Where Have All The Jobs Gone
Old jobs are being slashed and new ones have slowed down to a trickle. With corporate India shedding staff faster than ever before, the worst sufferers are freshers and middle-level managers.

Preparing For Musharraf
Administrators, securitymen and hospitality merchants gear up to ensure that it's not just the Taj that will impress the visiting
Pakistani President.

Adviser Raj
Bureaucrats don't retire. Their terms are extended or they are reappointed to counsel political mentors.

Out Of Luck Now
It will take more than voter-friendly symbolism to ensure victory in UP.

Hard Cover Up
The Government is perturbed by a cop's unreleased book on Rajkumar's kidnapping.

Connecting Bharat
It's a project to bridge the digital divide. But sources of funding are not known.

METROSCAPE

Hall Of Flame

The fire which swept through the first floor of the century-old Indo-Saracenic building housing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in January last year incinerated a portion of its crown jewel-the civic corporation hall. A stone balcony had collapsed, nearly a dozen oil paintings of city fathers destroyed and the walls and gilted ceilings coated with soot. Responding to the BMC's clarion call, the conservation architects of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) stepped in.

The cost of restoring the ceremonial hall was pegged at Rs 3 crore and research began in September last year. "We spent a month analysing paint samples to find the original shade of olive-grey," says intach's Tasneem Mehta. Architect Nicholas Thomson, who helped restore UK's fire-ravaged Windsor Castle, lent his expertise as did several British museums. Actual restoration work began in November. The ceilings were re-gilded with 22 carat gold worth Rs 14 lakh, original crests matched and painted and the fire-damaged Burma teak doors replaced.

Over six months of painstaking work later, the Victorian hall was ablaze again last month. As the mayor and 226 municipal councillors trooped into the hall of Urbs Prima In Indis-India's first municipal corporation-they had another surprise waiting. The restoration cost just Rs 1 crore, or a third of the original cost.

-Sandeep Unnithan

Cell And Stage

Chatterjee (centre) in Nilkantha

The thought must have crossed many minds: what does a cellular service provider have in common with theatre? But Command-one of Kolkata's two cell-phone operators-had done its homework before organising Odeon 2001, a theatre fest held recently. Snap polls showed that the leisure activity Kolkatans enjoyed most were plays.

Theatreperson Sohag Sen, who acted as consultant for Odeon, says she followed a pithy brief: plays that every category of subscriber could relate to. So there were three-a Bengali one called Nilkantha, directed by actor Soumitra Chatterjee, a Hindi play, Khubsoorat Bahu, and Lilette Dubey's Dance Like a Man. Sen claims there was no time to select debut plays, but hopes that since this could be an annual event, the next one might be better planned. For those still trying to, well, make the connection between the stage and a cell, here's how it goes: after plays were finalised, the hosts SMS-ed subscribers. And sold out all shows in the first half hour.

-Labonita Ghosh

MetroScape

Mumbai Tribal Art: Murias

Pune Multiplex:
City Pride

Long considered politically naive, the Gujarat chief minister is a wiser man now. But the shrewdness would prove worthier if employed in matters of state, writes INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Uday Mahurkar in
Misplaced Guile