Turning the

“Railways Will
Tables p.14 Will for
Phase Out Non-AC Water Hooked to Hemp
Coaches in All Mail, p.12
Express Trains” p.17

Vinod Kumar Yadav,

Chairman & CEO,
Railway Board p.08

www.economictimes.com | New Delhi | 20 pages | `10

October 11-17, 2020

Operation Classroom The incredible story of how

an IPS officer transformed a
network of state-run schools
for marginalised communities
in Telangana into a place
where students routinely
ace elite competitive exams
and excel in sports. On
occasion, they also climb
Mount Everest
p.04-07

BASHA, HYDERABAD
 02 what’s news
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Economic
Recovery Faster
Longer Moratorium Will Hurt Srikant Datar
Named Dean
than Expected:
Keki Mistry
Credit Discipline: RBI to SC of Harvard
Business School

New Delhi: Mortgage lender HDFC
Ltd’s CEO Keki Mistry on Saturday
said the “worst is behind us” and
the economic recovery has been
faster than expected. Stating that
the December
quarter growth
could outperform
t h e ex p a n s i o n
logged in the corre-
sponding quarter a
year ago, Mistry
said the Indian economy has shown
its resiliency. Benign interest rate
regime will continue going forward
and that rates will go up only after
economic activity gathers more
pace and inflation pressure rises,
Mistry, vice-chairman and CEO,
HDFC Ltd, said at an online dia-
logue organised by the All India
Management Association (AIMA).
He, however, said that interest rates
have bottomed out. The govern-
ment should identify the job creat-
ing sectors and address their issues
on priority, AIMA said in a release
quoting him. —PTI
Govt to Freeze
E-Way Bill Path if
Returns Not Filed
New Delhi: E-way bill generation
facility would be restricted in case
taxpayers with turnover of more
than `5 crore fail to file their GSTR-
3B returns, for a consecutive peri-
od of two months. The Goods and
Services Tax Network has issued
notices to taxpayers stating it
would implement this from Octo-
ber 15. “Large non-compliant tax-
payers would be faced with a stop-
page of supply from October 15 as it
is generally seen that on an average
only 60% of taxpayers file tax re-
turns by the due date,” said Rajat
Mohan, senior partner at AMRG
Associates. E-way bill is an elec-
tronic document required during
transportation of goods worth
more than `50,000. — Our Bureau
A
loan moratorium of more than six months
might result in “vitiating the overall credit
discipline”, which would have a “debilitat-
ing impact” on the process of credit creation in
the economy, the Reserve Bank of India has told
the Supreme Court.
In an affidavit filed in the apex court in the loan
moratorium case, the RBI said a long moratorium
period could impact credit behaviour of
borrowers and increase the risks of de-
linquencies after the resumption of
scheduled payments.
In its affidavit, the RBI has
said that any waiver of in-
terest on interest would
entail “significant eco-
nomic costs” which can-
not be absorbed by the
banks without serious
dent of their finances, and
this, in turn, would have huge im-
plications for the depositors and the broader fi-
nancial stability.
It has also said that the apex court’s interim or-
der of September 4, restraining classification of
accounts into non-performing accounts in terms
of the directions issued by the RBI, may kindly be
vacated with immediate effect. “If the stay is not
lifted immediately, it shall have huge implications
for the banking system, apart from undermining
the regulatory mandate of the Reserve Bank of In-
Vedanta Fails in Delisting Effort
Mumbai: Billionaire Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta Resourc-
es on Saturday said that they have failed to garner the
required number of shares to delist Indian subsidiary
Vedanta.
The number of shares validly tendered by
the public shareholders in the delisting offer
was 125.47 crore, less than the minimum
number of shares required to be accepted by
the acquirers in order for the delisting offer
to be successful, the company said in an ex-
change filings.
The promoters would not acquire any
shares tendered by the public shareholders in
Anil Agarwal
the delisting offer and all the shares tendered
would be returned to the respective public sharehold-
ers, it added.
Bankers and promoters on Friday approached mar-
ket regulator Sebi to grant an extension of one day but
Sebi did not grant any extension, according to sources.
dia,” the affidavit said.
The affidavit has been filed before the Supreme New York: Eminent Indian-origin
Court on two petitions seeking an extension of the academician Srikant Datar has
moratorium period and to waive off the interest been named as Dean of Harvard
on the repayment of the loan amount in view of Business School, succeeding Nitin
the Covid-19 pandemic. The matter is slated to Nohria and becoming the second
come up for hearing on October 13. consecutive dean
hailing from India
Centre on Fiscal Policy Decisions to lead the prestig-
In an another development, the Centre has told ious 112-year-old
the Supreme Court that go- institution.
ing any further than the fis- Datar, an alum-
cal policy decisions al- nus of University of
ready taken, such as waiver Bombay and IIM-Ahmedabad, is
of compound interest charged the Arthur Lowes Dickinson Profes-
on loans of up to `2 crore for six sor of Business Administration and
months’ moratorium, might be “detri- the senior associate dean for Uni-
mental” to the overall economic scenario, the versity Affairs at Harvard Business
national economy and banks might not take School. He will assume charge as
“inevitable financial constraints”. the school’s next dean on January 1,
The Finance Ministry, through its additional President Larry Bacow said.
secretary Pankaj Jain, filed an affidavit in compli- Bacow described Datar as an “in-
ance of the top court’s October 5 order asking it to novative educator, a distinguished
place on record the K V Kamath Committee rec- scholar, and a deeply experienced
ommendations on debt restructuring in view of academic leader.” “He is a leading
Covid-19 related stress on various sectors as well thinker about the future of business
as the notifications and circulars issued so far on education, and he has recently
the loan moratorium and financial difficulties. played an essential role in HBS’s
The Centre said that the recommendations of creative response to the challenges
the Kamath Committee have been broadly accept- posed by the pandemic,” Bacow
ed by the RBI. —PTI/New Delhi said. — PTI
Ram Vilas Paswan
Cremated in Patna
In May, the promoters of Vedanta announced a del- Patna: The mortal remains of Union
isting offer at `87.5 per share. In June, through a special Minister Ram Vilas Paswan, a man
resolution by postal ballot, 93.3% of all shareholders for all seasons and one of the tallest
and 84.3% of public shareholders had approved the Dalit leaders, were consigned to
delisting of Vedanta. flames in Patna on Saturday with
Vedanta is the third company to make an full state honours. Bihar Chief Min-
unsuccessful delisting effort in the past two ister Nitish Kumar and Union Minis-
years, after INEOS Styrolution and Linde In- ter Ravi Shankar Prasad were
dia. LIC, which held 6.37% in Vedanta, sub- among the dignitaries at the crema-
mitted all its shares at `320, a 267% premium tion site on the banks of the Ganges
over the floor price of `87.25, upsetting Ve- in the city.
danta’s calculations. The LIC bid price is now A large number of supporters
the discovered price for the reverse book had come to the Digha ghat from his
building process. pocket borough Hajipur, situated
Indian delisting rules require all companies to offer right across the river, which Paswan
to buy shares from public shareholders at a “discov- had nurtured since his Lok Sabha
ered” price through a reverse book building process. debut in 1977 when he won with a
The process requires 90% acceptance from all share- record margin.
holders. —Our Bureau —PTI

