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.

STATES: GUJARAT

And Greed Hits Home

More than anything, it was corruption that killed people as buildings built by getting around norms crashed in Ahmedabad

Rasikbhai Patel wasn't happy with his modest two-bedroom tenement in Ahmedabad's not-so-upmarket Rannapark locality. So, on January 22, he went out to sell it. When he was offered only Rs 5.5 lakh, which he thought too little, the deal fell through.

Then, on January 26, 80 buildings of four storeys and over came crashing down in the quake. As many as 700 people died in the rubble of bargain homes in Ahmedabad. And the price of small houses like Rasikbhai's rose. Now people are offering him Rs 10 lakh, he says. Only he isn't selling.

The Gujarat earthquake has rocked a lot more than buildings: it has shaken people's faith in high-rises and in builders who construct quick and cheap as well as jolted a lethargic government out of its slumber. Cases are being filed by the dozen and builders and officials who have had anything to do with the fallen buildings are being charged with culpable homicide and criminal conspiracy. If convicted, they could get jail terms of 10 years each.

Nearly all the builders who have been charged have fled the city. Ahmedabad police commissioner P.C. Pande says, "The guilty won't be spared, come what may." State Home Minister Haren Pandya says many buildings in Ahmedabad are being used without clearance certificates. The Government is committed to clearing the "Augean stables in the real-estate sector", he adds. But the Government shies away from answering why the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which was controlled by the BJP till last year, allowed this state of affairs to go unchecked. Obviously, no one ever imagined that a tremor of this magnitude would strike the state capital. Hence it was a free-for-all.

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.