the numbers are too hot,” he says. I ask why retailers don’t seem to be making money. “Possibly because there’s too much expansion, especially in places like Chennai. Also, in India you cannot be relevant just because you are differentiated. How many customers are really looking for the 20th variant of jam?”
Comparing the Westside and Shoppers Stop models, he points out that in a category like apparel, having control over 50-60 per cent of sales through store labels, which is how Westside does it, makes a lot of sense. “It hasn’t happened yet but Shoppers runs the risk of getting undercut if someone chooses to offer discounts on brands. Maybe it won’t happen with an Arrow, but it could happen with smaller brands.” He’s also not sure how well hypermarkets will work because people, he says, will not travel a long distance to buy food and groceries. “With Indian laws not permitting stores to charge prices higher than the MRP, convenience stores will remain competitive and it’s only for apparel that people will make the effort to go any distance.”
He’s convinced, though, that the Subhiksha model will work because it caters to the masses and the scale will allow it to procure cheaper, and therefore sell at everyday low prices. The store label strategy, he claims, is already working in categories where they exist — in-house brands contribute about 13 per cent of sales.
Subramanian predicts that the top three players in the industry will end up sharing the bulk of the profits. Subhiksha posted a net profit of Rs 41 crore last year on revenues of Rs 2,300 crore and is targeting profits of Rs 120 crore by March 2010. Though the company has been talking about an IPO for quite some time now, Subramanian says delaying it may be a smarter thing to do since the growth can be funded from the current net worth of Rs 260 crore. [That’s because unlike some other retailers, Subhiksha doesn’t buy properties.] The listing, he says, should give ICICI Ventures an exit.
Will he sell out at some point, I ask. “Right now, I don’t see any reason to get out. On the contrary, it might be a good time to acquire something because there can be some consolidation.” Brave words at a time when real estate prices are still high and the economy is clearly slowing down. But then, Subramanian always exudes confidence and he’s never perturbed about anything. That’s probably what has helped him come this far. With both of us skipping dessert, the bill has just about made it to four digits — in keeping with Subramanian’s low-cost mantra. Subramanian rushes off for a board meeting, leaving me wondering why ICICI Ventures wants to get out if Subhiksha is doing so well.
Ramaswamy Subramanian is a difficult customer — he never has time to spare and he’s not into food. Not the perfect candidate for Lunch with BS. But India’s most successful modern retailer (Subhiksha has the highest sales per square foot among modern retailers though it’s ranked Number 2 in terms of sales) is in Mumbai and we decide to try out the pasta at Spaghetti Kitchen in Phoenix Mills, the former textiles mills compound in Mumbai’s Lower Parel that is today home to some of the country’s top retail labels. The idea is to get Subramanian to walk around the stores of India’s largest retail chain, Kishore Biyani’s Future Group, and get his comments on the competition. Subramanian, however, is too smart to fall into the trap and refuses to do the walk-around, saying that he’s sure to say something politically incorrect. So, we have a polite lunch, while I try to bait him to talk about the competition, writes Shobhana Subramanian.
In true Tamil style, we’re having an early lunch; the rosemary potatoes we’ve ordered as starters are spicy enough for my guest. Subramanian, who’s just turned 42, believes in doing things fast — whether it’s rolling out stores or talking. And since he’s constantly on the phone, I ask if he’s always been so hyper. He has, he says — his mother had a tough time controlling him as a child. And he says he’s always been something of an anti-status quo person. He didn’t live on campus while in IIT Chennai, though he had no choice at IIM Ahmedabad. That, in retrospect, was a good thing because he was in good company: the class of ‘89 produced some really enterprising businessmen including Sanjeev Bikhchandani of naukri.com, Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss Capital and Nirmal Jain of India Infoline. In a class that also had Rahul Bhasin of Barings Private Equity, Subramanian was the topper, and by quite a distance.
Being the topper didn’t help him at Citibank — where he was at the money desk — which left him ‘cold’. “I expected some special treatment and that was probably not justified. But even otherwise, I didn’t see any kind of vision or attempt at team-building. What Citi did for me in the 15 days I was there was to show me the gap between what it could do for me and what I wanted to be.” His slightly-longer stint, of two years, with Enfield, then in dire financial straits, was a great learning experience — from dealing with vendors, making sales pitches and managing cash flows, the experience helped him at Subhiksha which he set up 1997. In between, he ran a finance company that did retail funding for IPOs.
We look for the most spicy pastas on the menu; my guest is missing curd rice. He opts for some fusili with a tomato-based sauce while I decide to try the spaghetti with pesto sauce. “I do try out other cuisines but like a true Tamil I never feel complete without thair shadam (curd rice),” admits Subramanian. Unlike most Tamils though, he’s not a Kamal Hasan fan and hasn’t seen Dashavatharam. Neither is he keen on music concerts though he does listen to a lot of Tamil film music on his Bose speakers — his one indulgence is electronic gadgets. He’s a newspaper addict and reads nine dailies every morning before his visit to the neighbourhood Ganesh temple.
The gruelling pace of work — Subhiksha has rolled out nearly 1,000 stores in the last three years — has left Subramanian little time to catch up with friends. He hasn’t been for a holiday in six years and his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Sumukhi, has to wait up for him till after nine every night. But she’s responsible for his much improved temper — it used to be terrible, he says, joking that he was close to digging pins into dolls. What could also have helped is that competition hasn’t done well as most expected. “Two years back, when all the big guns were setting up shop, we thought it would be tough but I don’t think the numbers are too hot,” he says. I ask why retailers don’t seem to be making money. “Possibly because there’s too much expansion, especially in places like Chennai. Also, in India you cannot be relevant just because you are differentiated. How many customers are really looking for the 20th variant of jam?”
Comparing the Westside and Shoppers Stop models, he points out that in a category like apparel, having control over 50-60 per cent of sales through store labels, which is how Westside does it, makes a lot of sense. “It hasn’t happened yet but Shoppers runs the risk of getting undercut if someone chooses to offer discounts on brands. Maybe it won’t happen with an Arrow, but it could happen with smaller brands.” He’s also not sure how well hypermarkets will work because people, he says, will not travel a long distance to buy food and groceries. “With Indian laws not permitting stores to charge prices higher than the MRP, convenience stores will remain competitive and it’s only for apparel that people will make the effort to go any distance.”
He’s convinced, though, that the Subhiksha model will work because it caters to the masses and the scale will allow it to procure cheaper, and therefore sell at everyday low prices. The store label strategy, he claims, is already working in categories where they exist — in-house brands contribute about 13 per cent of sales.
Subramanian predicts that the top three players in the industry will end up sharing the bulk of the profits. Subhiksha posted a net profit of Rs 41 crore last year on revenues of Rs 2,300 crore and is targeting profits of Rs 120 crore by March 2010. Though the company has been talking about an IPO for quite some time now, Subramanian says delaying it may be a smarter thing to do since the growth can be funded from the current net worth of Rs 260 crore. [That’s because unlike some other retailers, Subhiksha doesn’t buy properties.] The listing, he says, should give ICICI Ventures an exit.
Will he sell out at some point, I ask. “Right now, I don’t see any reason to get out. On the contrary, it might be a good time to acquire something because there can be some consolidation.” Brave words at a time when real estate prices are still high and the economy is clearly slowing down. But then, Subramanian always exudes confidence and he’s never perturbed about anything. That’s probably what has helped him come this far. With both of us skipping dessert, the bill has just about made it to four digits — in keeping with Subramanian’s low-cost mantra. Subramanian rushes off for a board meeting, leaving me wondering why ICICI Ventures wants to get out if Subhiksha is doing so well.
Personality - Omar Abdullah Interview
The National Conference is expecting a clear win in the coming elections, party Member of Parliament Omar Abdullah tells Aasha Khosa
Did you expect the kind of response that your speech in Parliament (during the trust vote) evoked across the country?
I am amazed at the reaction. Frankly, my speech was neither rehearsed nor designed to appease anyone. I just spoke what I felt. But to tell you the truth, I was very angry at not being given a chance to speak. I thought to myself that while people were openly talking about an MP being worth Rs 20-25 crore, here I was, not getting even 20 seconds to speak. It was a speech that I almost missed. After thaYoung MPs,t, I have been flooded with phone calls, letters and requests for interviews. Personally, I felt happy that for the first time a speech had the same impact in Kashmir as in the rest of the country. Everyone in Kashmir, including some hard-liners in my own party, appreciated my speech.
So it was a great moment for you.
Yes, it was a moment that one cannot get even in a million years. But at the same time it was a very bad day for Parliament. Indian democracy lost face before the world that day. The images of wads of notes being thrown inside Parliament have permanently damaged the reputation of Indian MPs. The rest of the world will always remember these images, though they will be forgotten in India.
Young MPs like you must be perturbed over the fall in the standards of parliamentary democracy. Do you people sometimes deliberate upon these issues?
Yes, a large number of MPs themselves feel disillusioned with the way the things have gone. Ask Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. He too must be feeling the same way. Frankly, I could not visualise a day when currency notes would be flaunted in Parliament. Some of us, cutting across party lines, share our concerns on important issues facing the nation. Rahul (Gandhi) wasn’t wrong when he said that many opposition members believed that the nuclear deal was good for the country. We do discuss things. But then we are bound by the whips of our parties.
Tensions, both communal and militancy linked, are rising in your home state. It surely does not augur well for you in the coming election.
I am not as worried about the security situation as I am about the rise of communal and regional tensions in J&K. The controversy over the Amarnath yatra may be the peg for the current tension but I also believe that the failure to take the Indo-Pak peace process forward and no visible impact of the confidence building measures (CBMs) remain the root cause of the turmoil in Kashmir.
Why do you think the Indo-Pak peace process floundered and the CBMs did not translate into action?
We missed a major chance to resolve the Kashmir issue while General Pervez Musharraf was in command in Pakistan. The General agreed to dissociate the resolution of the Kashmir issue from the United Nations’ resolutions, he agreed to consider India’s secular character while hammering out a resolution and spoke of making borders irrelevant. However, in India, we failed to react fast and concretise a resolution. Musharraf was all-powerful then. This was happening on track-II diplomacy. Being a democratic country, we took a long time to move these concrete suggestions into mainstream diplomacy. In the meantime, Musharraf got involved in problems at home.
Things are unlikely to change given that India is going to face elections soon. Do you agree?
The peace process with Pakistan may not be dead but it is on the backburner. We may continue the composite dialogue but are unlikely to make progress on contentious issues like Kashmir, Siachen or Sir Creek. Decisions like upgrading the Srinagar-Uri bus service from fortnightly to weekly are useless. As it is, the bus is running without passengers. We have been telling them to allow everyone to travel in the bus and not confine it to the divided Kashmiri families. We all know there are very few divided families in Kashmir. Besides, I feel the Congress and the BJP should stop looking at Kashmir through the prism of elections. The BJP should be reminded that it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who initiated the Indo-Pak peace process. Vajpayee had made an impromptu speech in Srinagar in which he talked of friendship with Pakistan. It was the trigger for the Indo-Pak peace process. We are hoping Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Islamabad materialises. That would probably give new life to the Indo-Pak peace process.
There are worries about the resurgence of insurgency in Kashmir. Are you also perturbed?
In spite of the lull on the militancy front for the last few years, we know that infiltration from across the Line of Control is continuing. North Kashmir, and particularly, Kangan, was chosen by the terrorists for camping. Our partymen living in villages tell us that the militants roam around in groups of tens and twenties. They were always there but were not able to strike due to the mood of the people. They are probably finding it easier to strike now.
The Amarnath land controversy probably saw your party in a difficult position. Has your stand damaged your party’s chances in all three regions of J&K?
The National Conference took a stand that the land cannot be given away. I said, why should the yatra, which has been conducted so successfully with the help of the Muslims and the government, be confined to 100 acres of forest land ? After all, the entire land has been used by the pilgrims for several hundred years. To be fair, the Hurriyat Conference did not talk along communal lines, but the BJP did manage to play the communal card in the Jammu region. Even my speech in Parliament was distorted and used to whip up communal passions. We hope the people can see through the game.
How do you look at the elections in J&K?
My party is hoping that the people are fed up with six years of coalition rule and will give us a clear mandate. I am not even thinking of pre-election tie-ups right now.
Did you expect the kind of response that your speech in Parliament (during the trust vote) evoked across the country?
I am amazed at the reaction. Frankly, my speech was neither rehearsed nor designed to appease anyone. I just spoke what I felt. But to tell you the truth, I was very angry at not being given a chance to speak. I thought to myself that while people were openly talking about an MP being worth Rs 20-25 crore, here I was, not getting even 20 seconds to speak. It was a speech that I almost missed. After thaYoung MPs,t, I have been flooded with phone calls, letters and requests for interviews. Personally, I felt happy that for the first time a speech had the same impact in Kashmir as in the rest of the country. Everyone in Kashmir, including some hard-liners in my own party, appreciated my speech.
So it was a great moment for you.
Yes, it was a moment that one cannot get even in a million years. But at the same time it was a very bad day for Parliament. Indian democracy lost face before the world that day. The images of wads of notes being thrown inside Parliament have permanently damaged the reputation of Indian MPs. The rest of the world will always remember these images, though they will be forgotten in India.
Young MPs like you must be perturbed over the fall in the standards of parliamentary democracy. Do you people sometimes deliberate upon these issues?
Yes, a large number of MPs themselves feel disillusioned with the way the things have gone. Ask Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee. He too must be feeling the same way. Frankly, I could not visualise a day when currency notes would be flaunted in Parliament. Some of us, cutting across party lines, share our concerns on important issues facing the nation. Rahul (Gandhi) wasn’t wrong when he said that many opposition members believed that the nuclear deal was good for the country. We do discuss things. But then we are bound by the whips of our parties.
Tensions, both communal and militancy linked, are rising in your home state. It surely does not augur well for you in the coming election.
I am not as worried about the security situation as I am about the rise of communal and regional tensions in J&K. The controversy over the Amarnath yatra may be the peg for the current tension but I also believe that the failure to take the Indo-Pak peace process forward and no visible impact of the confidence building measures (CBMs) remain the root cause of the turmoil in Kashmir.
Why do you think the Indo-Pak peace process floundered and the CBMs did not translate into action?
We missed a major chance to resolve the Kashmir issue while General Pervez Musharraf was in command in Pakistan. The General agreed to dissociate the resolution of the Kashmir issue from the United Nations’ resolutions, he agreed to consider India’s secular character while hammering out a resolution and spoke of making borders irrelevant. However, in India, we failed to react fast and concretise a resolution. Musharraf was all-powerful then. This was happening on track-II diplomacy. Being a democratic country, we took a long time to move these concrete suggestions into mainstream diplomacy. In the meantime, Musharraf got involved in problems at home.
Things are unlikely to change given that India is going to face elections soon. Do you agree?
The peace process with Pakistan may not be dead but it is on the backburner. We may continue the composite dialogue but are unlikely to make progress on contentious issues like Kashmir, Siachen or Sir Creek. Decisions like upgrading the Srinagar-Uri bus service from fortnightly to weekly are useless. As it is, the bus is running without passengers. We have been telling them to allow everyone to travel in the bus and not confine it to the divided Kashmiri families. We all know there are very few divided families in Kashmir. Besides, I feel the Congress and the BJP should stop looking at Kashmir through the prism of elections. The BJP should be reminded that it was Atal Bihari Vajpayee who initiated the Indo-Pak peace process. Vajpayee had made an impromptu speech in Srinagar in which he talked of friendship with Pakistan. It was the trigger for the Indo-Pak peace process. We are hoping Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Islamabad materialises. That would probably give new life to the Indo-Pak peace process.
There are worries about the resurgence of insurgency in Kashmir. Are you also perturbed?
In spite of the lull on the militancy front for the last few years, we know that infiltration from across the Line of Control is continuing. North Kashmir, and particularly, Kangan, was chosen by the terrorists for camping. Our partymen living in villages tell us that the militants roam around in groups of tens and twenties. They were always there but were not able to strike due to the mood of the people. They are probably finding it easier to strike now.
The Amarnath land controversy probably saw your party in a difficult position. Has your stand damaged your party’s chances in all three regions of J&K?
The National Conference took a stand that the land cannot be given away. I said, why should the yatra, which has been conducted so successfully with the help of the Muslims and the government, be confined to 100 acres of forest land ? After all, the entire land has been used by the pilgrims for several hundred years. To be fair, the Hurriyat Conference did not talk along communal lines, but the BJP did manage to play the communal card in the Jammu region. Even my speech in Parliament was distorted and used to whip up communal passions. We hope the people can see through the game.
How do you look at the elections in J&K?
My party is hoping that the people are fed up with six years of coalition rule and will give us a clear mandate. I am not even thinking of pre-election tie-ups right now.
Business - Interview Nitin Paranjpe (CEO,HUL)
From learning to play the keyboard with senior colleagues to benefitting from the parent firm’s scale and capability, leveraging is a key word in the HUL CEO's lexicon.
Nitin Paranjpe’s family used to call him a “modern-day Aurangzeb” given the distance he kept from the finer things in life. Two summers back his brother finally agreed to drop the nickname only if he could develop an ear for music, write Shyamal Majumdar and Ruchita Saxena.
Music was something for which Paranjpe had neither the time nor inclination; but determined to live up to the challenge thrown by his brother, he started taking keyboard lessons. He can now play about a 100 Hindi film music tunes and has formed an informal team of Lever-ites who play the keyboard along with him. It helped that Hindustan Unilever Limited’s (HUL) new management committee (eight top HUL managers) are in their early 40s. His family has dropped the nickname.
The 45-year-old MD & CEO of HUL says this has given him a vital lesson in life: you need not be immensely talented to succeed in a project as long as you are determined to succeed and are willing to put in that extra effort.
We are in the terrace room at HUL’s imposing headquarters at Backbay Reclamation in Mumbai. Paranjpe asks for warm water as he is suffering from a throat infection and wants us to hear him loud and clear. The youngest ever occupant of the corner office at HUL is, by his own admission, a CEO with a difference. His CV doesn’t boast an IIT or IIM badge; he is not extra fond of management books; has remained a one-company man for 21 years; returns home by 7 pm almost every day; listens to Vedanta philosophy on Sunday mornings and enjoys teaching his children over the weekends.
As an MBA student at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, Mumbai, he used to dream of getting into Hindustan Lever (as it was then called), India’s largest FMCG company. When he finally got the “high of his life” after Hindustan Lever gave him a job, he says he would have been delighted if he could have risen to head of sales or marketing in the company.
“Any job beyond that would be a bonus. My motto has been simple: be focused on your current job and do that well,” he says. His career graph shows the management at Lever has been quite generous in doling out ‘bonuses’.
He finally realised he is a ‘lister’ — HUL jargon for those on the superfast career track — when his boss once asked him to spell out his career ambitions. Paranjpe, then a brand manager, replied he wanted to become a regional manager. He forgot about the conversation, but his boss didn’t as two weeks later he got a double promotion and was made the south India regional head. It turned out be a tough assignment as it coincided with the company’s products being boycotted in Kerala. For the first time in his life, Paranjpe realised that he was capable of managing more than he had imagined. “Every manager must have one or two tough assignments. When you have to achieve more than what available resources permit, you grow professionally as well as mentally”, Paranjpe says.
The food is an elaborate Indian fare — roti, rice, paneer, mutton korma and grilled prawns with lots of vegetables — and tastes good. Paranjpe avoids the prawns but gives us an appreciative look as we choose not to follow him. He is health conscious and plays a game of squash often. This, of course, is becoming infrequent now that his 14-year-old son is playing better than him.
As the occupant of the corner office, what’s his new strategy going to be? Paranjpe says HUL, like some its competitors, has a great strategy in place. What will make the difference is the power of execution. The company is leveraging the capabilities and scale of its parent company and focusing on the value of execution. Cost reduction through technology is another priority.
Though HUL will continue to straddle the whole pyramid as far as price points are concerned, the company also recognises the changing market dynamics of the growing number of affluent households in India for whom price is not that big an issue. There are around eight million such households in the country, and the number is expected to double in the next three years. It’s an opportunity no company can afford to ignore. As Paranjpe puts it, “It’s amazing how people are willing to pay extra for little beauty jars”.
The other piece of good news for both Paranjpe and HUL is that inflation hasn’t compressed consumer demand and net sales growth in the June quarter was the highest in the past 10 years — and growth has averaged 19 per cent in the past three quarters. Rising cost pressures are still a problem, but Paranjpe says HUL will never focus on margins at the cost of top line.
Food is one area that has been a laggard due to intense competition, but Paranjpe says the segment is reaching a tipping point. “The platform has been built for the future, things will change. Please don’t forget packaged food sales are still just 5 per cent the value of fresh foods.” So expect launches, brand extensions and innovations steadily hitting shop shelves. It helps that Unilever has a huge food portfolio that is waiting to be unleashed in India.
He graduated from the stairs to the elevator in his career when he was made the head of the laundry category during the detergents’ price war between Procter & Gamble and HUL in 2002. For the first time in his career, he suffered from self-doubt as he was unable to meet the numbers target. The top line just refused to budge as consumers shied away from HUL products, often preferring cheaper alternatives.
But the management obviously felt otherwise as he went on to become the executive director (home & personal care) soon after. The reason was obvious: the platform he built during those days helped HUL regain its glory in subsequent years.
Though HUL has changed its management strategy swiftly with changing times, Paranjpe is clear that the one practice which has and will remain constant is sending managers to rural areas early in their career. “Selling soaps to a shopkeeper in a remote village gives you invaluable lessons. You start listening to the market; you empathise with problems that a salesman faces — these are lessons no B-school can ever teach you,” he says.
Lunch is long over, but Paranjpe does not want to leave in a hurry. He says executing the new gameplan of HUL means a lot of hard work. And that often means starting work at 5 am so that he doesn’t have to compromise on the time he wants to spend with his family. He thinks his wife, who is now on a sabbatical from her job at Wipro, is better than him in multi-tasking.
The person he treats as his idol is his father, a retired IAS officer. “I didn’t have to go too far to learn the power of integrity,” Paranjpe says. His fondness for teaching his children — even his neighbours’ children at times — comes from his mother, who even at the age of 70 runs a school for under-privileged children which has over 1,000 students.
When he finally leaves HUL, Paranjpe wants management trainees feel the same excitement he did 21 years ago. “The wow factor of working for HUL must remain,” he says. His bosses would be pleased with that answer
Nitin Paranjpe’s family used to call him a “modern-day Aurangzeb” given the distance he kept from the finer things in life. Two summers back his brother finally agreed to drop the nickname only if he could develop an ear for music, write Shyamal Majumdar and Ruchita Saxena.
Music was something for which Paranjpe had neither the time nor inclination; but determined to live up to the challenge thrown by his brother, he started taking keyboard lessons. He can now play about a 100 Hindi film music tunes and has formed an informal team of Lever-ites who play the keyboard along with him. It helped that Hindustan Unilever Limited’s (HUL) new management committee (eight top HUL managers) are in their early 40s. His family has dropped the nickname.
The 45-year-old MD & CEO of HUL says this has given him a vital lesson in life: you need not be immensely talented to succeed in a project as long as you are determined to succeed and are willing to put in that extra effort.
