HIKE \\ The Centre came under heavy flak from all quarters—industrial sectors, political parties, citizens and organisations—over the diesel and LPG price hike which came into being in mid-September. The Union government increased the price of diesel by `5. The new price is `6.2 per litre, including taxes. The price hike immediately affected the transport industry as a whole, and more particularly, Maharashtra was the worst hit. With the increase, the difference in diesel prices between Mumbai and Delhi jumped to `6.5 per litre. The Centre also limited subsidised LPG refill supply to six in a year at the rate of `450. The seventh cylinder will come at a cost of ` 800. The steps led to a slew of protests coming in from almost all states. The BJP and Shiv Sena activists staged demonstrations in Maharastra. Key UPA ally and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee too expressed her unhappiness over the hike and held a series of protests in Kolkata. Key UPA ally DMK described the diesel price hike as ‘very high’ and sought a roll back. BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said the hike will have a cascading effect on prices and will contribute further to inflation. Diesel price hike will indirectly increase the cost of production of goods by 10 to 12 per cent. Wholesale rates of vegetables are likely to shoot up by the end of the month by 25 to 30 per cent. With diesel prices going up, transportation companies are likely to increase their freight rates too.

WHAT YOU SEE...

...Is what you get; that is painter, artist, sculptor and graphic artist Jatin Das for you. He is an electrifying personality who hates to mince words, which should make him a pain for his publicist (thankfully, he has none) and a dream for journalists. But before his straightforwardness grabs your attention, the most singular aspect of his personality that hits you as a force, is his youthful, abundant energy. He bounces off to keep something, to arrange something else, places seats at the right angle, helps the photographer pick a corner for a photoshoot or opens the door for people to come in. Das is also attentive, courteous, and quick on the uptake. He offers everyone cigarettes. Before starting the interview, he wants everyone to have a cuppa. Not many artists, and certainly not many successful legends, send a drawn map minutes after the conversation. In fact, not many successful Indian people believe in common courtesies such as acknowledging emails. It seems Das and his team operate differently. Where do you work? What is it? Where is it? Who is in charge? He shoots off questions on our first interaction over the phone. He acknowledges answers with a quick “hmph” or a “huh”. And when he does not want an answer he says, “I do not care,” and dismisses both the answer and question with an impatience of a child. We were to encounter more of that visceral honesty and child-like impatience as we met in his Shahpur Jat studio as the conversation progressed at a mind-boggling speed over three languages, and with the artist’s answers beginning with an emphatic ‘no’.

THE ARTIST

The studio where Das works is a small and neat space. Though it is filled with wooden racks, stuffed with files and folders, and a handful of people quietly busy before computers, it contains an air of hushed order. Every folder, box and rack is neatly labelled. There is a temple-like quality to the space—guests are asked to remove their shoes before entering. If you strain your ears, a soft sitar music can be heard with the click-click of the keyboards. When Das does appear for the interview, he is in no hurry to get on. “No, no, no, listen, I do not even know your name. Let us all get to know each other. Unless you wish to finish everything in three minutes flat and make a quick exit. I am not ready as once I go through what I am going to say, I will have to relive it all in my mind. You know what I am saying?” he asks. For Jatin Das, there are no quick fixes or short cuts—if it is an interview, then it is about building a sense of trust before anything else. “Smallest of details matter to me. What I do, I do it with a passion for quality. If I am consuming daalchawal, it should be made with care, with love. I cook with passion. I garden with a passion. If I bathe I think of the rivers. Everything needs fervour and sincerity. For every bit of our life we should be committed and concerned,” he says without taking a breath. “I may not have done much for my children, but I find it most gratifying when I see them today. They, too, have a strong sense of commitment. They have the right set of values and they do not compromise in what they do. I have never compromised in what I have done either,” he says, as an afterthought. But our interview is yet to start—in fact, it will not start for well over an hour in which he will sometimes speaks in a tearing hurry, while often he would break off mid-sentence to review what was said before. But he would do everything with care—because a hurried interaction is not genuine. “When you come to meet me, shed the baggage. About what you know of art and artists. Let us start innocently,” he says. As his mind skips and wanders over what he wants to say he offers more information. “I came to Delhi in 1967 to teach. At that time, Delhi was a hub for artists. With the passage of time, they (colleagues) have all dispersed and some of them have become ‘quickies’ with their quick shows, quick money, quick parties,” says Das. “Lot of young artists tell me, Jatin-da I have to earn my bread and butter. Where do they learn the phrase? Why not talk about daal chawal? They accuse me that I must have thought about the same (bread and butter) when I was young. In my twenties I was much more dangerous because I thought of nothing else than work. Somehow for 54 years one has lived life without compromise. How did I do that?” Perhaps the question lies in the past—a little bit in his family, his teachers, the friends he acquired and people he met. Born to a traditional artistic family in Mayurbhanj (Orissa), Das was exposed to art early on. He grew up amid tribal and folk art, crafts, dance and music. His home is one of the lushest states of the country, dotted with ponds, rivers, groves and hamlets. His mother was an artist and a writer. It was a rich childhood. One that naturally progressed into a richer youth as he moved to Mumbai at the age of 16 to study at the JJ School of Arts. There he met Homi Bhabha (Das refuses to divulge how, as it is ‘not relevant’) and slowly learnt the ‘art of life’—living every second to its fullest. It is his mantra; he cooks, eats, plants a garden with the same fervour as he paints. This fervour lends him an exceptional eye for detail. “From the next time, don’t bring cups on a plastic tray. And put some extra water. Not too much, but a bit more. But very good Gopal,” he says as the tea gets served. He is quicker to heap praise for a job well done and every gentle criticism is accompanied by a pat in the back. Here is an artist not residing in an ivory tower of solitude—obtaining inspiration from the ether. In fact, if one suggests such a thing, Das would be enraged. He is easily provoked, the quintessential angry, youthful senior man. He is enraged by the present state of our country, he is dissatisfied by the youth’s unwillingness to commit to a craft for the sake of learning, he is embittered by the publicity-driven, commerce-driven world of art. “Everybody’s summing up everybody without knowing. Like you! You want an interview done in two minutes, you want a summation in three. An acquaintance of mine said such-and-such person said such-and-such things about you that too without meeting me even once. We have a very narrow vision of what a person, a profession should be. You remark that my studio is clean. How many artists’ studios have you visited? Did you know that Dom (Moraes) was one of the best poets that India ever had?” he asks. His friend, the fabled journalist Dom Moraes’s name, would appear in our interview regularly. It is when he talks of his friend or friends that we get to realise that there is the ivory tower after all. Age and nature has stolen most of his friends from him leaving him rather alone. “I have a handful of friends left,” he admits. His travels with Moraes in Sweden are sweet memories which he misses acutely. He gets up to show us articles and a photo of it. “If I stayed in Bombay I would either stay at Dom’s or Basu-da’s house or flit between both. When I would be at Dom’s, he would read out his poems. He never shared his poetry with the world apart from his few friends. He would tease his wife (Leela Naidu) and tell her, Polly you have no sense of poetry, off you go and sleep. And Dom would write about me the very next day. After all he was a lazy b*****,” Das says softly with a chuckle. The mention of old friends Don Moraes, Basu Bhattacharya, Satyajit Ray and Raghu Rai enter every conversation. He mentions them as people who did not live their lives stuck on a singular, linear path. They were, he tells us, souls who pored themselves in their immediate engagement, however trivial.

