I met up with an old friend who is one of the myriad spokespersons the BJP has, and asked him what the party’s view was on the fight between the Ambani brothers. Why should we have a view, he said, it is a dispute over who gets the spoils, how do we come in?

Well, for one, I pointed out, it would make a welcome change from the party’s stance of dealing with issues that aren’t exactly contemporary – Bofors is over 23 years ago, and the Jinnah controversy older than even the Partition! A look at the country’s demographics should make it pretty obvious the number of people born after Partition is so large, Jinnah has less than zero recall value. As for Bofors, how long are you going to flog it?

But more important, look at the amounts involved and the people – it makes Bofors look like child’s play. There are allegations of favouritism, of a huge impact on the exchequer and, more important, a fight between a public sector company and India’s richest man – where the public relations advantage lies is pretty much of a no-brainer.

Anil Ambani’s calculations of the profits Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) will make or how miniscule the government’s share will be may be off the mark, but that’s not the point. Forget whether Mukesh Ambani earns more or Anil Ambani earns less and how much this amount is. Concentrate on the fact that RIL won a contract with NTPC to supply it a certain amount of gas and then refused to supply it. The government, instead of forcing RIL to honour its commitment, has bent over backwards to try and scuttle NTPC’s case arguing the deal was never completed and, on another occasion, that RIL did not have the mandate to even participate in the NTPC tender since it had not asked for the government’s prior permission. Just imagine, I asked my friend, the impact of the BJP going to town with this – the public sector company that is responsible for some of the cheapest power in the country is not getting the fuel it needs to supply more; and the reason for this is the government wants to side with the country’s richest man. It has taken Anil Ambani’s public shaming of the government for the latter to even constitute a group to look into the matter and make assurances that it will take action to protect NTPC’s interests – it has been several days already, though, and there is no sign of  this action being concretized. Just imagine what an Arun Jaitley, the party’s great new hope, at least according to himself, could do with this.

Or consider the stuff about RIL’s capex for the KG Basin. In this case, after Anil Ambani came out with his ads alleging huge padding of costs, the government went into overdrive to debunk these claims – the higher the capex, the less the share of profits that the government gets from the KG Basin gas. The Director General of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons came out with his defence – he said independent experts had been consulted on the matter and that the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had already audited the data. Turns out, thanks to Anil Ambani’s sleuthing, the two independent experts had some links with RIL. And, far more damaging, the CAG said it had never audited the RIL data since it never had access to its balance sheets. It’s possible there’s nothing wrong with RIL’s capex costs, but just imagine what a clever lawyer, leave alone one of the caliber of Arun Jaitley, could do with the obvious gaps in the DGH’s statements on the matter.

I think it is a good idea, especially for those who vote BJP, to send in email asking for an invite to the formal burial of the BJP. You can then move on instead of having to wait forever for the comatose party to revive.

While the sharp upward movement in the stock markets would indicate that the worst is over, the numbers are not too convincing.
Analysts are clear in their view that better corporate numbers worldwide are more a function of reduced costs, rather than better performance.
As far as India goes, already drought has hit the country pretty badly. Consequently, agricultural production and gross domestic product will be hit. This means higher food prices, higher inflation, and ultimately, higher interest rates.
Worse still, a bad season means reduced purchasing power of rural India. Though the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has expanded the scope of NREGA, it will at best ensure that the poor do not die because of lack of food.
So the lack of demand will continue to hit companies, which are dependent on rural India, to generate revenues.
In other words, salaries are not going to improve in a hurry cramping the working middle or upper middle class’s ability to make big buying decisions.
While builders are aggressively building and touting ‘affordable’ homes, the definition of affordability has changed – a flat costing Rs 25-40 lakh flat may sound affordable to many, especially after the heady days of Rs 1 crore flats even at the suburbs (well, it’s still like that in many places).
But going by a simple thumb rule, here are some interesting numbers. To get a loan of say Rs 30 lakh for 20 years, a person needs to have take-home salary of around Rs 60,000 – 80,000 per month – a gross salary of Rs 7-10 lakh.
I wonder how many people would be willing to risk this unless the deal is really good.
Also, while the job market is improving, it’s still not a free-for-all (no hiring to just have the numbers). Importantly, salary hikes are much more conservative, if at all. Buying a car or a second car will also be a tough decision.
Signals from the world economy are not great either. The US, in spite of some decent numbers, does not seem to be out of the woods. And China’s growth, many feel, is a bubble.
Not quite a bright picture. Of course, markets might turn around much before that. But it will be more liquidity driven and less due to economic fundamentals.

