An innovative university in India has revolutionized the teaching of law
By Shailaja Neelakantan
Chronicle of Higher Education
Issue cover-dated December 2, 2005
Bangalore
When Mrinal Satish quit his job as a corporate lawyer to teach at his alma mater, the National Law School of India University here in the southern city of Bangalore, his former classmates and colleagues thought he was crazy.
After graduating from India's premier law school, he had been recruited by a top firm and was making an impressive salary. "I did corporate law for a while but realized that I was really interested in teaching — not any kind, but the kind we do here," says Mr. Satish, pointing toward the school's premises.
The campus may not be striking, but what takes place inside the classrooms is. Unlike most Indian universities, where professors often read their lectures from notes and students learn by rote, the National Law School vibrates with energy. In class, one hears students' voices as often as one hears the teachers. Laughter sounds through the halls, and when the bell signals that time is up, students file out with reluctance instead of jubilation.
"Students here are not spoon-fed," says Mr. Satish. "They are encouraged to discover stuff on their own, making the classroom situation more interactive. It is exciting."
In just the 12 years since it graduated its first batch of lawyers, the National Law School has revolutionized the teaching of law in India. Its graduates are some of the most successful lawyers in the country, and it has inspired more than a half-dozen copycat institutions. It has also helped to make law an attractive option in a country where a legal career has not always been a ticket to wealth and prestige.
Until the National Law School came on the scene in 1988, India's law schools often attracted students with little interest in the profession. Some were biding their time while studying for India's civil-service examination, others simply saw law school as a way to extend the perks of college life, such as cheap lodging and the opportunity to participate in campus politics.
"Until NLSIU began, law was not a preferred option; it was actually pretty low on the scale of options," says Probal Bhadhuri, a 1994 graduate of the university and a partner in one of India's top law firms. "So, for example, if anyone didn't get into the administrative services, they would fall back on their law degree."
Sunila Awasthi, a colleague of Mr. Bhadhuri's who attended the University of Delhi's graduate law program, agrees. "In my class of around 60, only 10 to
15 of us were really interested in being lawyers," she says.
The resulting mess — thousands of mediocre lawyers clogging up a legal system already notorious for obstructionism and endless delays — deterred many competent students from entering the profession.
An old joke, true enough to elicit rueful laughter, is that a civil suit in the Indian courts is the closest one can come to experiencing eternity. India's lower courts have a backlog of about 20 million civil and criminal cases. An additional 3.2 million cases are pending before the high courts, while the Supreme Court has about 20,000 old cases on the docket.
In the mid-1970s, concerned about the poor quality of India's law-school graduates and their effect on the legal system, the Bar Council of India, a professional organization that regulates the legal profession and sets standards for legal education, proposed the creation of a university devoted solely to the teaching of law. It took more than a decade of internal wrangling — these were lawyers, after all — before the bar council determined it could actually run a college.
Although its critics point out that most of National Law School's graduates eschew courtroom practice in favor of corporate transactions, others say the university may change the way law is practiced in India.
Stirring Up Debate
The most innovative aspect of the new university was that it enrolled students straight out of high school. Until then, all law schools consisted of a two-year graduate program, resulting in an L.L.B., or bachelor of law.
Five years in length, the new program sought to subsume the entirety of its students' university education.
The man tapped to bring the concept to fruition by the council of jurists was N.R. Madhava Menon, then head of the law department at the University of Delhi. The respected legal educator, who had set up India's first university-sponsored legal-aid program, had clear ideas about how the university should be run.
When Mr. Menon visited the law school at Columbia University, in New York, in the early 1970s, he was struck by the volunteer work that its students were doing for the poorer sections of the city. "My main objective was to provide clinical legal education like I had seen at Columbia," says Mr. Menon, who is now director of the National Judicial Academy, which is responsible for the continuing education of judges. Mr. Menon also felt strongly that the traditional way of teaching law, using lectures and rote learning, was not sufficient. So he introduced the Socratic method.
Mr. Bhaduri, the 1994 graduate, says that made all the difference. "We were told we would be discussing an issue in the next few days, say defamation, so we would go do our own research on it and in class it would be more of a Q and A and much more exciting," he recalls.
Siddharth Aggarwal, a 1998 graduate and a New Delhi-based litigator, says it was not uncommon for three professors to teach one class. "They would stir up a debate just by having different opinions. The school inculcated in us that in law there is no one correct answer. If you can justify your opinion, it is the correct answer," says Mr. Aggarwal.
Training professors was no easy task. "After we selected the faculty, for six months all we did was unlearn the old ways of teaching law," Mr. Menon remembers. "We conducted workshops, had refresher courses, invited faculty from other countries to advise us, and discussed and demonstrated how we should change the ways of teaching." Now all the school's professors are required to teach in this manner, and standards are strictly monitored.
Because Mr. Menon believed that academy-bar-bench cooperation would be key to ensuring high standards, he saw to it that the university's governing body included the chief justice of India, the chairman of the Bar Council of India, and leading lawyers of the Supreme Court and other high courts.
New Approaches
Students also study history, economics, politics, and sociology, says Mr.
Menon, "to give a social context to future lawyers." He notes that more than half of all the people in India are shut out of the legal system because they can't afford lawyers' fees. "We were the first people to seriously do this. A law degree isn't just an appendage to some other degree," says A. Jayagovind, the university's current director.
The range of legal issues students study is broad. Subjects include civil and criminal law, corporate and commercial law, mediation and negotiation, international law, intellectual-property law, medical-negligence law, environmental law, and human-rights law.
The National Law School was also the first to introduce internships that count toward course credits. These begin as early as students' third year so that future lawyers can swiftly apply their classroom knowledge.
"This practical-oriented approach to teaching gives a big edge when we go out into the real world," says Rajshekhar Rao, a 1999 graduate who has already argued cases before the Supreme Court. "It instills the ability to think tangentially and also the desire to make a difference in a variety of fields. An institution that teaches law should not teach just about law." In his brief career, Mr. Rao has been a counsel for the state of Delhi on the case of the 2001 attack on India's Parliament. "I've interacted with lawyers who have studied elsewhere," he says, "and I can see the difference."
The government of Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, provided land, basic infrastructure, and support of $150,000 to the university when it first started. But administrators say it wisely left the running of the institution — both academically and financially — to the Bar Council of India. India's federally subsidized universities, by comparison, are notoriously politicized and corrupt. Administrators and professors are often hired based on their political connections rather than on their academic credentials.
"We could experiment and innovate only because we were autonomous," says Mr. Menon.
National Law School's high academic standards have paid off — literally.
Starting salaries for recent graduates average about $450 a month — more than six times what other law-school graduates make. Today the university's alumni work at the country's top law firms and serve as in-house counsel to companies like General Electric and organizations like the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
The National Law School's success has had a profound impact on legal education throughout India. In 1995 a three-judge committee appointed by India's chief justice to evaluate legal education recommended that every state establish a college on the model of the National Law School. Six states so far have done just that. Like the university, these new institutions offer five-year degrees, use the Socratic teaching method, and stress an interdisciplinary approach.
Improvement All Around
Members of the legal profession hope that spillover effect will change the face of law in the country. "Because these new schools are trying to measure themselves against NLSIU, the quality of education has improved drastically all around," says Udaya Holla, a Bangalore-based lawyer who has appeared before the Supreme Court.
Some say the change is already under way. "The practice of law has already changed, thanks to all these new graduates," says Mr. Aggarwal. " ... When they perform in court you can really tell they know their stuff. This is a sea change from 20 years ago."