We are in the terrace room at HUL’s imposing headquarters at Backbay Reclamation in Mumbai. Paranjpe asks for warm water as he is suffering from a throat infection and wants us to hear him loud and clear. The youngest ever occupant of the corner office at HUL is, by his own admission, a CEO with a difference. His CV doesn’t boast an IIT or IIM badge; he is not extra fond of management books; has remained a one-company man for 21 years; returns home by 7 pm almost every day; listens to Vedanta philosophy on Sunday mornings and enjoys teaching his children over the weekends.
As an MBA student at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, Mumbai, he used to dream of getting into Hindustan Lever (as it was then called), India’s largest FMCG company. When he finally got the “high of his life” after Hindustan Lever gave him a job, he says he would have been delighted if he could have risen to head of sales or marketing in the company.
“Any job beyond that would be a bonus. My motto has been simple: be focused on your current job and do that well,” he says. His career graph shows the management at Lever has been quite generous in doling out ‘bonuses’.
He finally realised he is a ‘lister’ — HUL jargon for those on the superfast career track — when his boss once asked him to spell out his career ambitions. Paranjpe, then a brand manager, replied he wanted to become a regional manager. He forgot about the conversation, but his boss didn’t as two weeks later he got a double promotion and was made the south India regional head. It turned out be a tough assignment as it coincided with the company’s products being boycotted in Kerala. For the first time in his life, Paranjpe realised that he was capable of managing more than he had imagined. “Every manager must have one or two tough assignments. When you have to achieve more than what available resources permit, you grow professionally as well as mentally”, Paranjpe says.
The food is an elaborate Indian fare — roti, rice, paneer, mutton korma and grilled prawns with lots of vegetables — and tastes good. Paranjpe avoids the prawns but gives us an appreciative look as we choose not to follow him. He is health conscious and plays a game of squash often. This, of course, is becoming infrequent now that his 14-year-old son is playing better than him.
As the occupant of the corner office, what’s his new strategy going to be? Paranjpe says HUL, like some its competitors, has a great strategy in place. What will make the difference is the power of execution. The company is leveraging the capabilities and scale of its parent company and focusing on the value of execution. Cost reduction through technology is another priority.
Though HUL will continue to straddle the whole pyramid as far as price points are concerned, the company also recognises the changing market dynamics of the growing number of affluent households in India for whom price is not that big an issue. There are around eight million such households in the country, and the number is expected to double in the next three years. It’s an opportunity no company can afford to ignore. As Paranjpe puts it, “It’s amazing how people are willing to pay extra for little beauty jars”.
The other piece of good news for both Paranjpe and HUL is that inflation hasn’t compressed consumer demand and net sales growth in the June quarter was the highest in the past 10 years — and growth has averaged 19 per cent in the past three quarters. Rising cost pressures are still a problem, but Paranjpe says HUL will never focus on margins at the cost of top line.
Food is one area that has been a laggard due to intense competition, but Paranjpe says the segment is reaching a tipping point. “The platform has been built for the future, things will change. Please don’t forget packaged food sales are still just 5 per cent the value of fresh foods.” So expect launches, brand extensions and innovations steadily hitting shop shelves. It helps that Unilever has a huge food portfolio that is waiting to be unleashed in India.
He graduated from the stairs to the elevator in his career when he was made the head of the laundry category during the detergents’ price war between Procter & Gamble and HUL in 2002. For the first time in his career, he suffered from self-doubt as he was unable to meet the numbers target. The top line just refused to budge as consumers shied away from HUL products, often preferring cheaper alternatives.
But the management obviously felt otherwise as he went on to become the executive director (home & personal care) soon after. The reason was obvious: the platform he built during those days helped HUL regain its glory in subsequent years.
Though HUL has changed its management strategy swiftly with changing times, Paranjpe is clear that the one practice which has and will remain constant is sending managers to rural areas early in their career. “Selling soaps to a shopkeeper in a remote village gives you invaluable lessons. You start listening to the market; you empathise with problems that a salesman faces — these are lessons no B-school can ever teach you,” he says.
Lunch is long over, but Paranjpe does not want to leave in a hurry. He says executing the new gameplan of HUL means a lot of hard work. And that often means starting work at 5 am so that he doesn’t have to compromise on the time he wants to spend with his family. He thinks his wife, who is now on a sabbatical from her job at Wipro, is better than him in multi-tasking.
The person he treats as his idol is his father, a retired IAS officer. “I didn’t have to go too far to learn the power of integrity,” Paranjpe says. His fondness for teaching his children — even his neighbours’ children at times — comes from his mother, who even at the age of 70 runs a school for under-privileged children which has over 1,000 students.
When he finally leaves HUL, Paranjpe wants management trainees feel the same excitement he did 21 years ago. “The wow factor of working for HUL must remain,” he says. His bosses would be pleased with that answer
Mktg - Olmypics,ad spend
BEIJING: Olympic sponsors are launching possibly the largest advertising and marketing campaign ever, aiming to etch their brands in the minds of a new generation of Chinese consumers for far beyond the upcoming Games.
The ads range from traditional print and TV to glitzy new on-line media, blanketing a vast country whose citizens place an extraordinarily high value on the Olympic ideal and presumably the companies that support it.
While the risk of a public relations backlash still looms as China finds itself at odds with much of the world on hot-button issues such as Tibet and Sudan, the hoped-for gains far outweigh any possible downside.
"On a global scale, I don't think you are going to get this kind of investment again," said Greg Paull, the head of R3, a Beijing-based media consultancy.
R3 - which counts sponsors Coca-Cola Co, Adidas, Yili and Lenovo Group as clients - says the benefits for companies will be enjoyed for years after the last athlete crosses the final finish line next month.
R3 reckons all advertisers in China will spend 19 per cent more in 2008 than a year earlier to about $54.3 billion, for an "Olympic effect" of about $8.6 billion in additional spending.
In addition, Olympic sponsors alone will spend 21.8 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) this year, rising 52 per cent from 2007, said Paull.
German sportswear maker Adidas, one of 11 national partners of the Beijing Games, is expecting its Olympic tieup to vault it past arch rival Nike Inc in the China market this year.
"Our marketing campaign for China is the largest we have ever done in a single country," Erica Kerner, director of the Beijing Olympic program for Adidas, told Reuters.
"We see this as a marketing platform that will help us to achieve market leadership in China this year," she said.
Adidas will use a 360-degree projection theatre to spread its "Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing" slogan.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS POLITICS
Nike – which sponsors individual athletes and sports groups, but not the Olympics itself – is perhaps underestimating the fact that over 90 per cent of Chinese view the Olympics, and companies associated with it, in a positive light.
China is the world's fastest growing major economy and is seen by multinationals as a crucial market, success in which would give the winners a step up in the global battle for precious market share.
Adidas estimates China will become its second largest market after the United States by 2010, when its stores will grow to 6,300 from over 4,000 now, riding a sports and leisure boom.
But nothing in China comes easy, as Olympic backers found out earlier this year and again last month.
Organisers and sponsors of the Games were rattled when China's harsh crackdown in Tibet touched off global anti-Chinese protests leading to talk of an Olympic boycott.
"That is a big challenge for all sponsors," said Paull, the media consultant, referring to the political risks surrounding the Olympics.
"But it is also par for the course, part of doing business in this market," said Paull.
Tibet is far from the only issue that could tarnish the Games for sponsors and China.
Beijing criticised the International Criminal Court last month after the court charged the president of key ally Sudan with genocide, adding to claims Beijing was only interested in protecting its oil investments in the poor African country.
Some Olympic athletes who have joined Team Darfur, an informal, 300-strong group created by former US speed skater Joey Cheek to draw attention to Sudan, have said they may stage some form of protest while in Beijing.
The possibility foreign-based protestors or home-grown terrorists from Tibet or the restive region of Xinjiang could mar the Games, has prompted extraordinary security measures including emptying Beijing of migrant workers and tighter visa rules.
But the political backdrop is having little impact on advertisers who are taking advantage of the positive vibes to the pre-Olympic buildup in the capital. And cost is no object.
Coca-Cola is inviting 10,000 people to Beijing for the Games and will dazzle them with what is touted as the world's largest overhead LCD screen, covering an entire outdoor plaza.
Half of Coke's guest list are clients and employees from overseas, and another large contingent will be staff volunteers from China to help with its many hospitality events spread throughout Beijing.
"Our people are really excited to be here. It is a win-win," said Christina Lau, Coke's director of external affairs based in Beijing.
"We have selected employees who have demonstrated their passion and commitment to Coke and the Olympics," she said.
Many of the on-the-ground events where sponsors entertain amd market their brand directly to guests - i.e. not through media channels - are impossible to track and not included in tradtional advertising spending.
"I hear from clients that they are spending quite a huge amount on that," said Lisa Wei, the managing partner of GroupM, a unit of WPP Group, the world's second largest media group.
"But we are unable to monitor such spending," she said.
Besides the large marketing pavilions erected in the Olympic Green aimed at brand promotion, sponsors will also be demonstrating their broader commitment to China's social goals.
US healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, a first time global Olympic partner, will showcase the company's efforts to improve the country's healthcare from AIDs awareness to eyecare.
Adidas has commissioned 75 artists from around world, half from China, to produce pieces that combine art and sport for an exhibit that is touring the country and will stop in Beijing before the Games.
After the Games the entire exhibit will be auctioned in Hong Kong by Sotheby's with all the proceeds donated to victims of the Sichuan earthquake.
"This is a nice way to do something good with the event even after it is finished," said Kerner of Adidas.
The ads range from traditional print and TV to glitzy new on-line media, blanketing a vast country whose citizens place an extraordinarily high value on the Olympic ideal and presumably the companies that support it.
While the risk of a public relations backlash still looms as China finds itself at odds with much of the world on hot-button issues such as Tibet and Sudan, the hoped-for gains far outweigh any possible downside.
"On a global scale, I don't think you are going to get this kind of investment again," said Greg Paull, the head of R3, a Beijing-based media consultancy.
R3 - which counts sponsors Coca-Cola Co, Adidas, Yili and Lenovo Group as clients - says the benefits for companies will be enjoyed for years after the last athlete crosses the final finish line next month.
R3 reckons all advertisers in China will spend 19 per cent more in 2008 than a year earlier to about $54.3 billion, for an "Olympic effect" of about $8.6 billion in additional spending.
In addition, Olympic sponsors alone will spend 21.8 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) this year, rising 52 per cent from 2007, said Paull.
German sportswear maker Adidas, one of 11 national partners of the Beijing Games, is expecting its Olympic tieup to vault it past arch rival Nike Inc in the China market this year.
"Our marketing campaign for China is the largest we have ever done in a single country," Erica Kerner, director of the Beijing Olympic program for Adidas, told Reuters.
"We see this as a marketing platform that will help us to achieve market leadership in China this year," she said.
Adidas will use a 360-degree projection theatre to spread its "Together in 2008, Impossible is Nothing" slogan.
ECONOMICS TRUMPS POLITICS
Nike – which sponsors individual athletes and sports groups, but not the Olympics itself – is perhaps underestimating the fact that over 90 per cent of Chinese view the Olympics, and companies associated with it, in a positive light.
China is the world's fastest growing major economy and is seen by multinationals as a crucial market, success in which would give the winners a step up in the global battle for precious market share.
Adidas estimates China will become its second largest market after the United States by 2010, when its stores will grow to 6,300 from over 4,000 now, riding a sports and leisure boom.
But nothing in China comes easy, as Olympic backers found out earlier this year and again last month.
Organisers and sponsors of the Games were rattled when China's harsh crackdown in Tibet touched off global anti-Chinese protests leading to talk of an Olympic boycott.
"That is a big challenge for all sponsors," said Paull, the media consultant, referring to the political risks surrounding the Olympics.
"But it is also par for the course, part of doing business in this market," said Paull.
Tibet is far from the only issue that could tarnish the Games for sponsors and China.
Beijing criticised the International Criminal Court last month after the court charged the president of key ally Sudan with genocide, adding to claims Beijing was only interested in protecting its oil investments in the poor African country.
Some Olympic athletes who have joined Team Darfur, an informal, 300-strong group created by former US speed skater Joey Cheek to draw attention to Sudan, have said they may stage some form of protest while in Beijing.
The possibility foreign-based protestors or home-grown terrorists from Tibet or the restive region of Xinjiang could mar the Games, has prompted extraordinary security measures including emptying Beijing of migrant workers and tighter visa rules.
But the political backdrop is having little impact on advertisers who are taking advantage of the positive vibes to the pre-Olympic buildup in the capital. And cost is no object.
Coca-Cola is inviting 10,000 people to Beijing for the Games and will dazzle them with what is touted as the world's largest overhead LCD screen, covering an entire outdoor plaza.
Half of Coke's guest list are clients and employees from overseas, and another large contingent will be staff volunteers from China to help with its many hospitality events spread throughout Beijing.
"Our people are really excited to be here. It is a win-win," said Christina Lau, Coke's director of external affairs based in Beijing.
"We have selected employees who have demonstrated their passion and commitment to Coke and the Olympics," she said.
Many of the on-the-ground events where sponsors entertain amd market their brand directly to guests - i.e. not through media channels - are impossible to track and not included in tradtional advertising spending.
"I hear from clients that they are spending quite a huge amount on that," said Lisa Wei, the managing partner of GroupM, a unit of WPP Group, the world's second largest media group.
"But we are unable to monitor such spending," she said.
Besides the large marketing pavilions erected in the Olympic Green aimed at brand promotion, sponsors will also be demonstrating their broader commitment to China's social goals.
US healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, a first time global Olympic partner, will showcase the company's efforts to improve the country's healthcare from AIDs awareness to eyecare.
Adidas has commissioned 75 artists from around world, half from China, to produce pieces that combine art and sport for an exhibit that is touring the country and will stop in Beijing before the Games.
After the Games the entire exhibit will be auctioned in Hong Kong by Sotheby's with all the proceeds donated to victims of the Sichuan earthquake.
"This is a nice way to do something good with the event even after it is finished," said Kerner of Adidas.
Business - No Clash for steel
The three-month price freeze that the Indian steel majors had agreed to, in response to the government’s request, is over but there is unlikely to be any price increases announced this month. The industry appears also to have heeded the government’s call to go easy on exports, in return for the government not imposing formal restrictions and an export tax. Exports are down in the June quarter by 31 per cent over the same quarter of 2007, despite global prices remaining higher than domestic prices by a third. This new mood of cooperation (arguably achieved by pointing the barrel of a gun) is in sharp contrast to the face-off that occurred between the Indian cement industry and the government some months ago. The main reason for the lack of sparks in steel is that both the government and the industry have left each other some room for manoeuvre, even while sticking to their public postures. The government has been able to get a price freeze because all prices have not been frozen, only spot prices which account for no more than 40 per cent of tonnage. Prices fixed via long-term contract or relevant for re-rollers who export the final product are not affected.
The industry is holding its fire because it is still waiting for the outcome of the price re-negotiation between the state-owned iron ore exporter, National Mineral Development Corporation, and Japanese importers. If NMDC gets a hefty price rise from the Japanese, as the Australians have from the Chinese, then iron ore and steel prices will rise in tandem. The industry is also in fine fettle. It has just turned in a good quarter and is not expecting either the domestic or international scenario to turn adverse. In contrast, the cement industry is already facing a significant cooling of domestic demand. It is true that if the major Indian firms had been able to raise prices they would have been able to gain exceptional returns, as the global firms have been able to do, and build up reserves with which to face the next downturn in this very cyclical industry. The major Indian steel makers appear cool perhaps because, being global least-cost producers, they have confidence in the future. There are no long-term prospects of demand cooling off in either India or China, despite the present slowdown, and the appetite for steel in these two economies is likely to remain robust for a long time.
Given Indian costs, the industry should be able to sell whatever it produces, at home or abroad. The main uncertainty is how much it will be able to produce in the future. The massive greenfield expansion plans of the industry are held up by uncertainties over land, iron ore and rehabilitation of those who will be displaced by the projects. There is thus a serious challenge for state governments in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, which also happen to be affected by Naxalite disturbances. While India has to write a new chapter in rehabilitating indigenous people typically affected by such projects as they are both poor and do not have the skills to survive in a modern economy, state governments have to get the better of the intense lobbying among the contestants for iron ore and make the necessary mine allocations. In steel, there is enough for everybody — local people, producers and consumers — provided the regulator sets the right rules.
The industry is holding its fire because it is still waiting for the outcome of the price re-negotiation between the state-owned iron ore exporter, National Mineral Development Corporation, and Japanese importers. If NMDC gets a hefty price rise from the Japanese, as the Australians have from the Chinese, then iron ore and steel prices will rise in tandem. The industry is also in fine fettle. It has just turned in a good quarter and is not expecting either the domestic or international scenario to turn adverse. In contrast, the cement industry is already facing a significant cooling of domestic demand. It is true that if the major Indian firms had been able to raise prices they would have been able to gain exceptional returns, as the global firms have been able to do, and build up reserves with which to face the next downturn in this very cyclical industry. The major Indian steel makers appear cool perhaps because, being global least-cost producers, they have confidence in the future. There are no long-term prospects of demand cooling off in either India or China, despite the present slowdown, and the appetite for steel in these two economies is likely to remain robust for a long time.
Given Indian costs, the industry should be able to sell whatever it produces, at home or abroad. The main uncertainty is how much it will be able to produce in the future. The massive greenfield expansion plans of the industry are held up by uncertainties over land, iron ore and rehabilitation of those who will be displaced by the projects. There is thus a serious challenge for state governments in Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh, which also happen to be affected by Naxalite disturbances. While India has to write a new chapter in rehabilitating indigenous people typically affected by such projects as they are both poor and do not have the skills to survive in a modern economy, state governments have to get the better of the intense lobbying among the contestants for iron ore and make the necessary mine allocations. In steel, there is enough for everybody — local people, producers and consumers — provided the regulator sets the right rules.
Entertainment - Dubai cinemas go digital
DUBAI // The Middle East’s first digital cinemas open in Dubai tonight and the theatre owners say the new technology will change the way people watch movies.
Two new screens will show digital versions of the latest sequel to The Mummy at the new Grand Cinema’s Grand Festival complex in Dubai Festival City.
The company says digital cinemas, which have been operating for a year in the US and Europe, are “redefining the way we watch movies”.
Instead of using 35mm projectors, digital cinemas stream films onto the big screen from a hard drive.
“Film fans will see the difference in the clarity of the picture and sound,” said Jean Ramia of Gulf Films, a distributor with 177 cinemas in the region.
“There is a very high finish to the image, it’s like watching a normal LCD television and then moving on to the latest HDTV digital screens.”
Hollywood studios delayed the release of digital films in the Middle East because of fears they would be vulnerable to piracy as a result of censorship procedures.
Because sex scenes are censored in the region, studios would have to hand over movie source codes to allow films to be edited. However, anyone who obtained a source code could copy a film an unlimited number of times.
“There was an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] between the studios and us as a distributor that the protection of the source codes would be assured,” said Mr Ramia.
He gave no further details but said all Grand Cinema’s screens in the Middle East would be digital within two years.
Plans are already under way for the next digital cinema, which will open on the Palm Jumeirah within 18 months.
“We’re also going to look at putting digital into screens which are the most popular in Dubai, for example at the Grand Hyatt and Ibn Battuta mall,” he said.
Equipping a digital cinema costs US$180,000 (Dh661,000), which is twice as much as a cinema using a normal projector. However, ticket prices would not increase, said Mr Ramia.
The new Grand Festival Cinema Complex includes a Grand Class theatre with 44 reclining Lazyboy chairs and a personalised butler service during the film.
Mr Ramia said that compared with other cinemas it offered a standard of comfort comparable to flying business class.
“There is a butler service, where orders will be taken via PDA so the order will be instantly prepared, but it will be restricted to the first 15 minutes of the film and maybe at a halfway point,” he said.
Hot and cold towels will be available for cinema-goers to refresh themselves and tickets can be booked online to avoid queuing.
“The future of cinema really is this, because with digital you have the ability to make 3D films so much easier than with 35mm, so there will be a lot more 3D films being produced,” said Mr Ramia.
The DreamWorks studio has said it will release all its major movies, including the fourth Shrek film, in 3D starting in 2009.
Two new screens will show digital versions of the latest sequel to The Mummy at the new Grand Cinema’s Grand Festival complex in Dubai Festival City.
The company says digital cinemas, which have been operating for a year in the US and Europe, are “redefining the way we watch movies”.
Instead of using 35mm projectors, digital cinemas stream films onto the big screen from a hard drive.
“Film fans will see the difference in the clarity of the picture and sound,” said Jean Ramia of Gulf Films, a distributor with 177 cinemas in the region.
“There is a very high finish to the image, it’s like watching a normal LCD television and then moving on to the latest HDTV digital screens.”
Hollywood studios delayed the release of digital films in the Middle East because of fears they would be vulnerable to piracy as a result of censorship procedures.
Because sex scenes are censored in the region, studios would have to hand over movie source codes to allow films to be edited. However, anyone who obtained a source code could copy a film an unlimited number of times.
“There was an MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] between the studios and us as a distributor that the protection of the source codes would be assured,” said Mr Ramia.
He gave no further details but said all Grand Cinema’s screens in the Middle East would be digital within two years.
Plans are already under way for the next digital cinema, which will open on the Palm Jumeirah within 18 months.
“We’re also going to look at putting digital into screens which are the most popular in Dubai, for example at the Grand Hyatt and Ibn Battuta mall,” he said.
Equipping a digital cinema costs US$180,000 (Dh661,000), which is twice as much as a cinema using a normal projector. However, ticket prices would not increase, said Mr Ramia.
The new Grand Festival Cinema Complex includes a Grand Class theatre with 44 reclining Lazyboy chairs and a personalised butler service during the film.
Mr Ramia said that compared with other cinemas it offered a standard of comfort comparable to flying business class.
“There is a butler service, where orders will be taken via PDA so the order will be instantly prepared, but it will be restricted to the first 15 minutes of the film and maybe at a halfway point,” he said.
Hot and cold towels will be available for cinema-goers to refresh themselves and tickets can be booked online to avoid queuing.
“The future of cinema really is this, because with digital you have the ability to make 3D films so much easier than with 35mm, so there will be a lot more 3D films being produced,” said Mr Ramia.
The DreamWorks studio has said it will release all its major movies, including the fourth Shrek film, in 3D starting in 2009.
Business - Time to hunker down
One can’t recall when ITC last reported a fall in its net profit in any quarter, if at all it did. That was before the June 2008 quarter, when the cigarette major’s bottom line dipped marginally by just over 4 per cent. ITC can afford to lose a sum of Rs120 crore in a quarter, it’s no big deal. It’s not the losses in themselves that are worrying; any start-up venture — in this case food and personal products — needs time to stabilise. What is disconcerting is that the business itself doesn’t seem to be picking up the way one would have expected. To be sure, ITC has mopped up market share and is giving the competition a run for its money, whether in atta, snack foods or biscuits. But 23 per cent sales growth for the branded packaged foods business as a whole, on a low base, is rather disappointing.
To be fair to ITC, these are not the easiest of times to sell to consumers. A glance at the corporate results for the June 2008 quarter shows that, by and large, the top line for most companies has seen momentum and at an aggregate level, therefore, it would appear that demand is not slackening. But a closer look at businesses catering for consumers shows a somewhat different picture. Bajaj Auto, for instance, has seen revenues grow in single digits, on a low base, retailer Trent’s growth has just about made it to double digits while same-store sales at Shopper’s Stop are up just 7 per cent. In some cases it is sheer inflation that has helped prop up the top line — soaring gold prices have inflated Titan’s sales, there have been virtually no increase in volumes. Sun TV has seen disappointing subscriptions, as has Zee Entertainment. And people are not exactly queuing up outside banks to borrow to buy a house or an even a television set.
