THERE ARE several aspects to a university becoming world class. The most important aspects of these are—faculty, students and the research and learning that occur as a result of the interaction between the two. The university facilitates interaction between teachers and students resulting in research and higher learning with active involvement and support of the industry, community and the government. Thus, the quality of faculty and students that a university has is crucial in making it excel. Conduct socially relevant research and make students socially conscious. It is the quality faculty and students that ensure quality research, which is an extremely important component for a university to be classified as world class. Today education and research go hand in hand, as textbooks become obsolete even before they are printed. Excellence in research comes from establishing practices like a strong performance incentive in the form of grants from both industry and government for the faculty. These incentives however, must be tied up with accountability. The societal relevance of the research and students that a university produces is being recognised as more important criteria than the kind of jobs that the students land. Universities around the world are recognising that they need to be committed to carrying out research, projects and higher learning that benefits society. Billions of dollars may be poured into research, but if that research is not helping our society to prosper, then it is really not worth it.

The second point is to give autonomy and support to visionary founders. Universities in India are relatively young compared to universities in the West. So, in a way we are still trying to figure out our path. Universities require visionary founders and management who must have autonomy to chalk out the course for the university. This is how many top universities in the US were founded. If you look at corporations in India, this is how they have found a place in the international arena. Just 20 years ago, there were no Indian companies big enough to figure in the international reckonings even in the field of information technology. But today many top IT companies in the world are from India, thanks to their visionary founders, resources and freedom to compete in the market. Similarly, if some of the Indian universities with visionary founders get the right opportunity, they have the potential to emerge as the best in the world. Increase appetite for risk.

Indian institutions must increase their appetite for risk in order reach an international stature. This risk-taking percolates to different levels. It means encouraging entrepreneurial initiatives, putting in place some sort of a tenure system with performance linked promotion and tying up faculty compensation to grants. These are some of the standard practices that US universities employ to ensure they have dedicated faculty. At a vision level, I would like to quote our Chancellor Amma: “Learning and research should be important for life and not only for earning a living. It is very important to give a wholesome, holistic, well-rounded training to students so that when they graduate, they have the right perspective which brings them a lot of fulfilment in life.” What we also need is social vision. Sensitisation of students towards societal problems and the community around them is important. They have to realise that money is not the only factor that makes a difference in life. Getting involved in the problems of society and looking at ways to improve the situation at the grass roots and solve reallife situations is important. It is these students who will develop affordable healthcare for people who cannot pay high medical costs and address problems of environment, energy and water. The thought process that needs to go into such innovation comes only from interaction of the university with society. Hence it is one of those issues that should be given top priority.

My advice to the students would be to work as a team; in the modern context, working as a sort of a team is important. Our students take action in the face of uncertainties and don’t approach a project or a problem with maturity. The whole approach of the education system seems to create only students who can sit in front of computers as glorified typists, and textbooks become obsolete even before they hit the stands.

Teachers and students look for world-class content through open source as an alternative. Rural internships, implementing theoretical knowledge into practical situations and risk-taking abilities through innovative projects as suggestions to overcome the problem of making our graduates employable. Computer languages, algorithms...they constantly change.

Students need to keep pace with changes and develop an attitude to learn continuously. They should not be apprehensive of new situations that need innovative solutions. Also a problem to lament is the fact that creativity has made a silent exit from the educational system and so has the concept of entrepreneurship. The current educational system focuses on how efficiently to solve an old problem rather than finding out creative ways to solve new problems. Human beings are endowed with creative intelligence, which they should put to good use.

Once a student completes his or her education, the employment field is no longer segmented into mechanical, chemical, electrical or information technology. All that matters us whether he or she could solve problems and, problem solving becomes much easier when it is approached in multidisciplinary teams. People of different capacities should work together as a team to solve common work problems. A country like India needs to develop the culture of working together. We should not become a mediocre nation. Attend as many workshops and meetings and present papers and participate in debates.

Such conferences act as platforms, which gave birth to new ideas. Students should also get into the culture of research. For Western universities, our country offers opportunities for finding out solutions. The nature of the country’s problems is something countries in the West had not yet experienced. Indians should wake up to the need of finding out solutions for their problems and not wait for others to give them solutions.

The question now is can private universities help? It makes perfect sense for private universities to be teaching factories.

First, there is an ever-growing demand for higher education. Around five million Indians enter the 15-to-24 age group each year. Many more of them are interested in a college degree today than in the past. Public universities are in no position to absorb such large numbers of college-ready young women and men. Private institutions have inevitably stepped in to meet this growing demand.

Second, there is little teaching at most public institutions making students spending a fortune on private tuitions.

It perhaps makes more sense for students to pay higher tuition at private institutions with the expectation that they will actually get to attend lectures on a regular basis and perhapsacquire the necessary knowledge and skills to be meaningfully employed.

Third, appearances do matter. Step into the campuses of public institutions and then visit their private counterparts. Public institutions don’t have the feel and sense of modern educational institutions. Spider webs in classrooms and passages, broken furniture, empty laboratories and stinking toilets can hardly inspire the new generation of students.

Fourth, except for a few, there is no exit option for the majority of Indian students. More than 1 lakh students do head abroad for higher education but this number is quite small as a share of the total number of students entering college each year. Most of them have nowhere to “run” and must choose between crumbling public universities and shining private ones. Sixth, many students entering college, as well as their parents, do not have any real idea about what college education is all about. They are only too relieved and happy that some sort of foeducation is available. Private institutions can get away with providing bread crumbs to the less-informed and starved.

Here are some of the toolkits in social media space that will make your task that much simpler

Making the decision for your organisation to be on the social media bandwagon is really the easy part these days, a no-brainer even. It’s when you get down to business do you come across one of the most unrecognised hurdles of social media management—picking the right tools to manage your social media efforts. Too often have I seen folks getting hung up on evaluating tools to figure out what is the best tool for the job… and before they know it, days (if not weeks) have passed, and they’re no further down the road than the day they started! To remedy this situation exactly, we have compiled a list of tools—a social media toolkit, if you will—to get you started down the path.