One of the few criticisms leveled against the National Law School is that the bulk of its graduates enter the lucrative world of corporate transaction law, rather than litigation, which requires contact with courts and judges.
"There is disillusionment with the legal system and there is a misconception that there is no room for merit in litigation," says Aditya Sondhi, a 1998 graduate who runs a constitutional and corporate litigation practice in Bangalore. "Another deterrent is that it takes much longer to grow financially in litigation, and when colleagues take up such tempting corporate offers, the trend becomes to go for early money."
That is slowly changing. Mr. Satish says that after he quit his corporate job to teach, a couple of his colleagues quit corporate transaction law to start their own litigation practice. He has also noticed that more students seem to be interested in working for nonprofit groups.
Mr. Aggarwal believes that as the number of top-quality lawyers increases, so will their interest in litigation. And "once the quality of the bar changes, the quality of the bench will also change," says Mr. Jayagovind, the National Law School's director.
Mr. Menon, the university's founder, who went on to establish the National University of Juridical Sciences, in Calcutta, one of the dozen institutions inspired by the National Law School, hopes that these new law schools will help spur legal reform and social justice.
"It is a bit disappointing to see so many graduates go into corporate law,"
he says, "but I have seen that at least sensitivity to the poor has been inculcated in these lawyers. A faster, more humane system is evolving."
Permanent email: sn40@columbia.edu
Web site: www.shailaja.net
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
three cheers for ndtv
NDTV Profit, of all channels, stepped up to support Indian boxing, airing 5 matches during semi-primetime Sunday evening, televised from Ansal Plaza. Touting the show as a first for India and dubiously enshrining the Delhi mall/plaza as India's Madison Square Garden, NDTV Profit delivered a concept about which rumors had been floating around for awhile (ESPN was supposedly looking to promote a boxing tournament in its search for ratings since losing the bidding war for cricket).
I doubt the ratings were great, but the show was as entertaining as one could expect for non-tournament amateur-level boxing. That said, the quality of the performances was rather poor. Vijender Singh displayed solid tactical skills in pointing out an out of shape--and surely ballooned up at least one weight class?--Kim Jung Joo of Korea, who as a former Olympic bronze medalist was billed as the star attraction. Sadly, Singh was the only one of the Indian boxers to throw a single jab, which raised questions about the coaching of the team and advice given in the corners. Because under the current scoring system, punches only score if three of the five judges click a button to tabulate the punch within a second of one another, only the clearest of punches ever count toward victory--and nine times out of ten those are the straight jabs and crosses. While the Indians swung wild hooks--some of which connected and were not scored, some of which didn't connect at all--the fighters from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan showed that they understood the rules by which international amateur boxing is governed and racked up points with the workmanlike one-twos of the Russian school.
The most impressive fighter of the night was world junior champion Rahimov Ilhom of Uzbekistan, who handled Commonwealth games champ Akhil Kumar easily (Akhil threw no jabs at all, and held his hands at belt level even after Ilhom demonstrated he was the faster man). Meanwhile, superheavyweight Jitender Kumar looked fat, slow and clumsy in defeating a fatter, slower, clumsier Yumgoluv Abdel of Turkmenistan. The superheavyweight class is the weakest, and therefore the easiest in which to compete, so Jitender may have made a good manuever in moving up from heavyweight. But he needs to move some of the poundage from his paunch to his extremities from the looks of things. The only other bright spot for India was flyweight Balbir Singh, who lost his composure a bit in swarming Esenov Esenguli of Turkmenistan but threw punches with bad intentions (as Mike Tyson used to say) and scored a picture-perfect knockdown with a strong right hook.
Let's hope that the gig made NDTV a little money, or impressed ESPN enough to spur the rudderless sports channel into action.
I doubt the ratings were great, but the show was as entertaining as one could expect for non-tournament amateur-level boxing. That said, the quality of the performances was rather poor. Vijender Singh displayed solid tactical skills in pointing out an out of shape--and surely ballooned up at least one weight class?--Kim Jung Joo of Korea, who as a former Olympic bronze medalist was billed as the star attraction. Sadly, Singh was the only one of the Indian boxers to throw a single jab, which raised questions about the coaching of the team and advice given in the corners. Because under the current scoring system, punches only score if three of the five judges click a button to tabulate the punch within a second of one another, only the clearest of punches ever count toward victory--and nine times out of ten those are the straight jabs and crosses. While the Indians swung wild hooks--some of which connected and were not scored, some of which didn't connect at all--the fighters from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan showed that they understood the rules by which international amateur boxing is governed and racked up points with the workmanlike one-twos of the Russian school.
The most impressive fighter of the night was world junior champion Rahimov Ilhom of Uzbekistan, who handled Commonwealth games champ Akhil Kumar easily (Akhil threw no jabs at all, and held his hands at belt level even after Ilhom demonstrated he was the faster man). Meanwhile, superheavyweight Jitender Kumar looked fat, slow and clumsy in defeating a fatter, slower, clumsier Yumgoluv Abdel of Turkmenistan. The superheavyweight class is the weakest, and therefore the easiest in which to compete, so Jitender may have made a good manuever in moving up from heavyweight. But he needs to move some of the poundage from his paunch to his extremities from the looks of things. The only other bright spot for India was flyweight Balbir Singh, who lost his composure a bit in swarming Esenov Esenguli of Turkmenistan but threw punches with bad intentions (as Mike Tyson used to say) and scored a picture-perfect knockdown with a strong right hook.
Let's hope that the gig made NDTV a little money, or impressed ESPN enough to spur the rudderless sports channel into action.
kate atkinson
Readers of this blog know that Shailaja and I have become obsessed with crime novels--the reading of which is not so much a pleasure as a compulsion, a bit like eating peanuts and being unable to stop. But, strangely, although I can hardly force myself to slog through literary novels these days--and for many years I scoffed at "commercial" fiction--I find that I am often finding my comforting detective stories somehow wanting.
Witness my reaction to James Lee Burke. Every time I read one of the novels of his Billy Bob Holland (set in Montana) or Dave Robicheaux (set in Louisiana) series, I find myself wondering why he limits himself to the conventions of the detective genre, like a master chef who for some reason only turns his talents to macaroni and cheese. Inevitably, the best part of these novels are the interludes--always written in third-person--that tell an incidental, character-driven/character-shaping story along the lines of a literary novel; meanwhile, the main narrative--always in first-person--is somewhat obvious, pedestrian, and often repetitive of Burke's other books. (I hesitate to calculate exactly how many of the Dave Robicheaux novels pit Dave against a wealthy former lover, usually married to a senator or some such, who has gotten herself mixed up with the "Dixie mafia" i.e. the mob of the South). Why do I keep reading these books? As I said, there's something compulsive about it, like filling up crossword puzzles or playing solitaire--or eating macaroni and cheese.
That brings me to Kate Atkinson, who won the Whitbread Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her most recent book to appear in paperback--Case Histories--is one of those rare crime novels that take the genre up a notch without disposing of the best of its conventions. The NY Times said it fairly aptly, calling the book "part complex family drama, part mystery," with "more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers and more thrills than ordinary fiction.... A wonderfully tricky book."
This one goes on my best reads of 2005 list, along with Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy, and a handful of literary novels (like Bel Canto) that delivered the goods.
