Welcome To The "Token" Republic

For over a week now, India has been exercised over the issue of the (s)election of its First Citizen. Now it is fairly certain, barring cross-voting at a rather large scale, that the next Supreme Commander of the Indian armed forces is going to be a woman.

A woman called Pratibha Patil.

The Indian media has had a field day asking, "Pratibha Who?" After her recent not-the-most-politically-correct conmment about Hindu women in Rajasthan using the veil to protect their honour from Muslim rulers, questions have been asked about her suitability for a post that may be ceremonial but it is a job that, on occasions, calls upon its incumbent to display considerable political wisdom.

At the heart of the controversy over Pratibha Patil's choice lies the fact that she was not by a long shot the first choice of the ruling United Progressive Alliance goverment. A slew of names, from Shivraj Patil to Pranab Mukherjee to Arjun Singh to Sushil Kumar Shinde had been considered, debated over and then cast aside.

The current Home minister, Shivraj Patil had the blessings of Sonia Gandhi, but Comrade Carat, oops Karat, and his band of merry communists chose to play spoilsport. They argued Patil was not secular enough and too much of a political lightweight for the august post of the President of India.

It is a specious argument in itself because it implies the Left Front is okay with a non-secular home minister in a government that it supports but would not support the same man for the President of India's job. One would have thought given the nature of his job, a home minister would have to be more hands on with secular issues, and as the President his job would be more ceremonial, as enshrined in the Indian Constitution itself. But logic has not often been the Left's strongest suit.

After Madam Patil's history lesson on the veil, though, the Left might have similar worries about the secular credentials of the Patil they chose to back over the Patil they didn't. But now the Left Front would have to dwell on those thoughts in private, and Comrade Karat, in all likelihood would have five long years to mull over what they have brought upon themselves and the rest of the country, because the matter of election of the next President of India has already moved significantly forward.

Soon after Sonia Gandhi sprang the surprise candidature of the woman who was until recently the governor of Rajasthan, Congress spin doctors were quick to highlight the "progressive" decision to opt for a woman Presidential candidate. A happy picture was quickly painted of the largest democracy of the world with its First Citizen a woman and what such a move would do for woman's emancipation in this country and so on and so forth.

Now, we all know, THAT is such bullshit. Understandably, members of the media have reacted sharply to such a spin. Columnists like Shobha De have stridently protested against the sham symbolism of linking Pratibha Patil's candidature to women's emancipation. Others have rubbished the move as "blatant tokenism", the real purpose of which is to have a rubber stamp President, sympathetic to the interests of the ruling UPA government.

And so it is. Blatant tokenism it is, but all the same a shrewd move (albeit one she was forced to make) by Sonia Gandhi after the Left forced her hand. Honestly what were you and me and the rest were expecting other than blatant tokenism ?

We are, after all, a nation of, for the lack of a better word if I am allowed to coin one, "tokenists". We are most well versed in the intricacies of tokenism, better than anyone else I can think of. We can't stomach hard facts, whether in the political arena or on a sports field. We always prefer symbolism over more harder options.

We pay token tribute to secularism. In this non-violent land of Mahatma Gandhi, Hindus kill Muslims, Muslims kill Hindus, every now and then a Church gets burnt, and the odd nun gets raped -- a veritable plurality of killings in this plural society. And remarkably no one gets punished for these orgies of violence. No Hindu, no Sikh, or no Muslim has been sent to the gallows in this nation over communal violence. Perhaps that is our notion of secularism.

We pay token tribute to socialism. All the parties are committed to pro-poor policies, their election manifestos utopian. Yet, as the sensex is on a long bull run, Fortune 500 companies head India's way and we talk of a resurgent, new India with a double digit growth rate, in another India, farmer suicides continue unabated, and unemployment continues to rise alarmingly. As rich India waxes eloquent on socialism, poor India starves.

We pay token respect to our elders. We scorn the west for their old-age homes, and gloat over our ancient family values and then abandon our old parents. Younger men and women jostle past, push around their elders in public places, in buses and metros.

In our cities we build the world's finest hospitals, manned by worldclass doctors. Yet within a 250 km radius of all major cities in this country, you can find public health care centres which languish in abject neglect, the poor denied even basic health care. People from the US and western European countries fly down to India for top quality medical care. Yet even today women die in labour by thousands in this country not too far from these centres of medical excellence. And we talk of free health care for the poor. More tokenism.

