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THE WEEKLY NEWSMAGAZINE `35 April 22, 2013

SUBSCRIBER COPY NOT FOR RESALE

SUPPER CLUBS NEW WAYS TO DINE OUT

STARS TV MADE AND UNMADE

In becoming the megaphones of Modi

and Rahul Gandhi, business bodies are openly redrawing India’s political

contours ahead of 2014. Who speaks

for the Aam Admi?

CORPORATE LEADERS?

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Krishna Prasad EXECUTIVE EDITOR Bishwadeep Moitra BUSINESS EDITOR Sunit Arora SENIOR EDITOR Sunil Menon

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SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTSPragya Singh, Chandrani Banerjee,

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Published for the week of April 16-22, 2013

Released on April 15, 2013Total no. of pages 64 + Covers

www.outlookindia.com

Volume LIII, No. 15

In this issue...

OUTLOOK 22 April 2013 1

What they said to usA BIHAR RESIDENT, on the way the state is headed

“Bihar is now a republic of event managers and contractors, each out to make more money.”

C U R R E N T A F FA I R S

08 The Inside StoryNitish Kumar may boast a squeaky-clean reputation himself, but while he reigns over the state, it’s corruption which rules. Work gets done, yes, but at a price.

12 LA TOMATINA Column by Frank Krishner

14 CLOUD COMPUTINGGorging on Power

18 KERALA Forests and Family Drama

20 POTA Victims of the Law

22 POLITICAL PARTIES A Democracy of Dictators

25 COLUMN Siddharth Bhatia

F E AT U R E S

46 Gypsy Gourmands Supper clubs gain currency and patrons in the metros, food not necessarily the main course at these soirees

50 TV COMPETITIONS What Happens to the People Who Win All Those Prizes?54 TRIBUTE Natasha Badhwar on everyman film critic Roger Ebert

REGULARS 02 LETTERS 06 POLSCAPE 56 BOOKS 60 FINE LIVING 62 GLITTERATI 64 DIARY

Cover Design: Deepak Sharma

With the general elections within sniffing distance, there has been a sharp increase in national politics being played out via India’s top chambers of commerce. By giving platforms to Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the corporate sector, aided by a breathless media, is trying to shape perceptions of a gladiatorial contest. Is this rooted in reality, and who does it really benefit?

Business PoliticsCOVER STORY

28

12 22 April 2013 OUTLOOK

IT’S a riot of red, squishy messiness. Scores of pulp-covered boys and girls, uncles and aunties, and teenagers with

tomatoes in their hands and stars in their eyes, screaming, squealing, laughing andbombarding each other in a tomato-filled pool. This wasn’t Spain or laidback Bangalore. It was ‘La Tomatina’ in the unlikeliest of places in the world: in Patna, the capital of backward Bihar. This was the brand-new Bihari Holi ritual, tamatar maar, debuting for the first time in Patna’s only water park. Going by the rave reviews of the event in the local media, Bihar’s burgeoning middle class dubbed the event an unqualified success. Bihar, as every Indian and his pet parrot know, has been springing a lot of surprises.

Nobody was perhaps more surprised than the tic ket-checkers of the Indian Railways. For the first time in recorded history, some would say, the locals actually bought railway tickets on their way to the Ramlila grounds in Delhi to “celebrate Bihar” with a “special status rally”. Every person travelling to Delhi for the Nitish Kumar rally was specifically instructed to buy tickets, and they did so. The usual practice is to just clamber on to trains and dis-place everyone by brute force. Bihar is changing. “What next, Biharis giving up khaini?” gasped one surprised Bihari, pointing to the newspaper in utter disbelief.

Bihar’s own ‘La Tomatina’ Holi points to a new chapter in the chronicles of Patna’s city life. No doubt Patalipolis —the Pataliputra of new-found dreams—is evolving, much like Gotham City, with high-rises of glass and chrome, a new international airport being laid out, new traffic lights to replace the defunct ones (which were only recently installed), and new eyesores being built in the name of civic beautification projects.

There are some women activists who have been screaming themselves blue in the face that incidents of disfigurement of women by acid-throwing are on the rise. In March, before International Women’s Day, Chanchal Kumari narrated her story

to the Patna media. It was a five-month-long tale of horror, intimidation, apathetic local police, lapses in investigation and recording of evidence, discrimination, and apathy bordering on open hostility on part of the doctors and medical staff at the Patna Medical College Hospital. It was after the media carried the story that the superintendent of the Patna Medical College expressed regret. The media then turned from Chanchal’s hideously disfigured face to the beautification of the Gandhi Maidan and Nitish Kumar’s ‘plans for a beautiful Bihar’. It was after all, Bihar’s 101st birthday bash, and the virtual Nitish-Narendra Modi sparring bouts had infinitely more possi-bilities than some shrill women’s group crying foul over some stuff happening to the lower castes in rural Bihar.

Anyway, who says that women have a bad deal in Bihar? Right now, there are nine women ‘top cops’ in Bihar, and some, such as superintendents of police Harpreet Kaur and Dhurath Sayali Sawlaram have been posted to sup-posed male bastions such as Begusarai and Jehanabad, both “infested with Maoists”, as one local English daily put it. Will these women in top posts bring much-needed gender sensitivity to Bihar’s police force? That’s not a question on the mind of the average Bihari, though.

