Redesigning The Caravan Magazine (Vol. 2): A Graduation Project Documentation by Pupul Bisht

GRADUATION project Redesigning The Caravan Magazine Sponsor : The Caravan

Volume : 2 of 3 student : PUPUL BISHT programme : Bachelor of Design

guide : Tarun DEEP GIRDHER

2015 COMMUNICATION DESIGN faculty (GRAPHIC DESIGN)

National Institute of Design Ahmedabad

Copyright ÂŠ 2015 Student document publication, meant for Private Circulation only. All rights reserved. Bachelor of Design, Graphic Design, 2011 - 2015, National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. No part of this document will be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, xerography and videography recording without written permission from the publisher, Pupul Bisht and National Institute of Design, India. Trademark names are used throughout this document. Rather than putting a trademark symbol in every occurrence of a trademark name, it is stated that the names are used only in an editorial manner and to the benefit of the trademark holder with no infringement of the trademark. Few photographs used in this document are sourced from the web and are used for representational purposes only. All illustrations and photographs in this document are Copyright ÂŠ 2013 - 2015 by respective people / organizations. PLEASE NOTE: The colours shown throughout this document may not be the correct colour due to difference in printing process and pigments used for producing this document. Designed by: Pupul Bisht Edited by: Tarun Deep Girdher and Pupul Bisht E-mail: pupulbisht@gmail.com Processed at Sonal Xerox, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad-380002, Gujarat, India www.nid.edu Printed digitally in Ahmedabad, India. September 2015

VOLUME 2

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

CONTENTS

THE PROJECT

HOPPING ON THE CARAVAN

24 Why did I choose magazine design?

30 The Caravan: Magazine

26 Project Brief & Timeline

34 The Caravan: Masthead

Acknowledgments Preface Institute Guide

36 Flow of Work at a Magazine

Sponsor/ Client

38 Behind the Scenes at the Printing Press

Student

48 Vision Document

STEPPING INTO THE READERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S SHOES

THE PROCESS

TAKING A STEP BACK

54 The Caravan Story

86 Waterfall vs Agile Method

56 The Contemporaries

88 Magazine Redesign 101

66 The Caravan: Design Audit

88 Learning by Example: Case Studies

82 Observations and Inferences

96 What Really Happened: My 22 Weeks 98 Warming Up: Explorations

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

12 Glossary

REALIGN, REPURPOSE — RESTART

FROM HEAD TO TOE

DECISION TIME

10 Consistency vs Modulation

46 Final Design Selection

The Caravan, September 2015 issue

12 Design Approach #1

56 Concept Highlights

The Caravan, October 2015 issue

18 Design Approach #2

62 Revision of Structure

24 Design Approach #3

64 Colour Palette

20 Design Approach #4

66 Iconography

36 Design Approach #5

68 Grid & Style Sheets

Bibliography

OUT ON STANDS!

Colophon

42 Reaching a Consensus

THE NEW CARAVAN

CONCLUSION

LEARNING AND REFLECTIONS

96 Promotion & Advertisement

116 Looking Back & Moving Forward

126 About Designing a Magazine

98 The Magazine

128 About Working on my own 130 Invaluable Finds & Resources

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

06 REALIGN, REPURPOSE —RESTART

On the other side of a crucial discussion that acted like a turning point in the project (refer to Chapter 5 in Volume 1), was a clear, focused vision of streamlined agendas. With new insights and revelations I came back to Delhi feeling re-energized. Soon after, Girish and I met to re-calibrate our approach towards the redesign. In an extensive discussion over coffee, we put forth our vision for the ‘New’ Caravan. Until now we had been responding to the vision of the editorial team, but that evening was the first time ever, that we thought about the redesign in isolation to what the editors wanted. We were thinking purely as visual designers. Great leads came out of that discussion. We were able to question the need for such an exercise and find answers that made sense to us. We had successfully broken our problem down to its most fundamental concerns and now we were building up on that knowledge bit-by-bit. We stopped being vague about what we wanted to be the outcome of this rigorous effort and began articulating our aim more clearly.

the project, the content of this volume is more focused on tracing the discussions and decisions that lead to the final version of the design. Step-by-step, the reader will be guided through cover-to-cover dummies of the shortlisted design approaches, final round of decision making and design refinement, finally followed by the first look of the new design. The document ends with a conclusive analysis of the design that finally got published and a personal account of reflections on my learnings.

The two months that followed can be called the cream of the project. This was the time period that saw the most significant design development that finally shaped the ‘new-look’ of The Caravan which was eventually released in the market. Unlike the previous volume which presented a more conceptual and exploratory view of

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

07 FROM HEAD TO TOE

To read a book from cover-to-cover is to read it all the way from beginning to end. The term ‘cover-to-cover dummy’ was widely used in The Caravan office indicating a very similar meaning. The idea of such a dummy involves designing all the sections of the magazine including the cover page and arranging them in the actual sequence of their occurrence. This is done by selecting one visual language and seeing it through for the entire magazine. The last two months of my project were all about aggressively prototyping one dummy after another. Taking quick printouts in actual size is crucial since it gives one an exact idea about how visual elements are behaving on the page. More than anything else, it helps to test the readability and legibility of the text. For members of the team who come from a non-design background, such as the editors, writers and managers, these dummies are the only tangible way to see the design and to understand how a concept would be realized in a real world scenario when an actual issue gets published.

audiences. In this respect, cover-to-cover dummies prove to be a useful tool to test the issues of consistency. For the purpose of making cover-to-cover dummies, we selected a handful of explorations that seemed to be working for the vision that we had for the redesign. Taking one visual treatment at a time, we tried to treat all the sections of the magazine in that style. Special effort was to made to keep the page fixtures (page number, issue date etc) consistent and fixed throughout a given version. This exercise came with its own challenges and limitations that I will be discussing in further detail in this chapter. Following that, I will be presenting a comprehensive analysis of the five shortlisted cover-to-cover approaches that were consider for selection as the final design direction.

Like in any other brand, in a magazine too, visual consistency is key in building brand identity and recall value. In today’s information age, people are bombarded with hundreds of visual images and messages daily. Successful publications know that it is important to build and maintain a strong visual identity that will cut through the visual “clutter” and be recognised instantly and positively by key

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

#visualrhythm

While every piece in the magazine must look like it belongs to a cohesive whole, a successful design must factor in a fair amount of variation and visual modulation to keep the reader engaged as well as to avoid visual exhaustion

CONSISTENCY VS MODULATION Monotony is defined as uniformity or lack of variation in pitch, intonation, or inflection. It is the tedious sameness or repetitiousness of elements that is the biggest enemy of a pleasant visual experience. Identical objects perfectly lined up generate a feeling of discomfort in the viewer. At the very least, we experience something mechanical to which we react negatively as human beings, since we are used to more natural structures with variation and complexity. Therefore, consistency must never result in monotony. Monotony breeds boredom. In the earlier stages, we all agreed that before approaching any re-design exercise, we must have a clear idea of what is the core editorial essence of the magazine, one that has to be protected and safeguarded at all cost, and which is the defining character of the magazine that has gotten it thus far. Caravan started as a unique experiment in Indian newsrooms, one that bet on long-form narrative writing and which brought together the best of reportage and literary writing. Beyond narrative writing, the magazine is well respected for its opinion and essays, which are rigorously argued but

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

fluidly articulated. Over the last five years the magazine has developed a deeply engaged readership niche. Therefore we needed to keep the core- long form narrative. But beyond that, we needed to experiment with visual treatment in an effort to make the magazine more accessible to a larger audience, as well as to lend a bit of pizazz. Now an inherent challenge with long-form journalism is the length of articles. The Caravan is one of the few Indian magazine that runs articles as long as 15000-20000 words which are spread across 8-10 spreads. Anyone familiar with reading magazines would know that an article this length may struggle to hold the attention of a reader if not written and designed cleverly. One of the most obvious drawbacks of the older design of the magazine was its overtly consistent and standardized visual language. Image 1 illustrates these issues. While every piece in the magazine must look like it belongs to a cohesive whole, a successful design must factor in a fair amount of variation and visual modulation to keep the reader engaged as well as to avoid visual exhaustion.

In this case the dichotomy of consistency and modulation reminded me of the difference between rhythm and pattern that we had learned in our first month as design students at NID. While repetition without variation results in a pattern, repetition with variation gives birth to a rhythm. The design needed to be rhythmic if enhancing the reading experience was the goal. Keeping some key elements (mainly page fixtures) constant, I decided to play with typographic and colour variations while still limiting myself to a family/palette. Even the grid was treated as a modular one which responded to the immediate nature of the article or section. The articles in the final design transition between 2, 3 and 4 column layouts with fluidity. The idea was to provide a visual treatment that enhances the variety of writing within each issue without making any one article or section look out of place. Since the style of writing in The Caravan is narrative and relies on story-telling method, I decided to take inspiration from the conventional structure of story-telling and build my design on those principles.

Figure 2 depicts a typical plot-line that can usually be found at the core of most films. It shows events that form a significant pattern of action with a beginning, a middle and an end. In case of the magazine as well, there is a very distinct sense of a beginning (FoB), a middle (The Well) and an end (BoB). These distinctions are reflected clearly in the written content of the magazine but not so much in the visuals. With the redesign, I decided to use the tool of visual design to enhance this distinction. I began by plotting a plot-line/ mood-graph for the magazine and that became a frame of reference for me while fleshing out the coverto-cover dummies.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2 11

51 Spot the difference Image 1 shows four spreads from four different sections of the magazine. Even though there is significant difference in the length of articles, tone of writing as well as subject matter, visually all the spreads seem to belong to the same section of the magazine. The older design of The Caravan uses a monotonous two column grid throughout the magazine which adds to the monotony. Moreover the typographic color or the ‘gray’ on the page is the same which makes the pages look less exciting and overwhelmingly cluttered.

52 Plot line The top figure shows a typical plot-line graph that is followed in film making. The one at bottom is my adaptation of the same in the context of the magazine. I replaced the major ‘events’ in the original one with the main sections of the magazine. This became a good frame of reference while designing the various parts.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

DESIGN APPROACH #1

The first cover-to-cover dummy was based on the theme of minimalism. All the elements on the page were maintained at a smaller size and only the type was sparingly used in bolder sizes to get visual drama. This entire visual language exploits only a basic three color palette of black, white and red. This is a traditional graphic design palette and hence did not have much of an originality value. Other than the accent color ‘red’, the most used graphic element in this design is a ‘hairline rule’. Used both to divided the space horizontally as well vertically the hairline rule proved to be a subtle yet effective element for creating visual demarcations and hierarchy. This design also used a lot of white space on the spreads.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

Merits The slugs used as red flag-like elements in the beginning of the page catch the desired amount of attention. The entire design has a very clean and neat appeal to it. The visual hierarchy of elements on page is unambiguous. Demerits The use of lines to divide column space is superfluous and makes the entire page look claustrophobic and cluttered. The color palette and its usage is reminiscent of a lot of contemporary magazines

COLOR PALETTE

Story Header

Byline given an exclusive space for emphasis

Section Header given emphasis by the virtue of color

Text Debarshi Dasgupta

3 Column Grid

THE LEDE

Story Number Used at a large point size for visual drama

Slug highlighted by virtue of color

Story Strap

Education

s he struggled to read the first lesson in his Marathi textbook, Swapnil Keye Wadde tugged repeatedly at a frayed handle of the thick nylon carrying bag he uses for school. Rucksacks are an extravagance for children here in Midadapalli, a small village deep within a swathe of east Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district with a strong Naxal presence. When I visited, on a mid-December morning, Wadde, seated in a multi-grade classroom at the village’s government middle school, pored laboriously over the words, failing to recognise even individual letters. He was not exceptional in this. Another student, Sapna Wachami, sat silent when I asked her to read out the word “metre,” written in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also

April 2015

Page Fixtures page number and issue date which will be consistent throughout the design

Dummy Ad used as a placeholder

Careful Wording Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes government schools unfriendly places for Madia children. These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s education system. Despite official recommendations in the 2005 National Curriculum Framework that textbooks

incorporate more of local cultures and languages, India’s tribal children, but for rare exceptions, continue to be taught either in Hindi or one of the country’s 21 other official languages. In Chhattisgarh, where children in government schools are mostly taught in Hindi, only 35 percent of children in grades 3, 4 and 5 in the tribaldominated Bastar district can read first-grade texts—this according to the 2014 Annual Status of Education Report by the NGO Pratham. The same report showed that only about half of children in the same grades in Gadchiroli district can do the same. On the same day I visited the school at Midadapalli, I arrived in the village of Hemalkasa, which lies about 30 kilometres away over densely forested tracks navigable only on foot or on two wheels. At the single pre-primary class at Lok Biradari Prakalp, or LBP, an ashram established by the social activist Baba Amte in 1973 to aid the local tribal population, the mood was vastly different from that in the Midadapalli classroom. Excited Madia children flipped through a large picture book written in their native language. A teacher walked in, and they gathered around her for story time. The day’s tale, narrated in Madia Gondi, stressed the importance of sharing.

Image courtsey The Caravan Archive

Image Credits appearing as footnotes

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

1.1

1.4

14 THE LEDE

Text Kanishk Tharoor

Law & Order n the Saturday afternoon of 13 December, two large public events jostled for space in Manhattan. One was the Millions March, a peaceful demonstration of outrage at police violence against “people of colour”—most notably the fatal shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St Louis in August, and the choking and subsequent death by heart attack of a 43-year-old black man, Eric Garner, in the New York borough of Staten Island in July. In both cases, the civilians were unarmed. Grand juries in Missouri and New York had recently refused to indict the white officers involved in their killings. Chanting “Black lives matter!,” the marchers wound through downtown streets to Foley Square, near City Hall. Close by, revellers in Santa Claus suits and skimpy elf costumes stormed through the streets as part of SantaCon, an annual Christmas-time bacchanal. SantaCon began in the mid 1990s as a whimsical art stunt, but it has since swollen into a frenzy of drunkenness, part pub-crawl and part Mongol invasion. Inevitably, the protest and the party bumped together. Santas cut through the march; gnomes and elves searched for alternative routes to the next bar. Police officers flanking the demonstration looked on with amusement. But what could have passed as a brief comic respite became a point of friction. One white man in full red-and-white regalia berated a black female protester, telling her to “go get a job.” That jibe, overlaid with age-old racist and classist disdain, sparked great anger. Dozens of demonstrators started chanting not against the excesses of the police or the failures of the justice system, but against SantaCon.

1.2

1.3

1.1 The Lede, Continuing Page 1.2 The Lede, Story 2 1.3 The Lede, Story 3 1.4 The Lede, Letter Piece

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

April 2015

THE CARAVAN: A Jouranal of Politics and Culture

“A decision was made to push

City Watch

dark people out of the city, clean it up, and make room for a whiter, more affluent population. The

New York grapples with a crisis of trust in its police force

It was a collision of words, and of worlds. The tottering merrymakers were mostly white and middle-class; the Millions March, while very diverse, was composed in significant part of black New Yorkers. During recent months of discontent in New York, the gulfs of race and class between these two groups yawned wide. The top one percent of the city’s earners, the majority of whom are white, account for 44 percent of its total income; meanwhile, a fifth of all New Yorkers—a disproportionate number of them people of colour— live in poverty. A 2012 study showed Manhattan to be more socially unequal than Apartheid-era South Africa. The police play a prominent and divisive role on the front lines of inequality, and, with their conduct now under massive public scrutiny, tensions between the force, the city administration and minority communities are coming to a head. According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, two-thirds of white New Yorkers approve of the job being done by the police, while 54 percent of black New Yorkers disapprove. Ethnicity and class are central to shaping experiences of police behaviour in the city. Escalating housing prices have pushed working-class and minority families into peripheral neighbourhoods. It is there that the New York Police Department—the largest urban police force in the world, with 34,000 personnel for a population of 8.4 million people—is most heavily deployed, and where residents such as Eric Garner face the brunt of police excesses. The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled

unconstitutional, in August 2013. But the department still maintains its controversial “broken windows” policy (which it claims lowers rates of serious felonies) of cracking down on petty infractions in poor neighbourhoods while overlooking them in more affluent areas. Of the 179 people killed by on-duty NYPD officers since 1999, 86 percent were black or Latino (those communities formed just over half the city’s population in 2010); only one officer has ever been convicted in relation to these killings. “The police are the face of a much larger and more aggressive system,” Mark Winston Griffith, the executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community group that has long pushed for reform of the NYPD, told me in February. “You can’t separate ‘stop-and-frisk’ and ‘broken windows’ from gentrification, from people being pushed out,” he said. “Explicitly and implicitly, a decision was made to push dark people out of the city, clean it up, and make room for a whiter, more affluent population. The police help enforce that vision of society.” Garner’s death became a flashpoint after a video of the altercation leading to it, recorded on a bystander’s cell phone, went viral online. The grainy footage shows several police officers accosting Garner, accusing him of selling loose cigarettes. As the police struggle to handcuff him, one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, places Garner in a chokehold, and several others pin him to the ground for several minutes. Garner’s last words, clearly audible on the recording, were “I can’t breathe”—a phrase that became a protest slogan. The grand jury ruling exonerating Pantaleo was announced on 3 December, and protests flooded the

police help enforce that vision of society”

streets. Danielle Tcholakian, a city reporter for the news outlet DNAinfo, followed the demonstrators over several days. “There was a lot of yelling and highly charged emotions,” she told me, “but physical confrontations with the police were rare.” The protesters came from diverse backgrounds, she said, and shared a sense that they were part of a historic moment. “You could see many older people as well as teenagers. A lot of people I talked to had never been to a protest before. They were often black, long-time New Yorkers who had grown up here. One female protester told me her father had been an NYPD sergeant. She was quite emotional.” The demonstrations continued for days. Their refrain “Black lives matter!” became so ubiquitous that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, echoed it in an open letter to the city in the wake of the Garner ruling. In a later speech, de Blasio, himself white, described the fear he and his black wife have for their biracial son. “Because of a history that still hangs over us … we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” These were strong words from a mayor, and did not sit well with many of the police officers he presides over. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city’s largest police union, accused de Blasio of throwing cops “under the bus,” and many within the NYPD described him as “anti-police.” So did detractors on the political right, glad to pillory the first left-of-centre mayor to run New York in 10

April 2015

20 years. “That was a surreal moment,” Griffith said. “Surreal not in what de Blasio said but in how the police reacted. What he said was not an anti-police statement. It was an acknowledgement of how black parents have to train their children to be safe in the city. The fact that he can’t say something as harmless as that tells you how far outside the mainstream the NYPD is.” But many cops saw things differently. In their eyes, de Blasio had violated an unwritten pact. Responding to events in the New York Review of Books, the writer Michael Greenberg noted a sense that the police “believed themselves to hold an unquantifiable power over elected officials. Cops did the dirty work, they waded in the muck, keeping the poor and violent in check and monitoring the human detritus that is the result of inequities they’d had no hand in creating. In return, the politicians turned a blind eye to the excessive use of force.” Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor who served three terms in office, boasted of the department as “my own army.” It got worse for de Blasio after a deranged man from Baltimore drove up to New York to murder two NYPD officers on 20 December. On social media, the killer seemed to suggest that he acted to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown. Right-wing politicians blamed the anti-police protests for inciting the murders. Lynch singled out de Blasio. “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said on the evening of the killings. “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.”

Two days later, de Blasio delivered a eulogy at the funeral of one of the officers, Rafael Ramos, at a church in the borough of Queens. As he spoke, hundreds of officers in attendance turned their backs on him in protest. The gesture held an implacable power, and images of it ran in media across the country. Some officers again turned their backs on the mayor at the funeral of the second slain officer, Wenjian Liu, a few days later. The public was not sympathetic. According to the Quinnipiac poll, 69 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of the apparent mutiny. A New York Times editorial lambasted the police for their “snarling sense of victimhood,” and for their insistence that “the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence.” Even among the police, Tcholakian told me, the protest divided opinion. “The narrative in the media was that the cop protest was orchestrated,” he said. “My sources in the NYPD told me that it was not planned. It was an emotional response, not a political one.” Still, de Blasio was bruised. In his “State of the City” address, an annual speech delivered this year on 3 February, he conspicuously avoided mention of police conduct, or the underlying matter of police reform. He spoke instead of the scourge of inequality, warning that “New York risks taking on the qualities of a gated community, a place defined by exclusivity rather than opportunity.” He did not explicitly link the politics of inequality to the present crisis of trust between the city and its cops, but there is little doubt he understands the connection—as do the police themselves. At the graduation ceremony of the city’s police academy in December, he offered his sympathy to young cops, saying “You will confront all the problems that Image courtsey The Caravan Archive

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2.2 15 THE CARAVAN: A Jouranal of Politics and Culture

CO M M E N TA RY

Politics

The Quarry What the trial of Manmohan Singh must address

Text Krishn Kaushik

April 2015

he trial of Andimuthu Raja came to an impasse on 27 January 2013 when his lawyer, Sushil Kumar, was questioning Goolam Vahanvati, then the attorney general of India. Raja, the former telecom minister, had claimed that the policy decisions that led to his indictment in what is now called the 2G spectrum scam were not taken independently. Vahanvati was aware of the changed policy, he said; and so was Pranab Mukherjee, the head of the Empowered Group of Ministers responsible for spectrum allocation. Since Vahanvati denied that any such discussions had taken place between himself, Mukherjee and Raja, it was impossible to establish the truth of the matter. Only three people, Kumar said with a dramatic flourish, were aware of the details. “One is him,” he said, pointing to Vahanvati. “One is him,” at Raja. “And the third is at a position where we cannot reach”—implying in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Mukherjee, by virtue of his presidential position, remains immune to prosecution. The former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is not. Even as Raja’s case was being heard, it emerged that the 2G scam was not the most expensive of the UPA government’s misadventures. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India calculated that while irregularities in spectrum allocation had incurred the government a loss of R1.76 lakh crore (R1.76 trillion), its ineffective and possibly corrupt distribution of coal blocks had cost the exchequer R1.85 lakh crore. The Empowered Group of Ministers overseeing coal allocation was also headed by Mukherjee. Yet the lion’s share of responsibility for the decisions on the coal blocks, now under investigation in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, falls on Singh, who, in addition to leading the cabinet as prime minister, was also, for much of his tenure, head of the coal ministry, which was in charge of the

screening committee for coal allocation. On 11 March this year, the CBI court summoned Singh as accused number 6 in one of several cases pertaining to the alienation of coal blocks. Singh’s defenders decried the summons as a witch-hunt; prominent leaders of the Congress, rallied by the party president, Sonia Gandhi, led a march to Singh’s residence in a show of support and solidarity when the news broke. On the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, the sight of senior Congressmen in that procession— including the former cabinet ministers AK Antony, P Chidambaram, and Anand Sharma—reminded many people that fresh inquiries might yet cast doubt on the conduct of others in power during the UPA regime. Others pointed out that the summons came at a suspiciously convenient moment for the ruling National Democratic Alliance, as it attempted to overcome serious hurdles in parliament during the budget session. Since he has been called to account, Singh must use the opportunity to clarify what happened during a process that remains, at best, an opaque one. This particular case concerns the three Talabira coal blocks in western Odisha. In 1994, the aluminium producer Hindalco Industries, owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla, was allotted the Talabira I block, which it would mine to fuel a proposed aluminium plant. As early as 1996, it also wanted access to Talabira II. Talabira III, the largest of the blocks, was controlled by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of the government-owned Coal India Limited, and had never been up for allocation to private companies. Talabira II and III were contiguous blocks, and it was more efficient to mine them together. So, by early 2005, the screening committee and the coal ministry decided to grant the rights to both to Mahanadi Coalfields, which was to collaborate with another public sector company, Neyveli Lignite Corporation, even though the Odisha government 10

April 2015

Throughout his tenure, Singh was plagued by allegations that he privately answered to Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s investigations have not linked Singh’s actions to Gandhi in any way. was strongly in favour of giving Hindalco a slice of Talabira II. In May and June 2005, Kumar Mangalam Birla addressed two letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, which forwarded them to the coal ministry, asking for a report on the allocation. The ministry responded to the PMO’s request in August, justifying its decision to give Mahanadi the block. That month, the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, also wrote to the PMO in support of Hindalco. The PMO then asked the coal ministry to reconsider the allocation, and sent it the Odisha government’s letter. In September, the coal ministry reversed its earlier stance and submitted a new proposal for allotment. In this new dispensation, Hindalco got a 15-percent share not only in Talabira II, but also Talabira III—giving it access to more coal than it required for its proposed plant. The prime minister approved the new plan on 1 October that year. The facts demonstrate the arbitrariness and lack of transparency in the allotment process, although

they do not, in themselves, constitute evidence of corruption—bad policy must not be conflated with graft. Singh took full responsibility for all the ministry’s decisions in 2012, when questions were raised against the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in parliament. “I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts,” he said. But, in 2014, the Supreme Court decided that many decisions taken by the screening committee were “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and cancelled all allocations made since 1993. Screening committees for the alienation of coal blocks have existed since 1993, when India felt the need to cultivate private companies’ interest in mining. Under this system, an inter-ministerial screening committee chaired by the coal secretary decided on the allocation of captive blocks to private companies, which had exclusive rights to mine coal to feed industries that depend on the fuel, including power, steel and cement. This was in no way Singh’s or the UPA’s innovation, Image courtsey The Caravan Archive

2.1 Commentary, Section Opener 2.2 Commentary, Continuing Spread/Story 2

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

3.1

3.4

16 THE CARAVAN: A Jouranal of Politics and Culture

HIGH-RISK BEHAVIOUR

Cover Story by Surith Parthasarthi

Reportage

Government apathy leaves India’s AIDS programme in crisis

3.2

In the latest blow to the programme, in March this year, the union government slashed NACO’s budget by around 22 percent: from R1,785 crore in 2014 to R1,397 crore in 2015

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One afternoon in June last year, the union health minister, Dr Harsh Vardhan, paid a visit to the offices of the National AIDS Control Organisation, or NACO, in the heart of central Delhi. He was received by Dr VK Subburaj, then the secretary of the health ministry’s Department of AIDS Control, under which NACO functioned. The senior officials of the organisation who were present assumed that the visit was a routine meet-and-greet and photo opportunity with the new minister. Some of the gathered officials made a presentation about the AIDS programme, after which Vardhan addressed the group. The staff expected him to make a standard statement about the ministry’s commitment to the organisation. To their surprise, however, the minister took the opportunity to air his own views on the matter of AIDS control, some of which diverged distinctly from NACO’s approach. “It was a strange meeting,” a senior NACO official who was

3.1 Cover Story, Continuing Page 3.2 Cover Story, Continuing Page 3.3 Cover Story, Continuing Page 3.4 Cover Story, Section Opener

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

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April 2015

present told me. “The entire time he used words like ‘abstinence’ and ‘loyalty’ as a counter to AIDS.” While the organisation has in the past included abstinence as a part of its prevention programme, its primary focus has always been on condom distribution—a decision backed by its finding that about 86 percent of AIDS cases in India are a result of unprotected sex. “He stopped short of saying that NACO’s thrust on condoms was ill-advised,” the official said, “but his ideology on the matter was clear to all of us.” On 23 June, the minister’s notions received wider publicity in a story on the New York Times’ India blog. “The thrust of the AIDS campaign should not only be on the use of condoms,” he told the reporter. “This sends the wrong message that you can have any kind of illicit sexual relationship, but as long as you’re using a condom it’s fine.” The remarks drew widespread condemnation from public health experts and activists. Anjali Gopalan of NAZ Foundation, a leading NGO in

Image courtsey Reuters

the field of sexual health, was widely quoted as saying, “Just because condom is available, not everyone starts having sex. Either ways you need to promote condom use.” Sujatha Rao, the former secretary of the department, who later served as India’s health secretary, agreed that the minister’s remarks were unfortunate. “It’s absolutely foolish to bring morality into the picture when dealing with public health,” she told me. On 25 June, in response to the controversy, Vardhan issued a clarification in which he de-emphasised the importance of condoms once again. “Any experienced NGO activist knows that condoms sometimes break while being used,” he said. “That is why government campaigns in India, whether through the National Aids Control Organisation or the state governments, should focus on safe sex as a holistic concept which includes highlighting the role of fidelity to single partners.” Vardhan’s comments are only the most high-profile evidence of a grim truth: the Indian government’s commitment to the national AIDS programme has eroded dramatically over the last three years. The decline is particularly surprising given that the programme has been one of the country’s

April 2015

most successful public health interventions in the past two decades, comparable only with the polio eradication programme. According to a report published in the medical journal The Lancet, between 2000 and 2013, the annual rate of reduction in new HIV cases in India stood at 16.3 percent, four times more efficient than the worldwide rate of 3.9 percent. But, beginning in 2012, under the United Progressive Alliance government, and extending into the present National Democratic Alliance regime, a set of decisions on funding and organisation has almost completely drained the programme of the efficacy it once achieved. In the latest blow to the programme, in March this year, the union government slashed NACO’s budget by around 22 percent: from R1,785 crore in 2014 to R1,397 crore in 2015. Meanwhile, vital supplies of diagnostic kits and drugs have dried up across the country, endangering the lives of HIV-affected people who rely on governmental support for treatment—who, in effect, depend on the programme for their survival. “I am afraid all the momentum built up by so many hard-working people will be entirely lost,” Rao told me. Though the programme has managed to bring down the rate of HIV infection, she said, this success was now endangered. “We may see higher incidences of infection, and a change in statistics,” she said. “The failure of the leadership will prove to be a costly mistake.” Describing this failure as a “human-rights issue,” she added, “The state can’t look the other way as people die of a preventable, manageable disease.” India diagnosed its first cases of HIV in 1986. In the decades that followed, the country’s response to the disease has largely been characterised by well-coordinated, and often innovative, strategies. Generous funding and monitoring from international agencies, such as the World Bank, the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, or GFATM, and USAID, helped ensure that interventions were of a high standard. The programme’s success is particularly remarkable given that the disease, by the nature of its propagation, disproportionately affected communities that conservative sections of Indian society were—and still are—loath to accept, such as drug users, sex workers, and men who have sex with men. Though AIDS had been identified and was being combated globally by the mid 1980s, many believed that India would be protected from it by the country’s close-knit family structures and “traditional values.”

Image courtsey The Caravan Archive

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ART REVIEW

Taking A Part

‘In Order to Join’ allows women to become interpreters of history. On display in Mumbai until 10 April, the exhibition was first mounted in 2013, at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

April 2015

video documenting “The Negotiating Table,” Mona Hatoum’s landmark performance piece, opens on a breathing, bloodied mass of what looks like flesh, pulsing under a layer of plastic. Over 20 minutes, the camera slowly zooms out to reveal the Palestinian artist’s body, constrained by surgical gauze, foil and cling film. Hatoum’s original performance was accompanied by snippets of politicians’ speeches promising to bring peace to the Middle East. The video’s grainy quality and glacial pan heighten an intense sense of foreboding: Is the performer alive or dead? Is that bulbous red mess her entrails? I might have pegged the piece as a comment on recent events in West Asia, until I checked the label accompanying the video at In Order to Join: The Political in a Historical Moment—a hefty exhibition currently on show in Mumbai. The video was dated 5 December 1983, and Hatoum was likely reacting to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, her adoptive country, by Israeli forces; and to the civil war that had started there nearly seven years earlier. Still the contemporaneousness of her work is uncanny. This is true of most exhibits at In Order to Join, which brings together pieces by 14 women from various coun-

THE CARAVAN: A Jouranal of Politics and Culture

TEXT KARANJEET KAUR

The two curators found that they were looking at female artists born in the early 1950s who, started working after the Second Wave of feminism—they weren’t doing any rah-rah feminist thing and were working in a very different way.

NAME Image description goes here

Image courtsey Reuters

April 2015

tries to Mumbai’s Max Mueller Bhavan and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, or CSMVS—two venues separated by a five-minute walk. The curators, Swapnaa Tamhane and Susanne Titz, specifically chose works with longevity, that are concerned with a specific period in modern history, but which also reflect contemporary events. On display in Mumbai until 10 April, the exhibition was first mounted in 2013, at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany. Titz is the director of that museum, which was established in 1904 and is well known for its pop art and Nouveau réalisme collections. She was introduced to Tamhane by the artist Jitish Kallat, who thought she would be interested in Tamhane’s PhD research into the politically charged and formally challenging work of the late artist Rummana Hussain. “Susanne and I immediately started talking,” Tamhane told me when we met recently at the Max Mueller Bhavan. “She mentioned Astrid Klein and this generation of women artists who were working in the eighties. I mentioned, along with Rummana Hussain, Angela Grauerholz and Rosemarie Trockel.” The two curators found that they were looking at female artists born in the early 1950s who, Tamhane said, “started working after the Second Wave of feminism—they weren’t doing any rah-rah feminist thing and were working in a very different way.” Even though no themes united these artists initially, Tamhane said specific works immediately sprang to mind that seemed to loosely converse with each other. For instance, the Canadian artist Angela Grauerholz and the German artist Astrid Klein both employed black-and-white images and newsprint, and used contemporary events to hark back to the past. Tamhane and Titz zeroed down on the deceptively simple curatorial strategy of selecting artists born between 1948 and 1958—the first generation, they wrote in the exhibition catalogue, “to experience a global identity.” This rather free-flowing approach

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4.1 Art Review, Section Opener 4.2 Art Review, Continuing Spread 4.3 Art Review, Continuing Spread 4.4 Art Review, Continuing Spread

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

DESIGN APPROACH #2

The second cover-to-cover dummy followed a bold and loud visual style. Out of all the visual languages, this one had a particularly distinct treatment of section headers. This made it a popular choice among the editors. The visual treatment of the slugs was preferred as they seemed to be getting a distinct place right at the top of each story. The contrasting use of type-sizes gave the spreads a playful appeal. It was also very useful in creating a clear information hierarchy. The editors also loved the minimal pop of color on the headers and felt that it really added life to the page. This design was amongst the first to be shortlisted.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

Merits With its bold tone of voice, this design would be difficult to ignore. The relationship between different elements on the page was harmonious yet gave each element its distinct space. Demerits Even though the editors as well as the art director seemed to favour this design, I felt that it was not the right choice. The design was too loud for the personality of The Caravan and lacked the much needed elegance.

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Education

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Television . Media . Journalism . Law

Careful Wording Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

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pored laboriously over the words, failing to recognise even individual letters. He was not exceptional in this. Another student, Sapna Wachami, sat silent when I asked her to read out the word “metre,” written in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across

08| The Caravan| April 2015

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Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

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Law & Order

The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013.

City Watch New York grapples with a trust issue in its police force

n the Saturday afternoon of 13 December, two large public events jostled for space in Manhattan. One was the Millions March, a peaceful demonstration of outrage at police violence against “people of colour”—most notably the fatal shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St Louis in August, and the choking and subsequent death by heart attack of a 43-year-old black man, Eric Garner, in the New York borough of Staten Island in July. In both cases, the civilians were unarmed. Grand juries in Missouri and New York had recently refused to indict the white officers involved in their killings. Chanting “Black lives matter!,” the marchers wound through downtown streets to Foley Square, near City Hall. Close by, revellers in Santa Claus suits and skimpy elf costumes stormed through the streets as part of SantaCon, an annual Christmas-time bacchanal. SantaCon began in the mid 1990s as a whimsical art stunt, but it has since swollen into a frenzy of drunkenness, part pub-crawl and part Mongol invasion. Inevitably, the protest and the party bumped together. Santas cut through the march; gnomes and elves searched for alternative routes to the next bar. Police officers flanking the demonstration looked on with amusement. But what could have passed as a brief comic respite became a point of friction. One white man in full red-and-white regalia berated a black female protester, telling her to “go get a job.” That jibe, overlaid with ageold racist and classist disdain, sparked great anger. Dozens of demonstrators started chanting not against the excesses of the police or the failures of the justice system, but against SantaCon. It was a collision of words, and of worlds. The tottering merrymakers

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were mostly white and middle-class; the Millions March, while very diverse, was composed in significant part of black New Yorkers. During recent months of discontent in New York, the gulfs of race and class between these two groups yawned wide. The top one percent of the city’s earners, the majority of whom are white, account for 44 percent of its total income; meanwhile, a fifth of all New Yorkers—a disproportionate number of them people of colour—live in poverty. A 2012 study showed Manhattan to be more socially unequal than Apartheidera South Africa. The police play a prominent and divisive role on the front lines of inequality, and, with their conduct now under massive public scrutiny, tensions between the force, the city administration and minority communities are coming to a head. According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, two-thirds of white New Yorkers approve of the job being done by the police, while 54 percent of black New Yorkers disapprove. Ethnicity and class are central to shaping experiences of police behaviour in the city. Escalating housing prices have pushed workingclass and minority families into peripheral neighbourhoods. It is there that the New York Police Department— the largest urban police force in the world, with 34,000 personnel for a population of 8.4 million people—is most heavily deployed, and where residents such as Eric Garner face the brunt of police excesses. The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013. But the department still maintains its controversial “broken windows” policy (which it claims

THE LEDE

lowers rates of serious felonies) of cracking down on petty infractions in poor neighbourhoods while overlooking them in more affluent areas. Of the 179 people killed by onduty NYPD officers since 1999, 86 percent were black or Latino (those communities formed just over half the city’s population in 2010); only one officer has ever been convicted in relation to these killings. “The police are the face of a much larger and more aggressive system,” Mark Winston Griffith, the executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community group that has long pushed for reform of the NYPD, told me in February. “You can’t separate ‘stop-and-frisk’ and ‘broken windows’ from gentrification, from people being pushed out,” he said. “Explicitly and implicitly, a decision was made to push dark people out of the city, clean it up, and make room for a whiter, more affluent population. The police help enforce that vision of society.” Garner’s death became a flashpoint after a video of the altercation leading to it, recorded on a bystander’s cell phone, went viral online. The grainy footage shows several police officers accosting Garner, accusing him of selling loose cigarettes. As the police struggle to handcuff him, one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, places Garner in a chokehold, and several others pin him to the ground for several minutes. Garner’s last words, clearly audible on the recording, were “I can’t breathe”—a phrase that became a protest slogan. The grand jury ruling exonerating Pantaleo was announced on 3 December, and protests flooded the streets. Danielle Tcholakian, a city reporter for the news outlet DNAinfo, followed the demonstrators over several days. “There was a lot of yelling and highly charged emotions,” she told

me, “but physical confrontations with the police were rare.” The protesters came from diverse backgrounds, she said, and shared a sense that they were part of a historic moment. “You could see many older people as well as teenagers. A lot of people I talked to had never been to a protest before. They were often black, long-time New Yorkers who had grown up here. One female protester told me her father had been an NYPD sergeant. She was quite emotional.” The demonstrations continued for days. Their refrain “Black lives matter!” became so ubiquitous that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, echoed it in an open letter to the city in the wake of the Garner ruling. In a later speech, de Blasio, himself white, described the fear he and his black wife have for their biracial son. “Because of a history that still hangs over us … we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” These were strong words from a mayor, and did not sit well with many of the police officers he presides over. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city’s largest police union, accused de Blasio of throwing cops “under the bus,” and many within the NYPD described him as “anti-police.” So did detractors on the political right, glad to pillory the first left-of-centre mayor to run New York in 20 years.