Witness my reaction to James Lee Burke. Every time I read one of the novels of his Billy Bob Holland (set in Montana) or Dave Robicheaux (set in Louisiana) series, I find myself wondering why he limits himself to the conventions of the detective genre, like a master chef who for some reason only turns his talents to macaroni and cheese. Inevitably, the best part of these novels are the interludes--always written in third-person--that tell an incidental, character-driven/character-shaping story along the lines of a literary novel; meanwhile, the main narrative--always in first-person--is somewhat obvious, pedestrian, and often repetitive of Burke's other books. (I hesitate to calculate exactly how many of the Dave Robicheaux novels pit Dave against a wealthy former lover, usually married to a senator or some such, who has gotten herself mixed up with the "Dixie mafia" i.e. the mob of the South). Why do I keep reading these books? As I said, there's something compulsive about it, like filling up crossword puzzles or playing solitaire--or eating macaroni and cheese.
That brings me to Kate Atkinson, who won the Whitbread Award for her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. Her most recent book to appear in paperback--Case Histories--is one of those rare crime novels that take the genre up a notch without disposing of the best of its conventions. The NY Times said it fairly aptly, calling the book "part complex family drama, part mystery," with "more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers and more thrills than ordinary fiction.... A wonderfully tricky book."
This one goes on my best reads of 2005 list, along with Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy, and a handful of literary novels (like Bel Canto) that delivered the goods.
Friday, November 25, 2005
study shows indians have sex
Yes, it's true. Indians have sex. They're very good at it, apparently. Either that, or they keep trying. Hence the billion people. Why, then, all the fuss? I thought America was the most prudish of nations, but Indians seem to have it even worse. Or at least it seems so, given this whole Khushboo controversy.
Witness this brilliant remark from India's health minister in the Indian Express. ‘‘We have to remember that we are Indians and we have still not reached a point where we are comfortable discussing sex openly. It is not that we Indians don’t have sex. It’s just that we don’t talk about it. Even in America, nobody propagates sex for teenagers.''
Maybe "nobody" is an exaggeration, but I'll give the minister his due. He has a point. The problem is that Khushboo never said sixteen-year-olds should be jumping in the sack (though I think that's marriageable age in some states, and darn late for marriage in some remote areas) only that she doesn't think there's anything wrong with premarital sex.
So what's the big deal about sex before marriage between two consenting adults? For one, it gives women too much power. Yep. That's right. Once a woman has a little experience, she knows what she's missing. (Live in fear, bedroom weaklings). I'm a guy and all, and probably don't really get it, but I thought that the reason there was such a fuss when the pill was invented was that it gave women control over their sex lives, and thus freeing from the compulsion to get married. (Right along with abortion rights).
Do you think anybody would have made a stink if, say, Narain Karthikeyan had come out in support of premarital sex--as he came out in support of Khushboo after the fact? He's Tamil, too, but he's a dude, so it would have been OK, I bet.
Witness this brilliant remark from India's health minister in the Indian Express. ‘‘We have to remember that we are Indians and we have still not reached a point where we are comfortable discussing sex openly. It is not that we Indians don’t have sex. It’s just that we don’t talk about it. Even in America, nobody propagates sex for teenagers.''
Maybe "nobody" is an exaggeration, but I'll give the minister his due. He has a point. The problem is that Khushboo never said sixteen-year-olds should be jumping in the sack (though I think that's marriageable age in some states, and darn late for marriage in some remote areas) only that she doesn't think there's anything wrong with premarital sex.
So what's the big deal about sex before marriage between two consenting adults? For one, it gives women too much power. Yep. That's right. Once a woman has a little experience, she knows what she's missing. (Live in fear, bedroom weaklings). I'm a guy and all, and probably don't really get it, but I thought that the reason there was such a fuss when the pill was invented was that it gave women control over their sex lives, and thus freeing from the compulsion to get married. (Right along with abortion rights).
Do you think anybody would have made a stink if, say, Narain Karthikeyan had come out in support of premarital sex--as he came out in support of Khushboo after the fact? He's Tamil, too, but he's a dude, so it would have been OK, I bet.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
'a great shift'
India has leveraged its engineering and design skills to become a hot spot for auto parts.
By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek International
Nov. 28, 2005 issue - With a wandlike wave of his mouse, 27-year-old Saurabh Rawat displays a 3-D model of a new precision gearbox for Porsche's Boxster on his computer screen. Rawat works in the quiet 14th-floor office of Hi-Tech Gears in Gurgaon, Haryana, on the outskirts of New Delhi. On the street below, flashy new Hyun-dais vie for space with battered scooters, overloaded bicycle rickshaws and rawboned cattle. All around them a satellite town mushrooms out of the desert, growing on the strength of the IT-services outsourcing boom.
Rawat—and hundreds of thousands of workers like him—is part of another kind of revolution. Once considered incapable of making quality products and meeting shipment deadlines, India is leveraging its skill in engineering and design to emerge as a hot spot for auto-parts manufacturing. The sector has grown more than 20 percent a year over the past three years, while export growth has topped 40 percent. A host of local entrepreneurs are reaping the benefits. Hi-Tech Gears, for example, has become a global supplier for the German firm Robert Bosch International, while other Indian firms like Bharat Forge—now the second largest forging company in the world—have begun acquiring companies in the United States and Europe.
As some big global players begin to rethink their exposure to China, India is starting to attract some of the foreign investment once directed toward the dragon to the east. A recent study by McKinsey Co. suggests India's auto-components market could grow from roughly $9 billion in sales now to as much as $40 billion by 2015—including $20 billion to $25 billion in exports—as the parts business shifts from the West to low-cost nations like China, India, Thailand and Turkey. Struggling carmakers are under great pressure to chop their production costs, and parts suppliers in these big, developing markets are increasingly reliable.
To reach its goals, India's auto-parts industry will require lots of investment—as much as $20 billion over the next decade—and the capital inflow has already started. Last year, for example, the Bosch Group announced plans to invest about $225 million to build manufacturing capacity in India. Goetze India, in which U.S.-based Federal Mogul holds a 30 percent stake, says it plans $45 million in capital expenditures. And Sona Koyo Steering Systems, a joint venture with Japan's Koyo Seiko Co., has said it will invest about $30 million."There's a great shift underway," says Hi-Tech Gears chairman and managing director Deep Kapuria, a two-term president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India.
Kapuria says that some U.S., Japanese and European automakers and their first-tier parts suppliers have admitted to him that they're now overexposed in China. Volkswagen entered China aggressively in 1985, and quickly grabbed 60 percent of the embryonic auto market. But since then, even as China's car sales have exploded, the German automaker's market share has dwindled steadily, reaching just 18 percent in the first half of this year. The falloff prompted the company to announce last month that it will stop investing to expand production capacity in China, and will scale back its 2003- 2006 investment plans in the country by 40 percent. VW and other global car companies have suggested to Kapuria that Indian parts companies would be getting more business.
India's auto market is attractive for two reasons. First, though still only about a third the size of China's, it's growing faster than its eastern neighbor. Car sales in India last year grew by 24 percent, compared with 14 percent in China. Beyond that, unlike China, India has demonstrated its willingness to comply with intellectual-property rules and the global patent regime. That commitment is essential, because it's allowed India to build on its strength in engineering and to achieve a competitive advantage making advanced components such as exhaust manifolds and machined gears.