And we pay token tribute to our women. We rape them in our cities, starve them in our villages, abort them in their foetuses, burn them for dowry and say "Nari hamari Ma hai (woman is our Mother)."

Why are we so surprised then about the latest tokenism, blatant or otherwise, of the selection of Pratibha Patil as a Presidential candidate? The list of tokenisms is very very long and makes for rather sorry, and unsavoury, reading. Poor Pratibha Tai is only the latest in a long line of tokenisms.

It will be a delicious irony of sorts if the fears of Madam Patil's detractors were to prove true and she indeed went on to become a token President of a token secular, a token socialist, and a token democratic republic.

Last, but by no means the least, I am not averse to the Tai's presence in Rashtrapati Bhavan for an entirely different reason. In case Hillary Clinton makes it to the White House, we can always tell the Americans that we put a woman in the President's office before they did!

Southern Comfort -- A Chennai Diary

The Marina Beach is my favourite destination in Chennai

Oh,The Heat!

The airhostess on the Kingfisher flight had already warned that the temperature outside was 40 degrees. What she forgot to mention was the nearly hundred per cent humidity. Even as I stepped down to the tarmac, I was soaked with sweat. Hello Chennai, I murmured to myself. Combine the dry Delhi heat with Mumbai's humidity, and you have the nightmarish weather of Chennai in May.

Don't get me wrong though. I might have just trashed the Chennai weather here, but this remains one of my favourite cities, from the days it used to be called Madras.

For one thing I love the food here. No, not the idli-dosa-sambar routine. No veggie me, despite the clogged arteries. I am talking about the mouth-watering spicey fish and prawn curries, mmmm. Apart from the excellent food, I have met some really wonderful people in this city -- something I can't say about most other places I travel to.

Fisherman’s Cove

Chennai has one of my two most favourite hotels, Fisherman's Cove, the Taj property on the road to Pondicherry, the other one being Brunton’s Boatyard in Cochin ( let me not get started on that one, that will require an entire blog by itself).

Fisherman’s Cove offers an excellent view of the sea from most of its rooms, and serves the best beach barbeque you can have anywhere. This time I have business in the city, so I wouldn't be able to stay at Fisherman's Cove, but surely time can be found for a lunch or a dinner there. Despite the sweltering heat, I was in a happy frame of mind as I made my way into the airport, daydreaming about the possibility of a beach barbeque, accompanied by a very chilled glass (more likely, several bottles) of beer.

The Business of Kidney Selling

I am in Chennai as the pointsman for a BBC Scotland documentary team which is hoping to interview a few people who have sold their kidneys. Though the government of India has banned the sale of kidneys, it is a fairly well known fact in the murky world of organ trade that Chennai is the place to come to, if you are planning to buy a kidney.

Five years ago, I had come to Chennai on a similar story and stumbled upon an entire residential colony in downtown Chennai where more than 300 people had sold their kidneys. In his piece to camera, the BBC correspondent had referred to the place as “Kidneypuram”.

I intend to visit Kidneypuram over the next few days and locate few people who have recently sold their kidneys and persuade them to be interviewed on television.

Shouldn’t be tough. I have done it before. I do this for a living. As do the people who sell their kidneys, often for a final price that is far lower than what was originally promised. More about that, later.

Water Bodies

Methinks there should be a law which would allow all people born with water signs to stay close to water bodies. I am a Piscean who spent the first few years of my life blissfully close to water, living in a house practically on the edge of the beach in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar islands. After more than thirty years in Delhi, I have come to terms with that city of nine months of summer, but I sorely miss not living close to the sea.

I don't know about others, but in my case surely proximity to water sooothes me, calms my jangled nerves. It is my third evening in Chennai and so far I have managed to visit the Marina Beach every morning before setting out for work.

The Marina beach is the second largest beach in the world, inside city limits, that is. It is 12 kilometeres in length and at its widest point is 437 metres long.

About one hundred people died on Marina beach when Tsunami struck this beach and other coastal areas on December 26, 2004. The toll would have been much higher had the Tsunami hit in the evening instead of morning. Every evening thousands come to this beach, and on Sundays the crowds swell even more.

Me, I just love the peace and quiet of this beach in the mornings. One can just sit on the sand and watch the waves for hours. When I go back to Delhi, I think I will miss my daily trips to Marina beach the most.