“That was a surreal moment,” Griffith said. “Surreal not in what de Blasio said but in how the police reacted. What he said was not an anti-police statement. It was an acknowledgement of how black parents have to train their children to be safe in the city. The fact that he can’t say something as harmless as that tells you how far outside the mainstream the NYPD is.” But many cops saw things differently. In their eyes, de Blasio had violated an unwritten pact. Responding to events in the New York Review of Books, the writer Michael Greenberg noted a sense that the police “believed themselves to hold an unquantifiable power over elected officials. Cops did the dirty work, they waded in the muck, keeping the poor and violent in check and monitoring the human detritus that is the result of inequities they’d had no hand in creating. In return, the politicians turned a blind eye to the excessive use of force.” Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor who served three terms in office, boasted of the department as “my own army.” It got worse for de Blasio after a deranged man from Baltimore drove up to New York to murder two NYPD officers on 20 December. On social media, the killer seemed to suggest that he acted to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown. Right-wing politicians blamed the anti-police protests for inciting the murders. Lynch singled

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out de Blasio. “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said on the evening of the killings. “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.” Two days later, de Blasio delivered a eulogy at the funeral of one of the officers, Rafael Ramos, at a church in the borough of Queens. As he spoke, hundreds of officers in attendance turned their backs on him in protest. The gesture held an implacable power, and images of it ran in media across the country. Some officers again turned their backs on the mayor at the funeral of the second slain officer, Wenjian Liu, a few days later. The public was not sympathetic. According to the Quinnipiac poll, 69 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of the apparent mutiny. A New York Times editorial lambasted the police for their “snarling sense of victimhood,” and for their insistence that “the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence.” Even among the police, Tcholakian told me, the protest divided opinion. “The narrative in the media was that the cop protest was orchestrated,” he said. “My sources in the NYPD told me that it was not planned. It was an emotional response, not a political one.” Still, de Blasio was bruised. In his “State of the City” address, an annual speech delivered this year on 3 February, he conspicuously avoided mention of police conduct, or the underlying matter of police reform. He spoke instead of the scourge of inequality, warning that “New York risks taking on the qualities of a gated community, a place defined by exclusivity rather than opportunity.” April 2015| The Caravan| 15

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Law & Order

Television . Media . Journalism . Education

The Quarry What the trial of Manmohan Singh must address

COMMENTARY T

overseeing coal allocation was also headed by Mukherjee. Yet the lion’s share of responsibility for the decisions on the coal blocks, now under investigation in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, falls on Singh, who, in addition to leading the cabinet as prime minister, was also, for much of his tenure, head of the coal ministry, which was in charge of the screening committee for coal allocation. On 11 March this year, the CBI court summoned Singh as accused number 6 in one of several cases pertaining to the alienation of coal blocks. Singh’s defenders decried the summons as a witch-hunt; prominent leaders of the Congress, rallied by the party president, Sonia Gandhi, led a march to Singh’s residence in a show of support and solidarity when the news broke. On the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, the sight of senior Congressmen in that procession—including the former cabinet ministers AK Antony, P Chidambaram, and Anand Sharma— reminded many people that fresh inquiries might yet cast doubt on the conduct of others in power during the UPA regime. Others pointed out that the summons came at a suspiciously convenient moment for the ruling National Democratic Alliance, as it attempted to overcome serious hurdles in parliament during the budget session. Since he has been called to account, Singh must use the opportunity to clarify what happened during a process that remains, at best, an opaque one. This particular case concerns the three Talabira coal blocks in western Odisha. In 1994, the aluminium producer Hindalco Industries, owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla, was allotted the Talabira I block, which it would mine to fuel a proposed aluminium plant. As early as 1996, it also wanted access to Talabira II. Talabira

III, the largest of the blocks, was controlled by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of the government-owned Coal India Limited, and had never been up for allocation to private companies. Talabira II and III were contiguous blocks, and it was more efficient to mine them together. So, by early 2005, the screening committee and the coal ministry decided to grant the rights to both to Mahanadi Coalfields, which was to collaborate with another public sector company, Neyveli Lignite Corporation, even though the Odisha government was strongly in favour of giving Hindalco a slice of Talabira II. In May and June 2005, Kumar Mangalam Birla addressed two letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, which forwarded them to the coal ministry, asking for a report on the allocation. The ministry responded to the PMO’s request in August, justifying its decision to give Mahanadi the block. That month, the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, also wrote to the PMO in support of Hindalco. Throughout his tenure, The PMO then asked the coal ministry to reconsider the allocation, and sent Singh was plagued by it the Odisha government’s letter. In allegations that he September, the coal ministry reversed its earlier stance and submitted a new privately answered to proposal for allotment. In this new Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s dispensation, Hindalco got a 15-percent investigations have not share not only in Talabira II, but also III—giving it access to more linked Singh’s actions to Talabira coal than it required for its proposed Gandhi in any way. plant. The prime minister approved the new plan on 1 October that year. The facts demonstrate the arbitrariness and lack of transparency in the allotment process, although they do not, in themselves, constitute evidence of corruption—bad policy must not be conflated with graft. Singh took full responsibility for all the ministry’s decisions in 2012, when questions were raised against the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in parliament. “I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts,” he said. But, in 2014, the Supreme Court decided that many decisions taken by the screening committee were “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and cancelled all allocations made since 1993. Screening committees for the alienation of coal blocks have existed since 1993, when India felt the need to cultivate private companies’ interest in mining. Under this system, an inter-ministerial screening committee chaired by the coal secretary decided on the allocation of captive blocks to private companies, which had exclusive rights to mine coal to feed industries that depend on the fuel, including power, steel and cement. This was in no way Singh’s or the UPA’s innovation, but its faults were readily apparent, and Singh can be accused of failing to stop or improve the process when he had the opportunity. Everything we know about the coal allocation scam so far demonstrates the problems with the modus operandi. The CBI found that there were instances when minutes of the screening committee’s meetings went un-recorded; files related to corporate bidders and the allotment process have gone missing. PC Parakh, who was coal secretary between March 2004 and December 2005, and has also been summoned by the court, has claimed in interviews that he tried to convince Singh to adopt the process of auctioning coal blocks, a more transparent way of doing business. Moves to change the process commenced in late 2004, soon after Singh assumed power, but thanks to red tape and political expediency, no blocks were ever auctioned under the UPA government. In September 2012, the Deccan Herald quoted Parakh saying, “The prime minister could have put his weight behind to see that auction route was followed. After I took over, I put the screening committee on hold for a while to bring about

a transparent system. The prime minister, instead of waiting, decided to go ahead with the old system.” Singh was coal minister through much of the UPA’s first term between 2004 and 2009. All the chargesheets the CBI has filed in its investigation pertain more or less to this period— and both the coal ministry as well as the PMO interfered in the CBI’s dealings. On 6 March 2013, Ashwani Kumar, then the law minister, called two meetings in order to vet the CBI’s draft status reports in Preliminary Enquiries 2 and 4, both of which were later submitted to the Supreme Court. The meetings included Vahanvati; an additional solicitor general, Harin Raval, who was appearing for the CBI for all “Coal-gate” hearings; the CBI director, Ranjit Sinha; and Sinha’s junior OP Galhotra. There were also two others present: AK Bhalla, a joint secretary from the coal ministry; and Shatrughna Singh, a joint secretary in the PMO. In an affidavit Sinha filed in the Supreme Court weeks after those meetings, he said that everyone present had suggested changes to the reports, and that Kumar, Singh and Bhalla had suggested a few “significant” amendments. The Supreme Court observed that these amendments had “changed the heart” of the reports. In a later order, it noted that “there was no justifiable reason for the two Joint Secretaries to peruse the draft status reports and recommend changes,” nor was there “any justification for the CBI to allow these officers access to the draft status reports and allow the changes in the draft status reports as suggested by them.” It’s worth pointing out that Manmohan Singh led both Bhalla and Shatrughna Singh’s ministries during the period under investigation in Preliminary Enquiries 2 and 4. It remains unclear who asked the two officers to the meetings, or on whose behalf Ashwani Kumar had called the meetings in the first place. Throughout his tenure, Singh was plagued by allegations that he privately answered to Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s April 2015| The Caravan| 17

6.1 Commentary, Section Opener 6.2 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 2

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

7.1

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Cover Story Debarshi Dasgupta

Government apathy leaves Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s AIDS programme in crisis

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B EHAV IOUR

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8.1 Art Review, Section Opener 8.2 Art Review, Continuing Spread 8.3 Art Review, Continuing Spread

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

DESIGN APPROACH #3

With the third cover-to-cover approach we tried to switch things up and develop a visual language that was distinctly different from all our previous explorations as well as the contemporary Indian magazine aesthetic. This quest lead us to an approach which was daringly minimal in its appearance as well as its structure. We eliminated all visual elements and focused on using white space cleverly to create visual hierarchy. The mundane primary red used previously was replaced with a rich maroon, a color associated with wisdom and authority. This approach was favored by the entire design team as well as my guide, Tarun and so it was shortlisted as one of the final directions along with approach #2.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

Merits The use of icons as slugs is refreshing, novel and effective. Without being too over-powering it enhances the visual appeal of the page. The minimalism of the design echoed perfectly with the no-nonsense vision of The Caravan. Demerits The use of Mercury in the headers as well as the body did not prove to be very effective in creating the desired amount of visual variation on the page. The editors feared that the minimalism of this approach could make the magazine look too bland and serious.

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Teaching the Madia in their own toungue

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By Debarshi Dasgupta

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central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes government schools unfriendly places for Madia children. These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s education system. Despite official recommendations in the 2005 National Curriculum Framework that textbooks incorporate more of local cultures and languages, India’s tribal children, but for rare exceptions, continue to be taught either in Hindi or one of the country’s 21 other

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official languages. In Chhattisgarh, where children in government schools are mostly taught in Hindi, only 35 percent of children in grades 3, 4 and 5 in the tribal-dominated Bastar district can read first-grade texts—this according to the 2014 Annual Status of Education Report by the NGO Pratham. The same report showed that only about half of children in the same grades in Gadchiroli district can do the same. On the same day I visited the school at Midadapalli, I arrived in the village of Hemalkasa, which lies about 30 kilometres away over densely forested tracks navigable only on foot or on two wheels. At the single pre-primary class at Lok Biradari Prakalp, or LBP, an ashram established by the social activist Baba Amte in 1973 to aid the local tribal population, the mood was vastly different from that in the Midadapalli classroom. Excited Madia children flipped through a large picture book written in their native language. A teacher walked in, and they gathered around her for story time. The day’s tale, narrated in Madia Gondi, stressed the importance of sharing. For over a year now, LBP has been pioneering Madia Gondi education at the pre-primary level. To better engage Madia children, the ashram brings elements of their culture into the classroom. The results have been promising. A recent survey by LBP found that significantly more of its students between the third and seventh grades could read and understand a simple Marathi story compared to their counterparts at two randomly selected government schools also in Bhamragad block. I spoke to Samiksha Godse, LBP’s educational coordinator, who was instrumental in creating the ashram’s Madia Gondi module. Godse, who holds a prestigious postgraduate degree in economics, moved to LBP four years ago. She has been learning Madia Gondi ever since, though she admitted that “these children probably laugh at the way I speak.” “Imagine what it is like,” she said, “for a child who has been only spoken to in Madia Gondi to find himself or herself learning not just a foreign language but also

The Caravan/ April 2015

Page Fixtures page number, name of the magazine, issue date

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

9.1

9.3

26 The Lede

A Letter from New York New York USA

City Watch

New York grapples with crisis of trust in its Police force By Debarshi Dasgupta

9.2

n the Saturday afternoon of 13 December, two large public events jostled for space in Manhattan. One was the Millions March, a peaceful demonstration of outrage at police violence against “people of colour”—most notably the fatal shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St Louis in August, and the choking and subsequent death by heart attack of a 43-year-old black man, Eric Garner, in the New York borough of Staten Island in July. In both cases, the civilians were unarmed. Grand juries in Missouri and New York had recently refused to indict the white officers involved in their killings. Chanting “Black lives matter!,” the marchers wound through downtown streets to Foley Square, near City Hall. Close by, revellers in Santa Claus suits and skimpy elf costumes stormed through the streets as part of SantaCon, an annual Christmas-time bacchanal. SantaCon began in the mid 1990s as a whimsical art stunt, but it has since swollen into a frenzy of drunkenness, part pub-crawl and part Mongol invasion. Inevitably, the protest and the party bumped together. Santas cut through the march; gnomes and elves searched for alternative routes to the next bar. Police officers flanking the demonstration looked on with amusement. But what could have passed as a brief comic respite became a point of friction. One white man in full red-and-white regalia berated a black female protester, telling her to “go get a job.” That jibe, overlaid with age-old racist and classist disdain, sparked great anger. Dozens of demonstrators started chanting not

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Madia children practice science lessons set in Gondi Madia, in a makeshift classroom near Dibrugarh

against the excesses of the police or the failures of the justice system, but against SantaCon. It was a collision of words, and of worlds. The tottering merrymakers were mostly white and middle-class; the Millions March, while very diverse, was composed in significant part of black New Yorkers. During recent months of discontent in New York, the gulfs of race and class between these two groups yawned wide. The top one percent of the city’s earners, the majority of whom are white, account for 44 percent of its total income; meanwhile, a fifth of all New Yorkers—a disproportionate number of them people of colour—live in poverty. A 2012 study showed Manhattan to be more socially unequal than Apartheidera South Africa. The police play a prominent and divisive role on the front lines of inequality, and, with their conduct now under massive public scrutiny, tensions between the force, the city administration and minority communities are coming to a head. According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, two-thirds of white New Yorkers approve of the job being done by the police, while The Caravan/ April 2015

54 percent of black New Yorkers disapprove. Ethnicity and class are central to shaping experiences of police behaviour in the city. Escalating housing prices have pushed workingclass and minority families into peripheral neighbourhoods. It is there that the New York Police Department— the largest urban police force in the world, with 34,000 personnel for a population of 8.4 million people—is most heavily deployed, and where residents such as Eric Garner face the brunt of police excesses. The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013. But the department still maintains its controversial “broken windows” policy (which it claims lowers rates of serious felonies) of cracking down on petty infractions in poor neighbourhoods while overlooking them in more affluent areas. Of the 179 people killed by onduty NYPD officers since 1999, 86 percent were black or Latino (those communities formed just over half

the city’s population in 2010); only one officer has ever been convicted in relation to these killings. “The police are the face of a much larger and more aggressive system,” Mark Winston Griffith, the executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community group that has long pushed for reform of the NYPD, told me in February. “You can’t separate ‘stop-and-frisk’ and ‘broken windows’ from gentrification, from people being pushed out,” he said. “Explicitly and implicitly, a decision was made to push dark people out of the city, clean it up, and make room for a whiter, more affluent population. The police help enforce that vision of society.” Garner’s death became a flashpoint after a video of the altercation leading to it, recorded on a bystander’s cell phone, went viral online. The grainy footage shows several police officers accosting Garner, accusing him of selling loose cigarettes. As the police struggle to handcuff him, one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, places Garner in a chokehold, and several others pin him to the ground for several minutes. Garner’s last words, clearly audible on the recording, were “I can’t breathe”—a phrase that became a protest slogan. The grand jury ruling exonerating Pantaleo was announced on 3 December, and protests flooded the streets. Danielle Tcholakian, a city reporter for the news outlet DNAinfo,

followed the demonstrators over several days. “There was a lot of yelling and highly charged emotions,” she told me, “but physical confrontations with the police were rare.” The protesters came from diverse backgrounds, she said, and shared a sense that they were part of a historic moment. “You could see many older people as well as teenagers. A lot of people I talked to had never been to a protest before. They were often black, long-time New Yorkers who had grown up here. One female protester told me her father had been an NYPD sergeant. She was quite emotional.” The demonstrations continued for days. Their refrain “Black lives matter!” became so ubiquitous that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, echoed it in an open letter to the city in the wake of the Garner ruling. In a later speech, de Blasio, himself white, described the fear he and his black wife have for their biracial son. “Because of a history that still hangs over us … we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” These were strong words from a mayor, and did not sit well with many of the police officers he presides over. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city’s largest police union, accused de Blasio of throwing cops “under the bus,” and many within the NYPD described him as “anti-police.” So did detractors on the political right, glad to pillory the first left-of-centre mayor to run New York in 20 years. “That was a surreal moment,” Griffith said. “Surreal not in what de Blasio said but in how the police reacted. What he said was not an anti-police statement. It was an acknowledgement of how black parents have to train their children to be safe in the city. The fact that he can’t say something as harmless as that tells you how far outside the mainstream the NYPD is.” But many cops saw things differently. In their eyes, de Blasio had violated an unwritten pact. Responding to events in the New York Review of The Caravan/ April 2015

Books, the writer Michael Greenberg noted a sense that the police “believed themselves to hold an unquantifiable power over elected officials. Cops did the dirty work, they waded in the muck, keeping the poor and violent in check and monitoring the human detritus that is the result of inequities they’d had no hand in creating. In return, the politicians turned a blind eye to the excessive use of force.” Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor who served three terms in office, boasted of the department as “my own army.” It got worse for de Blasio after a deranged man from Baltimore drove up to New York to murder two NYPD officers on 20 December. On social media, the killer seemed to suggest that he acted to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown. Right-wing politicians blamed the anti-police protests for inciting the murders. Lynch singled out de Blasio. “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said on the evening of the killings. “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.” Two days later, de Blasio delivered a eulogy at the funeral of one of the officers, Rafael Ramos, at a church in the borough of Queens. As he spoke, hundreds of officers in attendance turned their backs on him in protest. The gesture held an implacable power, and images of it ran in media across the country. Some officers again turned their backs on the mayor at the funeral of the second slain officer, Wenjian Liu, a few days later. The public was not sympathetic. According to the Quinnipiac poll, 69 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of the apparent mutiny. A New York Times editorial lambasted the police for their “snarling sense of victimhood,” and for their insistence that “the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence.” Even among the police, Tcholakian told me, the protest divided opinion. “The narrative in the media was that the cop protest was orchestrated,” he said. “My sources in the NYPD told me that it was not planned. It was an emotional response,

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10.2

COMMENTARY

The Quarry What the trial of Manmohan Singh must address By Debarshi Dasgupta

www.caravanmagazine.com

decisions on the coal blocks, now under investigation in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, falls on Singh, who, in addition to leading the cabinet as prime minister, was also, for much of his tenure, head of the coal ministry, which was in charge of the screening committee for coal allocation. On 11 March this year, the CBI court summoned Singh as accused number 6 in one of several cases pertaining to the alienation of coal blocks. Singh’s defenders decried the summons as a witch-hunt; prominent leaders of the Congress, rallied by the party president, Sonia Gandhi, led a march to Singh’s residence in a show of support and solidarity when the news broke. On the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, the sight of senior Congressmen in that procession— including the former cabinet ministers AK Antony, P Chidambaram, and Anand Sharma—reminded many people that fresh inquiries might yet cast doubt on the conduct of others in power during the UPA regime. Others pointed out that the summons came at a suspiciously convenient moment for the ruling National Democratic Alliance, as it attempted to overcome serious hurdles in parliament during the budget session. Since he has been called to account, Singh must use the opportunity to clarify what happened during a process that remains, at best, an opaque one. This particular case concerns the three Talabira coal blocks in western Odisha. In 1994, the aluminium producer Hindalco Industries, owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla, was allotted the Talabira I block, which it would mine to fuel a proposed aluminium plant. As early as 1996, it also wanted access to

Talabira II. Talabira III, the largest of the blocks, was controlled by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of the government-owned Coal India Limited, and had never been up for allocation to private companies. Talabira II and III were contiguous blocks, and it was more efficient to mine them together. So, by early 2005, the screening committee and the coal ministry decided to grant the rights to both to Mahanadi Coalfields, which was to collaborate with another public sector company, Neyveli Lignite Corporation, even though the Odisha government was strongly in favour of giving Hindalco a slice of Talabira II. In May and June 2005, Kumar Mangalam Birla addressed two letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, which forwarded them to the coal ministry, asking for a report on the allocation. The ministry responded to the PMO’s request in August, justifying its decision to give Mahanadi the block. That month, the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, also wrote to the PMO in support of Hindalco. The PMO then asked the coal ministry to reconsider the allocation, and sent it the Odisha government’s letter. In September, the coal ministry reversed its earlier stance and submitted a new proposal for allotment. In this new dispensation, Hindalco got a 15-percent share not only in Talabira II, but also Talabira III—giving it access to more coal than it required for its proposed plant. The prime minister approved the new plan on 1 October that year. The facts demonstrate the arbitrariness and lack of transparency in the allotment process, although they do not, in themselves, constitute evidence of corruption—bad policy must not be conflated with graft. Singh took full responsibility for all the ministry’s decisions in 2012, when questions were raised against the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in parliament. “I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported by the facts,” he said. But, in 2014, the Supreme Court decided that many decisions taken by the screening committee were “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and cancelled all

Image Courtsey: The Caravan Archive

Throughout his tenure, Singh was plagued by allegations that he privately answered to Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s investigations have not linked Singh’s actions to Gandhi in any way. allocations made since 1993. Screening committees for the alienation of coal blocks have existed since 1993, when India felt the need to cultivate private companies’ interest in mining. Under this system, an inter-ministerial screening committee chaired by the coal secretary decided on the allocation of captive blocks to private companies, which had exclusive rights to mine coal to feed industries that depend on the fuel, including power, steel and cement. This was in no way Singh’s or the UPA’s innovation, but its faults were readily apparent, and Singh can be accused of failing to stop or improve the process when he had the opportunity. Everything we know about the coal allocation scam so far demonstrates the problems with the modus operandi. The CBI found that there were instances when minutes of the screening committee’s meetings went un-recorded; files related to

10.3

corporate bidders and the allotment process have gone missing. PC Parakh, who was coal secretary between March 2004 and December 2005, and has also been summoned by the court, has claimed in interviews that he tried to convince Singh to adopt the process of auctioning coal blocks, a more transparent way of doing business. Moves to change the process commenced in late 2004, soon after Singh assumed power, but thanks to red tape and political expediency, no blocks were ever auctioned under the UPA government. In September 2012, the Deccan Herald quoted Parakh saying, “The prime minister could have put his weight behind to see that auction route was followed. After I took over, I put the screening committee on hold for a while to bring about a transparent system. The prime minister, instead of waiting, decided to go ahead with the old system.” Singh was coal minister through much of the UPA’s first term between 2004 and 2009. All the chargesheets the CBI has filed in its investigation pertain more or less to this period—and both the coal ministry as well as the PMO interfered in the CBI’s dealings. On 6 March 2013, Ashwani Kumar, then the law minister, called two meetings in order to vet the CBI’s draft status reports in Preliminary Enquiries 2 and 4, both of which were later submitted to the Supreme Court.

The Caravan/ April 2015

10.1 Commentary, Section Opener 10.2 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 2 10.3 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 3

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

11.1

11.4

11.2

HIGH-RISK BEHAVIOUR Goverment apathy leaves Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s AIDS programme in crisis

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Cover Story by Debarshi Dasgupta

REPORTAGE

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A R T REVIEW

www.caravanmagazine.com

Taking A Part

12.3

In Order to Join allows women to become interpreters of history By Debarshi Dasgupta

also reflect contemporary events. On display in Mumbai until 10 April, the exhibition was first mounted in 2013, at the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, Germany. Titz is the director of that museum, which was established in 1904 and is well known for its pop art and Nouveau réalisme collections. She was introduced to Tamhane by the artist Jitish Kallat, who thought she would be interested in Tamhane’s PhD research into the politically charged and formally challenging work of the late artist Rummana Hussain. “Susanne and I immediately started talking,” Tamhane told me when we met recently at the Max Mueller Bhavan. “She mentioned Astrid Klein and this generation of women artists who were working in the eighties. I mentioned, along with Rummana Hussain, Angela Grauerholz and Rosemarie Trockel.” The two curators found that they were looking at female artists born in the early 1950s who, Tamhane said, “started working after the Second Wave of feminism— they weren’t doing any rah-rah feminist thing and were working in a very different way.” Even though no themes united these artists initially, Tamhane said specific works immediately sprang to mind that seemed to loosely converse with each other. For instance, the Canadian artist Angela Grauerholz and the German artist Astrid Klein both employed black-and-white images and newsprint, and used contemporary events to hark back to the past. Tamhane and Titz zeroed down on the deceptively simple curato-

rial strategy of selecting artists born between 1948 and 1958— the first generation, they wrote in the exhibition catalogue, “to experience a global identity.” This rather free-flowing approach comes together surprisingly well. With a large corpus of over 40 works, some of which are series with multiple pieces, this is one of the largest international exhibitions of women artists ever mounted in India. Through its breadth, it avoids the trap of making its contributors simply ciphers of the national or regional conditions of their sex. The selection of artists who are united by gender and a historical moment, but who span several nationalities and ethnicities, is liberating; it allows the women to become interpreters of history rather than its by-products. The feminist lens through which they do this is implicit, and often layered with other concerns—language politics, religious beliefs, personal identity, geographic location. The connections between the works are discernible, yet the curators mostly just suggest tenuous links, leaving viewers to discover common ground on their own. In Order to Join takes its title from Hussain’s 1998 exhibition at the Art in General gallery in New York, and the artist’s work is the cornerstone of the present exhibition. Hussain was largely a figurative painter until the 1990s. After the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, though, she took a turn towards the conceptual. She was also involved with the

Top Left: Women from rural Karnataka attend an HIV-awareness fair organised by the state government Top Right: Two young boys walk past a giant condom grafitti in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Opposite Page: Two young boys walk past a giant condom grafitti in a small town in Uttar Pradesh.

The Caravan/ April 2015

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Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

DESIGN APPROACH #4

With approaches #2 and #3 being shortlisted our design decisions started getting streamlined since we got a clearer understanding of what the team wanted. Instead of refining the two approaches separately, we decided to combine the positives of both the designs and formulate a new design direction. Approach #4 was a result of the same effort. Taking the example of good use of whitespace in approach #3 we built a sound modular structure. We also decided to retain the icons as slugs but change their treatment a little. Taking the idea of a slug-bar at the top of each story from approach #2, we developed it further into a more sleek and agile version of the bolder, bulkier one. The slider under the relevant slug of the story was directly inspired from navigation in the online space.

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Merits The icons used in addition to the written slugs solved the problem ambiguity faced in the previous attempts. Replacing the tradition drop-caps with the icons added pizazz. Visually, the number of elements of page increasing also allowed more entry points for a casual reader. The static header on top highlighted with color followed by a large image gave a very distinct sense of a section opener. Demerits Despite so many new elements on the page as well as an addition of color, the overall mood of the design did not signify a marked difference from the older design of the magazine. Even though the editors loved this direction, the design team felt that it looked rather old school and very safe.

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THE LEDE

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Teaching the Madia in their own native toungue

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debarshi dasgupta

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These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s internal education system. 4

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education · slaughter ban · pop-culture · law & order

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in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediateapril 2015

Page Fixtures page number, name of the magazine

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

13.1

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32 education · slaughter ban · pop-culture · law & order

City Watch New York grapples with crisis of trust on its police force debarshi dasgupta

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13.3

According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, two-thirds of white New Yorkers approve of the job being done by the police, while 54 percent of black New Yorkers disapprove.

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On the Saturday afternoon of 13 December, two large public events jostled for space in Manhattan. One was the Millions March, a peaceful demonstration of outrage at police violence against “people of colour”—most notably the fatal shooting of a black teenager, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St Louis in August, and the choking and subsequent death by heart attack of a 43-year-old black man, Eric Garner, in the New York borough of Staten Island in July. In both cases, the civilians were unarmed. Grand juries in Missouri and New York had recently refused to indict the white officers involved in their killings. Chanting “Black lives matter!,” the marchers wound through downtown streets to Foley Square, near City Hall. Close by, revellers in Santa Claus suits and skimpy elf costumes stormed through the streets as part of SantaCon, an annual Christmas-time bacchanal. SantaCon began in the mid 1990s as a whimsical art stunt, but it has since swollen into a frenzy of drunkenness, part pub-crawl and part Mongol invasion. Inevitably, the protest and the party bumped together. Santas cut through the march; gnomes and elves searched for alternative routes to the next bar. Police officers flanking the demonstration looked on with amusement. But what could have passed as a brief comic respite became a point of friction. One white man in full red-and-white regalia berated a black female protester, telling her to “go get a job.” That jibe, overlaid with age-old racist and classist disdain, sparked great anger. Dozens of demonstrators started chanting not against the excesses of the police or the failures of the justice system, but against SantaCon. It was a collision of words, and of worlds. The tottering merrymakers the caravan

were mostly white and middle-class; the Millions March, while very diverse, was composed in significant part of black New Yorkers. During recent months of discontent in New York, the gulfs of race and class between these two groups yawned wide. The top one percent of the city’s earners, the majority of whom are white, account for 44 percent of its total income; meanwhile, a fifth of all New Yorkers—a disproportionate number of them people of colour—live in poverty. A 2012 study showed Manhattan to be more socially unequal than Apartheid-era South Africa. The police play a prominent and divisive role on the front lines of inequality, and, with their conduct now under massive public scrutiny, tensions between the force, the city administration and minority communities are coming to a head. According to a January poll by Quinnipiac University, two-thirds of white New Yorkers approve of the job being done by the police, while 54 percent of black New Yorkers disapprove. Ethnicity and class are central to shaping experiences of police behaviour in the city. Escalating housing prices have pushed working-class and minority families into peripheral neighbourhoods. It is there that the New York Police Department—the largest urban police force in the world, with 34,000 personnel for a population of 8.4 million people—is most heavily deployed, and where residents such as Eric Garner face the brunt of police excesses. The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stopand-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013. But the department still maintains its controversial “broken windows” policy (which it claims lowers rates of serious felonies) of cracking down on petty infractions in poor neighbourhoods while overlooking them in more affluent areas. Of the 179 people killed by on-duty NYPD officers since 1999, 86 percent were black or Latino (those communities formed just over half the city’s population in 2010); only one officer has ever been con-

the lede · city watch The NYPD’s aggressive use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these areas led to hundreds of thousands of black and Latino residents being searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013. victed in relation to these killings. “The police are the face of a much larger and more aggressive system,” Mark Winston Griffith, the executive director of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a community group that has long pushed for reform of the NYPD, told me in February. “You can’t separate ‘stop-and-frisk’ and ‘broken windows’ from gentrification, from people being pushed out,” he said. “Explicitly and implicitly, a decision was made to push dark people out of the city, clean it up, and make room for a whiter, more affluent population. The police help enforce that vision of society.” Garner’s death became a flashpoint after a video of the altercation leading to it, recorded on a bystander’s cell phone, went viral online. The grainy footage shows several police officers accosting Garner, accusing him of selling loose cigarettes. As the police struggle to handcuff him, one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, places Garner in a chokehold, and several others pin him to the ground for several minutes. Garner’s last words, clearly audible on the recording, were “I can’t breathe”—a phrase that became a protest slogan. The grand jury ruling exonerating Pantaleo was announced on 3 December, and protests flooded the streets. Danielle Tcholakian, a city reporter for the news outlet DNAinfo, followed the demonstrators over several days. “There was a lot of yelling and highly charged emotions,” she told me, “but physical confrontations with the police were rare.” The protesters came from diverse backgrounds, she said, and shared a sense that they were part of a historic moment. “You could see many older people as well as teenagers. A lot

of people I talked to had never been to a protest before. They were often black, long-time New Yorkers who had grown up here. One female protester told me her father had been an NYPD sergeant. She was quite emotional.” The demonstrations continued for days. Their refrain “Black lives matter!” became so ubiquitous that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, echoed it in an open letter to the city in the wake of the Garner ruling. In a later speech, de Blasio, himself white, described the fear he and his black wife have for their biracial son. “Because of a history that still hangs over us … we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” These were strong words from a mayor, USA and did not sit well with many of the police officers he presides over. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city’s largest police union, accused de Blasio of throwing cops “under the bus,” and many within the NYPD described him as “anti-police.” So did detractors on the political right, glad to pillory the first left-of-centre mayor to run New York in 20 years. “That was a surreal moment,” Griffith said. “Surreal not in what de Blasio said but in how the police reacted. What he said was not an anti-police statement. It was an acknowledgement of how black parents have to train their children to be safe in the city. The fact that he can’t say something as harmless as that tells you how far outside the april 2015

mainstream the NYPD is.” But many cops saw things differently. In their eyes, de Blasio had violated an unwritten pact. Responding to events in the New York Review of Books, the writer Michael Greenberg noted a sense that the police “believed themselves to hold an unquantifiable power over elected officials. Cops did the dirty work, they waded in the muck, keeping the poor and violent in check and monitoring the human detritus that is the result of inequities they’d had no hand in creating. In return, the politicians turned a blind eye to the excessive use of force.” Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor who served three terms in office, boasted of the department as “my own army.” It got worse for de Blasio after a deranged man from New York Baltimore drove up to New York to murder two NYPD officers on 20 December. On social media, the killer seemed to suggest that he acted to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown. Right-wing politicians blamed the anti-police protests for inciting the murders. Lynch singled out de Blasio. “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said on the evening of the killings. “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.” Two days later, de Blasio delivered a eulogy at the funeral of one of the officers, Rafael Ramos, at a church in the borough of Queens. As he spoke, hundreds of officers in attendance turned their backs on him in protest. The gesture held an implacable power, and images of it ran in media across the 13

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14.2 33 commentary · the quarry

COMMENTARY

politics · law & order ·euthanasia coal ministry, which was in charge of the screening committee for coal allocation. On 11 March this year, the CBI court summoned Singh as accused number 6 in one of several cases pertaining to the alienation of coal blocks. Singh’s defenders decried the summons as a witch-hunt; prominent leaders of the Congress, rallied by the party president, Sonia Gandhi, led a march to Singh’s residence in a show of support and solidarity when the news broke. On the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, the sight of senior Congressmen in that procession— including the former cabinet ministers AK Antony, P Chidambaram, and Anand Sharma—reminded many people that fresh inquiries might yet cast doubt on the conduct of others in power during the UPA regime. Others pointed out that the summons came at a suspiciously convenient moment for the ruling National Democratic

The Quarry What the trial of Manmohan Singh must address debarshi dasgupta

The trial of Andimuthu Raja came to an impasse on 27 January 2013 when his lawyer, Sushil Kumar, was questioning Goolam Vahanvati, then the attorney general of India. Raja, the former telecom minister, had claimed that the policy decisions that led to his indictment in what is now called the 2G spectrum scam were not taken independently. Vahanvati was aware of the changed policy, he said; and so was Pranab Mukherjee, the head of the Empowered Group of Ministers responsible for spectrum allocation. Since Vahanvati denied that any such discussions had taken place between himself, Mukherjee and Raja, it was impossible to establish the truth of the matter. Only three people, Kumar said with a dramatic flourish, were aware of the details. “One is him,” he said, pointing to Vahanvati. “One is him,” the caravan

at Raja. “And the third is at a position where we cannot reach”—implying in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Mukherjee, by virtue of his presidential position, remains immune to prosecution. The former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is not. Even as Raja’s case was being heard, it emerged that the 2G scam was not the most expensive of the UPA government’s misadventures. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India calculated that while irregularities in spectrum allocation had incurred the government a loss of R1.76 lakh crore (R1.76 trillion), its ineffective and possibly corrupt distribution of coal blocks had cost the exchequer R1.85 lakh crore. The Empowered Group of Ministers overseeing coal allocation was also headed by Mukherjee. Yet the lion’s share of responsibility for the decisions on the coal blocks, now under investigation in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, falls on Singh, who, in addition to leading the cabinet as prime minister, was also, for much of his tenure, head of the

Throughout his tenure, Singh was plagued by allegations that he privately answered to Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s investigations have not linked Singh’s actions to Gandhi in any way. Alliance, as it attempted to overcome serious hurdles in parliament during the budget session. Since he has been called to account, Singh must use the opportunity to clarify what happened during a process that remains, at best, an opaque one. This particular case concerns the three Talabira coal blocks in western Odisha. In 1994, the aluminium producer Hindalco Industries, owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla, was allotted the Talabira I block, which it would mine to fuel a proposed aluminium plant. As early as 1996, it also wanted access to

screening committee were “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and cancelled all allocations made since 1993. Screening committees for the alienation of coal blocks have existed since 1993, when India felt the need to cultivate private companies’ interest in mining. Under this system, an inter-ministerial screening committee chaired by the coal secretary decided on the allocation of captive blocks to private companies, which had exclusive rights to mine coal to feed industries that depend on the fuel, including power, steel and cement. This was in no way Singh’s or the UPA’s innovation, but its faults were readily apparent, and Singh can be accused of failing to stop or improve the process when he had the opportunity. Everything we know about the coal allocation scam so far demonstrates the problems with the modus operandi. The CBI found that there were instances when minutes of the screening committee’s meetings went un-recorded; files related to corporate bidders and the allotment process have gone missing. PC Parakh, who was coal secretary between March 2004 and December 2005, and has also been summoned by the court, has claimed in interviews that he tried to convince Singh to adopt the process of auctioning coal blocks, a more transparent way of doing business. Moves to change the process commenced in late 2004, soon after Singh assumed power, but thanks to red tape and political expediency, no blocks were ever auctioned under the UPA government. In September 2012, the Deccan Herald quoted Parakh saying, “The prime minister could have put his weight behind to see that auction route was followed. After I took over, I put the screening committee on hold for a while to bring about a transparent system. The prime minister, instead of waiting, decided to go ahead with the old system.” Singh was coal minister through much of the UPA’s first term between 2004 and 2009. All the chargesheets the CBI has filed in its investigation pertain more or less to this period— and both the coal ministry as well

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april 2015

14.1 Commentary, Section Opener 14.2 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 2 14.3 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 3

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

15.1

15.4

15.2

15.3

High-Risk Behaviour Government apathy leaves India’s AIDS programme in crisis

By Rahul Bhatia

As discussions about the food security bill played on displays around the room, Rajdeep Sardesai took a seat at the centre of a simmering news pit in Mumbai, looking like he could use a break. Just ten days earlier, on 16 August, CNN-IBN and IBN7, the channels he oversees as editor-in-chief of the IBN Network, had witnessed the sudden layoffs of approximately 300 producers, cameramen, and reporters. Sardesai’s base of operations, at the channels’ headquarters in Noida, had been the worst affected by the forced departures; there, reporters and anchors on air had completed their broadcast and stepped off to find they no longer had a job. The layoffs were part of a large restructuring exercise recommended by Mercer and Ernst & Young for TV18, which was part of the gargantuan Network18 group. The group’s employees were told that management wanted to integrate the processes of its expansive media empire, which included CNBC-TV18, the IBN channels, Forbes India magazine, the website Firstpost, and a host

of other channels and outlets across television, print and the internet. The night before the layoffs, I met a senior CNN-IBN employee at a dimly lit coffee shop in Bandra, Mumbai. This person was washed out by the retrenchments to come. Between phone calls, over cups of coffee not quite large enough, the employee laid out the stark operational plan for the next 24 hours. “HR plans to finish by tomorrow evening. They want to finish it in a day.” The employee was reconciled to the job cuts, but wished they had been handled in a better way; Network18’s HR personnel had met in conference rooms to discuss these cuts in full view of the staff outside. “Tomorrow the HR person is going to tell them that the company is restructuring, and there’s going to be an integration of newsrooms,” the senior employee told me. To minimise the chances of backlash, the layoffs would all be communicated at one go. Over the course of our conversation, the person’s phone rang twice. Both callers wanted the same thing: information that would help them understand what was about to happen the next day. The group had been uncommunicative with most of its workforce (and would continue to be so for months afterward). The senior employee told me that a list of employees to be fired had been shown to editors; it was an indicative draft, but the heads of various departments began to quietly inform the people listed on it on their own. There seemed to be no recognisable pattern to the names. The company had marked for dismissal inexperienced rookies and old hands alike. Well-regarded reporters who had been with the group for some years were going, as was at least one person from the camera department on a salary below R10,000. “Reporters from IBN7 stopped coming to work because they were interviewing for other jobs,” the senior employee said. Sardesai had last visited the Mumbai bureau in July, by which time the rumours were flying so thick they were impossible to ignore. “Rajdeep said that we had to be prepared for a restructuring,” a former producer recalled. But he

also told them that good workers had no reason to worry. Elsewhere in the building, Ritu Kapur, the History TV18 programming head, who is married to Raghav Bahl, the founder and managing director of Network18, told the entertainment team that their concerns about impending layoffs were unwarranted. “Ritu said, ‘No, no! What are you saying?’” a person present recalled. The deceptions grated on reporters, who felt they were owed the truth. Over the last eight years, Sardesai had fostered an atmosphere of openness; his employees had always been comfortable expressing strong opinions that differed from his. But in contrast with the company line—and her own —Kapur informed Rajeev Masand and Vanita Singh, two IBN editors, that over twothirds of their reporters were going to be made redundant. “They were asked to say what each person brings to the table,” the senior employee said. Masand “spent hours on heated calls” to protect his team from being culled, the producer told me. Smitha Nair, the sharp, quick-talking Mumbai bureau chief, was “walking around red-eyed, in tears,” according to the producer. Among themselves, reporters began to call the coming day, 16 August, Black Friday. A clamour grew within and outside the studios that Friday; staff leaked details of the resignations online, in real time. Across Network18, approximately 350 people were asked to resign in one day. Several programmes on CNBC were scrapped with immediate effect. In Mumbai, CNN-IBN’s bureau of five news reporters, already stretched thin, was reduced to three. At the end of the day, Sardesai wrote on his Twitter feed—otherwise a mix of programme previews and observations from his morning walks—“Hurt and pain can be lonely. You must grieve in solitude. Gnight.” The layoffs at Network18 came at a time of enormous stress for Indian media. The exigencies of the market have caused advertisers to withdraw. Earlier this year, regulators proposed that each hour of television should contain only 12 minutes of advertising. There are April 2015| The Caravan| 19

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16.2 35 fiction · flood of fire

FICTION & POETRY amitav ghosh Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the first two volumes of The Ibis Trilogy; Sea of Poppies, and River of Smoke.

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Flood of Fire One of the greatest achievements in the world of the Indian novel—one of startling mimetic depth and variety, as well as linguistic invention and narrative power—reaches its climax with the publication of Flood of Fire, the final book in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. In this excerpt, taken from the novel’s opening pages, we see Shireen, the wife of the Parsi opium trader Bahram Modi and a minor protagonist of the series’ preceding volume, finally being sucked into the tides of power, trade and migration that roil the trilogy’s characters.

For Shireen Modi, in Bombay, the day started like any other: later, this would seem to her the strangest thing of all—that the news had arrived without presaging or portent. All her life she had placed great store by omens and auguries— to the point where her husband, Bahram, had often scoffed and called her “superstitious”—but try as she might she could remember no sign that might have been interpreted as a warning of what that morning was to bring. Later that day Shireen’s two daughters, Shernaz and Behroze, were to bring their children over for dinner as they did once every week. These weekly dinners were Shireen’s principal diversion when her husband was away in China. Other than that there was little to enliven her days except for an occasional visit to the Fire Temple at the end of the street. Shireen’s apartment was on the top floor of the Mistrie family mansion which was on Apollo Street, one of Bombay’s busiest thoroughfares. The house had long been presided over by her father, Seth Rustomjee Mistrie, the eminent shipbuilder. After his death the family firm had been taken over by her brothers, who lived on the floors below, with their wives and children. Shireen was the only daughter of the family to remain in the house after her marriage; her sisters had all moved to their husbands’ homes, as was the custom. The Mistrie mansion was a lively, bustling house with the voices of khidmatgars, bais, khansamas, ayahs and chowkidars ringing through the stairwells all day long. The quietest part of the building was the apartment that Seth Rustomjee had put aside for Shireen at the time of her betrothal to Bahram: he had insisted that the couple take up residence under his 22

own roof after their wedding—Bahram was a penniless youth at the time and had no family connections in Bombay. Ever solicitous of his daughter, the Seth had wanted to make sure that she never suffered a day’s discomfort after her marriage—and in this he had certainly succeeded, but at the cost of ensuring also that she and her husband became, in a way, dependants of the Mistrie family. Bahram had often talked of moving out, but Shireen had always resisted, dreading the thought of managing a house on her own during her husband’s long absences in China; and besides, while her parents were still alive, she had never wanted to be anywhere other than the house she had grown up in. It was only when it was too late, after her daughters had married and her parents had died, that she had begun to feel a little like an interloper. It wasn’t that anyone was unkind to her; to the contrary they were almost excessively solicitous, as they might be with a guest. But it was clear to everyone—the servants most of all—that she was not a mistress of the Mistrie mansion in the same way that her brothers’ wives were; when decisions had to be made about shared spaces, like the gardens or the roof, she was never consulted; her claims on the carriages were accorded a low priority or even overlooked; and when the khidmatgars quarrelled hers always seemed to get the worst of it. There were times when Shireen felt herself to be drowning in the peculiar kind of loneliness that comes of living in a house where the servants far outnumber their employers. This was not the least of the reasons why she looked forward so eagerly to her weekly dinners with her daughters and grandchildren:

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she would spend days fussing over the food, going to great lengths to dig out old recipes, and making sure that the khansama tried them out in advance. Today after several visits to the kitchen Shireen decided to add an extra item to the menu: dar ni pori—lentils, almonds and pistachios baked in pastry. Around mid-morning she dispatched a khidmatgar to the market to do some additional shopping. He was gone a long time and when he returned there was an odd look on his face. What’s the matter? she asked and he responded evasively, mumbling something about having seen her husband’s purser, Vico, talking to her brothers, downstairs. Shireen was taken aback. Vico was indispensable to Bahram: he had travelled to China with him, the year before, and had been with him ever since. If Vico was in Bombay then where was her husband? And why would Vico stop to talk to her brothers before coming to see her? Even if Vico had been sent ahead to Bombay on urgent business, Bahram would certainly have given him letters and presents to bring to her. She frowned at the khidmatgar in puzzlement: he had been in her service for many years and knew Vico well. He wasn’t likely to misrecognise him, she knew, but still, just to be sure she said: You are certain it was Vico? The man nodded, in a way that sent a tremor of apprehension through her. Brusquely she told him to go back downstairs. Tell Vico to come up at once. I want to see him right now. Glancing at her clothes she realised that she wasn’t ready to receive visitors yet: she called for a maid and went quickly to her bedroom. On opening her almirah her eyes went directly

to the sari she had worn on the day of Bahram’s departure for China. With trembling hands she took it off the shelf and held it against her thin, angular frame. The sheen of the rich gara silk filled the room with a green glow, lighting up her long, pointed face, her large eyes and her greying temples. She seated herself on the bed and recalled the day in September, the year before, when Bahram had left for Canton. She had been much troubled that morning by inauspicious signs— she had broken her red marriage bangle as she was dressing and Bahram’s turban was found to have fallen to the floor during the night. These portents had worried her so much that she had begged him not to leave that day. But he had said that it was imperative for him to go—why exactly she could not recall. Then the maid broke in—Bibiji?—and she recollected why she had come to the bedroom. She took out a sari and was draping it around herself when she caught the sound of raised voices in the courtyard below: there was nothing unusual in this but for some reason it worried her and she told the maid to go and see what was happening. After a few minutes the woman came back to report that she had seen a number of peons and runners leaving the house, with chitties in their hands. Chitties? For whom? Why? The maid didn’t know of course, so Shireen asked if Vico had come upstairs yet. No, Bibiji, said the maid. He is still downstairs, talking to your brothers. They are in one of the daftars. The door is locked. Oh? Somehow Shireen forced herself to sit still while the maid 23

april 2015

16.1 Fiction & Poetry, Section Opener 16.2 Fiction & Poetry, Alternate Section Opener 16.3 Books, Section Opener

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

DESIGN APPROACH #5

Just like approach #4, the fifth cover-to-cover was also born by combining the positives and eliminating the drawbacks of approaches #2 and #3. But it focused on elements different from the ones highlighted in design #4.