There are potential potholes for the industry, to be sure. The Chinese have a huge advantage when it comes to making products that depend on economies of scale. And the infrastructure problems and bureaucratic impediments for which India is notorious continue to discourage foreign investors. "India has a three- to five-year window to get its act [together]," says Kapuria. Carmakers are betting that it will.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10114266/site/newsweek/
By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek International
Nov. 28, 2005 issue - With a wandlike wave of his mouse, 27-year-old Saurabh Rawat displays a 3-D model of a new precision gearbox for Porsche's Boxster on his computer screen. Rawat works in the quiet 14th-floor office of Hi-Tech Gears in Gurgaon, Haryana, on the outskirts of New Delhi. On the street below, flashy new Hyun-dais vie for space with battered scooters, overloaded bicycle rickshaws and rawboned cattle. All around them a satellite town mushrooms out of the desert, growing on the strength of the IT-services outsourcing boom.
Rawat—and hundreds of thousands of workers like him—is part of another kind of revolution. Once considered incapable of making quality products and meeting shipment deadlines, India is leveraging its skill in engineering and design to emerge as a hot spot for auto-parts manufacturing. The sector has grown more than 20 percent a year over the past three years, while export growth has topped 40 percent. A host of local entrepreneurs are reaping the benefits. Hi-Tech Gears, for example, has become a global supplier for the German firm Robert Bosch International, while other Indian firms like Bharat Forge—now the second largest forging company in the world—have begun acquiring companies in the United States and Europe.
As some big global players begin to rethink their exposure to China, India is starting to attract some of the foreign investment once directed toward the dragon to the east. A recent study by McKinsey Co. suggests India's auto-components market could grow from roughly $9 billion in sales now to as much as $40 billion by 2015—including $20 billion to $25 billion in exports—as the parts business shifts from the West to low-cost nations like China, India, Thailand and Turkey. Struggling carmakers are under great pressure to chop their production costs, and parts suppliers in these big, developing markets are increasingly reliable.
To reach its goals, India's auto-parts industry will require lots of investment—as much as $20 billion over the next decade—and the capital inflow has already started. Last year, for example, the Bosch Group announced plans to invest about $225 million to build manufacturing capacity in India. Goetze India, in which U.S.-based Federal Mogul holds a 30 percent stake, says it plans $45 million in capital expenditures. And Sona Koyo Steering Systems, a joint venture with Japan's Koyo Seiko Co., has said it will invest about $30 million."There's a great shift underway," says Hi-Tech Gears chairman and managing director Deep Kapuria, a two-term president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India.
Kapuria says that some U.S., Japanese and European automakers and their first-tier parts suppliers have admitted to him that they're now overexposed in China. Volkswagen entered China aggressively in 1985, and quickly grabbed 60 percent of the embryonic auto market. But since then, even as China's car sales have exploded, the German automaker's market share has dwindled steadily, reaching just 18 percent in the first half of this year. The falloff prompted the company to announce last month that it will stop investing to expand production capacity in China, and will scale back its 2003- 2006 investment plans in the country by 40 percent. VW and other global car companies have suggested to Kapuria that Indian parts companies would be getting more business.
India's auto market is attractive for two reasons. First, though still only about a third the size of China's, it's growing faster than its eastern neighbor. Car sales in India last year grew by 24 percent, compared with 14 percent in China. Beyond that, unlike China, India has demonstrated its willingness to comply with intellectual-property rules and the global patent regime. That commitment is essential, because it's allowed India to build on its strength in engineering and to achieve a competitive advantage making advanced components such as exhaust manifolds and machined gears.
There are potential potholes for the industry, to be sure. The Chinese have a huge advantage when it comes to making products that depend on economies of scale. And the infrastructure problems and bureaucratic impediments for which India is notorious continue to discourage foreign investors. "India has a three- to five-year window to get its act [together]," says Kapuria. Carmakers are betting that it will.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10114266/site/newsweek/
spend less, get more
One thing India does better than China is high-tech research and development.
By Jason Overdorf and Sudip Mazumdar
Newsweek International
Nov. 28, 2005 issue - The office of Dr. D. Yogeswara Rao, head of business development at India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, doesn't exactly look like a nerve center of cutting-edge research and development. Cluttered with stacks of documents and crammed with the tattered furniture common to New Delhi's government offices, Rao's domain looks like part of the landscape of old India.
But the humble surroundings can be deceptive. Despite a lack of funding and facilities—the government's entire R&D budget is a fraction of the annual research expenditure by a single multi-national company like Pfizer—India's researchers have shown the world they can innovate without breaking the bank. And that's attracting a great deal of interest. "Not a week goes by without some foreign delegation visiting us to discuss research collaborations," Rao says. Over the past six months, Rao's visitors have included representatives of Procter Gamble, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson and Alcoa, to name a few. The reason is simple. "Per dollar, the output of innovations is significant, so overall you may spend less, but you get more," says Rao.
Over the last five years more than 100 companies, including General Motors, Boeing and Mobil, have chosen India as an R&D hub, some of them citing local scientists' facility in English, as well as the country's superior track record in intellectual-property protection, as advantages over China. Prominent among them is General Electric, which has its largest research-and-development center outside the United States in Bangalore, India. Though GE also has an R&D center in China, its state-of-the-art John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore employs about 2,300 scientists, researchers and engineers, double the number in Shanghai.
GE's $80 million Bangalore center does groundbreaking work in areas such as aerospace engineering, electronic systems, ceramics, metallurgy, advanced chemistry, chemicals, polymers and new synthetic materials. The center uses the latest technology and e-engineering tools to facilitate real-time global interaction with the company's affiliates, tech centers, customers and suppliers. "I have immense faith in the intellectual capital of India and the amount it can contribute to GE's success," says Scott R. Bayman, president and chief executive officer of GE India. "India is rich with bright, young talent."
GE's Indian researchers have applied for 260 U.S. patents on products such as synthetic materials and ceramics, with 37 approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to the company's spokeswoman in India. Motorola, which employs more than 1,700 Indian engineers and researchers, says Indian programmers develop about 40 percent of the software in its mobile handsets. The Internet browser and multimedia messaging system for the company's 3G and GSM phones were conceived, engineered and delivered by its India operations.
India's software industry was first out of the gate in R&D, and increasingly important tasks were outsourced as India's so-called cybercoolies demonstrated their prowess. But today, a host of industries—including the automotive, chip-design, pharmaceutical and aerospace sectors—are taking advantage of India's giant pool of scientists and engineers, and not only to write program code. According to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, India is rapidly moving up from relatively routine tasks like converting schematics from one computer-aided design system to another, to sophisticated and critical functions like plant engineering and redesigning products for a better cost-performance ratio. Global automakers, in particular, which spend 3 to 5 percent of their annual revenue on R&D activities, are turning increasingly to India, the consultancy says.
The main reason for the shift is manpower—the oft-cited 300,000 engineers and 150,000 computer experts who graduate from India's many universities and technical institutes each year. But that's not where the country has the biggest advantage over China, which produces 400,000 engineers of its own annually. According to Indian business experts, local graduates have greater cultural affinity with Westerners (not to mention English-language skills) than their Chinese counterparts. Like that of the United States, India's growth has been driven by entrepreneurs and market forces rather than the government, so foreign business leaders perceive India managers as more market-savvy.
That affinity has also helped India gain an edge in intellectual-property protection. In a sector like chip de-sign, for instance, large companies will outsource R&D activities only if they believe they can protect the intellectual property they are letting out the door. "The way you grow is by having contracts with bigger companies," says S. R. Dinesh, program manager of Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific electronics and semiconductors practice. "Intellectual-property law is a big issue. Even if multinationals outsource [to China], it will be at the lower end of the value chain."