Bihar’s 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayats only served to create another powerful ‘unofficial’ post: the mukhiapati. The local strongmen who couldn’t get themselves re-elected merely set up their wives as pup-pets. These mukhiapatis were the power behind the

panchayat. The government did try to crack down on the practice, but like the dowry system, it just doesn’t go away, several people point out. Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s push for 50 per cent inclusion goes on relentless.

“SP Kim, a woman, will handle Purnea district, noted for smuggling and terrorist activities. SP Meenu Kumari will be expected to take on the stone-quarrying mafia of Sheikhpura district. Bihar has gone where the Indian army fears to tread: watch our Calamity Janes leading from the front,” a man in khaki tells me, smirking, over a chilled Cobra beer, pro-

Tamatar Touche and Patna’s Holi GhostSounds schizophrenic? So is Bihar’s tumultuous change.

FRANK KRISHNER

COMMENT

WHILE MIDDLE-CLASS BIHAR JOLLIFIES HOLI WITH THE IMPORTED SQUELCH AND SQUASH OF ‘LA TOMATINA’, NITISHVISION WOULD LOVE TO SEE BHOJPURI SONGS SWEPT UNDER.

22 April 2013 OUTLOOK26

The Chamber The ficci-cii rallies have replaced grassroots ones. Is politics becomi

COVER STORYBUSINESS & POLITICS

OUTLOOK 22 April 2013 27

by Sunit Arora and Arindam Mukherjee

THE consultant-about-town takes a quick look around before launching the pitch. You see, there are three corporate

clients—all in their early 60s and owners of `1,000-crore plus companies—who are keen

Stateng a corporate playfield?

Rahul Gandhi addressing the CII AGM, Apr 4, Delhi

Photograph: JITENDER GUPTA

DINING OUTPOP-UPS

22 April 2013 OUTLOOK46

Gypsy gourmands The Great Delhi Pop-up recreates Purani Dilli on the lawns of an art gallery in south Delhi

Gone Flash-FeastinJoin the ‘supper club’, a mushrooming concept, offering serious food

47OUTLOOK 22 April 2013

restaurant which we would set up at a different venue in Delhi and Gurgaon every few weeks,” says Bhat, who’s often found experimenting with different cuisines when she isn’t working as a textile consultant. Goma, meaning ses-ame in Japanese, focuses, naturally, on Japanese-Korean fare and has proved to be such a hit after just 10-odd events that the duo is considering turning it into a full-time enterprise. “I think the concept has become popular because the guests really like the informality of it, and that you get to meet like-minded people, often strangers, over a range of food stories,” believes Sood, an educationalist who loves to host happy gatherings over food and abundant conversation.

Goma’s popularity reflects what foodies are now feverishly pursuing: not just experimental and new cui-sines, but a whole other culinary expe-rience. No wonder, then, there is a swelling off-the-mainstream dining culture that is emerging on city tables. For a bunch of 30-odd Delhiites, for example, Holi last month kicked off at the Great Delhi Pop-up—Holi Special, put together by food writer and consul-tant Anoothi Vishal, journalist Smita Tripathi and chef Nishant Chaubey. On a balmy March evening on the lawns of a serene south Delhi cultural space, fusion festive food proved to be the perfect conversation starter, as the motley crowd chatted over Kaanji, a fermented Holi cooler, and delicate kachoris stuffed with California prunes, with a fiery methi daane ki chutney to dip into. Between courses, the guests took a tour of the artwork on display at the venue, and then tucked into a sumptuous thaali of traditional Old Delhi fare, followed by prune-stuffed gujiyas and apple-prune halwa.

To diners around the country, a culi-nary experience such as this—with its

touch of spontaneity— is quickly turning out to be the next big thing on the culi-nary trail. The usp, of course, is that no meal is quite like another. Typically, pop-ups or supper clubs host 10-30 people, where you are mostly amidst strangers, with a long, lingering three-course meal on offer, which may on some occasions be peppered with a round of book-reading, a music perfor-mance, or just, well, “interesting” con-versation. Priced at `800-2,000 per person, at times with alcohol, the growing supper club culture may well counter the increasingly expensive, and often mediocre, mainstream dining scenario. Says Seema Chari, language course coordinator at the Italian Cultural Centre in Delhi and a regular at the Great Delhi Pop-up events, “What I enjoy about evenings like these is that there is always a story behind every dish, and a blend of history, heritage, food, and a different but invariably interesting gathering of people every time.”

Manu Sharma, a communications consultant and a big fan of Goma lunches, feels that where a pop-up event scores over a regular restaurant experi-ence is in the thought behind every little arrangement, from the food to the manner in which the host walks the thin line between interacting with guests and being not too intrusive. “Plus, every pop-up is different, with a change of venue, ambience, look and feel,” Sharma points out. That keeps the novelty alive.

“Dining as we knew it has changed, and eating out is not just about picking out a neighbourhood restaurant and poring over the menu,” affirms food writer and consultant Rushina Mun-shaw Ghil di yal, who recently set up abp Cook Studio in Mumbai, a home kitch-en-style cooking studio that hosts cu-rated culinary events. “The Cook Studio is our version of a supper club, which is

by Neha Bhatt

WHEN Nandini Sood and Anupama Bhat decided to launch their curiously titled culinary venture ‘Goma’ late last year, the idea was fairly simple: to bring

people and gourmet fare together. “We wanted to create an experiential dining opportunity, in the form of a ‘pop-up’

g for thought to patrons

Photograph: TRIBHUVAN TIWARI