To me, it will be a while (perhaps more than a while) before things really turnaround. Till then, well, life goes on.

It’s been ten days. And, I still can’t get over the fact that the restaurant next door is no more. The floor where the restaurant operated is now just an empty, blank space.

The exorbitant rent was too much for the operator to swallow. The land-lord had been trying to evict the restaurant operator for over an year, and where he did not succeed, the market forces did.

While, earlier, many of the staff working in some of the firms in the neighbourhood would order something to be delivered in their offices, the downturn and the salary cuts had an indirect impact on the business of Shezan. A plain case of the trickle down effect. Here, it was a trickling down of the impact of the salary cuts.

Shezan had been seeing a steady fall in the number of people coming for dine-ins ever since the global slowdown began. When many businesses in and around the restaurant began to down their shutters, the signs looked ominous. But, Shezan seemed to weather the slowdown with dignity if you went by the number of orders they were receiving for food to be delivered.

The restaurant operator (he was a contemporary of mine in college) had once lamented to me, “Now the orders of of much lesser value. It end up making the same efforts to deliver it, but make much lesser money.”
While, a couple of  months ago, a high-end Italian restaurant went down, Shezan seemed to be able to keep its head above water. Alas, while the news reports of the slowdown easing trickles in, the result has not been a proportional trickling down of the wealth creation, if any.
The real estate slump too had a huge impact. Many of the regulars to Shezan were those who made money in the real estate boom. The real estate bust has had a major impact on its revenues.

Bravo! I say to the landlord who managed to speed up the demise of a restaurant. Perhaps it was “mercy killing”.

It almost embarrasses me to admit it, but for a fellow who spends most of his time travelling (for a living, no less), I’m rather directionally challenged. Just to give
you a small example, I have been living in the Bombay suburb of Bandra for over two years now, and I still don’t know my way around it properly, apart from a couple of routes to and from the office. It doesn’t help that much of Bandra is still a maze of old-world lanes and alleys, but surely someone who’s driven thousands of kilometres all over the country should have at least a passing familiarity with his own neighbourhood? Not in my case, it would appear; I am usually to be found with a blank expression on my face if someone asks me for directions within Bandra.
This regrettable state of affairs extends itself well beyond the boundaries of Bombay. I normally pick up a car in Delhi whenever I’m driving around up north, and I always have a few nervous moments the night before I’m to leave Delhi – you see, getting out of that damn city has never been an easy task for me. The family I stay with there has a chauffeur, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to ask him for detailed directions about how to exit Delhi. His standard response is ‘But didn’t I tell you the last time you were here?’, to which I can do no more than grin sheepishly and beg his indulgence once again. Of course, the fact that I often end up getting hopelessly lost despite his advice is another matter. Entering the city provides just as many opportunities for losing my way – I once ended up crossing the Yamuna Bridge four times without realising quite what I was doing. On another memorable occasion, I drove almost all the way to Meerut, when my goal was to head in exactly the opposite direction. I feel, however, that I’m not entirely to blame as far as Delhi is concerned – I find the number of roundabouts and multi-directional flyovers in that city maddeningly difficult to decipher.
I must also admit that I’m a bit paranoid about routes when I’m out on the open road (it’s a Virgo trait, even though I’m a Leo by birth – long story). If I don’t see a distance marker or board for a while, I start to wonder if I’m on the right track and feel an urgent need to stop immediately and ask the nearest person. Of course, this can have its drawbacks. If I’m told I’m headed the right way, but the person looks of dubious navigational ability, then my worries deepen; if I’m laughed at and told I’m miles off the track, then of course I feel a right idiot. Not that passers-by are always piercingly accurate when doling out route advice, mind. Up north, the way to anywhere is frequently ‘Go straight and take a right’, often accentuated by pointing left. Is it any wonder I’m paranoid?
This is why I like living in Bombay, despite my being at a loss about my immediate surroundings. Of all the major cities in India, it’s the easiest to exit and enter; to the best of my knowledge, there are only four roads in and out of the city, and they’re all ‘straight down’ – no lefts, rights, circles and wildly-divergent flyovers to worry about. I’ve already mentioned Delhi’s peculiarities; Calcutta, Madras and Bangalore can be equally confusing in their own unique ways. Still, having said all this, it’s equally true that getting lost is often
more fun than being on the right road all the time. A great number of my most cherished adventures have been the result of taking a right instead of a left, and that’s something I wouldn’t change for all the world.