HOOTSUITE:

HootSuite does two things, and does them extremely well—monitor all your social media feeds in one application and schedule your posts across a range of platforms and from a number of accounts in advance. Start using HootSuite and you can preprogramme your posts to follow a structured, automated and efficient workflow. Clearly, the ability to structure your post frequency means that HootSuite works better for businesses focused on pushing out content and “thought leadership” style posts to their audience. The product by itself has multiple levels of membership—both free and paid—but you can probably get away with the free version for a while, at least. Just keep in mind—this tool is clearly foroutbound communication, and does not replace good ol’ human interaction with your audience!

SOCIAL MENTION:

One-way conversations rarely work, right? It is equally important you are listening not only to your audiences but also to the social web at large, and Social Mention lets you do just that—monitor news sources, web sites, blogs or microblogs and a lot more—for key terms that may relate to your brand or industry segment. Each of these terms is measured in terms of the sentiment associated with the mention and who or what the source of these mentions was. Not only does this tool give you a high-level view of how your brand is perceived socially, it also gives you direct insight into opportunities where your brand can engage with individual influencers to set right misconceptions or quell rumors before they gain traction. Naturally, Social Mention suits businesses with some degree of social media presence—if you’re just starting out on the social media journey, none of the metrics will show any meaningful data. The best part? This is a free tool, so you can start using it from day one with no additional outlay.

TWEETREACH:

Active on twitter, and plan to run contests and other user engagement campaigns on the micro-blogging service? Tweetreach can then identify the reach and exposure for the hashtag you’ve selected for the contest/event —what this will do is show you not only what size audience the contest has reached, but the ability to see who has interacted with your hashtag or brand (i.e. retweeted and mentioned).

For a similar monitoring service for Facebook/ LinkedIn, consider Social Bakers, which offers competitive social media intelligence at substantial cost saving compared with a dedicated social media research agency.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS:

Your website is a key component to your social media measurement, and the level of insights that Google Analytics reveals about your site, your categories/sections and the audience is unparalleled, and not just because this tool is a free offering.

With Google Analytics, you can create custom reports and even track specific customers, and gather valuable information about which posts or pages attract the most visitors, and get social analytics for insight on how they interact, and more critically, whether your social media efforts are paying off! Of course, if you’re advertising on the web, the tool can also measure how much you are selling online and how well your ads are performing.

And that’s it—with this pick of tools, you have enough to get started to interact, listen and monitor your social channels. Of course, you can look at the excellent compilations in the links below for further tools for your specific needs once you’ve gotten your own social media workflow in place.

The Saga of the Facebook Feet Photos and the Tales They Tell

IF YOU’VE EVER posted a photo of your feet on Facebook, chances are that you have been reminded of those famous words from the Hindi film Pakeezah while doing so: ‘Your feet are very beautiful, don’t put them on the ground’. I say this with a-bathtubis- a-swimming-pool kind of conviction because I did: for the longest half a minute that my slow internet connection took to upload the photo to my ‘Profile Pictures’ album, my eyes played ping pong between two things–the photo of my feet and my ‘real’ feet, peeping out from behind the laptop. The camera had inflicted a version of persecution complex on me for decades: I am terribly nonphotogenic. Even my feet had not been able to escape that curse.

It was one of my first profile photos on Facebook, a time when I was faceless and thus optically anonymous. I had few ‘friends’ then–I hadn’t yet begun to say ‘yes’ to strangers. My ex-classmates from school and university were curious to see how I had aged. A photo of my foot, in spite of no anti-ageing cream ever applied on it, would be of no help to them. I now find that there are only three ‘likes’ below my feet. This is the moment I regret being human. If I was a Hindu goddess, there would be 83 million ‘likes’ on the photograph, a version of the virtual pranam. My mother, Facebook-illiterate but ever the curious onlooker from behind my back, asked whether I considered my feet ‘special’ (she always uses the word in quotes), special in the way Goddess Lakshmi’s is, she whose footprints are drawn in Hindu households in Bengal on Lakshmi Purnima night.

Over the next four years on Facebook, I found many kinds of feet, but it was of my mother’s mention of the goddess’s feet that came back to my every time. For all these feet that I spotted on profile and cover and Timeline photos belonged to women alone. What were the men doing with their feet? I asked a friend who works for Facebook. ‘Playing footsie,’ he replied with a winking emoticon. The mention of male feet immediately takes me to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, where Crusoe, alone on the uninhabited island, discovers Friday’s footprints before he actually sees the man in person. And then there are Velutha’s feet in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. The absence of photos of male feet in my Facebook news feed directed my attention to the kind of men Friday and Velutha were: perhaps only the feet of the marginalised male could be made visible in the arts? The amateur sociologist in me reasoned– perhaps that explains why the fetish of foot binding, also called ‘lotus feet’ is meant only for Chinese women, not their men folk.

Facebook feet told stories. In late July this year, Alexandra Pringle, Editor in Chief at Bloomsbury Publishing, posted a photo of her feet resting on a table. Her nails were painted in a shade of red, a large cushion rested against a wall, a patch of sunlight fell on her legs–she had titled the photograph ‘Afternoon, Early Evening’. There were two comments below the photograph: ‘Nice case of the welldeserveds’; ‘Great toes’. The first was by a man, the second by a woman. In my mind, the photograph arranged itself in the mental folder that I have tentatively titled ‘Holiday Feet’. A fortnight later, a day after Indian Independence Day, I found a similar photograph: this time it was Trishna Chaudhuri, a teacher in The Sri Ram School in Gurgaon, who had put up her feet on the table in her balcony. The photo was titled ‘Brishti, garam chai and the newspaper’ (‘Rain, a cup of steaming tea and the newspaper’). Both Pringle and Chaudhuri’s photos of their respective feet were coded in leisure, a literal putting-my-feet-up.