Jags and Anwar

I am going to modify what I said earlier about Chennai. You don’t even have to be in Chennai to meet nice folks from there. A few (light)years ago, I met one sitting right in the BBC Delhi office. L Jagdeeshan aka Jags aka Jaggu Dada. Jags is one hell of a journalist, and an even better human being. BBC Tamil Service sent Jags to Delhi to give a sharper edge to its political coverage. He did all that and a lot more – he regaled us with his collection of Chennai jokes (some very politically incorrect ones about “Amma”).

I can’t remember the countless number of stories he has helped me with. Every time I prepared to visit Chennai, or for that matter anywhere south of the Vindhyas, he would have some valuable (and always useful) advice for me.

One of the best things Jags ever did was to introduce me to Anwar, a friend, photographer – and as I discovered this time -- a historian. Last evening I met Anwar over dinner. We talked about diverse subjects, from how politics is getting increasingly polarised on religious lines to a certain common friend’s fascination during his younger days for a leftist politician of the opposite sex. And then Anwar very casually informed me that he had been chosen to write on the Islamic history of Madras for a gazetteer on the city which was going to be published in a couple of months’ time.

Anwar is an interesting conversationalist, but very rarely – if ever – talks about his own accomplishments. So it was only after sustained and skillful interrogation on my part, he let out that a number of experts had been invited to write for the gazette, and he was among the chosen few. That was when I discovered for the first time that our man dabbled in history too.

DVD Treasure Trove

This is my last evening in Chennai. Must say it has been a most fruitful trip. Not just because I found the kidney sellers I was looking for, but because today I found a shop with the most amazing DVD collection. Hollywood, Bollywood, old classics, European stuff, Iranian movies – you name it and the fellow has it. Each DVD costs just Rs.50. Yep, just fifty bucks. Woohoo, and what a collection!

After I greedily sifted through the collection, I bought well beyond what any realistic DVD buying budget would allow. The best buy is undoubtedly two full seasons of MASH that I could lay my hands on. The miracle man (the shop owner, that is) has promised the rest of the seasons of MASH as well.

My wife is going to kill me when she finds out how much I have spent on the DVDs. If I have seen all the movies that I have bought, then I am going to die a happy man though.

India's Village of Identical Twins

Almost adjacent to the civilian airport in Allahabad, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is the village of Mohammad Pur Umri. As you drive into Umri, it doesn't look any different than scores of other such villages in the area. Once inside though as you look at the faces staring back at you, one may be forgiven for thinking that you have stepped into the sets of a sci-fi film on cloning.

For one in ten births in this village of eight hundred odd people involves twins, most of them identical, thus making it the highest concentration of identical twins anywhere in the world.

For the past few months, scientists from around the world are flocking to Umri to try to find out why an extraordinarily large number of identical twins are being born there. Ever since a local daily carried the story about the unusually high incidence of identical twins in Umri, scientists and members of the international media have descended upon this sleepy hamlet.

Globally, the odds of a woman giving birth to identical twins is one in 300.

Over the last 10-15 years, the number of twin births has gone up significantly," Netaji, a village headman who has lived in Umri for over 70 years, told me. "There would have been many more, but infant mortality has claimed many lives," he added.

Among the visitors has been a team of DNA experts from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad. They have been busy collecting blood samples from the residents of Umri, which is viewed as a "genetic gold mine" in the scientific community.

Identical twins emerge from a single fertilised egg, while non-identical twins are born if a woman carrying two eggs has both fertilised simultaneously. But scientists remain unsure if twinning is entirely a chance phenomenon.

DNA experts hope the blood samples of Umri's residents will provide a clue to whether there is a genetic basis for it, and if DNA rearrangement during the embryonic development is responsible.

One theory put forward has been that the high numbers of twins is due to the high number of marriages between relatives, which, in this predominantly Muslim village, are encouraged.There are not many takers for this theory, though.

While villagers admit that marriages between relatives are not infrequent, they dismiss the theory that inbreeding is the reason for the unusually high number of identical twins. According to them, marriages between relatives take place in other Muslim-dominated villages too - yet these places do not have as many twins as Umri.

"We believe these twins are a gift from God, and nothing else," village leader Netaji said. "The land of this area, between the two great rivers, Ganges and Yamuna, is very fertile. That is why this phenomenon occurs.Whether it's sugar cane or twin children, this land has always been very fertile," Netaji tells me with an unmistakable air of pride.