Merits This design managed to obtain the optimum visual balance of minimalism, functionality and aesthetic appeal. The hierarchy of elements is unambiguous.

Taking the essence of minimalism proposed in approach #2 ahead, this design direction eliminated the use of any superfluous graphic element completely. Instead of focusing of embellishment, the design attempted to stay true to the functional aspect of graphic design. Anything that did not serve an exclusive function, was removed.

Demerits The size of the icons used was too large and stark for the taste of the editors. There were also concerns about the design being too modern for The Caravan.

We decided to scale up use of icons on the page since it was an unprecedented treatment which had the potential to give the magazine a unique visual identity. The main elements of page were kept bold and the negative space was utilized to create adequate hierarchy. This design got a unanimous support of the design as well the digital teams. The editors however needed some more time to warm to the idea of an approach so distinctly different.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

COLOR PALETTE

Story Header

Section Header big and bold

3 Column Grid

THE LEDE

Icon as Slug scaled up in size to push it up in hierarchy

Credit Line

Story Strap

Dummy Ad used as a placeholder

Careful Wording Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

“metre,” written in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of the caravan

them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes april 2015

Page Fixtures page number, name of the magazine

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

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38 the lede · city watch

City Watch

searched, harassed and humiliated by the police until the practice was ruled unconstitutional, in August 2013. But New York city grapples with crisis of trust in the department still maintains its controversial “broken windows” policy its police force (which it claims lowers rates of serious felonies) of cracking down on petty infractions in poor neighbourhoods while overlooking them in more affluent areIt was a collision of words, and of as. Of the 179 people killed by on-duty debarshi dasgupta worlds. The tottering merrymakers NYPD officers since 1999, 86 percent On the Saturday afternoon of 13 Dewere mostly white and middle-class; were black or Latino (those commucember, two large public events jostled the Millions March, while very dinities formed just over half the city’s for space in Manhattan. One was the verse, was composed in significant part population in 2010); only one officer has Millions March, a peaceful demonof black New Yorkers. During recent ever been convicted in relation to these stration of outrage at police violence months of discontent in New York, the killings. against “people of colour”—most notagulfs of race and class between these “The police are the face of a much bly the fatal shooting of a black teentwo groups yawned wide. The top one larger and more aggressive system,” ager, Michael Brown, in a suburb of St percent of the city’s earners, the majorMark Winston Griffith, the executive Louis in August, and the choking and ity of whom are white, account for 44 director of the Brooklyn Movement subsequent death by heart attack of a percent of its total income; meanwhile, Center, a community group that has 43-year-old black man, Eric Garner, in a fifth of all New Yorkers—a disprolong pushed for reform of the NYPD, the New York borough of Staten Island portionate number of them people of told me in February. “You can’t sepain July. In both cases, the civilians were colour—live in poverty. A 2012 study rate ‘stop-and-frisk’ and ‘broken winunarmed. Grand juries in Missouri showed Manhattan to be more socialdows’ from gentrification, from people and New York had recently refused to ly unequal than Apartheid-era South being pushed out,” he said. “Explicitly indict the white officers involved in Africa. The police play a prominent and implicitly, a decision was made to their killings. Chanting “Black lives and divisive role on the front lines of push dark people out of the city, clean matter!,” the marchers wound through inequality, and, with their conduct now it up, and make room for a whiter, more downtown streets to Foley Square, near under massive public scrutiny, tensions affluent population. The police help City Hall. between the force, the city adminisenforce that vision of society.” Close by, revellers in Santa Claus tration and minority communities are Garner’s death became a flashpoint suits and skimpy elf costumes stormed coming to a head. after a video of the altercation leading through the streets as part of SantaCAccording to a Januto it, recorded on a on, an annual Christmas-time bacchaary poll by Quinnipiac New York bystander’s cell phone, nal. SantaCon began in the mid 1990s University, two-thirds went viral online. The USA as a whimsical art stunt, but it has of white New Yorkers grainy footage shows since swollen into a frenzy of drunkenapprove of the job several police officers ness, part pub-crawl and part Mongol being done by the poaccosting Garner, acinvasion. Inevitably, the protest and lice, while 54 percent cusing him of selling LETTERS FROM NEW YORK the party bumped together. Santas cut of black New Yorkers loose cigarettes. As the through the march; gnomes and elves disapprove. Ethnicity and class are police struggle to handcuff him, one searched for alternative routes to the central to shaping experiences of police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, places Garner next bar. Police officers flanking the behaviour in the city. Escalating housin a chokehold, and several others pin demonstration looked on with amuseing prices have pushed working-class him to the ground for several minutes. ment. But what could have passed as a and minority families into peripheral Garner’s last words, clearly audible on brief comic respite became a point of neighbourhoods. It is there that the the recording, were “I can’t breathe”—a friction. One white man in full red-andNew York Police Department—the phrase that became a protest slogan. white regalia berated a black female largest urban police force in the world, The grand jury ruling exonerating protester, telling her to “go get a job.” with 34,000 personnel for a population Pantaleo was announced on 3 DecemJust inserting a random sentence here. of 8.4 million people—is most heavily ber, and protests flooded the streets. That jibe, overlaid with age-old racist deployed, and where residents such Danielle Tcholakian, a city reporter and classist disdain, sparked great anas Eric Garner face the brunt of police for the news outlet DNAinfo, followed ger. Dozens of demonstrators started excesses. The NYPD’s aggressive use the demonstrators over several days. chanting not against the excesses of the of “stop-and-frisk” tactics in these “There was a lot of yelling and highly police or the failures of the justice sysareas led to hundreds of thousands charged emotions,” she told me, “but tem, but against SantaCon. of black and Latino residents being physical confrontations with the police

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were rare.” The protesters came from diverse backgrounds, she said, and shared a sense that they were part of a historic moment. “You could see many older people as well as teenagers. A lot of people I talked to had never been to a protest before. They were often black, long-time New Yorkers who had grown up here. One female protester told me her father had been an NYPD sergeant. She was quite emotional.” The demonstrations continued for days. Their refrain “Black lives matter!” became so ubiquitous that Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, echoed it in an open letter to the city in the wake of the Garner ruling. In a later speech, de Blasio, himself white, described the fear he and his black wife have for their biracial son. “Because of a history that still hangs over us … we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.” These were strong words from a mayor, and did not sit well with many of the police officers he presides over. Patrick Lynch, the head of the city’s largest police union, accused de Blasio of throwing cops “under the bus,” and many within the NYPD described him as “anti-police.” So did detractors on the political right, glad to pillory the first left-of-centre mayor to run New York in 20 years. “That was a surreal moment,” Griffith said. “Surreal not in what de Blasio said but in how the police reacted.

What he said was not an anti-police statement. It was an acknowledgement of how black parents have to train their children to be safe in the city. The fact that he can’t say something as harmless as that tells you how far outside the mainstream the NYPD is.” But many cops saw things differently. In their eyes, de Blasio had violated an unwritten pact. Responding to events in the New York Review of Books, the writer Michael Greenberg noted a sense that the police “believed themselves to hold an unquantifiable power over elected officials. Cops did the dirty work, they waded in the muck, keeping the poor and violent in check and monitoring the human detritus that is the result of inequities they’d had no hand in creating. In return, the politicians turned a blind eye to the excessive use of force.” Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor who served three terms in office, boasted of the department as “my own army.” It got worse for de Blasio after a deranged man from Baltimore drove up to New York to murder two NYPD officers on 20 December. On social media, the killer seemed to suggest that he acted to avenge the deaths of Garner and Brown. Right-wing politicians blamed the anti-police protests for inciting the murders. Lynch singled out de Blasio. “There’s blood on many hands tonight,” he said on the evening of the killings. “That blood on the hands starts at City Hall in the office of the mayor.” Two days later, de Blasio delivered a eulogy at the funeral of one of the april 2015

officers, Rafael Ramos, at a church in the borough of Queens. As he spoke, hundreds of officers in attendance turned their backs on him in protest. The gesture held an implacable power, and images of it ran in media across the country. Some officers again turned their backs on the mayor at the funeral of the second slain officer, Wenjian Liu, a few days later. The public was not sympathetic. According to the Quinnipiac poll, 69 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of the apparent mutiny. A New York Times editorial lambasted the police for their “snarling sense of victimhood,” and for their insistence that “the department is never wrong, that it never needs redirection or reform, only reverence.” Even among the police, Tcholakian told me, the protest divided opinion. “The narrative in the media was that the cop protest was orchestrated,” he said. “My sources in the NYPD told me that it was not planned. It was an emotional response, not a political one.” Still, de Blasio was bruised. In his “State of the City” address, an annual speech delivered this year on 3 February, he conspicuously avoided mention of police conduct, or the underlying matter of police reform. He spoke instead of the scourge of inequality, warning that “New York risks taking on the qualities of a gated community, a place defined by exclusivity rather than opportunity.” He did not explicitly link the politics of inequality to the present crisis of trust between the city and its cops, but there is little doubt he under39

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COMMENTARY

commentary · the quarry

City Watch New York city grapples with crisis of trust in its police force

debarshi dasgupta The trial of Andimuthu Raja came to an impasse on 27 January 2013 when his lawyer, Sushil Kumar, was questioning Goolam Vahanvati, then the attorney general of India. Raja, the former telecom minister, had claimed that the policy decisions that led to his indictment in what is now called the 2G spectrum scam were not taken independently. Vahanvati was aware of the changed policy, he said; and so was Pranab Mukherjee, the head of the Empowered Group of Ministers responsible for spectrum allocation. Since Vahanvati denied that any such discussions had taken place between himself, Mukherjee and Raja, it was impossible to establish the truth of the matter. Only three people, Kumar said with a dramatic flourish, were aware of the details. “One is him,” he said, pointing to Vahanvati. “One is him,” at Raja. “And the third is at a position where we cannot reach”—implying in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Mukherjee, by virtue of his presidential position, remains immune to prosecution. The former prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is not. Even as Raja’s case was being heard, it emerged that the 2G scam was not the most expensive of the UPA government’s misadventures. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India calculated that while irregularities in spectrum allocation 40

had incurred the government a loss of R1.76 lakh crore (R1.76 trillion), its ineffective and possibly corrupt distribution of coal blocks had cost the exchequer R1.85 lakh crore. The Empowered Group of Ministers overseeing coal allocation was also headed by Mukherjee. Yet the lion’s share of responsibility for the decisions on the coal blocks, now under investigation in a special Central Bureau of Investigation court, falls on Singh, who, in addition to leading the cabinet as prime minister, was also, for much of his tenure, head of the coal ministry, which was in charge of the screening committee for coal allocation. On 11 March this year, the CBI court summoned Singh as accused number 6 in one of several cases pertaining to the alienation of coal blocks. Singh’s defenders decried the summons as a witch-hunt; prominent leaders of the Congress, rallied by the party president, Sonia Gandhi, led a march to Singh’s residence in a show of support and solidarity when the news broke. On the front pages of the next day’s newspapers, the sight of senior Congressmen in that procession— including the former cabinet ministers AK Antony, P Chidambaram, and Anand Sharma—reminded many people that fresh inquiries might yet cast doubt on the conduct of others in power during the UPA regime. Others pointed out that the summons came the caravan

at a suspiciously convenient moment for the ruling National Democratic Alliance, as it attempted to overcome serious hurdles in parliament during the budget session. Since he has been called to account, Singh must use the opportunity to clarify what happened during a process that remains, at best, an opaque one. This particular case concerns the three Talabira coal blocks in western Odisha. In 1994, the aluminium producer Hindalco Industries, owned by Kumar Mangalam Birla, was allotted the Talabira I block, which it would mine to fuel a proposed aluminium plant. As early as 1996, it also wanted access to Talabira II. Talabira III, the largest of the blocks, was controlled by Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a subsidiary of the government-owned Coal India Limited, and had never been up for allocation to private companies. Talabira II and III were contiguous blocks, and it was more efficient to mine them together. So, by early 2005, the screening committee and the coal ministry decided to grant the rights to both to Mahanadi Coalfields, which was to collaborate with another public sector company, Neyveli Lignite Corporation, even though the Odisha government was strongly in favour of giving Hindalco a slice of Talabira II. In May and June 2005, Kumar Mangalam Birla addressed two letters to the Prime Minister’s Office, which forwarded them to the coal ministry,

Throughout his tenure, Singh was plagued by allegations that he privately answered to Sonia Gandhi. The CBI’s investigations have not linked Singh’s actions to Gandhi in any way. asking for a report on the allocation. The ministry responded to the PMO’s request in August, justifying its decision to give Mahanadi the block. That month, the chief minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik, also wrote to the PMO in support of Hindalco. The PMO then asked the coal ministry to reconsider the allocation, and sent it the Odisha government’s letter. In September, the coal ministry reversed its earlier stance and submitted a new proposal for allotment. In this new dispensation, Hindalco got a 15-percent share not only in Talabira II, but also Talabira III—giving it access to more coal than it required for its proposed plant. The prime minister approved the new plan on 1 October that year. The facts demonstrate the arbitrariness and lack of transparency in the allotment process, although they do not, in themselves, constitute evidence of corruption—bad policy must not be conflated with graft. Singh took full responsibility for all the ministry’s decisions in 2012, when questions were raised against the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report in parliament. “I wish to say that any allegations of impropriety are without basis and unsupported

by the facts,” he said. But, in 2014, the Supreme Court decided that many decisions taken by the screening committee were “illegal” and “arbitrary,” and cancelled all allocations made since 1993. Screening committees for the alienation of coal blocks have existed since 1993, when India felt the need to cultivate private companies’ interest in mining. Under this system, an inter-ministerial screening committee chaired by the coal secretary decided on the allocation of captive blocks to private companies, which had exclusive rights to mine coal to feed industries that depend on the fuel, including power, steel and cement. This was in no way Singh’s or the UPA’s innovation, but its faults were readily apparent, and Singh can be accused of failing to stop or improve the process when he had the opportunity. Everything we know about the coal allocation scam so far demonstrates the problems with the modus operandi. The CBI found that there were instances when minutes of the screening committee’s meetings went un-recorded; files related to corporate bidders and the allotment process have gone missing. PC Parakh, who was coal secretary

between March 2004 and December 2005, and has also been summoned by the court, has claimed in interviews that he tried to convince Singh to adopt the process of auctioning coal blocks, a more transparent way of doing business. Moves to change the process commenced in late 2004, soon after Singh assumed power, but thanks to red tape and political expediency, no blocks were ever auctioned under the UPA government. In September 2012, the Deccan Herald quoted Parakh saying, “The prime minister could have put his weight behind to see that auction route was followed. After I took over, I put the screening committee on hold for a while to bring about a transparent system. The prime minister, instead of waiting, decided to go ahead with the old system.” Singh was coal minister through much of the UPA’s first term between 2004 and 2009. All the chargesheets the CBI has filed in its investigation pertain more or less to this period— and both the coal ministry as well as the PMO interfered in the CBI’s dealings. On 6 March 2013, Ashwani Kumar, then the law minister, called two meetings in order to vet the CBI’s draft status reports in Preliminary Enquiries 2 and 4, both of which were later submitted to the Supreme Court. The meetings included Vahanvati; an additional solicitor general, Harin Raval, who was appearing for the CBI for all “Coal-gate” hearings; the CBI director, Ranjit Sinha; and Sinha’s junior OP Galhotra. There were also two others present: AK Bhalla, a joint secretary from the coal ministry; and Shatrughna Singh, a joint secretary in the PMO. In an affidavit Sinha filed in the Supreme Court weeks after those meetings, he said that everyone present had suggested changes to the reports, and that Kumar, Singh and Bhalla had suggested a few “significant” amendments. The Supreme Court observed that these amendments had “changed the heart” of the reports. In a later order, it noted that “there was no justifiable reason for the two Joint Secretaries to peruse the draft status reports and recommend changes,” nor

18.3

april 2015

18.1 Commentary, Section Opener 18.2 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 2 18.3 Commentary, Continuing Spread/ Story 3

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

19.1

19.4

debarshi dasgupta

How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences

TALK OF THE TOWN

people

19.2

opposite page: Women from rural Karnataka attend an HIV-awareness fair organised by the state government

19.1 Cover Story, Continuing Page 19.2 Cover Story, Continuing Page 19.3 Cover Story, Section Opener

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

the caravan

april 2015

20.1

20.2 41

FICTION & POETRY

FICTION

Flood of Fire

One of the greatest achievements in the world of the Indian novel—one of startling mimetic depth and variety, as well as linguistic invention and narrative power—reaches its climax with the publication of Flood of Fire, the final book in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy. In this excerpt, taken from the novel’s opening pages, we see Shireen, the wife of the Parsi opium trader Bahram Modi and a minor protagonist of the series’ preceding volume, finally being sucked into the tides of power, trade and migration that roil the trilogy’s characters.

or Shireen Modi, in Bombay, the day started like any other: later, this would seem to her the strangest thing of all—that the news had arrived without presaging or portent. All her life she had placed great store by omens and auguries— to the point where her husband, Bahram, had often scoffed and called her “superstitious”—but try as she might she could remember no sign that might have been interpreted as a warning of what that morning was to bring. Later that day Shireen’s two daughters, Shernaz and Behroze, were to bring their children over for dinner as they did once every week. These weekly dinners were Shireen’s principal diversion when her husband was away in China. Other than that there was little to enliven her days except for an occasional visit to the Fire Temple at the end of the street. Shireen’s apartment was on the top floor of the Mistrie family mansion which was on Apollo Street, one of Bombay’s busiest thoroughfares. The house had long been presided over by her father, Seth Rustomjee Mistrie, the eminent shipbuilder. After his death the family firm had been taken over by her brothers, who lived on the floors below, with their wives and children. Shireen was the only daughter of the family to remain in the house after her marriage; her sisters had all moved to their husbands’ homes, as was the custom. The Mistrie mansion was a lively, bustling house with the voices of khidmatgars, bais, khansamas, ayahs and chowkidars ringing through the stairwells all day long. The quietest part of the building was the apartment that Seth Rustomjee had put 46

aside for Shireen at the time of her betrothal to Bahram: he had insisted that the couple take up residence under his own roof after their wedding— Bahram was a penniless youth at the time and had no family connections in Bombay. Ever solicitous of his daughter, the Seth had wanted to make sure that she never suffered a day’s discomfort after her marriage—and in this he had certainly succeeded, but at the cost of ensuring also that she and her husband became, in a way, dependants of the Mistrie family. Bahram had often talked of moving out, but Shireen had always resisted, dreading the thought of managing a house on her own during her husband’s long absences in China; and besides, while her parents were still alive, she had never wanted to be anywhere other than the house she had grown up in. It was only when it was too late, after her daughters had married and her parents had died, that she had begun to feel a little like an interloper. It wasn’t that anyone was unkind to her; to the contrary they were almost excessively solicitous, as they might be with a guest. But it was clear to everyone—the servants most of all—that she was not a mistress of the Mistrie mansion in the same way that her brothers’ wives were; when decisions had to be made about shared spaces, like the gardens or the roof, she was never consulted; her claims on the carriages were accorded a low priority or even overlooked; and when the khidmatgars quarrelled hers always seemed to get the worst of it. There were times when Shireen felt herself to be drowning in the peculiar kind of loneliness that the caravan

amitav ghosh Amitav Ghosh was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria and is the author of The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines, In An Antique Land, Dancing in Cambodia, The Calcutta Chromosome, The Glass Palace, The Hungry Tide, and the first two volumes of The Ibis Trilogy; Sea of Poppies, and River of Smoke.

comes of living in a house where the servants far outnumber their employers. This was not the least of the reasons why she looked forward so eagerly to her weekly dinners with her daughters and grandchildren: she would spend days fussing over the food, going to great lengths to dig out old recipes, and making sure that the khansama tried them out in advance. Today after several visits to the kitchen Shireen decided to add an extra item to the menu: dar ni pori—lentils, almonds and pistachios baked in pastry. Around mid-morning she dispatched a khidmatgar to the market to do some additional shopping. He was gone a long time and when he returned there was an odd look on his face. What’s the matter? she asked and he responded evasively, mumbling something about having seen her husband’s purser, Vico, talking to her brothers, downstairs. Shireen was taken aback. Vico was indispensable to Bahram: he had travelled to China with him, the year before, and had been with him ever since. If Vico was in Bombay then where was her husband? And why would Vico stop to talk to her brothers before coming to see her? Even if Vico had been sent ahead to Bombay on urgent business, Bahram would certainly have given him letters and presents to bring to her.

The rooms are much as they were when we left, except that a thin film of dust has collected on the floors and the furniture. It gave me an eerie feeling to hear my footsteps echoing through empty corridors.

She frowned at the khidmatgar in puzzlement: he had been in her service for many years and knew Vico well. He wasn’t likely to misrecognise him, she knew, but still, just to be sure she said: You are certain it was Vico? The man nodded, in a way that sent a tremor of apprehension through her. Brusquely she told him to go back downstairs. Tell Vico to come up at once. I want to see him right now. Glancing at her clothes she realised that she wasn’t ready to receive visitors yet: she called for a maid and went quickly to her bedroom. On opening her almirah her eyes went directly to the sari she had worn on the day of Bahram’s departure for China. With trembling hands she took it off the shelf and held it against her thin, angular frame. The sheen of the rich gara silk filled the room with a green glow, lighting up her long, pointed face, her large eyes and her greying temples. She seated herself on the bed and recalled the day in September, the year before, when Bahram had left for Canton. She had been much troubled that morning by inauspicious signs—she had broken her red marriage bangle as she was dressing and Bahram’s turban was found to have fallen to the floor during the night. These portents had worried her so much that she had begged him not to leave that day. But he had said that it was imperative for him 47

april 2015

20.1 Fiction & Poetry, Section Opener 20.3 Books, Section Opener

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

#thebigdebate

In a magazine, several people work with a shared vision everyday to make their publication a reality each month. Even with the design, the ‘team’ could not be left out. Putting a product that lacked conviction out on the newsstands was not an option.

REACHING A CONSENSUS 21

The phase of exploring and testing dummies lasted for roughly six weeks and it was probably the most crucial exercise in terms of decision making. Our pace of working during this time was also fairly quick and adaptive. This period saw frequent meetings with the editorial team and the management. Everybody was on their toes, trying to push out the design. The editors who had just woken up from a state of slumber by the fear of an approaching deadline were rather demanding and stubborn now. Fortunately, by this point in the project, I had gained a good grip over the requirement of the brief which helped me deliver on time. Each new design approach, strikingly different from the previous one, was a result of a clear vision and meticulous execution. Even though this project and its outcomes had been fairly tangible from the very beginning, holding side-stapled dummies and seeing months of hard work and thought finally taking shape was still rewarding beyond expectation. Before this, I had never imagined the possibility

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

From Head to Toe

of visualizing an outcome in so many different ways, so close to the deadline. I didn’t know it was possible (or necessary), now I do. The launch of a redesign of a national magazine is a big deal and has a lot at stake. Therefore, no stone could be left unturned. We needed to explore every single concept and test every single vision and keep generating more till every one was convinced. In a magazine, several people work with a shared vision everyday to make their publication a reality each month. Even with the design, the team could not be left out. Putting a product that lacked conviction out on the newsstands was not an option. Strictly speaking in technical terms, there are very specific points of focus while reviewing a cover-to-cover dummy. Although most of these points are common-interest, some pertain very specifically to either the editorial side or the art side. For the art department, a cover-to-cover dummy is a quick way of testing the design that has been visualized on the screen. What

21 Before and After Taken during one of the review meetings at The Caravan office, the image shows the older design being compared to layout explorations of the same section on the screen and in print.

22 Fighting for the Vision Due to the disparity in opinion, most of the final review meetings were very heated with both sides trying to defend their preference.

seems to be working effortlessly on screen may not look as appealing when printed in actual format. Well resolved typography is the backbone of any publication and hence attention mainly lies in scrutinizing the type size, readability and legibility. The second thing to look at is the relative proportions of the various elements on a spread. Contrast between elements is vital for the purpose of establishing an unambiguous hierarchy and it can be best judged by looking at an actual size dummy in full colour. This is also a good time to look into the finer details of the grid such as the gutter space, leading, margins etc. For the editorial team, the dummies are the only good way of visualizing and understanding the vision of the designer. Coming from a nondesign background, they often struggle with being able to comprehend the layouts showed to them on a screen and hence depend largely on these dummies to be able to imagine the fate of the project. Even though the editors

also review all the fine elements on a page, they do so more from a conceptual stand point rather than a technical one unlike the design team. Their focus remains on testing the look and feel of different sections of the magazine and making sure that the tone of voice is accurate. Flipping through the pages helps them understand the overall flow of the publication. They are always looking to see if the design team was efficient (or kind) enough to incorporate the suggestions made by them. Ultimately what both the teams want is to be able to hold a particular design and flip through it like a reader would and just know that everything has fallen in to place. This is it.

what The Caravan could possibly be. But things did not end here. Relieved at the thought of narrowing down closer to our destination, little did we know that a battle of conflicts awaited us right at the next turn. As it turned out, the two shortlisted directions garnered polarized votes. While the editors seemed to favour one direction, the designers were leaning towards the other. The only way to resolve this conflict was seeing both the design through to a semi-final stage and comparing and analyzing them in the most democratic way. A couple of weeks were spent on design refinement and deliberations before a consensus was reached.

Taking all the points discussed above into consideration, we narrowed down on two main design directions (Design Approach #4 and Design Approach #5) out of the 5 dummies that were presented. These approaches were selected since they seemed to be the closest to

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

08 DECISION TIME

In design production, development of an idea is a result of works created in a series. Each effort solves certain problems, and suggests issues to be dealt with in the next work (or exploration). Working in a series is the most important stage of the design process. The ability to experiment, to value and learn from mistakes, and build on the experience achieved is the hallmark of thoughtful design. This chapter explores the penultimate leg of the journey. Given the conflict of opinion over the two shortlisted design directions, a lot of work went into refining both the approaches before the decision could be finalized. The arguments between the two sides in favor of each design must be interpreted at a level beyond the face value. I have tried to present the factual sequence of events as closely as possible for the ease of understanding the motivations that guided the final selection.

This chapter is a consolidation of all the explorations and iterations shared and discussed so far. It will focus on the final design decisions that were made. I have tried to break down the process of refining the design elements into comprehensible steps. From the typography, page fixtures, Iconography, colour palette to the flat plan, this chapter captures the journey of all the building blocks of the final design of The Caravan. In addition to the sequential process of design development, in this chapter I have also shared reflective insights into the process of decision making.

Once the decision was made, a lot of work had to be put into refining the design elements. The quality of writing in The Caravan has set a high standard which had to be matched by the quality of design. The time spent on cleaning up and refining the design was intense and mechanical. It gave me an opportunity to sharpen my eye as a visual designer and also better my software skills. It also gave me a chance to try my hand at smaller design outcomes that didn’t directly fall in the category of ‘publication design’.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

#andthewinneris

FINAL DESIGN SELECTION Fig. 3

The choice was clear. After around 10 days of hardcore design refinement and many heated deliberations, the editorial side accepted the arguments of the design team.

Editor’s Pick The editorial team as well as the management favored the design approach #4. The conventional placement of elements and traditionally aligned typography appealed to them. This approach seemed to lie well within the comfort zone of the editorial staff. Most of them proudly claiming to be oldschool, felt that going for a safer, less dramatic visual jump would be a good thing to do. One particular feature that appealed to the supporters of this design is the well anchored header on top. They also loved the idea of displaying all the slugs on top to communicate ‘what’s on the menu’. Lastly, the editor’s felt more satisfied with this direction because of the introduction of multiple graphical elements which seemed to be their idea of a ‘designed’ page.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

Fig. 3 & 4 Pros and Cons Figures 10 & 11 show the arguments in support of and against the two shortlisted designs What works What does not work

Fig. 4

Designer’s Pick

And the Winner is...

The designers on the other hand were strongly convinced that going down a safe road was not the answer. They felt that unless we chose something drastically different from the older design of The Caravan, the exercise of redesign would be futile and might have to be repeated again in a couple of years.

While design approach #4 came to be called ‘old school’, design approach #5 earned the title of ‘the cool design’ owing to the fact that the younger population of the magazine supported it. So it ultimately became a question of which of the two adjectives would we rather have the readers associate with the new Caravan.

The art director of the magazine saw immense merit in the fact that this approach was not overtly embellished and only used design functionally while still leaving centre-stage for the content of the magazine.

The choice was clear. After around 10 days of hardcore design refinement and many heated deliberations, the editorial side accepted the arguments of the design team in support of approach #5.

The freshness of design approach #5 and the fact that it was not reminiscent of any contemporary Indian magazine, got the vote of the design team hands-down. The digital team favored this design because they foresaw the potential ease of building a visual consistency between the print and the web version of the magazine owing to the notable use of icons.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Final Design Development (Section Opener)

The selection of the final design direction was followed by a couple of weeks of rigorous visual refinement. Even though everyone had agreed on the selected design to be the new face of The Caravan, various functional and aesthetic concerns came to the surface in the review meetings that could not be ignored.

The final points of consideration are as follows: (As listed at that time)

During the final round of debate around the two shortlisted approaches, I realized that there were some elements in the other design that would make the selected one stronger if incorporated wisely.

2. The size of the icon needs to be reduced while still maintaining the prominence of the icons as a distinct identifier of the visual language. We could look at a 80% reduction.

At the end of the final meeting, my mentor and I sat and made an exhaustive list of elements and parts of the layout that needed attention. With these points listed down, my next job was to refine the selected design in the concerned areas before presenting the final design dummy to the editors.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

1. For the sake of the editors, we need to align the elements in a more orderly and less quirky fashion. To work some sort of a structured template for the layout would be ideal.

THE LEDE

4. The written version of the slug need to be factored into the page. 5. The use of a narrower column to allow an additional entry-point was interesting and must be added to this approach

Careful Wording Teaching the Madia in their own tongue /Debarshi Dasgupta / Education

Careful Wording Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

debarshi dasgupta

3. The sense of header that the other design had worked well and may be worthwhile to try a few options in that direction with this one.

THE LEDE

the caravan

one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar april 2015 the caravan

language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes arge part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier 31

VERSION ONE

VERSION TWO

The initial layout approved at the meeting.

With this layout we tried to incorporate a distinct header with graphical elements to aide in navigation. We also added the slug in text and a drop-cap at the beginning of the piece.

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official,

the caravan

THE LEDE

Careful Wording

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue /Education debarshi dasgupta

debarshi dasgupta As he struggled to read the first lesson in his Marathi textbook, Swapnil Keye Wadde tugged repeatedly at a frayed handle of the thick nylon carrying bag he uses for school. Rucksacks are an extravagance for children here in Midadapalli, a small village deep within a swathe of east Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district with a strong Naxal presence. When I visited, on a midDecember morning, Wadde, seated in a multigrade classroom at the village’s government middle school, pored laboriously over the words, failing to recognise even individual letters. He was not exceptional in this. Another student, Sapna Wachami, sat silent when I asked her to read out the word “metre,” written in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373

Long-Term Investment Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

As he struggled to read the first lesson in his Marathi textbook, Swapnil Keye Wadde tugged repeatedly at a frayed handle of the thick nylon carrying bag he uses for school. Rucksacks are an extravagance for children here in Midadapalli, a small village deep within a swathe of east Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district with a strong Naxal presence. When I visited, on a midDecember morning, Wadde, seated in a multi-grade classroom at the village’s government middle school, pored laboriously over the words, failing to recognise even individual letters. He was not exceptional in this. Another student, Sapna Wachami, sat silent when I asked her to read out the word “metre,” written in Marathi on a flashcard. A large chart of the Devanagiri alphabet on one wall had clearly not helped the children’s reading skills much. Wadde and Wachami are members of the Madia Gond tribe—a small community within the larger Gond tribal family, which is spread across central India and numbers about 16 lakh people in Maharashtra alone. The Madia inhabit a border region of east Maharashtra that has much more in common with the adjacent Abujhmad area of Chhattisgarh, which also has a large population of Gond and other tribals, than with Nagpur, Maharashtra’s second capital, over 300 kilometres away. The community speaks Madia Gondi, a Dravidian language, and very few of them

Rajasthan’s camel numbers halved in the decade following 1997

understand Maharasthra’s official, Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.”

THE LEDE

The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes government schools unfriendly places for Madia children. These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s education system. Despite official recommendations in the 2005 National Curriculum Framework that textbooks incorporate more of local cultures and languages, India’s tribal children, but for rare exceptions, continue to be taught either in Hindi or one of the country’s 21 other official languages. In Chhattisgarh, where children in government schools are mostly taught in Hindi, only 35 percent of children in grades 3,

the caravan

72 / EDUCATION

blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes government schools unfriendly places for Madia children. These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s education system. Despite official recommendations in the 2005 National Curriculum Framework that textbooks incorporate more of local cultures and languages, India’s tribal children, but for rare exceptions, continue to be taught either in Hindi or one of the country’s 21 other official languages. In Chhattisgarh, where children in government schools are mostly taught in Hindi, only 35 percent of children in grades 3,

the caravan

DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

Careful Wording

Indo-Aryan Marathi; yet the state remains adamant in teaching Madia children in this unfamiliar language. This has been catastrophic for these children’s learning, both immediately and in the long term. Bhamragarh block, which takes in Midadapalli and where many Madia are based, had an official dropout rate of 18.4 percent in the 2011–2012 educational year, the third highest of all the 373 blocks in Maharashtra. P S Biswas, the school principal at Midadapalli, said this was, in large part, down to poor attendance. “Parents simply do not send their children to school,” he said. “They would rather have them as farm hands.” The language barrier plays a role in low attendance too, he said, since it makes government schools unfriendly places for Madia children. These children’s fate is emblematic of the problems facing linguistic minorities throughout India’s education system. Despite official recommendations in the 2005 National Curriculum Framework that textbooks incorporate more of local cultures and languages, India’s tribal children, but for rare exceptions, continue to be taught either in Hindi or one of the country’s 21 other official languages. In Chhattisgarh, where children in government schools are mostly taught in Hindi, only 35 percent of children in grades 3, 4 and 5 in the tribal-dominated Bastar district can read first-grade texts—this according to the 2014 Annual Status of Education Report by the NGO Pratham. The same report showed that only about half of children in the same grades in Gadchiroli district can do the same. On the same day I visited the school at Midadapalli, I arrived in the village of Hemalkasa, which lies about 30 kilometres away over densely forested tracks navigable only on foot or on two wheels. At the single pre-primary class at Lok Biradari Prakalp, or LBP, an

THE LEDE

DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

education

DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

The Lede

nikita saxena One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered at a house in south Kathmandu to play cards. The host was Shiva Rana, a descendent of two former prime ministers of Nepal—Chandra and Mohan Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, then aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi University. Gujaral had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, without success, to start “thinking skills” courses at several schools, in addition to trying his hand at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a break. As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s interest in the game floundered. But he found himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being used to keep score. Studying the figures on its front, he became convinced it was an old financial document, possibly some company’s annual 8

^ Rakesh Gujaral spent several years researching the fates of old Indian companies. Gujaral whittled his list down to about 500 shareholders, whom he traced to everywhere from England to South Africa, Canada and even Nepal.

the caravan

VERSION THREE

VERSION FOUR

VERSION FIVE

FINAL

Here, we tried to bring in the use of a thick rule to visually define the header. Also the story head was separated from the section head by placing the image in between the two. All the elements on page have been anchored to left.

Realizing that the headers with additional graphic elements were taking away from the simplicity of the design, we decided to revert back to the earlier treatment. In this design we added the slug in text within the story head unit next to the icon.

Taking the idea of adding entry points, we introduced a third narrower column to the layout which could provide place for nuggets of information like the pull-quote or photocaption. In this layout we experimented by writing the slug with the page number at the bottom. My mentor, however, was not in favour of this since he felt the slug at the bottom could go unnoticed.

Talking the best of all the previous version, we reached the final stage. Retaining the narrow column, the image was shifted to the left to align with the rest of the elements. The slug appeared in text with the story strap. The credit line was placed right at the beginning of the piece, set in bold. The size of the icon was reduced and on the request of the editor we decided to open the magazine with a warm color and hence the green was replaced with yellow.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Final Design Development (Cover Page)

With the finalization of the design language for the interiors of the magazine, it was time to revert our attention to the cover page. The main task at this point was to develop a design that was in synergy with the visual language of the rest of the magazine. Taking the selected cover page design (discussed on page 127 of volume 1), we decided to test the flexibility and adaptability of the approach. The adjoining images show some of the significant explorations in this direction. Given the potential versatility and promising visual impact, option 3 was finally selected. The following few spreads show the various different cover stories that were treated in the selected style. Till the very end, we worked with both, the shortlisted nameplate proposal as well as the original nameplate. Eventually, however, the editors unanimously decided to stick to the original nameplate.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

OPTION ONE

OPTION TWO

OPTION THREE

The selected cover design. All the teams at the magazine saw promising potential in the attention worthy appeal of this stark visual language. The idea of placing story lines at the top also had an obvious functional advantage.

Using a full bleed, this design attempted at a more refined information design and presentation. All the text on the cover was treated as a singular compact unit. The placement of this unit was such that it was bound to interfere with most portrait photos and hence this design was not selected.

A close variant of option one, this version establishes the flexibility of the shortlisted design by proving that this format would also work very well with bleed images. Additionally, the typographic treatment of the cover story line was further refined to give it a bolder and edgier look.

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THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER july 2015

july 2015/ INR 75.00

A Journal of Politics and Culture

THE STUBBORN KASHMIRI

A Profile of the Separatist Hawk, Sayed Ali Geelani

A J O U R NA L O F P O L I T I C S A N D C U LT U R E

Dynamism This version of the design shows how dynamism can be achieved by facilitating interaction between the header text and image. Moreover, the background colour can used to serve as a direct signifier of the subject/theme of the cover story.

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER july 2015

july 2015/ INR 75.00

A Journal of Politics and Culture

AAM AADMI EXTRODINAIRE

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND CULTURE

Arvind Kejriwal and the Lokpal War

Drama The design also allows for the cover image to be treated in specific ways that would help enhance the message to the consumer. Cropping of images in this fashion is unique to the Indian magazine cover aesthetic and can be captivating on a news stand.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

Arvind Kejriwal and the Lokpal War

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

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THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER july 2015

july 2015/ INR 75.00

A Journal of Politics and Culture

NREGA

4 YEARS, 7.1 MILLION PEOPLE WHERE WILL INDIA’S MOST AMBITIOUS PLAN TAKING US?

NREGA

4 YEARS, 7.1 MILLION PEOPLE WHERE WILL INDIA’S MOST AMBITIOUS PLAN TAKING US?

Flexible On rare occasions, the magazine may carry cover stories that may demand a landscape photograph as the cover image. This version hints at the possible adaptation of the selected design in such a situation.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Final Design Development (Contents Page)

The last phase of the design development involved exploring possible structures and treatments for the contents page of the magazine. Being a stand-alone section of the magazine, this was one page that was left untouched until the very end.

CONTENTS

Caravan THE

JULY 2015 VOLUME IV ISSUE 05

THE LEDE

The following thumbnail images discuss the concept overviews of the shortlisted directions. Image 23 on the opposite page shows the final design of the cover page which was proposed in the design dummy.

Careful Wording

Meat of the Matte

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

debarshi dasgupta

CAREFUL WORDING DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

EDUCATION

MEAT OF THE MATTER JANAKI LENIN

SLAUGHTER BAN

Warring Myths

City Watch

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

MEAT OF THE MATTER RAHUL M

CULTURE

debarshi dasgupta

CITY WATCH KANISHK THARUR

GLOBAL AFFAIRS

THE LEDE

www.caravanmagazine.com/thelede

IN THIS ISSUE

THE LEDE

COMMENTARY

The Quarry

Critical Judgement

What the trial of Manmohan Singh must address

How muddled prose can affect the rulings of our highest

debarshi dasgupta

THE QUARRY DEBARSHI DASGUPTA

POLITICS

CRITICAL JUDGEMENT JANAKI LENIN

LAW & ORDER

LAST RIGHTS RAHUL M

EUTHANASIA

Last Rights How muddled prose can affect the rulings of our highest debarshi dasgupta

www.caravanmagazine.com/commentary

april 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

april 2015

CONCEPT 1

CONCEPT 2

CONCEPT 3

This concept was highly reminiscent of a typical web interface. The layout accommodated for horizontal and chronological stacking of each section. The bottom band of each of these would carry the icon representation of all the slugs featured in that issue followed by a url of the magazine to establish an obvious connectivity between the two platforms. The biggest downside of this approach was that it did not provide adequate image space.