Exactly midway between the time of Pringle posting her photo and Chaudhuri posting hers, Sukanya, one of my closest friends from school, had posted a photo of two pairs of feet from a recent holiday– my friend in her sandals, her daughter in her running shoes. I found this to be a subgenre of the Facebook foot photograph–in them, the steppinginto- my-shoes is tweaked to indicate a bloodline, a genealogy that can be traced through similar shaped feet and toes and nails. It’s a genre that never fails to stir the wannabe anthropologist in me–is that a part of the genetic inheritance, I ask myself, similar feet in various sizes that turns my computer screen into a shoe store. In one such photograph posted by the journalist and writer Smriti Lamech, she, her mother and five year old daughter are wearing silver anklets. This photograph of the ‘happy feet’ of three generations of women, where the feet are resumes of age and economic class, is the best ‘happy-family’ photo I have seen on Facebook yet.

The genre also includes photos of footwear, often of the kind that reminds me of Ernest Hemingway’s famous six word short story, ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ Chandini Santosh, a poet who often writes about her homebound lonely life, once posted this as a Facebook update: ‘So I am taking my stilettos to the beauty parlour, sigh. At least, they should have an outing.’ Photographs of shoes, one half of a pair, sometimes with the wearer’s foot in them, make Cinderellas of many Facebookers just as red altapainted feet make brides of women in our Facebooking imagination.

Recently, I found two interesting ‘Cover Photos’ on the Facebook page of Radhika Iyengar, Features Writer with Platform Magazine. In one, taken in Uttarakhand, a woman’s toes, with silver toe rings on them, peep out from under her red sari. She must be from a village, I conclude. In the other, a slipper with red marks on it is lying on sand, possibly a sea beach. In this too, the identity of the wearer is not revealed. That is, in my reading, a kind of subversion of Facebook’s privileging of the face. (Some day, I would like to post a photo of my bandaged feet as my identifying photo.)

Type ‘feet’ in your Facebook search box and you will find ‘more than 1,000’ results. It’s a buffet: happy feet, six feet under, fancy feet, feet fetish, kiss your lady’s feet, cute Indian feet, Soft Indian feet, Indian sexy feet, and so on. When I type in my password to enter Facebook these days, I often think of the ‘Please remove your shoes’ sign that stands guard in front of our places of worship, and when I log out, of my Facebook footprint.

How Anasuya Gupta transformed CICO Group, an 80-year-old construction chemicals company against formidable challenges—little business experience, a huge personal loss and tangible scepticism from those around her

The article got us thinking: all things remaining the same— customers, products, employees—does a company change when the gender of its C-suite does? Especially, when there’s more Venus, for example. To answer that, we couldn’t have hoped for a better story to tell than that of Anasuya Gupta, managing director and chairperson, CICO Group, a Delhi-headquartered construction chemicals company. In March 2008, Gupta had to take over the company after her third-generation entrepreneur husband Amit Gupta passed away. Needless to say, it was an incredibly difficult time for Gupta— faced as she was with personal loss, two young children grieving their father and an established business that was jittery about its future. Yet, Gupta, essentially a homemaker till then, has done much more than just douse those fears. In the past five years, that she has led the company, it has been on a consistent upswing— both in terms of business growth and operational efficiency—thanks to the many qualities Buchanan mentions in her story about good leadership; qualities that Gupta seems to have in heaps. In fact, Gupta caught my attention precisely because she demonstrated a key qualityBuchananmentions— vulnerability—with such ease at the Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network in Istanbul where I happened to meet her in early June. Instead of first telling me about the huge business impact she’s had in the past five years (including doubling the company’s turnover, and completely buying back its private equity investors’ share), she spoke candidly about how she had personally navigated the ropes of business, including coaching her male colleagues on why they couldn’t use the ladies bathroom! Hers is an interesting journey on many accounts, and a worthy case study of transformative leadership. Read on to see the changes she brought on at CICO Group, and how:

Professionalism Discipline

I believe women are detail-oriented; sometimes, to the point of micro-managing. I’m like that too. In contrast, my husband’s policy was “Let Go. Let Be.” I have a certain image of what the office should look like, and that our employees should be well presented. I once even told one of our male employee to shave. In fact, I brought it up at a town hall meeting, saying untended facial hair was not acceptable. Each employee is an ambassador of the company, and each one must look professional. My daughter is constantly mortified that I say these things but it’s important to articulate, I think. Also, when I joined the business, I made a decision to make a few people redundant because I knew they would be roadbloacks in the journey ahead, including a few people who were very close to my husband. My husband never let go of people—ever. People just chugged along, sometimes without adding to their skills, or improving themselves. I view it differently. We have to demonstrate we are a highpotential company. So, when you condone under-performance, you’re setting the wrong culture. What’s the incentive for somebody to be an outstanding performer when even mediocre performers get the same benefits? It was important to be meritocratic and professional. We’ve tried to attract some really good talent, and bring in new people. In the past five years, we’ve also moved from Tally to ERP. We created a proper HR function. The biggest pat on my back really was when CICO won the Best Professionally Managed Organisation in our category at the 5th CIDC Vishwakarma Award 2013. I didn’t go up to the podium to receive the award though. I sent my AVP because I said if we’re getting an award for being a professionally managed company, a professional should go up to get it. This gentleman was so embarrassed. But I told him I was applauding from the audience, and he had to go up. I wanted to send a message to the company that we are a professional organisation, and that is something we deeply value.