ITC can sustain the losses for a while. But whether a Dabur wants to lose Rs 40 crore — more than a tenth of its estimated profits for this year — rolling out a retail network is another matter. Or whether a Dish TV, which has already piled up losses of over Rs 400 crore, wants to keep on subsidising set-top boxes is something to think about. Multiplex operator PVR may want to roll out fewer screens at a time when profits are falling. Across companies in the consumer space, start-ups and expansion plans seem to be dragging down profits. That’s partly because costs are rising and partly because there just don’t seem to be enough takers for products or services at higher prices. And prices need to be high if companies are to cover their costs. So while they’re no doubt scaling up the new ventures, it’s probably not happening at the kind of pace it should.
Sure, companies need to expand their portfolios and branch out into related areas but perhaps they could hold on for a while. As the earnings numbers for the June 2008 quarter clearly show, companies are selling but not enough to protect their profit margins. More important, a Citigroup study points out that larger companies appear to be holding out better in a challenging environment while their smaller counterparts seem to be in some amount of trouble. For a sample of BSE 500 companies, net profits have grown at just 6 per cent for the June 2008 quarter, just half the rate of 12 per cent seen in the March quarter. That is not a small drop. In contrast, earnings for a set of bigger firms have grown faster in the June quarter than they did in March. Things could get worse before they become better because prices of essentials continue to rise sharply; after a point consumers will think twice before blowing up money on luxuries. So Titan may actually end up selling less grammage this year, and occupancies at PVR’s theatres could fall more than they already have. Already, Maruti Suzuki hasn’t sold many more cars this July than it did last year and Mahindra & Mahindra has actually sold fewer numbers of its utes.
So this is hardly the time to burn cash, preservation is more like it. Unfortunately, India is becoming a high-cost economy in which real estate, people and now money are becoming unaffordable. Expanding the business at a time like this could jeopardise the core business, which also needs to be supported. And there isn’t that much money going around. So it’s probably a good thing that Shopper’s Stop is stepping off the accelerator — the retailer has decided to roll out fewer stores this year than it had planned. Perhaps others like Arvind Mills, which is attempting to break away from commodity products and foray into value-added segments, will do a rethink on whether it can afford to roll out new stores at this juncture. Broadcasters like Zee need to figure out whether it makes sense to hold on to channels like Zee Next, which has posted a loss of Rs 40 crore. This is no time to fritter away precious resources.
To be fair to ITC, these are not the easiest of times to sell to consumers. A glance at the corporate results for the June 2008 quarter shows that, by and large, the top line for most companies has seen momentum and at an aggregate level, therefore, it would appear that demand is not slackening. But a closer look at businesses catering for consumers shows a somewhat different picture. Bajaj Auto, for instance, has seen revenues grow in single digits, on a low base, retailer Trent’s growth has just about made it to double digits while same-store sales at Shopper’s Stop are up just 7 per cent. In some cases it is sheer inflation that has helped prop up the top line — soaring gold prices have inflated Titan’s sales, there have been virtually no increase in volumes. Sun TV has seen disappointing subscriptions, as has Zee Entertainment. And people are not exactly queuing up outside banks to borrow to buy a house or an even a television set.
ITC can sustain the losses for a while. But whether a Dabur wants to lose Rs 40 crore — more than a tenth of its estimated profits for this year — rolling out a retail network is another matter. Or whether a Dish TV, which has already piled up losses of over Rs 400 crore, wants to keep on subsidising set-top boxes is something to think about. Multiplex operator PVR may want to roll out fewer screens at a time when profits are falling. Across companies in the consumer space, start-ups and expansion plans seem to be dragging down profits. That’s partly because costs are rising and partly because there just don’t seem to be enough takers for products or services at higher prices. And prices need to be high if companies are to cover their costs. So while they’re no doubt scaling up the new ventures, it’s probably not happening at the kind of pace it should.
Sure, companies need to expand their portfolios and branch out into related areas but perhaps they could hold on for a while. As the earnings numbers for the June 2008 quarter clearly show, companies are selling but not enough to protect their profit margins. More important, a Citigroup study points out that larger companies appear to be holding out better in a challenging environment while their smaller counterparts seem to be in some amount of trouble. For a sample of BSE 500 companies, net profits have grown at just 6 per cent for the June 2008 quarter, just half the rate of 12 per cent seen in the March quarter. That is not a small drop. In contrast, earnings for a set of bigger firms have grown faster in the June quarter than they did in March. Things could get worse before they become better because prices of essentials continue to rise sharply; after a point consumers will think twice before blowing up money on luxuries. So Titan may actually end up selling less grammage this year, and occupancies at PVR’s theatres could fall more than they already have. Already, Maruti Suzuki hasn’t sold many more cars this July than it did last year and Mahindra & Mahindra has actually sold fewer numbers of its utes.
So this is hardly the time to burn cash, preservation is more like it. Unfortunately, India is becoming a high-cost economy in which real estate, people and now money are becoming unaffordable. Expanding the business at a time like this could jeopardise the core business, which also needs to be supported. And there isn’t that much money going around. So it’s probably a good thing that Shopper’s Stop is stepping off the accelerator — the retailer has decided to roll out fewer stores this year than it had planned. Perhaps others like Arvind Mills, which is attempting to break away from commodity products and foray into value-added segments, will do a rethink on whether it can afford to roll out new stores at this juncture. Broadcasters like Zee need to figure out whether it makes sense to hold on to channels like Zee Next, which has posted a loss of Rs 40 crore. This is no time to fritter away precious resources.
India - Respect the fiscal compact
It's time to plug legal loopholes to curb inconsistencies in the Centre-state fiscal compact.
In an article on May 10 in Business Standard, I had discussed and evaluated the efficacy of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBMA). The law was enacted to lower and cap the central government’s fiscal and revenue deficits over the medium term. Judging performance against quantitative (outcome) benchmarks, the evidence in favour of self-imposed rules as stipulated in the FRBMA was found to be patently thin.
It would seem that the FRBMA is not the only fiscal rule that has been the victim of central government behaviour (in spirit, if not in letter). A case in point is the sharing of Union taxes with states. Most readers of this paper would be aware that the Finance Commission every five years, inter alia, determines the states’ share of taxes imposed and collected by the Centre. Until 1999-2000, only income tax and Union excise duty were shared with the states; the 10th Finance Commission recommended a major change, specifically, that all union taxes should be included in the shareable pool. Prior to the enactment of the Constitution (Eightieth Amendment) Act, 2000, the sharing of Union tax revenues with the states was in accordance with the provisions of Articles 270 and 272, which, respectively, provided for the compulsory sharing of income tax (excluding corporation tax) and Union excise duty. The amendment altered the pattern of sharing of Union taxes in a fundamental way. Article 272 was dropped and Article 270 was changed, which provided for sharing all taxes and duties except those referred to in Articles 268 and 269 — respectively, surcharges on taxes and duties, and cess levied for specific purposes. There are three well-known advantages (to my mind) emanating from these changes: (i) removal of the anomalous incentive for the central government to concentrate its tax efforts on those taxes that it did not have to share with the states like corporation tax and customs duty; (ii) imparting flexibility and elbow room to the central government for pursuing tax reforms in a coherent manner; and (iii) allowing states to share the aggregate buoyancy of taxes that are under the remit of the Centre.
The 11th Finance Commission, in this context, had recommended that states’ share for the five-year period, 2000-01 to 2004-05, be 29.5 per cent (28 per cent plus 1.5 per cent on account of additional excise duties levied in lieu of sales tax), which was accepted by the Union government. Subsequently, the 12th Finance Commission recommended the share at 30.5 per cent for the period 2005-06 to 2009-10. Against this background it is apposite to briefly examine states’ shares in central taxes.
From the table it is clear that the allocation to states has been substantially and consistently less than the stipulated percentage. In none of the years has it been close to the Finance Commission recommendations accepted by the central government, which underscores the increasing importance of cesses and surcharges on taxes imposed by the Centre, which the latter is not required to share with the states. A quick back-of-the-envelope exercise from the Budget documents reveals that for 2007-08 the aggregate of revenue from cess and surcharge on income tax, corporation tax, customs duty, excise duty and service tax was of the order of Rs 70,000 crore (at about 1.5 per cent of GDP it is a number not be sniffed at!).
While there may be credible reasons to allow the central government to impose a cess/surcharge, the subject merits consideration on several counts: First, while surcharges and cesses could, under specific circumstances, be justified (for example, extraordinary financing for a national public good like defending against an enemy border incursion), the extant surcharges/cesses seem to be enduring irrespective of circumstances and the dispensation at the Centre. Second, despite the large quantum of revenue from cesses and surcharges, there is a virtual absence of formal proposals to share the cess revenues with states on grounds of fairness (based on principles of vertical equity established by successive Finance Commissions). Third, the dearth of compelling motivation justifying the seemingly ad hoc compromise of sound public finance practice; in other words, tax reform is undermined by fiddling.
Allocating revenue from a specific cess for stipulated expenditure implies that the Centre’s spending priorities are somehow more worthwhile than the states, or, that “Delhi knows better”. The central government on its part may contend that, for example, the education cesses are finding their way to states anyway and, that too, for an unexceptionable objective, viz. enhancing human capital of the young. However, with justification, it could be reasoned that some states may want to spend more on enhancing human capital through subsidising primary health and prenatal care or, even on law and order in these difficult times. In other words, “a one size fits all” approach structured by the Centre is not easily defensible when it comes to prioritising social expenditure.
Conceivably more insidious is that the cess and surcharge revenues that the Centre spends at its discretion underline the rule-based inter se allocation of revenues between states determined by a constitutional authority, viz. the Finance Commission. It is instructive that in the past decade there have been several instances of individual states complaining about favouritism/discrimination in allocation of central government largesse. The larger the revenue stream from shareable taxes that are not allocated according to rules (implemented in both letter and spirit), the higher the likelihood of heartburn among states that feel that they have had the unfavourable end of the stick. Perhaps the time has come to plug embedded legal loopholes to curb the possibility of time- inconsistent choices eroding the Centre-state fiscal compact.
In an article on May 10 in Business Standard, I had discussed and evaluated the efficacy of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBMA). The law was enacted to lower and cap the central government’s fiscal and revenue deficits over the medium term. Judging performance against quantitative (outcome) benchmarks, the evidence in favour of self-imposed rules as stipulated in the FRBMA was found to be patently thin.
It would seem that the FRBMA is not the only fiscal rule that has been the victim of central government behaviour (in spirit, if not in letter). A case in point is the sharing of Union taxes with states. Most readers of this paper would be aware that the Finance Commission every five years, inter alia, determines the states’ share of taxes imposed and collected by the Centre. Until 1999-2000, only income tax and Union excise duty were shared with the states; the 10th Finance Commission recommended a major change, specifically, that all union taxes should be included in the shareable pool. Prior to the enactment of the Constitution (Eightieth Amendment) Act, 2000, the sharing of Union tax revenues with the states was in accordance with the provisions of Articles 270 and 272, which, respectively, provided for the compulsory sharing of income tax (excluding corporation tax) and Union excise duty. The amendment altered the pattern of sharing of Union taxes in a fundamental way. Article 272 was dropped and Article 270 was changed, which provided for sharing all taxes and duties except those referred to in Articles 268 and 269 — respectively, surcharges on taxes and duties, and cess levied for specific purposes. There are three well-known advantages (to my mind) emanating from these changes: (i) removal of the anomalous incentive for the central government to concentrate its tax efforts on those taxes that it did not have to share with the states like corporation tax and customs duty; (ii) imparting flexibility and elbow room to the central government for pursuing tax reforms in a coherent manner; and (iii) allowing states to share the aggregate buoyancy of taxes that are under the remit of the Centre.
The 11th Finance Commission, in this context, had recommended that states’ share for the five-year period, 2000-01 to 2004-05, be 29.5 per cent (28 per cent plus 1.5 per cent on account of additional excise duties levied in lieu of sales tax), which was accepted by the Union government. Subsequently, the 12th Finance Commission recommended the share at 30.5 per cent for the period 2005-06 to 2009-10. Against this background it is apposite to briefly examine states’ shares in central taxes.
From the table it is clear that the allocation to states has been substantially and consistently less than the stipulated percentage. In none of the years has it been close to the Finance Commission recommendations accepted by the central government, which underscores the increasing importance of cesses and surcharges on taxes imposed by the Centre, which the latter is not required to share with the states. A quick back-of-the-envelope exercise from the Budget documents reveals that for 2007-08 the aggregate of revenue from cess and surcharge on income tax, corporation tax, customs duty, excise duty and service tax was of the order of Rs 70,000 crore (at about 1.5 per cent of GDP it is a number not be sniffed at!).
While there may be credible reasons to allow the central government to impose a cess/surcharge, the subject merits consideration on several counts: First, while surcharges and cesses could, under specific circumstances, be justified (for example, extraordinary financing for a national public good like defending against an enemy border incursion), the extant surcharges/cesses seem to be enduring irrespective of circumstances and the dispensation at the Centre. Second, despite the large quantum of revenue from cesses and surcharges, there is a virtual absence of formal proposals to share the cess revenues with states on grounds of fairness (based on principles of vertical equity established by successive Finance Commissions). Third, the dearth of compelling motivation justifying the seemingly ad hoc compromise of sound public finance practice; in other words, tax reform is undermined by fiddling.
Allocating revenue from a specific cess for stipulated expenditure implies that the Centre’s spending priorities are somehow more worthwhile than the states, or, that “Delhi knows better”. The central government on its part may contend that, for example, the education cesses are finding their way to states anyway and, that too, for an unexceptionable objective, viz. enhancing human capital of the young. However, with justification, it could be reasoned that some states may want to spend more on enhancing human capital through subsidising primary health and prenatal care or, even on law and order in these difficult times. In other words, “a one size fits all” approach structured by the Centre is not easily defensible when it comes to prioritising social expenditure.
Conceivably more insidious is that the cess and surcharge revenues that the Centre spends at its discretion underline the rule-based inter se allocation of revenues between states determined by a constitutional authority, viz. the Finance Commission. It is instructive that in the past decade there have been several instances of individual states complaining about favouritism/discrimination in allocation of central government largesse. The larger the revenue stream from shareable taxes that are not allocated according to rules (implemented in both letter and spirit), the higher the likelihood of heartburn among states that feel that they have had the unfavourable end of the stick. Perhaps the time has come to plug embedded legal loopholes to curb the possibility of time- inconsistent choices eroding the Centre-state fiscal compact.
India - Clintion foundation mulls world's largest solar project in Gujarat
US-based foundation to set up Rs 20,000-crore Integrated SolarCity.
This could well be the world’s largest solar power project at a single location if all goes as planned.
The US-based Clinton Foundation is in talks with the Gujarat government to set up an ‘Integrated Solar City’ project with a capacity to generate a 5,000 Mw over a period of time.
The project, tagged as one of the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) into the state, will also be a landmark project as the cost of power generation is likely to be 70 per cent less — around Rs 20,000 crore — than the conventional cost of generation, say sources close to the development.
The project envisages an integrated solar city wherein all the raw materials including glass and panels will be produced by them, bringing down the cost substantially, said a senior government official.
The cost of generation for thermal energy is about Rs 10-11 per unit. However, according to estimates of Clinton Foundation, the power produced in the solar city will cost around Rs 4 per unit, going by the scale of the project and technology advancement they have on hand.
The Gujarat government has roped in US-based Nobel Laureate John Byrne for charting the state’s solar roadmap and is considering Kutch and Banaskantha as favourable locations for the mega project.
“The Foundation, supported by the likes of GE Energy and Microsoft, already has a war chest of $12 billion which it wants to utilise for green energy initiatives,” sources said.
The world’s largest solar power plant is currently in Mojave Desert of California with a capacity that will go up to 900 Mw in few years.
The Clinton Foundation is also in talks with governments of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan for setting up solar power projects.
A number of corporates including Essar, Indiabulls, Reliance, ADAG, Tata Power, Suryachakra and Euro Group have also lined up solar projects in the state.
The Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance and Euro Solar have already been given letters of intent of 5 Mw each from the 10 Mw quota allotted by the Centre to each state
This could well be the world’s largest solar power project at a single location if all goes as planned.
The US-based Clinton Foundation is in talks with the Gujarat government to set up an ‘Integrated Solar City’ project with a capacity to generate a 5,000 Mw over a period of time.
The project, tagged as one of the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) into the state, will also be a landmark project as the cost of power generation is likely to be 70 per cent less — around Rs 20,000 crore — than the conventional cost of generation, say sources close to the development.
The project envisages an integrated solar city wherein all the raw materials including glass and panels will be produced by them, bringing down the cost substantially, said a senior government official.
The cost of generation for thermal energy is about Rs 10-11 per unit. However, according to estimates of Clinton Foundation, the power produced in the solar city will cost around Rs 4 per unit, going by the scale of the project and technology advancement they have on hand.
The Gujarat government has roped in US-based Nobel Laureate John Byrne for charting the state’s solar roadmap and is considering Kutch and Banaskantha as favourable locations for the mega project.
“The Foundation, supported by the likes of GE Energy and Microsoft, already has a war chest of $12 billion which it wants to utilise for green energy initiatives,” sources said.
The world’s largest solar power plant is currently in Mojave Desert of California with a capacity that will go up to 900 Mw in few years.
The Clinton Foundation is also in talks with governments of Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan for setting up solar power projects.
A number of corporates including Essar, Indiabulls, Reliance, ADAG, Tata Power, Suryachakra and Euro Group have also lined up solar projects in the state.
The Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance and Euro Solar have already been given letters of intent of 5 Mw each from the 10 Mw quota allotted by the Centre to each state
India - Hyderabad to get 71km metro 'free of cost'
Delhi’s 65-km metro cost the state and central governments Rs 10,500 crore. In comparison, Hyderabad is about to get a 71-km metro without the central or state government paying a rupee. Instead, the Andhra Pradesh government will receive Rs 1,240 crore (calculated at present value) by simply giving the concession to a private consortium.
The state cabinet approved the concession agreement and the winning bid at its meeting in Hyderabad earlier this week. The winning consortium is led by the city’s Satyam group, which has so far focused on its software business.
This dramatic bid result was so unexpected that the bid documents had not even considered the possibility of the government being the net financial gainer. Instead, the central government had expected to fork out about 20 per cent of the project cost of Rs 12,410 crore as a capital subsidy, with the possibility of a further 10 per cent funding from the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. The state government, in turn, had been prepared to fork out about 10 per cent of the project cost.
The combined saving for the Centre and state is, therefore, about Rs 4,800 crore or more, over and above which the state government will now receive Rs 30,300 crore from the concessionaires over the life of the concession. Discounted (at 13.5 per cent a year) to get its present value, that money is worth Rs 1,240 crore today.
Officials who have steered the project argue that the Hyderabad experience opens up a completely new way of building metro services in the big cities, at zero cost to governments and city administrations.
In contrast, Bangalore’s 42-km metro is a state-funded project costing Rs 6,500 crore. Mumbai has given the contract for the 11-km first phase of its metro project (costing Rs 2,356 crore) to a consortium led by the Reliance Anil Ambani group, with a government-paid capital subsidy of Rs 650 crore.
Five consortia had been shortlisted for the Hyderabad metro concession, which is to run for 35 years, with a possible extension by another 25 years. Of these, a GVK-led consortium did not bid finally.
An Essar-Alsthom consortium asked for a subsidy from the government of Rs 3,100 crore, while a Reliance Energy-Bombardier consortium wanted Rs 2,811 crore. The bid that came closest to the one by Satyam was from a Malaysian-led group which included Siemens and Nagarjuna, which had offered to pay the government Rs 151 crore.
The tariff has been set at Rs 8 to Rs 20. The tariff on the Delhi Metro for comparable distances is Rs 6 to Rs 22.
The project team that is celebrating its success now was led by NVS Reddy, a railway accounts service officer in Hyderabad, while the political leadership was provided by the Andhra Pradesh chief minister, YS Rajshekhar Reddy. In Delhi, the mentoring with regard to the concession agreement and the specifications manual was provided by Gajendra Haldea of the Planning Commission.
Based on the success of the Hyderabad model, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is understood to have written to the Prime Minister, suggesting that this be the model followed for other metro projects—a view that is apparently being opposed by the Ministry of Urban Development, which prefers the Delhi metro model.
The state cabinet approved the concession agreement and the winning bid at its meeting in Hyderabad earlier this week. The winning consortium is led by the city’s Satyam group, which has so far focused on its software business.
This dramatic bid result was so unexpected that the bid documents had not even considered the possibility of the government being the net financial gainer. Instead, the central government had expected to fork out about 20 per cent of the project cost of Rs 12,410 crore as a capital subsidy, with the possibility of a further 10 per cent funding from the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission. The state government, in turn, had been prepared to fork out about 10 per cent of the project cost.
The combined saving for the Centre and state is, therefore, about Rs 4,800 crore or more, over and above which the state government will now receive Rs 30,300 crore from the concessionaires over the life of the concession. Discounted (at 13.5 per cent a year) to get its present value, that money is worth Rs 1,240 crore today.
Officials who have steered the project argue that the Hyderabad experience opens up a completely new way of building metro services in the big cities, at zero cost to governments and city administrations.
In contrast, Bangalore’s 42-km metro is a state-funded project costing Rs 6,500 crore. Mumbai has given the contract for the 11-km first phase of its metro project (costing Rs 2,356 crore) to a consortium led by the Reliance Anil Ambani group, with a government-paid capital subsidy of Rs 650 crore.
Five consortia had been shortlisted for the Hyderabad metro concession, which is to run for 35 years, with a possible extension by another 25 years. Of these, a GVK-led consortium did not bid finally.
An Essar-Alsthom consortium asked for a subsidy from the government of Rs 3,100 crore, while a Reliance Energy-Bombardier consortium wanted Rs 2,811 crore. The bid that came closest to the one by Satyam was from a Malaysian-led group which included Siemens and Nagarjuna, which had offered to pay the government Rs 151 crore.
The tariff has been set at Rs 8 to Rs 20. The tariff on the Delhi Metro for comparable distances is Rs 6 to Rs 22.
The project team that is celebrating its success now was led by NVS Reddy, a railway accounts service officer in Hyderabad, while the political leadership was provided by the Andhra Pradesh chief minister, YS Rajshekhar Reddy. In Delhi, the mentoring with regard to the concession agreement and the specifications manual was provided by Gajendra Haldea of the Planning Commission.
Based on the success of the Hyderabad model, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is understood to have written to the Prime Minister, suggesting that this be the model followed for other metro projects—a view that is apparently being opposed by the Ministry of Urban Development, which prefers the Delhi metro model.
Lifestyle - India least popular among expats for a long haul
It offers the cheapest accommodation, the highest savings and a luxurious life across the world, but India is still the least desired place when it comes to attracting the expatriates for a longer stay, a new survey reveals.
According to a survey of expatriates across four continents, conducted by global banking major HSBC, Singapore, the US and UAE have emerged as the top three most popular destinations among expats.
The overall ranking, where India has been placed at ninth position, is based on four criteria — longevity, earning and saving, luxury and accommodation.
In individual categories, India has been ranked as the country with the cheapest accommodation, while it comes on the top in terms of earnings and savings for the expats.
In terms of living a luxurious life also, India has been ranked as the third best after UAE and Singapore.
