The New Boom

Better Off Than Dad

Services Sector: Growth Engine

Faces: Adventure Capitalists

Adapters: Tradition Meets Technology

Industry: Being Indian

Careers: Techies Line Up For Jobs Online

The Scindias: Will Power
The contentious will of Rajmata Vijayaraje Scindia virtually disinherits her only son Madhavrao Scindia. This controversy threatens to mar the reputation and respectability of one of India's best- known and highly regarded royal families.

Gujarat: Shaky Regime
Confronted with a monumental disaster, the Gujarat Government is at the centre of relief operations. Was its reaction timely and efficient? Could more lives have been saved?

And Greed Hits Home
More than anything, it was corruption that killed people in Gujarat as buildings constructed by getting around norms came crashing down.

Public Sector: Shotgun Exit
First large PSU where workers agreed to leave the company.

THE NEW ECONOMY: OPINION POLL

The Saving

Savings are on the rise but despite the hype mutual funds and shares don't find as much favour as bank deposits

Savings on the whole are on an upswing. In 1990, 28 per cent of the respondents maintained no savings whatsoever. That figure is now down to 23 per cent.

GENERATION GAP: Dad Sushil Kumar Ahluwalia retired as a manager with an insurance company. Mom Raj is a housewife. The younger Ahluwalias--double income, no kids--have ideas of their own. Son Manish, 28, started his travel agency in 1994 (annual turnover: Rs 5 crore) while wife Swati works in an MNC.

As many as 55 per cent (up from 47 per cent a decade ago) of respondents save a fourth of what they earn. The city where people save the most is Delhi. Saving patterns haven't changed but there are significant citywise differences. Predictably, investment in stocks and shares is most popular in Mumbai even though it has fallen from 7 per cent in the heady 1990s to 4 per cent.

In all metros, investment in gold and silver has fallen, with the notable exception of Chennai, where 64 per cent of respondents invest some money in gold as compared to 48 per cent 10 years ago.

Bank deposits will remain the preferred mode of investment in the future, followed by LIC, PPF, NSC and the like, property, stocks and shares, gold and silver. Mutual funds have been the least preferred mode of saving

HOUSING Types of accommodation varied across cities in the 1990s
-- Through company -- Bought with own means -- Inherited -- Rented
% families living in different types of houses

MetroScape
Random Readings
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra would rather be "accurate" in his latest undertaking, a book of Kabir's poetry in English, even if he says "Kabir's greatest hits may not have been written by him at all".
more...

Looking Glass

Kolkata: Restaurant

Bangalore:
Art Exhibition

New Delhi: Play

Who says Indian theatre is dying? Playwrights--both veteran and budding--in the country had a chance to interact with those from the Royal Court Theatre, London, at its first residency workshop in Bangalore recently.
It was a fortnight
of enrichment, concludes Principal Correspondent Stephen David in Despatches.

"I was very much against the idea of India," says William Dalrymple, author, The City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. In conversation with INDIA TODAY's Sonia Faleiro, he talks about his old girlfriend, Delhi and his "enormously exciting" next book, The White Moghuls in Interviews.