The intellectual-property issue is also crucial to the global pharmaceutical sector, which spends about $40 billion a year on drug development. Drug companies rise and fall on the strength of their patents for new blockbuster medicines. India's move to implement international patent laws earlier this year—despite the pain caused to domestic pharmaceutical giants like Ranbaxy, Cipla and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, which had built their businesses by making generic copies of drugs protected by patents in the West—was roundly criticized by aid agencies worried about providing affordable retrovirals for HIV sufferers in Africa. But the decision sent a message that India was committed to playing by global rules, whatever the political cost.
India already has a well-developed pharmaceutical industry. With turnover of about $7 billion—$2.5 billion from export sales—the Indian pharma sector ranks fourth in the world in terms of sales volume and 13th by value. The Chinese pharmaceutical industry, at $8 billion in 2004 and growing fast, is about the same size. But the new commitment to patent protection may help India beat China in the race up the value-chain ladder in pharmaceutical research, says Vivek Mehra, executive director for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Delhi. Multinationals like AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Pfizer and Roche set up modest research centers in India in the mid-1990s, and they've since grown substantially.
The fastest-growing pharmaceutical segment in India is so-called contract research, or the outsourcing of research-and-development activities. More than a dozen foreign contract-research companies—including Quintiles, ClinTec and PharmaNet—have set up operations in India, not only because it's inexpensive but also because India offers a large patient pool, trained doctors, good clinical diagnosis and a genetically diverse population for clinical research. Indian pharma giant Biocon, which set up a unit called Clinigene to conduct clinical trials for multinationals in 2000, has seen its contract-research revenue grow 45 percent over the past six months.
In spite of the gains, Chinese firms still apply for more patents annually than Indian firms, and some experts say India is weak in the area of fundamental research. The ties between academia and industry—needed to commercialize breakthroughs—must be strengthened if India is ever going to produce its own version of Silicon Valley. In the meantime, investment continues to roll in, and the demand for top graduates in technical fields is high. "The world has realized that if you don't have an India address [in R&D], you are in trouble," says R. A. Mashelkar, head of the government's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. That's a boast, but one that's hard to argue with.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10114269/site/newsweek/
By Jason Overdorf and Sudip Mazumdar
Newsweek International
Nov. 28, 2005 issue - The office of Dr. D. Yogeswara Rao, head of business development at India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, doesn't exactly look like a nerve center of cutting-edge research and development. Cluttered with stacks of documents and crammed with the tattered furniture common to New Delhi's government offices, Rao's domain looks like part of the landscape of old India.
But the humble surroundings can be deceptive. Despite a lack of funding and facilities—the government's entire R&D budget is a fraction of the annual research expenditure by a single multi-national company like Pfizer—India's researchers have shown the world they can innovate without breaking the bank. And that's attracting a great deal of interest. "Not a week goes by without some foreign delegation visiting us to discuss research collaborations," Rao says. Over the past six months, Rao's visitors have included representatives of Procter Gamble, Colgate, Johnson & Johnson and Alcoa, to name a few. The reason is simple. "Per dollar, the output of innovations is significant, so overall you may spend less, but you get more," says Rao.
Over the last five years more than 100 companies, including General Motors, Boeing and Mobil, have chosen India as an R&D hub, some of them citing local scientists' facility in English, as well as the country's superior track record in intellectual-property protection, as advantages over China. Prominent among them is General Electric, which has its largest research-and-development center outside the United States in Bangalore, India. Though GE also has an R&D center in China, its state-of-the-art John F. Welch Technology Center in Bangalore employs about 2,300 scientists, researchers and engineers, double the number in Shanghai.
GE's $80 million Bangalore center does groundbreaking work in areas such as aerospace engineering, electronic systems, ceramics, metallurgy, advanced chemistry, chemicals, polymers and new synthetic materials. The center uses the latest technology and e-engineering tools to facilitate real-time global interaction with the company's affiliates, tech centers, customers and suppliers. "I have immense faith in the intellectual capital of India and the amount it can contribute to GE's success," says Scott R. Bayman, president and chief executive officer of GE India. "India is rich with bright, young talent."
GE's Indian researchers have applied for 260 U.S. patents on products such as synthetic materials and ceramics, with 37 approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, according to the company's spokeswoman in India. Motorola, which employs more than 1,700 Indian engineers and researchers, says Indian programmers develop about 40 percent of the software in its mobile handsets. The Internet browser and multimedia messaging system for the company's 3G and GSM phones were conceived, engineered and delivered by its India operations.
India's software industry was first out of the gate in R&D, and increasingly important tasks were outsourced as India's so-called cybercoolies demonstrated their prowess. But today, a host of industries—including the automotive, chip-design, pharmaceutical and aerospace sectors—are taking advantage of India's giant pool of scientists and engineers, and not only to write program code. According to a recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, India is rapidly moving up from relatively routine tasks like converting schematics from one computer-aided design system to another, to sophisticated and critical functions like plant engineering and redesigning products for a better cost-performance ratio. Global automakers, in particular, which spend 3 to 5 percent of their annual revenue on R&D activities, are turning increasingly to India, the consultancy says.
The main reason for the shift is manpower—the oft-cited 300,000 engineers and 150,000 computer experts who graduate from India's many universities and technical institutes each year. But that's not where the country has the biggest advantage over China, which produces 400,000 engineers of its own annually. According to Indian business experts, local graduates have greater cultural affinity with Westerners (not to mention English-language skills) than their Chinese counterparts. Like that of the United States, India's growth has been driven by entrepreneurs and market forces rather than the government, so foreign business leaders perceive India managers as more market-savvy.
That affinity has also helped India gain an edge in intellectual-property protection. In a sector like chip de-sign, for instance, large companies will outsource R&D activities only if they believe they can protect the intellectual property they are letting out the door. "The way you grow is by having contracts with bigger companies," says S. R. Dinesh, program manager of Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific electronics and semiconductors practice. "Intellectual-property law is a big issue. Even if multinationals outsource [to China], it will be at the lower end of the value chain."
The intellectual-property issue is also crucial to the global pharmaceutical sector, which spends about $40 billion a year on drug development. Drug companies rise and fall on the strength of their patents for new blockbuster medicines. India's move to implement international patent laws earlier this year—despite the pain caused to domestic pharmaceutical giants like Ranbaxy, Cipla and Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, which had built their businesses by making generic copies of drugs protected by patents in the West—was roundly criticized by aid agencies worried about providing affordable retrovirals for HIV sufferers in Africa. But the decision sent a message that India was committed to playing by global rules, whatever the political cost.
India already has a well-developed pharmaceutical industry. With turnover of about $7 billion—$2.5 billion from export sales—the Indian pharma sector ranks fourth in the world in terms of sales volume and 13th by value. The Chinese pharmaceutical industry, at $8 billion in 2004 and growing fast, is about the same size. But the new commitment to patent protection may help India beat China in the race up the value-chain ladder in pharmaceutical research, says Vivek Mehra, executive director for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Delhi. Multinationals like AstraZeneca, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Pfizer and Roche set up modest research centers in India in the mid-1990s, and they've since grown substantially.
The fastest-growing pharmaceutical segment in India is so-called contract research, or the outsourcing of research-and-development activities. More than a dozen foreign contract-research companies—including Quintiles, ClinTec and PharmaNet—have set up operations in India, not only because it's inexpensive but also because India offers a large patient pool, trained doctors, good clinical diagnosis and a genetically diverse population for clinical research. Indian pharma giant Biocon, which set up a unit called Clinigene to conduct clinical trials for multinationals in 2000, has seen its contract-research revenue grow 45 percent over the past six months.