However, when it comes to longevity, which measures the score of a country in terms of attracting expats and where expats settle down, India has been ranked at the bottom of the list.
The three countries scoring highest in terms of longevity are Netherlands, Germany and the US.
Europe has emerged as the most popular destination in terms of the length of time expats stay there.
More than three quarters (82 per cent) of expats now living in the Netherlands have been there for three or more years, followed by Germany (77 per cent) and Spain (76 per cent).
In the overall ranking of 15 economies, Jersey, the UK and France emerged as the lowest rated expat destinations.
Spain and China also rated poorly, ranking 12th and 11th, respectively, while Australia featured 10th in the survey, despite scoring high on levels of luxury, ability to earn and save and accommodation as it scored low for longevity.
According to a survey of expatriates across four continents, conducted by global banking major HSBC, Singapore, the US and UAE have emerged as the top three most popular destinations among expats.
The overall ranking, where India has been placed at ninth position, is based on four criteria — longevity, earning and saving, luxury and accommodation.
In individual categories, India has been ranked as the country with the cheapest accommodation, while it comes on the top in terms of earnings and savings for the expats.
In terms of living a luxurious life also, India has been ranked as the third best after UAE and Singapore.
However, when it comes to longevity, which measures the score of a country in terms of attracting expats and where expats settle down, India has been ranked at the bottom of the list.
The three countries scoring highest in terms of longevity are Netherlands, Germany and the US.
Europe has emerged as the most popular destination in terms of the length of time expats stay there.
More than three quarters (82 per cent) of expats now living in the Netherlands have been there for three or more years, followed by Germany (77 per cent) and Spain (76 per cent).
In the overall ranking of 15 economies, Jersey, the UK and France emerged as the lowest rated expat destinations.
Spain and China also rated poorly, ranking 12th and 11th, respectively, while Australia featured 10th in the survey, despite scoring high on levels of luxury, ability to earn and save and accommodation as it scored low for longevity.
Business - BSNL unions reject ESOP offer
The union of state-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has rejected an employee stock option (Esop) offer by Communications Minister A Raja to coincide with the company’s initial public offer (IPO).
The union, which represents over 300,000 employees, has opposed the Esop on grounds that it was opposed to the IPO in any case.
“Even if they offer us Esops we will still oppose the listing. The unions are not convinced by the arguments put forward by the management in favour of the IPO,” said V A N Namboodiri, general secretary, BSNL employee union.Last week, BSNL’s board cleared the IPO proposal that would dilute the government’s stake by 10 per cent.
The company had estimated that it would be able to raise over $10 billion (Rs 42,000 crore) from this issue. With over 70 million subscribers the IPO is needed partly to fund its massive expansion in both 2G services and create a 3G network and also get navaratna (semi-autonomous) status.
Namboodiri added that Raja has assured them that no decision on the IPO would be taken without the union’s consent. “We have made it clear that if the IPO is implemented it would lead to consequences including an indefinite strike,” Namboodiri added.
Speaking to reporters after his meeting with the BSNL union, Raja said, “If the company goes for its IPO each employee will be allotted 500 shares at Rs 10 each. These could be listed at Rs 300-400, which will enable each employee to get at least Rs 1.5-2 lakh.”
“The union did express its apprehensions about the IPO, but the management explained that employee stock options will be given at liberal rates,” Raja said, adding, “The listing and Esops for workers will give them economic and social security.”
Defending the decision for an IPO, BSNL Chairman Kuldeep Goyal, said, “We explained to the union the advantages of the IPO that it will bring about more transparency in the functioning and future requirements of the company and how Esops would benefit employees. There is no immediate need for it but we are preparing the groundwork.”
He added, however, that some unions favoured the IPO.
Meanwhile, Raja also announced that one block of 3G spectrum each to the state-run telecom companies BSNL and MTNL was being released. Raja has also approved an annual payment of up to Rs 2,000 crore from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund to BSNL to compensate it for the loss it incurs from rural telephony.
The union, which represents over 300,000 employees, has opposed the Esop on grounds that it was opposed to the IPO in any case.
“Even if they offer us Esops we will still oppose the listing. The unions are not convinced by the arguments put forward by the management in favour of the IPO,” said V A N Namboodiri, general secretary, BSNL employee union.Last week, BSNL’s board cleared the IPO proposal that would dilute the government’s stake by 10 per cent.
The company had estimated that it would be able to raise over $10 billion (Rs 42,000 crore) from this issue. With over 70 million subscribers the IPO is needed partly to fund its massive expansion in both 2G services and create a 3G network and also get navaratna (semi-autonomous) status.
Namboodiri added that Raja has assured them that no decision on the IPO would be taken without the union’s consent. “We have made it clear that if the IPO is implemented it would lead to consequences including an indefinite strike,” Namboodiri added.
Speaking to reporters after his meeting with the BSNL union, Raja said, “If the company goes for its IPO each employee will be allotted 500 shares at Rs 10 each. These could be listed at Rs 300-400, which will enable each employee to get at least Rs 1.5-2 lakh.”
“The union did express its apprehensions about the IPO, but the management explained that employee stock options will be given at liberal rates,” Raja said, adding, “The listing and Esops for workers will give them economic and social security.”
Defending the decision for an IPO, BSNL Chairman Kuldeep Goyal, said, “We explained to the union the advantages of the IPO that it will bring about more transparency in the functioning and future requirements of the company and how Esops would benefit employees. There is no immediate need for it but we are preparing the groundwork.”
He added, however, that some unions favoured the IPO.
Meanwhile, Raja also announced that one block of 3G spectrum each to the state-run telecom companies BSNL and MTNL was being released. Raja has also approved an annual payment of up to Rs 2,000 crore from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) Fund to BSNL to compensate it for the loss it incurs from rural telephony.
Business - CK,Renaissance in the making
Through the 80s, Calvin Klein was a fashion house poised for stunning growth. Seen as an understated modern brand, from its sell-out jeans, underwear and fragrance lines, it embodied the spirit of the youth of the moment. Nothing defined its successes better than the fact that at the pinnacle of its success, CK One sold 20 bottles a minute in the 90s.
As it celebrates its fortieth year in existence and now without its namesake founder involved, the brand strives to keep its product fresh. When quizzed on the challenges that lie ahead, in an interview with CD , Calvin Klein president Tom Murry pooh-poohs the idea that the brand has little relevance to the current generation . In his guarded but assertive style he underscores the longevity of the brand’s “contemporary take” and says a renaissance is in the making. Now twelve years into his tenure at Calvin Klein, Murry claims the company is seeing its fastest growth rates yet. The brand may have been in India only a year, but Murry is sanguine about a profitable future here.
In the mid-80s Calvin Klein was a strong fashion house. Where is Calvin Klein positioned in the luxury market today?
Actually, so many people perceive us as a luxury company but in fact, we have a small but growing luxury component ($200 million). It’s surprising to us, but we’re not complaining. Today, Calvin Klein is a global lifestyle brand with sales of $6 billion. The brand is split into three tiers: Calvin Klein Collection- the black label which is top end designer clothing, ck Calvin Klein- the bridge collection and Calvin Klein- the white label of sportswear, which is our core business.
We continue to see high single-digit to low double-digit growth and we’re constantly adding more free standing stores and points of sale. Business is actually growing much faster than it did in the 80s, driven largely by the emerging economies. Our business in America is solid but the growth in Asian countries and Russia is meteoric.
You used to be known as masters of minimalism. Is that a tag that still sets you apart?
Minimalism definitely still plays a part in our designs. That said, you have to constantly evolve and re-invent yourself. If you look at any of our clothes today you can see that we’ve evolved. The clothes are not as clean and simple but are still contemporary.
I would actually say the essence of the brand over the last 30 years has been tasteful and modern. We’re quite proud that we’ve never been overly trendy. That’s one of the things we’ll be celebrating this year on our 40th anniversary — longevity.
Diffusion has become the luxury market’s cash cow. Mass marketing has threatened Calvin Klein’s brand image in the past. How do you make sure it doesn’t happen to you again?
We’ve done a lot of research on this and we find that consumers who walk into a store and buy the ck bridge line and those who buy the runway collection are different. They are not confused about which Calvin Klein product to buy. They are saying “I like this product and I trust this brand”.
Another big part of it is about maintaining brand image and brand awareness. It’s important that the consumer has a certain quality of experience whether it is for the white label or black.
During the designer jeans frenzy of the 80s, Calvin Klein jeans were the ultimate in denim luxury. Today the premium denim market is all about the niche brands, with ‘it’ brands changing every season. What are you doing to keep up?
Actually, business has never been better. CK jeans is doing well over $1 billion in retail and we hope to continue to have low double-digit growth for the foreseeable future. We’re happy not to be seen as overly trendy because fashion forward denim brands come and go. We plan to be around for the next 40 years.
Who is your target audience today?
Our research shows that we still have a young customer base, but we also have an older customer base that started out by buying CK underwear and then graduated to sportswear and now perhaps the black collection. Many of our consumers come to us from underwear because that is the most a c c e p t a b l e price point. That works very well for us. The trick to stay relevant is to keep our advertising fresh and our product categories current.
Calvin Klein is known to be one of the most extensively licensed luxury brands. Doesn’t such extensive licensing damage the brand name?
Business is good and our return on investment is high so we have no short term plans to change our licensing model. You have to just make sure you have very strong partners and excellent controls, which we have developed over the years. Having said, that for the first time since 2001, we own our luxury men’s and women’s collection and we are aggressively growing that business through chain stores and multi-brand stores.
You chose to be acquired by Phillips-Van Heusen even though in the late-90 s you had luxury goods companies LVMH and PPR at your door. What has been PVH’s value addition to the business?
PVH is one of the world’s largest apparel companies and it has given us a great corporate platform to grow from $3 billion to $6 billion in less than five years. Calvin Klein was always an incredible business and brand but like most entrepreneur-led brands, you need to incorporate a corporate structure if you want to grow.
You seem to be at it again with sexually evocative advertising. Didn’t your recent underwear advertisement featuring actress Eva Mendes face a ban in some countries?
We always push the envelope with advertising. That’s who we are. In certain countries we have to modify what we do. When we shoot an ad campaign, we do a large number of shots so that we have the flexibility region-by-region and country-by-country to run what we feel is appropriate. Advertising is a powerful tool for us to maintain a certain brand image. We spend over $250 million on advertising and marketing and our campaigns have been very consistent over the past 25 years .
What is your outlook for Calvin Klein in India? Why have you not opted for the permitted 51% foreign direct investment route?
We see India as a very important growth opportunity for us long-term. Every business decision we make is made thinking 5-10 years hence. We’re very impressed by the experience of our partners in India, the Murjani group. So, there’s no question of a direct investment for the time being.
There are definitely growing pains around getting stores located and built, so there’s a level of frustration that we can’t move faster, but all those issues are normal in an emerging market. What’s particularly exciting for us is that according to the latest Nielsen Global Luxury Brands study, the top brand that Indian consumers spend on is Calvin Klein and that if money were no object Calvin Klein would be the second most coveted brand among consumers in India.
Are you planning to do anything about the problem of counterfeit goods in India?
The problem of counterfeit is nothing new for us. We’ve been doing business in China for eight years now. We have a legal network around the world that deals with counterfeit goods and knockoffs, and globally we work with the Mckinsey group and with local governments.
We really have a comprehensive strategy to combat counterfeits, although we realise it will never be 100% controlled. Our company does as good a job as any.
As it celebrates its fortieth year in existence and now without its namesake founder involved, the brand strives to keep its product fresh. When quizzed on the challenges that lie ahead, in an interview with CD , Calvin Klein president Tom Murry pooh-poohs the idea that the brand has little relevance to the current generation . In his guarded but assertive style he underscores the longevity of the brand’s “contemporary take” and says a renaissance is in the making. Now twelve years into his tenure at Calvin Klein, Murry claims the company is seeing its fastest growth rates yet. The brand may have been in India only a year, but Murry is sanguine about a profitable future here.
In the mid-80s Calvin Klein was a strong fashion house. Where is Calvin Klein positioned in the luxury market today?
Actually, so many people perceive us as a luxury company but in fact, we have a small but growing luxury component ($200 million). It’s surprising to us, but we’re not complaining. Today, Calvin Klein is a global lifestyle brand with sales of $6 billion. The brand is split into three tiers: Calvin Klein Collection- the black label which is top end designer clothing, ck Calvin Klein- the bridge collection and Calvin Klein- the white label of sportswear, which is our core business.
We continue to see high single-digit to low double-digit growth and we’re constantly adding more free standing stores and points of sale. Business is actually growing much faster than it did in the 80s, driven largely by the emerging economies. Our business in America is solid but the growth in Asian countries and Russia is meteoric.
You used to be known as masters of minimalism. Is that a tag that still sets you apart?
Minimalism definitely still plays a part in our designs. That said, you have to constantly evolve and re-invent yourself. If you look at any of our clothes today you can see that we’ve evolved. The clothes are not as clean and simple but are still contemporary.
I would actually say the essence of the brand over the last 30 years has been tasteful and modern. We’re quite proud that we’ve never been overly trendy. That’s one of the things we’ll be celebrating this year on our 40th anniversary — longevity.
Diffusion has become the luxury market’s cash cow. Mass marketing has threatened Calvin Klein’s brand image in the past. How do you make sure it doesn’t happen to you again?
We’ve done a lot of research on this and we find that consumers who walk into a store and buy the ck bridge line and those who buy the runway collection are different. They are not confused about which Calvin Klein product to buy. They are saying “I like this product and I trust this brand”.
Another big part of it is about maintaining brand image and brand awareness. It’s important that the consumer has a certain quality of experience whether it is for the white label or black.
During the designer jeans frenzy of the 80s, Calvin Klein jeans were the ultimate in denim luxury. Today the premium denim market is all about the niche brands, with ‘it’ brands changing every season. What are you doing to keep up?
Actually, business has never been better. CK jeans is doing well over $1 billion in retail and we hope to continue to have low double-digit growth for the foreseeable future. We’re happy not to be seen as overly trendy because fashion forward denim brands come and go. We plan to be around for the next 40 years.
Who is your target audience today?
Our research shows that we still have a young customer base, but we also have an older customer base that started out by buying CK underwear and then graduated to sportswear and now perhaps the black collection. Many of our consumers come to us from underwear because that is the most a c c e p t a b l e price point. That works very well for us. The trick to stay relevant is to keep our advertising fresh and our product categories current.
Calvin Klein is known to be one of the most extensively licensed luxury brands. Doesn’t such extensive licensing damage the brand name?
Business is good and our return on investment is high so we have no short term plans to change our licensing model. You have to just make sure you have very strong partners and excellent controls, which we have developed over the years. Having said, that for the first time since 2001, we own our luxury men’s and women’s collection and we are aggressively growing that business through chain stores and multi-brand stores.
You chose to be acquired by Phillips-Van Heusen even though in the late-90 s you had luxury goods companies LVMH and PPR at your door. What has been PVH’s value addition to the business?
PVH is one of the world’s largest apparel companies and it has given us a great corporate platform to grow from $3 billion to $6 billion in less than five years. Calvin Klein was always an incredible business and brand but like most entrepreneur-led brands, you need to incorporate a corporate structure if you want to grow.
You seem to be at it again with sexually evocative advertising. Didn’t your recent underwear advertisement featuring actress Eva Mendes face a ban in some countries?
We always push the envelope with advertising. That’s who we are. In certain countries we have to modify what we do. When we shoot an ad campaign, we do a large number of shots so that we have the flexibility region-by-region and country-by-country to run what we feel is appropriate. Advertising is a powerful tool for us to maintain a certain brand image. We spend over $250 million on advertising and marketing and our campaigns have been very consistent over the past 25 years .
What is your outlook for Calvin Klein in India? Why have you not opted for the permitted 51% foreign direct investment route?
We see India as a very important growth opportunity for us long-term. Every business decision we make is made thinking 5-10 years hence. We’re very impressed by the experience of our partners in India, the Murjani group. So, there’s no question of a direct investment for the time being.
There are definitely growing pains around getting stores located and built, so there’s a level of frustration that we can’t move faster, but all those issues are normal in an emerging market. What’s particularly exciting for us is that according to the latest Nielsen Global Luxury Brands study, the top brand that Indian consumers spend on is Calvin Klein and that if money were no object Calvin Klein would be the second most coveted brand among consumers in India.
Are you planning to do anything about the problem of counterfeit goods in India?
The problem of counterfeit is nothing new for us. We’ve been doing business in China for eight years now. We have a legal network around the world that deals with counterfeit goods and knockoffs, and globally we work with the Mckinsey group and with local governments.
We really have a comprehensive strategy to combat counterfeits, although we realise it will never be 100% controlled. Our company does as good a job as any.
Business - 3G rollout to bring in big business for IT
NEW DELHI: While the impact of third generation (3G) mobile telecom on users will be huge, what might be immediately less visible is the impact on businesses of IT companies. With the announcement of 3G policy by the government this month, IT players are expecting a bonanza. Small and medium enterprises expect a slew of application and software development contracts from operators, hardware vendors and mobile value-added service providers. IT companies could see their telecom vertical revenues, about $4 billion at present, increase by at least 10% with the 3G rollout.
India has one of the largest mobile phone population with around 300 million phones in the country. About five million subscribers already have 3G enabled phones and even chip design companies are expected to benefit with 3G handset sales.
Says Texas Instruments (TI) India wireless business development director Jithu Niruthambath, “As a semi-conductor company, our customers are network suppliers (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Huawei) and handset suppliers ( Nokia, SEMC, Motorola). 3G will result in new network equipment deployment and handset sales. With a strong presence in both areas we foresee a significant impact of 3G on our revenues.” TI works on Digital Signal Processor (DSP) solutions, application processors, power management solutions which are embedded in handsets.
IT companies, which develop software for mobile value-added service, expect at least a 20% incremental rise in revenues. “3G will enable high speed, real time multi-player gaming on the mobile phone. We expect a 20% increase in the next 12 months through 3G. But the big growth will come in 2009. Overall. revenues from the telecom vertical for Indian IT industry may increase by at least 10% due to 3G rollout,” said Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies, which develops mobile games and content for mobile phones. Nazara Technologies customers include T-Mobile, Bharti Airtel and Tata Tele.
Telecom software companies which have deployed their solutions for global operators plan to deploy the same in India as well. “From a 3G perspective, we have worked with operators like TNZ (Telecom New Zealand) , Hutch Indonesia, Vibo Taiwan, O2. We have also worked with players in the US and the Middle East in development of heavy data consumption services which are typical to 3G networks. We plan to replicate the same in India too,” says a spokesperson of CanvasM.
But some technology companies say that India should directly jump to LTE (Long Term Evolution), a technology more advanced than 3G. “India should leapfrog beyond plain 3G to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), a collection of mobile telephony protocols or LTE. This will help us get to a high bandwidth path straight-away. It will be a little early to predict the exact numbers due to 3G but a lot will depend on the rate of adaptation to this service by consumers,” says G Venkatesh, executive director & corporate CTO, Sasken Communication Technologies, which works on 3G/4G technologies in all the three verticals that is, semiconductor, handsets and networks.
3G is a high-speed wireless communication technology. The government last week rolled out its policy on spectrum auction of 3G. For a pan-India licence, an operator will have to dole out at least Rs 2,020 crore. The government plans to rake in Rs 30,000 crore from 3G spectrum auction.
“We have partnerships with operators like BSNL, Bharti, Vodafone and are talking to some operators regarding development of a platform to roll out 3G services. We see a lot of revenues coming from areas like VOIP, corporate virtual PBX, social networking IPTV and quadplay,” adds Bhaskar Gorti, SVP and GM, Oracle Communications
India has one of the largest mobile phone population with around 300 million phones in the country. About five million subscribers already have 3G enabled phones and even chip design companies are expected to benefit with 3G handset sales.
Says Texas Instruments (TI) India wireless business development director Jithu Niruthambath, “As a semi-conductor company, our customers are network suppliers (Ericsson, Nokia Siemens, Huawei) and handset suppliers ( Nokia, SEMC, Motorola). 3G will result in new network equipment deployment and handset sales. With a strong presence in both areas we foresee a significant impact of 3G on our revenues.” TI works on Digital Signal Processor (DSP) solutions, application processors, power management solutions which are embedded in handsets.
IT companies, which develop software for mobile value-added service, expect at least a 20% incremental rise in revenues. “3G will enable high speed, real time multi-player gaming on the mobile phone. We expect a 20% increase in the next 12 months through 3G. But the big growth will come in 2009. Overall. revenues from the telecom vertical for Indian IT industry may increase by at least 10% due to 3G rollout,” said Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies, which develops mobile games and content for mobile phones. Nazara Technologies customers include T-Mobile, Bharti Airtel and Tata Tele.
Telecom software companies which have deployed their solutions for global operators plan to deploy the same in India as well. “From a 3G perspective, we have worked with operators like TNZ (Telecom New Zealand) , Hutch Indonesia, Vibo Taiwan, O2. We have also worked with players in the US and the Middle East in development of heavy data consumption services which are typical to 3G networks. We plan to replicate the same in India too,” says a spokesperson of CanvasM.
But some technology companies say that India should directly jump to LTE (Long Term Evolution), a technology more advanced than 3G. “India should leapfrog beyond plain 3G to High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), a collection of mobile telephony protocols or LTE. This will help us get to a high bandwidth path straight-away. It will be a little early to predict the exact numbers due to 3G but a lot will depend on the rate of adaptation to this service by consumers,” says G Venkatesh, executive director & corporate CTO, Sasken Communication Technologies, which works on 3G/4G technologies in all the three verticals that is, semiconductor, handsets and networks.
3G is a high-speed wireless communication technology. The government last week rolled out its policy on spectrum auction of 3G. For a pan-India licence, an operator will have to dole out at least Rs 2,020 crore. The government plans to rake in Rs 30,000 crore from 3G spectrum auction.
“We have partnerships with operators like BSNL, Bharti, Vodafone and are talking to some operators regarding development of a platform to roll out 3G services. We see a lot of revenues coming from areas like VOIP, corporate virtual PBX, social networking IPTV and quadplay,” adds Bhaskar Gorti, SVP and GM, Oracle Communications
Business - What ended the reign of mighty business houses of Delhi
Sitting next to a sandstone Buddha figurine in his large, elegantly modest room in Gurgaon , Arun Bharat Ram, the chairman of SRF closes his eyes and wonders what the economic clout of the erstwhile DCM group could have been if it hadn’t splintered. The grandson of DCM’s founder Sir Shriram, who today at 70 is part of the extended family’s old guard, almost sounds like Mahatma Gandhi on the partition of India.
“At the turn of the twentieth century, there was virtually no industry in the whole of North India including Pakistan. My grandfather was a pioneering entrepreneur who kickstarted the industrialisation of the North. Even after he died, in the mid-60 s, DCM was among the five biggest business houses in India. With each successive split, the economic clout of the family has spiralled downward. If we had stayed together, our combined valuation would have been among the highest in India,” he says without trying to mask the sadness.
Nostalgia is a condition as common as a common cold and rears its head more frequenly as you age, but Bharat Ram’s lament is the tale of Delhi’s traditional family business sultanate. At the time of Independence, the turnover of halfa-dozen Delhi-based big business families — the Dalmias, Thapars, Shrirams, Nandas, Modis and Singhanias — accounted for nearly 10% of the country’s GDP.