Collaboration & Teamwork

One of the first things I noticed when I came in was that people didn’t work in teams at all. They worked in silos, and decisions were taken individually. The left hand didn’t know what the right one was doing. There would be instances where we couldn’t execute efficiently on orders because the chemical needed wasn’t available in the country. I understood what was wrong when I began asking basic questions—had the sales team spoken to the production people before taking the order, or why didn’t we get a particular business after qualifying for its tender specifications? Had anybody talked to sales to find out? More often than not, the answer would be no. I began to fix that. Today, we work in teams. For example, we have a pricing committee now unlike before where only one person would decide the price but when we went out into the market, we couldn’t sell because that price was too high. Yet, it was impossible to get the head of pricing to be flexible. Coming down on price was a big no-no. Now, the pricing committee has three people; and one person from sales has to be there for meetings so we get a sense of the market. It’s important to get all viewpoints, and it’s so easy to do that in the era of BBM and WhatsApp. It takes two seconds to ask—can we go up 50 paise, or come down a rupee? Forget functional teams or managers, even I don’t take decisions singlehandedly. I may agree to disagree. And, sometimes I might push a decision through. But, I listen to all viewpoints, and then take a decision. My husband had the advantage of the company being on his fingertips and he didn’t need to reach out as much for advice. I’ve managed so far only because I asked a lot of questions. A key advantage of being a woman is that we have the strength to say, “I don’t know.” A lot of men don’t do that. I find it very easy in meetings to say—can I get a minute to call my office and find out, or that I’ll come back with the details later. I owe this ability to my B.Ed. education. During that training many years earlier, I was taught that if you go into class, and a child asks a question, don’t camouflage if you don’t know. Don’t fudge an answer. Tell them you’ll find out and let them know. That’s been a big lesson in my life. In any case, nobody knows everything; we’re all learning all the time.

To me, this honest give and take of views and ideas is so critical a need for running a business that I’ve ordered round tables instead of the rectangular tables we have in our conference rooms. In a circle, you feel everybody’s voice is equal, as it should be. Otherwise, the notion of the “head of the table” creates a wrong impression and builds unnecessary hierarchies.

Ambitious Buy-Back

Fortunately, things have changed a lot in the past few years. When I took over in March 2008, we had a turnover of `38 crore. We have nearly doubled that and closed FY2013 with `65 crore. Also, we have managed to buy back the 45.33 per cent share that private equity investor Actis had in our company. They had come on board as investors in May 2000. Buying back our share was one of the biggest challenges I’d set for myself when I joined.

I would keep telling our employees that I want this to be your company entirely, and we must meet that objective together. So, we did our first buy back of 22.67 per cent in May 2010, and followed that up a year later with 11.33 per cent in May 2011. Our final buy back of the remaining 11.33 per cent happened in August 2012. I was certain as soon as I joined that I didn’t want to be questioned about the way I wanted to grow the business, or having to report to our investors. I wanted the company to reflect our voice, to be a vehicle for our ambitions. Today, our 200 people are located across five manufacturing units in Gurgaon, Haridwar, Kolkata, Chennai and Kasna. This isn’t an industry dominated by women.

I’m often walking into conference rooms and seminar halls full of men. The DWEN conference has been such a rarity—I’ve never seen so many business women together!

Diversity & Sensitivity

I think the men have adapted very well to the changes that have taken place in our workplace. There is definitely more respect for women. This is a brick and mortar company. I remember when I came in, I would see people call out to even women with a casual “aye”. I made it clear in an open forum that this was not okay to do. There’s no abusive language anymore. Because women weren’t in leadership positions in CICO before, people didn’t have to watch their actions as much. A more civilised, sensitised workplace is important to me. But, to be honest, I’m not always conscious about being a woman first, and then an MD. The gender ratio has improved at CICO since I have joined. I’ve made efforts to do that but it’s been difficult. I got in a lot of women at first but I have to confess I got tired. So many women I brought in disappointed me; they didn’t seem to have their priorities right. So, I decided, “Ok, let the men come in.” My intentions were good but I got disheartened. So, I gave up for a while. Now, I’ve restarted the process because when women are focused, their results are much better. For example, there’s this young girl in my office—28 years old who is part of the sales force team. She’s from West Bengal, and is posted in Gujarat right now. She uses a moped, and has done a tremendous sales job. She’s been a great inspiration. I thought if we could get a few more women like her, the impact on the organisation would be huge. So, now, I’ve started looking at positions where I think women can really be very successful. See, you can’t completely negate or deny the social context. There are some roles, areas, or factories where I don’t think sending women would be wise. This time, I’m not going to give up easily. It might not work out but I don’t want to have regrets that I didn’t try. As Sheryl Sandberg says, “Don’t leave before you leave.”