While scientists may beg to differ with this interesting explanation, many of the other villagers are quick to agree with their village headman.

Netaji introduces me to Abu Saad, a 20-year-old who has two pairs of twin sisters among his eight siblings. As we walk towards his house to meet his siblings, Saad explains to me : "This phenomenon is partly a gift of nature, and partly a gift of the land of this village. There's something in the soil that produces so many identical twins." Experts at CCMB claim that two pairs of identical twins in the same family is "an extremely rare occurrance".

The most celebrated twins in the village are the oldest surviving ones, Guddu and Munnu. Guddu said that even his wife occasionally gets confused between the two - one of a great number of stories of confusion involving the twins throughout the village.

"Once my brother had a quarrel with someone in the neighbourhood," Gudu recalled. "When I saw him being taken away by the police, I followed, trying to find out what had happened.

"As I approached a policeman, he angrily asked me to accompany him to the station. I told them I wasn't the person they'd first held - I was wearing a white suit, my brother was dressed differently. "But they wouldn't listen. I was only let out when the confusion cleared, a few hours later."

The young twins of Umri attract a lot of attention at a nearby madrasa, or Islamic school. A very Indian custom of dressing up identical twins in the same clothes has only made matters worse for the teachers, who find it hard at the best of times to differentiate between the children. The scope for confusion, and the odd mischief, is endless. Meanwhile scientists in hi-tech labs thousands of miles away from the dust bowl of Umri will continue to peer down their microscopes and try to match DNA strains, seeking an answer to one of the more baffling genetic puzzles of our times.

Jarawas Living On Borrowed Time

Exactly six years after the Supreme Court of India ordered its closure, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in direct defiance of the order of the highest court of the land, continues to keep the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) open.

The controversial 340-km-long road goes right through the habitat of the Jarawas, one of the oldest hunter-gatherer communities in the world. Only two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas survive today. And the closure of the road is considered to be critical to the survival of the Jarawas.

London-based Survival International, an international organisation which fights for tribal rights, has declared the Jarawas among the “three most endangered tribes” in the world. Over the past several years, Survival International, along with several other organisations based in Andamans, have repeatedly called upon the authorities in Andaman and Nicobar islands to close the ATR, as per the Supreme Court orders of 2002.

The Jarawas live on Middle Andaman Island, in territory they have inhabited for thousands of years. In 1957, the government of India created a reserve of 700 square kilometres, surrounded by police posts and manned by a 400-strong force. Ostensibly the idea was to protect the Jarawas from outside incursions, but in reality the reserve was built to contain the Jarawas within that area.

And, almost overnight, the erstwhile lord and masters of the Andaman Sea found themselves confined to a limited piece of real estate. A piece of real estate, through which in 1969, the government of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in its infinite wisdom, decided to construct a major inter-island road.

From 1970 to 1989, when the Andaman Trunk Road was being constructed, the Jarawas on several occasions attacked the construction workers, thereby expressing their objection to the construction of the road in no uncertain manner. Anthropologists and environmental groups working in the Andaman islands had for long warned against the wisdom of constructing a road that goes right through the middle of the Jarawa reserve.

The authorities persisted with the construction of the road that links Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar islands, in south Andamans, with Diglipur in north Andamans. In the 1970s, when I was a schoolboy, it used to take more than a day and a half on a steam ship to travel from Port Blair to Diglipur. Now the same journey can be made by road in less than twelve hours, thanks to the ATR..

But the construction of the ATR brought in its wake not just settlers, but poachers who eyed the rich tree cover of the Jarawa reserve. As incidents of poaching increased, and tension among the Jarawas and the settlers who lived around the ATR mounted, environmentalists and anthropologists were convinced that Jarawas would in the not-so-distant future become extinct if the ATR was not closed down.

Acting on a petition filed by local environmental groups, prominently among them SANE (Save Andaman and Nicobar Ecology) and backed by Survival International, the Supreme Court in May 2002 had ordered the closure of the Andaman Trunk Road. An order that lies unimplemented even after six years of its passing.

As we drive down the gleaming tarmaced road starting from Port Blair, a top environmentalist who has battled the Andaman administration for several years, tells me : “Each day this road remains open, it brings the Jarawas closer to extinction.”

About 15 kilometres down the road, bang on the middle, sits a huge, abandoned road roller – perhaps the most poignant symbol of the insensitivity with which the authorities in Andamans have tried to steamroll the opposition to the construction of this road.