Seth Ramkrishna Dalmia, was in fact reported by Time Magazine, to be the third richest Indian industrialist behind only JRD Tata and GD Birla upto the mid-50 s. Now, large parts of the traditional Delhi family business empire is either dead or irrelevant, and the ones that have survived are nowhere close to the glory of the heydays.
While it was the changing business landscape of the post license-quota raj and the inability to transform swiftly that did most in, intra-family squabbles and ego clashes rendered them too fragile to even mount a comeback bid. The ones who have survived are not outright market leaders in their substantial revenue generating businesses , but they are steady players, sticking to their core businesses without drastic diversifications.
Says Rajiv Memani , managing partner, Ernst & Young India, who has often been a professional advisor for many ertswhile maharajas of Delhi: “The old set are mostly gone. Only some individuals and some sub-groups are doing well. None of these groups are in the premium position that they were in. In the new Delhi landscape, the new Sultans are Ranbaxy, Bharti, DLF ,HCL, Jaiprakash Industries, and Jindals. They are the new big league,”
Arun Bharat Ram who got the ownership of the tyre cords company SRF during the 1990 carve up of the DCM group — the largest of the Delhi family business of that time — feels that as with most large business families, DCM’s undoing too was the inability to manage the differing aspirations of various family members, and professionalise management fast enough. “Although my grandfather was a competent businessman, his singular failure was that he couldn’t prepare the next generation and use their skills in a complementary manner. There was too much dissension between my father and uncle even when I was young. There was a turf war going on within the family and as a result too many factions got formed in the company,” he says.
Today, armed with the benefit of hindsight, Bharat Ram says he has clearly defined the roles for his sons at the Rs 2000 crore SRF, in accordance with their aptitude and capabilities so that they don’t step on each other’s shoes. While elder son Ashish Bharat Ram, the MD of SRF looks after strategy, finance and management reviews, Karthikeya, the younger sibling, handles IT and quality management.
Bhupendra Kumar Modi, the son of family patriarch Gujar Mal Modi, another significant member of the Delhi Club, says he parted ways with the family in the early 1980s because the undivided Modi group wasn’t professional enough to accommodate his modern management ideas he tried to bring in after his US education . “Different people have different ways of thinking. I wanted to put up contemporary systems and processes in place, but nobody warmed up to the idea,” says the chairman of Spicecorp and a self-styled interfaith harmony advocate.
Known as the joint-venture king of India, Modi began a series of business alliances with global corporations, starting with Xerox, with the money he got after splitting from the family. “Some of my family members also failed to understand that in those days, access to technology was not available without giving away equity. JVs was the way to go,” he says. Today, Modi says, he has completely dissociated himself from the old family and has developed a unique identity for his businesses away from the Modi name.
Wearing his trademark brown cap, and clad in a white Polo Ralph Lauren tee, jeans and uber trendy red and white Puma sneakers, the Beverly Hills-based billionaire who drives a Rolls Royces when in Delhi (registered in the name of the Mahabodhi Society of India which he heads, if you must know), he even brandishes his business card to ram home the point.
It merely says Dr. BKM. “Tell me where’s the Modi name. The cards I use only has Dr. M printed on it. You can call me doctor M,” Modi adds for good measure. Having sold his mobile telephony firm Spice Telecom to Idea for Rs 2716 crore, Modi says he is in the process of totally restructuring his conglomerate , both in terms of its business focus and its geographical reach.
Under his new grand plan, Modi’s companies would only operate in areas where the products and technology can be taken global. Ergo, the telecom business, that only had the license to operate in parts of North India was sold, and he is in negotiations to sell off his handsets business to Sony Ericsson. “Our four distinct business lines will be mobile value added services (VAS) under the Cellebrum Technologies brand, retail , BPO, and entertainment,” he says. “I want to be in businesses that don’t require any kind of license, or are based on regulations, and that are non-political ,” says Modi.
All In The Family
With funds from the Spice Telecom sale, Modi says he’s scouting for acquisitions in the media and entertainment space. While his efforts to buy a 32% stake in Sony Entertainment Television have run into trouble, an unfazed Modi says there are plenty of other entertainment channels up for grabs and he has a more than adequate budget of $2-3 billion.
As someone who professes a deep interest in dharmic religions (he has demanded Indian citizenship for the Dalai Lama) and Indic philosophy and culture, Modi wants his businesses too to recapture the glory and geographic spread of the ancient Indian civilization. “I want my business to span I-to-I .” That’s Israel to Indonesia in Modispeak.
Along with ushering in professional management and re-aligning his businesses , Modi is also making sure his two children in the business, Dilip and Divya Modi have non-competing roles. While Dilip Modi now heads the BPO and VAS business, Divya Modi handles the retail and mall ventures besides investor relations . “The biggest problem with the younger generation today is they don’t want to work with their father. I don’t teach them anything. They understand the language of the Mckinseys and the KPMGs better without realising that I implemented what these management companies are advocating today, several years back. So I let them train with them and hire those companies to work with my children,” adds Modi.
The reason why most patriarchs are demarcating territories very clearly and laying down a strategic roadmap for the future is because they don’t want history repeated. “The old Delhi families spent a lot of energy in in-fighting . Secondly, the old groups didn’t have any strategic vision. They didn’t enter the new sunrise sectors and missed the bus on several occasions. Post the opening up of the economy, these groups were unable to gear up and they didn’t possess the entrepreneurial energy that was needed to harvest those new opportunities ,” says Memani.
SRF’s Bharat Ram took his two sons to IMD in Laussane in 2003 to attend a course in managing family businesses, and was convinced that it was transparency and clear lines of communication that would prevent further splits. He soon constituted a family business council which comprised all members, including wives and children, who were not actively in business, and drafted a code of conduct that would act as the guide to resolve any issues that arise in the future.
At DSCL, the agri inputs-to power group and another DCM splinter, now controlled by Ajay Shriram and his brothers Vikram and Ajit Shriram, the same principles of family management are employed. “We witnessed how the 1990 split led to a rapid degeneration of all parts of the DCM group. Once a year, the entire family goes for a threeday retreat with a consultant on board to sort out differences of opinion if there are any. Nothing is pushed under the carpet,” says Ajay Shriram, chairman, DSCL.
For the Shrirams, the experience of separation was too traumatic and stressful to let it happen again. Ajay Shriram recollects that after the marathon meeting that decided the trifurcation of the DCM group, they came out of the room with shirts totally drenched in sweat and utter confusion about what the future held for them. “It was decided that our family would get the fertilizer, chemicals and a part of the textiles business. We did not have a clue about what these businesses were. In fact, we knew absolutely nothing about what happened at our chemicals complex at Kota, except for the fact that something very complex was made,” he says.
All the businesses the brothers inherited were riddled with losses, and the textile unit Swatantra Bharat Mills alone was losing nearly Rs 1.5 crore every month. The cash flows were so bad that their Kota plant had to be shut down for a couple of weeks because the brothers did not have enough money to buy raw materials for their flagship business. On another ocassion, they did not have the money to pay customs duty for a shipment of raw materials at the Mumbai port and the consignment was stranded in the port’s warehouse for so long that according to Shriram, the demurrage DSCL had to pay for it far exceeded the cost of materials.
“Once the textile division stopped bleeding , we were able to turn things around.” Today, the Rs 2,770 crore group with interests in rural retail, sugar, agri-inputs and power generation is one of the better performing among the DCM-fold and is rated highly by analysts for its sound and transparent management. Shriram says that DSCL turned the corner with a strong faith in the company’s core businesses and sticking to it even in times of adversity, without trying to diversify in desperation.
Sticking to the core, and resisting the Lorelei lure of various sunrise sectors has been the strategy of some of the other old Delhi based family businesses such as Escorts and Apollo Tyres as well. The Nandas of Escorts were spared succession squabbles and splits, but fell prey to diversifications which were often half-hearted and hamstrung by the group’s inability to pump in money to scale them up. Five years ago the Nandas decided to exit non-core businesses like telecom, healthcare, and IT and go back to the group’s core.
Apollo Tyres’ founder Raunaq Singh Kanwar, an entrepreneur from Lahore, entered the tyres business by happenstance. At the height of licence raj in 1978, he bought a licence to manufacture tyres from a family that was desperate to sell. At a time when the economic viability of a new business was not as important as getting the license for it, the Kanwar family decided to add Apollo tyres to their flagship company Bharat Steel Tubes.
Onkar Singh Kanwar was entrusted with the company that today by his own admission made terrible products and was besieged with labour problems. “When I took over Apollo Tyres, it was a sick company, with strong unions, a lousy product and a government that wanted to nationalise it,” he says. Kanwar turned it around by what he claims was the one of India Inc.’s first attempts at workplace diversity , thorough market research and effective government lobbying. He decided to revamp the middle management by hiring bright people from patently middle-class backgrounds and avoiding Bschool grads. “The sons of school teachers were more likely to value workplace stability and go along with my ideas. The IIM types wanted to sit on my chair in the second day of their job,” he says.
Today, The Rs 5,000 crore Apollo Tyres is the marketleader in most segments, and according to Kanwar, can become a big global force even in a commodity business. Last year, it acquired Dunlop’s operations in South Africa and the rights to use the brand across the continent in a $60 million deal. Neeraj Kanwar, vicechairman and MD, is actively scouting for global acquisitions, besides the upcoming greenfield plant in Hungary that is part of his plans to take the company’s sales to $2 billion by 2010.
Although Kanwar did dabble in a few new businesses like online lottery, UFO Moviez (run by his other son Raaja Kanwar ) that digitises movies to air-beam them straight to movie theatres via satellite, and hospitals, which seems to be his latest passion , Apollo has largely stuck to its core business without spending too much resources on the new ones.
The core-focus apart, it looks unlikely that Apollo would face succession blues unlike other Delhi counterparts with Onkar S Kanwar anointing his younger son Neeraj as the heir apparent. “Neeraj has shown leadership qualities and is leading from the front. The operational part is already with him, and I only look at the strategy and the new businesses.”
They are no longer the Sultans of Delhi, but the city’s old business families seem reconciled to a steady march as satraps in their core businesses.
“At the turn of the twentieth century, there was virtually no industry in the whole of North India including Pakistan. My grandfather was a pioneering entrepreneur who kickstarted the industrialisation of the North. Even after he died, in the mid-60 s, DCM was among the five biggest business houses in India. With each successive split, the economic clout of the family has spiralled downward. If we had stayed together, our combined valuation would have been among the highest in India,” he says without trying to mask the sadness.
Nostalgia is a condition as common as a common cold and rears its head more frequenly as you age, but Bharat Ram’s lament is the tale of Delhi’s traditional family business sultanate. At the time of Independence, the turnover of halfa-dozen Delhi-based big business families — the Dalmias, Thapars, Shrirams, Nandas, Modis and Singhanias — accounted for nearly 10% of the country’s GDP.
Seth Ramkrishna Dalmia, was in fact reported by Time Magazine, to be the third richest Indian industrialist behind only JRD Tata and GD Birla upto the mid-50 s. Now, large parts of the traditional Delhi family business empire is either dead or irrelevant, and the ones that have survived are nowhere close to the glory of the heydays.
While it was the changing business landscape of the post license-quota raj and the inability to transform swiftly that did most in, intra-family squabbles and ego clashes rendered them too fragile to even mount a comeback bid. The ones who have survived are not outright market leaders in their substantial revenue generating businesses , but they are steady players, sticking to their core businesses without drastic diversifications.
Says Rajiv Memani , managing partner, Ernst & Young India, who has often been a professional advisor for many ertswhile maharajas of Delhi: “The old set are mostly gone. Only some individuals and some sub-groups are doing well. None of these groups are in the premium position that they were in. In the new Delhi landscape, the new Sultans are Ranbaxy, Bharti, DLF ,HCL, Jaiprakash Industries, and Jindals. They are the new big league,”
Arun Bharat Ram who got the ownership of the tyre cords company SRF during the 1990 carve up of the DCM group — the largest of the Delhi family business of that time — feels that as with most large business families, DCM’s undoing too was the inability to manage the differing aspirations of various family members, and professionalise management fast enough. “Although my grandfather was a competent businessman, his singular failure was that he couldn’t prepare the next generation and use their skills in a complementary manner. There was too much dissension between my father and uncle even when I was young. There was a turf war going on within the family and as a result too many factions got formed in the company,” he says.
Today, armed with the benefit of hindsight, Bharat Ram says he has clearly defined the roles for his sons at the Rs 2000 crore SRF, in accordance with their aptitude and capabilities so that they don’t step on each other’s shoes. While elder son Ashish Bharat Ram, the MD of SRF looks after strategy, finance and management reviews, Karthikeya, the younger sibling, handles IT and quality management.
Bhupendra Kumar Modi, the son of family patriarch Gujar Mal Modi, another significant member of the Delhi Club, says he parted ways with the family in the early 1980s because the undivided Modi group wasn’t professional enough to accommodate his modern management ideas he tried to bring in after his US education . “Different people have different ways of thinking. I wanted to put up contemporary systems and processes in place, but nobody warmed up to the idea,” says the chairman of Spicecorp and a self-styled interfaith harmony advocate.
Known as the joint-venture king of India, Modi began a series of business alliances with global corporations, starting with Xerox, with the money he got after splitting from the family. “Some of my family members also failed to understand that in those days, access to technology was not available without giving away equity. JVs was the way to go,” he says. Today, Modi says, he has completely dissociated himself from the old family and has developed a unique identity for his businesses away from the Modi name.
Wearing his trademark brown cap, and clad in a white Polo Ralph Lauren tee, jeans and uber trendy red and white Puma sneakers, the Beverly Hills-based billionaire who drives a Rolls Royces when in Delhi (registered in the name of the Mahabodhi Society of India which he heads, if you must know), he even brandishes his business card to ram home the point.
It merely says Dr. BKM. “Tell me where’s the Modi name. The cards I use only has Dr. M printed on it. You can call me doctor M,” Modi adds for good measure. Having sold his mobile telephony firm Spice Telecom to Idea for Rs 2716 crore, Modi says he is in the process of totally restructuring his conglomerate , both in terms of its business focus and its geographical reach.
Under his new grand plan, Modi’s companies would only operate in areas where the products and technology can be taken global. Ergo, the telecom business, that only had the license to operate in parts of North India was sold, and he is in negotiations to sell off his handsets business to Sony Ericsson. “Our four distinct business lines will be mobile value added services (VAS) under the Cellebrum Technologies brand, retail , BPO, and entertainment,” he says. “I want to be in businesses that don’t require any kind of license, or are based on regulations, and that are non-political ,” says Modi.
All In The Family
With funds from the Spice Telecom sale, Modi says he’s scouting for acquisitions in the media and entertainment space. While his efforts to buy a 32% stake in Sony Entertainment Television have run into trouble, an unfazed Modi says there are plenty of other entertainment channels up for grabs and he has a more than adequate budget of $2-3 billion.
As someone who professes a deep interest in dharmic religions (he has demanded Indian citizenship for the Dalai Lama) and Indic philosophy and culture, Modi wants his businesses too to recapture the glory and geographic spread of the ancient Indian civilization. “I want my business to span I-to-I .” That’s Israel to Indonesia in Modispeak.
Along with ushering in professional management and re-aligning his businesses , Modi is also making sure his two children in the business, Dilip and Divya Modi have non-competing roles. While Dilip Modi now heads the BPO and VAS business, Divya Modi handles the retail and mall ventures besides investor relations . “The biggest problem with the younger generation today is they don’t want to work with their father. I don’t teach them anything. They understand the language of the Mckinseys and the KPMGs better without realising that I implemented what these management companies are advocating today, several years back. So I let them train with them and hire those companies to work with my children,” adds Modi.
The reason why most patriarchs are demarcating territories very clearly and laying down a strategic roadmap for the future is because they don’t want history repeated. “The old Delhi families spent a lot of energy in in-fighting . Secondly, the old groups didn’t have any strategic vision. They didn’t enter the new sunrise sectors and missed the bus on several occasions. Post the opening up of the economy, these groups were unable to gear up and they didn’t possess the entrepreneurial energy that was needed to harvest those new opportunities ,” says Memani.
SRF’s Bharat Ram took his two sons to IMD in Laussane in 2003 to attend a course in managing family businesses, and was convinced that it was transparency and clear lines of communication that would prevent further splits. He soon constituted a family business council which comprised all members, including wives and children, who were not actively in business, and drafted a code of conduct that would act as the guide to resolve any issues that arise in the future.
At DSCL, the agri inputs-to power group and another DCM splinter, now controlled by Ajay Shriram and his brothers Vikram and Ajit Shriram, the same principles of family management are employed. “We witnessed how the 1990 split led to a rapid degeneration of all parts of the DCM group. Once a year, the entire family goes for a threeday retreat with a consultant on board to sort out differences of opinion if there are any. Nothing is pushed under the carpet,” says Ajay Shriram, chairman, DSCL.
For the Shrirams, the experience of separation was too traumatic and stressful to let it happen again. Ajay Shriram recollects that after the marathon meeting that decided the trifurcation of the DCM group, they came out of the room with shirts totally drenched in sweat and utter confusion about what the future held for them. “It was decided that our family would get the fertilizer, chemicals and a part of the textiles business. We did not have a clue about what these businesses were. In fact, we knew absolutely nothing about what happened at our chemicals complex at Kota, except for the fact that something very complex was made,” he says.
All the businesses the brothers inherited were riddled with losses, and the textile unit Swatantra Bharat Mills alone was losing nearly Rs 1.5 crore every month. The cash flows were so bad that their Kota plant had to be shut down for a couple of weeks because the brothers did not have enough money to buy raw materials for their flagship business. On another ocassion, they did not have the money to pay customs duty for a shipment of raw materials at the Mumbai port and the consignment was stranded in the port’s warehouse for so long that according to Shriram, the demurrage DSCL had to pay for it far exceeded the cost of materials.
“Once the textile division stopped bleeding , we were able to turn things around.” Today, the Rs 2,770 crore group with interests in rural retail, sugar, agri-inputs and power generation is one of the better performing among the DCM-fold and is rated highly by analysts for its sound and transparent management. Shriram says that DSCL turned the corner with a strong faith in the company’s core businesses and sticking to it even in times of adversity, without trying to diversify in desperation.
Sticking to the core, and resisting the Lorelei lure of various sunrise sectors has been the strategy of some of the other old Delhi based family businesses such as Escorts and Apollo Tyres as well. The Nandas of Escorts were spared succession squabbles and splits, but fell prey to diversifications which were often half-hearted and hamstrung by the group’s inability to pump in money to scale them up. Five years ago the Nandas decided to exit non-core businesses like telecom, healthcare, and IT and go back to the group’s core.
Apollo Tyres’ founder Raunaq Singh Kanwar, an entrepreneur from Lahore, entered the tyres business by happenstance. At the height of licence raj in 1978, he bought a licence to manufacture tyres from a family that was desperate to sell. At a time when the economic viability of a new business was not as important as getting the license for it, the Kanwar family decided to add Apollo tyres to their flagship company Bharat Steel Tubes.
Onkar Singh Kanwar was entrusted with the company that today by his own admission made terrible products and was besieged with labour problems. “When I took over Apollo Tyres, it was a sick company, with strong unions, a lousy product and a government that wanted to nationalise it,” he says. Kanwar turned it around by what he claims was the one of India Inc.’s first attempts at workplace diversity , thorough market research and effective government lobbying. He decided to revamp the middle management by hiring bright people from patently middle-class backgrounds and avoiding Bschool grads. “The sons of school teachers were more likely to value workplace stability and go along with my ideas. The IIM types wanted to sit on my chair in the second day of their job,” he says.
Today, The Rs 5,000 crore Apollo Tyres is the marketleader in most segments, and according to Kanwar, can become a big global force even in a commodity business. Last year, it acquired Dunlop’s operations in South Africa and the rights to use the brand across the continent in a $60 million deal. Neeraj Kanwar, vicechairman and MD, is actively scouting for global acquisitions, besides the upcoming greenfield plant in Hungary that is part of his plans to take the company’s sales to $2 billion by 2010.
Although Kanwar did dabble in a few new businesses like online lottery, UFO Moviez (run by his other son Raaja Kanwar ) that digitises movies to air-beam them straight to movie theatres via satellite, and hospitals, which seems to be his latest passion , Apollo has largely stuck to its core business without spending too much resources on the new ones.
The core-focus apart, it looks unlikely that Apollo would face succession blues unlike other Delhi counterparts with Onkar S Kanwar anointing his younger son Neeraj as the heir apparent. “Neeraj has shown leadership qualities and is leading from the front. The operational part is already with him, and I only look at the strategy and the new businesses.”
They are no longer the Sultans of Delhi, but the city’s old business families seem reconciled to a steady march as satraps in their core businesses.
Lifestyle - Libraries going digital
NEW YORK: It may be about time to dig out that old library card. Hoping to draw back readers, libraries have vastly expanded their lists of digital books, music, and movies that can be downloaded by their patrons to a computer or MP3 player, and it doesn't cost a cent, unlike, say, media from Apple Inc'siTunes or Amazon.com Inc.
In Phoenix, for instance, branches have banded together to create a digital library that currently has about 50,000 titles of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos that can be "checked out" from anywhere.
Once discovered, says Tom Gemberling, the electronic resources librarian for the Phoenix Public Library, the program often proves wildly popular.
Not long ago, Gemberling visited a local trailer park to speak about the program to 100 or so seniors, who regularly travel the roads touring in their recreational vehicles.
"They were cheering and screaming by the end," he said. "They were so excited. They're RVers, so they can go anywhere on the road, find a computer, go into the Phoenix Public Library catalogue, download a book and play it while they drive down the highway."
Available in thousands of libraries across the country, the programs work like this: First you need a library card, access to the web, and some easily downloadable software, the Adobe Digital Editions, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console
At that point, just browse around the library's website, select some titles, add them to a digital book bag and click the download button. If the title isn't available, it can be placed on hold for downloading later.
Depending on the library and title, the item remains on your computer for one to three weeks before disappearing, meaning you don't have to bother with returning a book, CD or DVD to the actual library.
One of the main distributors to libraries is OverDrive Inc, based in Cleveland, which has deals with publishers including HarperCollins and Random House as well as music labels like Alligator Records.
David Burleigh, OverDrive's director of marketing, says the company now has an inventory of around 100,000 titles, works with about 7,500 libraries and has racked up millions of downloads of its media player and digital check-outs.
"We also know we are touching only a small percentage of each library's patrons. Everyone we talk to is like 'Wow, you do that?'" he says. "It's a like this nice secret, that we of course don't want to be kept secret."
Although it depends on publisher permission, books can usually be transferred from a desktop computer to any number of mobile devices.
Sony Corp's Reader, SanDisk Corp's Sansa, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Blackjack, Palm Inc's Treo 700wx, Motorola Inc's Q, Microsoft Corp's Zune, iRiver's 510, Hewlett-Packard Co'siPAQ, Dell Inc's Axim, Creative Technology Ltd's ZEN, AT&T Inc's Cingular Smartphone, and Apple's iPhone and iPods can all be used with the downloads, depending on the title and the library.
"People like the portability of it," Jim McCluskey, collection development assistant manager for Washington State's Sno-Isle Libraries, which will soon be offering iPod compatible downloads.
While having a collection of books and music available for downloads helps libraries keep up with changes in technology, McCluskey said, it carries other advantages, too. "A lot of our libraries are cramped for space," he notes. "Material that doesn't take up shelf space and is available 24/7, that's really attractive for libraries."
