Table of contents for 13 February 2017 in Open Magazine

NO FINANCE MINISTER can draft a Union Budget that can please everyone, considering the relatively meagre resources that are available for allocation after all the pre-committed expenditure. But there are finance ministers who can satisfy even the most demanding analyst with the direction of their budgetary proposals and focus on principles as a policy guide. If Arun Jaitley, a lawyer by professional training, is eloquent in Parliament, he is even more so speaking impromptu. This was evident at his Open House interactive session with industry leaders on February 2nd, a day after he presented the Budget for 2017-18, at the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi, where he held everyone in rapt attention with his smile-inducing aphorisms, straight talk and exhaustive answers to questions on the Budget, offering peeks into what…

ONCE UPON A time an economic heavyweight, India has a long—two-and-a-half century old—habit of missing the bus of the most tectonic, prosperity enhancing, shifts in the global economy. When the First Industrial Revolution swept through Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, mechanising the textile industry and unleashing the power of the steam engine, India was experiencing the slow demise of the Mughal Empire and the gradual emergence of a British Empire, neither of which would prepare it to join the bandwagon of prosperity. At the time of the Second Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, characterised by a move to mass production and electric power, India was a colony (with no economic autonomy) on the verge of a mass movement against Empire. When the…

Kenya is an ultimate honeymoon destination to celebrate your love and begin your life’s journey together. Whether it’s spotting the reallife cast of the Lion King, exploring a big city, or lazing around on some of the best unspoiled beaches in the world, Kenya’s got every honeymooner’s wish list covered. From luxury and pampering to intimate and private personalized friendly services. You can have plush or rustic accommodations as you wish and almost all camps and small lodges have a “honeymoon tent” or “honeymoon suite” located in a way to ensure maximum privacy. Its quintessential images of herds of elephants in front of snow capped Mount Kilimanjaro, hot air balloons above the Maasai Mara & the proud Maasai warriors has drawn honeymooners for years. It is the land which inspired…

“ARE YOU SITTING on the edge of your couch or a seat?” V Ramesh asks me. I am, but the person on the other side of the phone is in Vishakhapatnam and shouldn’t know that. “Call me whenever you want,” he continues affably. “Except between 1:30 and 2:30. That’s my siesta time. I don’t have my chair, so I can’t paint right now. I just go and sit in my studio.” Ramesh’s favourite chair is in Delhi for an exhibition. It’s perched in front of an oil-on-canvas painting of him in the same chair; as is his dresser, mirror, calendar, marble-top table and a few books from his studio, including a book by Salim Ali on birds and John Berger’s Bento’s Sketchbook. On the opposite wall hangs a note detailing…

SOON AFTER THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued an update on the global economy in January, there was excited commentary that India was no longer the fastest growing economy in the world. The IMF had shaved 0.4 percentage points off India’s growth estimate for 2017 from what it had projected in October last year. Within no time, political opinion was mixed with economic analysis. Once the word ‘demonetisation’ was added to this cauldron, a witch’s brew was ready. What was ignored in all this effervescence—or fury if you wish—was India’s creditable economic performance in an otherwise gloomy world. India is growing at double the rate of the global economy and is many laps ahead of the sclerotic ‘advanced’ economies of Europe, although this comparison is somewhat unfair to the Eurozone.…

ONCE UPON A time, a young person studying in a well-known college decided to drop out. This was not because that person was incapable of doing course work, or passing exams. That individual was a wannabe entrepreneur with a clever business idea. Thatpersonthought,‘Whynotfocusondevelopingthatidearatherthanwastetimepassingirrelevantexams?’ The dropout managed to find some backers to fund the idea and set up a company. After some initial struggles, the business took off and then grew rapidly. The dropout eventually became a household name with a gazillion-dollars of net worth. The company hired thousands of people who also became rich riding in the billionaire’s wake. And they all lived happily ever after. This is a fairy tale, of course. It is also true. The name doesn’t matter. It’s all about one’s risk-taking ability. The name could…

ON MY WAY to a shoot a week ago, I had two choices. To re-read the script of the film I was shooting for or to read a book called Khullam Khulla. That’s the title of Rishi Kapoor’s autobiography (HarperCollins, 284 pages, Rs 599), fresh off the rack, peeping out of my leather bag. Reluctantly, I keep the script away and open the book, so I can be prepared for our appointment scheduled for the coming week. Why would an actor like him want to write a book? I ask myself, looking at his name written in gold and embedded above his profile picture lit by the blazing bulbs of a make-up room mirror. The next thing I remember is keeping the book down six hours later when I was…

A FAVOURITE PARLOUR game among Indian venture capitalists is to fantasise about being in a ménage-à-trois with a technologist from Bengaluru and a businessman from Delhi, a cross-cultural venture surely destined for an IPO. “The Bangalorean engineer may not wear the pants in this relationship, but he is the reason we are all here,” says a partner at a VC firm in Bengaluru that invests in early growth stage companies. The baseline perception of Bengaluru as the infotech hub of India falls short of evaluating its potential for further greatness. Bengaluru, like Silicon Valley, is an idea. It is a confederacy of visionaries looking beyond profitability. It is a story where the underdog triumphs and where failure is a rite of passage. It is home to a man worth $1.5…

THE PRESENTATION OF the Budget is a day of spectacle and tradition. It begins with cameramen and journalists pursuing a man with a leather briefcase as though he might trip and spill its content. It is a route everyone knows well, from his residence to the North Block office by 9 am, through the Rashtrapati Bhavan for a quick sit-down with the President, and finally to Parliament House sometime before 11 am, where on the hallowed steps of the institution, he will pose for pictures. Meanwhile, industrialists and analysts elsewhere would have gathered around a screen as though watching a marquee match unfold. Here, they spend all morning in speculation over the contents of the briefcase, and, once revealed, engage in lengthy exegetical performances. However, at the end of it,…

ANY WORK OF collected minibiographies is bound to have gaps, more names that deserved a place, questions about who was chosen and why. Ira Mukhoty’s Heroines: Powerful Indian Women in Myth and History features eight female historical and mythological figures: Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal. The gaps in this highly conventional set of portraits of famous women are larger than most. Notably, despite an attempt at religious diversity (four Hindus, three Muslims, one Buddhist), Mukhoty’s heroines are strictly north Indian. They largely belong to royalty, or enjoy royal patronage. It is unclear how the author’s stated intent of challenging patriarchal culture by propagating erased female narratives is met, firstly, by choosing a set of protagonists on whom relatively extensive material already exists, as does…