In spite of the gains, Chinese firms still apply for more patents annually than Indian firms, and some experts say India is weak in the area of fundamental research. The ties between academia and industry—needed to commercialize breakthroughs—must be strengthened if India is ever going to produce its own version of Silicon Valley. In the meantime, investment continues to roll in, and the demand for top graduates in technical fields is high. "The world has realized that if you don't have an India address [in R&D], you are in trouble," says R. A. Mashelkar, head of the government's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. That's a boast, but one that's hard to argue with.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10114269/site/newsweek/
Friday, November 18, 2005
y: the last man
Readers, get ahold of the comic book series "Y: the last man" by any means necessary. A politically conscious book that begins with a plague (perhaps engineered by humans) that wipes out every mammal with a Y chromosome except a single amateur escape artist and his pet monkey, Y blows away Sin City and the Sandman series in every aspect I can think of. And I really dig Sandman.
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
honey, i shrunk the jpeg
Finally, JPEG is doomed, algorithm geeks unite! This is the quantum leap, no compromise technology. Young genius about to rock the DI world.
By Shailaja Neelakantan, September 21, 2005 BUSINESS 2.0
If downloading digital photos stalls your PC, spare a thought for the data networks in hospitals. A midsize hospital typically gets 60 requests every hour for MRIs and echocardiograms. At 10 megabytes apiece, the enormous images can quickly cripple a network.
Enter 25-year-old Arvind Thiagarajan, co-founder of Singapore-based startup MatrixView, who wants to revolutionize digital imaging. The data-compression algorithm he invented shrinks images into a format called a MatrixView Universal, or MVU, which is 15 to 300 percent smaller than a JPEG. But unlike a JPEG, which omits details, an MVU is as precise as the original. "Data loss is unacceptable in medical diagnosis," Thiagarajan says. That's why the startup is focusing on health care first. A well-known hospital in Bangalore is using the technology, and MatrixView plans to ink deals in the coming year with several Fortune 100 health-care companies in the United States. MatrixView is also targeting other subsets of the $9 billion U.S. digital-imaging market. Right now it's negotiating with chipmakers to embed the technology in cameras and fit more files on storage cards. MRIs today, vacation snaps tomorrow.
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1106847,00.html
By Shailaja Neelakantan, September 21, 2005 BUSINESS 2.0
If downloading digital photos stalls your PC, spare a thought for the data networks in hospitals. A midsize hospital typically gets 60 requests every hour for MRIs and echocardiograms. At 10 megabytes apiece, the enormous images can quickly cripple a network.
Enter 25-year-old Arvind Thiagarajan, co-founder of Singapore-based startup MatrixView, who wants to revolutionize digital imaging. The data-compression algorithm he invented shrinks images into a format called a MatrixView Universal, or MVU, which is 15 to 300 percent smaller than a JPEG. But unlike a JPEG, which omits details, an MVU is as precise as the original. "Data loss is unacceptable in medical diagnosis," Thiagarajan says. That's why the startup is focusing on health care first. A well-known hospital in Bangalore is using the technology, and MatrixView plans to ink deals in the coming year with several Fortune 100 health-care companies in the United States. MatrixView is also targeting other subsets of the $9 billion U.S. digital-imaging market. Right now it's negotiating with chipmakers to embed the technology in cameras and fit more files on storage cards. MRIs today, vacation snaps tomorrow.
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,1106847,00.html
my last trip to thai wok
Thai Wok remains one of the most stylish spots in the city and still serves the best Thai food in Delhi, as far as I know, but it's over as far as I'm concerned. Why? They've taken Olive's lead in setting their drinks prices. It used to be you could get a large bottle of Kalyani Black Label for Rs. 150 - a bit steep, but bearable - but now they've stricken Kalyani from the menu and only serve small bottles of Kingfisher for Rs. 110. (For non-beer drinkers, that means that two beers cost you Rs. 300 after tax, instead of around Rs. 200.)
If I have to shell out like that, I prefer Olive, where the crowd generally has a bit more style.
If I have to shell out like that, I prefer Olive, where the crowd generally has a bit more style.
vir right?
This Sunday India's best restaurant critic--and one of its best editors--revealed his choices for Delhi's best restaurants. While I'm glad that Vir Sanghvi has resumed writing his restaurant reviews for the Hindustan Times, I have to quibble with a couple of his choices below:
First - Swagath. I know everybody loves this place, but I have never had a good meal there except the dry items that our dear friend Sunila had delivered to a party at our house one night. The gravies are all gloppy and overspiced, and, as in many Indian restaurants, most of the dishes taste suspiciously alike. The atmosphere is also terrible. Like Embassy with pretensions and higher prices. (In general, I have my doubts about Vir's take on South Indian - he doesn't seem to eat any vegetarian food, for one thing).
And - Diva? Diva? Diva? I can't communicate enough disbelief that (1) Vir actually says this place is the best non-five star hotel restaurant and (2) the Italian embassy gets owner/chef Ritu Dalmia to cater its dos. To me, this is another restaurant where I've never ordered right--once I had a beef dish that was composed entirely of gristle, another time a terribly over-salted pesto, and there were several other items I can't remember. I'm willing to accept that sometimes a place will get it wrong, but I've been at least three times with groups of four or so people, and nobody got a decent meal. (The gristle-squirrel patty swimming in salty brown sauce that masqueraded as beef tenderloin was grounds for immediate closure, as far as I'm concerned).
Rick's - Maybe they do make good cocktails, but (as Vir points out) it's uglier than an airport smoking area. Also, the crowd tends to lean toward the worst sort of Delhi elitism.
Vir's column follows below. What say you? Does he get it right?
"This is a subjective and entirely arbitrary listing of the places I enjoy going to. It is not the view of the HT Eating Out Guide -- which, by definition, is far more objective and well-considered -- but consists of personal preferences. And as I am not sponsored by ITC -- unlike the Guide -- I am not excluding the Maurya's restaurants.
Best Indian Restaurant Swagath, Defence Colony Perhaps because it is in my locality, I am always well-disposed towards Swagath and its well-priced South Indian non-vegetarian food. Go for the crab, the bombil and the prawn Koliwada.
Best Non Five Star Restaurant Diva, Greater Kailash An island of excellence in the city. Ritu Dalmia does amazing pasta, risottos and desserts. If you don't believe me, ask the city's Italian community. Ritu -- and not the city's expatriate Italian chefs -- is the one the Italian embassy has chosen to cater its parties and to run the café at its cultural centre.
Best Cocktails Rick's, Taj Mahal Hotel I've never been wild about the sterile hotel bar décor but this is the place that introduced the Mojito, the Cosmopolitan and a whole range of flavoured vodkas to Delhi. The food menu is beginning to look a bit tired but the snacks are consistently good and the service is outstanding.
Best Funky Bar Agni, The Park Hotel Best enjoyed after a couple of drinks or half a bottle of wine from the excellent list. On weekends, this place rocks and Hindi film music has never sounded as terrific as it does on their sound system. You can also order food from Fire, the wonderful Indian restaurant next door.
Best Kebabs Bukhara I've heard the claims for all the other places but nearly three decades after it opened, Bukhara is still the king. You'll find it difficult to eat a bad meal here. I also like the fact that it is a democratic restaurant. There are no great tables and no VIP stands. No matter who comes to eat -- and Tony Blair and Bill Clin ton have both been here over the last few months -- they will get the same amazing kebabs and service on the rest of us.