THE TECHNIQUE

“I never use the expression that I am doing art. I always say that I am working. I never use words such as creativity or inspiration. They are hackneyed words. In any profession when you work for a certain period of time you have set of concerns, commitments and certain fervour with which you work. These emotions are devoid of the country or society, etc. Of course, certain things leave a mark. Your personal anguish, family, nature of things seep into the work naturally. I work on human predicament and all my work generally are human figures. But they are devoid of embellishments and devoid of time and place. They are not factual. They are not narratives. I can’t explain my work at all. I am not going to and I am not attempting it,” he says when the official interview starts. We begin with India. I make the mistake of asking him whether he finds working in India conducive. In seconds he is inflamed and calls the question ‘quite dangerous’. “Every country is conducive to art. One can create everywhere. I think people who don’t like staying in India and don’t find working here conducive are mediocre and ordinary. India is one of the greatest countries of the world. It is a goldmine. I am not talking about politics, art or cinema, specifically. India is not just a Delhi or a Mumbai. Even if for argument’s sake we say they are the so-called yardsticks to deciding the concept that is India, how do you define these cities? In Delhi and Mumbai there are hundreds of smaller spaces which are distinct and interesting. There are people in Chandni Chowk who have, perhaps, not seen the world outside the walled city. People in Bhindi Bazaar in Mumbai. Every city has hundreds of layers—especially the Asian cities,” he adds. “The western world is finished. They have lost their arts, crafts and culture. They are all prototypes. They have a shared post-colonial, postwar culture and shared paradigms. The fact that India is still chaotic and is in a transitional state, is the best bit about our country. It is a pity that we are not trying to retain its character but adopting western paradigms and prototypes (food, clothing and way of life). We have adopted the British education system—the British taught us to make us into clerks. Real education comes from being rooted to your reality, your home town, your state. Once you know your home then you know or imbibe everything else,” says Das. Here is an artist who likes to dirty his hands. He loves the dusty road. He adores making real life his playground. If indeed the real is his inspiration. His nudes—whether supple lines or rich and textured oil canvases—come from his greatest inspiration; life. Or, if you are talking of Das’s version of it, write them in capitals. What inspires this artist? Everything, he will tell you. Encounters, passions, life, experience and relationships. This exultation of spirit makes his art youthful—giving it a vitality which makes the figures dance before your eyes. He is also an innovative artist. Perhaps a part of this innovation stems from the impatience of the young man he is. He is always trying to find dynamic ways of depicting his emotions. His paintings revolve around the various aspects of relationships (crisis, contact, disclosure, emotional tension). The treatment is often clean, linear and colours are charged with emotions with a brisk brushwork which further add a unique dimension. But all these explanations (and narratives) are just unnecessary words . “Why can’t a painting be accepted as it is? Work never has an agenda,” he protests. “I am not always telling a story. I paint first, then draw the outline. I see something and just feel like translating that onto paper. That’s it. These photographs are manifestations of my concern. I write a bit of free verse occasionally. I listen to a lot of music. I am open, willing and ready to be exposed to anything and any influence which comes my way. When you grow older in such a rich environment, art is not a separate thing that you do when you have the time,” he says. But why is the human body a recurring theme? “There is either a lot of purpose or no purpose at all. I just enjoy painting. I paint because I love to. I enjoy the process allowing the unexpected to enter and govern. That is the beauty of painting, indeed, of life for me. I have been painting human figures for many years. Usually, I like working on a single figure. Now and then, two figures together have periodically emerged unintentionally. Recently, I have become conscious of it as a series. I suppose I have become more and more conscious about human relationships and our predicament. But it is in no way a documentary of anything. I try to capture a mood, an emotion. And the body, the form, the physicality is accidental,” Das avers. “My works are quite unlike other artists. They are usually linear and I sculpt paintings. First, I create the mass, tone, colours and body, and then chisel it with lines. Most artists first draw the lines and then fill it up with colours.” Das usually draws with conte and ink, sometimes in oil and sometimes with acrylic; and he has admitted in a previous interview that he had used water colour every day for 12 years now. He also engraves on metals and occasionally etches. For someone who has exhibited in more than 55 solo exhibitions, he calls them mechanical. “Exhibitions are boring. Painting is a more personal thing. When I am painting it is just about my paper and me. Nothing else matters. I also hate auctions, especially those that sell a painting at a much higher price than what it deserves,” he says. “For a bit, forget about art and fart, I am deeply concerned about issues and these matter to me. The psychological state of the country with bad governance, corruption which has percolated to all layers including art). We have forgotten basic truths. That a plant can only grow in the ground. A potted plant is an anomaly. Due to a lack of space, now we believe that to be the ultimate—but that is and will remain an anomaly,” he says as an after thought.

THE BEGINNING, THE END

Words flow torrentially and freely changing colour and direction in response to his moods—Das is as quickly inflamed as he becomes pensive. Phrases from Bengali, Oriya, Hindi and Sanskrit are used liberally in his conversation. The poetic, rather than the prosaic, is his chosen metier. Winding through the diverse bylanes of his life, he looks more to the future than the past. “A big book on paintings, memoirs and one on poems for Penguin, a book on the pankha collection. I have stalled many things. My daughter keeps calling me up to make my documentary film festival once in every two years. She has a point—I am putting too much on my plate. Nearly 90 per cent of all that I had earned is now into the JD Art and Research Centre and in the art documentary film festival which will happen next year. And see all these brushes and painting items, well, there should be a centre that is dedicated to the tools of art, if I can have my way.” It is not the end of the road for Das as his journey has just begun. “I’m still a child, and still beginning to paint, beginning to live, and rethinking about life and work. I’m looking for people who can take up a few projects. Between the books, the JD Centre for Art, the proposed pankha museum and the dream of the museum dedicated to tools of painting, I am very busy,” he reveals. To make his point, he gets up and picks up an ostrich feather duster used to dust canvases. He displays it with a grin of a child. You look around the room, spot the transparent telephone, a dusty paper ferris-wheel and the black and white photograph of Das caught in the middle of a dance—and you see a pattern. This is not merely a studio, it is a museum dedicated to celebrating life and its little details.