With this concept we proposed an extremely minimal and compact approach for the contents page. The story descriptors were eliminated and each section only carried story heads followed by other names. The side bar on the right was meant to serve as a quick listing of all the themes covered in the issue, graphically indicating ‘what’s on the menu’.

In this final concept, we proposed a modern grid-based tiling treatment for the contents page. Not only would this design be easy to adapt on the web, the image-heavy approach also had a very novel appeal as far as mainstream print publishing goes. We further developed this concept to make room for more textual content.

23 55

VOLUME VI/ISSUE 07

MARCH 2015

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

reportage

Talk Of The Town How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people “Jaitley... puts his feet up, settling down for his ritual informal chat with journalists after the daily press briefing. That’s when the gregarious college boy in Jaitley comes to the fore. His sharp political insights are then peppered with pithy one-liners, jokes which have him convulsing with laughter more than his assembled audience. He occasionally mimics other politicians.”

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S volume vi/issue 07

MARCH 2015

volume vi/issue 07

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, publisher & printer: Paresh Nath

MARCH 2015

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, publisher & printer: Paresh Nath

PRAVEEN DONTHI

perspectives

COV E R STO RY

TALK OF THE TOWN How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people

PRAVEEN DONTHI

education

City Watch

TALK OF THE TOWN How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people. Cover Story by Praveen Donthi

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue

THE LEDE

54 ·REPORTAGE

Up in Smoke

Teaching the Madia in their own education tongue 54

Fleeting Youth

MEAT OF THE MATTER

WARRING MYTHS

Teaching the Madia in their own tongue.

By Debarshi Gupta

08 ·EDUCATION

10 ·SLAUGHTER BAN

12 ·GAMING

april 2015

Teaching the Madia in their own education tongue

The child jockeys of Sumbawa PRAVEEN DONTHI

23 Off the Rails

menaka rao

54 april 2015

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambition

nikita saxena

How Ujjwal Nikam became Maharashtra’s most popular lawyer

law & order

City Watch

Up in Smoke

CAREFUL WORDING

50 The Avenger 54

City Watch Teaching the Madia in their own education tongue

The child jockeys of Sumbawa PRAVEEN DONTHI

20 Farm and Factory economy

City Watch

Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove PRAVEEN DONTHI

education

City Watch

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book

saurav datta 79

64 Up in Smoke

CONCEPT 3.1

CONCEPT 3.2

A minimal take on the approved grid approach. The story lines are compact and understated. The main focus in this design is maintained on the images. The size of the images has been utilized to indicate section hierarchy.

Recognizing the need for accommodating a higher number of stories on a single page given the space crunch in the magazine, modular tiling was introduced to the shortlisted approach. This allowed for better information hierarchy and section segregation while allowing an ample amount of space for both images and text.

Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove even today

vaishnavi chandrashekhar

25 Sceptred Sway A war in Yemen exposes the chinks in

world affairs Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi

omar waraich

april 2015

The Final Design The final design is a refined version of concept 3.2. Certain editorial decisions also contributed to the final version of this design. The sections of the magazine were rearranged in the contents page to create a conscious sense of hierarchy based on importance and significance of content.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

#whatsinstore

Intelligent reading experience, Robust, Eclectic, Statement, Nonsensational, Engaging, Articulate and Bold.

CONCEPT HIGHLIGHTS With the redesign, the new Caravan, aims to realign itself and adapt to the evolving design preferences of today’s day and age. The new visual language with its clean and distinguished appearance breaks the monotony of the older version and allows for greater flexibility for incorporating photographs. One of the most striking features is the introduction of color in the design which was previously primarily black and white. The biggest challenge for this redesign has been to remain serious while still retaining reader attention. The main driving force behind this effort was the intention to increase reader-base by developing a relevant and contemporary visual language that speaks to younger readers.

Primary Readers: The intellectually inclined and culturally oriented. The Caravan is a conversation setter for the pop intelligentsia of India. With the new design it wants to reach out more to the younger audiences.

The Brief: To redesign The Caravan magazine, in order to broaden its readership by engaging the casual as well as the loyal reader through a visual makeover which places The Caravan in the mainstream magazine domain while still staying true to its fundamental core of longform narrative journalism.

1. People see before they read

Keywords: Intelligent reading experience, Robust, Eclectic, Statement, Non-sensational, Engaging, Articulate and Bold.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

The design process that began with brainstorming and understanding the context and identity of the magazine as well as of its potential readers, was followed by creating and reworking design elements where the content guided the form. The following principles became fundamental in guiding our design decisions for the redesign:

2. Print isn’t dead, it is changing 3. Building a seamless visual narrative At every step, we made a conscious effort to exploit the tool of visual design to move closer to the bigger goal of a refined identity (which is more ‘now’).

Principle 1: People see before they read Most readers judge the content of a publication by assessing its design. Therefore, the first challenge for a magazine lies in calling its reader from the news rack which can only be accomplished by an interesting cover. Since the invention of modern magazine design, the rules for a ‘successful’ magazine cover have been simple; be big, be loud, be busy and scream for attention. But in a sea of tabloids, these covers no longer garner the desired attention. Amidst all the visual clutter and noisy graphics today, it is the clear, bold and intriguing message that catches the eye. This is exactly where we positioned the New Cover Design.

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Nameplate We stuck to the original ‘The Caravan’ nameplate for its brand-recall-value, only cleaning it up visually in places to make it more cohesive, compact and grounded.

Story Lines When stacked one-behindthe-other on a rack, the top two-thirds of the cover-page is essentially all that is visible to a potential consumer. Keeping this in mind, the story headers were pushed to the top of the page from their earlier rockbottom placement in the older design to ensure better visibility.

Old Cover Design

THE STUBBORN KASHMIRI A Profile of the Separatist Hawk, Sayed Ali Geelani

Tagline The tagline moves from its ‘sidelined’ position in the older design, to a centered location at the bottom of the cover-page, corresponding to the nameplate on top, establishing a better relative hierarchy between the two.

Imagery Retaining the essence of ‘portrait/profile’ oriented pieces as the cover-story, we tried to redefine the quality of the cover-imagery by making way for more dramatic and dynamic photographs set against contrasting, solid backgrounds. These flat coloured backgrounds, sure to catch the attention on a newsrack by the virtue of ‘starkness’, will also serve as visual identifiers for each individual issue, since every issue would feature a different background colour. A J O U R NA L O F P O L I T I C S AND CULTURE

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

C O N T E N T S

'%6%:%2 8,)

VOLUME 6 ISSUE 11

November 2014

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, publisher & printer: Paresh Nath

The Lede 8

Divine Tongues Madrasa students ﬁnd a niche in the job market GAGANDEEP KAUR

10 Wall Posts The child reporters of Odisha VIVEKANANDA NEMANA and ANKITA RAO

R E P O R TA G E

32 A Shah Overthrown After two decades battling rivals and regulators, the bull run of billionaire Jignesh Shah comes to a catastrophic end

12 Flow of Time An architect rediscovers ancient secrets of water management DEEPA PADMANABAN 14 Band Aid A Mumbai ensemble performs exclusively for disadvantaged groups MALAY DESAI

Letters From 18 The Netherlands | CASPER THOMAS Familiar Foe The country is spearheading a head-on clash between Europe and Russia 20 Turkey | CALEB LAUER Editor-in-Chief The Erdo÷an government’s intimidation and control of the media is growing

DINESH NARAYANAN

VOLUME VI/ISSUE 07

Reporting and Essays

MARCH 2015

EXCERPT

50 Blood in the Water The contested history of one of Bangladesh’s worst wartime massacres SALIL TRIPATHI

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

PHOTO ESSAY

58 A Pinprick of Light Stories of Poland’s Roma THE ROMANI CLICK PROJECT

Perspectives 22 Justice Relayed The long road to Jayalalithaa’s conviction for corruption SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU 24 In Transition New legal support for transgender people may challenge India’s afﬁrmative-action framework MARIO DA PENHA 27 Demography Now India’s misguided family-planning policies RUHI KANDHARI

Principle 2: Print isn’t dead, it is changing

NOVEMBER 2014 | THE CARAVAN | 03

Old Contents Page

The Caravan recognizes the change in reading habits and has revamped its online presence to become more relevant for a modern reader. We know that the readers today are used to getting their daily fix online in faster, crisper and more absorbable nuggets. But we also know that our readers still cherish and crave for the tactile comfort of our print issues. So we took cues from what grabs the attention in the online world and translated that experience through strategically treated graphical elements into our print issue.

reportage

Tiling We moved to a more newage visual treatment for the contents-page, inspired by the ‘tiling’ trend in UI design. The modular grid allows for flexibility of scaling different stories and sections based on the intended hierarchy.

PRAVEEN DONTHI

perspectives

64 Eclectic Menu The Indian consumer is most satisfied on receiving ‘more for less’ and hence the content section of the magazine has been treated in a way that gives the sense of a ‘full-plate’.

20 Farm and Factory economy

50 The Avenger

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambition

nikita saxena

How Ujjwal Nikam became Maharashtra’s most popular lawyer

23 Off the Rails

menaka rao law & order

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book

saurav datta

64 Up in Smoke Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove even today

vaishnavi chandrashekhar

25 Sceptred Sway A war in Yemen exposes the chinks in

world affairs Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi

omar waraich

april 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

59 PERSPECTIVES

Perspectives JUSTICE RELAYED The long road to Jayalalithaa’s conviction for corruption SUGATA SRINIVASARAJU

PERSPECTIVES Snappier Slugs We played-up the fact that The Caravan offers a rather large variety of topics to its readers in each issue. Slugs play a crucial role here. They needed to be bolder, snappier and cooler. So we introduced an additional visual layer to the page by using icons as slugs. This also has an added advantage of facilitating the visual continuation from the print to the web domain, where the same icon could become a touchpoint for each story/piece.

Farm and Factory The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambitions /Economy HARTOSH SINGH BAL Arguing in support of the Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha in March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphasised the need to reduce the number of people in the country who subsist on agriculture. “The share of GDP of agriculture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of the population shares that 15 percent,” he said. “So you have to bring people out of agriculture and create jobs in manufacturing.” This was as succinct a summary as any of the government’s intentions with regard to agriculture and industry. While the aim itself cannot be faulted, the concrete measures taken towards it so far suggest that Jaitley’s is a facile formulation, and one that conceals far more than it reveals. Jaitley’s assertion begins with an indisputable fact, central to the challenge of India’s growth: if wealth is to be distributed more equitably, it will be vital to reduce the number of people who depend on farming. A great part of the wealth being generated in this country is not reaching a large section of the population; and farmers suffer most severely from this inequity, which is only increasing with time. In the 1994 financial year, agriculture generated 28 percent of the country’s GDP, and 62 percent of total employment; by 2010, these figures had fallen to 15 percent and 53 percent respectively. Thus, the decrease in agriculture’s share of total GDP was far greater than the decrease in the number of people the sector supports. 20

But Jaitley’s conclusion, that jobs in manufacturing offer a way out, does not follow from this. It is based on the premise that, in general, if more jobs become available in sectors such as manufacturing, people move out of agriculture in greater numbers, allowing those who remain in it levels of affluence comparable to those of their counterparts in urban India. A look at the evidence available suggests reality is more complicated. Consider the figures (in millions of people) for employment from 1999 to 2009:

Between 2004 and 2009, India witnessed a fall in the absolute number of people employed in agriculture. This was also the period of India’s highest rate of economic growth in modern history. Belying Jaitley’s reasoning, however, the number of manufacturing jobs actually declined during these years; industrial growth was fuelled largely by increases in productivity, not labour participation. From the data, it’s clear there is only one sector that could have absorbed those who left farming: construction.

Typography We kept a minimalist typographic palette, using only two typeface families throughout the magazine. The body text is set in Mercury ( serif) with Thesis (sans) as the secondary typeface to allow for a good contrast. Based on the importance of content, the type-size varies from small to very large sizes in places, to act as a visual anchor for readers flipping between pages.

n 1 October 2014, the Vellore municipal council passed a resolution against John Michael Cunha, the judge who presided over the Special Court in Bangalore which sent Jayalalithaa Jayaram to jail in late September. In the resolution, the council claimed to be confounded by a mere mortal’s daring to arrogate himself powers to punish a goddess. Getting Jayalalithaa—the de facto supreme leader of Tamil Nadu’s ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam—to cooperate with the court may certainly have seemed to her prosecutors like setting human will against superhuman. Charges in the case, which alleged misuse of her ofﬁce to acquire assets worth R66.65 crore, were framed in 1997. The trial, which culminated dramatically last month in a conviction, a rejected bail plea and a suspended sentence, lasted 18 years, over ten of those in the Bangalore Special Court. Cunha’s judgement, which runs to over a thousand pages, made it clear that the delay was caused mostly by impediments that Jayalalithaa created at every stage of the trial. The trial ought to have stood as an exemplar of how to bring the powerful to justice. Jayalalithaa is the only sitting chief minister in India’s history against whom a conviction for corruption has been delivered; even the former chief minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, found guilty in September 2013 for his role in one of the major cases related to the fodder scam, had been out of power for several years at the time of his conviction. In reality, achieving a result took an extraordinary combination of individual and institutional perseverance, helped along by a dogged political opposition. “It is borne out from the records that, after the trial resumed before this court, the accused moved applications after applications before this court at every stage of the proceedings,” Cunha wrote. By purportedly exercising her right to a free and fair trial, “virtually every order passed by this court was carried in appeal or revision to the High Court of Karnataka and then to the Supreme Court of India resulting in considerable delay.” Jayalalithaa inordinately stretched the provisions of appeal that a court of law allows any accused. She registered hundreds of objections to the proceedings; as many as two

Old Section Opener

112

94 44

56 18

total: 397*

1999-2000

total: 458*

2004-2005

243

agriculture

Infographics Wherever content permits, the new design proposes an extensive use of inforgraphics and illustrations to provide easy to to understand nuggets of information to the readers.

services manufacturing

112

construction

49 52

total: 460* 2009-2010

* the columns don’t add up to the totals because only figures for select sectors have been shown.

the caravan

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

The trial ought to have stood as an exemplar of how to bring the powerful to justice. In reality, achieving a result took an extraordinary combination of individual and institutional perseverance.

22 | THE CARAVAN | NOVEMBER 2014

259

238

hundred of these were filed on her behalf between 2005 and 2013 alone, according to BV Acharya, the Special Public Prosecutor leading the prosecution during that period. All of these applications went all the way to the Supreme Court only to be dismissed, or granted partial relief in a few instances. Jayalalithaa was notably dissatisfied by complications arising from a language barrier: many of the documents produced before the Special Court were originally in Tamil, and required translations into English after the case was moved from Chennai to Bengaluru in 2003: by repeatedly complaining of inaccurate translations, Jayalalithaa was able to delay her case considerably. “The translation work was completed by 2005 and the copies of the English translation of the deposition and the exhibits were furnished” to Jayalalithaa in March that year, Cunha wrote. In July 2010, the SPP, Acharya, sought to recall 45 witnesses for cross-examination. But “A-1”— Jayalalithaa—“filed an application in I.A-No. 396,” Cunha wrote, “seeking to scrap the English translations of the depositions of all the witnesses and to hold a de novo translation by summoning all the witnesses before the court.” It had taken the court over a year to get the documents translated by a team of twenty assistant professors and lecturers. (The Supreme Court turned down the request, having found no reasonable grounds to order a fresh translation.) Getting Jayalalithaa to appear before the Special Court in Bangalore was itself a humungous task. When summoned, she often meandered to the Supreme Court instead, in order to express an inability to attend hearings. Once, she cited work exigencies; at another time, she claimed her security detail was inadequate. In December 2011, Jaya-

Graduation Project 2015

Principle 3: Building a seamless visual narrative The USP of The Caravan is its narrative journalism and through our design we wanted to do justice to the quality of its writing. Keeping in mind that long-form reading requires spending a lot of time with the publication, visual modulation was introduced to guide the journey of the readers. This visual variation in design complements the change in tone of writing from one section to another.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

The Caravan is strategically divided into three distinct sections, namely, FoB, The Well and BoB. The pieces are sequenced by format and nature; the shorter, quirkier stories up front, then the long reportage pieces followed by the photo essay, in the middle and finally, the lighter, more laid back content at the back. We used a classic â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Warm-to-Coldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; colour scheme to complement this transition, moving between yellow, orange, red, blue and green from the front of the magazine to the back.

24 Grey-scale Image shows the section opener spreads from the older design. The entire magazine was devoid of color which made the visual language look overtly serious and monotonous.

25 Warm to Cool The figure below illustrates the concept of visual translate with the aide of color which is a characteristic feature of the new design.

THE LEDE

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambitions /Economy

One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered at a house in south Kathmandu to play cards. The host was Shiva Rana, a descendent of two former prime ministers of Nepal—Chandra and Mohan Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, then aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi University. Gujaral had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, without success, to start “thinking skills” courses at several schools, in addition to trying his hand at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a long break. As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s interest in the game floundered. But he found himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being used to keep score. Studying the figures on its front, he became convinced it was an old financial document, possibly some company’s annual

the caravan

THE LEDE (FoB)

HARTOSH SINGH BAL Arguing in support of the Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha in March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphasised the need to reduce the number of people in the country who subsist on agriculture. “The share of GDP of agriculture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of the population shares that 15 percent,” he said. “So you have to bring people out of agriculture and create jobs in manufacturing.” This was as succinct a summary as any of the government’s intentions with regard to agriculture and industry. While the aim itself cannot be faulted, the concrete measures taken towards it so far suggest that Jaitley’s is a facile formulation, and one that conceals far more than it reveals. Jaitley’s assertion begins with an indisputable fact, central to the challenge of India’s growth: if wealth is to be distributed more equitably, it will be vital to reduce the number of people who depend on farming. A great part of the wealth being generated in this country is not reaching a large section of the population; and farmers suffer most severely from this inequity, which is only increasing with time. In the 1994 financial year, agriculture generated 28 percent of the country’s GDP, and 62 percent of total employment; by 2010, these figures had fallen to 15 percent and 53 percent respectively. Thus, the decrease in agriculture’s share of total GDP was far greater than the decrease in the number of people the sector supports. 20

The Road Not Taken

112 56 18

total: 397*

1999-2000

Toward a History of Kavya Literature: Innovations and Turning Points

^ Jaitley’s friendships cut across political lines and professions. The self-styled marketing guru Suhel Seth photographed him at a party with Congress politician Shashi Tharoor and journalists Karan Thapar and Tavleen Singh.

259

total: 458*

2004-2005

243

agriculture services manufacturing

112

construction

49 52

total: 460* 2009-2010

Food

A review of the modern day translations of Kalidasa’s work; by vijay nambisan

238

SHOWCASE

BOOKS

COURTESY SUHEL SETH

Farm and Factory

Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business

COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

Long-Term Investment

NIKITA SAXENA

PERSPECTIVES

reportage · talk of the town

* the columns don’t add up to the totals because only figures for select sectors have been shown.

the caravan

PERSPECTIVES (FoB)

During Jaitley’s initial years as a minister—first of information and broadcasting, and then of law and justice—these opinions contributed to the increasing alienation of Vajpayee, the prime minister, as younger BJP leaders scrabbled for proximity to Advani, who was tipped to take over the top post. In June 2002, in the aftermath of the failed India–Pakistan talks at Agra the previous year, Time magazine ran a cover story on Vajpayee titled ‘Asleep at the Wheel?’ After a colourful description of the prime minister’s dietary habits and ill health, it stated that he “is given to interminable silences, indecipherable ramblings and, not infrequently, falling asleep in meetings ... an unusual candidate to control a nuclear arsenal.” The former BJP general secretary called the story as “a noticeable debriefing” by Jaitley. “That trait was noticed in him very clearly for the first time” after the Time article, he said, “and Vajpayee was very angry.” Several others also cited Jaitley’s “lack of control” as the reason for Vajpayee’s opposition to his advancement. The BJP MP I spoke to, however, said that Vajpayee was particularly upset by Jaitley’s references to his adopted family. A senior journalist told me about a conversation that took place at a BJP national executive meeting in Bhopal, while “sitting in the Jehan Numa Palace hotel and having coffee after dinner,” with two other journalists. “Jaitley walked up to us ... and immediately started

David Shulman and Gary Tubb Oxford University Press 805 pages, R1295

bad-mouthing Vajpayee and Ranjan Bhattacharya,” the prime minister’s son-in-law. “Jaitley said, ‘He has a son-in-law who is a failed businessman. A failed businessman is dangerous because they love power.’” Vajpayee’s family got wind of this conversation: Bhattacharya later ribbed the journalist about the “long chat session in Jehan Numa.” The senior Delhi BJP leader and the BJP MP said Advani’s trust in Jaitley extended beyond professional issues, and that he sought Jaitley’s help to resolve a personal matter as well. Mohan Guruswamy, a special adviser to the finance minister in Vajpayee’s government, has known Jaitley since the late 1980s; the two shared a closeness to Advani and met regularly at the India International Centre. He described Jaitley as a “durbar politician,” who, “after making an argument, looks at everybody for approval with a big smile. That is his characteristic habit.” Even Advani, he said, was not immune from Jaitley’s tongue. “Four, five of us would have lunch at Advani’s house,” Guruswamy said. “We would step out and Jaitley would immediately start abusing him. It was the same with Vajpayee and everybody else. You can’t have a conversation with him for more than five minutes before he starts abusing somebody.” Political journalists thrived on the BJP’s internal mud-slinging. Dissecting the “internecine war,” in the BJP in Outlook in 2002, the reporter Saba Naqvi wrote that “the old rivalries and manoeu-

n the first page of Mani Rao’s Kalidasa translation is a verse that takes the words out of my mouth:

When the poets of old were numbered in conclave The first finger was by all adjudged Kalidasa’s. From that day on, for want of a poet to match him, The second finger has gone unnamed. This is the tribute of a later poet, a clever and touching conceit to explain why the ring finger is called anamika—anonymous—in one system of numbering. In the general critical and public opinion, over a millennium and a half, Kalidasa has held a position in the Sanskrit, and Indian, canon hardly matched even by Shakespeare in the English. His felicity of composition and imagery; his skill with words; the ease with which he evokes a rasa or flavour, whether while portraying nature or humanity; indeed his expertise in exploiting the socalled pathetic fallacy, where natural phenomena reflect human emotions: all these individual gifts may have been matched or surpassed in individual cases, but in the making of a whole play or poem his mastery is still held to be ineluctable. 86

the caravan

WARM TO COOL

Malavikagnimitram

Translated by Hank Heifetz Penguin Classics 216 pages, R399

REPORTAGE (Well)

Kumarasambhavam

Translated by Srinivas Reddy Penguin Classics 165 pages, R399

Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader Translated by Mani Rao Aleph Book Company 247 pages, R399

However, critics and readers such as I, educated in the modern—European, humanist—tradition, find much to cavil about in Kalidasa. To my mind, Bharata Muni, who lived perhaps a couple of centuries before Kalidasa, is the culprit here. Once his Natya Shastra, which laid down the strictest guidelines for the performing arts, received almost scriptural status, the purpose of art and literature became religious enlightenment. As Srinivas Reddy points out in the introduction to his translation of Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitram, “the cascade of emotions built up by the poetic action of a drama should ultimately propel the observer to an impersonal state of supreme peace.” That is, the purpose of the eight rasas is to lead to a ninth, shanta—which, indeed, was a later addition to the list. Further, the internalisation of Bharata Muni’s dicta—meant to serve as a board of censors in the mind—made characters into what we would call stereotypes. There were no shades of grey. Kalidasa went even further: he cut out the black by dropping villains altogether. There’s an excuse for everyone—unless he’s a rakshasa, which is itself the caravan

BOOKS (BoB)

Queen of Molecular Gastronomy vijay nambisan Vijay Nambisan is an award winning poet, writer, critic and journalist of India writing in English. He won the First Prize in the first ever All India Poetry Competition in 1990 organized by The Poetry Society (India) in collaboration with the British Council.

Sitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, ut unt optatet usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, si inverum initiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipiet es assitamendae omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum quunt evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume delicidus et destibus re, te coriat quaspit et apiet fuga. Ut aut aut rem is alit experio voloreh endusa quia qui aut fuga. Igent occumque nihicil laboriandi aliquam ius dolore, et exerferio d Maio. Loriam incipitio qui aut et inulpar ciassit ut invenis nem. Ucia sed quodit eaqui quia deligni aecaece periost, omnimporum fugit, autatur ehenihi ctorecepeles nosti assitio.

above: Ritu Dalmia, head chef at Riga Food opposite page: Molecular gastronomy dishes that Riga specializes in

100

the caravan

SHOWCASE (BoB)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

#changeofplans

While the print version stays committed to the core of in-depth reporting, the website and app will focus on pieces discussing the trending topics.

REVISION OF STRUCTURE Towards the end of the project, while we were working towards finalizing several design decisions, the editorial team was parallelly working on refining the content structure further. In the wake of the upcoming launch of an improved website and a mobile application for the magazine, the editors felt the need of reallocation of content. The first result of the restructuring exercise was introduction of an ‘only-for-web’ section called the Vantage. This section primarily features stories that are shorter in length and more current in their subject matter. The reviews on books, art and cinema which had previously been a popular section of the magazine were also shifted to the Vantage section and removed from the print version. The decision to launch an exclusive section such as the Vantage was rooted in the fact that The Caravan is a monthly magazine. Given the unprecedented influx of technology in

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

today’s day and age, there are many readily accessible sources of information available to people. Thanks to 24-hour news channels, news websites, blogs and applications, news today is traveling faster than ever before. Moreover, the latest addition of ‘trending’ items on the homepage of popular social media sites like the Facebook may pose a serious threat to establishments that solely thrive on the business of dispensing information. Deliberating on this scenario, the editors decided to define the role of the print and online versions of the magazine. While the print version stays committed to the core of in-depth reporting, the website and app will focus on pieces discussing the trending topics. This restructuring resulted in an obvious alteration to the flatplan of the magazine. The facing page shows the new and revised flatplan. The most striking change in section division is the elimination of the entire Reviews

section from the BoB which has been replaced by a separate section called ‘Books’, a section solely focusing on literary essays. Additionally, owing to the visual revamp The Caravan has been able to add a permanent section dedicated to ‘sponsored features’ which will act as a break between the well and the back of the book. This new flatplan structure will be followed in the implementation of the new look and will be carried forward hence forth.

Cover Page

The Lede (Letters)

Commentary

Photo Essay

Sponsored Feature

Reportage 1 (Cover Story)

Reportage 2

Photo Essay

Reportage 1 (Cover Story)

The Lede (Letters)

The Lede

Commentary

The Lede

Reportage 1 (Cover Story)

The Lede

Commentary

Reportage 1 (Cover Story)

The Lede (Letters)

Reportage 1 (Cover Story)

Contributors

Contents

108

Graduation Project 2015

COLOR PALETTE

We recognized the need to device a color palette which would allow for a seamless flow from either end of the magazine. Additionally, the color used in each section needed to communicate the right emotion to the reader even when viewed in isolation.

EXPLORATION #1

EXPLORATION #2

EXPLORATION #3

EXPLORATION #4

EXPLORATION #5 *

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

The success that color can bring to a brand may be the result of its effectiveness on memory. Specifically in case of print publishing the use of color on page not only enhances the reading experience but also provides necessary visual breaks (or accents) in an otherwise black and white sea of text. Like discussed in one of the previous sections, for the sake of boosting a sense of visual continuity and modulation from one section of the magazine to another, we decided to follow a warm-to-cool color palette in the magazine. Unlike a book, a magazine is an assortment of different pieces, of varying content and length, which may or may not be related to each other. More often than not, this means that there is no standardized sequence of reading. While some people may flip in a linear fashion from the first

section to the last, many would start from the back of the magazine and work their way to the front. A committed reader who is familiar with the content may pick up the magazine to read his favorite section only. Acknowledging this pattern we recognized the need to device a color palette which would allow for a seamless flow from either end of the magazine. Additionally, the color used in each section needed to communicate the right emotion to the reader even when viewed in isolation. Therefore, once we had conceptually decided on having a warm-to-cool palette, we spent a lot of time on picking the perfect shade for each section. The figure on the left shows few of the explorations that we did for the same. Exploration #5 was finally selected as it

provided us the desired nodes as well as an even flow. Once the color palette was selected it was time to optimize the palette for offset printing. It is common knowledge that in 4-color offset printing, the colors are created by an overlap of a series of half-tone dots of each ink. Unless the registration is impeccable, some color may â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;peepâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; out of form. In case of type, this may lead to fuzziness around letters which is highly undesirable. Aware of the lack of precision in the printing process followed for the magazine, I decided to reduce the error margin due to miss registration. This was done by making any two values in the CMYK scale 0%, reducing each swatch to a 2-process color swatch. This is illustrated in image 27 . Figure 5 shows the subtle shift in hues after the reduction process.

26 Color Selection During the initial phase of explorations, I found the color guide tool of Illustrator particularly helpful. It provides several harmony rules to choose from for creating color groups using a selected base color. Once we decided on having red as the midpoint of the palette, the colors preceding and following it were selected with assistance from the tool. 27 Reduction While specifying the final CMYK values of the hues, each color was reduced to a 2-color hue.

Fig. 5 Everything but Red Figure illustrates the derivation of the final color palette from the shortlisted one. While all the other colors were reduced to their 2-color values, we could not do the same with red. Reducing red in such a manner did not give us the desired results in terms of richness and intensity. Being the color for the most intense section of the magazine, we needed a red that communicated the right emotion and hence we decided to make a technical exception in its specifications.

Fig. 5

SHORTLISTED PALETTE

C- 3%, M- 42%, Y- 100%, K- 0

C- 4%, M- 80%, Y- 80%, K- 0

C- 4%, M- 100%, Y- 100%, K- 0

C- 43%, M- 1%, Y- 100%, K- 0

C- 67%, M- 10%, Y- 10%, K- 0

C- 0%, M- 80%, Y- 80%, K- 0

C- 10%, M- 100%, Y- 92%, K- 0%

C- 46%, M- 0%, Y- 100%, K- 0

C- 73%, M- 46%, Y- 0 K- 0

FINAL PALETTE

C- 0%, M- 42%, Y- 100%, K- 0

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

ICONOGRAPHY

Fig. 6

The visual language for the icons was intentionally kept minimal and neutral. Given the global relevance of the content of the magazine, the icons also needed to have a universal appeal to them.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Icons are the most significant addition to the new visual language of The Caravan. Introduced as a graphical representation of the slug, these icons are meant to serve both function and aesthetic on the page. Given the unprecedented appeal of the icons in the Indian magazine market, they would hopefully become instrumental in defining a unique visual identity for the magazine. Heavily inspired by the uncluttered and minimalistic wave of visuals across media today, these icons provide an important bridge between the print and digital versions of the magazine. The development of a website and mobile application for the magazine followed the redesign of the print publication. In these platforms the icons from the print design language would be used as visual touch-points and a means to categories stories on the bases on slugs. The use of a constant graphical elements across platforms would help establish a consistent brand visual language.

Decision Time

As for the design and construction, special attention was paid in order to ensure proportionality in form. The icons have been designed on an underlying grid system that with an intention to achieve a much more harmonious relationship between individual elements. The construction of this has been illustrated in figure 8. The visual language for the icons was intentionally kept minimal and neutral. Given the global relevance of the content of the magazine, the icons also needed to have a universal appeal to them. We decided against using icons with â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;fill-colorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; because we wanted the background colors to be the primary identity of the sections. As a result, a clean, linear design language was developed. Figure 6 shows the complete set of the final icons. It is important to note that the icons used in the well section of the magazine are used in reverse without any background color.

BUSINESS

TECHNOLOGY

PROFILE

WORLD AFFAIRS

ECONOMY

LAW & ORDER

REPORTAGE

PHOTO ESSAY

BOOKS

ART

MUSIC

CINEMA

DESIGN

THEATRE

FOOD

67 Fig. 7

Fig. 8

FINAL GRID

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

Fig. 6 The Final Set The first batch of 15 icons that were created for the final design dummy. This set was to be used as a reference for style and proportions for all the subsequent icons in the upcoming issues. Fig. 7 Underlying Grid An underlying grid using con-centric circles and their tangents was used to guide the construction of all the icons. We decided to base all the icons on one common grid in order ensure consistency in proportions.

Fig. 8 Construction The editorial and design teams joined hands to brainstorm on what would be the appropriate iconographic depiction for each slug. This was done with the help of keywords. Once the themes were decided, the icons were constructed on the base grid. Although, at a time of construction each icon was made at the same size, the usage of icons in the magazine employs variation in size. The specifications on actual diameters of the encasing circles in different sections are mentioned in the the style sheets, discussed in the following section.

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

GRID & STYLE SHEETS

Respecting the length of pieces in each section, the usage of grid has been kept rather flexible.

Taking the idea of aiding the flow of reading by building a seamless visual narrative ahead, we decided to structure the design on a simplified modular grid. With an underlying 12-column grid, we developed a design which uses fluid layouts that respond to the immediate nature and requirement of the content. Additionally, respecting the length of pieces in each section, the usage of grid has been kept rather flexible. Where the stories in the front are packed with multiple nuggets of information on a single page, the middle sections exploit more white space and larger image formats. The back of the book has its distinct identity owing to an extensive use of adaptable layout structures.

2 COLUMN LAYOUT

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

3 COLUMN LAYOUT

3 COLUMN LAYOUT (WITH VARYING COLUMN WIDTH)

Rhythm in Grids 16.4 mm

16.4 mm 5.1 mm

5.115 mm 20.5 mm

14.3 mm

2 COLUMN LAYOUT

85.2 mm

3 COLUMN LAYOUT

55.3 mm

Grids are based on mathematical proportions. They’re rhythms in space. The fundamental objective while setting up a typographic grid is to find the sweet-spot of type size to leading ratio. Establishing a modular scale is the best way to determine typographic sizes, in fact, it can help with laying out measurements and proportions across your whole page layout. The term Modular Scale refers to a series of harmonious values. Being a scale, each value is a factor of the others. By adhering to this scale the elements take on an inherent beauty; proportions which have worked for typographic designers for centuries. In the grid shown here, taking the type size of 9pt as a base unit and multiplying it by a factor of 1.28 (derived from the page format of 210:270 :: 7:9) gave me the optimal leading size of 11.6 pt. The rest of the measurements too were derived by progressively multiplying or dividing the base unit of 9 by a factor of 1.28.

55.3 mm

3 COLUMN LAYOUT ( with varying column width) 25.1 mm

70.3 mm

14.3 mm

20.5 mm

16.4 mm

Margins Inside- 20.5 mm Outside- 14.3 mm Top- 16.4 mm Bottom- 16.4 mm

16.4 mm

Number of Columns- 12

Gutter- 5.1 mm

We decided to the 12 column grid like the previous design as being a multiple of 3 and 4, it’s fairly flexible. It is possible to derive 2 (by spanning 6), 3 (by spanning 4) or 4 (by spanning 3) content columns. It also allows for 5 columns by skipping one and then spanning two, 5 times.

The gutter width was reduced considerably since the older 9mm gutters looked very stark. As the gutter space was reduced, it left us with more space to accomodate wider margins

While maintaining the outside margin, we decided to increase the inside margins by approximates 5 mm on either side of the spine. This additional space would help push the text away preventing curving of text into the spine as well as making the centre of the page looking more airy than before.

Baseline- 11.6 pt In order to optimize a comfortable reading experience and eye-movement, we reduced the text size to 9pt and increase the leading to 11.6 pt

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Cover Page

IMAGERY

TYPEFACES USED

Image on the cover would change in every issue according to the main reportage piece (cover story). The 3 scenarios which would influence the selection of cover-image differently are mentioned as follows;

The Sans- Story lines and dateline Didot- Nameplate and tagline

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

july 2015/ INR 75.00

1. Profile-based story: The cover image can only be a portrait of the protagonist. The grandeur of the image must be kept in mind to make a lasting impression. In special cases, the designer may choose to crop the frame such that it highlights a specific feature of the personality which maybe instrumental in communicating the essence of the story. 2. A story presenting an event scenario and/ or has multiple protagonists: The cover image may be a single photograph or a metaphorical/ stylistic illustration or photo-manipulated artwork that communicates the crux of the story. It may also be a photo of an object if it happens to be central to the story-plot. 3. Culture Issue: The cover image can be a photograph/illustration on the theme of ‘audience’ or ‘spectatorship’.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

TYPE SIZE Dateline- 10 pt Storylines- 12 pt on 14.4 pt leading Cover Story Header- Size may vary based on requirement of image ALIGNMENT

Note: The designer can use his/her discretion to set the nameplate in a colour that complements the background colour of cover and stands out. The name of the magazine on the spine is meant to be set in the same colour.

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

JULY 2015/ INR 75.00

july 2015/ INR 75.00

THE STUBBORN KASHMIRI A Profile of the Separatist Hawk, Sayed Ali Geelani

THE CULTURE ISSUE

NREGA

4 YEARS, 7.1 MILLION PEOPLE WHERE WILL INDIA’S MOST AMBITIOUS PLAN TAKING US? A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND CU LTU RE

A J O U R NA L O F P O L I T I C S A N D C U LT U R E

Scenario #1

Dateline- Right aligned Storylines- Centre aligned Tagline- Centre aligned

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

Scenario #2

Scenario #3

the caravan

RURAL WELFARE GETS SHORT SHRIFT

THE TRIALS OF UJJWAL NIKAM

PAKISTAN CRICKET’S GLORIES AND TRAGEDIES

MAY 2015/ INR 75.00

arun jaitley | ujjwal nikam may 2015

TALK OF THE TOWN ARUN JAITLEY

caravanmagazine.in

A JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND CULTURE

april 2015

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Contents Page

The contents page of the magazine, similar to the cover page is a stand alone section and is mainly used to communicate the variety and nature of content in every issue to the reader. The occurrence of section content on either pages of the contents section is fixed based on the importance of the sections. This is illustrated through the adjoining thumbnails. Within the assigned area however, the designer may choose to tile the images and text differently in different issues while still keeping the typographic style for each unit constant.

Page Numbers

TYPOGRAPHY

Cover Story- The Sans SemiBold, 10 pt, Centre aligned, set in colour of the section Photo Essay- The Sans SemiBold, 10 pt, Centre aligned, set in colour of the section Other Sections- The Sans SemiBold, 8.5 pt, Centre aligned, set in colour of the section

Story Head Cover Story- Mercury Bold, 20 pt, Centre aligned Other Sections- Mercury Bold, 12 pt on 12 pt leading, Left aligned

VOLUME VI/ISSUE 07

Cover Story- The Sans Bold, 14 pt, set in colour of the section Other Sections- The Sans Bold, 11.5 pt, set in colour of the section On Photos-The Sans Bold, 12 pt

MARCH 2015

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

Note: The page numbers on photos must always appear at the bottom left corner. Slug

april 2015

Contents Page #1

107

108

the caravan

Contents Page #2

Story Strap Cover Story- Mercury Roman, 10 pt on 12pt leading, Centre aligned Other Sections- Mercury Roman, 8 pt on 9 pt leading, Left aligned Note: The cover story unit also carries a short description of the story set in Mercury Italics, 8pt on 9 pt leading, left aligned

Well Perspectives The Lede Books Bookshelf & Showcase

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

73 the lede

VOLUME VI/ISSUE 07

08 Long-Term Investment

MARCH 2015

business

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambition

nikita saxena

12 Web Masters The Indian stewards of Wikipedia

technology

14 The Way to Love

reportage

Image

profile

Talk Of The Town How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people

Page Number

PRAVEEN DONTHI

perspectives

photo essay

An ageing bachelor helps build a road

sanjay pandey

76 To Ashes Behind the scenes of India’s tobacco industry

16 City Watch

Cover Story Unit

law & order

photographys by ROCCO RORANDELLI

New York grapples with a crisis of trust in its police force

kanishk tharoor

books

18 Independent Will

“Jaitley... puts his feet up, settling down for his ritual informal chat with journalists after the daily press briefing. That’s when the gregarious college boy in Jaitley comes to the fore. His sharp political insights are then peppered with pithy one-liners, jokes which have him convulsing with laughter more than his assembled audience. He occasionally mimics other politicians.”

maddy crowell

The SNP is set to become a pivotal

world affairs power in a country it wants to break

ross adkin

86 The Road Not Taken Revisiting Kalidasa in the modern day and age

samanth subramaniam

28 100 bookshelf

showcase

100

editor’s pick

The chequered history of Pakistan cricket

104

menaka rao

the caravan

20 Farm and Factory economy

Page Number

92 White on Green

50 The Avenger

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambition

Story Unit

nikita saxena

How Ujjwal Nikam became Maharashtra’s most popular lawyer

23 Off the Rails

menaka rao law & order

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book

saurav datta

Icon 64 Up in Smoke Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove even today

vaishnavi chandrashekhar

25 Sceptred Sway A war in Yemen exposes the chinks in

world affairs Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi

omar waraich

april 2015

Slug

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Page Fixtures

1. Section Openers: On the opening spread of each section, the running head must not appear on the page bearing the section header and must only appear on the facing page.

