Shamed And Crippled
With Tehelka.com's spy-camera taking a heavy political toll after the damning revelations of corruption in defence deals, the beleaguered Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government will have an uphill task restoring its credibility and undoing the damage to its image.

BJP: Old Hype

Interview:
Bangaru Laxman

Jaya Jaitly:
Jhola To Purse

Opposition: On A Roll

INDIA TODAY-ORG-MARG Poll: Outraged !

Defence Establishment
: Surgery For Graft

Interview: G. Fernandes

Barak Missiles:
Off The Mark

Tehelka:
Sting Theory

Highlights Of The Findings

Rakesh Kumar Jain: Gasbag Man

Wheeling A Good Deal
The battle for BALCO degenerates into a political chess match between Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi, and Union Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie. Jogi holds most of the aces at the moment--but will he play them all when it could mean loss of investments to the state?

The New Targets
The 60,000 policemen in Kashmir are caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, they are the target of militant attacks, and, on the other, the Army sees them with suspicion. It is not just themselves, but their families that the policemen worry about as they struggle to battle militancy and falling morale.

Crisis Of Confidence While stock prices haven't recovered since the collapse of March 2, the panic has spread from Mumbai to Kolkata. Underlying the fear is a deepening fear of the Securities and Exchange Board of India's will or capacity to regulate the stockmarkets.

Escape to Victory
Down and virtually out, India create a miracle at the Eden Gardens to stun the Australians and break their winning streak.

Mixing Metaphors Music, dance, and tourism synthesise in the famed textile centre of Maheshwar to provide sustainable synergies for its growth.

METROSCAPE

Jazz By The Mum-bay

Beauty ... Not The Beasts

Slips And Straps

Factory Produce

Virtual Reality

Colours Of Convention

Play On

Pop Corn

ROCK AWAY THE BLUES: The laid-back Aussie band Hoodangers Sexter

The backdoor entry of bhangra in the extended version of Brubeck's classic, Take Five, probably originated there. So who cares if "Jazz Yatra", the 23-year-old ragtime carnival, has rather insipidly changed its name to "JazzFest India" this year. It didn't slow down the crowds. At the Mumbai version of the fest last week, spread over five days and three venues (St Andrews Auditorium, Sophia Bhabha Auditorium and Oberoi Hotel) groups from as offbeat as Lithuania and as overrun as the US swayed crowds with their editions of contemporary and traditional jazz. Daninius Pulauskas Sextet (the Lithuanians) merged both electronic and non-voltage sounds into purposeful fusion, while vocalist Fay Victor from USA teamed up with both the Xavier Fernandes Trio and the Louis Banks Trio at separate performances. The Eastern touch came courtesy the Japanese Yuko Fujiyama Quartet, inflated with notes by flautist Masami Nakagawa. But the scenestealers would have to be the laid-back Hoodangers Sextet from Down Under who confessed that they'd spiced up time-honoured 1920s riffs and street scene New Orleans Jazz with funk, reggae and boogie woogie to give their music a danceable edge.

-Natasha Israni

Factory Produce

STEEL A MOMENT: Brit Gibbons (left) with his five-piece milestone sculpture; and Mumbai-based Jani with Gurdas & a dream, about an enslaved servant's sexual fantasy

If professor Vincent Barre from France really had to baptise the curving shapes of his cold-rolled milesteel sculpture, it would be the slogan: "Without accidents, you gain no sorrow, no suffering, no pain". This sentiment may not have been the original inspiration, but Barre could not help these words from seeping into his creative psyche-they were dutifully scrawled on the factory wall just behind the designated work area. At "Steel Works", a four-week international artists' residency initiated by the Jindal Art Foundation at JISCO's plant in Thane, near Mumbai, three other artists also found factory life impacting their work: the UK's Professor John Gibbons who carved an elaborate five-piece milesteel sculpture with a 61-ft long pole, Mumbai's Jehangir Jani who used hot-rolled plates to make Gurudas & The Dream, and Delhi's Subodh Gupta who created illusory and three-dimensional effects with fabricated steel boxes. Some inspiration, some muse.

-Natasha Israni

VIRTUAL REALITY: A huge arm of an alien monster pulls Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black. Cut! "Special effects," says CEO of Platinum Studios Scott Rosenberg, "is fun." When leading animators and special effects experts shared the SFX magic at a meet during EGO (Entertainment Graphics Organisation)-2001 in Chennai last week, it was more than fun. Tamil film director Singeetam Srinivasa Rao felt SFX would help him avoid dealing with actor tantrums. And Tamil writer Sujatha asked if the real actor would be replaced by SFX. EGO-2002 may have some answers.

-Arun Ram

MetroScape
Pop Corn
"You are the best audience in the whole world," the Vengaboys tell raving crowds
in Delhi.
more...

Looking Glass

Delhi Exhibition:
Pop To Classic

Delhi Restaurant:
San Gimignano

Mumbai Accessories Store: Watches Of Switzerland

Bangalore Concert: Deep Purple

A bloody crackdown on Naxalites in the south-eastern fringes of Uttar Pradesh proves that only developmental programmes, not guns, can help fight the menace. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Subhash Mishra explains why in
Despatches.