Cinema, and its struggles, with the depiction of the Bharatiya nari

THERE HAS BEEN much discourse recently on depictions of women in Indian cinema, with anger expressed about manifestations of misogyny—from “item numbers” that objectify women to scenes where the hero “woos” an reluctant heroine. It is imperative to have these conversations: after all, cinema is a influential medium, and this is a country where a large percentage of the population is under-educated and brought up to never question the assumptions of a deep-rooted patriarchal “tradition”. But it is also true that righteous anger sometimes get conflated with the knee-jerk snobbery that has been directed towards mainstream Hindi cinema for decades—and that when the two things combine it can lead to the forming of simplistic analyses. Before rushing to condemn, it is important to understand the attitude that a particular film has towards its own subject. A film that shows a hero running after a heroine can amount to a glorification of stalking—an endorsement of a dangerous idea that a woman’s “no” secretly means “yes” or “umm…well…maybe…if you try a little harder”. But if done with selfawareness, such a scene might also tell us something useful about the workings of an orthodox milieu where girls are conditioned to believe that they must never be the initiators in a relationship— that they must protect their “dignity” and not be desirous—while boys are conditioned to think that they must be the first-movers. It must be possible for a film to be a mirror to a society without implying that “this is how things should be.” The process of interpreting a film about a delicate subject— say, gender equations or communal violence—raises questions about the relationship between a society and its art or popular culture. For instance: should art necessarily set out to be corrective or prescriptive? Does a wellintentioned filmmaker have a responsibility to make his own moral position as clear as possible; to spell it out for less-sophisticated viewers? I don’t think such questions can have definite, context-free answers: they are useful as conversation-initiators. The answers will also vary from one viewer to the next. As a relatively privileged male, I know that my perspective on misogyny in cinema is necessarily a limited one. But I also know that at least a few of my women friends (intelligent, sensitive viewers) found nothing ill-intentioned about the recent film Raanjhanaa that has been denounced in some circles for its “glamorising” of the “stalker-hero”. It is tempting to believe that these issues are new—symptoms of a morally corrupt age—but they have really been around for decades. When Raj Kapoor slaps Nargis around and drags her by her hair in Awaara while she accepts, even welcomes, the treatment as her due, is this a endorsement of how men should behave with women or is it (given the context of the film’s narrative and its character types) a depiction of what might happen in a very specific situation? One can note that Kapoor’s films have often shown a somewhat disturbing, puritanical attitude to the female form. But as Camille Paglia once pointed out, male artists—from Botticelli to Alfred Hitchcock—have often had complex, ambivalent feelings about women that they grapple with and try to resolve through the creative process. This does not imply that the disturbing interpretations of their work are the only “correct” ones. In 1960, Hrishikesh Mukherjee made a lovely movie titled Anuradha, about a woman who forsakes her singing career and moves to a village with her doctor-husband. One scene has a male character—a figure of authority—delivering a flamboyant speech about the capacity of women to suffer and make sacrifices for the nation. Listening only to this speech, which comes at a key point in the story, you might think the film is endorsing the idea that a woman’s place is at home while the man’s profession is more important. But on a scene by scene basis, Anuradha is consistently sensitive to its heroine’s need for self-actualisation. In one mesmeric sequence, she sings in the presence of two men—her husband, who is barely paying heed to her song, and an old friend who is giving her all the attention she deserves, and there is no doubt where the viewer’s sympathies should lie. All this said, it is true that mainstream Hindi cinema has often relegated women to ciphers. In many cases, mothers and sisters in particular were not so much fleshed-out people but convenient foils for the male hero—our film history is dotted with mothers mollycoddling narcissistic sons (and this again may be a reflection of a society where mothers of convicted rapists routinely beg for “leniency” for their ladlaa). There is an inbuilt dichotomy in portrayals of mainstream movie mothers going back at least to the 1950s: on the one hand, the mother is someone to be worshipped, to be placed above all else; on the other hand, she has no personality of her own. She might as well be a Goddess statue made of cheap clay.

Which is why it has been heartening to see more varied and dynamic portrayals—and a willingness to break stereotypes—in the multiplex era of the last decade. We have, for instance, a Jaane Tu...Ya Jaane Na in which the terrific Ratna Pathak Shah plays a wisecracking mom who is a pal to her son, and whose banter with her dead husband’s wall-portrait marks a 180-degree twist on every maudlin wall-picture scene from movies of an earlier time. Or there is the Kirron Kher character in Dostana, initially dismayed about the possibility that her son is homosexual, but eventually coming around, gifting bangles to her “daughter-in-law” and wondering if traditional Indian rituals might accommodate something as alien as gay marriage. These scenes are played for laughs—and Dostana is an often facetious film—but they do touch on real cultural conflicts and on the ways in which parents from conservative backgrounds often have to change to keep up with the times. We should be grateful for this new-found variety and irreverence. In fact, one good way for Hindi cinema to start depicting women as sentient people—warts and all—is to start at the grass-roots level and puncture that ultimate holy cow, the sanctified mother. The rest will hopefully follow.

Ride handcrafted Made-in-India Bambikes to derive extra mileage for a greener environment

How about taking a Bambike ride to office today? It promises physical exercise, fresh air and in addition reduces your carbon footprint on Mother Earth. Sounds interesting, right? The architect of India’s Bambikes, Vijay Sharma, passionately desires that more people take to cycling for the health and ecology benefits that it packs in its pedals. It is this singular wish that is driving him to persist with building these eco-friendly Bambikes despite the fact that he has not yet found many buyers in the country for his creation. The bike though has created plenty of buzz in the India and abroad.

The first Bambike or bamboo bike in India was crafted by Bengaluru-based Sharma in 2009. But Sharma does not claim any patent for this innovation as he says, “The first bamboo bike was made in 1898 in England.” It is a different matter altogether that the invention did not succeed at that point of time due to its faulty design.

“But after about a hundred years it’s a rediscovery I would say,” adds Sharma talking about his innovation.

The popularity of Sharma’s Bambike pans across the globe. From Mauro Vanoli, a bike enthusiast from Italy who came down to Bengaluru to get a customised mountain terrain bike (MTB) made at Sharma’s workshop, to the German granny who was on a mission to travel across the world on her bike in 10 years, and chose Bambike for her forward journey after meeting Sharma in Bengaluru in 2010—Sharma undoubtedly has a long list of admirers.

The faith of his patrons is not misplaced. In the first dynamic testing in 2010, under the Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) testing at TI Cycles in Chennai, the Bambike underwent 200,000 vibrations and emerged unscathed. The test entails only 100,000 vibrations. It proved beyond doubt that the bamboo bike was as tough as a steel frame one.

For Sharma, “The Eureka moment was when the R&D department from TI Cycles, Chennai, called me with the result of the JIS test. It was a great experience to see people’s reaction when they saw the Bambike for the first time. Everyone had one question: “Will it break?” And I would reply: No it won’t, it is as strong as steel. They would ride it and would not believe that bamboo can be such a strong material.”

Sharma, an alumnus of the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, credits his creative skills to his carpenter father whose workshop was his childhood playground. Perhaps the reason he was always keen to have his own space— a workshop. When his wife Niyati bought a bicycle to commute to work in 2008-09, his interest in bicycle design was aroused and he started researching online. Meanwhile, after a short stint at a furniture design company, he set up his own workshop in collaboration with two friends—6mm Designs and Furniture. Interestingly though, it was not a bicycle but a tricycle or a trike that first rolled out of Sharma’s workshop. The next invention was what he called a unique Tandem Trike. Both the varieties were an instant hit in Bengaluru, especially with kids, to whom Sharma would give free rides as a reward for doing their homework.