TYPOGRAPHY Running head- The Sans Semibold, 10 pt, Left aligned (on verso), Right aligned (on recto)

PERSPECTIVES Farm and Factory The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambitions /Economy

Note: Section name set in section colour, story name set in black (for section colours please refer to page 64) Page numbers- The Sans Semibold, 9 pt, Left aligned (on verso), Right aligned (on recto) Folio- Mercury Roman SC, 9 pt, Centre aligned

HARTOSH SINGH BAL Arguing in support of the Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha in March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphasised the need to reduce the number of people in the country who subsist on agriculture. “The share of GDP of agriculture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of the population shares that 15 percent,” he said. “So you have to bring people out of agriculture and create jobs in manufacturing.” This was as succinct a summary as any of the government’s intentions with regard to agriculture and industry. While the aim itself cannot be faulted, the concrete measures taken towards it so far suggest that Jaitley’s is a facile formulation, and one that conceals far more than it reveals. Jaitley’s assertion begins with an indisputable fact, central to the challenge of India’s growth: if wealth is to be distributed more equitably, it will be vital to reduce the number of people who depend on farming. A great part of the wealth being generated in this country is not reaching a large section of the population; and farmers suffer most severely from this inequity, which is only increasing with time. In the 1994 financial year, agriculture generated 28 percent of the country’s GDP, and 62 percent of total employment; by 2010, these figures had fallen to 15 percent and 53 percent respectively. Thus, the decrease in agriculture’s share of total perspectives · farmthan andthe factory GDP was far greater decrease in the number of people the sector supA great part of the wealth ports.

being generated in this country is not reaching a large section of the population; and farmers suffer most severely from this inequity, which is only increasing with time.

2. Inside Pages: The inside pages of each section must carry both the section name and story name as the running heads. This pair must appear on either page of the spread.

Between the 2014 and 2015 financial years, the budget for agricultural research and extension has remained at R3,691 crore; spending on irrigation has come down from R1,900 crore to R600 crore; and funding for rural development has dropped from R80,043 crore to R71,642 crore. The latest budget document states: “It may however be noted that despite reduction in Central assistance to State Plan in respect of most programmes, overall outlay for the programme will remain unchanged with States pooling resources from their enhanced devolution”—or, that the overall outlay for rural development has not fallen. Of course, owing to inflation, an unchanged overall allotment is, in fact, a budget cut in real terms. This administration seems to believe that simply creating urban jobs will ameliorate rural problems; it fails to see the contradictions in offering workers urban jobs without strengthening rural infrastructure and amenities. Ironically, this neglect comes from a

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total: 397*

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total: 460* 2009-2010 government whose political future may well depend on the rural economy’s ability to absorb a greater number of those seekingthe employment. caravan A 2014 report by the research and analysis company CRISIL argues that, in the short term, the country has to depend on the agricultural economy’s ability to take on more people if unemployment is to be stemmed. In view of the slowdown of the economy post 2010, the report says, “nonagricultural employment … could, at best, grow by 38 million from 2011–12 to 2018–19.” This is insufficient to absorb India’s growing labour force—estimated to rise by 51 million over the same period. Thus, due to the lack of adequate opportunities in industry and services sector, an additional 12 million will be forced to either depend on low productivity agriculture or remain unemployed. If some of these people do not resort to farm employment, India’s unemployment rate will be seen to rise above its current level of 2.2% (2011–12) in the years ahead. The national crisis that lies ahead as a result of emphasising urban over rural development has already played out at state level—in Andhra Pradesh, during the second chief ministerial term of Chandrababu Naidu, between 1999 and 2004. Earlier, Naidu had commissioned the consultancy McK-

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Looking at other demographic trends gives us a more complete picture of these changes. Census data show that India’s number of cultivators—those who have a supervisory role in agricultural work, whether on their own or on leased land—decreased from 127 million in 2001 to 119 million in 2011, even as the average size of landholdings shrank and small holdings grew less profitable. Meanwhile, the number of farm labourers—those who work in the fields for wages—increased from 107 million to 144 million in the same period. Considered alongside the steady migration from villages to cities over the same time, these data suggest that many labourers migrate to cities to take up unskilled construction work— in many cases the only jobs they are equipped for. Jaitley’s statement conceals the simple fact that the vast majority of those trying to move away from agriculture are of no use to the manufacturing sec-

* the columns don’t add up to the totals because only figures for select sectors have been shown. insey to draw up a blueprint for the

state’s development. The document, titled “Vision 2020,” laid out a vision for the future very like that of the Modi government today. It spoke of “e-governance,” of using information technology to provide better services in specially developed cities, decentralisation, and involving the private sector in health care. It envisaged a rapid expansion of infrastructure and services to fuel growth and employment, which, by 2020, was to reduce the share of the state’s population dependant on agriculture from 17 percent to 40 percent. In practice, this approach resulted in a deterioration of rural infrastructure, as is likely to occur under the Modi government. By 2004, Naidu was voted out of power. He has learnt his lesson: in his current stint as chief minister, he speaks of making agriculture profitable through waiving farmers’ loans and appointing new extension workers. Nearly a year into Naidu’s current term, the proportion of Andhra Pradesh’s population dependent on agriculture still hovers at around 70 percent, even as farming’s share of the state’s gross domestic product has fallen from what it was during his previous stint in power. The larger problem here is that electoral corrections in response to flawed policies often arrive too late. By investing in rural infrastructure and amenities in a sustained manner rather than merely occasionally s in order

tor. The fact that most rural migrants to urban India end up becoming construction workers suggests that, despite the drawbacks of village life, the decision to move is in most cases not voluntary, but born out of some degree of coercion. One possible way of changing this, of course, is to improve the skills of those migrating to cities in search of jobs. Concomitantly, since a workforce is of little use if in poor health, we will also have to address the health-care needs of this population. So if, as the government suggests, its “Make in India” policy will lead to a vast increase in manufacturing jobs, shifting people into those jobs from farming would require it to invest in rural education and health. That investment is not happening on the ground. This government has actually slashed its expenditure on health. As far as rural education is concerned, it has inherited a mess

Off The Rails

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem april 2015 with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order

from its predecessor. While there has been a large expansion of educational opportunities since the implementation of the Right to Education Act in 2009, this has come with a very real fall in standards. The Annual Status of Education Reports, prepared by the NGO Pratham, do a commendable job of mapping the status of education across the country. What they reveal about rural government schools over the last few years makes for depressing reading. From 2010 to 2014, the proportion of class 5 students in these schools who could perform simple subtraction fell from 64 percent to 51 percent, while the percentage of class 8 students who could divide a three-digit number by a single digit fell from 67 to 44. Education of this quality is no preparation for even a basic manufacturing job. off the rails Meanwhile, those who· perspectives remain in agriculture are not receiving adequate support from the government. 21

SAURAV DATTA On 28 January this year, Sunil Kumar, accused of raping a woman multiple times over a period of eight years, secured an acquittal from the Special Fast Track Court for rape cases, in Dwarka, Delhi. In his ruling, the additional sessions judge who presides over the court found that the victim’s testimony was replete with “prevarications, embellishments and improbabilities,” which made it unconscionable to convict the accused. It is possible, on the basis of a bare reading of the decision, to discover some support for this conclusion, because the investigation was indeed shoddy; the prosecution was careless enough to not question key witnesses and produce their testimonies. The prosecution alleged that over an extended period of time, Kumar lured the victim on the pretext of providing her with a government job, and subsequently raped her. On some occasions, it was said, he forced her to comply with threats of blackmail and defamation. The judgment duly noted these aspects of the case, but executed a complete volte face, with the judge, Virender Bhat, directly blaming the accuser for not speaking out, although she had been raped on multiple occasions. If she had not said a firm “no” to Kumar’s advances, Bhat said, it meant that she may well have consented to sex. In her testimony, the victim had stated that the first time she was raped, the drawstring of her pyjamas broke in the struggle. She had managed to walk home without them slipping off. So how, Bhat wondered, had her family and neighbours failed to notice what was “a very unusual scene”? In paragraph 28 of the ruling, Bhat states that, after being raped several times, the woman should have known that the accused was “in

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UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

The page number, folio (magazine name and issue date) and section running head together fall under the category of page fixtures. The treatment and placement of these elements must remained fixed throughout the magazine as well as in every subsequent issue. On each spread the verso page must bear the name of the magazine while the recto page must bear the issue date. The use of the running heads will vary between the following two scenarios:

HARSHA VADLAMANI

Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered.

no position to provide her with a job.” In some ways, Bhat’s views expose the deeper problem with the nature of the court he presides over. In December last year, it was widely reported that none of the six fast-track courts set up following a murderous gang-rape in Delhi in December 2012, were performing as per expectations. An Economic Times report on the courts’ sluggishness quoted Justice SN Dhingra as saying that the problem was that courts could not be “fast-tracked” without putting the whole legal system on the fast track. Pendency is a feature of every court in India, but the fast-track courts have come in for particular scrutiny because, by some calculations, they have been less efficient at delivering justice than regular courts. For a mechanism that was meant to recognise and address the urgency of fighting gender injustice, this is an alarming turn of events. The performance of these courts also indicates that the solutions to improving the way in which sexual violence is prosecuted do not lie merely april 2015

in reducing pendency, important as that may be. Bhat’s judgments and remarks, which have come under some scrutiny from the media and observers, show us that misogyny is not absent from the Indian legal system, and that even specialised courts cannot escape it. In January 2012, Alison Saunders, the Chief Crown Prosecutor for London, threw a challenge to the United Kingdom’s criminal justice system in a speech about rape trials. “How do we ensure that myths and stereotypes do not play any part in a jury’s deliberations whether consciously or subconsciously?” she said. Entrenched myths about rape have a direct and significant bearing on acquittals; the issue has been studied in some detail in the United States and the United Kingdom, although no similar scholarship exists in India yet.) For instance, a committee set up by the supreme court of Florida in 1990, which detailed specific cases in which judges’ bias had led to travesties of justice, found that the most common prejudice was an acute distrust of wom23

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vrings between second-rung leaders of the BJP like Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Pramod Mahajan ... operates at a very petty level, like the Jaitley camp using friendly publications to plant stories about Swaraj,” who took over as information minister in 2000, and Swaraj in turn “blacking him out of Doordarshan’s national network.” (According to the BJP-friendly editor who is critical of Jaitley, when he lost the information ministry, “Nusli Wadia helped him get the Shipping Ministry with a promise of cabinet post soon.”) Virendra Kapoor’s gossip column on Rediff. com, Capital Buzz, typically painted Jaitley in a positive light, attacking his rivals and often singling out Swaraj. “Whenever she comes under media attack, which is quite often,” Kapoor wrote in 1999, “thanks to her talents in that direction, she starts blaming one or another BJP leader. She would not counter the report with facts, oh no, not she! Instead, she would rush to senior party leaders complaining ‘look what that man has done to me!’” Kapoor insisted to me that “Jaitley is not a politician for me, and I am not a journalist for him.” When someone recently insinuated that Jaitley had fed him a story about Modi, he said, “I felt bad that poor Jaitley is being faulted for no fault of his.” When the Time article appeared, Jaitley had been the minister of law and justice for two years— he took over the position from Ram Jethmalani, who still holds it against him. The same month,

June 2002, there was a cabinet reshuffle, and Jaitley was removed from his post. In Outlook, Arnab Pratim Dutta, a journalist who knew Vajpayee’s adopted family well, wrote that “According to sources close to him, Vajpayee, till the end of his tenure, will call the shots. Says a PMO official: ‘It is another matter that Vajpayee wants Advani to succeed him. But while in office, he’d like to prove that he’s not as ineffective as Time magazine has painted him to be.” The political editor who has covered the BJP for three decades remembered Jaitley being “very, very low—that was the lowest point in his political career.” Despite Vajpayee’s ire, however, Jaitley was brought back as law minister after six months, in January 2003; the government needed its best legal brain. That April, Shamit Mukherjee, a Delhi High Court judge appointed by Jaitley, was arrested for exchanging favourable verdicts for material favours. A few days later, the Akshaya Mukul in the Times of India noted that the arrest “has led law minister Arun Jaitley to speed up legislation to ensure transparency in appointments and check cases of improper behaviour by judges.” However, as Mukul reported, the paper had documents suggesting that, in 2001, “the Union law ministry has itself been willing to overlook questions raised by the Intelligence Bureau about the integrity of candidates.” According to the article, the law ministry had recommended Adarsh K Goel—a april 2015

Folio (issue date)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

^ Even while working together, Jaitley and BJP leaders like Sushma Swaraj often compete for proximity to the party’s top brass.

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Graduation Project 2015

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Variables

As discussed in chapter 3, volume 1, the magazine is broadly divided into three sections. While the visual treatment of elements varies from one section to another, the elements themselves remain constant throughout. These elements are listed as follows;

Section Head

1. Typographic Elements: section head, story head, story strap, slug, byline, body text, photo captions, pull quotes and photo credits

Icon (as slug)

2. Image: photographs and illustrations

Image

THE LEDE

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COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

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Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business

3. Icons Most sections of the magazine carry more than one story. The first story of every section is treated differently from the subsequent stories. In the following pages of this section, the typographic and design specifications of these elements is explained in detail.

Story Head

Long-Term Investment

NIKITA SAXENA One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered at a house in south Kathmandu to play cards. The host was Shiva Rana, a descendent of two former prime ministers of Nepal—Chandra and Mohan Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, then aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi University. Gujaral had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, without success, to start “thinking skills” courses at several schools, in addition to trying his hand at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a long break. As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s interest in the game floundered. But he found himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being used to keep score. Studying the figures on its front, he became convinced it was an old financial document, possibly some company’s annual 8

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Slug

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The name of section is highlighted on the opening spread of each section. The treatment of these section heads differs from one part of the magazine to another as specified below; Front of Book (FoB)

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Long-Term Investment

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Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business

The Well financial report. He asked Rana if he knew what

was important,” he recalled at our first meeting, at a café in Delhi’s Connaught Place, “but for me, that sheet held an unknown promise.” Gujaral kept at it, and Rana directed him to a trunk full of old documents. He spent the 16.369 mm remainder of the day going through dated cheques, brokers’ notes, bank statements and annual reports, some of which went as far back BOOKS 14.323 mm as the 1940s. The documents pointed to multiple investments made by Shiva’s grandfather, Madan Shumsher Rana, both in his own name and his wife’s name as-well. When Rana and his extended family proved to know nothing about the papers, Gujaral asked to bring the lot back with him to Delhi. Here, he created a directory of all the companies—around 150 or 180 of them, as he recalled—mentioned in the documents. Companies that continued to ^ Rakesh NIKITA SAXENA exist, such as Tata Steel and Bombay Dyeing, he Gujaral spent One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered knew a lot about already. Ones that he knew had several years at a house in south Kathmandu to play cards. The been nationalised, voiding private claims on their researching A review of the modern day translations of Kalidasa’s work; by vijay nambisan host was Shiva Rana, a descendent of two former shares, he struck off. Then he began painstakthe fates of prime ministers of Nepal—Chandra and Mohan ingly tracking the remaining ones. This was not old Indian Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back easy: Gujaral combed through records at the companies. to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within Gujaral whittled National Council for Applied Economic Research, Back of Book scanned statements on year-wise capital gains in his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, his list down then aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi old copies of the Income Tax Ready Reckoner at to about 500 University. Gujaral had just graduated with a the library of the Bombay Stock Exchange, and shareholders, bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, whom he traced more. For companies he didn’t find mentioned in without success, to start “thinking skills” courses any literature, he travelled to their registered adto everywhere at several schools, in addition to trying his hand dresses to see if they still existed. Slowly, tracing from England at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a mergers, buy-outs and liquidations, he discovered to South Africa, Toward a History of Kavya Kumarasambhavam Malavikagnimitram long break. the fate of each one. Kalidasa for the Canada and 21st Century Translated by Translated by Literature: Innovations As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s Six years after he discovered the Reader documents, even Nepal. Translated by Mani Rao Heifetz Srinivas Reddy and Turning interest in thePoints game floundered.Hank But he found Gujaral recovered many lakhs of rupees for Rana Aleph Book Company Penguin Classics Penguin Classics David Shulman and Gary Tubb himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being and his relatives through the sale of still viable 247 pages, R399 216 pages, R399 165 pages, R399 Oxford University Press used to keep score. Studying the figures on its shares in about 15 companies. Just how much he 805 pages, R1295 front, he became convinced it was an old finanmanaged to get, Gujaral wouldn’t say; over the Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design Graduation Project 2015 cial document, possibly some company’s annual course of our three meetings, the numbers he COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

In the well section of the book, which carries the lengthiest stories of the magazine, the section name is underplayed to give prominence to the story titles. The specifications of the same is discussed in the ‘story head’ section.

Front of Bookit was, but was brushed off. “For them, the game

The Road Not Taken

O 8

n the first page of Mani Rao’s Kalidasa translation is a verse that takes the words out of my mouth:

However, critics and readers such as I, educated caravan in the the modern—European, humanist—tradition, find much to cavil about in Kalidasa. To my mind,

Section Head

STORY HEAD UNIT

The Well

The story head unit contains all introductory information about a particular story and comes at the beginning of each article. This unit includes; the story title, story strap, slug, icon and byline. The specifications and arrangement of these elements varies from section to section and is illustrated as follows.

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Long-Term Investment

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Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business

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the lede

The Way to Love ^ Rakesh

NIKITA SAXENA

Gujaral spent An ageing bachelor helps build a road

One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered at a house in south/Profile Kathmandu to play cards. The host was Shiva Rana, a descendent of two former 10.8 mm prime25 ministers of Nepal—Chandra and Mohan mm Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, then aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi University. Gujaral had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, without success, to start “thinking skills” courses at several schools, in addition to trying his hand at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a long break. As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s interest in the game floundered. But he found himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being used to keep score. Studying the figures on its front, he became convinced it was an old financial document, possibly some company’s annual

several years researching the fates of old Indian companies. Gujaral whittled his list down to about 500 shareholders, whom he traced to everywhere from England to South Africa, Canada and even Nepal.

SANJAY PANDAY 8

^ Girha Yadav, the caravan described as the oldest bachelor in Barwan Kalan, hopes the new road improves the prospects of his “younger brethren.”

SANJAY PANDEY

Story Head (Books)- The Sans Extra Bold, 48 pt, Left aligned Story Strap (Books)- Mercury Roman, 10 pt, Left aligned Byline (Books)- Mercury Bold SC, 12 pt

Decision Time

financial report. He asked Rana if he knew what it was, but was brushed off. “For them, the game was important,” he recalled at our first meeting, at a café in Delhi’s Connaught Place, “but for me, that sheet held an unknown promise.” Gujaral kept at it, and Rana directed him to a trunk full of old documents. He spent the remainder of the day going through dated cheques, brokers’ notes, bank statements and annual reports, some of which went as far back as the 1940s. The documents pointed to multiple investments made by Shiva’s grandfather, Madan Shumsher Rana, both in his own name and his wife’s name as-well. When Rana and his extended family proved to know nothing about the papers, Gujaral asked to bring the lot back with him to Delhi. Here, he created a directory of all the companies—around erty made from elsewhere dif150 or 180 attracting of them, aspartners he recalled—mentioned ficult. marrying Devi, Bachchan had twice in the Before documents. Companies that continued to been engaged to girls from the plains, Dyeing, only to be exist, such as Tata Steel and Bombay he rebuffed. For Devi’s family to accept the match, he knew a lot about already. Ones that he knew had had lied that he owned property in claims the plains, and been nationalised, voiding private on their would be soon.he began painstakshares, hemoving struck there off. Then Now, things are localnot ingly tracking the changing. remainingSince ones.2008, This was men, frustrated by years of failed attempts to get easy: Gujaral combed through records at the the government build a roadEconomic to their village, National Counciltofor Applied Research, have beenstatements cutting one thecapital rocky hills scanned onthrough year-wise gains in themselves. five-kilometre links old copies ofThe the new Income Tax Ready stretch Reckoner at Barwan Kalan to an existing track in the nearthe library of the Bombay Stock Exchange, and by plains, runs he another kilometres to in more. For which companies didn’t17find mentioned Bhabua. “Last year, we inaugurated the road foradany literature, he travelled to their registered pedestrian, bicycle and two-wheeler movement,” dresses to see if they still existed. Slowly, tracing Girha Yadav, an aged bachelor, told me. mergers, buy-outs and liquidations, he Yadav discovered doesn’t his age, but several people in the fateremember of each one. theSix village he was over years old. yearsassured after heme discovered the80 documents, As the oldest road-building volunteer, Yadav is Gujaral recovered many lakhs of rupees for Rana something of a talisman thesale cause. “Marriage and his relatives throughfor the of still viable proposals have started tricklingJust in,”how he said. shares in about 15 companies. much he “There were five Gujaral weddings in our village since managed to get, wouldn’t say; over thethe inauguration the road. The results have charged course of our of three meetings, the numbers he up our guys. Now, I am quite hopeful that we will be able to make a proper motorable road.” On a normal day, a crew of about 20 works to improve the present track. I was aboard the first four-wheeler to ever navigate the entire, terrifying track up to Barwan Kalan. “The work is on for the past seven years, but there is still a lot to do,” Madan Guruji, the village headmaster, told me. With the road as it is now, “a slight mix up and you go crashing 1,500 feet down.” Guruji, who toiled for years to upgrade the village’s primary school into the high school he now heads, complained of persistent negligence. “It has been seven decades since India attained freedom,” he said, “but we have not seen a sign of governance here. At times, it feels that Barwan Kalan doesn’t exist on India’s map.” Yadav told me the village was inspired by Dashrath Manjhi, a Bihari man who, after failing to get his ailing wife to a doctor in time to save her life, worked almost single-handedly between 1960 and 1982 to build a road to his village near Gaya. “Manjhi built a passage after he lost his wife,” Yadav quipped, “we are doing the same to get wives.” But where Manjhi won accolades, Barwan Kal-

Front of Book (Section Opener)

Back of Book (BoB)

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25 mm

COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

Front of Book

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Front of Book (Subsequent Story)

Early in 2014, Archana Devi, aged 20, was married to Amitabh Bachchan, aged 32, in her village in Kaimur district, in the south-west corner of Bihar. As the groom’s party took her to her new home, in the village of Barwan Kalan, she was in for a shock. “I was asked to sit in a palanquin,” she told me in Barwan Kalan in February, describing how she was cradled in a sari tied to two bamboo poles and carried up a rough, narrow track. “The three-hour journey from the foothills to my husband’s house felt like traveling through time, from the modern age to the stone age.” Barwan Kalan, with a population approaching a couple of thousand, sits close to another small village, Barwan Khurd, high on a rocky hilltop in the Kaimur hills, inside the Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary. For years, the village’s only connection to the outside world was the same track Devi had been carried along. It took at least three hours of difficult trekking over five kilometres to get out of the hills, and then a further 12 kilometres into Bhabua town—the district headquarters, and a gateway

BOOKS

TALK OF THE TOWN

How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people · Cover Story PRAVEEN DONTHI

opposite page: Jaitley in his early years, built his career as a powerful lawyer. BCCL

31 mm In 2012, two years before Arun Jaitley became the most important minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet, the news that the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s allocation of coal blocks may have cost the government thousands of crores and unfairly benefitted private interests, incapacitated the parliament’s monsoon session. Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarians threatened to resign en masse, and Jaitley, then the BJP’s opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha, aggressively spoke out against what he called “the biggest scam in independent India.” As the stymied parliament session ground to a halt that August, Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, his counterpart in the Lok Sabha, released a fierce joint statement. “We used this session of Parliament to shake the conscience of the people of India,” they wrote. “This is not merely a political battle. It is a battle for safeguarding the economic resources for a larger public good.” In a press conference, Jaitley called the allocation process “arbitrary,” “discretionary,” and “corrupt,” “a textbook case of crony capitalism.” In an opinion piece in The Hindu, titled “Defending the Indefensible,” he wrote “the government was so overenthusiastic in continuing the discretionary process in allotment” that it did not institute the “competitive bidding mechanism” that would have ensured a more just process of allocation. A few years earlier, Jaitley had offered a different type of opinion to Strategic Energy Technology Systems Private Limited, an ambitious joint venture between Tata Sons and a South African firm, in his capacity as a practicing lawyer. When applying for coal blocks in 2008, SETSPL, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the allocation process, sought Jaitley’s advice on whether it could avoid sharing a certain part of its profits with the government. Jaitley provided the company with a 21-page legal opinion, via the law offices of his college friend Raian Karanjawala, recognising that “the Govt. of India is entitled to adopt a procedure for allocation of coal blocks,” and that the company was not legally bound to share the proposed profits with the government. Jaitley’s arguments in support of SETSPL indicated that he had been well aware of the prevailing coal block allocation process despite his hue and cry about “the monumental fraud.” Shortly after the coal scam broke, the legal opinion was made available to the press by one or more UPA ministers. As the BJP fanned the flames of protest against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh—

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14.3 mm

White on Green

The chequered history of Pakistani cricket by samanth subramanian

TO ASHES

12 mm

Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan

Behind the scenes of India’s tobacco industry Photo Essay

Peter Oborne Simon and Schuster 608 pages, R699

Photographs By ROCCO RORANDELLI

Beginning in 1910, the German photographer and anthropologist August Sander took thousands of portraits of his compatriots as part of a series titled Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts—People of the Twentieth Century. Sander strove to create a sort of composite document of the society he lived in, and classified the portraits under seven categories: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People (a variety of outcasts and vagabonds). After decades of work, he was interrupted by the Second World War, after which he largely gave up on photography. Though parts of the series were published, Sander never considered the project complete. Sander’s simple documentary approach, of capturing people at work, in their own environments, serves as inspiration for the Italian photographer Rocco Rorandelli. Rorandelli lost his father, a heavy smoker, to cancer in 2007, and began to wonder if he could emulate the German’s style to take a close look at the tobacco industry. At the end of 2009, Rorandelli travelled to India, which is the world’s second-largest producer, and consumer, of tobacco. Travelling through Karnataka, he chronicled the many arms of the industry: the fields, the facilities where the plant is processed, a research centre working to improve the crop, and much else. At each stage, he focused less

on the processes and more on the people involved, including farmers, truck drivers, tasters, wholesalers, shopkeepers and consumers. Rorandelli found tobacco to be a mean plant, as unkind to its consumers as to many of those who prepare it for them. Tobacco rapidly depletes the soil it grows in, and is often planted alongside other crops, such as sorghum, that help replenish fields and reduce farmers’ economic dependency on the crop. Much of India’s tobacco goes to making bidis—a large but badly regulated industry, where workers are prevented from unionising, and endure brutal hours and unsafe conditions in return for paltry wages. But despite this, farming and processing tobacco offers vital employment to entire communities. “I don’t want to condemn an economic sector,” Rorandelli said. “I want people to be aware about the repercussions of their actions.” The public should know, he said, that smoking “has a series of impacts on the environment and on the lives of millions of people employed in this sector.” With their direct composition and unfussy style, Rorandelli’s photographs reflect this non-judgemental but critical attitude, while capturing the harsh truths hidden behind the flash and glamour of the tobacco industry’s marketing campaigns.

opposite page: A farmer with first-grade tobacco leaves. Tobacco is generally graded based on qualities such as appearance, sweetness and aroma, and consistency in burning.sorghum.

april 2015

Osman Samiuddin Harper Sport 480 pages, R799

Back of Book (Books)

o much that is memorable about Pakistani cricket seems to be embodied in the tapeball. The tape-ball is a humble object, born out of necessity: a tennis ball that is first bandaged tight in electrical tape, and then deployed in pickup cricket games across Pakistan. It is pressed into action amidst stark circumstances: cracked footpaths, maidans of congealed dust, crowded lanes and muddy farms—uninspiring surroundings that reliably produce inspired cricketers. Upon these inconstant surfaces, the tape-ball stays firm, skids, and leaps upon the batsman, filling a fast bowler’s sails with encouragement and sweetening him on the prospect of bowling ever quicker. Razor a slit into the tape on one side of the ball, and it will careen in or out late on its way to the batsman—a phenomenon linked to the physics of reverse swing, and thence to the burning desire to engineer this swing discreetly by picking away the tape with a fingernail. The tape-ball creates drama, and cricket in Pakistan is nothing if not drama. As the tape-ball is to Pakistani cricket, so Pakistani cricket is to Pakistan itself. That latter metaphor is, let us acknowledge it, impossible to escape. Indeed, isn’t that part of the appeal of myth-making in sport? As we once did with armies, we look to sports teams to gauge the moral fibre of their members, and then we think we have a handle on the characters of their cities, or even their countries. What extrapolative folly this appears to

be when laid out in cold, hard print—and yet, how tempting it is to be persuaded that the metaphor is watertight in the case of Pakistan. So much that is memorable about Pakistan seems to be embodied in its cricket. To the outsider, it can look hopeless, barely held together by corrupt or impoverished governing bodies, its structures rickety and its psyche tortured. Giant wills and egos clash with frightening frequency. Individuals of mad talent emerge from nowhere, hum with promise, and then contrive to hobble themselves. Fortunes swing from month to month. Life is uncertain. Mood is everything. And yet, despite all this swirling chaos, the cricketers delight audiences, the team wins matches, the country soldiers on. Over the past year, two new books, both stout, have endeavoured not only to chronicle the history of Pakistani cricket but also to probe the ties that so intimately bind sport to nation. The first is Wounded Tiger, by Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph and the author of Basil D’Oliveira, a life of the steelwilled Cape Coloured all-rounder. The second is The Unquiet Ones, by Osman Samiuddin, an editor of Cricinfo’s The Cricket Monthly and a reporter (as I am) with The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi. Each book is strong and incisive in its own right, and consumed in tandem they compensate for each other’s stray deficiencies, as if they were the Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis of cricket

Well (Cover Story)

The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket

the caravan

Well (Photo Essay)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

samanth subramaniam Samnath Subramaniam is an award winning poet, writer, critic and journalist of India writing in English. He won the First Prize in the first ever All India Poetry Competition in 1990 organized by The Poetry Society (India) in collaboration with the British Council.

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Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

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81 reportage · talk of the town

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reportage talk the town alleging that·he hadof allowed controversial allocations under

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“But it is worth it. I don’t have my own family, and perhaps that makes doing this easier.”

terialised”—versions. “If anyone had converted their shares to Demat,” he said, “it meant that they were aware of their shares. If the shares were in their physical form, it meant that the holding was too small to justify Demat, or that the shareholder was gave me swung between R5 lakh and either deceased or had forgotten about R20 lakh. When I asked Rana about it. My starting point was to ask myself, these sums over the phone, he rewhy were these shares not claimed or sponded with a long silence, and then, put into a Demat account?” “Oh, enough for us to be happy.” He Gujaral whittled his list down to Front of Book told me he and his family used to tease about 500 shareholders, whom he Gujaral “about how he was obsessed traced to everywhere from England with kabaad”—scrap—“but he perto South Africa, Canada to Nepal. The sisted. His obsession got us money we majority of them, he believes, were didn’t even know existed.” residents of India who left due to 22 mm That experience gave birth to the turmoil of Partition. white on green“Their · books idea Fundtracers, Gujaral’s Delhi-based was—once things settled down in the Had Pakistan at the time been which according newly independent India, they would a “initiative,” more settled country, it would to its perhaps not have“to tolerated website aims serve investors and return,” he explained in an email. the iron reign of find Kardar—or of to trace families who it difficult “As a result, they did not inform the President Ayub Khan, the army assetswho in India that were acquired by companies or banks of the change in general ran Pakistan from 1958 to family 1969. elders and ancestors,” by their address. However, once they were tracing “assets like shares & securities back home”—for those who returned at the president, an analysis that might apply just as well Kardar. intoIndian companies, bank accounts, all—“things changed. Many, especially For both Ayub and Kardar, the centre did not lands and and facilithose who were of advanced age, died. hold. Ayub left officebuildings two years beforeetc., the fission of Pakistan in 1971, although he must have known, tating the legal procedures to claim Their families were either not aware throughout his tenure, about the growing anger and resentment in theGujaral, eastern limb ofahis country. the same.” wiry man with a of the investments or considered them No native East Pakistani ever played Test cricket to live to be too much of a hassle.” forrestless Pakistan; the air, closesttold anyoneme camehe was chooses Raqibul Hasan, who was dropped several times from the like a lafanga—a delinquent of sorts— Gujaral concentrates on shareholdfinal XI, and who tells Samiuddin, decades later, “I partly felt there was a little conspiracy and because he isagainst notmecomfortable ers whose inherited shares are worth it did hurt.” Even as the country prepared to boil Back of Book with people knowing how well he is (Books) at least R10 lakh in today’s terms. “The over with political unrest, the BCCP tried to do its bit for unity, picking Raqibul for a domestic game doing. He initially told me he has made documentation process and legal fees against a Commonwealth XI in Dhaka in February 1971. He scored only onerupees in each innings, but he did over a crore recovering old asitself takes up to R1.5 to R2 lakhs,” he tell his teammate Zaheer Abbas to be sure to bring later refused to confirm this; said. “So then, if the shares are worth hissets, passportbut the next time he came to Dhaka. This was an irony, for it has been the cricket “There are some things that should only, say, R3 lakhs, and the person quizzer’s abiding joy to point out that the very first Pakistani city to host a Test in fact,Though Dhaka, in the not be said,” hewas, said. gets only R1.5 lakhs, usme mazaa nahi 1955—one of the many atrophic draws that India Fundtracers to a “we,” aata”—there is no joy in that. Gujaral’s and Pakistan, petrified ofwebsite losing to eachrefers other, played out in those early decades. Despite its size Gujaral told me that his was a one-man own commission, which is 30 percent and importance, though, Dhaka was still dwarfed byshow, Lahore and whichnot carvedbeen up Pakistan’s asKarachi, he had able to find of any amount recovered, would also cricket culture between themselves. In India, cricket is perceived to have truly ^Mushtaq peoplebeautifully with the andspirits commitment be paltry inthesuch Samiuddin parsesskills the different spread out of its metropolises only after recent,cases. Ahmed is typithat animated cricket in those two cities: Lahore’s bat-whirling advent of Mahendra Singh Dhoni, cal of the Pakinecessary to help in his work. Gujaral said he prefers to work with well-organised games on grand grounds, produced who grew up in Ranchi. In Pakistan, however, stani cricketer cricketers of aristocratic suchresearch, as Kardar that process began earlier, in the waning years of is who emerges During his mien, early Gujanon-Indians, and apprehensive and Imran Khan, who seemed born to play the the 1970s. Mushtaq Ahmed, whom Oborne writes out of nowhere raland told me,fragmented he began see theabout fullat length, started about taking on anyand clients ofa Indian game; Karachi’s cricket,to played out bowling his scampering becomes on streets, parks and the occasional, inadequate leg-breaks for hours at a tree in a village in Punjab, star potential of the database he was origin, regardless of their location. ground, producing scrappy fighters such as Hanif many miles from Lahore. Tennis balls were too and the batsman Javed Miandad. Samiud-a method expensive, Mushtaq wrote in his memoir Twen- Indians,” he said, creating. “I had toVividly, develop “Not that I hate DAVID MUNDEN / POPPERFOTO / GETTY IMAGES

14.3 mm

din describes a moment during a 1993 Test in New

ty20 Vision, so often “we would put a cheap plastic

for leaders with mass support bases, life in the public eye his watch as coal minister—the leaked opinion, a potential hot is an exercise in reassuring a particular constituency of one’s tip, became a hot potato. The document was passed around ability to represent it. A leader like Arun Jaitley, whose supbetween journalists, including senior staff at the Times of Inport base is his range of contacts in the media, judiciary and 30.3 mm dia, the Economic Times, Headlines Today, NDTV and CNBC. corporate world, requires a different public image—in his case in each claims case, the to story of Jaitley’s inconsistent outrage the portrayal of the refined, well-spoken Delhi insider who Of the 17 cases thatBut Gujaral was withheld. can navigate his less-polished colleagues through the shifthave resolved, ten involved residents A mid-level journalist at Headlines Today said that the ing currents of India’s national politics as they eddy around of the opposition in the supported of Nepal, and five of India. the office ofAmong P Chidambaram, the union home at the time, the power centre of the capital. ForLok fourSabha, decades, Jaitley “Logically, politically andminister ethically, it would an amendment in the income-tax law could 14.3 mm with gave several the channel the story of the leak as “an exclusive,” and has stayed afloat on these currents, embracing thethat primary Nepalis, he worked Rana have been more fitting if Mr. Jaitley’s force Vodafone to pay much as R20,000 crore that it ran once before being taken off the air. The journalist political imperative of change, andasimpressively adapting to families—descendants of an eponyretroactive taxes,one Jaitley andjournalist Piyush Goyal services available bono) to was told by hiswere senior, who said he had free spoken (pro to Jaitley, that it. Jaitley’s in steady rise in what senior with a mous dynasty of autocratic, opposedtalent it in the though hehereditary believed in “the merits of the story,” Jaitley had daily papervehemently called “the limited poolupper of thehouse. BJP,” Citing and his the depositors of MMCB,” wrote business factparty that Jaitley had appeared fivewhen timesModi on former prime ministers, forthe whom, argued leaked document was “a private opinion.” “I have importancethe to his was affirmed a year ago, behalf Vodafone in thefinance Delhi High Court 2008 journalist Sucheta always believed what the editorDalal. thinks is right,” the journalist awarded him withofthe high-profile portfolio, asin well Gujaral said, “the state’s treasury was and 2009, TelecomLive alleged that “Analjit Singh, said, smiling, “so I said okay.” as the portfolios for corporate affairs and defence. Jaitley had their personal treasury”—before also the present of Vodafone Essar Another journalist who had the document told me that charge of defence untilchairman last November, when he tookLimited up inforhas a good relationship with Mr Jaitley. He reaching out to othersJaitley withwrote relatives a letter to the vice president, who is chairman of mation and(VEL) broadcasting. has beentight-lipped lobbying with Mr Jaitley Rajya Sabha, complaining “that the intelligence agencies In a notoriously regime, Jaitleyfor is, his to astrong great on his list. Beyond thethesubcontinent, back up support...” were trying to tarnish his reputation. The vice president’s extent, entrusted with speaking. He has always loved to hold he has had limited success—in part, 2014, when Jaitley became thethose finance office had confirmed it to me,” the journalist said. “The bucourt, and hisIn door is typically wider ajar than of his he said, because the distances inKaranjawala mewasn’t Chidambaram minister, theThe caseTelegraph was still unresolved, he did reau chief wanted Jaitley’s comment, told but he willing toand Jaitley colleagues in the party. described aand typical enfriends” who had known other in an recuse himself, deputing ministerial authority volved make frequenttalk travel aboutdifficult, the issue at were all. So“decent the story was not carried.” Only each counter interview with Jaitley,his freshly glowing from his were lawyers suc- in managing in the matter. “I stopped practicing as a elections. lawyer one journalist actually spokethe to 1990s, Jaitleywhen aboutboth the opinion, but in asuccess the 2008 Karnataka assembly meaning he cannot work in person as since cession war at the Indian The anti-Jaitley with effect from 2nd June, 2009,” he wrote on his colleagues who knew about the interview, whichExpress. never ran, Jaitley: he would like to. From England, wherecontingent believes the relationship goes (Scenario deeper, Facebook The Well #2) page.“Prior to that, I had been consulted said he was unsatisfied with Jaitley’s answers. The journalist Gujaral has even hired genealogists pointing to Jaitley’s Chidambaram puts his feet in the bydown the company on various taxation didn’t want to share details of the meeting defense to avoidof “creatup,matter settling for his ritual informal chat a 1997 corruption case filed Last issues. I therefore it appropriate notthe to to help search for potential clients, he in ing discomfort” to his colleagues. “And remember heby is Swamy. the with journalists after the dailyconsidered press briefing. That’s when year,“Iafter Kishwar with the a Minister.” finance minister,” he said. don’t want tomade upsetsome him.”of the allegations gregarious deal college boy inmatter Jaitleyas comes to the fore. His sharp has had only two fruitful cases. against and NDTV on the website Likeare many seesone-liners, little conflict A year later, the story of theChidambaram legal opinion finally appeared, political insights thenpoliticians, peppered Jaitley with pithy Once Gujaral informs clients of of Manushi, a trust she runs,without NDTV filed a defainterest hiswith professional his but on the non-mainstream news website Altgaze, jokes whichofhave himbetween convulsing laughteractions—in more than his mation case against her. Gurumurthy impleaded case as legal to some of theother country’s most shares they may be able to claim, the impact it might have had earlier. Several journalists joked assembled audience. Hecounsel occasionally mimics politicians. in the case, and Jethmalani powerful private companies and individuals—and with me about Jaitley himself having rustled up the “Jaitley Press has representthey must furbish several documents: Kishwar in court. KPS Gill, the former director his legislative and executive roles. In can 2005, while Corps”—a twist on theed Joint Parliamentary Committee—to A news editor called Jaitley “a raconteur who regale reportage · talk the town among them, the death certificate ofof general of police in Punjab and a security advisor he was a member of parliament from Gujarat, Jaitquell the news. you with great stories and nuggets of information. It can make the original shareholder, a relation- to Modi after the 2002 riots, also threw his weight ley defended the stockbroker Ketan Parekh against A prominent lobbyist in Delhi, referring to Jaitley’s indignation charges of defrauding Madhavpura Mercantile ship certificate14.3 proving kinship, and behind the group. In a letter to Jaitley, he argued mm over the coal scam told me that one “partthe ofcaravan is public—that is in the state of R840 crore. Jaitley ahim special Cooperative Bank 30 a power of attorney allowing Gujaral that the finance minister ought to order liberal and modern.” Theinto other “isinvolving the shrewd strategist.” investigation the case Chidambaram got Parekh out of jail on bail (he was later convictto administer their estate in India on and NDTV and to recuse himself from involvement ed). Angry depositors demanded Jaitley’s resignatheir behalf. With these papers, Guja- in it due to his previous legal support for both tion, and some senior BJP leaders complained to theseinparties. In other instances,1952, as Gill pointed Advani, also an MP from state. Jaitley ral applies for a succession certificate: Arun Jaitley was born New Delhi, in December on to become a BJPwho MLAwas from Delhi, told me the he thought it out, Jaitley has removed himself from situations in told the“because media that propriety forbade him I to a family had moved there from Lahore via Amritsar was Jaitley’s turn, helegal was more active in politics. a court document granting thethat original which his work as a lawyer migh compromise his from speaking on the matter. In a scathing critique, during Partition. Jaitley’s father, a lawyer, began practicing was more into shakha work.” However the defection of the shareholder’s heirs the rights to his orjudgment as a politician. business journalist Sucheta Dalalpredecessor, wrote, “Login the capital, where Jaitley attended St Xaviers, a missionary ABVP’s firstthe elected DUSU president, Khanna’s In 2006, arguing on behalf of Sushil Modi, then ically, politically andthe ethically, would have been her securities. Gujaral then publishschool in Civil Lines. According to a school friend, he was an to its Congress-affiliated rival, Nationalit Students’ Union the BJP’s leader of the opposition in Bihar, in more fitting if Mr. services were available es advertisements, inaverage both India studentand who wanted to be an engineer, but instead ofaIndia, “sent panic waves. SoJaitley’s the ABVP wanted to pick up a defamation Jaitley said that “in performing free (pro bono) to the Khanna depositors of MMCB.” While joined Delhi University’s Shri Ramcase, College of Commerce. swayamsevak,” an RSS member, said. the country where the heirs reside, his duties and obligations, the leader of opposition Jaitley’s position was legally sound, it raised seriKaranjawala told me Jaitley was a B-plus student but an avid It wouldn’t be the last time Jaitley, with his friends across notifying any other claimants to makeis of supposed to take not only what he lines and ous questions about commitment, as awas public debater; he was captain the debate teaminto andaccount won several party a reputation for his fitting in anywhere, is today but what he hopes to be tomorrow.” Three the publicmore good.committed to the themselves known within a month. gold medals. His image as an erudite public-school boy, repassed overrepresentative, for a candidatetoseemingly yearsthe later, as the of thecareer. opposition inideology the at university, course of leader his political of the RSS and its affiliates. But eventually, the very If none do, the courtsfined order that theshaped Rajya Sabha, he seemed to The havecrucibles few such (Scenario comin january, the former Bishan Singh Well #3) In the early 1970s, India’s campuses were political things made him somewhat of an cricketer outsider—“He could shares in question be transferred to punctions. The industry magazine TelecomLive that Bedi and others wrotespeak a complaint Narendra for Jayaprakash Narayan’s Englishtofluently, and the heirs. Gujaral then approaches theraised one example of this in a 2012 cover story Modi about his financeitminister. Jaitley had growing movement against wasn’t common in the that explored Jaitley’s position, while leader of the “misused his position as Leader of Opposition necessary companiesPrime to comply. MinisterOnce Indira GandParishad family,” Kumarto opposition, on the telecom company Vodafone. prevail upon various ministries spare DDCA of hi’s increasingly said—alsoto made him useful. the transfers are complete, Gujaraliron-fisted While Murli Manohar Joshi, the finance minister punitive action,” they Khanna wrote, referring to thehad Delhi policies. Many politicians, told me they sells the shares, deducts his own and District Cricket Association. including Lalu Prasad Yashwant Sinha and Sushma Swaraj, the leader to persuade“Mr the Jaitley RSS to is give

commission, and sends theSushil rest of theNitish Yadav, Modi, money to his clients. Even things Kumar,when Venkaiah Naidu 46 and Ravi Shankar Prasad, go well, he said, the whole process can first emerged as student take between eight months and a year leaders, and Jaitley, too, was and a half. introduced into the world of

