The Truth About Ourselves
The human genome sequence has been completed and shows some surprising findings. Despite having one-third less genes than estimated, human beings are still very complex. With access to disease genes, medicine and diagnostics will be revolutionised. However, this will also raise ethical questions on cloning and genetic privacy.

Hope In Hell
Four weeks after the earthquake, Gujarat is still coming to terms with the devastation. True grit is emerging from the rubble but it will be some time before lives are rebuilt. INDIA TODAY's teams went out across these death zones, capturing stories which record this renewal.

Simmer Time

Profitable Loss
36 With over 90,000 employees opting for the VRS scheme, PSU banks are set to get over their problem of overstaffing. But is it going to make banks more competitive in this age of automation? Besides, it is also going to cost more than Rs 7,500 crore and will deprive the banks of skilled workers.

Paper Money

Spreading Terror
The attacks on Delhi's Red Fort,
the Srinagar airport and the city's police control room show the Lashkar-e-Toiba is increasingly catching the Indian security forces unawares-and emerging as the most daring terrorist group from Pakistan.

Face Off
It's David Vs Goliath as India play an Australian demolition squad at home. What makes the Aussies tick and how can India take them on?

Cricketwatch:
Ashley Mallett

DIPLOMACY

India: A counter-weight to China

FROM BUDDHA'S LAND: Singh at the Shwedagon pagoda complex in Yangon

Apart from geoeconomics, Delhi could do with Yangon's cooperation to make life inhospitable for those insurgent groups who feel there are permanent sanctuaries across the border. This includes Assam's ULFA, a faction of the NSCN which operates in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh and the PLA and its offshoots in Manipur. Blessed with Chinese weapons, the Indian insurgents have established links with ethnic rebels in Myanmar. Though Yangon has entered into cease-fire agreements with 17 of its 18 rebel groups, it has not prevented the rebels from extending hospitality to those fighting the Indian state. Singh raised this in his meeting with the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Chairman Senior General Than Shwe, Vice-Chairman and Army chief General Maung Aye and head of Military Intelligence General Khin Nyunt last week. Their response is understood to have been very supportive.

That shouldn't come as a surprise. Apart from being wary of the ethos governing the insurgents on both sides-particularly the inspiration they draw from evangelists in the West-the military rulers of Myanmar appreciate a neighbour that neither questions the country's territorial integrity nor its abiding commitment to Buddhism. On both these counts, the BJP-led dispensation is regarded as more kosher than its predecessors which equated Indo-Myanmar relations with the fate of opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. In harping on civilisational links while complimenting the SPDC on its efforts at national consolidation, the Indian political leadership has enhanced the comfort level of the generals.

Indeed, an offshoot of the patient rebuilding of Indo-Myanmar ties since 1999 has even led to India being regarded as a counterweight to China. While China's political and military links with the ruling SPDC are formidable, there is a wariness on two counts. First, there is a fear of China's connections with the ethnic rebels through the Communist Party of Burma (CPB). Though the CPB withdrew from the fight in 1988 when the regime was most beleaguered, it is seen as a reserve army of subversives. Second, the near-organised influx of the Chinese into areas bordering China is seen in Myanmar as an exercise in demographic transformation. Read with the Islamic jehadi threat the regime perceives in the Arakan region and the indignation it feels at the pro-democracy hysteria generated by the West, the SPDC is in search of an affable counterweight.

India wouldn't have fitted the bill earlier, obsessed as it was with sanctimonious diplomacy. However, as the largest purchaser of Myanmar's goods (25 per cent of exports) and a country with shared cultural assumptions, economics, civilisation and pragmatism have produced a happy blend. Handled with sensitivity, the convergence could now produce dramatic results.

MetroScape
Delhi On My Mind...
I'm very flattered to have this act of 'piracy' take place," laughs William Dalrymple, as extracts from his engrossing travelogue City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi were interpreted by photographer Agnes Montanari and art historian Nathalie Trouveroy in an exhibition.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi: Restaurant

Delhi: Exhibition

Mumbai: Exhibition

"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.