The first Bambike prototype weighed 15 kg, 2 kg less than conventional steel frame bikes. Built on the request of friend and business partner Vaibhav Kaley for one of the latter’s friends, Sharma says, it had a slight design fault. The prototype that entailed hours of internet research and took just three days and `10,000, had, in Sharma’s words, “a problem of fishtail effect”.

With the first Bambike picture being uploaded on the internet by a friend, Sharma, however, got international attention. Craig Calfee, US-based bamboo bike maker offered collaboration while enquiries from Europe also poured in. But Sharma had a different path chalked out for himself. He wanted his bikes to be made indigenously and remain affordable for India.

The first prototype was soon refined to perfection. The first Bambike was made with raw bamboo using metal sleeves on junctions. “I overcame the bobbing problem in the second prototype where I used a hollow bamboo stick instead of a solid one. It reduced the physical weight of the bamboo (to 12 kg) as well as made the frame stiffer.” The metal sleeves were replaced by hemp fibre and the prototype was made with thicker bamboo sections with a jig to hold all members and important junctions like bottom brackets, rear drop out, head tube and seat tube. All the parts were glued together. Sharma explains, “While making the first Bambike I had not thought of a jig.” A jig is a metal frame used as a reference for mass production while joining different parts to make an object so that all pieces are identical, he explains.

While the average speed of these bikes is the “same as normal bikes depending on how fit a person is and how fast he can pedal,” as Sharma says, the intrepid inventor put his innovation through tough tests to prove its strength. Soon after the first prototype, Sharma became associated with Ride-a-Cycle Foundation that promotes cycling as an eco-friendly measure. Arun Katiyar of the Foundation, who proved a valuable guide to the innovator, encouraged Sharma to test his bike at the Tour of Nilgiris (TIF). So Sharma built a special MTB for the 8-day, 900km rally in December 2009, which came out tops. It also garnered wide media attention.

Asked about his journey since the first prototype in May 2009 to now, the humble innovator says, “Well I am very much where I used to be—still working on my furniture and bikes, as and when I get orders. I have been exploring using wood to make a bike for children.” He admits, “Though lots of recognition has come to me, I have not sold many bikes in India.” To be precise, as Sharma elaborates, “There is not much demand for these bikes in India, but abroad there is for sure. Out of the 12 bikes I have sold, only two have been sold here.”

The starting price of the handcrafted bikes, each of which is a piece of pure aesthetics, is `25,000 ($ 417.43). The cost goes up as per customisation requirement. But Sharma remains unfazed by the slow uptake and in 2012 tied up with a Manipur NGO to train indigenous people in the craft. The target is to produce 1,000 bikes by 2014. “Making a single bike takes up to 15 days now as there is a lot of customisation involved and it is a labour intensive process,” says Sharma. “From the first prototype till today there have been improvements in terms of incorporating high quality parts in the bike. What has changed is the geometry and accessories used in the bikes.” The Bambike’s eco-friendly credentials are unarguable. As Sharma says, “It is much a sustainable design since we are using seven types of bamboo which are naturally grown rather than steel or aluminum which has its own carbon footprint. In addition bamboo has tensile strength, consumes less energy compared to metals and also is better-suited for rough terrain given its better shock absorbing powers.” Despite all the advantages, the reason for the lack of a market for Bambikes here, Sharma feels, is because “people are reluctant to buy at the current price. I guess it can be made cheaper if it is produced in numbers.” The innovator who admits he “has no concrete plans for the future and I guess I will keep making bikes as and when I get orders and try new things,” adds, “I would be happy to have them made in good quantity so that people can afford them. It requires only a couple of days for a person to learn how to make a frame. I feel I am an artisan myself and can teach others but maybe I cannot make a big industry out of it. For that I may require someone else’s help.”

We sure do hope someone out there is listening. For, this is one right cause.

India’s future roadmap through the eyes of its young parliamentarians.

INDIA–THE FUTURE Now is a promising book. It promises a greater future for India, as envisaged in the 12 essays penned by the country’s young, dynamic under-40 parliamentarians. The writers through clear prose develop arguments that demonstrate their deep understanding of the country and at the same time lead to visionary solutions, crafted meticulously by their pens. The young Members of Parliament (MPs) certainly have their finger on the pulse of the nation.

But undoubtedly, the most remarkable piece in this compendium is the introduction by Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Government of India. The book is a collector’s item. Firstly, for the first time, it brings together India’s diverse set of parliamentarians cutting across party lines, ideologies and geographies, to speak in one voice on a single agenda—the country and its people. The second most important factor is that they represent the country’s youth. And this brings us to the provocative headline of the book and the pithy cartoon by renowned cartoonist Sudhir Tailang that precedes Tharoor’s Prologue. A Tailang cartoon precedes each essay and his satirical wit evokes a smile.

Tailang takes a dig at India’s aging Cabinet where the average age is 65. And Tharoor writes, “India holds the world record for the largest gap between the average age of the population (28 years) and that of the Cabinet (65 years)...The young are entering leadership positions, but still with diffidence—and they continue to be outnumbered by their seniors.”

With the “great demographic advantage” of 600 million young people under the age of 25, Tharoor has a very valid question: Where do young political leaders in India fit into its future? He candidly points to the “significant gap” between the political processes and the participation of these young turks. Apparently, what Tharoor is trying to demonstrate is that the young leaders of India are ready to lead the country as demonstrated by their perspicacious visions. The ‘future’ certainly is ready ‘now’ to be led by these young, capable leaders.