RAJU VEGESNA: It was in the late 1990s, when right after finishing with my Bachelor’s of Engineering from Bapuji Institute of Engineering and Technology, Davanagere, Karnataka, I had just began working. My job was to handle website promotions which led to my interest in network management. That is when I came across Zoho. I thought they were doing interesting things in the field of network management. Since I, too, had an interest I started communicating with them. Moreover they were a product-based company, which I always found exciting. So, after a few initial interactions with them I proposed a few product ideas which they liked and in a couple of months I joined the company. Today the company is almost 16 years old and my association with it has been for 13 years now. Zoho is one of the very few productbased companies from India. A significant point about Zoho is that we run it from the US, while others are based from India. When Zoho started out, India had a lot of companies providing services, but not many were into making products. Striving hard for bringing in projects and making the clients implement those was an idea which never fascinated us. What we at Zoho wanted to do was to create products and sell them in the global markets directly. Once the decision was made, we got in touch with a few Indian companies who were dealing in the same space and launched a few products and finally marked our arrival in the network management zone. Even though Zoho is being run and managed from the US most of Zoho’s employees, consciously or not, are Indians. We hire engineers and management people, mostly freshers because young people are more creative, innovative and enjoy challenges. We have around 1,600 employees in India, in America we have around 30 and in Japan around 30 more. People often talk about the challenges of running an Indian company in the US. But honestly speaking, it is not that big a deal these days. In fact, there are more advantages than disadvantages. Having said that, there are some challenges that we do face and have been facing over the years. For instance we have an office in India and in the US. In both the countries we have support teams. It is when these teams interact, that the problem arises. Most of all, language is a big barrier. Understanding each other’s accents is a troublesome area. But that is something that cannot be helped much. English, as we know is not our first language, and Americans do not understand any other language. The other problem that we deal with on a daily basis is the cultural difference between the two countries. This creates enormous amount of problems for us. The thing is that both the countries follow different work cultures, people have different ideologies and these are issues which will only get sorted over time. While these are some of the internal challenges that we face, the biggest and the foremost issue that we face is of reach. In a global market companies like Yahoo! and Google have a wider reach, which is something we lag. We would like to reach to more and more people but that is yet to happen. Perhaps we need to work on better marketing strategies. I would be stating the obvious in saying that the US has a more mature market, which actually changes a lot of things. For instance people in the US have been used to buying things online. They are comfortable with the concept of e-commerce. As compared to India, they are more comfortable buying something that has been put online. While in India that culture is yet to come. In the US we often see that the customers come online and browse for products. If they like the products they buy them, they don’t really talk to other people or take another opinion into consideration. It is tough to get that scenario in India. Moreover, dealing with the clients in the US is completely different from dealing with the clients in India. I agree that every country has their own culture and their own issues. And it is understandable that the Indian clients will have different sets of expectations while US clients will have different ones. Japanese clients, for instance, want every minute detail to be fixed. They look into the smallest matter, as they are very detail-oriented. Our clients in the US, on the other hand, are okay with smaller nuances, but they want the core structure to be impeccable. However, in India, perhaps because of the lack of infrastructure and tech support, clients always seek support to fix problems. They demand onsite support all the time. India needs an attitudinal change when it comes to these things. Similarly in the case of venture capital (VC) investment, it is widespread in US, especially in the software market, there are many VC firms with different models. It is a highly competitive market in US and some of the VC firms from US are making their way to the Indian market for expansion. In India though, it is starting to evolve, I would say Indian investors are more conservative compared to US investors. But to be fair to the Indian market, the scene is changing. Each day, we notice changes which point towards growth and maturity. When we started off in India, it was tough to get talent on board. One big issue that India faces is that it doesn’t have a culture of innovation and there is lack of exposure too. When the students come out of engineering colleges, they do not know that there is something like a product-based company, they are completely unaware. This lack of exposure becomes a road block. But I wouldn’t blame just the students or the colleges for this lack of exposure. The truth is that when we started out, there weren’t many product-based companies in India. And the market wasn’t all that open. However things have changed now, in the past few years I have seen some good product companies popping-up and the employees of these companies are the local talents, which is fantastic news. Especially for Zoho which always has had a policy of building talent and not targets. Speaking about the achievements of Zoho, I think it is becoming India’s largest product-based company, and its ability to capture the local Indian market. I think we have done a great job in bringing India to a strut in the international market. We have really worked hard on it. We have built products, taken them to the market, have taken the responsibility of ensuring that they are quality stuff and we have strived hard to promote them. The journey—as smooth as it sounds—has not been easy. It has been exciting, but not without hurdles. For an Indian company it is a big challenge understanding the US market. As open as this market is, it follows a certain work culture and expects every company to follow that culture too. Indian companies, which belong to a different school of thought, find it difficult to navigate through this market. Now that we have been in the US for some 16 years we understand how it works and therefore are able to strive through and navigate through the US market. Therefore, I think that execution is a biggest issue here. It is not about how great an idea you have. If you can not execute it properly, it would not work. Things that worked in favour of Zoho was that we always believed in taking one step at a time. When we entered the product market what we initially did was that we would take a software and embed it in our product and sell. Our targeted space was not all that big, probably half a billion dollar market, but it was getting us easy money, if not a brand image. We were always focussed on our next step—entering the network management market, which was a 50 billion dollar space. There we built some 30 to 40 products and it helped us bring in money and invest in our future applications. With our third phase of the company, zoho.com, we have left behind the $50-billion market and entered the multi-billion dollar market and I am happy to say that we are doing well. After all this effort that we have put in, we really hope that we have managed to inspire people back home to start more product-based firms. India has a great future, the market is booming, we have the talent and the enthusiasm. All we really need today is to pull our act together and make things work. I hope that Zoho’s success model is replicated and bettered by other Indian companies in the near future.

