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Retelling India’s fashion story
There’s a beeline for India – from publishers of magazines and newspapers to manufacturers of garments and textiles. Not quite without reason – its ever-growing affluent section is bigger in numbers than many European nations put together.
If you care to look beyond the obvious, you will realise those making this beeline have not just been taken in by speculative hype alone. Numbers scream realities, and the numbers indicate that the Indian fashion market is huge, it is growing, it is vibrant. The rich are getting richer, and the number of the rich is also increasing at an alluring rate. This lure is for all those who see India as the promised land for fashion and retail.
So what is it with fashion in India? What is it with sportswear in this country?
What's in a name?
With the stage set for the February 15 Assembly polls in the Northeast, a surfeit of names crop up that extend from the ordinary to the bizarre. There are namesakes and names for names' sake.
Adolf Hitler, for once, is not a member of the German National Socialist Party. He is not a protagonist of Nazism either for anybody to be alarmed of but just the Congress(I) nominee for the Rangsakona (ST) seat in Meghalaya. Adolf Hitler R Marak is his full name.
The Great Dictator of the Third Reich is not the only fiend to contest in the ensuing elections in the state. The very name of a candidate for the Mendipather (ST) constituency would send a shiver down the spine of one too many. One was told that Mary Shelley's monster did destroy its creator. But Frankenstein is alive and kicking for he (Frankenstein W Momin) is the Congress(I) man out here.
ISI in Assam: Not a wolf cry anymore
• Sections:
• Originally published in Rediff.com
• Originally published in Rediff.com
The frantic air-dashes by Union home ministry officials to Assam is telling. The possibility of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence fishing in the troubled demographic waters of the state is not a mere bogey any more. What was an impending threat only a few years back is now a reality. What was a pernicious pathogen till yesterday, has today infected the host and spread to such an extent that its debilitating effects are already beginning to show. The days of crying wolf for politicians are over -- the most subversive activities in Assam today carry the ISI mark.
Demographic realities in the state are murky enough. Ethnic equations are always difficult to understand. But the ISI understands it better than most. Well, enough to upset the wavering demographic equilibrium beyond redemption -- throw life so much out of gear that peace will never return.
What Nagaland doesn't need is a Neroesque politician
• Sections:
• Originally published in Rediff.com
• Originally published in Rediff.com
The tragedy of the Naga political movement has been the annihilation of Nagas by Nagas themselves.
The Nagas have remained cleaved along various schools of thought. Between radicals and moderates (from the killing of Theyieu Sakhrie to that of Kaito Sema) among the insurrectionists themselves. Also between those underground and those overground (from the killing of Imkongliba Ao to that of the Kevichusa brothers).
And somewhere complicating all these delicate equations and rendering all calculations awry are the perennial inter-tribe schisms. Exploiting all these to the hilt are politicians, giving all internecine killings a tribal hue. The blight continues.
As the Nagas do, Swu shall they reap
Had he not become the leader of the dreaded insurrectionist organisation, he would probably have been serving in a mission. The last time that negotiations were held between the Indian government and Naga guerrillas in the late Sixties, playing a key role was a suave young man in his mid-30s. Another 30 summers later, the same man is set to play a bigger role in the current negotiations. Meet the soft-spoken, deeply-religious chairman of the underground National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), Isak Chishi Swu.