These neighbourhoods are hives of building activity. The houses here have long passed the hutment stage and are now as pucca as your own homes, albeit in constrained conditions. Unlike most flat owners (this means you), these homes occupy a plot on the ground and rise to a height that will not get them in trouble with the BMC. They are built in RCC and brick masonry, finished with ceramic tiles, both inside and outside, are clean and largely maintenance-free. They have electricity and piped water running to their kitchens and toilets. This is clearly seen by the miles of running pipes over ground, on both sides of the streets. The roads outside their homes are paved with interlocking tiles, just like any other part of the city.

Despite this, the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) chooses to name these localities as ‘difficult’ areas, and damn them to the eternal hell of rehabilitation.

Unfortunately the system in most cities in India is broken, and most notably so in Chennai. The government-mandated meter is never switched on, and the passenger has to negotiate the fare upfront before boarding. Residents of the city consider the system to be highly overpriced, and a significant section doesn’t even venture to travel by it. In Bangalore and Mumbai, rickshaws refuse to ply to areas from where they are unlikely to get onward passengers, and in a number of cities, it is rumoured that the number of autos on the road far exceeds the number of licenses issued.

India’s Census 2011 shows that one in every three Indians now lives in an urban habitat and that the move towards towns and cities has happened mostly in south India, contiguously from Maharashtra to Tamil Nadu.

According to the latest census, 31.2% of the total population lives in urban centres compared with 27.8% in 2001 and 25.5% in 1991. Of the 1.21 billion population, 833 million live in rural India while the remaining 377 million reside in urban India.

Lavasa is an orderly, high-tech community with everything. 

Except people.

In this city that barely existed two decades ago, there are 26 shopping malls, seven golf courses and luxury shops selling Chanel and Louis Vuitton. Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs shimmer in automobile showrooms. Apartment towers are sprouting like concrete weeds, and a futuristic commercial hub called Cyber City houses many of the world’s most respected corporations.

Gurgaon, located about 15 miles south of the national capital, New Delhi, would seem to have everything, except consider what it does not have: a functioning citywide sewer or drainage system; reliable electricity or water; and public sidewalks, adequate parking, decent roads or any citywide system of public transportation. Garbage is still regularly tossed in empty lots by the side of the road.

Coming here to meet and follow one of the world’s most influential living gurus—although it didn’t involve an undercover investigation—turned out to be one of my most taxing assignments. I was advised by many former devotees, and explicitly warned by his current disciples, not to write critically about the spiritual leader whose followers include the President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, the founder of the Hard Rock Café and legions of the Indian social elite.

All these are passive ways of abandoning our culture. But some people go even further and criticise and mock it. For example, there are some who claim that astrology has no scientific basis and doesn't work.
This is nonsense. If astrology didn't work, why have we been using it for six thousand years? And if it has no scientific validity, why is it so accurate?

As per estimates of the Committee set up by Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation under the Chairmanship of Dr. Pranob Sen, Principal Adviser, Planning Commission (former Secretary, Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, and Chief Statistician, Government of India) the slum population in the country is expected to touch 93.06 million by 2011.

One of the startling and alarming conclusions from this mammoth exercise is that the institutional architecture of our representative democracy does not reflect the uneven demographic sprawl of our citizenry

In their zest for Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, people forgot to find out what he really stands for

The proposed Jan Lokpal Bill is a knee-jerk reaction to the present scenario. Corruption is draining our exchequer as well as our sense of morality and faith in the system, no doubt. Like most knee-jerk reactions, it is not well thought out, and by taking over the independence of courts and the investigating authorities, leaving no scheme of appeal, and the ambiguous treatment of the right to be heard, the bill is absolutely unconstitutional and should not be implemented at any cost – fast-unto-death or not. The possible implications of its enactment far outweigh the obviously good intentions that it was drafted with.

The morality of fasting unto death for a political cause in a constitutional democracy has always been a tricky issue. There is something deeply coercive about fasting unto death. When it is tied to an unparalleled moral eminence, as it is in the case of Anna Hazare, it amounts to blackmail.

What are the aspects of this common ethos? The most important, I would submit, are Spirituality, Plurality and Balance. You may perhaps have a different list, but few will dispute the contention that there is an Indian culture and that comprises of many Indian cultures.

Twenty eight. Almost half a lifetime. Seven World Cups. Many prime ministers. An economic upheaval. From one television channel to a zillion. In 1983, my dad had to wait eight months before he could own a land line phone. Apparently he was luckier than many.

From Kapil to Gavaskar to Vengsarkar to Srikkanth to Azhar to Sachin to Ganguly to Dravid to Dhoni. Phew! At last. From Srikkanth ecstatically puffing on a cigarette in the Lord’s balcony to Yuvraj Singh sobbing emotionally at the Wankhede.

Like every Vyas before him, Anant Pai shone the copper so a new generation could see itself reflected in mythology

In the final week of 1998, the national newsweekly Outlook dedicated an entire issue to him, declaring that he was “The Last Hero.” Tarun Tejpal, who was the magazine’s managing editor then, wrote in that special issue, “Indians are lucky that a short, gifted man can, with a few swishes of his wand, take away the cares and drudgery of their lives and transport them to a 22-yard pleasure palace where the onslaught of disease and the price of onions is for fleeting hours no more real than a distant mirage.”