The world’s your stage, and clients your avid audience, if you know how to conduct yourself online

Influence n. the power or ability to affect someone’s beliefs or actions, arising out of status, contacts or wealth. As succinctly as the Oxford English Dictionary defines the word, social influence is particularly difficult to define, and is one of those things that you just know when you see it. And unlike the word-of mouth brand champions of yesteryear, what we are increasingly seeing is the rise of the digital influencer—a small breed of somewhat special individuals on the Internet that have a strong effect on the opinions and even consumption habits of a large number of ordinary individuals. Crack this puzzle—figure out who is influential in which community, up to the extent of driving purchases and growing the brand—and you can crack the ultimate goal—sales. But if you thought it was difficult to define exactly who is influential online, measuring it and putting it to meaningful use is even more so. No wonder there is a slew of start-ups, each pushing their own metric of social currency to define how connected and influential you are online, and measuring social influence has fast become one of the key buzzwords to track this year. KLOUT: The tool to beat, and also the one you’ve probably heard the most about, Klout looks at your activity across all the major social networks–Facebook, twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, FourSquare among others—factors in a whole bunch of parameters such as likes, retweets, friends or subscribers, and who you’re connected to, to arrive at a Klout score between 0 and 100. Add in more accounts to your Klout profile and the formula works in your influence across various social platforms towards that magic number—your Klout score. If you are interested in analysing the score further, Klout provides some neat but basic graphs and a good-looking user interface for you to see what topics you are regarded to be an expert on, and how the Klout scores of your friends and peers compare to yours. Of particular interest is the Perks section, which allows businesses to offer products or services to individuals with a certain Klout score or influence in a specific topic. The idea is to get that product or service into the hands of the people who will then hopefully talk about it through their social channels and influence their audience towards the product or service. PEER INDEX: While it is not as flashy as Klout, Peer Index does a decent job at helping you understand what topics you and your social circle is influential about, as well as others who are influential about the same topics—very handy if you’re looking to engage with thought leaders in your space. Where it differs from Klout is that apart from an overall PeerIndex score, topical Peer Index scores are calculated based on category, making it easier to identify people with authority on a particular subject. It uses three variables— authority, audience and activity— to identify expertise in a particular subject and in my experience, does a better job at pinpointing specific areas of interest and expertise than Klout. KRED: While Kred is relatively new in the game, it has tried to differentiate itself by being transparent about how your Kred score breaks down, something that Klout and Peer Index cannot claim to do. Each tweet, mention or retweet on twitter is assigned a score (which is visible on your dashboard). The sum total of your interactions is then totaled and averaged across the Kred network to give you an idea of where you are placed. Kred calculates two scores, a measure of Influence, which is based on how often you are retweeted, replied, mentioned or followed on Twitter, and a measure of Outreach, which is reflective of how often you engage (retweet, reply or mention) with others. Now, in our numbers-driven world, does merely having a high Klout, Kred or PI score mean you have arrived? Understand this—most of these tools indicate the stature an individual possesses within a social network, what one could term as their social capital, and at best a limited range of interests that contribute to that standing. They then compute the influence using proprietary formulae, with little guidance to the individual on what they can do to improve their scores. At most, they introduce some elements of gamification, such as rewarding users for either completing their profiles or inviting more friends on to the network, but never a clear explanation as to how to consciously work towards a higher score. In short, there is no one ‘formula’ for being influential. So then is all of this just hokum? In the end, you as an individual or a brand manager have to decide, but my advice would be to take all these scores with a grain of salt. Any one metric will at best give you a hazy picture of an individual’s online presence, so it would be best to use these scores to augment your own primary research findings. There is no one-size-fits-all-solution, instead social influence scores should be taken as guidance to help inform but not dictate your social media and marketing outreach plans.

New Alliances and Reallignment

EVER SINCE the revelations about the 2G imbroglio, the media has been lamenting the decline of public morality. Indeed, it has been able to sustain this narrative because alleged scams are being unearthed with relentless regularity. In all of its lamentations, the media is joined by a multiplicity of activists, NGOs, and public citizens, loosely described as members of ‘civil society’. The list of such voices is long, and the now fractured Team Anna—for better or worse—has perhaps emerged as one of the most visible faces of civil society engagement in recent times. Occasional hiccups faced by members of Team Anna notwithstanding, the media savvy of the India Against Corruption Movement needs to be unpacked carefully. Many of their strategies emerge out of a deeper structural shift in the place that civil society occupies in Indian politics today. What is this shift, and how exactly have civil society organisations (CSOs)—NGOs, non-profits, advocacy groups, etc—come to relate to the government and private sector today? A brief glance backwards might provide perspective on this. When Pandit Nehru declared that dams were the ‘temples of modern India’ in 1963, he articulated a vision that sought to meet three challenges after Independence. First, he worked towards the consolidation of a government that would prioritise rapid economic growth to address the welfare needs of India. The emphasis on planned economic growth was put in the service of a second ideal: the need for modern infrastructure, which would provide a material framework within which India’s masses would conduct their lives as citizens of a socialist republic. These two ideals were, for Pandit Nehru, central to the realisation of a third: the idea of liberal democracy. At its core, Nehruvian Socialism sought to create the apparatus necessary to channel the energies of India’s millions in a modern, liberal democratic direction. Regular elections, bicameralism at the centre, fundamental rights, elected legislatures, etc., were all part of this federal vision and its attempt to unify the country, without muffling India’s diversity. And in this vision, civil society was autonomous of the state. Partly for these reasons, civil society at this early stage was a localised or regional affair, directed by the energies of local groups. Few in the 1940s and 1950s would have imagined that social movements and NGOs would play a critical role in representing the diversity that was such a conspicuous fact of Indian life. There were, of course, some notable exceptions like Vinoba Bhave’s Sarvodaya Movement, but broadly, civil society from the 1950s to the late 1970s had an unstable quality and was rooted in the lives of those being directly affected. For all practical purposes, these movements had little impact on the central government. By the time Indira Gandhi became a national political figure, a whole generation had been marked by their contact with the State in some form. Many were benefited by the Nehruvian model, but others began expressing a sense of political disenchantment at the state’s inability to alleviate the problems confronting their constituencies. Some of this put a severe strain on India’s federal structure, as Indira Gandhi’s decision to declare Emergency makes clear. This political churning came at a time when India’s socialist planned economy was having to compete with alternative economic visions in the minds of India’s increasingly vocal middle class, members of which began to feel hemmed-in by India’s closed economy. As the effects of globalisation seeped into the nooks and crannies of urban life in the late-1980s, economic reforms were adopted in the 1990s. How many CSOs are there in India? Figures vary, but according to a Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation Report released in March 2012, India has staggering 3.17 million non-profits registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860, and the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, of which 80 per cent were created after 1990. Little is known about the activities of most of organisations, but it is fair to say that they are reshaping Indian society and culture in subtle, and as in the case of the Anna Hazare movement, not-so-subtle ways. Today, civil society is an active sphere of political engagement at the national level, propelled by a resurgent middle class. There are countless illustrations of this going back to the early 1990s. The Right to Information campaign started in Rajasthan and burgeoned into a national movement that succeeded in bringing about a constitutional legislation. After the Gujarat earthquake in 2001, CSOs have been among the most effective groups to get the state governments to provide rehabilitation services. The Right to Education Campaign had a strong civil society base; and the list goes on. Clearly, unlike the CSOs active from the 1950s to the 1970s, many that have emerged since the 1980s have much closer relationships with both the government and the heavy-hitters of India’s private sector. Whether they receive funding from the government, corporates or international agencies, CSOs are today forging new linkages in ways that were unimaginable in the Nehruvian years. The creation of the National Advisory Council in 2004 is the strongest statement of the government’s formal acceptance of a role for civil society at the central level. And the Indian government’s fondness for public-private partnerships only underscores the growing role that CSOs will play in the implementation of government’s developmental initiatives. It is patently clear that in the past few decades, the distinctions between the government, private sector, and civil society have become murkier, less discernible. The globalisation of India’s culture and economy has added an additional dimension into this mix. As we look to the future, it is difficult to discern any general relationship of causality between the four; in other words, which sphere will exercise greater authority over others at any moment is impossible to predict. But the overall result of this—and this is significant—has been the growing professionalisation of ‘movementbased’ politics, and civic engagement in general. As one looks to the future, one can only hope that CSOs will exercise constructive surveillance over the state to keep it accountable, while providing support when necessary. In their more pernicious form, however, CSOs have the potential to be hijacked and put in the service of selfish, illiberal ends.