Tharoor accedes that only three of the 12 MPs have climbed up the ranks of the party and just two diverted from different professions. He rightly points out that the MPs are the trendsetters who will motivate more ‘apolitical’ educated youth to enter politics. “There is too much at stake,” says Tharoor, and by keeping away, young people will impede progress. He also calls it an “abdication of responsibility” by the youth. And so Tharoor lays the ground for the 12 young MPs to draw the roadmap of their vision for an India they seek to grow, the vision that would inspire the youth to follow in their footsteps, and the old order to change.

The first of the roadmaps is penned by Anant Kumar Hegde, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Uttara Kannada constituency, whose argument for localised and indigenous solutions under a fresh model “from foodgrain security to nutrition security” and growing biofuels, is worth a debate in Parliament. Anurag Singh Thakur, BJP MP from Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, takes up the issue of national security. Thakur presents well-documented security issues and underlines why for India a vision-plan to tackle it is a top priority. MP from Lakshadweep, Hamdullah Sayeed brings us back to education with his vision of an India where education “develops the mind”. So we revisit the golden era of education in India, of gurukuls and pathshalas. The education system needs a revamp, he says, and we agree. “This re-thinking process shall not only relate education to jobs and positions but also lead to a larger inner self-realisation.” He is confident that the problems in the system would be addressed. Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda, has been in the Parliament for the last 11 years. A Biju Janata Dal MP from Odisha, this seasoned politico, an alumnus of Michigan Technical Institute, quit his corporate career to pursue his interest in politics. Jyotiraditya Scindia, another former corporate honcho with Harvard and Stanford degrees is a Congress MP representing the Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh. While Panda’s road to fast-track development is through well-laid-out infrastructure, Scindia underscores it with his social model of inclusive growth.

Old wine in new bottle, but good wine nonetheless

YES, JUDGE us, we are so reviewing a book that belongs to young-adult (YA) fantasy fiction genre. But before you do, hear me out; prophecies (newspaper articles as a matter of fact) have foretold that Shannon is the next big thing in the YA fantasy fiction genre with her six-figure publishing deal with Bloomsbury for a seven-book series. Heck, she’s also been compared to J.K. Rowling on a couple of occasions though the label rests uncomfortably on the young author’s shoulders. Basically, the publishing world has been waving their wands crazily around at the mere mention of Shannon. Her first book in the yet-unnamed series—The Bone Season—was perceived by the author when she was 19. She began casting her spell much before, at 15, with another YA fantasy novel (Aurora) which 10 publishers rejected outright. However, by 21, abracadabra, Shannon not only had published a book, she had also earned herself an English Literature degree from Oxford University. Also, she sold off The Bone Season’s film rights to Andy Serkis’s (actor who played Gollum in The Lord of The Rings trilogy) film company, The Imaginarium Studios, by November 2012. Ah, the magic of all these numbers, and what’s exactly my point, you ask?

It is this; the tale of Shannon’s rise to author-hood is more magical than your average YA books out there. The initial half of The Bone Season is set in a police state of London governed by a security force-cum-system of administrators called Scion(s). It then moves to Oxford, a bare and derelict human prison camp ruled by creatures called Rephaim (singular Rephaites). Shannon’s dystopian futuristic London of 2059 is one where clairvoyance is a pestilence. Instead of being very afraid of her “powers”, the novel’s heroine chooses to be a part of an underground criminal syndicate of seven clairvoyants using her power for financial gain—an absolute no-no. So far, so very, very good. Now for the bit worse. The Rephaims. Wonderful creatures those; oddly reminiscent of vampires who live off the auras of “voyants”, afraid of none apart from flesheating creatures called Emims. The story arc goes a bit predictable with our heroine beginning a student-mentor relationship with one of them, and the writing gets a wee bit whinny. Good action. Check. Strong characters (especially the rest of the voyants in the Seven Dials—sincerely hope that Shannon will go into their back stories more in her later books). Check. Pacy. Nearly. Worth reading. Yes!

For the best view of four of the five highest peaks in the world head to Sandakphu

Sandakphu may not ring a bell for many travellers. But for the inveterate adventure seeker or the bona fide trekker, it is the ultimate destination. Tucked away in the eastern edge of India in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal is this tiny hamlet atop the eponymous peak, the highest peak in the state. So what makes Sandakphu so special? The climb to the highest point of this hill station situated at an altitude of 3,636m promises you a sight that will leave you gasping. The arduous trek that takes three to four days to reach the point is well worth the never-before sight of Nature in all its glory. Located to the northwest of Darjeeling town, the trek to Sandakphu packs one memorable adventure. This 32 km adventure trail along the Singalila Range is actually considered a beginner’s trek, the best place for a first-time adventure tourist to begin. One of the most beautiful terrains for trekking, the best time for the Sandakphu experience is April-May (spring) and October-November (post monsoon). But the stark beauty of snow-covered Sandakphu in the harsh winter months is something that only the most experienced trekkers dare to experience. To reach Sandakphu, one has to begin a 12-hour trek from Maneybhanjang, known as the Gateway to Singalila and Sandakphu. It takes four days to reach Sandakphu on foot. The best way to reach the tiny hamlet is via the hill town of Darjeeling. Maneybhanjang is about 26 km from Darjeeling by road. Travellers can opt to take public transport (shared jeeps or buses) upto Sukhiapokhri which is a one-hour drive from Darjeeling and from there change to another onward going transport up to Maneybhanjang. Trekkers can use this latter stretch as a warm-up leg, as Maneybhanjang is a 4km trek from Sukhiyapokhri.

Maneybhanjang, a hamlet on the border of India and Nepal, is situated at the height of 2,150m. Tourists can take a jeep safari in a Land Rover, a relic of the British Raj, to Sandakphu or Singalila National Park from here. If so inclined, break your journey and spend the night at one of the friendly lodges or home-stays. You can check out the Tibetan monastery and the quaint bazaar the next morning before proceeding to Sandakphu. Starting a trek early in the morning is always advisable. If you can leave Maneybhanjang at the crack of dawn, the tea break at Chitrey at around 6am will be rejuvenating. Breakfast can be had at Meghma, a small village; this will come as much-needed relief after the steep three-and-a-halfhour climb up the 7km stretch. It takes another 2km walk to reach Tonglu, one of the peaks of the Singalila Range at an altitude of 3,070m. Meghma Tea House, a small eatery, takes care of the hunger pangs and also offers accommodation. In Tonglu there is a Trekker’s Hut. For those wanting to break journey for a view of the valleys of Nepal, plains of Bengal, the snow-fed Teesta River, Koshi and a number of smaller rivers dotting the bird’s eye view from the peak, a night stay at Tonglu is recommended.