In Phoenix, for instance, branches have banded together to create a digital library that currently has about 50,000 titles of e-books, audiobooks, music and videos that can be "checked out" from anywhere.
Once discovered, says Tom Gemberling, the electronic resources librarian for the Phoenix Public Library, the program often proves wildly popular.
Not long ago, Gemberling visited a local trailer park to speak about the program to 100 or so seniors, who regularly travel the roads touring in their recreational vehicles.
"They were cheering and screaming by the end," he said. "They were so excited. They're RVers, so they can go anywhere on the road, find a computer, go into the Phoenix Public Library catalogue, download a book and play it while they drive down the highway."
Available in thousands of libraries across the country, the programs work like this: First you need a library card, access to the web, and some easily downloadable software, the Adobe Digital Editions, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console
At that point, just browse around the library's website, select some titles, add them to a digital book bag and click the download button. If the title isn't available, it can be placed on hold for downloading later.
Depending on the library and title, the item remains on your computer for one to three weeks before disappearing, meaning you don't have to bother with returning a book, CD or DVD to the actual library.
One of the main distributors to libraries is OverDrive Inc, based in Cleveland, which has deals with publishers including HarperCollins and Random House as well as music labels like Alligator Records.
David Burleigh, OverDrive's director of marketing, says the company now has an inventory of around 100,000 titles, works with about 7,500 libraries and has racked up millions of downloads of its media player and digital check-outs.
"We also know we are touching only a small percentage of each library's patrons. Everyone we talk to is like 'Wow, you do that?'" he says. "It's a like this nice secret, that we of course don't want to be kept secret."
Although it depends on publisher permission, books can usually be transferred from a desktop computer to any number of mobile devices.
Sony Corp's Reader, SanDisk Corp's Sansa, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Blackjack, Palm Inc's Treo 700wx, Motorola Inc's Q, Microsoft Corp's Zune, iRiver's 510, Hewlett-Packard Co'siPAQ, Dell Inc's Axim, Creative Technology Ltd's ZEN, AT&T Inc's Cingular Smartphone, and Apple's iPhone and iPods can all be used with the downloads, depending on the title and the library.
"People like the portability of it," Jim McCluskey, collection development assistant manager for Washington State's Sno-Isle Libraries, which will soon be offering iPod compatible downloads.
While having a collection of books and music available for downloads helps libraries keep up with changes in technology, McCluskey said, it carries other advantages, too. "A lot of our libraries are cramped for space," he notes. "Material that doesn't take up shelf space and is available 24/7, that's really attractive for libraries."
Mktg - Ad spends on wane as companies plan more promos
NEW DELHI: Ad spends are on the wane as companies are gearing up for promos to maintain that direct link with the consumer so critical in today’s fast-changing retail sphere.
And with the festive season round the corner, below-the-line (BTL) activities seem to be the buzzword in every marketer’s lexicon. Around 32-33% of the total promotional budget is slated to go towards BTL promotions this year, say analysts.
“In future, it will reach a ratio of 70:30, where 70% of the marketing spend will be geared to promos,” contends Consults Inc CEO Harish Bijoor. As for above the line or advertising tactics, they’re all so very expensive, particularly during a downturn.
For Samsung India deputy MD Ravinder Zutshi promos will be a “thrust area”, with 4.5% of his company’s turnover etched as marketing spend.
“The ratio of BTL:ATL would be 60:40 this year as against last year’s ratio of 55:45. The BTL drive is also derived from the thrust on regional marketing, but this calls for a lot of customisation. Samsung’s Dream Home Roadshows, local language POP/POS material, regional language brochures, local language advertising are some of the activities we will carry out in all the regions,” he elaborates.
A year ago, a company’s spend on advertising and promos was in the 70:30 ratio. Now, it is around 60:40, or 50:50. However, FMCG companies still go in for 90:10 or 80:20 ratio, as they are quintessentially mass products whereas since durables and electronic products are sold at multi-brand outlets and require product demonstration and frequent first-hand consumer interaction, promos are undoubtedly a better option.
“ATL is very expensive and companies are looking for expenditure cuts. That is the main reason that below-the-line spending has added impetus,” says an analyst.
Of the total ad spends of LG Electronics worth Rs 370 crore this fiscal, 60% will go to BTL activities while the rest will be on advertising. In the festive season, the company will spend around Rs 70 crore on better displays in retail outlets, special discount scheme, in-store demonstration, new catalogues and product launches.
LG chief marketing officer LK Gupta said, “BTL promotions help build brand equity and influence the point of purchase as consumers are not satisfied with advertising alone.” Videocon marketing head Sandeep Tiwari said, “Out of the Rs 80 crore marketing budget this festive season, it would be a 50:50 deal for ATL and BTL, nearly 35% will go into in-shop demonstration.”
MPG CEO Jeffery Crasto said, “Even as the media cost has been reasonable, except for certain television prime time slots, companies want to work closely through consumer touch points in retail outlets. Moreover, televison and radio media are increasingly used to promote activities in a mall or a retail outlet.”
“A TV commercial would cost a company anywhere between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 2 crore whereas spend on roadshows, discount offers, billboards is much reasonable,” says Euro RSCG chief creative officer Satbir Singh.
And with the festive season round the corner, below-the-line (BTL) activities seem to be the buzzword in every marketer’s lexicon. Around 32-33% of the total promotional budget is slated to go towards BTL promotions this year, say analysts.
“In future, it will reach a ratio of 70:30, where 70% of the marketing spend will be geared to promos,” contends Consults Inc CEO Harish Bijoor. As for above the line or advertising tactics, they’re all so very expensive, particularly during a downturn.
For Samsung India deputy MD Ravinder Zutshi promos will be a “thrust area”, with 4.5% of his company’s turnover etched as marketing spend.
“The ratio of BTL:ATL would be 60:40 this year as against last year’s ratio of 55:45. The BTL drive is also derived from the thrust on regional marketing, but this calls for a lot of customisation. Samsung’s Dream Home Roadshows, local language POP/POS material, regional language brochures, local language advertising are some of the activities we will carry out in all the regions,” he elaborates.
A year ago, a company’s spend on advertising and promos was in the 70:30 ratio. Now, it is around 60:40, or 50:50. However, FMCG companies still go in for 90:10 or 80:20 ratio, as they are quintessentially mass products whereas since durables and electronic products are sold at multi-brand outlets and require product demonstration and frequent first-hand consumer interaction, promos are undoubtedly a better option.
“ATL is very expensive and companies are looking for expenditure cuts. That is the main reason that below-the-line spending has added impetus,” says an analyst.
Of the total ad spends of LG Electronics worth Rs 370 crore this fiscal, 60% will go to BTL activities while the rest will be on advertising. In the festive season, the company will spend around Rs 70 crore on better displays in retail outlets, special discount scheme, in-store demonstration, new catalogues and product launches.
LG chief marketing officer LK Gupta said, “BTL promotions help build brand equity and influence the point of purchase as consumers are not satisfied with advertising alone.” Videocon marketing head Sandeep Tiwari said, “Out of the Rs 80 crore marketing budget this festive season, it would be a 50:50 deal for ATL and BTL, nearly 35% will go into in-shop demonstration.”
MPG CEO Jeffery Crasto said, “Even as the media cost has been reasonable, except for certain television prime time slots, companies want to work closely through consumer touch points in retail outlets. Moreover, televison and radio media are increasingly used to promote activities in a mall or a retail outlet.”
“A TV commercial would cost a company anywhere between Rs 15 lakh and Rs 2 crore whereas spend on roadshows, discount offers, billboards is much reasonable,” says Euro RSCG chief creative officer Satbir Singh.
World - Prepare for a global rise of 4 Degrees in Temperature
LONDON: A scientist has suggested that the world should be prepared to face an alarming increase of 4 degree Celsius in global temperatures.
A report in UK’s leading newspaper said that this was suggested by agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson, who is one of the UK government's chief scientific advisers.
In policy areas such as flood protection, UK should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels, said Watson. Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact.
According to the government's 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year.
Also, there would be a 30-50 per cent reduction in water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15 to 35 per cent in Africa and 20 to 50 per cent of animal and plant species would face extinction.
In the UK, the most significant impact would be rising sea levels and inland flooding. Climate models also predict there would be an increase in heavy rainfall events in winter and drier summers.
The EU (European Union) is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.
"There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial," said Watson.
"But given this is an ambitious target, and we don't know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2 degree target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C," he added.
Watson's plea to prepare for the worst was backed up by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King.
According to King, even with a comprehensive global deal to keep carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at below 450 parts per million, there is a 50 per cent probability that temperatures would exceed 2C and a 20 per cent probability they would exceed 3.5C.
"So even if we get the best possible global agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses on any rational basis you should be preparing for a 20 per cent risk so I think Bob Watson is quite right to put up the figure of 4 degrees," he said.
"At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime," said Professor Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich.
"There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming," he added.
A report in UK’s leading newspaper said that this was suggested by agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson, who is one of the UK government's chief scientific advisers.
In policy areas such as flood protection, UK should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels, said Watson. Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact.
According to the government's 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year.
Also, there would be a 30-50 per cent reduction in water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15 to 35 per cent in Africa and 20 to 50 per cent of animal and plant species would face extinction.
In the UK, the most significant impact would be rising sea levels and inland flooding. Climate models also predict there would be an increase in heavy rainfall events in winter and drier summers.
The EU (European Union) is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.
"There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial," said Watson.
"But given this is an ambitious target, and we don't know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2 degree target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C," he added.
Watson's plea to prepare for the worst was backed up by the government's former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King.
According to King, even with a comprehensive global deal to keep carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at below 450 parts per million, there is a 50 per cent probability that temperatures would exceed 2C and a 20 per cent probability they would exceed 3.5C.
"So even if we get the best possible global agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses on any rational basis you should be preparing for a 20 per cent risk so I think Bob Watson is quite right to put up the figure of 4 degrees," he said.
"At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime," said Professor Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich.
"There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming," he added.
India - Thriving global e-waste dumpyard
NEW DELHI: If you thought your old outdated PC or television was safely in a junkyard rotting away or being dismantled, think again. A study by a leading environmental group says it is poisoning our soil and water, causing serious health problems.
Booming economies like India and China that are increasingly dependent on electronic and electrical equipments have created a new but very dangerous stream of waste, called "electronic-waste", or simply e-waste, says the report brought out by Greenpeace India.
"Primitive recycling or disposal of e-waste to landfills and incinerators causes irreversible environmental damage by polluting water and soil and contaminating air."
Titled "Take Back Blues - An assessment of e-waste takeback in India", the report showed that in 2007 India generated 380,000 tonnes of e-waste from discarded computers, televisions and mobile phones. This, the report said, was projected to more than double by 2012, to 800,000 per annum with a growth rate of 15 per cent.
"Long-term exposure to deadly component chemicals and metals like lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury and polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) can severely damage the nervous systems, kidney and bones, and the reproductive and endocrine systems, and some of them are carcinogenic and neurotoxic," the report mentions.
"The findings from this study are absolutely shocking. It seems like e-waste takeback in India is in no way a priority for global brands. Otherwise, how else can one explain the irresponsible conduct of brands like Sony, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Samsung and Philips, which have no take-back service in India whatsoever?" questions Abhishek Pratap, Greenpeace Toxics campaigner and the principal investigator for the study.
Another campaigner Rampati Kumar believes the only way to tackle this looming threat was to ensure that global and domestic brands manufacture eco-friendly equipment.
"If brands follow the 'cradle to grave' approach by ensuring takeback and bring back responsibility, it might work," he says.
"The solution lies with the brand owners or manufacturers of electronic products, which need to bear responsibility for financing the treatment of the own-branded e-waste discarded by their customers."
Findings from the study reveal that nine of the 20 brands surveyed for their takeback practice have no takeback service in India. The nine named in the report are Apple, Microsoft, Panasonic, PCS, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.
Two brands stand out as having the best takeback practice in India - HCL and WIPRO - and have come out publicly in support of e-waste legislation in India.
Positions on this from other brands are not clear. No brand has invested much in education and awareness of general customers on e-waste management.
"As part of HCL's eco safe programme, we give booklets along with our products that address waste disposal and inform customers of take back policies, we also host customer seminars telling them about the importance of electronic waste disposal," George Paul, executive vice-president marketing, HCL Info Systems, said.
He also said that though the company had tied up with government approved recycling bodies to treat the electronic items after they are rendered useless.
"Customers have to incur the cost of giving back the equipment; thus they prefer to sell it to local scrap dealers for a nominal price. Unlike in Europe where once a week the local municipality picks up the electronic waste for a charge levied at the time of purchase of goods, in India the consumer is still at a fairly nascent stage of understanding waste disposal."
Even as India heads for an e-waste crisis, most of the global electronic brands have no functioning e-waste takeback services in India.
The study is yet another effort to sound an alarm and get domestic standards on a par with global environment and health safety norms. Failure, as the report points out, could convert emerging economies into permanent grounds of toxic waste.
Booming economies like India and China that are increasingly dependent on electronic and electrical equipments have created a new but very dangerous stream of waste, called "electronic-waste", or simply e-waste, says the report brought out by Greenpeace India.
"Primitive recycling or disposal of e-waste to landfills and incinerators causes irreversible environmental damage by polluting water and soil and contaminating air."
Titled "Take Back Blues - An assessment of e-waste takeback in India", the report showed that in 2007 India generated 380,000 tonnes of e-waste from discarded computers, televisions and mobile phones. This, the report said, was projected to more than double by 2012, to 800,000 per annum with a growth rate of 15 per cent.
"Long-term exposure to deadly component chemicals and metals like lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury and polyvinyl chlorides (PVC) can severely damage the nervous systems, kidney and bones, and the reproductive and endocrine systems, and some of them are carcinogenic and neurotoxic," the report mentions.
"The findings from this study are absolutely shocking. It seems like e-waste takeback in India is in no way a priority for global brands. Otherwise, how else can one explain the irresponsible conduct of brands like Sony, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, Samsung and Philips, which have no take-back service in India whatsoever?" questions Abhishek Pratap, Greenpeace Toxics campaigner and the principal investigator for the study.
Another campaigner Rampati Kumar believes the only way to tackle this looming threat was to ensure that global and domestic brands manufacture eco-friendly equipment.
"If brands follow the 'cradle to grave' approach by ensuring takeback and bring back responsibility, it might work," he says.
"The solution lies with the brand owners or manufacturers of electronic products, which need to bear responsibility for financing the treatment of the own-branded e-waste discarded by their customers."
Findings from the study reveal that nine of the 20 brands surveyed for their takeback practice have no takeback service in India. The nine named in the report are Apple, Microsoft, Panasonic, PCS, Philips, Sharp, Sony, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.
Two brands stand out as having the best takeback practice in India - HCL and WIPRO - and have come out publicly in support of e-waste legislation in India.
Positions on this from other brands are not clear. No brand has invested much in education and awareness of general customers on e-waste management.
"As part of HCL's eco safe programme, we give booklets along with our products that address waste disposal and inform customers of take back policies, we also host customer seminars telling them about the importance of electronic waste disposal," George Paul, executive vice-president marketing, HCL Info Systems, said.
He also said that though the company had tied up with government approved recycling bodies to treat the electronic items after they are rendered useless.
"Customers have to incur the cost of giving back the equipment; thus they prefer to sell it to local scrap dealers for a nominal price. Unlike in Europe where once a week the local municipality picks up the electronic waste for a charge levied at the time of purchase of goods, in India the consumer is still at a fairly nascent stage of understanding waste disposal."
Even as India heads for an e-waste crisis, most of the global electronic brands have no functioning e-waste takeback services in India.
The study is yet another effort to sound an alarm and get domestic standards on a par with global environment and health safety norms. Failure, as the report points out, could convert emerging economies into permanent grounds of toxic waste.
Entertainment - Bollywood banks on 28*7 shows
MUMBAI: India’s dream factory is waking up to some hard facts: Illegal internet downloads and rampant piracy is eating into their profits. That’s why you’ll find Bollywood resorting to every trick in the book to boost its opening weekend box-office. That after all — as is the case with the global film industry — is where the moolah is.
The latest gimmick is carpet-bombing of multiplexes. Starting Friday, the Akshay Kumar-starrer Singh is Kinng will reel out in 28 shows a day across multiplexes all over India.
Devang Sampat, senior VP, Cinemax, confirms the strategy: “We will run the film as many as 28 times each day for a week. The first show will start as early as 7am.’’
Shravan Shroff of Fame Cinemas, too, affirms that his chain will have 19-25 shows a day across the country. ‘‘With 150-odd releases fighting for the 52 Fridays in a year, such tactics are bound to become the order of the day,’’ says a trade insider. ‘‘Such a move is usually successful because even before the reviews or public opinion dig in, 70% of the public has already seen the film or made bookings for it.’’
The math is simple. With around 700 multiplexes and 12,000 screens, Sampat estimates that at the end of the first week itself, a film that runs for 196 (28x7) shows is likely to rake in close to Rs one crore from each property.
Another multiplex manager points out that this strategy was tried out earlier in the case of Yashraj’s Dhoom 2 , where some multiplexes scheduled as many as 23-25 shows a day to cash in on the initial craze of the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai pairing. ‘‘ Dhoom 2 enjoyed one of the best initials of all time,’’ he says.
The latest gimmick is carpet-bombing of multiplexes. Starting Friday, the Akshay Kumar-starrer Singh is Kinng will reel out in 28 shows a day across multiplexes all over India.
Devang Sampat, senior VP, Cinemax, confirms the strategy: “We will run the film as many as 28 times each day for a week. The first show will start as early as 7am.’’
Shravan Shroff of Fame Cinemas, too, affirms that his chain will have 19-25 shows a day across the country. ‘‘With 150-odd releases fighting for the 52 Fridays in a year, such tactics are bound to become the order of the day,’’ says a trade insider. ‘‘Such a move is usually successful because even before the reviews or public opinion dig in, 70% of the public has already seen the film or made bookings for it.’’
The math is simple. With around 700 multiplexes and 12,000 screens, Sampat estimates that at the end of the first week itself, a film that runs for 196 (28x7) shows is likely to rake in close to Rs one crore from each property.
Another multiplex manager points out that this strategy was tried out earlier in the case of Yashraj’s Dhoom 2 , where some multiplexes scheduled as many as 23-25 shows a day to cash in on the initial craze of the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai pairing. ‘‘ Dhoom 2 enjoyed one of the best initials of all time,’’ he says.
India - HC bans plastic bags in Delhi
NEW DELHI: In a major step towards tackling the plastic menace, the Delhi high court on Thursday extended the ban on plastic bags to all markets in the city. Since hotels, hostels and shopping malls have already been declared no-plastic zones, the new order, if strictly enforced, will significantly reduce the use of this ecologically hazardous material.
The court also asked the Delhi government to increase the minimum permissible thickness of plastic bags from 20 microns to 40 microns and ordered the closure of all illegal recycling units in the city with immediate effect.
A bench headed by Justice T S Thakur, responding to a PIL by Vinod Jain of an NGO, Tapas, asked the city government to consider the recommendations of the Justice Chopra committee. The panel, comprising Delhi Pollution Control Board chairman J K Dadoo, Central Pollution Control Board chairman J M Mauskar and retired judge R C Chopra, had sought the use of virgin plastic in place of recycled plastic, a ban on small plastic pouches and getting plastic manufacturers to set up a state-of-the-art recycling unit.
While the government representatives chose not to talk about the order, saying they hadn't received a copy of the judgment, petitioner Jain said this was the first step in completely phasing out plastic bags from the city.
"The court has banned the bag at all places where it is used the most. The only setback at this point appears to be the lack of a deadline for implementing the ban. The government may take forever with this order," he said.
Experts, however, point to another huge problem that may occur after the order on closure of illegal recycling units is enforced. Delhi recycles about 1.2 million tonnes of plastic a year of which about 90% is done illegally, say industry insiders. In the process, the industry uses up about 50% of the city's plastic waste. At present, Delhi has no other mechanism for handling its waste and most of it finds its way to sewers and the Yamuna. As one expert asked, "Once the illegal units are shut, what is to happen to all this waste?"
"Delhi Pollution Control Committee does not have sufficient staff for such an operation," a government official said. "Till some time back, DPCC did not even have a clear idea of the extent of illegal plastic recycling taking place in the city. The collection mechanism was based largely on ragpickers. While the order is good for the city, the government needs to plan out its course of action before implementing the order in a hurry."
The court also asked the Delhi government to increase the minimum permissible thickness of plastic bags from 20 microns to 40 microns and ordered the closure of all illegal recycling units in the city with immediate effect.
A bench headed by Justice T S Thakur, responding to a PIL by Vinod Jain of an NGO, Tapas, asked the city government to consider the recommendations of the Justice Chopra committee. The panel, comprising Delhi Pollution Control Board chairman J K Dadoo, Central Pollution Control Board chairman J M Mauskar and retired judge R C Chopra, had sought the use of virgin plastic in place of recycled plastic, a ban on small plastic pouches and getting plastic manufacturers to set up a state-of-the-art recycling unit.
While the government representatives chose not to talk about the order, saying they hadn't received a copy of the judgment, petitioner Jain said this was the first step in completely phasing out plastic bags from the city.
"The court has banned the bag at all places where it is used the most. The only setback at this point appears to be the lack of a deadline for implementing the ban. The government may take forever with this order," he said.
Experts, however, point to another huge problem that may occur after the order on closure of illegal recycling units is enforced. Delhi recycles about 1.2 million tonnes of plastic a year of which about 90% is done illegally, say industry insiders. In the process, the industry uses up about 50% of the city's plastic waste. At present, Delhi has no other mechanism for handling its waste and most of it finds its way to sewers and the Yamuna. As one expert asked, "Once the illegal units are shut, what is to happen to all this waste?"
"Delhi Pollution Control Committee does not have sufficient staff for such an operation," a government official said. "Till some time back, DPCC did not even have a clear idea of the extent of illegal plastic recycling taking place in the city. The collection mechanism was based largely on ragpickers. While the order is good for the city, the government needs to plan out its course of action before implementing the order in a hurry."
Mktg - The Media Epic
When Lynn de Souza, Ravi Kiran, Vikram Sakhuja, Shashi Sinha and Sam Balsara sit under the same roof, media magic is bound to happen. At the Media Review 2008 organised by the Advertising Club Bombay, the five media agency heads spoke on the topic for the evening, 'Media: Unstoppable, or Unsustainable?'.
Lynn de Souza, chairman and chief executive officer, Lintas Media Group
Lynn de Souza, chairman and CEO, Lintas Media Group was first on the dais and spoke on the developments in the television and radio space. She said that TV viewing homes increased from 93 million in 2006 to 100 million in 2007, while multi-TV homes increased by 16 per cent during the same period. 74 new TV channels found their way onto the Indian TV landscape (adding up to 447 channels currently), and there was a 30 per cent increase in advertising seconds. The highlight of the year was Rs 10 crore spent on a single day, on 5704 spots, with 1.4 lakh seconds of commercial time and over 600 GRPs – all to announce the transition of Hutch to Vodafone.
Next, de Souza highlighted the conflicts between advertisers and the IBF last year. On October 16, advertisers displayed their unity by protesting against the IBF’s 25 per cent hike in TV ad rates, forcing the IBF to backtrack. She also spoke of the draft recommendation released by TRAI a few weeks ago – Policy Guidelines for Television Audience Measurement and TRPs. “So we want the government interfering with us? Certainly not!,” stated de Souza.