A boxing champion, a doting mother, a loving wife and a woman of substance. Meet Mary Kom, India’s Million Dollar Baby

There is a scene in Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby, where Maggie’s (Hillary Swank) mother asks her to quit boxing and do something more suited for a woman. Maggie simply tells her mother that boxing is what she likes and knows best and shall do it till she can. Maggie might have been a fictional character, but her story could not have been more real. When our own Million Dollar Baby told her parents about her decision of becoming a boxer, their reaction was: What if you get disfigured? Who will marry you? One look at the recent Tag Heuer commercial and you know that her mother’s fears completely unfound. The magnificent Mary is grace personified, and looks splendid in that commercial. This beauty only increases when beads of sweat adorn her face after a gloriously won boxing match. The idea of a woman becoming masculine because of the ‘manly’ sport is something that Kom does not understand. When asked if she ever has been tagged as a masculine woman, she laughs and asks, “I do not think it applies to me, does it? I thought I was quite feminine!” She also believes that “men and women are equal and physical strength is probably the silliest standard or marker to judge women against men”. Coming from such a school of thought, it is no wonder that Kom did not listen to her mother and did not give in. Like every other great story, this one too has many twists and turns, ups and downs. But then, what good is a story without a bit of a drama? When Kom started training for boxing at the age of 15, she did not inform anyone in her family. She knew that she would not be granted her wish, and thought it was best to hide it from her parents and her three siblings. In the Kom household, while boxing was not considered a sport, athletics was given a lot of importance. So Kom informed her parents that she was training to be in athletics. They happily let her go. However, truth has a way of sneaking in when you least expect it; one morning, Kom’s father was surprised to find his daughter’s picture in the newspaper. It was taken after she won the Manipur State Boxing Championship. After confronting Kom on the subject, she finally told them, and managed over a period of time to convince them. It is not too far from the truth that today they are the proudest set of parents in the country. After the Olympic Bronze, Kom became a household name. When she apologised to people back home for not winning the Gold, she managed to induce a few tears. When she came back, she was received with great love and admiration. Some said she is a role model, and some called her an inspiration. It is said that the road to success is seldom smooth. Kom knows it more than anyone else. Born in an economically weak family of Manipur, life was nothing short of a struggle. Each day, the parents worked hard to make ends meet. But they understood the importance of education and made sure that all four children went to school. Talking about her growing up years, Kom informs us that “[They] were difficult as we were very poor. I had to go to school, take care of my siblings, help my parents in the fields and still find time to study and train for sports.” Perhaps it was this everyday brush with poverty that made her the person she is today—disarmingly modest, humble to the core and absolutely genuine. So far in the conversation Kom has told us a lot, answering all questions as candidly as she can. But the one question that begs to be asked is: why boxing? How did she become interested in a sport which India barely notices? She tells us that the reason behind her interest was another boxer, who hailed from the same region—Dingko Singh. In the year 1998, Singh won the Gold at the Asian Games, and became a star overnight. Kom was in her teens and was awestruck by the way Singh was felicitated. “What inspired me to take up boxing was Dingko Singh’s performance at the Asian Games. He was given a hero’s welcome after that,” says Kom. “That was very inspirational for me and made me think of boxing as a possible future,” she adds. Such was the impact that Kom started training that very year. Other than Singh, Kom considers Muhammad Ali to be her inspiration. But then it is difficult to a find a pugilist who has not been touched by the magic that is Ali. Like her inspirations, Kom, too, is a fighter; she has fought injuries and bounced back to form. It was during the World Championships in 2006 when she fell severely ill during the finals. The match had to be stopped in the second round. After this, Kom took a two-year break. However, keeping away from one’s passion for too long is easier said that done. If records are to be believed, it did her more good than bad. Upon her return, she won a Silver at the Asian Women’s Boxing Championships, a Gold at AIBA Women’s World Boxing Championships and another Gold at the 2009 Asian Indoor Games. While medals and accolades were coming her way, the one thing which is considered to be the Mecca for any sportsperson— the Olympics—was a far cry. Till the 2012 Games, women’s boxing as a sport was not featured in the Olympics. Therefore, when they added boxing to the list, Kom knew what she had to do. Despite the fact that she had won several medals in the 48 and 46KG category, the Olympic rules meant that she had to gain weight. Kom now had to fight in the 51KG category and win a few fights to be a part of the Olympics team. Thus began a rigorous training regime in which she sweated for eight hours every day, in the morning and evening. The little time in between was spent with her family. Even that became impossible towards the end, when she had to be training away from her twins and her husband for almost 12 weeks, which she calls “a lifetime”. Then arrived the final moment. The Olympic glory came in the form of a well-deserved Bronze. This was no mean feat since Kom was fighting in a higher category— an unknown territory. But Kom does not believe in backing off. This time was no different. The life of any sportsperson involves travelling and being away from the family most of the time. So how does her husband cope with situations when he has to be the primary care giver of the family? If you like a love story with a strong hero, then read on. Kom met her husband Onler in Delhi in 2001, fell in love and married him on March 12, 2005. “Ours was a love marriage. He is my friend, philosopher and guide; my pillar of strength,” says Kom. Often when one partner is more popular than the other, things go sour. But in Kom’s case, her gallant hero was a lot stronger and secured about himself, than the run-of-themill mewling personalities. Not only did Onler become Kom’s pillar, he quit his job after the birth of their twins. Several years have passed, and the two remain blissfully married. Onler continues to make his family a priority and takes care of their children to let his exceedingly talented wife do what she does best—win. And with time, his contribution to her success has grown. “He is a loving husband and an outstanding father. Without him there would be no question of me having continued boxing.” After her Olympic victory, the Manipur Government announced a cash award of `50 lakh for her. She was also awarded a government job for which she admits being grateful. She also confesses that while the job has allowed her to live reasonably, life is still not a luxury. “It is only after the Olympic medal that we received financial support which would allow us to secure the future of our family,” she admits. But the Olympic medal has turned the tide to her favour. The acknowledgement might have come late, but it arrived. It has allowed Mary Kom to think of expanding her boxing academy in Manipur. She now talks about equal opportunity for all and encourages women to take up sports not for fun, but as a way of life. Despite all the hardships, she does not believe in frowning; after all she is a true sportsperson. We posed one last question, how confident was she about her chances, Kom says, “I always believed that I would win it. I was aiming for the Gold and apologise to the entire country for falling short this time.” We, too, apologise for not being more vocal—a star boxer, a super mom and a loving wife—there truly is something about Mary.