Confession time: I didn’t want to come back to work after a two-week break. Did I head to an exotic destination? No. Did I manage to get all the house work done? No. In fact, my home needs a LOT of attention right now. Did I just chill? Yes and no.

I joined a theatre workshop for two weeks and kept up my grueling schedule much to the disappointment of my parents. My father was ecstatic when I told him that I was taking a two-week break and not going out of the city. “Great, so you’ll stay with us for some time?” When I informed him that the leave was actually for a 10-day theatre workshop (1.30-5.30 pm everyday) he didn’t say much.

I come from a family where, despite all the good intentions perhaps, my parents never encouraged me, beyond a point, to pursue creative activities. They were aware of my interests in singing, dancing, acting and writing but just didn’t have enough exposure themselves to tap various avenues to nurture my talent. As long as I was singing to relatives and participating in school competitions, it was okay. But a ‘career’ in singing was a firm NO. She might disagree today but I remember my mum actually stating that my horoscope clearly mentioned that a career in singing would result in “an enemy murdering me”. And, trust me, even though I laugh at the thought now, at that time – I was 13 years old — it was a scary feeling. So, if they didn’t want me to go to Mumbai (Bombay in those days) for college, I argued meekly but never fought back. If they said, singing and dancing is good as a hobby but no, you can’t think of it as a career, I thought they knew what was best for me. If they patted my back in front of others and said, “She’s a good girl. She always listens,” I was happy and content. In that sense, I lacked the drive to pursue my own dreams. I was scared of going against them.

A lot of people in the entertainment industry with whom I speak to today (in the line of duty) share similar stories, tell me about times they were regarded as outcasts, how parents always screamed and shouted at their “wastrel son” or the “stupid daughter who thinks she can be a star”. I remember speaking to actor Deepak Dobriyal and asking him if those times, those taunts, those accusations hurt? “Of course, I was very upset then. But I knew my goal very well.”

And that’s where I faltered completely. I never had any risk-taking abilities (I don’t, even today) and back in college days, instead of going to the music society (which, in my college, was also riddled with politics back then) I wanted to catch films, share all sorts of gossip and coffee with my friends. Today, I do regret wasting all that time in college. I had a fixed pocket money of Rs 1,000 in college days (this had to include my sojourns with friends, money to board buses and buy books) and silly as it sounds, it never occurred that I could ask my dad to give me more money to attend plays and concerts, stuff that I used to secretly circle in newspapers promising to watch all of those when I would start earning myself. For the record, summer job was another strict NO for me.

Anyway, the theatre workshop that I’d attended recently brought back a flood of memories of my childhood days, my earliest dreams and ambitions, the confidence with which I used to get up, look my teachers in the eye and say, “Ma’am, I want to be a singer when I grow up.”

The workshop, hosted by Actor Factor (a Delhi-based theatre company) and conducted by Shelli Koffman had a mixed age group (15 and above). Needless to say, I was the oldest in the batch and every time I walked into the hall where the sessions were being held, I gaped at the confidence of youngsters and their desire to do a summer job and use the money to enroll themselves in the workshop. I was amazed at parents who would walk into the hall and sit silently, observing their children, enquiring from them if they liked the activity. I felt secretly happy when 14-year-old Vani, a girl from DPS mentioned that her parents, having observed her at a school play, thought she was inclined towards acting and promptly got her to the workshop. It felt good to look at kids making mistakes at the final production on stage and still finding the confidence to look at the audience and laugh. As for myself; it simply felt good to be on stage after all these years.

I had a fun-filled and an enriching time at the workshop. For the past 10 days, my life has revolved around theatre and creative activities that I’ve always loved but never knew where to begin. For the past 10 days I’ve been a youngster all over again. Only this time, I was far more confident, happier and far more content.

PS: This post was written two months ago. Right now, I’m a part of an advanced acting workshop and working towards a production — 6 pm to 10 pm every day — and we’ve finalised a folktale from Bihar, just in case you’re interested in the details.

Clichéd as it may sound, it’s never too late to pursue your dreams despite your job, your home and other commitments. Ask yourself, is there any activity that you want to take up despite your hectic schedule? Share it with us on the blog.

