Monday, June 30, 2008

With his charm, Manekshaw won hearts more than wars



The old soldier has faded away. And the battle-hardened eyes of his men glisten like medals. He was always more Sam Bahadur than Field Marshal SHFJ Manekshaw. He won hearts even more than he won wars. His weapons were a rakish charm as well as valour; the twinkling look as much as the straight baton. Death had a tough time capturing him, and it hasn't been for want of determination. The young soldier escaped from its near-certain clutches twice on the battlefield in Burma during World War II. Indeed, on the first occasion he was felled by a point-blank gun shot in his stomach. Maj Gen D T Cowan spotted him holding on to life, quickly pinned his own Military Cross ribbon on to Manekshaw saying, "A dead person cannot be awarded a Military Cross." Over 60 years later in November 2005, his obituary was revised, and ready to roll off the presses as he lay in a coma. He rose again to fight another day. But now the Last Post has been bugled. Of such stuff is legend. Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, all one man. One man who had handled it all. The raw heat of enemy fire and the white-hot core of the War Room; forging the three services into an integrated, taut, toned fighting machine and managing the bloodied chaos of Partition and then, 24 years later, the waves of East Bengal refugees fleeing the brutality unleashed by their West Pakistani masters; managing the POWs he took in 1971. Yet, though he was honoured with a rank higher than any Indian soldier, he remained forever a jawan. He was so warmly inspirational, and not only for the beloved Gurkhas of his regiment; in every ceremonial parade, all soldiers march with the jauntiest gait when the band strikes up 'Sam Bahadur', composed for him after the 1971 war. I will never forget how we sat at the radio that heady Saturday afternoon of the surrender, feeling the goose bumps rise as he called on Tikka Khan's soldiers to lay down arms. The 'butcher of Bangladesh' had himself been decimated by the Indian army. But it was infamous defeat not victory that provided my first encounter with Manekshaw. In 1962, I accompanied my father to the Control Room of Calcutta's Fort William, and stood awestruck as he bayoneted a map with the positions where the Chinese army had trapped his almost bootless soldiers. Then, three decades later, I summoned the courage actually to spend time with him. I had moved to Bangalore, and he had moved from guns to roses in his retirement cottage near Wellington. We wound our way up the winding Kotagiri road; all the urchins whom we asked for directions straightened up visibly as they proudly obliged. We found him washing his car. "Come for lunch tomorrow,'' he said without preliminaries. We did, savouring his stories and his wife's casserole which arrived grandly on a dumb waiter up from the kitchen on a lower part of the slope. He looked out on to the "wild acres bought by Silloo who was abandoned here in Coonoor when Nehru summoned me in 1962. She paid the princely sum of Rs 18,000 for them, and designed this house. See, each window frames a panorama. My wife has hijacked a corner of my garden,'' he added indulgently. "Why did you call your daughter Sherry?'' we asked. "I did, but I didn't tell her to marry a chap called Batlivala, and name their daughter Brandy!" Still poker-faced, he continued, "My other daughter, Maja, married a Daruwala." He then told us of his late mother's early predicament. Manekshaw's doctor father had set up practice in Amritsar, and he brought his young Bombay-raised bride here. "As the train steamed in, she wept in sheer panic for, there, bathing under a tap on the station, was this huge man with flowing black beard and hair down to his waist: she had never seen a Sikh before.'' In 2003, I met Sam Manekshaw the last time. I lived in Delhi then, and the whole capital it seemed had turned out to greet him on his 90th birthday. The Oberois wheeled in a cake, and Parzor, a UNESCO-funded NGO preserving the Parsi heritage unspooled a documentary on him. Predictably, all speaker paraded the hope of 'hitting your century'. Death ran him out five years too early. It may have won that battle; but Sam has still decisively won the war.