Most Picturesque Restaurant Olive It swings at night but the best time to go to Olive is for a cool winter lunch when you can soak in the ambience and admire the sheer beauty of the place.
Where To Take the Kids Eatopia, India Habitat Centre Rohit Khattar is a quality-conscious, highly self-critical owner so he's never satisfied with the food quality at this food court. But I like it. And so will your kids.
Best Sunday Brunch West View, the Maurya Bill Marchetti is an Australian who pretends to be an Italian. But he's also one hell of a chef and one of ITC's greatest assets. He has transformed Sundays with his fresh oysters, chorizo and Canadian bacon filled lunches. Plus there are terrific wines -- chosen by Bill -available by the glass. I am also a great fan of the Machan brunch but West View is now a better bet because a) the location and view are amazing and b) the Indian food on the Machan buffet has collapsed since Chef Qureshi flew off to Scotland. Nevertheless, give Machan a shot as well -- the oysters and caviar are astonishingly well-priced and Tapash Bhattacharya is a great manager-chef.
Best Place for a Romantic Dinner San Gimignano, The Imperial I've lost count of the illicit couples -- a minister (in the last government) plus mistress, a movie star plus girlfriend etc. -- I've caught having a romantic dinner here -- especially when they open the terrace in the winter.
Most Interesting Restaurant Owner Nelson Wang, China Garden The last real character among India's restaurateurs, Nelson can be great fun. And if he snaps his fingers at the kitchen, the food can be truly amazing.
Best Special Occasion Restaurant The Orient Express, Taj Palace Hotel. If you have a birthday or an anniversary, this is the place to go. Mohit Malhotra is Delhi's best restaurant manager and chef D N Sharma acquires new skills with each passing year. A class act.
Best Place for a Quiet Lunch Travertino, The Oberoi It is Delhi's most expensive restaurant but maitre d'hotel Salvatore Scarpino's wine-picks and Chef Tomasso Maddalena's food are worth the price. It gets an elegant, quiet crowd at lunch.
Best F&B Professional Thomas Abraham, The Taj Palace It is amazing how Abraham has turned the Palace's restaurants around. The Tea House of the August Moon has never been better, Masala Art is packed and The Orient Express thrives. I never thought anyone could affect such a turnaround so quickly. Best of all, Thomas is a low-key sort of guy who does nothing to promote himself but concentrates on operations. It doesn't give him the profile he deserves, but it works wonders for the hotel.
The Taj Palace is currently on a roll. The team of General Manager Sarabjit Singh and Thomas have really turned the hotel -- traditionally, the biggest under-performer in the Taj Luxury stable -- around so completely that it now outshines its big brother on Man Singh Road. Hotelier of the Year Gautam Anand, ITC He's not General Manager of the Maurya any longer now that he's been promoted to corporate office but Gautam is still Mr Delhi. He works his butt off, is in total control of his operation and has created a highly motivated team of professionals that maintain his high standards.
I should actually also mention Nakul Anand ITC's big boss, because the chain's hotels in other cites (such as Calcutta, Bangalore and Delhi) have been completely transformed since he's taken control of the company and introduced new levels of professionalism. But I think the credit for Delhi should go to Gautam nevertheless because of his obsessive perfectionism and his passion for F&B."
First - Swagath. I know everybody loves this place, but I have never had a good meal there except the dry items that our dear friend Sunila had delivered to a party at our house one night. The gravies are all gloppy and overspiced, and, as in many Indian restaurants, most of the dishes taste suspiciously alike. The atmosphere is also terrible. Like Embassy with pretensions and higher prices. (In general, I have my doubts about Vir's take on South Indian - he doesn't seem to eat any vegetarian food, for one thing).
And - Diva? Diva? Diva? I can't communicate enough disbelief that (1) Vir actually says this place is the best non-five star hotel restaurant and (2) the Italian embassy gets owner/chef Ritu Dalmia to cater its dos. To me, this is another restaurant where I've never ordered right--once I had a beef dish that was composed entirely of gristle, another time a terribly over-salted pesto, and there were several other items I can't remember. I'm willing to accept that sometimes a place will get it wrong, but I've been at least three times with groups of four or so people, and nobody got a decent meal. (The gristle-squirrel patty swimming in salty brown sauce that masqueraded as beef tenderloin was grounds for immediate closure, as far as I'm concerned).
Rick's - Maybe they do make good cocktails, but (as Vir points out) it's uglier than an airport smoking area. Also, the crowd tends to lean toward the worst sort of Delhi elitism.
Vir's column follows below. What say you? Does he get it right?
"This is a subjective and entirely arbitrary listing of the places I enjoy going to. It is not the view of the HT Eating Out Guide -- which, by definition, is far more objective and well-considered -- but consists of personal preferences. And as I am not sponsored by ITC -- unlike the Guide -- I am not excluding the Maurya's restaurants.
Best Indian Restaurant Swagath, Defence Colony Perhaps because it is in my locality, I am always well-disposed towards Swagath and its well-priced South Indian non-vegetarian food. Go for the crab, the bombil and the prawn Koliwada.
Best Non Five Star Restaurant Diva, Greater Kailash An island of excellence in the city. Ritu Dalmia does amazing pasta, risottos and desserts. If you don't believe me, ask the city's Italian community. Ritu -- and not the city's expatriate Italian chefs -- is the one the Italian embassy has chosen to cater its parties and to run the café at its cultural centre.
Best Cocktails Rick's, Taj Mahal Hotel I've never been wild about the sterile hotel bar décor but this is the place that introduced the Mojito, the Cosmopolitan and a whole range of flavoured vodkas to Delhi. The food menu is beginning to look a bit tired but the snacks are consistently good and the service is outstanding.
Best Funky Bar Agni, The Park Hotel Best enjoyed after a couple of drinks or half a bottle of wine from the excellent list. On weekends, this place rocks and Hindi film music has never sounded as terrific as it does on their sound system. You can also order food from Fire, the wonderful Indian restaurant next door.
Best Kebabs Bukhara I've heard the claims for all the other places but nearly three decades after it opened, Bukhara is still the king. You'll find it difficult to eat a bad meal here. I also like the fact that it is a democratic restaurant. There are no great tables and no VIP stands. No matter who comes to eat -- and Tony Blair and Bill Clin ton have both been here over the last few months -- they will get the same amazing kebabs and service on the rest of us.
Most Picturesque Restaurant Olive It swings at night but the best time to go to Olive is for a cool winter lunch when you can soak in the ambience and admire the sheer beauty of the place.
Where To Take the Kids Eatopia, India Habitat Centre Rohit Khattar is a quality-conscious, highly self-critical owner so he's never satisfied with the food quality at this food court. But I like it. And so will your kids.
Best Sunday Brunch West View, the Maurya Bill Marchetti is an Australian who pretends to be an Italian. But he's also one hell of a chef and one of ITC's greatest assets. He has transformed Sundays with his fresh oysters, chorizo and Canadian bacon filled lunches. Plus there are terrific wines -- chosen by Bill -available by the glass. I am also a great fan of the Machan brunch but West View is now a better bet because a) the location and view are amazing and b) the Indian food on the Machan buffet has collapsed since Chef Qureshi flew off to Scotland. Nevertheless, give Machan a shot as well -- the oysters and caviar are astonishingly well-priced and Tapash Bhattacharya is a great manager-chef.