As we move into Baratang in Middle Andamans, the heart of the Jarawa reserve, one can see makeshift straw shelters on roadsides which act as police pickets. Policemen can be seen lounging idly, their backs against the straw shelters, puffing away at cigarettes. Cigarettes that, my environmentalist friend tells me, find their way to the Jarawas.

In order to ensure the road remains closed, the Andaman government had set up police pickets at different intervals along the Andaman Trunk Road. Apart from the human and vehicular traffic on the road, today the single biggest threat to the survival of the Jarawas is posed by the policemen manning these pickets.

Though authorities in Port Blair claim otherwise, the policemen appear hardly sensitized to handle the delicate issue that they have been asked to oversee. Not only there have been reports of growing addiction to tobacco among the Jarawas, as a direct result of easy access to cigarettes through the police personnel on duty, there has been the odd case of policemen trying to sexually exploit the Jarawa women.

The contact of outsiders travelling on this road exposes the Jarawas to all kind of medical diseases that these people may be carrying with them. There have been several earlier instances of large numbers of tribals dying following contact with members of the outside world.

Worse, outside contact is exposing the Jarawas to a lifestyle that they can ill afford to adopt. My friend showed me a photo of a Jarawa woman being given a packet of biscuits by a passenger in a bus.

On my second morning in Baratang, at about ten in the morning, I spot a bus carrying settlers entering Baratang. You can see on the roof of the bus, a group of Jarawas who have decided to hitch a ride into town. They purposefully make their way into shops, often buying stuff in exchange of honey they have collected from the forest.

Among them is a boy no more than 15 or 16, wearing a worn out Calvin Kline tee shirt. My environmentalist friend points out to the sight and comments ruefully : “Calvin Kline meets Stone Age, huh?”

I speak to some of the shopkeepers who deal with Jarawas on a daily basis. They are the settlers who have built houses along the ATR, set up shops there. They are unanimous in their contempt for the Jarawas. "These people are uncivilized. For them this road is not important. For us it is a lifeline," says one.

A number of them have been settled there by the Andaman administration, others have moved on their own. Now they add up to a sizeable vote bank that no political party in Andamans is willing to antagonize.

Manoranjan Bhakta, solitary representative of the Andaman islands in the Indian Parliament, calls for a holistic approach to the whole issue. He says the Andaman government remains committed to protect the interests of the Jarawas. But Bhakta says the Andaman administration cannot overlook the interests of people it has brought from different parts of mainland India and settled them around Andaman Trunk Road.

Politicians have their own compulsions. They need votes. And in electoral terms, the two hundred and fifty odd Jarawas don’t matter at all, in comparison to the 12,000-strong settler votes. Any politician worth his salt would tell you, that is a bit of a no-contest.

Problem is, if only the Jarawa could articulate an important piece of anthropological arithmetic, he would tell you that three decades of settlers’ existence in Andamans weighed against a civilization as old as perhaps mankind itself, is also a bit of a no-contest.

Western Media Majors Eye India

As newspaper readership stagnates in the US and Europe, India's newspapers are enjoying the kind of golden age the US saw at the end of the 19th century. These prospects are luring in international groups to India. Rupert Murdoch announced plans to launch The Wall Street Journal in India within a month of agreeing to acquire the paper.

That is unlikely to be his last venture in the subcontinent. There have been rumours all year that News Corporation is gearing up to launch a version of The Sun. Three other dailies, Mint, DNA and Mumbai Mirror, have all hit the news-stands in the past two years.

Timmy Kandhari, head of the entertainment and media practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Mumbai, says: "There's going to be 12 to 15 per cent annual growth in the market going forward, and I think our prediction is conservative."

His study earlier this year predicted that the print industry would almost double in size between 2006 and 2011, from $3.3bn (1.7bn) in 2006 to $6bn in 2011.

The Economist aims to triple its Indian readership from 18,000 to 50,000 by the end of 2009, investing $20m in a concerted marketing push starting next month.

Mr Kandhari says PwC has fielded several enquiries from magazine groups looking to acquire Indian titles. The attractions are obvious. "The demographics in terms of the potential are just off the scale," says an executive connected with the Mail Today launch. "There are lots of people who are going to be entering working age over the next decade and they're increasingly interested in news. Plus, there's a big retail boom and retailers want to advertise their products."

In the past six months alone, advertising rates in India have risen by 30 to 40 per cent.