The molestation of a teenage girl on July 9, 2012 in Guwahati, Assam, which happened in full public view, was taped, recorded and then flashed across news channels, was just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of safety of women in India. Not a day passes without cases of atrocities against women, dominating the news headlines. A recent report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) revealed that the proportion of IPC crimes committed against women (to the total IPC crimes) has increased from 8.8 per cent in 2007 to 9.4 per cent during the year 2011

Yet the law and the judiciary has been inactive in dealing with the issues—there has been no radical overhaul of laws relating to rape or sexual assault. In fact, there has been a rather steady decline in the conviction rates of rapists with ever-fewer victims getting justice. The issue has become so serious that even the more reticent politicians of the country have started to comment on the phenomenon. During the recent Parliamentary session, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde remarked, “Serious crimes against women have continuously increased during the period 2009-11. We need to adopt appropriate measures for swift and salutary punishment to the persons found guilty of violence against women.” The Home Minister also added that police chiefs have to increase the number of women personnel in their respective organisations. “The overall representation of women in police forces should be increased through affirmative action. There are only 83,829 women police in our country as on January 2012,” he said. And Shinde stated several reasons for the rising graph of crimes against women. Relaxing of social norms, relaxing of family control, adverse sex ratio and proximity of colonies of the affluent with the underprivileged. Surprisingly, he found no fault with the Police in tackling crimes. However, most single women have some interface with police. Recent trespasses on women’s modesty have been more incriminating and often the perpetrators have been police personnel. There is an euphemism in India regarding harassment of women. It is sugar coated and shrouded in a sweet word called eve teasing. It is about women becoming recipients of hate attacks. It is about men turning into monsters. It is about women damned because she chooses to or has to work late. Because she dresses “wrong”. What is this twisted link that exists between what a woman wears and does and between her safety? What makes an institute such as Vivekananda Vidyavardhaka Sangha issue a mandate asking every female student and staff to wear bindis and bangles to ensure the safety of the people on campus. In India the answers are not clear. To understand the issue, DW spoke to two women— Urvashi Butalia, who runs India’s first feministic publication and to Brinda Bose, Associate Professor at Department of English, University of Delhi, for their take in the matter in our Issue of the month.

URVASHI BUTALIA// I am not sure that the recent spate of attacks that we have been witnessing currently are different from what we have seen in the past. The question is why we are seeing more of it. I believe that there are many reasons behind the rise. One of them is the increasingly sharp difference between the rich and the poor in the semi-urban and urban areas of the cities. Gated communities that are a part of the entire NCR and in several cities across India, create strong levels of distance and difference. They also exacerbate a lot of tensions which are already there, and just get sanctioned by the presence of such islands of prosperity. The fact of new kinds is that the jobs which have opened up as a result of globalisation have led to a lot of women joining the workforce, stepping out to do jobs that they did not do before. Although these (jobs) are not large in number, both the jobs and the women are becoming more and more visible. Women are also accessing spaces and going out more. There is a kind of anger in the society that is already suffering with such a lot of unemployment when they see half of the population successfully landing jobs. It is also a case of women being “those who are not supposed to get out to the field”, they are now taking a share of the limited pie. That and the fact that women perform quite well in the workplace, sometimes better than their male colleagues, and then return home to manage to take care of the household, creates jealousy, tension, anger and resentment of sorts among a lot of men. All that finds an expression in one kind of violence to which women are extremely vulnerable to, which is usually sexual in nature. I believe that there is also the fact that there is a kind of modernisation and modernity coming into India’s cities. A lot of women from the semi-urban and rural sections are stepping out into the cities and leaving their homes behind. These are not the women that we spot in the shopping mall or in the BPO or the IT sector, but are the domestic helps and the daily wage earners from Bihar or Jharkhand. They are the ones who are most vulnerable to exploitation because their earnings do not allow them to live in places which have a modicum of law and order, security or protection. There is a general breakdown of law and order. There is also a general breakdown of public infrastructure. The public spaces and travel vehicles are not equipped to provide that extra protection to the vulnerable people— why only the women, it is not safer for the senior citizens and the children, when the streets are badly lit and when the public transport is in shambles. Then there is a creamy layer of modern, urban, educated women who see no reason as to why they will have to lock themselves down in their houses, who feel that they have the right to be out on the streets—and rightly so. They too become targets and it seems that because they are doing that they are “asking for it”. I believe the collection of all these things leads to the thing that is always talked about—which is because some women dress in a particular way or they move around later in night, they are asking for it. In this of list reasons I would think it is at the bottom of the ladder. But it is a reason that gets most picked up; because it is convenient to state that women are moving out of the boundaries that have been set for them and thereby they are being targetted.