Jaitley the vice presidential Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design ticket. “And we literally had the caravan to force him to file the nomination because he was so cheesed off,” he said. Denied top billing, Jaitley made the

Graduation Project 2015

off the rails · perspectives

Off The Rails Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order SAURAV DATTA

HT PHOTO

COURTESY SUHEL SETH

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

reportage · talk of the town On 28 January this year, Sunil Kumar, accused of raping a woman multiple IMAGE CAPTION times over a period of eight years, secured an acquittal from the Special Fast Track Court for rape cases, in Photo captions carry descriptive text Dwarka, Delhi. In his ruling, the additional supporting the images. The treatment ofsessions thesejudge who presides over the court found that the victim’s captions is not section specific andtestimony any given was replete with “prevaricaembellishments and improbabilpart of the magazine, they can be tions, treated in ities,” which made it unconscionable to either of the following two ways; convict the accused. It is possible, on the basis of a bare reading of the decision, to discover somept support this conclusion, beScenario #1- The Sans SemiLight, 7.5 on 9forpt cause the investigation was indeed leading, Left aligned shoddy; the prosecution was careless enough to not question key witnesses Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered. and produce their testimonies. The 6.2 mm prosecution alleged that over an exNote: This is the most basic treatment for image tended period of time, Kumar lured no position to provide her with a job.” in reducing pendency, important as that captions where the caption must always appear the victim on the pretext of providing In some ways, Bhat’s views expose may be. Bhat’s judgments and remarks, the deeper problem with the nature of which have come under some scrutiny with a government job, and subseat the bottom of the correspondingherimage the court he presides over. In Decemfrom the media and observers, show us quently raped her. On some occasions, Scenario that #1 misogyny is not absent from the ber last year, it was widely reported it was said, he forced her to comply that none of the six fast-track courts set Indian legal system, and that even spethreats of blackmail and defamaScenario #2- The Sans SemiLight, with 7.5 pt on 12 up following a murderous gang-rape in cialised courts cannot escape it. tion. Delhi in December 2012, were performIn January 2012, Alison Saunders, The judgment duly noted these aspt leading, Left aligned ing as per expectations. An Economic the Chief Crown Prosecutor for Lonpects of the case, but executed a com5.7 mm Times report on the courts’ sluggishdon, threw a challenge to the United plete volte face, with the judge, Virenness quoted Justice SN Dhingra as Kingdom’s criminal justice system der Bhat, During Jaitley’s initial years as a minister—first ^ Jaitley’s Note: This treatment is specific to the welldirectly blaming the accuser 14.3 mm friendships cut saying·that was that courts in a speech about rape trials. “How for not speaking out, although she hadreportage talkthe ofproblem the town of information and broadcasting, and then of section, where the image captions been mayraped appear could not be “fast-tracked” without do we ensure that myths and stereoon multiple occasions. If she 5.8 mm law and justice—these opinions contributed to across political In 1974, Jaitley (left) became presidenton ofthe the Delhi University Manyin student the whole legal system types doStudent’s not playUnion. any part a jury’s had not said a firm “no” to Kumar’s ad-below:putting the increasing alienation of Vajpayee, the prime lines and in the blank header space above the body text. leaders from the time ended up in politics and journalism. His colleagues included Purnima Sethi fast track. Pendency is a feature of evdeliberations whether consciously or vances, Bhat said, it meant that she may minister, as younger BJP leaders scrabbled for professions. (centre), who became a member of the Delhi legislative assembly. ery court in India, but the fast-track subconsciously?” she said. Entrenched well have consented to sex. In her tesproximity to Advani, who was tipped to take over The self-styled courts have come in for particular scrumyths about rape have a direct and sigtimony, the victim had stated that the the top post. In June 2002, in the aftermath of the marketing guru Scenario #3- The Sans Bold, 10 pt first on time 12 pt tiny because, by some calculations, they nificant bearing on acquittals; the issue she was raped, the drawstring failed India–Pakistan talks at Agra the previous Suhel Seth have been less efficient at delivering has been studied in some detail in the of her pyjamas broke in the struggle. leading, Left aligned year, Time magazine ran a cover story on Vajpayphotographed justice than regular courts. For a mechUnited States and the United Kingdom, She had managed to walk home wither war, brewing through the 1980s, ee titled ‘Asleep at the Wheel?’ After a colourful him at a party anism that was meant to recognise and although no similar scholarship existsbetween politicians, industrialists and out them slipping off. So how, Bhat description of the prime minister’s dietary habits Congress address the urgency of fighting genin India yet.) For instance, a committee wondered, had her family and neighmedia owners. Loyalties were with divided and ill health, it stated that he “is given to interNote: This treatment is to be used whenever politician der injustice, this is an alarming turn set up by the supreme court of Florida between the industrialists Nusli bours failed to notice what was “a very Wadia, minable silences, indecipherable ramblings and, of events. The performance of these in 1990, which detailed specific cases in unusual scene”?as In paragraph 28 of Shashi the owner of Bombay Dyeing, and his Tharoor there is a need to highlight the photo caption not infrequently, falling asleep in meetings ... an courts also indicates that the solutions which judges’ bias had led to travestiesrival Dhirubhai Ambani, the head the ruling, Bhat states that, after being Reandofjournalists unusual candidate to control a nuclear arsenal.” an important entry point on the page. photo to improving the way in which sexual of justice, found that the most common rapedThe several times, the woman should liance Textile Industries Limited; batKaran Thapar 6.2 mm The former BJP general secretary called the story violence is prosecuted do not lie merely prejudice was an acute distrust of womhave known that the accused was “in tles played out in courtrooms and across and Tavleen captions are set in the section colour and must as “a noticeable debriefing” by Jaitley. “That trait inches of newsprint. Jaitley had many Singh. was noticed in him very clearly for the first time” always occupy an exclusive two-column unit. opportunities to engage in legal joustapril 2015 after the Time article, he said, “and Vajpayee was 23 ing—especially in a supporting role to very angry.” Scenario Several others#3 also cited Jaitley’s “lack senior lawyer and former BJP politician Scenario #2 of control” as the reason for Vajpayee’s opposition Ram Jethmalani—while also raising his to his advancement. political profile. After the BJP’s colossal The BJP MP I spoke to, however, said that drubbing in the 1985 general elections, Vajpayee was particularly upset by Jaitley’s refVajpayee told India Today, “The elecerences to his adopted family. A senior journalist tion result gives us time for rethinking. told me about a conversation that took place at a There is need to project new faces. We have young talent in people like Pramod BJP national executive meeting in Bhopal, while Mahajan of Bombay and Arun Jaitley of “sitting in the Jehan Numa Palace hotel and having Delhi.” coffee after dinner,” with two other journalists. In 1987, Jaitley was involved in a series “Jaitley walked up to us ... and immediately started Decision Time “Ours is a centrestage profession,” Jaitley told India of legal matters related to interactions between the EnforceToday in 1997, on having a legal career. “Of course, there is ment Directorate, under former finance minister VP Singh, the caravan tremendous clout.” He reportedly told the magazine that, and Fairfax, an American detective agency that had allegedly 38 “unlike industrialists seeking favours, lawyers don’t need polbeen hired to investigate the illegal stacking of black money iticians, if anything, politicians need them.” While Jaitley said overseas. In March 1987, Jaitley and Jethmalani success-

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

bad-mouthing Vajpayee and Ranjan Bhattach the prime minister’s son-in-law. “Jaitley said has a son-in-law who is a failed businessman. failed businessman is dangerous because they power.’” Vajpayee’s family got wind of this co versation: Bhattacharya later ribbed the journ about the “long chat session in Jehan Numa.” senior Delhi BJP leader and the BJP MP said vani’s trust in Jaitley extended beyond profes issues, and that he sought Jaitley’s help to res a personal matter as well. Mohan Guruswamy special adviser to the finance minister in Vajp ee’s government, has known Jaitley since the 1980s; the two shared a closeness to Advani a met regularly at the India International Centr He described Jaitley as a “durbar politician,” “after making an argument, looks at everybod approval with a big smile. That is his characte tic habit.” Even Advani, he said, was not imm from Jaitley’s tongue. “Four, five of us would lunch at Advani’s house,” Guruswamy said. “W would step out and Jaitley would immediatel abusing him. It was the same with Vajpayee a everybody else. You can’t have a conversation him for more than five minutes before he star abusing somebody.” Political journalists thrived on the BJP’s in mud-slinging. Dissecting the “internecine wa in the BJP in Outlook in 2002, the reporter Sa Naqvi wrote that “the old rivalries and manoe

off the rails · perspectives

Off The Rails Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order SAURAV DATTA

In The Caravan, since the images are sourced from various national and international sources, the photo credits must accompany every image in the magazine. Scenario #1- Mercury Roman, 5 pt, Left aligned Note: This is the most basic treatment for image credits where the credit must always appear along the left edge of the image and oriented perpendicular to the top edge of the page. Scenario #2- Mercury Roman, 5 pt, Left aligned Note: This treatment is specific to the well section, where the image credit may appear on top of a full bleed image.

TALK OF THE TOWN

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

IMAGE CREDIT

On 28 January this year, Sunil Kumar, accused of raping a woman multiple times over a period of eight years, secured an acquittal from the Special Fast Track Court for rape cases, in Dwarka, Delhi. In his ruling, the additional sessions judge who presides over the court found that the victim’s testimony was replete with “prevarications, embellishments and improbabilities,” which made it unconscionable to convict the accused. It is possible, on the basis of a bare reading of the decision, to discover some support for this conclusion, because the investigation was indeed shoddy; the prosecution was careless How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences · Cover Story enough to not question key witnesses Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do littlepeople to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered. and produce their testimonies. The prosecution alleged that over an extended period of time, Kumar lured no position to provide her with a job.” in reducing pendency, important as that In some ways, Bhat’s views expose the victim on the pretext of providing may be. Bhat’s judgments and remarks, the deeper problem with the nature of her with a government job, and subsewhich have come under some scrutiny Scenario #1 the court he presides over. In Decemquently raped her. On some occasions, from the media and observers, show us ber last year, it was widely reported it was said, he forced her to comply that misogyny is not absent from the that none of the six fast-track courts set with threats of blackmail and defamaIndian legal system, and that even speup following a murderous gang-rape in tion. cialised courts cannot escape it. Delhi in December 2012, were performThe judgment duly noted these asIn January 2012, Alison Saunders, ing as per expectations. An Economic pects of the case, but executed a comthe Chief Crown Prosecutor for LonTimes report on the courts’ sluggishplete volte face, with the judge, Virendon, threw a challenge to the United ness quoted Justice SN Dhingra as der Bhat, directly blaming the accuser Kingdom’s criminal justice system saying that the problem was that courts for not speaking out, although she had in a speech about rape trials. “How could not be “fast-tracked” without been raped on multiple occasions. If she do we ensure that myths and stereo-Image Credit putting the whole legal system on the had not said a firm “no” to Kumar’s adtypes do not play any part in a jury’s fast track. Pendency is a feature of evvances, Bhat said, it meant that she may deliberations whether consciously or ery court in India, but the fast-track well have consented to sex. In her tessubconsciously?” she said. Entrenched courts have come in for particular scrutimony, the victim had stated that the myths about rape have a direct and sigtiny because, by some calculations, they first time she was raped, the drawstring nificant bearing on acquittals; the issue ENRICO FABIAN / THE WASHINGTON POST / GETTY IMAGES have been less efficient at delivering of her pyjamas broke in the struggle. has been studied in some detail in the justice than regular courts. For a mechShe had managed to walk home withUnited States and the United Kingdom, anism that was meant to recognise and out them slipping off. So how, Bhat although no similar scholarship exists april 2015 107 address the urgency of fighting genwondered, had her family and neighin India yet.) For instance, a committee der injustice, this is an alarming turn bours failed to notice what was “a very set up by the supreme court of Florida #1 of events. The performance of these unusual scene”? In paragraph 28 of Scenario in 1990, which detailed specific cases in courts also indicates that the solutions the ruling, Bhat states that, after being which judges’ bias had led to travesties to improving the way in which sexual raped several times, the woman should of justice, found that the most common violence is prosecuted do not lie merely have known that the accused was “in prejudice was an acute distrust of womPRAVEEN DONTHI

opposite page: Jaitley in his early years, built his career as a powerful lawyer. BCCL

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april 2015

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april 2015

Scenario #3

23 Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

IMAGE The design especially allows for a flexible usage of imagery throughout the magazine and the photo editor along with the designer must choose images that enhance the impact of the written content. While deciding the format of images within a story, the designer must do justice to the image quality. The images may follow any one of the four formats followed bellow; 1. Full Bleed- A full bleed image extends or “bleeds” to the edges of a page so that the image completely covers the entire page. A full bleed image does not show borders or white space around the edges. 2. Contained within colum-width: These images strictly follow the article layout and are constrained to the width of the columns. 3. Cross-over- A cross-over image spans partially across an adjoining column or onto the opposite page of a spread.

UP IN SMOKE

Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove vaishnavi chandrashekhar

on many mornings, especially in winter, a pall of smoke hangs over the villages of Palwal district in Haryana, a landscape of tractors, brick kilns and new colleges. It’s the haze of thousands of hearth fires burning in the courtyards of homes, boiling dal, baking rotis, and producing fine particles of soot and other pollutants at levels as high as that of Delhi—arguably the world’s most polluted city, only a few hours’ distance from here. Indian cities don’t have perfect services. Electricity may vanish for hours, and piped water is supplemented by tankers. Yet the urban elite can take one thing for granted: cheap cooking gas. Those who’ve grown up and live in well-off city homes can hardly imagine life before LPG: the long hours over slow stoves, the smells of kerosene and coal, the smoke of wood and dung. But the kitchen life of their grandmothers is still the kitchen life of millions of women in villages across India. On 2 December 2009, a few days before global climate talks in Copenhagen, the United Progressive Alliance government announced the launch of the National Biomass Cookstoves Initiative. The programme was intended to spur the development and sale of modern chulhas—cookstoves—that would burn dung and wood while minimising producing smoky emissions. “Success,” the government said, “could well have a transformative impact not only for our own citizens but also for the energy poor in other developing countries.” 64

4. Inset- An inset image is text-wrapped on all four edges.

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ENRICO FABIAN / THE WASHINGTON POST / GETTY IMAGES

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Full Bleed

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order

reportage · talk of the town

below: In 1974, Jaitley (left) became president of the Delhi University Student’s Union. Many student leaders from the time ended up in politics and journalism. His colleagues included Purnima Sethi (centre), who became a member of the Delhi legislative assembly.

A prominent lobbyist in Delhi, referring to Jaitley’s indignation over the coal scam told me that one “part of him is public—that is liberal and modern.” The other “is the shrewd strategist.”

HT PHOTO

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

SAURAV DATTA

Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered.

april 2015

Contained within column-width

“Ours is a centrestage profession,” Jaitley told India Today in 1997, on having a legal career. “Of course, there is tremendous clout.” He reportedly told the magazine that, “unlike industrialists seeking favours, lawyers don’t need politicians, if anything, politicians need them.” While Jaitley said he “sort of evolved into law,” Karanjawala told me his college friend was practically “born in Tis Hazari,” the north Delhi district court where his father, Maharaj Kishen Jaitley, practised. Jaitley began appearing there himself in the late 1970s, specialising in cases involving the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority. In 1979, when he married Sangeeta Dogra, the daughter of veteran Congress leader Girdhari Lal Dogra, Jaitley had a wide network among the political top brass. Both Vajpayee and Advani attended the wedding—as did Indira Gandhi. But over the next few years, Jaitley’s experience in the courts brought him closer to the inner circle of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which he joined in 1980, the same year it was established with Vajpayee as president. Indira Gandhi returned to power that year and, as payback for the Indian Express’s critical coverage of her during the Emergency, the DDA tried to revoke a building permit issued to the newspaper by the previous government. When Ramnath Goenka, the paper’s proprietor, and Arun Shourie, its executive director, approached Karanjawala for help, he got Jaitley involved, he said, “since Arun had the specialty that the case required.” The court granted the paper a stay order, and the case strengthened Jaitley’s relationship with Goenka, whom he had met as a student. The Indian Express case was just one skirmish in a larg34

er war, brewing through the 1980s, between politicians, industrialists and media owners. Loyalties were divided between the industrialists Nusli Wadia, the owner of Bombay Dyeing, and his rival Dhirubhai Ambani, the head of Reliance Textile Industries Limited; battles played out in courtrooms and across inches of newsprint. Jaitley had many opportunities to engage in legal jousting—especially in a supporting role to senior lawyer and former BJP politician Ram Jethmalani—while also raising his political profile. After the BJP’s colossal drubbing in the 1985 general elections, Vajpayee told India Today, “The election result gives us time for rethinking. There is need to project new faces. We have young talent in people like Pramod Mahajan of Bombay and Arun Jaitley of Delhi.” In 1987, Jaitley was involved in a series of legal matters related to interactions between the Enforcement Directorate, under former finance minister VP Singh, and Fairfax, an American detective agency that had allegedly been hired to investigate the illegal stacking of black money overseas. In March 1987, Jaitley and Jethmalani successfully defended S Gurumurthy, an RSS ideologue and Goenka’s financial advisor, from suspicions of passing classified information to Fairfax, soon after Gurumurthy wrote a series of articles in the Indian Express against the Congress and Reliance. A commission headed by two Supreme Court judges was appointed to investigate Singh, by then defence minister, who was on the outs with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi for his relentless pursuit of tax evaders, including Congress-friendly companies such as Reliance. Singh resigned from his ministerial post, quit the Congress Party and hired for his defence Karanjawala, who told me, “Arun also used to advise him.” The next month, in April, the tide turned against Congress when news broke that the Swedish armaments firm Bofors had allegedly paid Gandhi kickbacks to broker a deal worth $1.3 billion with the Indian government. That summer, as the Fairfax probe continued and the Bofors scandal raged, Jethmalani went on the offensive with a series of front-page Indian Express articles interrogating Gandhi. According to Nalini Gera’s 2009 book Ram Jethmalani: The Authorized Biography, he was helped in this endeavour by Gurumurthy, Arun Shourie and several BJP members, “especially Arun Jaitley.” Jaitley contributed outside the courtoom too. Riding the wave of the Bofors scandal, in December 1989, VP Singh led

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Cross-over

Arun Jaitley was born in New Delhi, in December 1952, to a family that had moved there from Lahore via Amritsar during Partition. Jaitley’s father, a lawyer, began practicing in the capital, where Jaitley attended St Xaviers, a missionary school in Civil Lines. According to a school friend, he was an average student who wanted to be an engineer, but instead joined Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce. Karanjawala told me Jaitley was a B-plus student but an avid debater; he was captain of the debate team and won several gold medals. His image as an erudite public-school boy, refined at university, shaped the course of his political career. In the early 1970s, India’s campuses were political crucibles for Jayaprakash Narayan’s growing movement against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s increasingly iron-fisted policies. Many politicians, including Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sushil Modi, Nitish Kumar, Venkaiah Naidu and Ravi Shankar Prasad, first emerged as student leaders, and Jaitley, too, was introduced into the world of campaigning and elections in this manner. Jaitley was initially part of what his acquaintances referred to as the “left club.” In 1971, he met Sri Ram Khanna, a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a right-wing student organisation allied with the RSS. “We were angry young men,” Khanna said when I met him in January. “Anti-Congress-ism was the mood of the campus politics across the country those days. An entire crop of young people got assimilated in the ABVP.” Several of them, such as Naidu and Nitin Gadkari, later became top BJP leaders. Others, such as Prabhu Chawla and Rajat Sharma, became powerful editors. Khanna, now a professor at Shri Ram College of Commerce, said he “inducted” Jaitley into politics, nominating him for the post of supreme councillor—one of ten electors in charge of indirectly voting in the president of the Delhi University Students Union. In 1972, Khanna became the DUSU president, and Jaitley replaced him as the president of the Shri Ram College union. By the next year, Jaitley had embarked upon a law degree at Delhi University—following in the footsteps of his father, uncle and two cousins. He was expected to be the ABVP’s presidential candidate for 1973, but instead the ABVP chose Alok Kumar, a member of the RSS. Even Kumar, who went ATUL LOKE/ THE OUTLOOK

off the rails · perspectives

Off The Rails

on to become a BJP MLA from Delhi, told me he thought it was Jaitley’s turn, “because he was more active in politics. I was more into shakha work.” However the defection of the ABVP’s first elected DUSU president, Khanna’s predecessor, to its Congress-affiliated rival, the National Students’ Union of India, “sent panic waves. So the ABVP wanted to pick up a swayamsevak,” an RSS member, Khanna said. It wouldn’t be the last time Jaitley, with his friends across party lines and a reputation for fitting in anywhere, was passed over for a candidate seemingly more committed to the ideology of the RSS and its affiliates. But eventually, the very things that made him somewhat of an outsider—“He could speak English fluently, and it wasn’t common in the Parishad family,” Kumar said—also made him useful. Khanna told me they had to persuade the RSS to give Jaitley the vice presidential ticket. “And we literally had to force him to file the nomination because he was so cheesed off,” he said. Denied top billing, Jaitley made the most of an important secondary position. in 1974, the student’s union had its first direct elections. By this time, Jaitley was considered a shoe-in for president, but the banner he would run under was an open question. Pankaj Vohra, a senior editor with the Sunday Guardian who was then a member of the NSUI, told me Jaitley “was considered to be a winner regardless of the party. The Congress also wanted to woo him.” A senior ABVP leader of the time told me it took Prabhu Chawla, the ABVP’s Delhi head, and Rajkumar Bhatia, another leader, three days to persuade the RSS to give Jaitley the ticket. Vohra told me that “Jaitley was seen being openly approached by Bahadur Singh and Kulbir Singh of the Congress in the Law Faculty,” after which the ABVP “announced his candidature in a hurry.” According to Ravi Gupta, a businessman who was also an ABVP member, the announcement came as a surprise to the NSUI, which was supporting Jaitley. Jaitley “may dispute it now,” Vohra said, “but in 1974, he could have as well been a Congress candidate.” For Jaitley, casting his lot with the ABVP paid off, and he won the election by a wide margin. Jaitley was an effective president, Kumar, Khanna and

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Inset

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

ICONS

Back of Book

In The Caravan, icons are used as slugs to articles and represent the theme of each story. The icons are always set in the color of the section that they appear in.

Books- 20 mm diameter, white on blue Showcase (opening spread)- 20 mm diameter, white on green Showcase (subsequent spread)- 14.4 mm in diameter & 10 mm in diameter, white on green

THE LEDE 20 mm

Front of Book

The Well Cover Story- 20 mm diameter, red outline Reportage & Photo Essay- 14.4 mm diameter, red outline Note: In the well section, the icons instead of depicting the theme of the story, stand for the style of article/ writing. To distinguish them from the slug icons in the magazine, these icons are outline only and never fill.

Making a business of recovering forgotten ancestral assets /Business 14.3 mm

financial report. He asked Rana if he knew what it was, but was brushed off. “For them, the game important,” he recalled at our first meeting, Front of Book (The was Lede) at a café in Delhi’s Connaught Place, “but for me, that sheet held an unknown promise.” Gujaral kept at it, and Rana directed him to a trunk full of old documents. He spent the remainder of the day going through dated cheques, brokers’ notes, bank statements and annual reports, some of which went as far back as the 1940s. The documents pointed to multiple investments made by Shiva’s grandfather, Madan Shumsher Rana, both in his own name and his wife’s name as-well. When Rana and his extended family proved to know nothing about the papers, Gujaral asked to bring the lot back with him to Delhi. Here, he created a directory of all the companies—around 150 or 180 of them, as he recalled—mentioned 20 mm in the documents. Companies that continued to ^ Rakesh NIKITA SAXENA exist, such as Tata Steel and Bombay Dyeing, he Gujaral spent One afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered knew a lot about already. Ones that he knew had several years at a house in south Kathmandu to play cards. The been nationalised, voiding private claims on their researching Thea descendent Modi government isn’t the laying host was Shiva Rana, of two former shares, he struck off. Then he began painstakfatesthe of necessary prime ministers offoundations Nepal—Chandra and for itsMohan manufacturing ambitionsingly tracking the remaining ones. This was not old Indian Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently moved back easy: Gujaral combed through records at the companies. /Economy to Nepal from India to settle land disputes within Gujaral whittled National Council for Applied Economic Research, 14.3 mm his family. One of his guests was Rakesh Gujaral, scanned statements on year-wise capital gains in his list down But Jaitley’s conclusion, that jobs 2004 2009, India witHARTOSH SINGH BAL of Rana’s from Delhi then aged 22, a batchmate old in copies of Between the Income Taxand Ready Reckoner at to about 500 manufacturing offer a way out, does nessed a fall in the absolute number University. Gujaral had just graduated with a the library of the Bombay Stock Exchange, andof shareholders, Arguing in support of the Land Acquinot follow from this. It is based on the people employed in agriculture. This bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, more. For companies he didn’t find mentioned in Front of Book (Perspectives) whom he traced sition Billsuccess, in the Rajya Sabha in March, premise that, in general, if more jobs was he also the period of India’s highestadwithout to start “thinking skills” courses any literature, travelled to their registered to everywhere Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphabecome available in sectors such as rateifofthey economic growthSlowly, in modern at several schools, in addition to trying his hand dresses to see still existed. tracing frompeople England sised need to reduce the number of manufacturing, move out mergers, of aghistory. and Belying Jaitley’s reasoning, at thethe stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a buy-outs liquidations, he discovered togreater Southnumbers, Africa, allowing people in the country who subsist on riculture in however, the number of manufacturing long break. the fate of each one. Canadainand agriculture. “The GDP of up, agrithose who remain it levels of affluactually declinedthe during these As the wins andshare lossesofstacked Gujaral’s Six yearsjobs after he discovered documents, even Nepal. culture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of ence comparable to those of their coun- recovered years; industrial growth was fuelled interest in the game floundered. But he found Gujaral many lakhs of rupees for Rana the population shares 15 percent,” largelythrough by increases in productivity, himself transfixed by that a worn sheet of paperterparts being in urban India. and his relatives the sale of still viablenot he said. “So you have to bring people A look at the evidence available suglabour participation. From the data,he it’s used to keep score. Studying the figures on its shares in about 15 companies. Just how much out of agriculture and create itjobs gests reality is more complicated.managed Conis only one sector thatthe could front, he became convinced wasinan old finantoclear get, there Gujaral wouldn’t say; over manufacturing.” sider the figures (in millions of people) have absorbed thosethe who left farming: cial document, possibly some company’s annual course of our three meetings, numbers he This was as succinct a summary as for employment from 1999 to 2009: construction. any of the government’s intentions with regard to agriculture and industry. the caravan 8 259 While the aim itself cannot be faulted, 238 the concrete measures taken towards it so far suggest that Jaitley’s is a facile

PERSPECTIVES

COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

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Long-Term Investment

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Farm and Factory

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TALK OF THE TOWN

In 2012, two years before Arun Jaitley became the most important minister in Narendra Modi’s cabinet, the news that the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s allocation of coal blocks may have cost the government thousands of crores and unfairly benefitted private interests, incapacitated the parliament’s monsoon session. Bharatiya Janata Party parliamentarians threatened to resign en masse, and Jaitley, then the BJP’s opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha, aggressively spoke out against what he called “the biggest scam in independent India.” As the stymied parliament session ground to a halt that August, Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, his The Well (Cover Story) counterpart in the Lok Sabha, released a fierce joint statement. “We used this session of Parliament to shake the conscience of the people of India,” they wrote. “This is not merely a political battle. It is a battle for safeguarding the economic resources for a larger public good.” In a press conference, Jaitley called the allocation process “arbi14.4 mm trary,” “discretionary,” and “corrupt,” “a textbook How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences case of crony capitalism.” In an opinion piece in people · Cover Story The Hindu, titled “Defending the Indefensible,” he wrote “the government was so overenthusiastic in PRAVEEN DONTHI continuing the discretionary process in allotment” that it did not institute the “competitive bidding mechanism” that would have ensured a more just process of allocation. A few years earlier, Jaitley had offered a different type of opinion to Strategic Energy Technology Systems Private Limited, an ambitious joint venture between Tata Sons and a South African firm, Behind the scenes of India’s tobacco industry in his capacity as a practicing lawyer. When applyPhoto Essaying for coal blocks in 2008, SETSPL, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the allocation process, sought Jaitley’s advice on whether it could avoid sharing Photographs By ROCCO RORANDELLI a certain part of its profits with the government. Jaitley provided the company with a 21-page legal opinion, via the law offices of his college friend Beginning in 1910, the German photographer and anthroon the Raian processes and more recognising on the people involved, including Karanjawala, that “the Govt. of pologist August Sander took thousands of portraits of his comfarmers, truck drivers, to tasters, India is entitled adoptwholesalers, a procedureshopkeepers for alloca- and The Well (Photo Essay) patriots as part of a series titled Menschen des 20. Jahrhunconsumers. tion of coal blocks,” and that the company was not derts—People of the Twentieth Century. Sander strove to Rorandelli beproposed a mean plant, aswith unkind to legally found boundtobacco to shareto the profits create a sort of composite document of the society he lived its consumers as to many of those who prepare it for them. the government. Jaitley’s arguments in support of in, and classified the portraits under seven categories: The Tobacco rapidlyindicated depletes that the soil it grows and is often SETSPL he had been in, well aware of Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, Woman, Classes and Profesplanted alongside other crops, such as sorghum, that help the prevailing coal block allocation process despite sions, The Artists, The City, and The Last People (a variety replenish fieldsand and reduce economicfraud.” dependency his hue cry aboutfarmers’ “the monumental of outcasts and vagabonds). After decades of work, he was on the crop. Much of India’s goes to making bidis—a Shortly after the coaltobacco scam broke, the legal opininterrupted by the Second World War, after which he largely large but regulated industry, workers preionbadly was made available to thewhere press by one orare more gave up on photography. Though parts of the series were pubventedUPA fromministers. unionising, endure brutal and Asand the BJP fanned thehours flames of unsafe opposite page: Jaitley in his early years, built his Sander never considered BCCL the project complete. conditions in return paltry wages.Manmohan Singh— careerlished, as a powerful lawyer. protest againstfor Prime Minister Sander’s simple documentary approach, of capturing people But despite this, farming and processing tobacco offers at work, in their own environments, serves as inspiration for vital employment to entire communities. “I don’t want to 28 the Italian photographer Rocco Rorandelli. Rorandellithe lostcaravan his condemn an economic sector,” Rorandelli said. “I want peofather, a heavy smoker, to cancer in 2007, and began to wonple to be aware about the repercussions of their actions.” der if he could emulate the German’s style to take a close look The public should know, he said, that smoking “has a series at the tobacco industry. At the end of 2009, Rorandelli travof impacts on the environment and on the lives of millions of

TO ASHES

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showcase

The chequered history of Pakistani cricket by samanth subramanian

Design

Product Design Grand Prix

at Cannes The Unquiet Ones: A History Back of Book (Books) of Pakistan Cricket Peter Oborne Osman Samiuddin The most low-tech product imaginable, a simple Simon and Schuster Harper Sport lump of iron, won the Grand Prix in the Product 608 pages, R699 480 pages, R799Lions contest here tonight. But while it Design looks unassuming, this fish made tens of thousands of Cambodians healthier. approached the problem of iron deficiency in Cambodians by trying to find ways to add more iron into their diet. One way, they SHOWCASE o much that is memorable about Pakistani be when laid out in cold, hard print—and yet, how found, was to simply put a piece of iron into skillets cricket seems to be embodied in the tapetempting it is to be persuaded that the metaphor and pans while cooking.isBut Cambodians were ball. The tape-ball is a humble object, born watertight in the case of Pakistan. reluctant to do so … at first. out of necessity: a tennis ball that is first bandaged So much that is memorable about Pakistan seems tight in electrical tape, and then deployed in pickto be embodied in its cricket. To the outsider, it up cricket games across Pakistan. It is pressed can look hopeless, barely held together by corrupt Reimagining into action amidst stark circumstances: cracked or impoverished governing bodies, its structures The Iconic footpaths, maidans of congealed dust, crowded rickety and its psyche tortured. Giant wills and Coke Bottle lanes and muddy farms—uninspiring surroundings egos clash with frightening frequency. Individuals 14.3 mm 20 mm 10.6 mm that reliably produce inspired cricketers. Upon of mad talent emerge from nowhere, hum with 14.4 mm these inconstant surfaces, the tape-ball stays firm, promise, and then contrive to hobble themselves. samanth This year marks a significant skids, and leaps upon the batsman, filling a fast Fortunes swing from month to month. is milestone forLife Coca-Cola as its subramaniam European Union Film Festival bowler’s sails with encouragement and sweetening uncertain. Mood is everything. Andhourglass-shaped yet, despite all signature him on the prospect of bowling ever quicker. Razor this swirling chaos, the cricketers delight audiencSitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, bottle celebrates 100 years. Samnath Subramaniam is a slit into the tape on one side of the ball, and it will es, the team wins matches,While the country soldierspop on. ut unt optatet usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq the pioneering an award winning careen in or out late on its way to the batsman—a Over the past year, two brand new books, both stout, with uiates recatur, si inverum initiam endandi quident, has experimented poet, writer, critic phenomenon linked to the physics of reverse have endeavoured not only to chronicle the history sum qui net, as alit ipiet es assitamendae omnihilis packaging throughout the and journalist of swing, and thence to the burning desire to engiof Pakistani cricket but also to probe the ties that India writing in decades, there’s no denying soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum quunt neer this swing discreetly by picking away the tape so intimately bind sport tothe nation. The first is universal recognition that English. He won the evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume delicidus et First Prize in the fingernail. The tape-ball creates drama, and Wounded Tiger, by Peter shapely Oborne,silhouette the formercarries. chief destibus re, te coriat quaspit et apiet fuga. Ut aut Backwith ofaBook (Showcase, opening spread) Back first ever All of IndiaBook(Showcase, subsequent spread) cricket in Pakistan is nothing if not drama. political commentator of the Daily Telegraph and aut rem is alit experio voloreh endusa quia qui aut Poetry Competition As the tape-ball is to Pakistani cricket, so the author of Basil D’Oliveira, a lifethe of the steelTo mark centenary, fuga. in 1990 organized Pakistani cricket is to Pakistan itself. That latter willed Cape Coloured all-rounder. The second is 12 by The Poetry Surface magazine invited Society (India) in metaphor is, let us acknowledge it, impossible The Unquiet Ones, by Osman Samiuddin, an editor designers to reimagine the What: European Union Film Festival to escape. Indeed, isn’t that part of the appeal of of Cricinfo’s The Cricket Monthly a reporterissue. collaboration with bottle forand its June/July Where: National Centre for the Performing Arts, the British Council. myth-making in sport? As we once did with armies, (as I am) with The National newspaper in Abuglobal “Coca-Cola, though NCPA Marg, Nariman Point, Mumba we look to sports teams to gauge the moral fibre of Dhabi. Each book is stronginand incisive in its own scale and influence, is so When: 8 to 12 May their members, and then we think we have a hanright, and consumed in tandem they compensate American,” Surface’s Spencer For more information, visit www.ncpamumbai.com dle on the characters of their cities, or even their for each other’s stray deficiencies, as if“Ithey were‘Why Bailey says. thought, countries. What extrapolative folly this appears to the Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis not ask someofofcricket today’s top Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design Graduation Project 2015 U.S.-based designers to rethink its iconic design in a the caravan 92 fresh way?” Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan

Food

Cinema

The brief was simple: “create an object inspired from the

BODY TEXT

The Well

The body copy format is fairly consistent throughout the magazine and must be adhered to for visual continuity. The treatment of opening paragraphs, however, differs from one section to another.

Opening Paragraph- No Indent, First phrase to be set in Mercury Semibold Small Caps and set in section colour

Body Text (General) Character Style- Mercury Roman, 9 pt on 11.6 pt leading, Left aligned, Paragraph Style- First line left indent of 3 mm Front of Book Opening Para- No Indent

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

Sub-section Opening Paragraph- First line left indent of 3 mm, First phrase to be set in Mercury Semibold Small Caps Back of Book (Books) Opening Paragraph- No Indent, Drop Cap of 3 line, First phrase to be set in Mercury Semibold Small Caps

But Jaitleyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conclusion, that jobs in manufacturing offer a way out, does not follow from this. It is based on the premise that, in general, if more jobs become available in sectors such as manufacturing, people move out of agriculture in greater numbers, allowing those who remain in it levels of affluence comparable to those of their counterparts in urban India. Between 2004 and 2009, India witnessed a fall in the absolute number of people employed in agriculture. This was also the period of Indiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s highest rate of economic growth in modern history.

Body Text (General)

Arguing in support of the Land Acquisition Bill in the Rajya Sabha in March, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley emphasised the need to reduce the number of people in the country who subsist on agriculture. “The share of GDP of agriculture is 15 percent, and 60 percent of the population shares that 15 percent,” he said. “So you have to bring people out of agriculture and create jobs in manufacturing.” This was as succinct a summary as any of the government’s intentions with regard to agriculture and industry. While the aim itself cannot be faulted.

Front of Book (Opening Paragraph)

The Well (Opening Paragraph)

for leaders with mass support bases, life in the public eye is an exercise in reassuring a particular constituency of one’s ability to represent it. A leader like Arun Jaitley, whose support base is his range of contacts in the media, judiciary and corporate world, requires a different public image—in his case the portrayal of the refined, well-spoken Delhi insider who can navigate his less-polished colleagues through the shifting currents of India’s national politics as they eddy around the power centre of the capital. For four decades, Jaitley has stayed afloat.

The Well (Sub-section Opening Paragraph)

o much that is memorable about Pakistani cricket seems to be embodied in the tape-ball. The tape-ball is a humble object, born out of necessity: a tennis ball that is first bandaged tight in electrical tape, and then deployed in pick-up cricket games across Pakistan. It is pressed into action amidst stark circumstances: cracked footpaths, maidans of congealed dust, crowded lanes and muddy farms—uninspiring surroundings that reliably produce inspired cricketers. Upon these inconstant surfaces, the tapeball stays firm, skids, and leaps upon the batsman.

Back of Book (Books Opening Paragraph)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Special Elements

BOOKS

Given the unique and exclusive nature of content of certain sections, there are some elements that are specific to those sections only and do not appear anywhere else in the magazine. These following couple of spreads discuss the style treatments for these elements.

White on Green

The chequered history of Pakistani cricket by samanth subramanian 12 mm

BOOKS 14.3 mm

Wounded Tiger: A History of Cricket in Pakistan

Author Illustration Each piece in the books section must be accompanied by an illustration of the author. This illustration must be done in the style of the sample using the section colour as the line colour. Author Name- Mercury Bold SC, 9.25 pt, set in colour of the section Author Bio- The Sans Light, 8pt on 9.6 pt leading Note: This unit must always occupy an exclusive two-column unit Books Unit Title- Mercury Bold, 9pt on 11.6 pt leading, Left aligned Author & Publisher- The Sans Regular, 8pt on 11.6 pt leading, Left aligned

Peter Oborne Simon and Schuster 608 pages, R699

Decision Time

Osman Samiuddin Harper Sport 480 pages, R799

18 mm

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket

85 mm

BOOKSHELF 14.6 mm

BOOKSHELF

14.3 mm

Imagery In the listing, each recommendation must be accompanied by an image of the cover page of the corresponding book. The format of the original cover should not be changed.

Book Cover

Serial Number

NON-FICTION

FICTION

Genre

DEMOCRACY AND POWER THE DELHI LECTURES

REGRET: TWO NOVELLAS Translated from Urdu by Faruq Hassan and Muhammad Umar Memon

Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky, considered by some “the world’s top public intellectual,” visited India in 1996 and 2001, and spoke on a wide range of subjects, from democracy and corporate propaganda to the nature of the world order and the role of intellectuals in society. He presented audiences with his lucid challenge to dominant political analyses, and his commitment to social equality as well as individual freedom. Collected here and introduced by Jean Drèze, this is an invaluable guide to the essential ideas of one of the leading thinkers of our time.