The Press Club of India (PCI), Delhi is one of the most democratic places on earth. Sure, as with all enterprises run by journalists, this one too tends to get mired in verbiage, fruitless mudslinging (frequently using facts that are incorrect) and name-dropping. It also runs - God know how.  And having finished their work, when journalists come here, they tend to attack the bar, leading to some piquant situations where alcohol plays a big role in the outcome.

The PCI is democratic because since its inception, it is a place where women can walk in drink or not drink, without the risk that some kind of value judgment will made on them. During the Emergency PCI was the place where newspersons would hang out asking each other how their day was.

But the daily humdrum of PCI is extremely entertaining. Once, while watching the fruitless efforts of a colleague to flag down a waiter, a British journalist commented sympathetically: “yes, I know, it is difficult to tell the waiters from the journalists”.

Last week a famous Bangladeshi singer was invited to PCI. Every Bengali who follows culture has heard of her. So it was a philistine who introduced her: “And now, Ms Lisa Mohammad will sing a song”, mispronouncing her name.

Sacrilege! But the audience bore it and after Ms Ahmad had corrected the journalist for getting her name wrong, she began singing.

The songs were beautiful enough to bring tears to the eyes of some. When the concert came to an end, she said her last song would be a piece of Rabindra Sangeet Bengalis revere: the national anthem of Bangladesh ‘Amar Sonar Bangla, Aami tomake bhalo bashi’. Everyone stood up, except four persons who were sitting in the front row. They continued to sit.

The song ended. The singer bowed low and folded her hand. Suddenly there was a loud comment in the midst of the applause. It was a term of abuse in Hindi that begins with a B.

The golden moment was broken. The singer did not know who the abuse was meant for. Others craned their necks to see who had made it. Those who were sitting got up to beat up the person who was abusing them. “Who said that” one of them asked. One journalist bounded up in front and shouted: “I said it, and I will say it again. You were sitting when the national anthem was playing. I will fix you.”

A crowd gathered as a fistfight started. The singer was paralysed and the security staff whisked her away. A sublime evening dissolved into a brawl. But then that’s journalists for you!

An article written by a Chinese demagogue for a “patriotic” website has received surprisingly scant attention in India. Zhan Lue (a pseudonym for ‘strategy’) of the Institute for International Strategic Studies has written a widely circulated article that advocates China should work at splitting India into 30 states and take the help of Pakistan and other neighbours to bring this about.

The squeamishness of the Indian media is shocking. This should be headline stuff. Rarely does policy intent emerge with such forthrightness and the last thing we can do is to tide over the matter and brush it under the carpet by invoking peace and goodwill.

India and China met recently for border talks and in spite of the diplomatic noises emanating from that meeting, it is common knowledge that China has long harboured designs on India’s north-east. But Zhan Lue takes it to the next ghastly level: “China can dismember the so-called ‘Indian Union’ with one little move! China should join forces with ‘different nationalities’ such as Tamil and Kashmiri people so that they can establish independent nation states of their own.”

If that’s not language that closely mirrors the Pakistani Army’s stated intention to bleed India through a thousand cuts, I can’t say what is. Interestingly, the article was posted around the same time as the two countries met for border talks.

In a nasty dig at the concept of ‘Chindia’ (coined by Jairam Ramesh to denote the economic rise of the emerging economic giants), Zhan Lue says there can’t be two suns in the sky, and that “China and India cannot really deal with each other harmoniously.”

While there has been no word from the Chinese government on the matter, India has, unbelievably, offered the olive branch by saying that relations between the two countries are stable. “The Chinese side has conveyed to us that in approaching India-China relations, China abides by the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. One of these principles stresses respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty,” a foreign ministry spokesman said.

This, when the article could not have been posted on a well-known site and then freely disseminated without the consent of the Chinese authorities. At the very least, the government should have released a stronger statement denouncing the article and asking the Chinese government to do the same.

The economic miracle that has allowed China to have its way in the international geostrategic stakes is likely to tilt the balance in its favour in international forums. America, especially in the post-September 2008 world, cannot afford to annoy China. Irrespective of what the international community might say about the Dalai Lama/Tibet/human rights abuses, China does what it wants to, as happened recently in Xinjiang. India must treat with caution any suggestions that our partnership with the US is “natural” and must brace itself for all eventualities.

It’s a small world but its not really the same world. Cross a couple of seas or oceans and things change for good or bad, while you are still on the same planet Earth.