South Africa: Investors Waking Up to the Force of India Rising

OVER the past decade, India has moved relentlessly towards claiming its place as one of the world's most powerful nations. Amid the cacophony that represents Indian politics, India's rulers have slowly but surely put together a fabric that allows business to prosper.
There has been a gradual opening up of the economy in key sectors and today, tangible evidence of reforms can be seen in the financial sector, consumer sector and the telecommunications industry, among other arenas. Never before has international big businesses been quite as interested in India as an investment destination, and for very good reason
A giant landmass making up the bulk of an entire subcontinent, India is a country in which 1,2-billion people -- of different languages, cultures and just about every religion on the planet -- miraculously live together in relative peace and harmony, despite some deep schisms and fault lines emanating from those differences .
This melting pot of cultures has resulted in the country walking a tightrope amid the coalition politics that have kept the current government in power and still managed to bring about transformation.
Economic and demographic statistics make the picture very intriguing:
India has the fourth-largest economy after the US, China and Japan.
India is one of only 10 countries with a gross domestic product (GDP) of over $1-trillion.
At its current rate of growth, the Indian economy will add nearly one France every three-and-a-half years and one Australia every year.
The middle-income category is currently 50-million strong.
The number of middle class people is expected to reach 583-million by 2025.
One percent of the hitherto low-income group has been shifting into the middle class every year for the past 10 years.
In pure numbers, this is the largest segment of the population, of around 40 million people annually.
India has the highest growth rate of dollar millionaires and billionaires, yet 25% of people earn below $1 a day.
India's economy has grown 8% a year in the past decade
.Although India's employment numbers are very high, so is its unemployment rate.
India is such an interesting investment prospect because of four very powerful themes, which have underpinned growth:
Outsourcing and information technology. These already make up more than 20% of the GDP and are growing at a faster rate than the overall economy.
Consumption. Feeding and selling ordinary daily essentials to a 500-million-plus consumer base is a lucrative business.
Infrastructure. Meeting the challenges of growth in this country is a huge task. Already an estimated $1-trillion is being proposed for spending in the next five years.
Financial products: A huge opportunity in an increasingly urbane population, which, as matters stand, has only 5% of national savings in financial markets.
Most notably, information technology in India has successfully moved up the value chain. Whereas it was once a mere labour cost arbitrage-driven outsourcing business, today it is a highly acclaimed treasure house of intellectual capital. Ironically, this IT-led surge and increasing liberalisation have forced the historically lagging public sector companies -- with their much-maligned bureaucracies and inefficiencies -- to wake up and start to make dramatic changes.
This is a unique transformation, in which the public sector, instead of withering away as predicted, has become stronger and proved itself to be an able competitor to the private sector.
State-owned behemoths such as the State Bank of India, the Life Insurance Corporation of India, ICICI Bank, the Steel Authority of India and the Oil & Natural Gas Commission, among others, have shaken off their historical images and confounded their critics by capitalising on opportunities available to them to become powerhouses in their respective arenas.
India has historically, thanks to its post-independence state-subsidised education focus, produced surplus labour. This has changed and, for the first time, Indian businesses are now beginning to face a skills shortage. Long criticised for its failure to curb population growth, suddenly its young population is being hailed as its biggest advantage. India is therefore in the midst of a transformation few nations have managed. A sharply divided and highly politicised country with significant polarisation and populism set amid a long-suffering and largely "unconscious" electorate can be fraught with pitfalls. There are bound to be disappointments in the pace and quality of some of the reforms.
But India has become a relentless force with awe-inspiring momentum. The energy and enthusiasm of the citizenry in India will pave the way for sustained growth and development. India is poised to become the most important economy in our lifetime and Indian-owned businesses are set to dominate the world markets. Admittedly, the jury is still out on where it will all finally lead to. But never in the history of modern times has such a story unfolded, and big business cannot afford to remain a bystander. "Go east" should be our mantra.

Topshop may enter India with Tata Group

Arcadia had been in talks with Indian real estate firm DLF (DLF.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), but "finally decided in favour of a franchise agreement with Tata Group's retail chain Trent (TREN.BO: Quote, Profile, Research)", the newspaper said, citing a person close to the development.
A spokeswoman for Trent declined comment.
Green had said in April he was pushing ahead with Topshop's international expansion, including the first store in the United States slated to open in October. He said at the time he was nearly set with plans to enter China and Hong Kong, too.
Foreign retailers are showing keen interest in India's fast-growing retail industry amid stagnating growth at home.
Single-brand foreign retailers in India are allowed to take up to 51 percent in a venture with a local retailer; multi-brand retailers are limited to franchise or licence operations.
Marks & Spencer (MKS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) in April signed a joint venture agreement with Reliance Retail, a unit of India's Reliance Industries (RELI.BO: Quote, Profile, Research), for stores to sell apparel and homeware.
Trent, which operates department store chain Westside, hypermarkets and bookstore chain Landmark, last year said it would manage Benetton Group's (BNG.MI: Quote, Profile, Research) Sisley stores in India.
Infiniti Retail, a unit of Tata Sons, runs Croma, a chain of consumer electronics and durables, in partnership with Australia's Woolworths