Moving away from controversies, de Souza said that people are hard-pressed for time and want entertainment in everything. “Meeting these requirements was a tiger on the Indian television landscape last year – the DLF Indian Premier League,” she said. Perhaps the success of the IPL is an indication that short formats will rule television and that sheer entertainment (in this case, good cricket, celebrities, gossip and cheerleaders) works. She added, “Further, IPL was the perfect example of a global/universal show, with artistes from all over doing their bit.” The radio industry, too, is looking positive with radio adding 7.2 million listeners in 2007. With 260 FM stations across 93 towns, things are looking up. Further, de Souza said that advertising seconds have doubled while revenues have also increased.
Vikram Sakhuja, chief operating officer, GroupM South Asia
Taking over from de Souza was Vikram Sakhuja, COO, GroupM South Asia, who spoke on ambient media and sponsorship. He pointed out that ambient has a huge scope to move beyond impact and salience, and move into the area of engagement. Ambient traditionally comprises outdoor (a Rs 1,400 crore industry in 2007), retail level activities (Rs 225 crore) and activation (Rs 710 crore). In all, ambient is a Rs 2300 crore game, including static, activation and digital. Static ambient media is present mainly in the top seven metros which account for nearly 75 per cent of the overall static pie. Billboards form 35 per cent of the spends, he revealed, but there are talks of regulations affecting these (the stripping of Chennai’s hoardings is a recent example). “But the end of billboards is certainly not the end of ambient,” said Sakhuja. “Our signages are moving from ugly to sophisticated and quality focused, with uni-poles and backlit doing the rounds.” Currently, some 10-15 players rule the roost, out of which Times OOH, Jagran Engage and BIG Street are playing the aggregation game. With international players such as JCDecaux and Stroer Media ready to dive into India, things are surely looking up.
“There will be high bids for airports, railways and other premium inventory,” Sakhuja said. As far as activation is concerned, the advent of screens is a big development. Today, there are over 10,000 activation screens in India in the shopping environment, lifestyle/gaming environment, eateries and pubs. Also called last point TV, these help reach a difficult target group (TG) and are good frequency builders. However, Sakhuja advised creative heads to tailor make creatives for these which don’t extend beyond 10 seconds and provide a call to action. For ambient, Sakhuja felt that metros will remain crowded; non-metros are an opportunity. Billboards will give way to street furniture and measurement is a huge opportunity, Sakhuja opined.
Sponsorships (which traditionally means the rights a brand acquires to associate with a property) is a Rs 2700 game, divided into TV sponsorships (Rs 1900 crore) and on-ground (Rs 600 crore). Cricket is the biggest contributor (Rs 850 crore) followed by movies, music, dance, fashion and movie award shows. There are title sponsors, ground sponsors and on-air sponsors – and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “Usually, the ratings of the previous series is the determinant of the next game,” Sakhuja stated. Other sports constitute a smaller booty of Rs 50 crore, including Formula1, tennis and football, among others.
Movie Awards (a Rs 100 crore sponsorship space) command Rs 3-4 crore for title sponsorships. Blockbuster sponsorships on television account for Rs 435 crore. Sponsoring international format shows is like a ‘Matka’ or a gamble, Sakhuja said, as it is risky business and may not pay off. Then there are the targeted sponsorships (in fashion shows or youth shows such as MTV Roadies) which are a much bigger payoff than the rest. “Sponsorships help brands leverage a passion bigger than the brand onto themselves,” Sakhuja concluded.
Shashi Sinha, chief executive officer, Lodestar Universal
Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar Universal, spoke on the magic of print even as people claim that it is fading away. “Almost 49 per cent of the ad pie often goes to print,” he said. He spoke of five trends in print over the last year. First, there is an emerging audience, with growth in total readership among 12-14 year olds. “This could be because news channels are becoming more entertainment focused than news focused,” Sinha opined. Small town youth are the torch bearers of print (the Dhoni effect is applicable here, too). Second, he cited emerging markets as another point: people hail English print publications as the magnet for advertisers, but the Hindi/regional belts are showing increasing promise. “We are moving away from the domination of English,” he said. Another trend he spotted was that telecom advertisers have gone off print.
Sinha also spoke of emerging segments: niche publications are the name of the game and help deliver more segmented/targeted readers to advertisers. There were over 20 new niche publication launches in 2007, but interestingly, these did not include any sports oriented magazines/supplements. The entry of international players such as Conde Nast will lead to improved production quality and access to global content. “However, niches have low reach and high cover prices,” Sinha said, which is another debate altogether. On the fourth point – emerging digitisation – Sinha said that digital as a medium will enhance print and not replace it. Lastly, Sinha spoke of emerging revenue streams for print owners. By venturing into other arenas such as television or outdoor, things are going towards a 360 degree offering to advertisers. “But we’re not doing justification to this. In a bid to offer everything, we are spreading ourselves too thin,” Sinha concluded.
Ravi Kiran, chief executive officer, South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group
Ravi Kiran, CEO, South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group took over and spoke on digital as a medium for advertisers. Digital is a Rs 500 crore industry and is slated to double next year. “Unlike other media, something new in digital is happening every day, every hour,” Kiran emphasised. “We have conversations in digital, we send digital winks and hugs, for heaven’s sake!” In 2007, there were nearly 300 advertisers with 550 brands on digital. Mobile advertising, too, has multiplied last year. “Advertisers are changing their question regarding digital from Should I? to How should I?,” Kiran said, “which is a good thing.”
On the negatives of digital, Kiran frowned upon too much experimentation in the medium by clients, despite eight years having passed since the dotcom bust. “Why are we still experimenting?” he asked. “People often do digital, but don’t have a strategy.” Intrusive elements such as site captures, for instance, are big right now, which shouldn’t be the case. “Most clients don’t know what to do on digital; others expect too much just because it is measurable,” Kiran declared. “Don’t kill the medium by over-demanding,” he concluded.
Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World
Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World, concluded the Media Review with talks about industry issues. According to him, the biggest problem we face today is that media agencies, from being the darlings of media owners, have somehow fallen out of favour with them. “The media agency structure is here to stay and we must discuss our issues now so we can all coexist tolerably, if not happily,” he quipped. Furthermore, he also said it was time to enlarge the media agency’s role in the scheme of things for the benefit of these agencies, advertisers and media owners alike.
Balsara said, “We must question, who are the media agencies ultimately working for? Channel owners are becoming large advertisers themselves, and trust me, when they don the hat of an advertiser, they become even more demanding for lower rates.” Next, media agencies should revise their business models and not feel shy to ask for what they deserve, particularly regarding remuneration. A client credit and process rating system should do it. Digitisation of processes and finding appropriate talent were some of the other things he mentioned. He concluded his talk by addressing media owners. He said, “Your media agency acts as your collection agent, evangelises your new ventures and shows with advertisers, gives you a wide reach with advertisers and encourages these advertisers to take risks. Finally, if the media agency weren't there, you'd miss out on your favourite whipping boy or girl.”
Lynn de Souza, chairman and chief executive officer, Lintas Media Group
Lynn de Souza, chairman and CEO, Lintas Media Group was first on the dais and spoke on the developments in the television and radio space. She said that TV viewing homes increased from 93 million in 2006 to 100 million in 2007, while multi-TV homes increased by 16 per cent during the same period. 74 new TV channels found their way onto the Indian TV landscape (adding up to 447 channels currently), and there was a 30 per cent increase in advertising seconds. The highlight of the year was Rs 10 crore spent on a single day, on 5704 spots, with 1.4 lakh seconds of commercial time and over 600 GRPs – all to announce the transition of Hutch to Vodafone.
Next, de Souza highlighted the conflicts between advertisers and the IBF last year. On October 16, advertisers displayed their unity by protesting against the IBF’s 25 per cent hike in TV ad rates, forcing the IBF to backtrack. She also spoke of the draft recommendation released by TRAI a few weeks ago – Policy Guidelines for Television Audience Measurement and TRPs. “So we want the government interfering with us? Certainly not!,” stated de Souza.
Moving away from controversies, de Souza said that people are hard-pressed for time and want entertainment in everything. “Meeting these requirements was a tiger on the Indian television landscape last year – the DLF Indian Premier League,” she said. Perhaps the success of the IPL is an indication that short formats will rule television and that sheer entertainment (in this case, good cricket, celebrities, gossip and cheerleaders) works. She added, “Further, IPL was the perfect example of a global/universal show, with artistes from all over doing their bit.” The radio industry, too, is looking positive with radio adding 7.2 million listeners in 2007. With 260 FM stations across 93 towns, things are looking up. Further, de Souza said that advertising seconds have doubled while revenues have also increased.
Vikram Sakhuja, chief operating officer, GroupM South Asia
Taking over from de Souza was Vikram Sakhuja, COO, GroupM South Asia, who spoke on ambient media and sponsorship. He pointed out that ambient has a huge scope to move beyond impact and salience, and move into the area of engagement. Ambient traditionally comprises outdoor (a Rs 1,400 crore industry in 2007), retail level activities (Rs 225 crore) and activation (Rs 710 crore). In all, ambient is a Rs 2300 crore game, including static, activation and digital. Static ambient media is present mainly in the top seven metros which account for nearly 75 per cent of the overall static pie. Billboards form 35 per cent of the spends, he revealed, but there are talks of regulations affecting these (the stripping of Chennai’s hoardings is a recent example). “But the end of billboards is certainly not the end of ambient,” said Sakhuja. “Our signages are moving from ugly to sophisticated and quality focused, with uni-poles and backlit doing the rounds.” Currently, some 10-15 players rule the roost, out of which Times OOH, Jagran Engage and BIG Street are playing the aggregation game. With international players such as JCDecaux and Stroer Media ready to dive into India, things are surely looking up.
“There will be high bids for airports, railways and other premium inventory,” Sakhuja said. As far as activation is concerned, the advent of screens is a big development. Today, there are over 10,000 activation screens in India in the shopping environment, lifestyle/gaming environment, eateries and pubs. Also called last point TV, these help reach a difficult target group (TG) and are good frequency builders. However, Sakhuja advised creative heads to tailor make creatives for these which don’t extend beyond 10 seconds and provide a call to action. For ambient, Sakhuja felt that metros will remain crowded; non-metros are an opportunity. Billboards will give way to street furniture and measurement is a huge opportunity, Sakhuja opined.
Sponsorships (which traditionally means the rights a brand acquires to associate with a property) is a Rs 2700 game, divided into TV sponsorships (Rs 1900 crore) and on-ground (Rs 600 crore). Cricket is the biggest contributor (Rs 850 crore) followed by movies, music, dance, fashion and movie award shows. There are title sponsors, ground sponsors and on-air sponsors – and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “Usually, the ratings of the previous series is the determinant of the next game,” Sakhuja stated. Other sports constitute a smaller booty of Rs 50 crore, including Formula1, tennis and football, among others.
Movie Awards (a Rs 100 crore sponsorship space) command Rs 3-4 crore for title sponsorships. Blockbuster sponsorships on television account for Rs 435 crore. Sponsoring international format shows is like a ‘Matka’ or a gamble, Sakhuja said, as it is risky business and may not pay off. Then there are the targeted sponsorships (in fashion shows or youth shows such as MTV Roadies) which are a much bigger payoff than the rest. “Sponsorships help brands leverage a passion bigger than the brand onto themselves,” Sakhuja concluded.
Shashi Sinha, chief executive officer, Lodestar Universal
Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar Universal, spoke on the magic of print even as people claim that it is fading away. “Almost 49 per cent of the ad pie often goes to print,” he said. He spoke of five trends in print over the last year. First, there is an emerging audience, with growth in total readership among 12-14 year olds. “This could be because news channels are becoming more entertainment focused than news focused,” Sinha opined. Small town youth are the torch bearers of print (the Dhoni effect is applicable here, too). Second, he cited emerging markets as another point: people hail English print publications as the magnet for advertisers, but the Hindi/regional belts are showing increasing promise. “We are moving away from the domination of English,” he said. Another trend he spotted was that telecom advertisers have gone off print.
Sinha also spoke of emerging segments: niche publications are the name of the game and help deliver more segmented/targeted readers to advertisers. There were over 20 new niche publication launches in 2007, but interestingly, these did not include any sports oriented magazines/supplements. The entry of international players such as Conde Nast will lead to improved production quality and access to global content. “However, niches have low reach and high cover prices,” Sinha said, which is another debate altogether. On the fourth point – emerging digitisation – Sinha said that digital as a medium will enhance print and not replace it. Lastly, Sinha spoke of emerging revenue streams for print owners. By venturing into other arenas such as television or outdoor, things are going towards a 360 degree offering to advertisers. “But we’re not doing justification to this. In a bid to offer everything, we are spreading ourselves too thin,” Sinha concluded.
Ravi Kiran, chief executive officer, South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group
Ravi Kiran, CEO, South Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group took over and spoke on digital as a medium for advertisers. Digital is a Rs 500 crore industry and is slated to double next year. “Unlike other media, something new in digital is happening every day, every hour,” Kiran emphasised. “We have conversations in digital, we send digital winks and hugs, for heaven’s sake!” In 2007, there were nearly 300 advertisers with 550 brands on digital. Mobile advertising, too, has multiplied last year. “Advertisers are changing their question regarding digital from Should I? to How should I?,” Kiran said, “which is a good thing.”
On the negatives of digital, Kiran frowned upon too much experimentation in the medium by clients, despite eight years having passed since the dotcom bust. “Why are we still experimenting?” he asked. “People often do digital, but don’t have a strategy.” Intrusive elements such as site captures, for instance, are big right now, which shouldn’t be the case. “Most clients don’t know what to do on digital; others expect too much just because it is measurable,” Kiran declared. “Don’t kill the medium by over-demanding,” he concluded.
Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World
Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World, concluded the Media Review with talks about industry issues. According to him, the biggest problem we face today is that media agencies, from being the darlings of media owners, have somehow fallen out of favour with them. “The media agency structure is here to stay and we must discuss our issues now so we can all coexist tolerably, if not happily,” he quipped. Furthermore, he also said it was time to enlarge the media agency’s role in the scheme of things for the benefit of these agencies, advertisers and media owners alike.
Balsara said, “We must question, who are the media agencies ultimately working for? Channel owners are becoming large advertisers themselves, and trust me, when they don the hat of an advertiser, they become even more demanding for lower rates.” Next, media agencies should revise their business models and not feel shy to ask for what they deserve, particularly regarding remuneration. A client credit and process rating system should do it. Digitisation of processes and finding appropriate talent were some of the other things he mentioned. He concluded his talk by addressing media owners. He said, “Your media agency acts as your collection agent, evangelises your new ventures and shows with advertisers, gives you a wide reach with advertisers and encourages these advertisers to take risks. Finally, if the media agency weren't there, you'd miss out on your favourite whipping boy or girl.”
Entertainment - Colors No-3 GEC
MUMBAI: It has scored a century on debut, probably the only general entertainment channel to achieve that distinction in recent times. Colors, the Network 18-Viacom promoted GEC has generated GRPs of 116 GRPs (gross rating points), in its first full week (Tam, week 31; 27 July-2 August, HSM, C&S 4+) of launch catapulting it to the the No 3 position (The channel launched on 21 July and it generated 81 GRPs in that week which was for five and a half days - hence not a full week - of telecast.)
Apparently, Colors CEO Rajesh Kamat’s “disruptive and differentiated” programming, accompanied by an aggressive marketing (outdoor, online, television and cable TV placement campaign) has succeeded in attracting viewers. From the very beginning, Kamat was confident of his plans, he had shared his launch plans with Indiantelevision.com as “We are launching with a canon and not a pistol.”
The credit of high-ratings also goes to distribution, which Colors claims has touched 44.5 million viewers
The big winner for the channel is its Akshay Kumar hosted, Fear Factor-Khatron Ke Khiladi which clocked a TVR of 2.73 this week with its average TVR being 2.55. Balika Vadhu registered a 1.48 TVR (the average being 1.36), Jai Shree Krishna rang up a 1.46 TVR with its average touching 1.06 for the week.
Tam data reveals that the channel has attracted viewers of all hues and colours and age groups. 32 per cent of its GRPs were contributed by the 35+ age group audience, while the 15-24 years demographic totted up 31 per cent.
Additionally, both men and women are watching the channel almost equally with females 4+ contributing 53 per cent of the GRPs, and males 4+ the remainder.
Show wise, Fear Factor, logged in 53 per cent viewing from males with females accounting for 47 per cent. Balika Vadhu and Jai Shree Krishna are being watched more by women (66 per cent and 55 per cent respectively).
Media planners agree that the channel has created ripples and is a hot property. Says Madison Media Group CEO Punitha Arumugum, “The channel has generated interest among viewers with its interesting content. Though I feel Fear Factor – Khataron Ke Khiladi would have done better after all the promotion.”
Lodestar Universal CEO Shashi Sinha adds, “Colors is a good entry in the GEC space, and it is also getting a good response. Though, these properties build over time and it is too early to say anything.”
Colors also has announced that it will run Bigg Boss2 seven days a week at 10 pm. Sinha asserts that, “seven days airing will be a good option for advertisers, with regular content.”
Arumugum agrees saying, “It (Bigg Boss2) will reduce the monotony of television viewing.
What' happening to the rest of the channels? Star Plus leads with 321 GRPs, followed by Zee TV's 217 GRPs. Sony Entertainment Television (SET) has slumped to fourth position having lost three GRPs to drop to 96. Star One, NDTV Imagine and 9X are neck-on-neck with 89, 87 and 86 GRPs respectively
Entertainment - Short format shows better
MUMBAI: With an incremental rise in the number of television channels from 157 in 2004 to 447 in 2008 and with the number of multi-television homes going up by 16 per cent, the only way to capture more eyeballs is by developing content that is short in format, entertaining, has a global understanding and bears a universal appeal, said Lintas Media Group chairman and CEO Lynn de Souza at the Media Review 2007-08 organised by the Advertising Club, Bombay on 6 August.
To support her point, de Souza cited the example of the DLF-sponsored Indian Premier League, which was an amalgamation of all these four elements. She said that the IPL not only exhibited a short format but also excelled in engaging eyeballs by associating with celebrities.
“The DLF IPL has left a remarkable impression on this year’s action on TV and confirms to the fact that the content formats need to undergo a sea change in order to create more opportunities for advertisers. The short format league definitely had a universal appeal as it helped many brands reach their target consumers through various touch points,” explained de Souza.
de Souza said that even though the number of channels has increased by 12 per cent, there has been no rise in viewership and this is because content has remained almost the same across all channels.
“From 157 TV channels in 2004, now we are at 447. However, even with this amplification, the viewership percentage has remained the same. For example, in 2004, while at least a group of 8 channels enjoyed 41 per cent viewership, that number remains the same in 2008. Also, the market share of eight channels taken together, which was 2 per cent in 2004, has dropped to 1 per cent,” stated de Souza.
“This is a sign that confirms that there is an urgent requirement of format change and the tremendous success of DLF IPL only suggests that opportunity lies in short formats encapsulated with entertainment and international appeal,” she added.
Talking about radio, Lynn said that with 260 FM stations across 93 towns and cities, there is a tremendous opportunity for advertisers in the radio industry as well.
“The radio industry has added 7.2million listeners in the last one year. While the advertising seconds have doubled, the advertising revenue has gone up three times. Thus I believe apart from short format shows, there is also a huge opportunity lying in the radio industry,” said de Souza.
To support her point, de Souza cited the example of the DLF-sponsored Indian Premier League, which was an amalgamation of all these four elements. She said that the IPL not only exhibited a short format but also excelled in engaging eyeballs by associating with celebrities.
“The DLF IPL has left a remarkable impression on this year’s action on TV and confirms to the fact that the content formats need to undergo a sea change in order to create more opportunities for advertisers. The short format league definitely had a universal appeal as it helped many brands reach their target consumers through various touch points,” explained de Souza.
de Souza said that even though the number of channels has increased by 12 per cent, there has been no rise in viewership and this is because content has remained almost the same across all channels.
“From 157 TV channels in 2004, now we are at 447. However, even with this amplification, the viewership percentage has remained the same. For example, in 2004, while at least a group of 8 channels enjoyed 41 per cent viewership, that number remains the same in 2008. Also, the market share of eight channels taken together, which was 2 per cent in 2004, has dropped to 1 per cent,” stated de Souza.
“This is a sign that confirms that there is an urgent requirement of format change and the tremendous success of DLF IPL only suggests that opportunity lies in short formats encapsulated with entertainment and international appeal,” she added.
Talking about radio, Lynn said that with 260 FM stations across 93 towns and cities, there is a tremendous opportunity for advertisers in the radio industry as well.
“The radio industry has added 7.2million listeners in the last one year. While the advertising seconds have doubled, the advertising revenue has gone up three times. Thus I believe apart from short format shows, there is also a huge opportunity lying in the radio industry,” said de Souza.
Entertainment - Yash Raj ties up with Star to promote BAH
MUMBAI: In an attempt to promote its forthcoming film, Bachna Ae Haseeno, Yash Raj Films has tied up with Star India, wherein the star cast of the film namely Ranbir Kapoor, Bipassha Basu, Minissha Lamba and Deepika Padukone will make an appearance on two reality shows, Aja Mahi Ve and Zara Nach Ke Dikha.
Aja Mahi Ve will air the special episode with the star cast on 9 August at 8 pm while Zara Nach Ke Dikha will air its episode on 11 August at 9:30 pm.
In addition to the star appearances on the shows, the network is creating and airing tune-in promos to these shows, featuring the film and its stars.
The promos and the packaging for these shows on the network will take on a Bachna Ae Haseeno look and feel. Also, the making of the film will be aired on the network too.
Aja Mahi Ve will air the special episode with the star cast on 9 August at 8 pm while Zara Nach Ke Dikha will air its episode on 11 August at 9:30 pm.
In addition to the star appearances on the shows, the network is creating and airing tune-in promos to these shows, featuring the film and its stars.
The promos and the packaging for these shows on the network will take on a Bachna Ae Haseeno look and feel. Also, the making of the film will be aired on the network too.
Business - INS urges 20% cut in newsprint consumption
The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has issued an advisory to all its member publications to reduce their newsprint consumption by 20 per cent. The INS note urges the members to “take immediate steps to reduce newsprint consumption by 20 per cent in the shortest possible time…”
The need for such an advisory has arisen because of the extraordinary hike in newsprint prices. According to INS Deputy President Paresh Nath, the newsprint cost has jumped by about 50 per cent in the last six months.
“Though newspapers are attempting to cut costs on their own, the advisory puts them in a comfort zone that they are not facing the crisis alone,” said Nath, publisher, Delhi Press.
However, he observed that there was no reason for indigenous newsprint prices to spiral upwards. The advisory is aimed at curbing cartelisation of the domestic newsprint manufacturers as lower demand could improve the prices.
“Since imported newsprint prices have shot up, the local manufacturers are blackmailing the publishing industry to maximise their profits,” said Sanjay Gupta, CEO, Jagran Prakashan Limited that publishes India’s largest-read newspaper Dainik Jagran.
The “unprecedented” price increase in newsprint prices is forcing the industry to take steps to keep costs under control. For a start, newspaper rivals are talking to one another to arrive at a consensus to cut pages.
“We are talking seriously as the industry is left with little option. It is going through a huge turmoil. We are already cutting down our pages,” said Ravi Dhariwal, president (publishing) at Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd.