BRINDA BOSE// All of us realise that the problem of safety of women is a pan-Indian one. Because I have not systematically studied reports and tables on cases of violent attacks on women in India, I would not like to comment on the actual numbers. But there certainly appears to be a sense that they have increased, which I think is more to do with the fact that the issue has now become a focus of media interest, as well as the fact that there are more ways for stories to circulate in the media and more people accessing them. All of which is not a bad thing at all, if attention is drawn to the issue and it begins to knock on public consciousness in a much bigger fashion. As I said, it is probably that we know more because of greater reportage of attacks. It may also of course be due to other factors like more women being out and about the cities, more women living alone or driving alone today compared to a decade ago, but obviously the answer does not lie in women being less independent or more prudent and ‘careful’ but in the enhancement of safety measures in cities and the greater policing of crime. It is important that we see freedom for women to live and work and dress as they please as a right rather than as a blight on our society. All cities have always had a mix of different realities, spaces and classes, is that not what makes up a city? I am not comfortable with finding reasons for increased crime against women in the notion that it is bound to happen when rural boors have recourse to ogling sophisticated city women in the NCR—which is the purport of the idea that conflicting spaces are now slowly merging into one another, is it not? I think this is stereotyping the semi-urban and rural people most dangerously, and trying to fix scapegoats for what is a larger malaise. Of course, when there are interfaces between different communities and beliefs there may be clashes in expectation and reaction, but I think this is what makes an urban space exciting and dynamic, and would be true of inner-city neighbourhoods just as much as suburban ones. I am sure ‘citizen communities’ need to step up their efforts to spread greater and more urgent awareness about crimes against women as well as to make the spaces within their control safer for women to move freely in. Many of the crimes against women in latenight car-drops home from work are perpetrated because of the callousness of corporate employers in securing minimum safety for their female workers in particular. I do not know of the statistics in demographic spread of crimes against women, except that it is normal perhaps that some cities emerge as ‘safer’ than others for women, which may also be something to do with how many women go out to work, live alone, are out later at night—in terms of sheer numbers— in those cities comparatively, rather than to do with ‘northern’ or ‘southern’ or ‘western’ character, especially of men. It is quite likely that the number of such women in Delhi and the NCR are many times that of its equivalent in another city of the south or west of India—in which case the number of cases of assault against women will expectedly be higher in the north? I would not like to essentialise the character of any region as more brutish than another, but of course some cities are always far more dangerous to live in for women due to a large number of reasons. Finally, I do not think that the panels and commissions do enough, and yes, sometimes they do more damage because many of those who sit in power on them are incredibly conservative about women’s rights! They consider their function to be that of vigilantes rather than of securing freedom for women to live as they wish. If women, who head bodies set up to investigate and frame policies for controlling crime against women, harbour the deep-seated notion that women must behave according to certain norms set for them failing which they invite assault and violence, then they are policing the women instead of policing the criminals.

Have we come to see the world in a way that allows us to exercise and condone corruption?

CORRUPTION is hardly a new phenomenon in India but in the past few months we have seen corruption of a scale never witnessed before. Every week brings in a new scandal. Corruption seems to have moved beyond its permanent abode (viz politics and the bureaucracy) into sports, the military, media, the judiciary, religion and godmen and corporate India. It is clear that the problem does not relate to isolated individuals but is of a systemic nature. Of course, corruption is by no means unique to India. But we do manage an impressive ninth rank in the world corruption charts. According to the same study, 54 per cent of Indians claimed to have paid a bribe in the past one year. It begs the question as to whether there is a cultural element to this phenomenon, without descending into gross cultural stereotypes that speak of corruption as a character trait. Is it possible that corruption is a manifestation of the ways in which we have collectively learnt to respond to certain contexts? Have we come to see the world in a way that allows us to exercise and condone corruption? At the heart of the Indian response lies the ambivalent relationship we have with the idea of power, particularly that of power acquired through man-made mechanisms like a designation or political office. Power is seen less as an instrument of making an impact but more as a condition that modifies one’s born station. Power makes all of us rulers, whatever may be the size of the territories. The fondness of visible signs of power (sirens, badges, entourage), as with the extreme touchiness when the less powerful question us, all point to the implicit mental model of power we carry. The election exists to pick rulers not public servants and promotions anoint new despots. It is revealing to see how naked this model of power is; a despotic boss who rides roughshod over his subordinates sees nothing wrong in enacting rituals of greasy subservience in front of his own boss. The message is clear—hierarchy itself must be respected and all power and all modes of use of power are legitimate. Hierarchy exists in every facet of life and we measure ourselves anxiously with those against whom we benchmark ourselves. Even in the private sector there exists a presumption that one should be paid what one’s batchmate gets for no other reason than that the two lie on the same social platform. What this wholehearted embrace of power does, is to legitimise all forms in which it comes to be used. Separated from the purpose for which it was created, it lives on in its mutant form, and recognises few boundaries of right and wrong. A system gets created around this mode of using power. Institutional power that is acquired, rather than in-born, is particularly difficult to digest. Given the deeply-rooted nature of Indian social organisation, where everyone has a defined place, and there exists a great certainty about rules and conventions that govern our lives, we find it difficult to navigate a world where rules do not carry the same invisible certitude. Rules are so visibly constructed by human beings that they carry little moral sanctity. They become frameworks within which we carry out negotiations with local circumstances. New social formations do not have the heft of the older (more defining) categories such as the community. And we struggle with figuring out what is appropriate behaviour for a ‘neighbour’ or an ‘elected representative’. New rules do not imprint themselves with the same finality. The fact that we see everyone around us display the same ambivalence re-inforces the doubts we carry about them. The same does not apply when we are in a developed country; there it becomes apparent that these rules are non-negotiable. The idea of using acquired power for socially-correct reasons has never really been ingrained in us. For all the railing against corruption, in our personal lives we are happy to excuse ourselves from the prescriptions we proffer. The belief that our values are implanted within us, because of a past that is mythically rather than historically defined, makes it easier to believe that all actions are therefore suffused with values by definition. Actions comes pre-fitted with presumed propriety and the outside world is not taken that seriously. By giving the individual endless latitude in dealing with his immediate circumstances, we engage with the world as hagglers, trying to hustle a better deal. Every ounce of power earned becomes useful leverage in extracting a little more. In this view of the world, power is useless unless converted into some form of currency. The awareness of its transience lends urgency to this need. The powerful thus create a system around the extraction of value from their good fortune. Patronage, rather than competency, becomes the key operating principle. Every kacheri, RTO office and passport office has an institutionalised set of touts, brokers and middlemen who get the work done for a fee. Citizens can carry out some civil action if they so desired. But the truth is that even as we moan, we take no interest in dealing with the graft right in front of us. Is there a reason why we are seeing so much corruption today? A change that we have seen in the past few years is the entry of the market into more arenas of our life. It is interesting to note how easily India has embraced the market. As a mechanism, it carries great resonance with the Indian ability to see the world as a place where we carry out negotiations. The market has given everyone a common vocabulary in which to transact. The market legitimises the pursuit and use of power for personal gain. Of course, when regulated well, the market is not allowed to penetrate all walks of life. In India, given the learnt collective tolerance for the personal use of power, the market seems to be present everywhere. For now certainly we seem united by corruption.