This argument, to put it mildly, is bunkum. It doesn’t explain, for instance, why the Pakistani government can’t collect taxes and electricity bills from its elite. It doesn’t explain, for instance, why Salmaan Taseer’s assassin is celebrated as a national hero. The mess that is Pakistan is the creation of the Pakistani people. Pakistan can’t be fixed by changing its ‘relationship’ with India any more than North Korea can be transformed by tweaking US-South Korea relations.

The ball-busting defense of the tiny-yet-critical British fortress at Saragarhi is one of the most storied and famous tales of skull-crushing bravery in the already-badass military history of the Sikh people. The middle-finger-u-death response of the ferocious 21 men who bravely held their ground against impossible odds is often held up as the ultimate example of Sikh badassitude, which is really saying something considering that these balls-out Indian hardasses have stories about shit like the dude who ran around pureeing enemy soldiers apart even after being mostly decapitated by a broadsword to the throat. Yet despite this epic showdown being the basis for a national holiday among Sikhs and a valiant, head-cleaving last stand worthy of the Spartans at Thermopylae, this insane tale of 21 warriors going Horde Mode against roughly the entire male population of Central Asia in a single battle remains largely undocumented in Western military histories. This is their tale.

No one denies that Hinduism’s most sacred and ancient texts, including the Bhagvad Gita, describe different kinds of yogic practices. But what does this ancient and sacred tradition of yoga have to do with what people all around the world do in yoga classes in gyms and fitness centres today?

To most Indians, such questions are nothing less than sacrilegious. Yoga is for them what apple pie and motherhood are for Americans: a living symbol of their way of life.

"Jugaad" is a Hindi term referring to the ingenuity of citizens living in resource-constrained environments, a concept from which New Yorkers might derive some enlightenment. Enter Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for Indian Cities, an exhibition created with the help of curator Kanu Agrawal that opens at New York's Center for Architecture next week.
The exhibition is "design by the people, for the people, of Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Pune," says Agrawal, and showcases everyday innovations of slum-dwelling residents and the designers and architects who work around them.

Our criminal indifference to cities like Calcutta or Bombay over the last decades has allowed conditions to deteriorate to sub-human levels. Yet somehow Bombay functions, and with an energy and enthusiasm that is really astonishing—far more impressive than a showpiece capital like Delhi, where the budget available per capita is several-fold that of Bombay. Furthermore, cities like Bombay and Calcutta represent a true cross-section of urban incomes, whereas New Delhi has no destitute people (they are all hidden away in Old Delhi), where the poorest you see are government clerks cycling to work—and in winter even they are dressed in woollens!

Swami Aseemanand’s chilling confession is the first legal evidence of RSS pracharaks’ involvement in the Samjhauta Express and 2006 Malegaon blasts. ASHISH KHETAN scoops the 42-page document that reveals a frightening story of hate and deliberate mayhem

In 2011, Indian society will transform. The right to education Bill, which will be applied this year, requires all private schools to set aside 25% of their seats for the poor

The 1984 Bhopal disaster and its aftermath are of global importance. The abandoned Union Carbide factory in Bhopal is a repository of history and stories that need to be told. Its relevance concerns questions of power, justice "and sustainability - social and ecological." The 2011 symposium and workshop in Bhopal will raise and address these questions. It will focus on the possible transformation of the site into a place of remembrance and a resource for empowering the local community.

In the midst of the Afghan war, Indians have been conserving pre-Islamic art, Buddhist monuments and Mughal gardens, even tracing links back to the Bronze Age.

The Indian government aims to spend $500 billion on infrastructure by 2012 and twice that amount in the following five years.

The problem is a dearth of engineers — or at least the civil engineers with the skill and expertise to make sure those ambitious projects are done on time and up to specifications.

The other Panvel, to my right as I get off the train, is, not unlike Mumbai, an old town in a new world. Historically both a port and a trading town, Panvel was once the rice bowl of the north Konkan, with its famous Bazaar Peth, Mirchi and Kapad Gallis. Panvel Gaon dates back to 1725, when the Bapat Wada was built. It was elevated in the 1800s, when migrants from the Konkan were populating Bombay, and Panvel Shahar was an alternate place to make a home. When you talk to old-timers, they tell you that a newcomer could always find home in Bapat Wada and a job in Dhootpapeshwar, the ayurvedic factory. While the factory is gone, the wada still shelters several hundred residents.

Indian-Americans, the fastest growing Asian group in the United States, make up a little over three million of the country’s population. But only two -- Jindal and Dalip Singh Saund, A Democrat who represented a California district from 1957 to 1963 -- have ever served in Congress. This year, though, there are an unprecedented six Indian-American candidates, all Democrats, are running for the House. And with Jindal and Haley generating national attention, the prominence of Indian-American politicians has never been greater.

And while one might assume that cultural conformity would be more important to Republicans, given the party’s conservative, tradition-minded base, Indian-American Democratic candidates can be just as quick to prove their American assimilation to voters.