The downhill walk from Tonglu takes the trekker to Gairibas situated at 2,621m. After walking continuously for two hours covering a distance of 9km, through bamboo glades, one reaches Gairibas. From here the climb begins through the charming rhododendron forests to reach Kalipokhri, which is a further 6km trek. It takes around three hours to reach the ‘black pond’, named so because of its black water which does not freeze even on the coldest day. The next stop is Bhikeybhanjan or the Valley of Poison. The valley has got its name from the poisonous aconite plants that grow in abundance here. The weary trekker can have lunch and take a nap before the last lap to the final destination. The last leg to Sandakphu is a steep 4km trek.But the path is so picturesque that it makes the effort worth the pain. In spring, a walk through the forests promises a vista of trees heavy with blooming rhododendrons, giant magnolias, spruce and orchids. Sandakphu is the only spot in the world to boast of silver fir forests, and 600 varieties of orchids. From this vantage point, a visitor can have a never-before view of four of the five highest mountain peaks of the world—Mt Everest, Makalu, Kanchenjunga and Lhotse.

Sandakphu means height of the poison plants, i.e. the aconites flowering on the highest peak in Darjeeling. The aconite flowers are in vibrant shades of purple and yellow, their beauty taking away some of the sting. There are a couple of private lodges and a Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council Trekker’s Hut at the village atop the summit. The best time for this once in a lifetime panoramic date with Nature is early dawn. Step outdoors and stand on the hilltop. In the foreground you will see the deep basin with thick vegetation and pops of bright colours—the rhododendrons growing on the slopes. At the back, rise the mountains, impenetrable. The towering Kanchenjanga with her attendant peaks Kabru, Pandim and Kumbhkaran, and the graceful Everest dominate the whole range of mountain peaks. The ranges of Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan form 320 km of an unbroken snow barrier but they are dwarfed by the mighty Kanchenjanga and the beautiful Everest. Smaller snowy ranges fill up the space between the two giants.

As the sunlight strikes Sandakphu, the white peaks of the Everest family in the West in Nepal, 160 km from where you stand, become awash in the red-gold hue of the sun. The Everest (20,029 ft) rises in all its glory above the valleys and ridges. You can also see the fifth-highest peak, Mt Makau (27,825 ft), rising like a huge snow pyramid, along with Mt Chamlang (24,006 ft) and Mt Lhotse, the fourth-highest peak at 27,940 ft, further west towards Nepal behind the ranges of the Everest family. Look to your east beyond the great Kachenjunga and you will see Narsing, Donkya, Chola and Chumalhari ranges that form the Tibetan frontier. The red glow of the sun adds a halo to the mountains that look like a crown of snow reaching up in the sky. Their beauty is indescribable. Trekkers may opt to continue further to Phalut, another 23 km from Sandakphu, and camp at Singalila Pass or stay at the trekker’s hut there. Phalut Summit, the tri-junction of Sikkim, Nepal and West Bengal, provides an aweinspiring view of the snow-clad Kanchenjunga peak, which is just 48 km from this point. The scenery in the company of the silent yaks is a moment to treasure and is etched in the mind forever.

Coming back to Sandakphu, for those who opt for the four-wheeled ride to the hamlet, there is still much to savour on the way back. Drive through the Singalila National Park, which is one km from Tumling, a small hamlet two km from Tonglu. Tumling is more popular with the trekkers than Tonglu as it offers better lodging facilities. Situated at 9,600 ft, this village of Nepal is inhabited by just about 10-15 Nepali families. There is no border restriction and the village offers a beautiful view of both the Kanchenjunga and the Sandakphu peaks.

BY THE TIME this edition of Democratic World hits the stands or lands on your thresholds, notifications for the 2013 Assembly Polls will have probably been issued across Delhi and Mizoram. As of November 16th, candidates will have filed nominations, while “scrutiny” would be over by November 18th. By November 20th, 2013, we shall know our final list of nominees. This is a crucial period for us all. Adding to the political energy reverberating around the NCR, is the buzz of Diwali—one of the most widely-celebrated festivals of India. I must say, lives are truly busy now. My country’s people are truly wonderful; they are capable of treating a pooja and the polls with equal veneration.

Rightly so, if one is good for the spiritual journey of the individual, the other is good for the country's soul. I know that you are watching the political space closely. I wish you all the luck and may you enjoy a fair and transparent poll in December.

Talking about fairness and transparency, we spoke to one its champions who was manning one of the most crucial official posts of them all, till May 2013—keeping a tab on government expenses. It has not been the easiest job, but Vinod Rai managed it with such grace and dignity that he became quite a legend. We kid you not, go take a look at his Facebook fan-2013page. Not very many ex Comptroller and Auditor Generals of India (CAG) can claim to have won “fans”. However, our personality of the month is humble enough to brush aside all accolades. He believes that the office of the CAG has always done “solid work”. The jeep scandal, Bofors, Coffingate and the Centaur Hotel Scam, all exposed thanks to the close attention paid by its officers. Read our interview of Vinod Rai on Page 12.

We also serve our usual fare; since it is getting chillier, we decided to dip the temperature further, and take you to the Nilgiris. Tushar Kanwar, our gizmo guru, takes us through fun sites which help you to keep fit. Yes, exercise and social media, do mix after all, it seems! Do have a great Diwali, folks. Have fun and stay safe. Firecrackers are good, but keeping the air clean for our next generation is better, is it not?