Typography Serial Number- Whitney Index Black RoundBd Regular, 24 pt Genre- The Sans Extra Bold, 12 pt, Left aligned, set in colour of the section Title- The Sans SemiLight, 15 pt on 16pt leading, Left aligned Author- Mercury Bold, 10 pt Synopsis- Mercury Roman, 9pt on 11.6pt leading, Left aligned Publisher & Price- Mercury SemiBold SC, 9pt

Publisher & Price

Title

Author

Ikramullah, a Jalandhar-born Pakistani writer, has been publishing fiction since the 1960s, but his work is little known in India. In Regret, the first of these two novellas, the author recreates the childhood idyll of two friends, which was shattered by Partition. In Out of Sight, Ismail, who narrowly escaped the carnage of 1947 in his youth, despairs at the sudden resurgence of sectarian violence in Pakistan, and resolves to protect his loved ones penguin modern classics, 264 pages, S299

Hairline Rule

Three Essays Collective, 220 pages, S350

4 2

FICTION

AGNISAKSHI FIRE, MY WITNESS

PATNA MANUAL OF STYLE

Note: Each item unit on the list must occupy only a single six-column unit.

Translated from Malayalam by Vasanthi Sankaranarayanan

Siddharth Chowdhury

Synopsis

In these nine interlinked stories, we meet the not-soquintessential Patna man Hriday Thakur, a literature junkie and aspiring writer familiar to readers of Chowdhury’s previous fiction. Also featured are Jishnu-da, his acquaintance from Delhi University, who is now an “importer of blondes,” Samuel Crown, the fastidious proofreader who mentors Hriday and instils in him a deep love for the art of bookmaking, and the parade of women in Hriday’s life.

The only novel by one of Kerala’s best-known short-story writers, Lalithambika Antharjanam, and first published in 1976 when the author was 67 years old, Agnisakshi is an account of a woman’s life set against both the customs, habits and culture of the Namboodiri community, as well as the national freedom struggle. The characters include Tethi, a dazzling but disappointed bride who renounces worldly life; Unni Namboodiri, whose adherence to the Vedic way of life destroys his personal happiness; and Thankam, Unni’s cousin and the mighty Aphan Namboodiri’s daughter, seeking her own liberation from the past.

aleph book company, 152 pages, S295

oxford university press, 208 pages, S350

the caravan

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

SHOWCASE Imagery

showcase

SHOWCASE

Design

Food

Each item in the listing must be accompanied by one or more supporting images. The stories on the opening spread of the section are highest in hierarchy.

Product Design Grand Prix at Cannes The most low-tech product imaginable, a simple lump of iron, won the Grand Prix in the Product Design Lions contest here tonight. But while it looks unassuming, this fish made tens of thousands of Cambodians healthier. approached the problem of iron deficiency in Cambodians by trying to find ways to add more iron into their diet. One way, they found, was to simply put a piece of iron into skillets and pans while cooking. But Cambodians were reluctant to do so … at first.

Typography Title (Opening Spread)- Mercury Text Bold, 18pt, Left aligned Title (Subsequent Spread)- Mercury Text Bold, 14pt, Left aligned Synopsis- Mercury Roman, 9pt on 11.6pt leading, Left aligned Photo Caption- The Sans Bold/ Regular, 7.5pt Note: The usage of grid in this section is fluid and with each issue, based on the content of every item, the designer may tile them differently.

Cinema

Reimagining The Iconic Coke Bottle This year marks a significant milestone for Coca-Cola as its signature hourglass-shaped bottle celebrates 100 years. While the pioneering pop brand has experimented with packaging throughout the decades, there’s no denying the universal recognition that shapely silhouette carries.

Queen of Molecular Gastronomy Sitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, ut unt optatet usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, si inverum initiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipiet es assitamendae omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum quunt evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume delicidus et destibus re, te coriat quaspit et apiet fuga. Ut aut aut rem is alit experio voloreh endusa quia qui aut fuga. Igent occumque nihicil laboriandi aliquam ius dolore, et exerferio d Maio. Loriam incipitio qui aut et inulpar ciassit ut invenis nem. Ucia sed quodit eaqui quia deligni aecaece periost, omnimporum fugit, autatur ehenihi ctorecepeles nosti assitio.

above: Ritu Dalmia, head chef at Riga Food

European Union Film Festival Sitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, ut unt optatet usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, si inverum initiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipiet es assitamendae omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum quunt evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume delicidus et destibus re, te coriat quaspit et apiet fuga. Ut aut aut rem is alit experio voloreh endusa quia qui aut fuga.

To mark the centenary, Surface magazine invited 12 designers to reimagine the bottle for its June/July issue. “Coca-Cola, though global in scale and influence, is so American,” Surface’s Spencer Bailey says. “I thought, ‘Why not ask some of today’s top U.S.-based designers to rethink its iconic design in a fresh way?”

What: European Union Film Festival Where: National Centre for the Performing Arts, NCPA Marg, Nariman Point, Mumba When: 8 to 12 May For more information, visit www.ncpamumbai.com

The brief was simple: “create an object inspired from the original Coca-Cola bottle design that somehow dispenses the beverage,” Bailey says.

opposite page: Molecular gastronomy dishes that Riga specializes in

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the caravan

Opening Page

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Decision Time

102

the caravan

Subsequent Page

Editor’s Pick

30 mm

EDITOR’S PICK Imagery This piece must be accompanied by a singular supporting image. Typography

POPPERFOTO / GETTY IMAGES

Section Head- The Sans ExtraBold, 18pt Body Copy- Mercury Roman 9pt on 11.6pt Paragraph Style- Drop Cap of five lines, set in The Sans ExtraBold

lanked by masked attendants, an idol of a goddess of smallpox is carried in procession at an unspecified location in India, in 1890. The idol is likely of Shitala—roughly, the one who cools—a goddess then particularly popular in north India, and one of the many deities worshipped across the country. In 1796, Edward Jenner, an English scientist, successfully vaccinated an eight-year-old boy against smallpox using the related cowpox virus, and went on to repeat the procedure on numerous subjects. Others in England and Europe had performed inoculations earlier, and the practice had existed even centuries before in China, the Ottoman Empire and, arguably, India. But until Jenner’s work, it was not scientifically proven or understood. Smallpox is thought to have afflicted humans since as early as 10,000 BCE, and is estimated to have claimed up to 500 million lives during the twentieth century alone. Major vaccination campaigns in the centuries following Jenner’s breakthrough reduced the spread of the disease. The last smallpox infection occurred

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in 1978, following a laboratory accident in England; the last known natural infection was recorded in 1977, in Somalia. In India, the smallpox vaccination was first administered in 1802. Numerous inoculation programmes followed, but as late as 1950 the disease was reportedly still killing over a million Indians a year. Local superstitions spurred various campaigns against vaccination; some Hindus resisted because of a belief that the vaccine was obtained from cows. In 1974, India reported 188,000 cases of smallpox infection and 31,000 smallpox-related deaths. The country’s last known case was detected 40 years ago, on 24 May 1975, in the Cachar district of Assam. In India, the smallpox vaccination was first administered in 1802. Numerous inoculation programmes followed, but as late as 1950 the disease was reportedly still killing over a million Indians a year. Local superstitions spurred various campaigns against vaccination; some Hindus resisted because of a belief that the vaccine was obtained from cows. In 1974, India reported 188,000 cases of smallpox infection and 31,000 smallpox-related deaths. s

the caravan

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

09 THE NEW CARAVAN

This is it! The five hectic months of my project, all the hardwork and confusion lead up to this. The New Caravan. This chapter presents the first-look of the redesigned version of The Caravan which hit the news stands in September 2015. From the beginning of this project, the biggest incentive that kept me going was the possibility of seeing my design on the news stands. As it is with most real time projects, the design process was no less than a roller coaster ride, sometimes with highs and lows so extreme that I was left doubting my decisions. At the time of hand over at the end of my project period, we still weren’t sure about the launch of the new look. Several editorial decisions were pending and even though the design team was confident and ready, without the editorial effort we could not have moved on.

and nauseating experience. Being a student, it is a rare thing to see your work being produced in bulk and released commercially. The joy of being the consumer of my own design was unparalleled. The upcoming spreads in this section present a flip-through of the September 2015 issue of The Caravan. Keeping in mind the fact that the third volume of this document carries physical copies of both the September and October 2015 issues, only prominent spreads and sections openers have been shown here. One month prior to the launch, the magazine also ran a few self-ads announcing the redesign and giving its readers a sneak peak of what to expect in the ‘new’ Caravan. These ads have been included in this section too.

Naturally, when the release of the redesign was announced, I was ecstatic beyond limits. The trip I made down to the bookstore to pick up the new Caravan is etched in my memory forever. The launch was definitely the high point of this project for me. The dream to someday work in a magazine, that was ignited after watching the famous documentary ‘The September Issue’, serendipitously got actualized with the release of the September Issue of The Caravan. Picking up the magazine and flipping through my design, as a reader would, was both a thrilling

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

Self-Ads Announcing the Redesign

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

(REGISTERED) RNI DELENG/2008/27062/08 DL(C)-14/1296/2015-17 U(C) 122/2015-17 KA/BGGPO/2568/15-17 Posted at BGGO on 1st, 5th & 10th of every month Pgs.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;100 P.O. SRT Nagar Posting Dt. 29 to 04 Published on 16/08/2015.

The following spreads show some of the prominent spreads from the September 2015 issue of The Caravan. These images are 75% reduced from the actual size. The actual printed copies are included volume 3 of the document.

COVER PAGE

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

CONTENTS PAGE

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

100

THE LEDE

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

101

THE LEDE

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

102

PERSPECTIVES

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

103

PERSPECTIVES

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

104

COVER STORY

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

105

COVER STORY

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

106

REPORTAGE

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

107

REPORTAGE

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

108

PHOTO ESSAY

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

109

PHOTO ESSAY

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

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BOOKS

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

111

BOOKS

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

112

BOOKSHELF

Redesigning The Caravan The Redesign Caravan Magazine

The New Caravan

113

SHOWCASE

Pupul Pupul Bisht Bisht路 UG 路 UG Graphic Graphic Design Design

Graduation Graduation Project Project 2015 2015

114

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

115

10 CONCLUSION

The four month redesign project that started in February 2015, owing to the characteristic inevitable delays of team work, concluded academically five months later in June 2015. At the beginning of the project, I was supposed to work on two real time issues within the project timeline. The design process, however, ended up taking longer than anticipated and as a result I had to wrap up the project with the handover of a design dummy to the in-house design team of the magazine. This design dummy was meant to act as a reference of how the new proposed design direction was to be actualized with real time content. Special efforts were made to include as many permutations and combinations of layout and design scenarios within this dummy and for this purpose we used the entire content of the May issue as it is. With the dummy as a style and treatment reference, the inhouse design team then worked on the September issue. Meanwhile, I was back at NID working on my document and collaborated with the team at The Caravan through correspondences via email.

It is important to note that design is just a part of the many aspects of producing a magazine and the final outcome that ultimately reaches a consumer is affected by several managerial and marketing factors. As graphic designers it is our job to propose the best possible design solution, however, it may not be in our hands to foresee or influence the changes that may occur during actual production. Even in the case of this project, the final version of The Caravan that reached the markets was not identical to the design dummy that had been proposed by me. However, I consider myself extremely fortunate that a big part of my design vision for the magazine was realised and seen through. It is important to note that decisions regarding production of the final issues were not a part of this project. Since The Caravan is produced inhouse, production constants such as paper, format, binding etc were more or less maintained in accordance to the older design and any decision to change these lay outside the purview of the design team.

With the actual content in hand, over the course of two months between July and September, we further refined the designed to iron out certain apparent teething issues as well as to establish some very specific editorial changes that had taken place since my departure from Delhi.

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Graduation Project 2015

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#scopeforimprovement

In case of a redesign, any new design approach would typically take about three to four months in real time to adjust to the content of the magazine. During this incubation period, each new issue must be looked at as a brand new opportunity to fix the loopholes of the previous ones.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

LOOKING BACK & MOVING FORWARD The unique thing about a magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work flow is its cyclic nature. Like most other news publications, a magazine too comes with a definitive deadline which must be met at any cost. In case of The Caravan, the deadline comes at the end of every month. All the hard work done throughout the month has to be pushed out within the deadline. The next month you start with a clean slate again. Even though one may give it their all with the production of an issue, there is always scope for improvement. Designers are critical by nature and the first look at a new issue may typically show several things that could not be accomplished in the time that the deadline allowed. Fortunately, there is always the next issue already waiting for your attention. In case of a redesign, any new design approach would typically take about three to four months in real time to adjust to the content of the magazine. During this incubation period,

Conclusion

each new issue must be looked at as a brand new opportunity to fix the loopholes of the previous ones. Being a direct reflection of popculture, magazines are always evolving and the design must evolve with it too and with each new issue, the editors and designers should continue to stretch for perfection. This section, presents an analytical reflection on the design of the issue that got published. Between the proposed and published version of the magazine, several issues were addressed and well resolved and many could not be attended to in time. This section discusses those issues, the ones that got resolved and the ones that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. As a design student, I am still learning and growing and it was crucial for me to acknowledge the scope of improvement in my work. The upcoming pages are an attempt at that.

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COVER PAGE In terms of typography and element composition, the cover page design that finally got published, was quite different from the proposed design. One of the main reasons for this change was that the editors were insistent on adding more information on the page. They felt that the Indian consumer is heavily influenced by the philosophy of ‘more for less’. The visual language how ever was more or less maintained and even with the final version we decided to stick to the idea of placing a powerful portrait on a stark flat colour background. The magazine was definitely standing out the newsstand and I think we accomplished what we set out to.

In the process of final design development for the cover page, we did explore certain radically directions and pitched them to the editors. The ‘Alternative’ on far left, was the most effective of those explorations. This design proposed a clean sans-serif approach to the nameplate which in turn gave the cover a drastically fresh and contemporary look. The editors, however, were not keen on such an evident change and hence we settled on a middle ground.

HOW SMS SPAM SELLS REAL ESTATE

IN TRANSLATION A PARTITION MASTERPIECE

THE FIRST GREAT INDIAN RAPPER

(REGISTERED) RNI DELENG/2008/27062/08 DL(C)-14/1296/2015-17 U(C) 122/2015-17 KA/BGGPO/2568/15-17 Posted at BGGO on 1st, 5th & 10th of every month Pgs.—100 P.O. SRT Nagar Posting Dt. 29 to 04 Published on 16/08/2015.

july 2015/ INR 75.00

THE STUBBORN KASHMIRI A Profile of the Separatist Hawk, Sayed Ali Geelani

A J O U R NA L O F P O L I T I C S A ND C U LT UR E

Proposed

Published

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Alternative

Graduation Project 2015

118 VOLUME VI/ISSUE 07

Date Line

MARCH 2015

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

Cover Story reportage

PRAVEEN DONTHI

perspectives

Gutters

CONTENTS PAGE While the final version of the contents page largely followed the graphic structure of the proposed design, certain minor tweaks were introduced to improve functionality. The adjoining figure highlights these changes.

Founder: Vishwa Nath (1917-2002) Editor-in-Chief, Publisher & Printer: Paresh Nath

20 Farm and Factory economy

50 The Avenger

The Modi government isn’t laying the necessary foundations for its manufacturing ambition

nikita saxena

How Ujjwal Nikam became Maharashtra’s most popular lawyer

To reduce the visual clutter of an already busy page, the dateline was made more compact. The cover story unit was typographically rearranged for better information flow. Certain redundant gutters were removed and the gutters between different sections were widened which made the over all page neater. The decision to rearrange the story lines to accommodate the slugs as a part of the unit led to better space management. The encircled page numbers definitely draw more attention.

VOLUME 07 • ISSUE 09 SEPTEMBER 2015

cover story / politics 34

23 Off the Rails

menaka rao law & order

Everybody’s Brother

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book

Akhilesh Yadav in the family business neha dixit

saurav datta

64 Up in Smoke Why India is still looking for a perfect cookstove even today

vaishnavi chandrashekhar

When Akhilesh Yadav became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2012, he was coasting on the promise of his youthful energy, an education and an interest in technology, and talk of development. Three years on, he faces a state of chaos, fierce internal competition within his Samajwadi Party, and the fraying of caste and communal ties engineered by his powerful father, Mulayam Singh Yadav.

25 Sceptred Sway A war in Yemen exposes the chinks in

world affairs Pakistan’s relationship with Saudi

omar waraich

april 2015

perspectives

Proposed 34

22 politics

22 In Sickness and in Health

Tamil Nadu waits on its ailing chief minister

vaasanthi

Story Line

law

25 Unscrupulous Act

New amendments threaten to sabotage a law that protects whistle-blowers

krishn kaushik health

28 Results May Vary

Page Number 54

Story Line

31 Past Expiry

54 On The Line

An island in Lakshadweep tries to save a remarkable spawning site

The tenuous legal grounds for re-promulgating ordinances

rucha karkarey and shreya yadav

vidya krishnan

Published

Conclusion

vidya krishnan politics

conservation

SEPTEMBER 2015

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Behind the snazzy marketing, there is little clarity on what AYUSH should be doing

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order SAURAV DATTA

PAGE FIXTURES One of the most significant alteration made to the page fixtures was that with the final design we got rid of the rule at the bottom of the text area. In the older design, the folio was too close to the bottom edge of the page which created problems while finishing (trimming) the edge of the magazine as it did not allow for a comfortable error margin. By eliminating the bottom rule we were able to accommodate for an additional 4 mm margin without compromising on the line count.

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Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered.

vipin kumar / hindustan times / getty images

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, which has been laid low by massive electoral defeats at the state and national levels, reduced to third position in the assembly, and coming a distant second in Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha elections. But the opposition parties’ hopes of painting Jayalalithaa as bedridden and collapsing were dented by her appearances with Modi, and later at Independence Day celebrations. Earlier, her arch-rival, Muthuvel Karunanidhi of the DMK, had claimed she was unfit to lead, and publicly advised her to leave office. “The chief minister is not discharging her duties because she is not in good health,” he said at a public meeting in July. “That is why the state is being run like one without a CM.” He asked the “ailing” Jayalalithaa to divulge her medical condition, and to “take rest.” These were provocations rather than expressions

of concern, and also attempts to cast a shadow over the future of the AIADMK as a whole. Karunanidhi’s barbs seem to suggest history repeating itself. Over 30 years ago, the AIADMK founder and former chief minister MG Ramachandran, or MGR, Karunanidhi’s bitter rival, suffered kidney failure and a stroke, and had to be taken to the United States for medical treatment. Karunanidhi used the same rhetorical weapons against him then. But so popular was MGR that he won the 1984 assembly elections from his hospital bed in Brooklyn. If an election were held today, Jayalalithaa and her party— which captured 44 percent of the vote in the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections—may yet win hands down. She may not be able to campaign like she did in 2011, but that in itself may garner sympathy votes. SEPTEMBER 2015

Proposed

Published

Additionally, the absence of the bottom rule also makes the page look airier by making room for more white space. The reduction in size of the folio and page numbers also adds to the overall breathing space.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

above: The speculation about Jayalalithaa’s health came as her party looked to be in an unassailable position going into assembly elections next year.

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the lede · independent will

City Watch

Map: The new treatment of the map for the letter pieces in The Lede section, cleverly resolves the uneven ‘text-wrap’ effect that was problematic in the proposed version.

Peer Review

THE LEDE

Long-Term Investment

By Any Other Name

Forbidden Fruit

Proposed

Music

Suman Sridhar and the Oracle public domain

Although, the reduction in the size of the icon in the final design works better aesthetically.

Off The Rails

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

Icons: In the proposed design special attention was paid to the visual consistency in the iconography. But in the final version of the design, the language followed by the icons is largely inconsistent. The change of color from black to white (on green) for the icons in the showcase icons seems random and erratic. Since the icons are a central graphic element in the new design, additional effort will have to be made in the subsequent issues to ensure visual uniformity and consistency.

COURTESY RAKESH GUJARAL

GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

three establishment parties; on 2 April this year, David Cameron debated six other party leaders. “I think it’s pretty New York city grapples with crisis of trust in obvious that no one standing here is its police force going to win this election outright,” the /Law & Order head of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, said in his opening statement. “So you’re going to have to choose … Scots want. From today, it’s about what who’s going to work with who.” KANISHK THAROOR the English want.” Many Scots will vote to make the On 18 September last year, Scots voted That pronouncement was premaSNP one of the key players. In March, in a referendum on whether to remain ture. The campaign for independence I got on the phone with Nighet Nasim part of the United Kingdom or whether was spearheaded by the Scottish NaRiaz, an associate lecturer at the Unito return, after a break of 307 years, to tional Party, though it also took in the versity of the West of Scotland, who independent rule. In George Square, Scottish Green Party and the Scottish is affiliated with Scots Asians for Yes, in the centre of Glasgow, a boisterous Socialist Party, and disparate other a pro-independence campaign group. crowd spent much of that night celorganisations. Each pursuing their We had last met in September, two ebrating that the question had been own agendas, these groups remain days before the referendum, when she asked at all. They sang songs, waved united behind what was, and is, their had been busy and tired, but also optiScottish flags, passed wine and whisky primary complaint against the United mistic. Following the vote, she said, “I around, and told the anti-independence Kingdom—what they see as the marthink the people were so disappointed Conservatives in London, and the Conginalisation of Scotland by the UK because it”—independence—“was in servative prime minister, David Camerparliament at Westminster, dominated our grasp.” But rather than weaken on, where they could shove their Union. for the last hundred-odd years by the Scottish nationalist politics, that disBut by 3 or 4 am, as more and more Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, illusionment translated into further regions declared results, the crowds, and the Conservatives, or Tories (these mobilisation. The SNP’s membership now sheltered in pubs and bars, quilast two parties form the current ruling soared from 25,642 on the day of the etened. Once it became clear that the coalition). referendum to over 80,000 by 10 Octopro-Union “No” vote was going to win, Ian Swanson, the political editor ber. By March, the figure had risen to they began trudging home in droves, at the Edinburgh Evening News, told 102,000, making the SNP the United muddle-headed and despondent. me in March that though the “Yes” Kingdom’s third largest party by memthe lede That morning, I took an especially campaign was roundly beaten—55.3 bership, behind Labour and the Tories. off the rails · perspectives subdued early commuter train into percent of voters supported remaining Besides proving the SNP’s strength, Edinburgh. As it pulled in, the historic in the Union—the defeat’s effect on the Riaz said, these numbers showed that Royal Mile was sombre, dreich and pro-independence parties has been the pro-independence campaign is “goIndia’s last jury trials mysterious, with mist and low cloud “quite paradoxical,” and the SNP in ing to be back.” / Law Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem clinging to the spires and chimneys particular “has been able to maintain Rebecca Bicocchi, a politics student with bringing sexual violence to book that flank it. At Holyrood, at the bottom a remarkable momenat the University of of the Mile, where the Scottish parliatum.” And as the Unit/Law and Order New York Glasgow who had camthe lede ment exercises its devolved powers, a ed Kingdom votes in paigned for the SNP USA giant tent set up for television crews a general election on before the referendum, stood almost empty, sagging under a 7 May, the SNP—easreinforced much that SAURAV DATTA drizzle. Instead of becoming the legily the largest party Riaz told me. When government pressure LETTERS FROM NEW YORK islative centre of the world’s newest Pseudonyms in Scotland endure and the amid we spoke in April, she On 28 January this year, Sunil Kumar, on journalists / Media country, the news was saying that Scottish parliament, explained that while accused of raping a woman multiple morning, Holyrood would instead be and presently with 6 seats in the UK excitement around the possibility of times over a period of eight years, receiving a new plethora of powers that lower house—is likely to make or break independence has died down, the vote secured an acquittal from the Special politicians in London had, ahead of the any anti-Conservative alliance in the had “brought politics to the fore of a Fast Track Court for rape cases, in / joe freeman In 2012, Lintner was granted a visa Protect Journalists, an international adthe lede referendum, hastily promised to deincreasingly fragmented politics of the lot of people’s minds ... Not many of my Dwarka, Delhi. In his ruling, the adto return to Myanmar. The year before, vocacy group, Myanmar remains among volve in a desperate attempt to save the very Union it is bent on quitting. friends or family members were politiditional sessions judge who presides Bertil Lintner started writing about in 2011, the regime adopted reforms the world’s most censored countries. Union. Throughout the city, which had That control of Westminster will cally active and the Yes-No vote really over the court found that the victim’s Myanmar in the early 1980s—when the to allow a democratic election, permit A recent report by the human-rights largely voted “No,” there was a feeling again require some form of coalition made them think about what they stood testimony was replete with “prevaricacountry, ruled by a military junta since broader political opposition and bring in group Amnesty International lists one Getting to know Kerala’s of relief, but tinged with sadness—the Making a business of recovering forgotten seems beyond doubt. Television screens for and what they believed in.” tions, embellishments and improbabil1962 and riddled with long-standing but foreign investment. It was a watershed journalist killed in military custody in “suicide tree” / Nature party was over, and with it the massive across the country recently offered a All this has come at a high cost for assetsto/Business ities,” which madeancestral it unconscionable obscure ethnic insurgencies, was still time for the media too. Pre-publication October, and at least 11 people arrested media focus on Scotland. An English telling sign. The United Kingdom’s first one party in particular. “Labour,” convict the accused. called Burma. From Thailand, the Swedcensorship, dating to 1962, ended. Disin 2014 for carrying out “peaceful journalist talking into a camera said, televised general-election debates, in Swanson told me bluntly, “are in a It is possible, on the basis of a bare ish journalist crossed into rebel-held sident outlets working from outside journalistic activities.” Also in 2014, “Up till now, it’s been about what the 2010, featured the leaders of only the real mess.” Scotland’s populous, inreading of the decision, to discover areas in Myanmar illegally and often. the country—including The Irrawaddy, five staffers of the newspaper Unity, debarshi Malayalam phrase with their tendency financial report. He /asked Rana dasgupta if he knew what some support for this conclusion, beConcerned the Democratic Voice of Burma, and which ran a story accusing the military to wobble before coming to rest: Otha- for his safety, he adopted a it was, but was brushed off. “For them, the game cause the investigation was indeed Thai Mizzima—were called back in. Several of running a secret factory producing On a Wednesday night in early May, langa pole likepen an name. As P Vichit-thong, over was important,” he recalled at our first meeting, 16 mariyum, or “Fickle the caravan shoddy; the prosecution was careless the next two years he wrote articles for new publications rolled off the presses. chemical weapons, were each sentenced four teenage athletes rushed to othalanga.” at a café in Delhi’s Connaught Place, “but were for me, enough to not question key witnesses Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue the Thai magazine Focus, including one More freelancers arrived. The governto seven years imprisonment with hard hospital from a Sports Authority of Dileep picked a fruit, and, after sevthat sheet held an unknown promise.” if judges remain blinkered. and produce their testimonies. The on the Communist Party of Burma, or labour (the government denied the altraining centre in to the coastal city eral blows with a rock, prised it open to Gujaral kept at it, India and Rana directed him prosecution alleged that over an exSHOWCASE CPB. Later, under his real name, Lintner legations). Numerous other publications of Alappuzha, in Kerala. reveal an ovoid seed in a fibrous white a trunk full of old documents. He spent the The young tended period of time, Kumar lured no position to provide her with a job.” in reducing pendency, important as that wrote a long story about the CPB for the are battling lawsuits filed by the governhad deliberatly swallowed shell. This is the seat of a toxin, cerberremainder of the daywomen going through dated showcase LETTER FROM the victim on the pretext of providing In some ways, Bhat’s views expose may be. Bhat’s judgments and remarks, Eastern Economic Review. A former ment. Amnesty International has also the poisonous seeds ofand the othalanga in, that causes uncoordinatedFar spasms cheques, brokers’ notes, bank statements MYANMAR her with a government job, and subsethe deeper problem with the nature of which have come under some scrutiny CIA analyst, whose book Lintner had criticised as “overly broad” a package of tree, or Cerbera Police later of the heart and eventual cardiac arannual reports, some of which wentodollam. as far back quently raped her. On some occasions, the court he presides over. In Decemfrom the media and observers, show us panned, dismissed the piece in an regulations passed in 2014 to establish reported finding signed by the rest. The seeds are a favouredearlier means as the 1940s. The documents pointedatonote multiple it was said, he forced her to comply ber last year, it was widely reported that misogyny is not absent from the academic a code of conduct for the media, citing a four, explaining the actMadan as a response of suicide, Dileep said, because they journal, citing for contrast an investments made by Shiva’s grandfather, with threats of blackmail and defamathat none of the six fast-track courts set Indian legal system, and that even spe“excellent provision that journalists must avoid “a to in harassment by other living purportedly bring on a painless death. article” in Focus by a P VichitShumsher Rana, both his own name and athletes his tion. up following a murderous gang-rape in cialised courts cannot escape it. thong. When I interviewed him recently writing style which deliberately affects at the centre. The next day, one of There is also a cultish fascination with wife’s name as-well. The judgment duly noted these asDelhi in December 2012, were performIn January 2012, Alison Saunders, over about email, Lintner recalled that he sent the reputation of a specific person or/ them died. family proved to them, including in online forums When Rana and his extended OpenaAir, pectsBangalore of the case, but executed coming as per expectations. An Economic the Chief Crown Prosecutor for Lonthe analyst a message to say, “I am P ment started issuing six-month journaland organization,” and “ways of writing In papers, the media stormasked that followed, the mystery writing, as perfect murder know nothing about the Gujaral pleteBengaluru volte face, with the judge, VirenTimes report on the courts’ sluggishdon, threw a challenge to the United ist visas and published lists of media which may inflame conflicts regarding was described weapons, since cerberin goesVichit-thong.” undetectto bring the lot backothalanga with him tree to Delhi. Here, he in unider Bhat, directly blaming the accuser ness quoted Justice SN Dhingra as Kingdom’s criminal justice system Nowadays, Lintner is revered by figures and activists, such as Lintner, nationality, religion and race.” Violators formly macabre tones—a “suicide tree,” ed in standard autopsies. No antidote created a directory of all the companies—around for not speaking out, although she had saying that the problem was that courts in a speech about rape trials. “How 14 AUGUST, 9.00 PM foreign correspondents covering Myanwho were no longer blacklisted. Pen risk maximum fines of $1,000. a plant of “ill repute” bringing a “brutal has been found yet. If anyone swallows Sitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, ut unt optatet 150 or 180 of them, as he recalled—mentioned been raped on multiple occasions. If she could not be “fast-tracked” without do we ensure that myths and stereoBLUEwhen FROG, BENGALURU mar. In April, he told anothalanga inter- tree, names no longer felt as crucial. “We still allow some reporters to use The seeds of the loaded with harvest”—and good reason. Kera seed, doctors can only induce vomitusapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, si inverum in the documents. Companies thatwith continued to ^ Rakesh NIKITA SAXENA had not said a firm “no” to Kumar’s adputting the whole legal system on the types do not play any part in a jury’s a highly poisonous toxin, come shielded by Three years on, though, and with their pen names if they have a good ala—where the annual suicide ing to try and flush the toxin viewer out. that a general election due later initiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipiet esGujaral assita- spent exist, such as Tata Steel and Bombay Dyeing, he rate, at vances, Bhat said, it meant that she may fast track. Pendency is a feature of evdeliberations whether consciously or Suman Sridhar and the Oracle kicked off their a hard fruit. this year had a “75–25” chance of not a general election due in November, reason,” Kyaw Zwa Moe, the editor of 24.6 deaths per 100,000 people, is more The othalanga seed’s poisonous traits omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum One mendae afternoon in August 1998, six men gathered knew a lot about already. Ones that he knew had years well have consented to sex. In her tesery court inseveral India, but the fast-track subconsciously?” she said. Entrenched Black Mamba his Tour, presenting music Sridgoingas ahead as planned, comment they from are still common among Burmese The Irrawaddy’s English edition, told than double theclaims national were documented at least as early quunt in evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume et destibus at a house south Kathmandu to play cards.delicidus The been nationalised, voiding private on average—has their timony, the victim had stated that the courts haveresearching come in for particular scrumyths about rape have a direct and sighar’s forthcoming solo album, in Mumbai. A good was repeated in news stories and on sojournalists, and, to a lesser extent, me at the magazine’s offices in downlong and lethal acquaintance with the 1914, when Rao Sahib M Rama Rao by the seeds is extremely rare, which teShiva coriatRana, quaspit et apiet fuga.ofUt autformer aut rem is alit experio hostre, was a descendent two shares, he struck off.a Then he began painstaktheby fates first time she was raped, the drawstring tiny because, someof calculations, they nificant bearing on acquittals; the issue turned up intoBengaluru tosee hear Sridhar sign of how pen names cial media as something akin gospel. foreigners—a town Yangon one afternoon in May. We species. Yet, as IThis discovered noted them in his Flowering Plants of crowd is why Keralites tend not to the voloreh endusa quia qui aut fuga.and Igent occumque nihicil prime ministers of Nepal—Chandra Mohan ingly tracking the remaining ones. was noton a visit to old efficient Indian at delivering of her pyjamas broke in the struggle. have been less has been studied in some detail in the open the set with a distinctive reworking of ‘Ave His books and articles traverse the last a cherished part of the local culture, spoke in a small conference area next to Alappuzha in June,at the Othalanga tree Travancore. Rao, then the conservator othalanga tree as a source ofare peril. Aflaboriandi aliquam ius dolore, etmoved exerferio d Maio. Loriam Shumsher Rana. Rana had recently back easy: Gujaral combed through records the She had managed to walk home withjustice thancompanies. regular courts. For a mechUnited States and the United Kingdom, Maria,’ influenced by African styles. She contin- that the government and three decades of history, and of concern the newsroom, in a converted thirdfar fromEconomic ostracisedResearch, here. It grows of forests in the erstwhile kingdom, terthe mycountry’s excursion with Dileep, I drove incipitio aut et ciassit ut invenis nem. Ucia sed whittled to Nepal fromqui India to inulpar settle land disputes within National Council forisApplied above:on Under the out them slipping off. So how, Bhat anism that Gujaral was meant to recognise and although no similar scholarship exists ued exhibit herthe versatility from yet for most of to the timeinto since 1985, a few everything the military haven’t completely given up floor apartment. Reporters sat side by freely in nearby salt marshes, and in wrote of the othalanga fruit’s use to kill deeper backwaters as the quodit One eaquiofquia deligni was aecaece periost, omnimporum fugit, his family. his guests Rakesh Gujaral, scanned statements on year-wise capital gains in Parsi Matrimonial list down wondered, had her family and neighaddress thehis urgency of fighting genin India yet.) For instance, a committee slow ballads to energetic Bollywood covers. After years after he started publishing under their old ways. The military commands, side at a line of messy desks snaking similar locations elsewhereatin south dogs, and even, curiously, to “deprive afternoon wore on.and Sobha Maniradhan ehenihi ctorecepeles nosti assitio. alit experio voloreh500 thenautatur aged 22, a batchmate of Rana’s from Delhi old copies of the Income Tax Ready Reckoner Disputes Act, to this about bours failed to notice what was “a very der injustice, is an alarming turn set up by the supreme court of Florida a score ofsweeping original numbers, the band closed the privilege, a quarter of his real he was officially barred by constitutional around a wall. Editorial cartoons hung Kerala,Stock and has rooted itself deeply in them of their teeth.” A rare paper on name, was her yard I showed endusa Gujaral quia quihad aut fuga. University. just graduated with a the library of the Bombay Exchange, and jurieswhen elected by shareholders, unusual scene”? In paragraph 28 of of events. The performance of these in 1990, which detailed specific cases in with a rendition ofthe Jimi Hendrix’s from Myanmar for inand rebel terall seatsclassic in parliament, and is still firmly from concrete columns, next to admonicommunity psyche. Many Keralites have a the seeds’ use for suicide, published in nightup attrekking her gate, her two-year-old bachelor’s degree in commerce, and had tried, more. For companiesthe helocal didn’t find mentioned in hethat traced the ruling, Bhat states that, after being courts also whom indicates the solutions which judges’ bias had led to travesties ‘All Along the Watchtower.’ can grant divorces ritory. The only exceptions, he told me, a part of the ruling elite. In June, lawtions on journalistic ethics. surprisingly easy relationship with the 2004, attributed 537 deaths in Kerala grandson was frolicking in her garden. When: 6 June without success, to start “thinking skills” courses any literature, he travelled to their registered adtothe everywhere raped several times, the woman should to improving way in which sexual of justice, found that the most common to estranged Parsi ~ priyanjali were two visits in 1989,simon on invitations makers shot down an amendment that The country “is not safe yet,” Kyaw mortal plant. to them between 1989 and 1999. “To the Maniradhan had two othalanga trees Where: Jayamahal Palace to Hotel, Jayamahal at several schools, in addition trying his handRoad, Bengaluru. dresses to see if theypotentially still existed. Slowly, tracing couples. have known that the accused was “in from England violence is prosecuted do not lie merely prejudice was an acute distrust of womfrom“no a former intelligence official would Zwa continued, “especially in the media Dileep, an assistant professor of best of our knowledge,” it stated, in her backyard. “Awho child can’t bite have lowered the percentage of For more information, visit www.bangaloreopenair.com. at the stock market. He was in Kathmandu for a mergers, buy-outs andCliquidations, he discovered to South Africa, “wanted out the whoseed my sources votes needed to change the constitution, sector. Many journalists and reporters plant in the world is responsible for asto findinto because the fruit is very long break. the fate of each one.botany at the Sanatana Dharma Col12 THE CARAVAN Canada and Lintner hard,” retiredshe P Vichit-thong which currently gives veto power to are harassed by the authorities and by in Alappuzha, agreed to23 show me many deaths by suicide as thewere.” odollam reassured me. As the wins and losses stacked up, Gujaral’s Six years after he lege discovered the documents, april 2015 even Nepal. inYvan 1983 and later eschewed penbeing names, military MPs. Last month, Shwe Mann, the local people.” The Irrawaddy, which the tree in its naturalfor habitat. tree.” The French toxicologist Rather than an immediate interest in the game floundered. But he found Gujaral recovered many lakhs of rupees Rana From a but, with foreignthe correspondents the popular publishes both in English and Burmese, new fast-food opposite the Gaillard, the paper’s lead author, told otherthreat, species is threatened itself. chairman of the ruling party himself transfixed by a worn sheet of paper being and his relatives through the sale restaurant of still viable being blacklisted andtrees localare beingand a rival of the current president, was was started in Thailand by Kyaw Zwa’s college campus, we drove me over email that othalangaafraid seedsof may In places, the crowded used to keep score. Studying the figures on its shares in about 15 companies. Just how much along he roads journalists fearing pseudsacked overnight—with, many believe, older brother, Aung Zaw, in 1993, two under gathering monsoon well have caused “as many homicides out persecution, by pollution and urban encroachfront, he became convinced it was an old finanmanaged to get, Gujaral wouldn’t say; over theclouds, lined onyms remained de riguer many are concerned the support of powerful members of the years after Kyaw Zwa was arrested for with fisherman waving he their catch at us as suicides” over the period studied. He ment. Localfor botanists cial document, possibly some company’s annual course of our three meetings, the numbers writers. military. According to the Committee to distributing anti-government leaflets. hopes ofAir a sale. We stopped just outbased this view on suggestions from about the species’ future. “It is one of Lorem Ipsum oninThin side town, at a stretch of road cutting a coroner in Kerala, whose suspicions the important backwater trees we have 8 the caravanSitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa 14 THE CARAVAN through trees could never be confirmed because here,” Dileep said. “Not only does it etaetbackwater. quam re, utOthalanga unt optatet shot up sporadically its flank, no lab in the state could then detect prevent soil erosion, its fruits are also usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, along si inverum displaying succulent and dainty cerberin. part of the diet of local birds.” Thankinitiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipietleaves es assitawhite flowers ofeum crape jasFor all the plant’s notoriety, othafully, there have been no calls for its mendae omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus reminiscent et qui tecturit mine blooms. hung langa poisoning is hardly the leaderadication. Suicide is a problem that quunt evernam et ex eos sequam rerrumeMango-like delicidus etfruits destibus and in the wind like ing means of suicide in Kerala, and requires a “social response,” Gaillard re, te coriat quaspit et apietlow fuga. Utheavy, aut autbobbing rem is alit experio Children’s Carnatic Choir I was toldrem theyisare called is eclipsed by hanging and ingesting told me. “It is not for humanity to try voloreh endusa quia qui autyo-yos; fuga. Ut aut aut alitalso experio mangoes,” and have inspired a pesticides. Unintentional poisoning and control biodiversity.” s Sitiuriatus as modicilique laccusa et et quam re, ut unt optatet voloreh endusa quia qui aut“sea fuga. usapedit mi, iuntium et aperumq uiates recatur, si inverum 10 THE CARAVAN initiam endandi quident, sum qui net, as alit ipiet es assitamendae omnihilis soloratiur aboresci cus et qui tecturit eum quunt evernam et ex eos sequam rerrume delicidus et destibus

Proposed

Published shikhant sablania for the caravan

Published

Theatre

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Conclusion

everybody’s brother · reportage

off the rails · perspectives

Off The Rails reportage · the avenger

Fast-track courts fail to address the real problem with bringing sexual violence to book /Law and Order