Newspaper companies are also looking at increasing their ad rates. Bennett, Coleman has already taken a 40 per cent rate hike. However, such steep hikes may not be possible for papers who are not leaders in their markets. In such a scenario, newspaper owners have suggested putting a newsprint surcharge both on the cover price as well as on billings to advertisers.
The INS is also said to be pushing for a hike in the DAVP rates, that is, prices at which space is sold for government advertising. Currently, DAVP rates are said to be one tenth of the price of commercial rates. The INS is lobbying for a 15 per cent rate increase on government advertising, to begin with.
“If the top 10-12 newspapers come together and decide that we will not accept government ads at the current rates, it may work,” said a newspaper proprietor. Newspapers also need to increase their cover price. “However, no consensus has been reached we compete with one another in different markets. But we are talking to each other,” said Sanjay Gupta.
Most newspapers work on about a 10 per cent margin. “If costs go up by 40 to 50 per cent, it can destroy the newspaper business,” said Dhariwal.
The need for such an advisory has arisen because of the extraordinary hike in newsprint prices. According to INS Deputy President Paresh Nath, the newsprint cost has jumped by about 50 per cent in the last six months.
“Though newspapers are attempting to cut costs on their own, the advisory puts them in a comfort zone that they are not facing the crisis alone,” said Nath, publisher, Delhi Press.
However, he observed that there was no reason for indigenous newsprint prices to spiral upwards. The advisory is aimed at curbing cartelisation of the domestic newsprint manufacturers as lower demand could improve the prices.
“Since imported newsprint prices have shot up, the local manufacturers are blackmailing the publishing industry to maximise their profits,” said Sanjay Gupta, CEO, Jagran Prakashan Limited that publishes India’s largest-read newspaper Dainik Jagran.
The “unprecedented” price increase in newsprint prices is forcing the industry to take steps to keep costs under control. For a start, newspaper rivals are talking to one another to arrive at a consensus to cut pages.
“We are talking seriously as the industry is left with little option. It is going through a huge turmoil. We are already cutting down our pages,” said Ravi Dhariwal, president (publishing) at Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd.
Newspaper companies are also looking at increasing their ad rates. Bennett, Coleman has already taken a 40 per cent rate hike. However, such steep hikes may not be possible for papers who are not leaders in their markets. In such a scenario, newspaper owners have suggested putting a newsprint surcharge both on the cover price as well as on billings to advertisers.
The INS is also said to be pushing for a hike in the DAVP rates, that is, prices at which space is sold for government advertising. Currently, DAVP rates are said to be one tenth of the price of commercial rates. The INS is lobbying for a 15 per cent rate increase on government advertising, to begin with.
“If the top 10-12 newspapers come together and decide that we will not accept government ads at the current rates, it may work,” said a newspaper proprietor. Newspapers also need to increase their cover price. “However, no consensus has been reached we compete with one another in different markets. But we are talking to each other,” said Sanjay Gupta.
Most newspapers work on about a 10 per cent margin. “If costs go up by 40 to 50 per cent, it can destroy the newspaper business,” said Dhariwal.
Entertainment - Mahuaa TV to debut - First Bhojpuri GEC
The massive popularity of Bhojpuri films is not only limited to the Bhojpuri heartland which includes Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, parts of Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Mumbai, which have substantial Bhojpuri speaking population have not escaped its magic.
Now the Bhojpuri speaking population which is estimated to be around 33 million – as per Indian Census – have more reasons to rejoice. A Bhojpuri GEC (general entertainment channel), Mahuaa TV, which promises a heavy dose of entertainment, is all set to go on air on August 11.
The GEC is being launched by Century Communication Limited (CCL), a media and entertainment company, boasting of four verticals: Pixion (media services, such as post production facilities), Pearl Media (media sales for TV broadcasters), CCL Studio (filming facilities at a state-of-the-art digital studio) and Metamorphosis (one-stop shop for branding and design solutions).
Raghwesh Asthana, business head, Mahuaa TV spoke to afaqs! about the plans for the new Bhojpuri channel. Revealing the purpose and strategy behind the regional channel, Asthana says, “Bhojpuri, as a language, is spoken and understood by more than 33 million people in our country. The language has a stronghold over two of the biggest states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The channel will be a GEC, offering the Bhojpuri speaking population a complete entertainment package in terms of news bulletins, daily soaps and weekend movies.”
Asthana is of the view that defining the audience for the channel in terms of age group will not be fair to the channel or the audience. Being a GEC, it is targeted at the whole family, from kids to women and men. Moreover, it is not a niche channel, targeting only a specified section of the audience.
To begin with, the channel will have 10 hours of programming, including five half-hour news segments, six daily soaps, two weekly shows and a movie each on weekdays and weekends. Some of the shows on the channel include women oriented, family soaps such as Chotki Dulhan and Sato Vachanva Nibhaib Sajna; other shows include Bahubali and Baliaa Kranti 1942. Mahuaa TV has a huge line-up of hit Bhojpuri movies starring popular stars, Ravi Kishan and Manoj Tiwari. On weekdays, movies will be aired at 1:30 pm; and on weekends, they will be aired at 7:30 pm.
Asthana emphasizes that the channel has ensured that the content on the channel reflects the simplest and purest form of day to day spoken, identifiable Bhojpuri language. Superfluous or forced usage of the language will achieve nothing but put off the TG.
The advertising campaign for Mahuaa TV is being handled by AMO Communication Private Limited, a Percept Group company.
Jitendra Khokle, chief operating officer, AMO Communication, shared the communication strategy and positioning of Mahuaa TV with afaqs!. “The idea is to position and establish Mahuaa TV as the first, original Bhojpuri channel for the Hindi heartland; and next, play up the content by strongly promoting the programming lineup of the channel. The tagline for the channel, ‘Aapan Pahila Bhojpuri TV Channel’ aims to do exactly that. The advertising campaign studies and reflects the true nature and psyche of the Bhojpuri speaking belt.”
Khokle points out that the campaign, spread over print, TV, radio and OOH (out of home) media, uses relevant visuals and colour schemes symbolic of distinct Bhojpuri culture. Giving an example, Khokle describes one of the teaser campaigns, currently on air on India TV. “One of the TV campaigns reflects the real psyche and profile of the audience for Mahuaa TV. In the Bhojpuri speaking belt, putting one's ‘gamcha’ on a cinema hall seat is equivalent to reserving the particular seat. So, one of the TVCs depicts a large number of people of different age groups and occupations, coming and leaving either a stone or a ‘chappal’ or any other object near a well, thereby reserving their place in the long queue at the well. The TVC concludes with a super saying, ‘Coming Soon’, emphatically declaring and informing viewers that a complete channel in your own language is ready to be part and parcel of each Bhojpuri speaking individual.”
The teaser campaign on TV went on air from August 4. The next phase of on-air promotion, which will talk about the programming lineup, will begin on August 11, after the formal launch of Mahuaa TV.
In print, two different sets of half-page ads will appear on August 10 and August 11 in newspapers, such as Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, Hindustan and Hum. More than 600 hoardings have been put up, covering the entire Bhojpuri speaking belt. Ad spots have been taken up in bulk on radio station, Radio Mirchi. The station was chosen because it is the only one with a substantial presence across the states that have a significant number of Bhojpuri speaking people. For instance, in a place like Jaunpur, Radio Mirchi is the only player.
The advertising spend for the pre-launch and launch campaign ranges between Rs 3 to 5 crore. Asthana concludes, “The entire campaign for Mahuaa TV is a highly aggressive, impact oriented, short duration advertising and promotional campaign, establishing it as the first-ever, original Bhojpuri channel in the Hindi heartland.”
Now the Bhojpuri speaking population which is estimated to be around 33 million – as per Indian Census – have more reasons to rejoice. A Bhojpuri GEC (general entertainment channel), Mahuaa TV, which promises a heavy dose of entertainment, is all set to go on air on August 11.
The GEC is being launched by Century Communication Limited (CCL), a media and entertainment company, boasting of four verticals: Pixion (media services, such as post production facilities), Pearl Media (media sales for TV broadcasters), CCL Studio (filming facilities at a state-of-the-art digital studio) and Metamorphosis (one-stop shop for branding and design solutions).
Raghwesh Asthana, business head, Mahuaa TV spoke to afaqs! about the plans for the new Bhojpuri channel. Revealing the purpose and strategy behind the regional channel, Asthana says, “Bhojpuri, as a language, is spoken and understood by more than 33 million people in our country. The language has a stronghold over two of the biggest states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The channel will be a GEC, offering the Bhojpuri speaking population a complete entertainment package in terms of news bulletins, daily soaps and weekend movies.”
Asthana is of the view that defining the audience for the channel in terms of age group will not be fair to the channel or the audience. Being a GEC, it is targeted at the whole family, from kids to women and men. Moreover, it is not a niche channel, targeting only a specified section of the audience.
To begin with, the channel will have 10 hours of programming, including five half-hour news segments, six daily soaps, two weekly shows and a movie each on weekdays and weekends. Some of the shows on the channel include women oriented, family soaps such as Chotki Dulhan and Sato Vachanva Nibhaib Sajna; other shows include Bahubali and Baliaa Kranti 1942. Mahuaa TV has a huge line-up of hit Bhojpuri movies starring popular stars, Ravi Kishan and Manoj Tiwari. On weekdays, movies will be aired at 1:30 pm; and on weekends, they will be aired at 7:30 pm.
Asthana emphasizes that the channel has ensured that the content on the channel reflects the simplest and purest form of day to day spoken, identifiable Bhojpuri language. Superfluous or forced usage of the language will achieve nothing but put off the TG.
The advertising campaign for Mahuaa TV is being handled by AMO Communication Private Limited, a Percept Group company.
Jitendra Khokle, chief operating officer, AMO Communication, shared the communication strategy and positioning of Mahuaa TV with afaqs!. “The idea is to position and establish Mahuaa TV as the first, original Bhojpuri channel for the Hindi heartland; and next, play up the content by strongly promoting the programming lineup of the channel. The tagline for the channel, ‘Aapan Pahila Bhojpuri TV Channel’ aims to do exactly that. The advertising campaign studies and reflects the true nature and psyche of the Bhojpuri speaking belt.”
Khokle points out that the campaign, spread over print, TV, radio and OOH (out of home) media, uses relevant visuals and colour schemes symbolic of distinct Bhojpuri culture. Giving an example, Khokle describes one of the teaser campaigns, currently on air on India TV. “One of the TV campaigns reflects the real psyche and profile of the audience for Mahuaa TV. In the Bhojpuri speaking belt, putting one's ‘gamcha’ on a cinema hall seat is equivalent to reserving the particular seat. So, one of the TVCs depicts a large number of people of different age groups and occupations, coming and leaving either a stone or a ‘chappal’ or any other object near a well, thereby reserving their place in the long queue at the well. The TVC concludes with a super saying, ‘Coming Soon’, emphatically declaring and informing viewers that a complete channel in your own language is ready to be part and parcel of each Bhojpuri speaking individual.”
The teaser campaign on TV went on air from August 4. The next phase of on-air promotion, which will talk about the programming lineup, will begin on August 11, after the formal launch of Mahuaa TV.
In print, two different sets of half-page ads will appear on August 10 and August 11 in newspapers, such as Dainik Jagran, Dainik Bhaskar, Amar Ujala, Hindustan and Hum. More than 600 hoardings have been put up, covering the entire Bhojpuri speaking belt. Ad spots have been taken up in bulk on radio station, Radio Mirchi. The station was chosen because it is the only one with a substantial presence across the states that have a significant number of Bhojpuri speaking people. For instance, in a place like Jaunpur, Radio Mirchi is the only player.
The advertising spend for the pre-launch and launch campaign ranges between Rs 3 to 5 crore. Asthana concludes, “The entire campaign for Mahuaa TV is a highly aggressive, impact oriented, short duration advertising and promotional campaign, establishing it as the first-ever, original Bhojpuri channel in the Hindi heartland.”
Sport - Beijing Etiquette guide for US Olympic Team
US contingent run though a ‘Miss Manners’ style crash course before reaching China
NEW YORK: US Olympic officials are hoping for exemplary behaviour from their athletes, especially in light of the “ugly American” image abroad, stoked in part by the unpopular war in Iraq.
The US Olympic Committee, for the first time ever, ran all its 596 Olympians through a crash course in Chinese culture prior to travelling to Beijing.
Jen Pan, a Chinese-language teacher taught the US athletes some vocabulary, social customs (Chinese do not hug), eating etiquette (Do not spear the food with your chopsticks), and drinking habits (Chinese don’t really drink, except at banquets), reported the “Wall Street Journal” on Wednesday.
Pan also had a nugget of wisdom to share on Chinese practices: “If Chinese say they are not quite sure, they are probably saying ‘no’ to you.”
The two-day course held in five cities across the US included role-playing and group games.
The course, nicknamed the “ambassador program” taught US athletes to go along with rituals that might seem whimsically clownish.
In one game, called “energy ball,” athletes formed circles and passed around an imaginary ball. The participants had to say “whoosh” when handing it to the right or left, while an imaginary throw across the circle required a “zap.”
If someone wanted to hold the ball for a moment, he had to say, “groove-alicious,” the cue for the circle to break into a little jig. Just in case you are wondering why on earth Olympians need to go along with such silliness, a New York executive coach
illuminates.
“We want to help them with things that make them uncomfortable,” Cathy Salit, whose New York firm, Performance of a Lifetime, was hired by the US Olympic Committee for the program, told the “Journal.”
“If they are going to be ambassadors, they have to be attuned to what’s going on around them and be able to respond,” she added. Salit’s clients typically come from the corporate world and she said she found the US athletes sporting.
“Compared with the folks at Citigroup, they were very good at getting into the groove of it,” she said.
The US has had its share of “ugly American” moments. In the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney US swimmer Amy Van Dyken spit into the lane of Dutch swimmer Inge de Bruijn before one of their races.
The “Journal” recalled how members of the US men’s track team apologised after excessive celebrating following their win in a relay race, including flexing their muscles and sticking out their tongues. This pales in comparison with US hockey players in Japan trashing their hotel rooms during the 1998 Games.
NEW YORK: US Olympic officials are hoping for exemplary behaviour from their athletes, especially in light of the “ugly American” image abroad, stoked in part by the unpopular war in Iraq.
The US Olympic Committee, for the first time ever, ran all its 596 Olympians through a crash course in Chinese culture prior to travelling to Beijing.
Jen Pan, a Chinese-language teacher taught the US athletes some vocabulary, social customs (Chinese do not hug), eating etiquette (Do not spear the food with your chopsticks), and drinking habits (Chinese don’t really drink, except at banquets), reported the “Wall Street Journal” on Wednesday.
Pan also had a nugget of wisdom to share on Chinese practices: “If Chinese say they are not quite sure, they are probably saying ‘no’ to you.”
The two-day course held in five cities across the US included role-playing and group games.
The course, nicknamed the “ambassador program” taught US athletes to go along with rituals that might seem whimsically clownish.
In one game, called “energy ball,” athletes formed circles and passed around an imaginary ball. The participants had to say “whoosh” when handing it to the right or left, while an imaginary throw across the circle required a “zap.”
If someone wanted to hold the ball for a moment, he had to say, “groove-alicious,” the cue for the circle to break into a little jig. Just in case you are wondering why on earth Olympians need to go along with such silliness, a New York executive coach
illuminates.
“We want to help them with things that make them uncomfortable,” Cathy Salit, whose New York firm, Performance of a Lifetime, was hired by the US Olympic Committee for the program, told the “Journal.”
“If they are going to be ambassadors, they have to be attuned to what’s going on around them and be able to respond,” she added. Salit’s clients typically come from the corporate world and she said she found the US athletes sporting.
“Compared with the folks at Citigroup, they were very good at getting into the groove of it,” she said.
The US has had its share of “ugly American” moments. In the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney US swimmer Amy Van Dyken spit into the lane of Dutch swimmer Inge de Bruijn before one of their races.
The “Journal” recalled how members of the US men’s track team apologised after excessive celebrating following their win in a relay race, including flexing their muscles and sticking out their tongues. This pales in comparison with US hockey players in Japan trashing their hotel rooms during the 1998 Games.
World - Car that changed the world turns 100
HAMBURG: When the Ford Model T went into production in 1908, it marked the beginning of an era when motoring became affordable to the masses and an end to the horse and cart age.
Thousands of enthusiasts the world over are this week celebrating in Richmond, Indiana, the centenary of the car affectionately known as "Tin Lizzie".
It is just one of several events leading up to the Oct 1 anniversary when the first Model T drove off the assembly line.
The Model T was a dream come true for Henry Ford who wanted to make transportation by motor car affordable by introducing assembly line production.
While the first Model-T sold for less than $1,000 at a time when other cars cost between $2,000 and $3,000, the price fell to about $300 in the early 1920s as production methods became more refined and cheaper.
It was sold only in black, allegedly because the colour dried faster which could speed up production.
The Model T has become virtually synonymous with the roaring 1920s featuring in many Laurel and Hardy movies. Ford extended production to European plants in Britain and Germany with the Model T becoming the first world motor car and sold 15 million units by 1927.
The 15 kW/20 hp engine with a top speed of up to 70 km/h had to be started with a hand crank. The throttle was controlled by a lever beside the steering wheel.
The petrol tank was fitted under the front seat and petrol had to flow to the carburettor by force of gravity.
It is ironic that Ford is celebrating the centenary of its most successful vehicle at a time when the company itself is in a deep crisis. During the last two years, it has lost more than $15.3 billion and failed to turn a profit since 2005.
Although Ford's deputy president Mark Fields says the lessons learned from the Model T still apply today "as part of our DNA and our way of doing business", the company has lost huge shares to the Japanese manufacturers on its home US market where buyers are shunning fuel-guzzling Ford pick-up trucks and SUVs.
Now the company is trying to return to its Model T roots by adjusting to smaller and fuel efficient vehicles. At the London Motor Show, it presented a super fuel-efficient Ford Fiesta with a fuel-consumption of only 3.7 litres of diesel per 100 km.
Apart from the new Fiesta, Ford is planning to bring at least six small European-designed models onto the US market over the next three years.
Thousands of enthusiasts the world over are this week celebrating in Richmond, Indiana, the centenary of the car affectionately known as "Tin Lizzie".
It is just one of several events leading up to the Oct 1 anniversary when the first Model T drove off the assembly line.
The Model T was a dream come true for Henry Ford who wanted to make transportation by motor car affordable by introducing assembly line production.
While the first Model-T sold for less than $1,000 at a time when other cars cost between $2,000 and $3,000, the price fell to about $300 in the early 1920s as production methods became more refined and cheaper.
It was sold only in black, allegedly because the colour dried faster which could speed up production.
The Model T has become virtually synonymous with the roaring 1920s featuring in many Laurel and Hardy movies. Ford extended production to European plants in Britain and Germany with the Model T becoming the first world motor car and sold 15 million units by 1927.
The 15 kW/20 hp engine with a top speed of up to 70 km/h had to be started with a hand crank. The throttle was controlled by a lever beside the steering wheel.
The petrol tank was fitted under the front seat and petrol had to flow to the carburettor by force of gravity.
It is ironic that Ford is celebrating the centenary of its most successful vehicle at a time when the company itself is in a deep crisis. During the last two years, it has lost more than $15.3 billion and failed to turn a profit since 2005.
Although Ford's deputy president Mark Fields says the lessons learned from the Model T still apply today "as part of our DNA and our way of doing business", the company has lost huge shares to the Japanese manufacturers on its home US market where buyers are shunning fuel-guzzling Ford pick-up trucks and SUVs.
Now the company is trying to return to its Model T roots by adjusting to smaller and fuel efficient vehicles. At the London Motor Show, it presented a super fuel-efficient Ford Fiesta with a fuel-consumption of only 3.7 litres of diesel per 100 km.
Apart from the new Fiesta, Ford is planning to bring at least six small European-designed models onto the US market over the next three years.
Lifestyle - Indians better at english than British
LONDON: Students from India and other former colonies have better English language skills compared to their local British counterparts, academics feel.
Many undergraduates in British universities have such low competence with spelling, punctuation and grammar that despairing lecturers often spend time teaching the basics of English to the English.
Lecturers say that international students from India and other former colonies often have higher standards of basic English than their British colleagues in the same classroom.
Some of the most common mistakes are in spelling, often using 'their' when students mean 'there', 'who's' for 'whose', 'truely' for 'truly', 'occured' for 'occurred' and 'speach' for 'speech'.
An Indian-origin university lecturer said that British students even in their second year of degree study, use "atrocious" English language in their assignments.
He said that he often found it challenging to figure out what students wanted to express in English. International students, in contrast, had better English language skills, he added.
English language standards have deteriorated to such an extent that one leading academic has been forced to ignore common errors altogether.
Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, told The Daily Telegraph that many students failed to apply basic rules, such as 'i' before 'e', except after 'c'. The words 'weird', 'seize', 'leisure' and 'neighbour' are regularly misspelt by students, he said.
Some universities have already extended courses by a year to give weak students extra tuition in core subjects that they failed to pick up in the classroom.
Bernard Lamb, a Reader in genetics at Imperial College London, said those from Singapore and Brunei made fewer mistakes in their work, despite speaking English as a second language.
Many British students appear to have been through school without mastering basic rules of grammar and punctuation, or having their errors corrected, he said.
Writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, Smith said mistakes were now so common that academics should simply accept them as "variants".
He wrote: "Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling. But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea.
University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell, he added.
Jack Bovill, chairman of The Spelling Society, said "All the data suggests that there are more and more students at university level whose spelling is not up to scratch. Universities are even finding they have masters-level students who cannot spell."
Many undergraduates in British universities have such low competence with spelling, punctuation and grammar that despairing lecturers often spend time teaching the basics of English to the English.
Lecturers say that international students from India and other former colonies often have higher standards of basic English than their British colleagues in the same classroom.
Some of the most common mistakes are in spelling, often using 'their' when students mean 'there', 'who's' for 'whose', 'truely' for 'truly', 'occured' for 'occurred' and 'speach' for 'speech'.
An Indian-origin university lecturer said that British students even in their second year of degree study, use "atrocious" English language in their assignments.
He said that he often found it challenging to figure out what students wanted to express in English. International students, in contrast, had better English language skills, he added.
English language standards have deteriorated to such an extent that one leading academic has been forced to ignore common errors altogether.
Ken Smith, a senior lecturer in criminology at Bucks New University, told The Daily Telegraph that many students failed to apply basic rules, such as 'i' before 'e', except after 'c'. The words 'weird', 'seize', 'leisure' and 'neighbour' are regularly misspelt by students, he said.
Some universities have already extended courses by a year to give weak students extra tuition in core subjects that they failed to pick up in the classroom.
Bernard Lamb, a Reader in genetics at Imperial College London, said those from Singapore and Brunei made fewer mistakes in their work, despite speaking English as a second language.
Many British students appear to have been through school without mastering basic rules of grammar and punctuation, or having their errors corrected, he said.
Writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, Smith said mistakes were now so common that academics should simply accept them as "variants".
He wrote: "Teaching a large first-year course at a British university, I am fed up with correcting my students' atrocious spelling. But why must we suffer? Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I've got a better idea.
University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell, he added.
Jack Bovill, chairman of The Spelling Society, said "All the data suggests that there are more and more students at university level whose spelling is not up to scratch. Universities are even finding they have masters-level students who cannot spell."