Best Place for a Romantic Dinner San Gimignano, The Imperial I've lost count of the illicit couples -- a minister (in the last government) plus mistress, a movie star plus girlfriend etc. -- I've caught having a romantic dinner here -- especially when they open the terrace in the winter.
Most Interesting Restaurant Owner Nelson Wang, China Garden The last real character among India's restaurateurs, Nelson can be great fun. And if he snaps his fingers at the kitchen, the food can be truly amazing.
Best Special Occasion Restaurant The Orient Express, Taj Palace Hotel. If you have a birthday or an anniversary, this is the place to go. Mohit Malhotra is Delhi's best restaurant manager and chef D N Sharma acquires new skills with each passing year. A class act.
Best Place for a Quiet Lunch Travertino, The Oberoi It is Delhi's most expensive restaurant but maitre d'hotel Salvatore Scarpino's wine-picks and Chef Tomasso Maddalena's food are worth the price. It gets an elegant, quiet crowd at lunch.
Best F&B Professional Thomas Abraham, The Taj Palace It is amazing how Abraham has turned the Palace's restaurants around. The Tea House of the August Moon has never been better, Masala Art is packed and The Orient Express thrives. I never thought anyone could affect such a turnaround so quickly. Best of all, Thomas is a low-key sort of guy who does nothing to promote himself but concentrates on operations. It doesn't give him the profile he deserves, but it works wonders for the hotel.
The Taj Palace is currently on a roll. The team of General Manager Sarabjit Singh and Thomas have really turned the hotel -- traditionally, the biggest under-performer in the Taj Luxury stable -- around so completely that it now outshines its big brother on Man Singh Road. Hotelier of the Year Gautam Anand, ITC He's not General Manager of the Maurya any longer now that he's been promoted to corporate office but Gautam is still Mr Delhi. He works his butt off, is in total control of his operation and has created a highly motivated team of professionals that maintain his high standards.
I should actually also mention Nakul Anand ITC's big boss, because the chain's hotels in other cites (such as Calcutta, Bangalore and Delhi) have been completely transformed since he's taken control of the company and introduced new levels of professionalism. But I think the credit for Delhi should go to Gautam nevertheless because of his obsessive perfectionism and his passion for F&B."
Monday, November 14, 2005
foreign correspondence
I don't think I'll ever figure out what stories to sell and what stories to ignore. Witness last week's article on Nirbhay Singh Gujjar. This character had amused me when I read about his marital exploits a few months back in an excellent piece by the Express's Aman Sharma, who's doing an excellent job reporting for India's best muckrakers from UP. But I never guessed "Mr. Gujjar," as he wound up being called in my piece for the Globe and Mail, was ready for prime time. A 4:30 a.m. email from the paper's foreign editor set me right.
As many readers will know, Gujjar's death was regarded as suspicious by local journalists and others familiar with India's police encounters. As in nearly all such cases, however, those doubts could not be substantiated by witnesses, so the larger story of the failure of India's police to implement the rule of law--instead acting as vigilantes in uniform--remains untold.
As many readers will know, Gujjar's death was regarded as suspicious by local journalists and others familiar with India's police encounters. As in nearly all such cases, however, those doubts could not be substantiated by witnesses, so the larger story of the failure of India's police to implement the rule of law--instead acting as vigilantes in uniform--remains untold.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
‘lion of the chambal’ does last deadly dance
India’s police traced notorious bandit via cell phone signals, then shot him.
By Jason Overdorf/NEW DELHI
(This article appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 10, 2005).
For 25 years, he terrorized the villagers of central Indian and outsmarted police. In the end, though, notorious bandit Nirbhay Singh Gujjar was brought down by his penchant for publicity, as police were able to use cell phones through which he boasted to reporters to trace him to his forest hideout. They killed him this week in a shootout.
“It was an embarrassment for the police, because he was talking to the media,” said Yashpal Singh, director-general of the police force in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. “So we were under pressure from people who were asking why journalists could locate him and the police could not.”
After determining Mr. Gujjar’s location by tracing the signals from the two phones he used, authorities crawled through thick scrub to creep up on a ravine where the bandit was drinking with half a dozen members of his gang.
Alerted by a sentry, Mr. Gujjar’s band opened fire, but police scattered the gang, trapping the bandit and a lieutenant in a canyon.
When police called for him to surrender, Mr. Gujjar tried to fool them into thinking he had been killed, but opened fire again when officers advanced to investigate, said Deputy Superintendent Rajesh Dwivedi of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force. In the ensuing shootout, Mr. Gujjar was shot in the head.
“This sends a clear signal that we are going after them,” Mr. Singh said. “It will certainly send a frightening message [to other bandits].”
Mr. Gujjar, whose name means “fearless,” was known as “the last lion of the Chambal,” an unmappable labyrinth of ravines in the border area between the modern states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The area is famous for marauding outlaws, called dacoits, and is portrayed in hundreds of Bollywood films.
Married three times and cuckolded as many times by rival bandits, Mr. Gujjar went berserk when his third wife ran away with a man he had kidnapped as a boy and raised as his foster son. Vowing to track the lovers down and exact his revenge, he announced a hefty reward for information about the couple.
He then told reporters he wanted to lay down his arms. All he asked was that a political party from one of the states he terrorized grant him a role in government as a member of the legislative assembly.
But even though politicians with long charge sheets are common in central India, Mr. Gujjar misread the way the political wind was blowing, according to police.
“He didn’t have any connections,” Supt. Dwivedi said.
Copyright 2005 The Globe and Mail
By Jason Overdorf/NEW DELHI
(This article appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 10, 2005).
For 25 years, he terrorized the villagers of central Indian and outsmarted police. In the end, though, notorious bandit Nirbhay Singh Gujjar was brought down by his penchant for publicity, as police were able to use cell phones through which he boasted to reporters to trace him to his forest hideout. They killed him this week in a shootout.
“It was an embarrassment for the police, because he was talking to the media,” said Yashpal Singh, director-general of the police force in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. “So we were under pressure from people who were asking why journalists could locate him and the police could not.”
After determining Mr. Gujjar’s location by tracing the signals from the two phones he used, authorities crawled through thick scrub to creep up on a ravine where the bandit was drinking with half a dozen members of his gang.
Alerted by a sentry, Mr. Gujjar’s band opened fire, but police scattered the gang, trapping the bandit and a lieutenant in a canyon.
When police called for him to surrender, Mr. Gujjar tried to fool them into thinking he had been killed, but opened fire again when officers advanced to investigate, said Deputy Superintendent Rajesh Dwivedi of the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force. In the ensuing shootout, Mr. Gujjar was shot in the head.
“This sends a clear signal that we are going after them,” Mr. Singh said. “It will certainly send a frightening message [to other bandits].”
Mr. Gujjar, whose name means “fearless,” was known as “the last lion of the Chambal,” an unmappable labyrinth of ravines in the border area between the modern states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The area is famous for marauding outlaws, called dacoits, and is portrayed in hundreds of Bollywood films.
Married three times and cuckolded as many times by rival bandits, Mr. Gujjar went berserk when his third wife ran away with a man he had kidnapped as a boy and raised as his foster son. Vowing to track the lovers down and exact his revenge, he announced a hefty reward for information about the couple.
He then told reporters he wanted to lay down his arms. All he asked was that a political party from one of the states he terrorized grant him a role in government as a member of the legislative assembly.
But even though politicians with long charge sheets are common in central India, Mr. Gujjar misread the way the political wind was blowing, according to police.
“He didn’t have any connections,” Supt. Dwivedi said.
Copyright 2005 The Globe and Mail
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