Editorial

Matters of the Heart in Valentine’s Month

IT TAKES no calendar to tell you it’s February. There are enough giddy young adults at every café and gifts shop, making it clear that it’s the month of Saint Valentine. However, I wish I could say that matters of the heart plague only the young. They don’t; at least not according to the medi...

Cover Story

Mending a Million Hea

‘A letter to 4,000 children with a scar on the chest’  "When God sent you to this world it was the best thing that had happened to your parents. Unfortunately, their happiness was short-lived. That very day you started turning blue in colour; the doctors had found a hole in your heart.Your par...

Up-To-Date

Aung San Suu Kyi to run for elections

End of the Junta Rule? INTERNATIONAL \\ Burmese Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be running for Parliament in the country’s highly anticipated April by-elections. According to her party sources, the Nobel laureate will be contesting elections from her home district outside of Yanong. The c...

ECI announces poll dates in five states

With elections around the corner, fair polls get top priority ELECTIONS \\ The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates for the upcoming Assembly elections in five states — Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Manipur. A code of conduct has also been implemented in these sta...

North Korean dictator dies at 69

People mourn the death of Kim Jongil, as son takes charge of country INTERNATIONAL \\ North Korean leader Kim Jong-il died after suffering a major heart attack while on a train out on a “field trip”. According to official reports, every possible measure was taken to save his life, but help did ...

Saina Nehwal can’t conquer the wall of China

SPORTS\\ Fourth seed Indian ace Saina Nehwal lost to top seed Wang Yihan of China 15-21, 16-21 in the women’s singles semifinal of the Maybank Malaysia Open Badminton Championship in January. Nehwal lost the match, which lasted for 41 minutes, in straight sets. Nehwal got off to a great start with...

The Lokpal Logjam

Rajya Sabha rejects Lok Sabha-approved, constitutionally vulnerable Lokpal Bill POLITICS\\ The Lok Sabha passed the landmark Lokpal Bill on December 28, 2011, but failed to make the Lokpal committee a constitutional body. The Bill came with the amendment that appointing Lokayuktas would not be man...

foreign dispatches

Entrepreneurship is an attitude: if you can spin an idea, you can make it”

PRAKASH BHALERAO: I was born into a financially comfortable and traditional extended family in Indore. My maternal uncle was quite the patriarch. My parents used to pay heed to what he had to say — that nearly cost me my higher education. He didn’t think it was a good idea to send me to IIT Bomb...

Social Agenda

Enterprise 2.0 Business Goes Social

Can this new concept help communicate and collaborate at the office? Or will it become a victim of workplace culture? Years ago, a concept was born. In the past three years or so, it began to slowly grow. In 2011, it gained traction. And in 2012, it’s said to be poised to take off. In fact, it i...

Platform 1

Challenges to Institutional Legitimacy

Have citizens lost faith in government bodies? AS INDIA enters 2012, the country is at an important crossroads. At one level, the expansion in the quantum and breadth of economic activity remains impressive, and reflects the ways in which sections of the country’s population are transforming thei...

Issue

a closer look at FDI in Retail

When the Indian Cabinet cleared the deck for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the multi-brand retail sector after years of discussion, there was joy in many quarters. The government called it ‘another revolutionary leap’ after the IT revolution and liberalisation. But the euphoria was not shar...

Looking Back

HIGH ON HIDE DESIGN

HIDE DESIGN It’s love of leather, not business, that shapes Hidesign’s success story, says Dilip Kapur I was born in New Delhi to a post- Partition refugee family. But my parents soon moved to Agra where my father set up a shoe factory and stores. Obviously the love for leather is genetic! We m...

Platform 2

Delhi 100

A big birthday as the capital city celebrates a re-emergence INDIA HASN’T really known quite how to mark the first centenary of the founding of its modern capital city, Delhi, by the British in 1911. It is not quite politically correct to celebrate things done by former colonial masters, even tho...

Good Karma

STRATEGIC PHILANTHROPY

Dasra is changing the wayIndia looks at the business of giving Those of us who did not pay attention in our Sanskrit classes would hardly understand the meaning of a word which struck a chord with Deval Sanghavi and Neera Nundi, Co-founders of Dasra. ‘Enlightened giving’ (or Dasra) is both the ...

Reading Room

The Man Within My Head

Pico Iyer‘s tribute to the great English writer, Graham Greene, coupled with his own story, is a great read THE FIRST dilemma that arises in one’s mind while reading Pico Iyer’s The Man Within My Head is how to classify this book. It would be unfair to call it a travelogue even though Iyer ta...

The House of Silk

The magic of Sherlock Holmes recreated! The game is afoot once again as Holmes is back with his most gruesome case ever THE NEW Sherlock Holmes novel — The House of Silk — is not a tribute to the great man’s work, it’s not a continuation of his stories and it’s not an imitation. It is a ...

Garnish

Joie de vivre, chef style

Tossed in olive oil and served with a smile, that’s the recipe for Ritu Dalmia’s robust cooking Often the mention of an aura is pooh-poohed. But if there is indeed something of an energy around a person, then Ritu Dalmia has an impressive amount of it. Hers is a positive one which makes her loo...

Hitchhikers Guide

To Paradise: via the Spice Route

Dive into sparkling waters, idle on sun-baked beaches or walk through history in Zanzibar Zanzibar is a name most of us recognise — though may be hard pressed to pinpoint on a map — as it conjures up the sights and sounds of an African island on the old Spice Route. So when I got an opportunity...