But the only international newspaper to actually to publish in India is the International Herald Tribune, which began printing in collaboration with Hyderabad's Deccan Chronicle in 2004. Pearson made its first strategic acquisition in the market in the same year, when it bought a stake in Business Standard, a business paper. Independent News & Media took a different tack a year later, opting to invest in the faster-growing Indian-language media. It now has a 20.8 per cent stake in Jagran Prakashan, which publishes Dainik Jagran, India's leading Hindi-language newspaper.

The Wall Street Journal was heavily involved in the launch of Mint, a business paper promoted by India's Hindustan Times Group, although it has taken no equity in the project.

Raju Narisetti, Mint's editor, points out: "Last year, all of India's papers added 12 million new readers. That is equivalent to five Wall Street Journals. There are 360 million Indians who can read and write and don't read a paper. In a country where the government is making no initiatives to talk about population control, I see very healthy growth."

But, as is often the case in India, promising demographics do not mean guaranteed profits. For a start, there are still onerous regulatory barriers limiting international involvement in the Indian press. Magazines can be 100 per cent foreign owned, but foreign investment in news publications is limited to 26 per cent.

In 2004, Independent News & Media proposed to launch an edition of The Independent in India, in collaboration with Jagran Prakashan. However, Indian editions of international newspapers, with the exception of the International Herald Tribune, have not so far been permitted. In the days before its acquisition by Rupert Murdoch, The Wall Street Journal signed a joint venture with The Times of India's publishers, Bennett, Coleman & Co. But its Indian edition never launched.

The Economist gets around the restrictions by bringing in copies printed in Hong Kong and Singapore a practice that only makes sense for a magazine that retails at Rs200 (2.50), roughly 10 times the price of India's current affairs magazines.

Mint's Mr Narisetti says: "For Indian newspapers, the laws on direct foreign investment are really archaic, and it's unfortunate, because the industry in India take Bajaj scooters, Maruti cars, you name it they've all benefited from foreign competition."

India's newspaper industry is also fairly lively already. The Times of India has the highest circulation of any English-language newspaper in the world, but it doesn't even make the top five of 200 newspapers in its home market.

Ravi Dharimal, chief executive of Bennett, Coleman & Co, is sceptical about the prospects for international newspaper groups in the country. "I would be very surprised if they have a big role in the Indian media," he says. "I don't see how they can bring too much innovation. I see newspapers as primarily a local business."

A new entrant in the market is Mail Today, a collaboration between India's India Today group and Daily Mail, one of the most popular tabloids in England. Many in India's media establishment write off Mail Today as too lightweight. Paresh Nath, a magazine publisher and deputy president of the Indian Newspaper Society, says: "Things like this do not last very long, because the advertiser doesn't take kindly to a publication which is flipped through and thrown away. The advertiser wants a story to be serious so that the reader is stuck to it."

But this view may simply reflect the innate conservatism that could give international groups an edge. Mail Today believes it is doing something new. "There isn't a paper out there that caters to the middle-class woman," says the executive who helped with the paper's launch. "Look back to the 1970s that was the path that the [Daily] Mail took and it was very successful with it."

PwC's Mr Kandhari argues that Bennett, Coleman & Co's launch of the Mumbai Mirror shows that they see a threat from tabloids. "With the Mumbai Mirror, The Times of India has been trying to protect its flank," he says.

At the other end of the market, Mint has succeeded by offering readers a clearer, more balanced and certainly more accurate take on Indian business. Launching in February last year, it has now reached a circulation of some 120,000, making it the second most-read business paper in Mumbai and Delhi. But the paper's editor, Mr Narisetti, admits it could be three years before it breaks even. "Advertising has been slow there's no two ways about it," he says. "When you're a new paper it takes a while to convince advertisers. A new newspaper in India won't make money for two to three years, and that's the same with us as well."

He believes some of the newspapers and magazines launching today will not survive. "What we've seen in 2007 and maybe [will in] 2008 is probably the peak of this boom. I think in 2008-09 you'll see a fair amount of consolidation. People forget that in this business you burn money very quickly."

But even if the market falls short of PwC's bullish predictions and the latest figures from the Indian Readership Survey suggest a slowdown its prospects will still outshine other markets enough to hold the interest of the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

Good One, This! (From Anand Bazar Patrika)

Umm... did you know the Bangla word for "cheerleader"?

'Tis Ullasnetri...