Not very long back, I think it was 2004. I was working in Delhi and I had a very strange experience. It was a Saturday and a bunch of us in the bureau had gone for a lazy late lunch. It was one of those rare Saturday lunches when we decided not to drink any beer. Just food and no booze we decided. We were all in a colleague’s car and trying to park it in the ever crowded Fleet Street in Delhi (Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg) right opposite to Business Standard office. My chief was driving the car and was maneuvering the car to park it with some difficult gear shifts. This dude follows rules to the point of irritation. All indicators were on and he was watching the rear view mirror all the time but still a couple of trigger happy goons managed to bump their bike behind our car. What followed as a typical Delhi-style testosterone fight. Goon number one who was riding the bike wanted to prove a point while my chief was trying to explain why the fault was not his but Goon No.1’s. I was fairly new to Delhi so I decided to correct the situation. Leaving my two colleagues (who were bigger and more street-wise than me anyway) to handle the goons, I ran to the nearest police picket and brought with me two fat cops, one actually carrying a big gun — the one with lots of holes in the nozzle. Then came one more cop and he said we all need to go to the station (IP Estate) to file a complaint. I was happy. See, who said this is jungle raj. It worked like a charm and the bad guys will learn their lesson today.

The three of us, along with the two goons where asked to wait a bit. We were introduced to two more cops, one lady and another big Jat cop (am guessing by his size and his accent). Then the lady cop casually dropped the bomb. All us were asked to strip for a medical check up. WHAT? I don’t go topless in my hometown’s Marina beach, leave alone stripping in a police station. This is one of those moments when you get that strange ticklish feel in your sole and certain parts defy gravity and move upwards (you know what!).  That strange churn in the stomach ensued. Eyes start to dilate and normal sounds assume Dolby Surround Sound effect in the head. My poor boss looked at me in shock. Ok, I am going to be taken out of the auto beat and asked to cover chambers for the rest of my life!

Luckily, my other colleague got this brilliant idea. Call the big boss, that is my boss’ boss’ boss. (No names please). He came to the station and spoke to the lady cop and explained to her that all this was not necessary and we don’t want to register a complaint. Suddenly the two goons and all us were shaking hands and putting up a grand show for all to see, how we were almost like childhood friends who failed to recognize each other and all is well. So bye bye.

Phew, close one. On the way back to office, one question was in the top of every one’s mind. Why did I call the cops? Someone even asked it. That is when the big boss said, what I did was the right thing. The only mistake was I forgot it was in Delhi. For small harmless altercations you don’t call the cops. We are not living in the West. This is India, I was told. But isn’t it how big fights start? So why not nip it in the bud by bringing in the cop early? May be, but don’t do that again I was told. Ok, said I. It made sense actually.

Five years later, something eerily similar happened here in London right outside my house. It was Friday evening. My wife, visiting mom-in-law and I were coming home after an evening stroll at around 8 pm.  It was still bright outside and a green Honda was parked outside my apartment building. We walked around the car and it suddenly started to back up, slowly at first. I managed to cross, then my wife and just about when my mom-in-law was about to make it the car accelerated. We had to pull my mom-in-law right on time and avoided what could have been a serious accident. My wife screamed at the driver. It was a lady behind the wheel and she looked Asian. At first she gave a lame apology. My wife and I were shocked and it must have shown on our face. Now that really ticked off the nice cement-footed lady behind the wheel. She went off the handle and said, “I apologised didn’t I? So why are you making faces” she asked.

Hey I have a question, I said. “Does your lame apology make your wrong right? Don’t we have the right to express shock?” asked I. Now this nice lady gets better by the minute. “I did not hit you, did I? Be grateful I did not run my car over you, ok?” Not a nice lady anymore. She asked us to “@*&% #*%”. Back home, still a bit shaken, I decided to call the cops. Control room came on the line right away and the lady at the other end calmly told me, since we were not hit by the car, there is very little they could do. But then she said something that surprised me. “You can register a complaint just in case should you encounter this person again in your apartment complex. I can record the complaint and give you a reference number,” she said. I was happy. That is exactly what I wanted. Being the victim  of this unpleasant event, I wanted to be the first one to record it with the police. That we got to do and we got the reference number as well.

That night I went to sleep with smile on my face. My big boss in Delhi was right. I am now living in the West and even as a working class immigrant, I have rights. A right I am constitutionally entitled to in India but seldom get to exercise. A few hours later India will wake up and celebrate Independence Day for the 63rd year!