A simple move to set up a school in NCR’s slums led to India’s first profit-for-all voluntary organisation

Holistic education is one which imparts an applicable set of skills. To do all that a child needs exposure to books—lots and lots of them along with newspapers, storybooks, and educated adults. But does an Indian child, especially he in that impoverished semi-urban, rural and urban fringes, receive all that help? Katha began its journey by asking this simple question. Its inference was obvious—basic, primary schooling in India left underprivileged children with a handful of textbooks (often hand-me-downs with pages missing) and zero exposure to reading. Whom does a child in a family of illiterates, wage-labourers turn to, to know more? Some successfully turn towards Katha, the voluntary organisation which helps India’s underprivileged children through their primary schools, reading centres and libraries. The best bit about Katha is the means they employ to teach the children enrolled with them. You thought education was only through boring text books. Think again, as even illustrated storybooks can be used to explain complicated issues such as nanotechnology, marine biology or trigonometry. As Executive Director of Katha Geeta Dharmarajan points out—what is a subject, if not a story waiting to be told? Today through cooperative action and activism, Katha brings together parents and teachers to boost children’s interest in reading. It brings together the colours of his or her country alive to children across socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural divides—with volunteers and community members. It brings storytelling techniques and expertise to people across age groups. The story of Katha starts some 2,000-3,000 years ago. We do not kid you. The New Delhi-based voluntary organisation derives its vision from the age-old educational traditions of Bharat, a land where learning was a pleasure activity, imparted through stories. “In India storytelling was always treated as the more effective form of learning. There were so many ways of telling a story; through theatre, dance recitals, and puppet theatre. And Bharata Natyashastra encompassed all these. Natyashastra was put in place to take the so-called knowledge of the Gods to humans on earth. We at Katha, have faith in the way in which communication was carried out 2,000-3,000 years ago, which always incorporated a pleasure principle. Learning was not arduous, tedious or difficult,” she adds. Katha began with an idea that students would learn through stories. In reality two kinds of stories—one for leisure and another for learning. The team also decided to source the right kind of stories from across the nation and the world. “Originally I hail from Tamil Nadu. It was there while working as the Director of Indian National Trust of Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and for an orphanage that my duties took to me to the rural sections on a regular basis. There while speaking to children, parents and teachers about education, health care and infrastructure, I always felt that the people carried within them a sense of defeat. They had reconciled to an idea that poverty was a matter of karma. Poverty is not about karma. It is a state that can be alleviated,” she adds. But before she could do more, Dharmarajan shifted to the National Capital Region. Her introduction to Delhi’s municipal schools was through Govindpuri; with its lakhs of people surviving in utter squalor and poverty. The schools she visited there had students who could barely read. It was then that she hit upon an idea of a magazine stocked with fun and informative tales, which made reading so much fun that children would put that extra effort in. In 1988, Tamasha was launched. It was to make stories from across the world come alive on paper, all translated in Hindi. Along with Tamasha, Dharmarajan also began the first library for children of Govindpuri (in Dharmarajan’s own garage). By the third issue Tamasha became a hit and UNICEF picked up quite some copies of it, providing a decent profit to Dharmarajan. With that sum (`20,000) and a year-old experience behind her, she officially started Katha on September 8, 1989. Their first project was to start a school at Govinpuri. Parents agreed to send their children to school. “We calculated that between all of us, we could manage 50 children. The parents had given us their consent to send the students. But around five turned up,” she remembers with a chuckle. It was then that this Executive Editor, and visionary, learnt her hard lesson—poor families did not send their primary bread-earners away to school. It was there that we found a figure (`600) which was required to put food on the table for a month. We started to pay the mothers that sum in exchange they would let us bring the children to school. Thus we started,” says Dharmarajan. Bribery was the way out then—presently the way has changed. And how. Lakhs of students are trained by the first batches of Katha schools. These children will one day, hopefully, train several more and the dominoes effect will pull the evil of illiteracy down. One glance through the pages of the website, it is easy to see their innovative methods have worked. Their students have also come back and joined Katha serving as trainees, teachers and accountants. These are people who are breaking the poverty-karma equation. Their dreams combined with Katha’s effort, gives a polish to the dream of India Shinning.

An interesting perspective on time but lacks originality

WHAT IF THERE were no clocks in the world? What if you did not know what time of the day it is or going to be? How different would the world have been? Would you have lived your life any differently? Mitch Albom’s latest novel The Time Keeper urges you to ponder over these questions and makes you wonder the relevance of man’s obsession with measuring every second of the day, every day of the month. An author relevant to his times, Albom chooses an unusually interesting protagonist to help his readers understand the “meaning of life” or the meaning of time—the inventor of the world’s first clock—Father Time. As is his usual style, the novel shuffles between two timelines (the past and the present) with three story tracks running parallel to one another. One is a story of a man (Father Time) obsessed with counting everything that is humanly possible, set in a centuries old era when no time measuring devices had been invented on earth, and the other two are the tales of two modern-day individuals (a teenage girl and an old, wealthy businessman) who are used to measuring time as the most natural process of their lives. The young girl, hurt in love, wants to end her life, while the old businessman diagnosed with cancer, wants to bypass death and live forever. Albom paves the way for an interesting yet trite perspective on the most precious thing man considers today after money, when Father Time meets the girl and the businessman to teach them the value of time. He learns this lesson himself after being banished to a cave for centuries and forced to understand the phenomenon he had set in motion by counting time. There are a few obvious references to Biblical stories which I did not find too appealing. And around the end of the novel, Father Time assumes the role of Dickens’ The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come to show characters their future. Yet as always, Albom’s everyday characters make it very easy for the reader to relate to them and work well for him. The novel is thought-provoking though some of its lessons—it is never too soon and never too late for spending more time to be with the people you love—are reminiscent of Morrie’s aphorisms from Albom’s debut novel Tuesdays with Morrie. Hailed as his most heartfelt novel yet, The Timekeeper is inspiring, as long as you have not read any of his others.