Market and mayhem in Meerut

The footage on TV and pictures in papers brought me head on with a past I had left 16 years behind. The same city. The same fire. The same bodies. The same mortuary. The flames claimed anything between 50 and 100 lives. Sixteen years ago, the extent of the inferno was larger, though the bodies were fewer. I had walked the brick-littered streets then; I walked this time on TV. If the Meerut riots on the 1991 election eve were a harsh slap that woke me up from my school-college, carefree-living slumber and introduced the real world, the Victoria Park fire is bringing to life memories of an India that lies beyond the metro malls. If election violence put me off political reporting, yesterday’s fire is a reminder that I can run but I can’t hide.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 11, 2006

Today’s PEs, tomorrow’s profits

Beginning next week, corporate results will start streaming in, giving strength to a market that has almost quadrupled over the past three years --- from under 3,000 in April 2003 to over 11,700 today. If a person had invested Rs 1 lakh in the Sensex in 1979, when the index was conceived (it came into force in 1986, but with 1979 as its base), he would be sitting on more than Rs 1 crore today. Which means a return of over 19 per cent per annum.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 05, 2006

Driving a turnaround

It’s difficult to even imagine, leave alone believe, that the Indian Railways, a Rs 54,700 crore giant, lumbering since 1996, has turned around over the past two years. What turnaround? The stations suck, the trains stink and let’s not even begin to talk about service. Yes, it’s difficult to visualise this turnaround. But if that’s difficult, let me increase the degree of difficulty --- the turnaround has been, and is being, driven by Lalu Prasad, the man accused of driving Bihar aground, single-handedly.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 05, 2006

On track

A Rs 54,700 crore giant can’t rise up and compete, get customer focussed, generate record-breaking surpluses. An organisation whose costs increase at Rs 5,000 crore per annum, irrespective of whatever else it does, cannot turn around. An institution that has been diagnosed by economists as being in a “terminal debt trap” can’t be reformed. A state-controlled ministry carrying the financial weight of 1,422,251 staffers and 1,152,087 pensioners can’t execute productivity jumps. A perceivably somnolent rail bureaucracy can’t fight for market share from roads and air. Elephants don’t dance.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 05, 2006

‘We’re only milking the cow’

Tracking Lalu Prasad is not an easy task --- you have to struggle through crowds, through security, through long queues of favour-seekers to get to him. We were lucky to get an inside view of things over the two days that we trailed him across three states in the Railway Minister’s Special Train. Excerpts from a series of interviews with Gautam Chikermane, held at Lalu’s new residence, in his special train, at various rallies and over quiet meals on trains, at stations and in the BNR House, South Eastern Railway’s heritage building on Garden Reach Road.

Interview in The Indian Express, April 05, 2006

Birth and death

Can prenatal babies understand? Can foetuses learn? Do they know good from bad, life from death? If science and its commercial manifestation of product sales are concerned, the answer is yes. There is a $199.95 prenatal education system in Australia that, according to its sellers, “helps kick-start learning for children still in the womb — by providing stimulating, rhythmic sounds that mimic their mother’s heartbeat. As the rhythms change, babies learn to differentiate the sounds, strengthening brain development”. Biological research is clearly indicating the presence of consciousness in the foetus, apart from life.

Opinion in The Indian Express, April 02, 2006

To save the girl child — invest

Like all well-planned crimes, Anil Sabhani and Kartar Singh, both doctors, had only pulled the triggers. The masterminds behind the killings are still walking free. The two good doctors are part of a fast-growing club of medical professionals using technology as a sex-seeking weapon of mass destruction. The duo had a code that would give many criminals a run for their crimes: if parents were told to collect the sex determination report on a Monday, it was a boy; if Friday, a girl. According to the Indian Medical Council, doctors like Sabhani and Singh have killed about 5 million foetuses through abortion; the Lancet puts it at 500,000.

Opinion in The Indian Express, March 29, 2006