Noble laureate Amartya Sen, whom The Economist refers to as an ‘economist who thinks like a philosopher’, one who can ‘theorise without oxygen at any height’, recently released his latest book, The Idea of Justice.

On August 5, Sen delivered a lecture in Kolkata drawing upon the premise of his latest book. Media reports of the lecture highlighted eyeball-grabbing issues of Singur land acquisition and the role of trade unions that Sen touched upon during the lecture. Then the reports went on to convey his lament made during the same lecture that we, as a society, give far more importance to broader issues like Singur land acquisition or the Indo-US nuclear deal than we give to the perennially nagging issues like poverty and undernourishment.

Puzzled, I looked up the web for a copy or video file of the lecture, but in vain. So I bought the book instead. It has been three days since then and I am yet to move past the preface (in my defence, the book is not exactly a bedtime read. A cursory look suggests that the prose is more technical and less anecdotal than that of The Argumentative Indian). Nonetheless, the little that I have gathered from book reviews and recent media interviews tells me that The Idea of Justice explores exciting ways to address social issues that have troubled us for long.

Sen questions the widely accepted approach to social justice — famously propounded by the American philosopher John Rawls in The Theory of Justice – that social justice can be delivered by creating perfectly just institutions. To wit, if we have to make healthcare or primary education accessible to all, we must create institutions or systems to ensure the same.

Sen proposes that a more efficient way to deliver social justice would be to identify social injustices and weed them out. That is, in the above example, we must recognise where and why people are being deprived of primary education or healthcare, and correct such anomalies.

Sen’s latest book, which has been in the works for about 25 years by his own admission, is perfectly timed. As evidenced by our social indicators, the Rawlsian way of creating just institutions, systems or mechanisms hasn’t proved very effective in our country so far.

It is about time that the myriad social mechanisms that exist in our country should deliver what they promise, for a change. Insufferably huge amounts of resources and man-hours have been invested in creating and managing such institutions, but we continue to have millions of people among us who will never be able to realise their full potential – something a democracy must ensure in principle – just because they don’t have access to proper healthcare, nutrition or basic education. I, like everyone else, hope that Sen’s treatise on justice sparks off a nationwide debate that influences our approach to development.

Crowded and bedraggled as it is, there’s something uncommonly pleasing about Darjeeling. Having spent a few days there recently, I was able to meditate on how beautiful views and cool weather offer ample compensation for narrow, slippery walkways, running drains, taps running dry, and damp and poky accommodation.

Being a condemned Delhiite, my thoughts turned inevitably to the home city. Here in central Delhi are umpteen ministries housed in awful Socialist-style blocks, crammed full of peons and paper and divided up into a warren of cubbyholes and passages — while outside is the open sweep of the so-called Central Vista. No wonder you see lower-rung civil servants taking extended lunch breaks on the grass. Is it possible that this cramped architectural perspective has some relationship with the cramped policy thinking that came out of these edifices?

Newer government buildings to house new or newly expansionist ministries and departments, however, offer a different paradigm. These state-funded monoliths can afford to have what no privately developed office building can: plenty of space, both within (i.e., broad corridors and chambers) and without (i.e., lawns, which furnish the necessary setback for the appreciation, from the citizens’ street level, of the vertical acres of tinted glass and imperial pink sandstone). They also start with the paper-limiting advantages of computerisation. Could it be that this lavish gift of space will contribute to a slight opening up, a greater responsiveness, in official thinking?

(To give one small example, when the post office once housed in the generously proportioned Eastern Court on Janpath was shifted to a cramped and dingy single room opening onto the unlovable middle lane of Connaught Place, the friendliness and helpfulness of its workers — the employees moved with their office — took a palpable dip.)

The new defence buildings — administrative offices, officers’ clubs, hospitals, research headquarters — offer by far the most promising prospect. There, the tradition of “the commanding officer has the last word” is an asset, because, paradoxically in a military setting, it preserves the potential for an individual’s ideas to have a visible effect on the final outcome. That element of quirkiness, sometimes even downright bad taste, is actually rather attractive in a government building.

Of course the military has always had spacious institutional quarters — like the cantonments. But now, for the first time in a long time, it is building itself significant new space. Concomitantly, there’s a hint that there’s some new thinking also going on — slowly, painfully and creakily, of course. Is it possible that the two go together?