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no position to provide her with a job.” in reducing pendency, important as that In some ways, Bhat’s views expose may be. Bhat’s judgments and remarks, the deeper problem with the nature of which have come under some scrutiny the court he presides over. In Decemfrom the media and observers, show us ber last year, it was widely reported that misogyny is not absent from the Proposed (Adjoining Caption) that none of the six fast-track courts set Indian legal system, and that even speup following a murderous gang-rape in cialised courts cannot escape it. Delhi in December 2012, were performIn January 2012, Alison Saunders, ing as per expectations. An Economic the Chief Crown Prosecutor for LonTimes report on the courts’ sluggishdon, threw a challenge to the United ness quoted Justice SN Dhingra as Kingdom’s criminal justice system saying that the problem was that courts in a speech about rape trials. “How could not be “fast-tracked” without do we ensure that myths and stereoputting the whole legal system on the types do not play any part in a jury’s Bertil Lintner was blacklisted in the 1980s, for travelling throughwhether areas under rebel control. fast track. Pendency is a feature of evdeliberations consciously or ery court in India, but the fast-track subconsciously?” she said. Entrenched was the father of the current opposithe name of the protagonist in Scoop, the courts have come in for particular scrumyths about rape have a direct and sigtion leader Aung San Suu Kyi. He was English writer Evelyn Waugh’s satirical tiny because, by some calculations, they nificant bearing on acquittals; the issue bornbeen as Htein tookat the name Aung novel about journalism. have less Lin, efficient delivering has been studied in some detail in the San at university, and then became Bo Not everyone I spoke to wasKingdom, eager to justice than regular courts. For a mechUnited States and the United Tayza—General Flames—when he went go on the record with both their anism that was meant to recognise and although no similar scholarship given exists to Japanthe forurgency militaryof training. and assumed names. One writer, who address fighting genin India yet.) For instance, a committee Published (Adjoining Caption) There are any number of approaches has published two highly regarded books der injustice, this is an alarming turn set up by the supreme court of Florida toevents. a new moniker. The historian Andrew in on1990, Myanmar the pseudonym of The performance of these whichunder detailed specific cases in Selth, in a 2013 essaythat on pseudonyms Emmajudges’ Larkin,bias did not her real courts also indicates the solutions which hadvolunteer led to travesties in Myanmar, notes that some people identity. Via email from Thailand, she to improving the way in which sexual of justice, found that the most common add the name of their workplace to told me she borrowed nameof from violence is prosecuted do not lie merely prejudice was an acutethe distrust womtheir own. Among journalists, examples a street in San Francisco. Larkin came include Guardian U Sein Win—a legendto Myanmar in the mid 1990s with “no

RAFIQ MAQBOOL/ AP PHOTO

UJWAL GARG FOR THE CARAVAN

Increasing the number of courts dedicated to cases of sexual violence will do little to tackle the issue if judges remain blinkered.

courtesy bertil lintner

On 28 January this year, Sunil Kumar, accused of raping a woman multiple times over a period of eight years, secured an acquittal from the Special Fast Track Court for rape cases, in Dwarka, Delhi. In his ruling, the additional sessions judge who presides over the court found that the victim’s testimony was replete with “prevarications, embellishments and improbabilPHOTOities,” CAPTIONS which made it unconscionable to convict the accused. Adjoining Captions: In the final version, the It is possible, on the basis of a bare regular captions that appear at the bottom of reading of the decision, to discover photographs have been supported with a rule some support for this conclusion, bewhich was missing in the older design. The by any name · was the indeed lede cause theother investigation addition of rule aides better demarcation of the shoddy; the prosecution was careless caption text from the body copy. When he in 1999, headed to enough to got notout, question keyhe witnesses Thailand too, but came back to pilot the produce testimonies. The Columnand Captions: Thetheir column captions which magazine’s Yangon operations. alleged over an exwere anprosecution important element ofthat the proposed The use of pseudonyms is still tended period of time, Kumar lured design had a fundamental functional issue. widespread, but “it’s changed a lot,” victim pretext of providing The tinythe arrow usedon tothe indicate the location of Kyaw Zwa said. had “I’veitsbeen a lot her with a image government job, seeing and subsethe corresponding limitations of reporters using their own names. quently raped her. On some occasions, when it came to indicating an image placed on I myself encourage itAnd, was said, he forced her to comply the right. Thispersonally, was addressed by replacing the the reporters to description use their real name, instead with of blackmail and defamaarrow with a threats worded of the same. of the pen name.” Foreign correspontion. dents have more leeway, he said, The now judgment duly noted these asbut “Iofthink local but reporters, they are pects the case, executed a commorevolte careful about they write and plete face, withwhat the judge, Virenwhat theydirectly report.”blaming the accuser der Bhat, even among visahad reforStill, not speaking out,foreigners, although she strictions and a number of recent deporbeen raped on multiple occasions. If she tations old fears. The prized had not have said araised firm “no” to Kumar’s adsix-month journalism visas are almost vances, Bhat said, it meant that she may never issued to foreigners well have consented to sex.not In working her tesfor high-profile media timony, the victim had organisations. stated that the Multiple-entry business valid for first time she was raped, visas, the drawstring upher to apyjamas year, were until an opof broke in recently the struggle. tion,had butmanaged heightened scrutiny onwithreportShe to walk home ers working without proper documents out them slipping off. So how, Bhat has forced had many tofamily consider wondered, her andrenewable neigh“j-visas” that last between 28 days and bours failed to notice what was “a very three months. InIn the last year, 28 at least unusual scene”? paragraph of fiveruling, foreignBhat journalists and photograthe states that, after being phers several withouttimes, the right raped the papers womanhave should beenknown deported orthe “asked to leave.” have that accused was “in Shawn Crispin, Southeast Asia representative for the Committee to Protect

sakib ali / hindustan times / getty images

SAURAV DATTA

had blocked the rest of the leadership from access above: According to fired in 2006 over a dispute about electoral tickets “Even the snake would feel ashamed,” he conless well suited to covering procedural failures ^ PoliceSingh. This was Samajwadi workers, to Mulayam a blow that many with Singh. “Amaris Singh anyway took it upon his cluded. “If the snake could talk, he would say—Mr in individual cases or the system as a whole.” escorting a any youth wing felt personally: MulayamNikam, Singh’sweconsiderable ego to engineer a crushing defeat for Babbar,” one bite sometimes. Why do you compare Nikam came to prominence just as network man accused member of the interpersonal skills had knit the party together. senior Samajwadi Party leader told me. “He prous with a human being who bites all the time?” If laws in India changed, and the television industry in the Shakti party can still call Further, none of Singh’s glamour was helping the posed Dimple’s name. He thought she will be the Kasab were given a life sentence, he told the judge, boomed. From what several journalists told me, Mills case in Akhilesh personally. thousands of people would knock on the doors of his talents apparently included an instinctive party through the 2000s. As Mayawati grew from safest candidate since she is from the family.” 2013. Feminist Heunrelies on his the court, demanding the extraction of every drop derstanding of how television worked. If newspastrength to strength, But Singh’s missteps during the campaign network of young lawyers found her 2007 electoral strategy, of poison that filled Kasab’s body—presumably reporters had attended the day’s proceedings, loyalists to crossNikam’ssamaj,” based the “sarvajan on an unprecedented proved costly. In aper Muslim-majority area, his killing him to do so. Yug Mohit Chaudhry, among or caught hold of court documents, they would check information prosecutorial Brahmin-Dalit voter alliance, became a blow to decision to bring into the party Kalyan Singh— others, said this was entirely improper, as well not always need a quote from him for their stofrom anywhere in methods Party’s traditional arrangements, the Samajwadi formerly the BJP ries—but chief minister who presided as cynical. “He does this to prejudice the public television reporters always would.the He state. “unnerving.” and they failed to recoverand in inflame time forjudicial the 2009 Lok over the Masjid demolition—went down poorly. passions against the accused, responded well to this requirement: some televithus hindering a dispassionate evaluation of the sion reporters jokingly started to call him “Visual” Sabha polls. A movie star inadvertently contributed to his evidence,” Chaudhry wrote in our email interview Nikam. Unlike of >his party colleagues, Akhilesh’s downfall, too: several people told me that Singh Abumost Salem this March. He claimed otherwise to me, but Nikam is eviseat was alienated Muslim voters by speaking slightingly of in secure, 2007. In and doubly so. He contested In 2006, the US scholar Sara Sun Beale, a prodently interested in how the media sees him as a and won the this 2009 polls from both Kannauj and one of Babbar’s campaigners, Salman Khan. Fans March year, fessor at Duke University School of Law, pubpublic figure. It is not uncommon for him to pause, the extradited Firozabad, and decided tolished stay awith former. of Khan, a legendary loyalty paperthe that analysed how news mediawho in commands swipe through his hair with a tinyfrom comb, and then gangster Firozabad is anwas old partythe bastion—its current MP followers theofcountry, may have United States covered criminalhis trials. In The around step out the courtroom at the found end of a hearing convicted of the Media’s Influence on Criminal Justice Poli- an electoral to address cameras English, Hindi and Marathi. is Ram Gopal Yadav’s sonNews and Akhilesh’s cousin, this as urgent issue asinany other, judg1995 murder cy: How Market-driven Punitivewillingness to any speak to television Akshay—but the 2009 by-election resulted in aNews Promotes ing from accountsThis of the time. At rate, Dimplereporters is of a Mumbai ness,as Beale “Television emphasizes ‘filmic’ andunusual Mumbai, found where even high-ranking postunning upset for the party, thewrote: Congress’s was defeated, Singh in suddenly himself builder. stories—discrete, dramatic, visual incidents belice officials, who see it as part of the job to maintain candidate, the former actor Raj Babbar, handed a out in the cold. tween individuals. Coverage of the investigation good relations with the press, do not go on record to crushing defeat to the Samajwadi and trial ofParty violentnominee, crime fits this profile because reporters on a daily basis. Akhilesh’s wife, Dimple. it is dramatic and lends itself to replays party in-in May 2010, soonofafter the by-election, the Just beforethe Kasab wasstarted sentenced gory details of the crime itself, as the appellate channel caught of a ten-year-old Singh had been responsible for persuading the viting applicationsa television for tickets for the 2012hold assembly generally by-poll. does not. In contrast, who had lost her in theapplicacarnage; on camera, party to put Dimple up forprocess the Firozabad polls.television Akhilesh began to look intolegthese Babbar and he were old rivals. Babbar had once tions personally, joining senior party members as belonged they interviewed prospective candidates. By this 60 to the Samajwadi Party, but he had been the caravan SEPTEMBER 2015

Proposed (Column Caption)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Published (Column Caption)

Graduation Project 2015

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THE WELL Being the meatiest section of the magazine, the design of this section needs extra attention to detail. There are some glaring issues with the design that got published.

Pull Quotes: The use section colour to highlight specific sections of a pull quote, proposed in the design dummy, was well carried out in the published version as well. However, on after thought, the treatments seems redundant and could be done away with.

Cover Story

Photo Essay

Color: As mentioned in the final Color Palette section, each hue in the colour palette of the magazine was reduced to a two process colour value in order to minimize the error due to misregistration. The ‘red’ used in the well of the final version is a 4-color hue and has resultantly given very inconsistent results in printing.

Photo Captions: With the new look, an editorial call was taken to do away with all page fixtures including photo caption for the entire photo essay section. While this treatment does give an artistic treatment to the section and ensures full focus on photography; the absolute absence of photocaptions may leave the readers bereft of context.

Cover Story: In the proposal, the opening spread of the cover story was especially design to give a sense of grandeur and to establish the arrival of the reader to the most important section of the magazine. The layout of this spread in the published version, however, fell short of making the intended impact.

Proposed (Colour) reportage · talk of the town

everybody’s brother · reportage

“Logically, politically and ethically, it would have been more fitting if Mr. Jaitley’s services were available free (pro bono) to the depositors of MMCB,” wrote business journalist Sucheta Dalal.

Karanjawala told me Chidambaram and Jaitley were “decent friends” who had known each other since the 1990s, when both were lawyers in a succession war at the Indian Express. The anti-Jaitley contingent believes the relationship goes deeper, pointing to Jaitley’s defense of Chidambaram in a 1997 corruption case filed by Swamy. Last year, after Kishwar made some of the allegations against Chidambaram and NDTV on the website of Manushi, a trust she runs, NDTV filed a defamation case against her. Gurumurthy impleaded himself in the case, and Jethmalani has represented Kishwar in court. KPS Gill, the former director general of police in Punjab and a security advisor to Modi after the 2002 riots, also threw his weight behind the group. In a letter to Jaitley, he argued that the finance minister ought to order a special investigation into the case involving Chidambaram and NDTV and to recuse himself from involvement in it due to his previous legal support for both these parties. In other instances, as Gill pointed out, Jaitley has removed himself from situations in which his work as a lawyer migh compromise his judgment as a politician. In 2006, arguing on behalf of Sushil Modi, then the BJP’s leader of the opposition in Bihar, in a defamation case, Jaitley said that “in performing his duties and obligations, the leader of opposition is supposed to take into account not only what he is today but what he hopes to be tomorrow.” Three years later, as the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, he seemed to have few such compunctions. The industry magazine TelecomLive raised one example of this in a 2012 cover story that explored Jaitley’s position, while leader of the opposition, on the telecom company Vodafone. While Murli Manohar Joshi, the finance minister Yashwant Sinha and Sushma Swaraj, the leader

Proposed (Pull Quote)

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Conclusion 46

Published (Colour)

the caravan

theSabha, south.supported You have travelled so much. of the opposition in the Lok You know that discrimination is everyan amendment in the income-tax law that could where,” he said. “But socialists function force Vodafone to pay as much as R20,000 crore without discrimination.” in retroactive taxes, Jaitley and Piyush Goyalwas first elected to When Akhilesh parliament, his Samajwadi vehemently opposed it in the upper house. Citing colleague in the lower house was the fact that Jaitley had appeared five times onhis distant neighbour from Chambal, Phoolan Devi. behalf of Vodafone in the Delhi High Court in 2008 He said he had no personal memory of and 2009, TelecomLive alleged that “Analjit Singh, Chambal’s caste wars. “I studied in a the present chairman of Vodafone Limited ChristianEssar school, and then a military school, where there were (VEL) has a good relationship with Mr Jaitley. He no such divisaid. has been lobbying with Mrsions,” Jaitleyhefor hisOutsiders strong were always more scared by the thought of dacoitry back up support...” than those who lived with it, he said. In 2014, when Jaitley became finance “Thosethe rivalries were because of land minister, the case was stillissues. unresolved, andhave he did You must seen the movie, Paan Singh Tomar?”—the recuse himself, deputing his ministerial authority hit 2012 biopic of a National Games-winning runin the matter. “I stopped practicing as a lawyer ner compelled to turn dacoit when he with effect from 2nd June, 2009,” he wrote on his returned home to the Chambal valley. Facebook page.“Prior to that,HeI had been paused forconsulted a moment. “But now I in the matter by the company various taxation haveon made a lion safari there,” he said withitaappropriate smile, referring issues. I therefore considered not to the project he inaugurated in 2012 in a forest close to deal with the matter as a Minister.” the National Chambal Sanctuary. “InLike many politicians, Jaitley sees little conflict stead of dacoits, lions will roam around of interest between his professional his there. It is actions—in a big project, in 3,000 acres. case as legal counsel to some of the country’s most Times have changed.” approached the question of the powerful private companiesIand individuals—and Muzaffarnagar violence his legislative and executive roles. In 2005, while from a different tack. Was it now true, I asked, that he was a member of parliament from Gujarat, Jaitthe party practised strategic, opporley defended the stockbroker Ketan Parekh against tunistic secularism, evident even in its charges of defrauding Madhavpura Mercantile approach to rival parties? The Samajwadis had made major objections to Cooperative Bank in the state of R840 crore.noJaitley thinly-veiled electoral speeches about got Parekh out of jail on bail (he was later convict“honour” and “defence” that the BJP ed). Angry depositors demanded Jaitley’s resignaleader Amit Shah had made during the tion, and some senior BJP2014 leaders complained campaign. Yet itto blocked AsadudAdvani, who was also an MP theleader state. Jaitley dinfrom Owaisi, of the fast-growing All Indiaforbade Majlis-e-Ittihadul Muslitold the media that legal propriety him meen, visiting violence-affected from speaking on the matter. In afrom scathing critique, areas in western Uttar Pradesh. Perthe business journalist Sucheta Dalal wrote, “Loghaps the party feared that its Muslim ically, politically and ethically, it would haveshift beenallegiance to supporters would more fitting if Mr. Jaitley’sthe services available MIM, were I suggested. “The local administration took a While call on the issues free (pro bono) to the depositors of MMCB.” of law anditorder regarding Jaitley’s position was legally sound, raised seri- his visit,” Akhilesh said. “We don’t play any role ous questions about his commitment, as a public in it.” representative, to the public good. 52

in january, the former cricketer Bishan Singh Bedi and others wrote a complaint to Narendra Modi about his finance minister. Jaitley had “misused his position as Leader of Opposition to prevail upon various ministries to spare DDCA of punitive action,” they wrote, referring to the Delhi and District Cricket Association. “Mr Jaitley is

A person who left the Samajwadi Party shortly after the Muzaffarnagar violence told me that the Yadav-Muslim alliance had begun to witness fissures. “Mulayam was known as Mullah Mulayam,” he said. “Akhilesh will be known as Yadav bhaiya.” According to him, the state’s mixed population posed a problem to the BJP, which had played a deeply divisive political game to make inroads here. “That is why BJP makes all incidents of disagreements into a communal issue,” he said. This answer did not take into account the fact that riots and communal violence almost always occur because of failures or abdications of responsibility from state machinery. “The Muzaffarnagar conversation is over,” he said. “The state has helped in whatever way it could.”

documents state that the outcome was 60 deaths, seven alleged rapes and 40,000 displaced people. In a public interest litigation filed by a victim of the violence, Mohammed Haroon and others in the Supreme Court, the number of deaths is pegged at over 200. The figures may well vary; bodies of those killed in the violence were being found months after it was all over. According to a union home ministry report released at the end of September 2013, 247 communal riots had taken place in Uttar Pradesh already that year, compared to 118 in all of 2012. The BJP’s election plank consisted, in part, of sympathy for the Jat community, whose members stood accused of rioting and were up for legal action. It was a strategy that brought the party unprecedented success; it won 71 of the state’s 80 seats, a huge leap over its previous tally of 10. The Samajwadi Party won only five seats, and the BSP none at all. For the first time in the history of independent India, Uttar Pradesh did not send a single Muslim MP to the lower house. A person who left the Samajwadi Party shortly after the Muzaffarnagar violence told me that the Yadav-Muslim alliance had begun to witness fissures. “Mulayam was known as Mullah Mulayam,” he said. “Akhilesh will be known as Yadav bhaiya.” But in spite of widespread discontent over the increasing religious violence, Uttar Pradesh’s influential Muslim leaders may still see the party of Mulayam Singh as their best bet.

Published (Pull Quote)

“it is not that the cm office did not know that large-scale violence was brewing in West UP,” one of the chief minister’s aides told me when we met in April this year. “It was the indecision.” One reason for this may have been the dissatisfaction the government had incurred for a law and order decision it had taken just weeks prior to the mahapanchayat. In late August, 1,698 activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad were arrested from across the state for flouting a state government ban on their activities. Those arrested included high-level VHP leaders, such as Ashok Singhal, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das and Praveen Togadia, who had managed to reach Ayodhya in spite of the ban. The incident had been messy for the government. “The CM office did not want a similar situation by banning the mahapanchayat,” said a bureaucrat attached to the office. Figures of the toll of the Muzaffarnagar violence vary widely. Official THE CARAVAN

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EVERYBODY’S BROTHER

reportage

How Arun Jaitley wins friends and influences people · Cover Story PRAVEEN DONTHI

opposite page: Jaitley in his early years, built his career as a powerful lawyer. BCCL

the caravan

Akhilesh Yadav in the family business COVER STORY / POLITICS NEHA DIXIT

two years ago, on the morning of 6 September, Anita Singh, principal secretary to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, was informed that thousands of people from the neighbouring states of Haryana and Delhi were gathering at Kawal village in Muzaffarnagar district. A “Jat Mahapanchayat,” a large-scale political meeting of the region’s Hindu Jats, was scheduled to take place the following day, curdling an atmosphere already soured by threats and suspicion. Some days earlier, two young Jat men and a Muslim youth had allegedly been murdered in an altercation; rumours had circulated of the latter harassing a young Hindu woman. A number of Jat-affiliated outfits had responded by organising the mahapanchayat, with the involvement and encouragement of the local cadre of the Bharatiya Janata Party. All this had divided local Hindus and Muslims, and the regional authorities were on edge, anticipating violence. Orders prohibiting assembly under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code were in force. The men occupying the posts of senior superintendent of police, and district magistrate, had been transferred out twice in the last fortnight. Thousands of police and paramilitary personnel were mobilised in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts to maintain the state’s control over a potentially inflammatory situation. An additional director-general of police, Arun Kumar, had come west from Lucknow to keep an eye on the proceedings. Yet instructions to actually stop the mahapanchayat never arrived from the secretariat. On this day, Uttar Pradesh’s youngest-ever chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, was in Delhi to inaugurate the new headquarters of the information technology body NASSCOM. The offices had been set up in Noida, the part of the National Capital Region that falls under his governance, but he was presiding over the ceremony from the Taj Mansingh hotel in central Delhi. Since assuming office in 2012, Yadav had inaugurated several major Noida projects remotely, usually from Lucknow. Many speculated that this was because of persistent stories about the “Noida jinx”—a political superstition that no chief minister of Uttar Pradesh april 2015

courtesy samajwadi party

TALK OF THE TOWN

above: Akhilesh Yadav, a twoterm member of parliament, became one of the faces of the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh in 2008, when he led a student campaign against the Mayawati government.

who visited Noida got to keep his or her seat in the following election. It had created some bad press for Yadav. Journalists covering the inauguration wanted to know whether Yadav, a tech-savvy environment engineer who went about distributing laptops to his state’s students, was falling prey to baseless belief. A reporter asked him why a young and modern chief minister was scared of Noida. Yadav, smiling, delivered a riposte in Hindi: “Because you guys live there.” The Noida jinx preoccupies the “pancham tal,” or fifth floor, of the Uttar Pradesh secretariat in Lucknow, where the chief minister’s offices are located. For at least 20 years now, every man in the post has considered a visit to Noida as a bad omen for their career: anyone who visited, it was said, would not get another term in office. This had happened to Narayan

SEPTEMBER 2015

THE CARAVAN

Proposed (Cover Story Opener)

Published (Cover Story Opener)

Proposed (Photo Essay)

Published (Photo Essay)

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Dutt Tiwari, Veer Bahadur Singh, and Rajnath Singh. Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh’s father, went to Noida during one of his terms, failed to be re-elected, and did not repeat the trip when he regained power. Akhilesh’s predecessor, Mayawati, tried to break the jinx in the last few months of her tenure, but was taken to have failed when she lost the assembly elections in 2012. In his keynote address at the NASSCOM inauguration, Yadav talked of Uttar Pradesh’s progress in the information technology sector, and his Samajwadi Party government’s scheme for distributing laptops to citizens. They were now planning to set up a cyber-security lab at the NASSCOM headquarters. “We have spruced up the police control rooms to check the law and order situation in the state,” Yadav said.

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Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

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11 LEARNING AND REFLECTIONS

As far as my experience as a designer/ design student goes, this project marked a lot of ‘firsts’. It was the first time I was designing a magazine. First time I was going to work on a single design brief for six months. My first time at a publication house and also my first time working in the absence of close guidance. The industry is a scary place. But only as long as you are not prepared. If this project has taught me anything it is — to believe in myself and take a leap of faith. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t intimidated at first, by the mammoth task of redesigning a national monthly magazine within four months. The day I registered my project at NID and said my goodbyes to my guide, Tarun, I was as nervous as a four-year-old on the first day of kindergarten. I was stepping into the unknown and I had no idea what to expect.

This document would be incomplete without reflecting on these lessons and experiences. This last and final chapter is dedicated to everything that I took away from the project. Any real time experience is seldom a straight path from one end to another. Naturally, this project too was a result of multiple factors adding up together. It contributed to my growth both, personally and professionally. I will be discussing these separately in the upcoming sections. As I was working from home for the majority of the project, I had to figure out a way to find constant information and motivation. I stumbled upon some gems while on this quest and the concluding spread of this section will be talking about those resources. I feel that students who might pick up my document to read will especially benefit a lot from that resource list.

“Faith, Conviction, Love, Commitment. All the best for your dip”, Tarun wrote on the first page of a notebook that was my good luck present. These four commandments took me farther in my journey of this project than I could have imagined at the time. Life wasn’t particularly kind during these six months. It was not a smooth sailing project. While I was living it, everyday was a struggle. Now that it is over, in retrospect everyday brought with itself a dozen unimaginable and invaluable lessons to learn.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

ABOUT DESIGNING A MAGAZINE

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Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

READ THE CONTENT

ACCEPT THE LIMITATIONS OF DESIGN

PERSONALITY IS THE BIGGEST CUE

MOVE BEYOND A TEMPLATE

Familiarizing yourself with the content is the most important activity in a magazine design project. The success of the design outcome heavily depends on how well the designer knows the content that he/she is designing. I was not a regular reader of The Caravan when I started the project but I was familiar with their writing. On several occasions I was tempted to skip the reading and plunge straight into the visual domain. I learned my lesson the hard way. Any design that was done without reading was dry and lacked soul. But even while reading the content, one must do it like a designer and not like a casual reader. In a long form journalism magazine, it is easy to get carried away in the beauty of story-telling but what was needed was to absorb, understand and respect the work of the writer.

This might sound harsh but the truth is better said than ignored. Personally this was the hardest lesson to digest. As a design student I was interested in flaunting my skill and creating visual masterpieces. But a magazine is not about the designer, it is about the reader. The content is the star of a publication. The role of design is to show off that content and not itself. At The Caravan, the design team had no control over what was being written. The sooner I accepted what design was allowed to do, the easier it was to focus on doing that job well. I also feel that such a situation demands a higher degree of design acumen; to be subtle with your design while still making a statement is a tricky task.

People today, use brands to define themselves. They use what the brands stands for, to add something to what they want to say about themselves. These subtle cues are hidden in what they wear, what they eat, where they go and what they read! Therefore, the first thing to consider is who the magazine is for and why is the reader interested in building that association with the title. The personality of its readers is reflected in that of the publication and vice versa. To be aware of the kind of personality that the editors want to project and the reader wants to associate with can be a key guiding factor for the designer.

The biggest challenge while designing a magazine is to achieve diversity within unity. A magazine is a repeated conversation between the readers and the contributors and to keep the reader interested in it each month, every issue must be new but the same. The structure that design provides to the content must be solid enough for the readers to feel guided by the editorial viewpoint and yet flexible enough to allow for non-linear browsing. Sticking to a rigid template makes the content look monotonous and uninspiring. Each page of the magazine must communicate the effort that went behind bringing it to the reader and for this, building a design structure that responds to the changing needs of the content is vital.

Leraning and Reflections

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DON’T SETTLE

TALK TO THE EDITORS. A LOT!

CREATE MULTIPLE ENTRY POINTS

IMAGES ARE POWERFUL

Creative output is unpredictable and may not always be directly proportional to the number of hours invested. On a good day, the first thing you design may be the one that gets approved and on another, even a hundred explorations may not take you to the destination. But to get lazy and settle for what does not feel right in your heart may be fatal for the project. People will only have faith in your design only if you have conviction in it to begin with. The trick is to keep pushing the envelop of personal limits until you know you have hit gold. Explore! Explore! Explore more!

Unlike a typical academic project, most real time ventures are a result of a collaboration between various teams. For the benefit of the project it is important to keep everybody in the loop and keep all channels of communication open. In a redesign project it is important to understand the problems of the past as well as the vision for the future. Talking to the editors and understanding why they want the change, what are their day-to-day struggles and what they are trying to achieve, can result in a design proposal that is inclusive in nature. Ultimately, a good design is something that not only adds visual value to the publication but also puts systems in place that help the teams in the way they work.

People only read word-by-word when they are really interested in the content. The usual tendency is to skim the pages looking for highlighted keywords, meaningful headings and short paragraphs that catch their attention or match the reason they picked up the magazine in the first place. Design should work around this reality and must offer multiple entry points to readers allowing them to start reading anywhere they pick up from. This can be particularly tricky for a long-form journalism magazine like The Caravan but necessary nonetheless, since it is unrealistic to expect every reader to read a 20 page long story from beginning to end. Offering small nuggets of information that are easy to access and absorb goes a long way in tapping a casual reader.

They say, a picture says a thousand words. Nothing could be more true. Not only is a single picture capable of communicating way more than a hundred words, it also communicates much faster than written content does. Images are the most important anchor points on the page and the first thing that meets the eye of a reader while flipping through the pages of a magazine. The kind of photography that a magazine invests in goes a long way in defining the visual personality associated with it. But sometimes, given the nature of content, the designer may not have great images to work with. At such a time the design must be smart enough to compensate for poor imagery.

Pupul Bisht · UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015

ABOUT WORKING ON MY OWN

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Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

PLAN AHEAD!

EDUCATE YOURSELF

EXERCISE

HAVE FAITH IN YOUR JUDGMENT

Physical separation from your co-workers can affect your work process in more than one ways. When I came on board I had no idea I was going to be working on my own for the majority of the duration of this project. I am not great with time management which meant that in the initial phase of the project I struggled a lot to keep the pace on track. However, I soon realized that sharing a virtual work space with my mentor meant that a lot of time was wasted in waiting for response to emails and text messages. Few weeks into the project I began working on many aspects of the redesign simultaneously. This improved my work efficiency as whenever I was awaiting feedback on one thing, I could still make progress in the other rather than being in a total deadlock.

When you work at a studio, there are many people around you at all times, some with greater experience and some with different stories to tell, all of whom contribute to your process and learning. Unfortunately, while working on your own, the only person to look for inspiration to, is yourself. But we are lucky to be living in the information age and the internet is a great source of information. Not just design blogs and TED talks but instagram accounts of design studios and individual designers can be a great fix for the daily need for visual stimulation as well. Reading design theory and ebooks on publication design was another good source of self-learning.

When you are formally required to do on something for a long period of time, it is easy to loose touch with the rest of the world. One of the dangers of working from home is that, you end up staying indoors for days at end without realizing. Needless to say a routine like this for a prolonged time is extremely unhealthy and would sooner or later lead to counter-productivity. I found it particularly helpful to tie myself down to a daily habit and make it a point to never miss it. Exercising everyday was not only a stress buster but also helped me maintain better focus on work.

At a studio, the responsibility for the quality of output and that of meeting the deadline is collectively shouldered by the entire team. In a freelance situation the onus is solely on your shoulders. A major disadvantage of working on your own is that you cannot readily bounce ideas off people. Up until this project, I always relied on feedback from batch mates or teachers to judge the worth of my designs. But this project taught me how to test and judge the credibility of my own creative output. Instead of relying completely on external help, it is perhaps healthier for design students to develop an eye for quality control earlier on in their academic and professional lives.

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START EARLY

TAKE THE SUNDAY OFF

One habit that becomes a part of your lifestyle at design school is that of burning the midnight oil. While it is natural to pull all-nighters on certain specifically hectic days, shifting your general body clock to the second half of the day may not be viable in a professional situation. Inability to align my work schedule to office hours would commonly result in a loss of several valuable hours of interaction with the rest of the team. As a result it became imperative for me to start my days early.

One of the most common issues with working at home is ‘over working’. In the absence of a structured daily time line, it is easy to neglect boundaries and let work take over all your other commitments. In the long run, however, mental and physical exhaustion tend to take over, pushing you to a situation of a burn out. In order to avoid getting to a point of no return, anyone working from home must clearly define work time and off-time and try to stick to it as much as possible. In my case, I tried to make sure that I take at least one day off in the week. Indulging in unrelated activities on that day also opened up my mind and often presented some unexpected sources of inspiration.

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INVALUABLE FINDS & RESOURCES

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TALK: MORE PERFECT TYPOGRAPHY by Tim Brown In this insightful talk, by type designer Tim Brown can serve as a solid starting point for any project that may heavily depend on usage of typography. Although, being a typekit developer for Adobe, his area of focus remains ‘typography for web’, the fundamental approach to the process of informed and conscious type decisions discussed in this video can be very helpful for designer working on other platforms as well. Additionally visit his website www.modularscale.com, which is a handy tool for calculating complex typographic modular scales.

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Leraning and Reflections

BOOK: MAKING AND BREAKING THE GRID by Timothy Samara

INSTAGRAM: COVER JUNKIE by Steven Watson

Making and Breaking the Grid is a comprehensive layout design workshop that assumes that in order to effectively break the rules of grid-based design, one must first understand those rules and see them applies to real-world projects. This book is a great resource for young and aspiring publication designers like me who are still in the process of warming up to the medium.

As the name suggests ‘coverjunkie’ Jaap Biemans, who also works as art director for Volkskrant Magazine, is addicted to magazine cover design and created this account/website to spread this love. Through an eclectic feed that is updated daily, cover junky highlights some of the most impactful cover designs from around the world. His blog is a brilliant documentation of the contemporary visual culture reflected through magazine design.

WEB CHANNEL: TWO-MINUTE MAGAZINES by Steven Watson Two-minute magazine reviews on Vimeo by Steven Watson served as the only accessible source to off-beat magazines from all over the world. Getting your hands on these publications while sitting in India can be hard and expensive. In his reviews, Steven, passionately and meticulously discusses the nuances of design and writing of any one new magazine every month. He also runs a website called Stack Magazines, which curates a fresh set of magazines and surprises it subscribers by delivering a random title to them at the start of every month.

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WEBSITE: THINKING WITH TYPE by Ellen Lupton If there is one book on typography that everyone must read, it is Thinking With Type. The book comprises of three main sections, namely, Letter, Grid and Text. It is well structured and does not bombard the reader with type-speak. Every new term is defined and illustrated in a no-nonsense way. For those like me, who may not be in possession of the book, there’s a complimentary Thinking With Type website that hosts some amazing tools for teachers and several short exercises.

WEBSITE: MAGAZINE DESIGNING by Nikola Mileta

TALK: YOUR ELUSIVE CREATIVE GENIUS by Elizabeth Gilbert

Magazine designer Nikola Mileta who was formerly the art director of the Croatian edition of the National Geographic Magazine, created Magazine Designing website to share her vast knowledge of the field with first timers. The website covers all aspects of magazine creation. From the design related topics, to print, editorial, production, digital publishing and even marketing topics. They interview art directors around the world, present beautiful magazines and bring the news about what is going on, with the hope of helping someone just entering the business

One of the greatest TED Talks of all time, this talk on ‘Where does creativity come from?’ by ‘Eat Pray Love’ author Elizabeth Gilbert is a must for all creative professionals. Gilbert’s assertion that we use concepts like “genius” and “muse” to shield ourselves from the results of our own work is easy to identify with for anyone in the ‘creative’ field, bringing into question some of our most fundamental assumptions about creativity. Although this talk discusses nothing about magazines or graphic design, on days when I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of the task at hand, listening to her made me feel reassured and inspired.

WEBSITE: FONTS IN USE sponsored by Font Bureau Fonts In Use is a public archive of typography indexed by typeface, format, and industry. It documents and examines graphic design with the goal of improving typographic literacy and appreciation. The website also allows users to contribute to the collection which makes it a large and diverse resource bank. In the early stages of type selection, this website can be useful for looking at good examples of well resolved typography in use.

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References

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PRINT Cowley, Jason. New Statesman. London: Progressive Media International, 2014 Walker, Ronald. Magazine Design: Hands on Guide. : Pira International, 1992 Crowe, Dan. Port. London: Dan Crowe, Kuchar Swara, Matt Willey, 2013

Chase, Matt. “Escapades: The Take off Issue”. Chasematt Journal. 27 April 2015. <http://chasemattjournal.tumblr.com/post/79867342423/last-fall-i-was-contacted-by-a-publishing-company> “Critical Dialogues”. Gridness. 27 April 2015. < http://gridness.net > Daniels, Steve. “Printworthy: How we redesigned Makeshift to merit its medium”. Medium. 13 May 2015. < https://medium.com/re-form/printworthy-7a4d672261a6 >

Fletcher, Alan. The Art of Looking Sideways. London: Phaidon, 2001 Mathew, Philip. The Week. India: Malayala Manorama Press, 2015

Losowsky, Andrew. “Magazine designer’s guide to magazines”. Stack: Magazines that Work. < http:// www.stackmagazines.com/uncategorized/magazine-designer-guide/>

Prasad, Krishna. Outlook. India: Outlook Publishing, 2015

“Magazine Structure”. Magazine Designing. < http://www.magazinedesigning.com>

Prasannarajan, S. Open. India: Open Media Network, 2015

Sexton, Annie. “Seeking Simplicity” ISSUU. < http://issuu.com/anniesexton/docs/seeking_simplicity_ book_sexton_issu_9ed4cd08d61ca3/1?e=10390589/10913091>

Purie, Arun. India Today. India: India Today Group, 2015 “Typography Cheatsheet”. Typewolfe. < https://www.typewolf.com/cheatsheet> Samara, Timothy. Making and Breaking the Grid: A Layout Design Workshop. USA: Rockport Publishers Inc. 2002 Saville, Laurel. 100 Habits of Successful Publication Designers: Insider Secrets for Working Smart and Staying Creative. USA: Rockport Publishers Inc. 2008

“Various Types Of Magazines”. Blessed Digital. 10 May 2015. < http://blesseddigitaltt.org/ web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=81:various-types-of-magazines&catid=38:magazines&Itemid=60 >

Stossel, Scott. The Atlantic Magazine. The Atlantic Monthly Group. USA, 2012

DIPLOMA DOCUMENTS

WEB

Halankar, Akash. Redesigning a Spiritual Magazine: Osho World. India: National Institute of Design, 2013

Alderson, Rob. “Behind the scenes of The New York Times Magazine redesign”. It’s Nice That. 20 February 2015. < http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/behind-the-scenes-of-the-new-yorktimes-magazine-redesign> Beirut, Michel. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Typeface”. Design Observer. < http://designobserver. com/feature/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-typeface/5497>

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Glossary

A Audit Auditing refers to a systematic and independent examination of material to ascertain a value for it and to present a true and fair view of the concern.

Colour Palette

Editorial Design

A set of a specified range of colours that are used in an artwork or design.

The practice or profession of designing print or electronic forms of visual information, as for an advertisement, publication, or website.

Justified Text

Drop Cap

A drop cap is a large capital letter at the beginning of a text block that has the depth of two or more lines of regular text. It is usually used as a stylistic element to indicate the beginning of a story or section.

BoB An abbreviation for ‘Back of the Book’, it refers to the back section of a magazine.

An imitation of a real or original object, intended to be used as a practical substitute.

Cover-to-Cover Dummy

Redesigning The Caravan Magazine

Flatplan A flatplan is a more than a diagram of thumbnail pages in which each story is represented by the number of pages (thumbs) it consists. Each section is given a specific color which helps the team to get an overview of the tone of the magazine.

Justified text is spaced so the left and right sides of the text block both have a straight edge.

A listing printed in all issues of a newspaper or magazine (usually on the editorial page) that gives the name of the publication and the names of the editorial staff, contributors and the publisher. It may also refer to the head or top of a mast

A left-aligned text block, which has a straight left edge and an uneven right edge.

Also called masthead, flag. the term nameplate refers to the name of a newspaper printed on its front page or of a magazine printed on its cover page.

Lorem Ipsum FoB An abbreviation for ‘Front of the Book’, it refers to the beginning sections of a magazine.

Editor A magazine editor is a senior-level journalist responsible for the planning and execution of issues of consumer and trade magazines. These editors choose the exact content, including written work and photos, the print or Web magazine will publish.

Masthead

Nameplate Left aligned Text

Dummy

E A dummy that involves designing all the sections of a magazine including the front and back cover page and arranging them in the actual sequence of their occurrence. This is done by selecting one visual language and seeing it through for the entire magazine.

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum (derived from Latin dolorem ipsum, translated as “pain itself”) is a filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation.

GTG An abbreviation for ‘good-to-go’, GTG refers to the final edit text file of an article complete with photo captions and pull quotes.

Narrative Journalism Narrative journalism is the interpretation of a story and the way in which the journalist portrays it, be it fictional or non-fictional. In easier words, it tells a story.

Newsroom The area in a newspaper or broadcasting office where news is processed.

Magazine A periodical publication containing articles and illustrations, often on a particular subject or aimed at a particular readership.

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Newsroom

Photo Essay

A stand or stall for the sale of newspapers, magazine and journals.

An account of something told predominantly through photographs, with some accompanying text.

Pre-press

Offset Printing

Jobs and tasks relating to composition, page layout, and other work done on a publication before it is actually printed.

Offset printing is a commonly used technique in which the inked image is transferred (or “offset”) from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface.

Reportage

Visual Language

Factual or journalistic writing intended to give an account of observed or documented events.

Visual language is a form of communication that uses visual elements as opposed to formal written language to convey meaning or an idea.

Printing Press A machine that transfers lettering or images by contact with various forms of inked surface onto paper or similar material fed into it in various ways.

Saddle Stitch A stitch of thread or a wire staple passed through the fold of a magazine or booklet.

Slug Publication Photo Caption A title or explanation for a picture or illustration, especially in a magazine.

An issue of printed or electronic matter, such as a book or magazine, offered for distribution or sale to the public.

A slugline is something that is tagged to the very beginning of a news story to let editors know the basic content of the story.

Web-Fed Web offset is a form of offset printing in which a continuous roll of paper is fed through the printing press. Pages are separated and cut to size after they have been printed.

Well

Photo Editor

Pull Quote

Photo editors often work for a website, newspaper, magazine or book publisher. They’re typically responsible for selecting, editing, positioning and publishing photos to accompany the text of a publication. Photo editors also might supervise staff photographers and give photo assignments.

A brief, attention-catching quotation taken from the main text of an article and used as a subheading or graphic feature.

Tagline A catchphrase or slogan, especially as used in advertising, or the punchline of a joke.

The well is the section of the magazine (generally the middle) that carries the feature and longer pieces. It is generally placed as the central section of a magazine.

Workflow The sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.

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Colophon

Content

Production

Photographs for section openers were shot by Ninaad Kulkarni and Noosheen Mehta with assistance from Pupul Bisht.

This document was created using Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop CS6 on a 15” MacBook Pro bought in 2012. It is printed on 130gsm matt art paper and 100gsm uncoated buff paper, using VCSEL laser printing on Ricoh Pro C651EX machine by Sonal Xerox, Ahmedabad.

The magazine mock-ups used in this document are courtesy of Graphicburger. The total word count for volume 1 & 2 is 41,292, excluding the image captions. Typography The text of this document is set in Gotham, a typeface designed by Tobias Frere Jones. Born in 2000, when men’s fashion magazine GQ commissioned New Yorkbased Hoefler & Frere-Jones to create a new typeface for their publication, the Gotham family is heavily inspired by the no-nonsense lettering of the American vernacular.

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Both volumes collectively weigh 4450 grams. The packaged folder of this document is only 1.195 gigabytes

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Pupul Bisht 路 UG Graphic Design

Graduation Project 2015