US Secretary of State Pompeo Says China Has
Deployed 60,000 Soldiers on Indian Border
Washington: China has deployed tens
of thousands of soldiers on India’s
northern border, Secretary of State
Michael Pompeo said, in further signs
that a deadly military standoff be-
tween the world’s two most populous
countries is far from cooling down.
“The Indians are seeing 60,000 Chi-
nese soldiers on their northern bor-
der,” Pompeo said on Fox News late
Friday. Each of the three major Indo-Pacific
democracies — India, Australia and Japan —
which form the so-called Quad along with the
US, is under threat from the Chinese Commu-
nist Party, Pompeo said, according to a tran-
script released by the US State Department.
Pompeo also criticised China’s response to the
coronavirus pandemic and its telecommuni-
Secretary of State cation infrastructure, and said the country
Michael Pompeo steals intellectual property. —Bloomberg
N Korea Displays New ICBM at Parade
Seoul: North Korea showed off a gigantic new intercontinental ballistic missile Sat-
urday that analysts described as the biggest of its kind in the world, as the nuclear-
armed country defied the coronavirus threat with thousands of maskless troops
taking part in a military parade. The ICBM, carried on a transporter-erector-launch-
er with no fewer than 11 axles, rolled through Kim Il Sung square as leader Kim Jong
Un watched from a rostrum, footage from state broadcaster KCTV showed. Several
analysts described it as the largest road-mobile liquid-fuelled missile anywhere,
with Harry Kazianis of the Center for the National Interest saying it was “much big-
ger and clearly more powerful than anything in the DPRK’s arsenal”. The ICBM was
preceded earlier by the Pukguksong-4a, a new submarine-launched missile that
would add another dimension to Pyongyang’s arsenal, which it says it needs to de-
ter a US invasion. —AFP
 perspective 03
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Wrong TargetAs an instrument of monetary policy, inflation targeting has

outlived its utility. But we like to keep up the pretence

:: TK Arun Especially when policy rates are

W
e Indians indulge in double- no longer the primary means of con-
speak. Everything you see or trolling interest rates or credit avail-
do not see is Brahman, the ability. The RBI has taken to creating
seeming difference is illusion, several lakh crore worth of liquidity
holds Advaita. And yet, Hindus for banks to pass on to industry, de-
have practised caste discrimi- throning interest rates as the price
nation for ages. We are building of credit. The price goes up, in the
socialism, said Independent normal course, when demand goes
India’s early builders, and went up, and falls, when demand falls. By
on to build a domestic capitalist using its ability to create supply of
class. money, the RBI has stripped interest
Doublespeak has entered the rates of their conventional signal-
area of monetary policy as ling power.
well. Inflation targeting has The RBI has also shown its willing-
been a great success, we claim, ness to raise short-term rates and
so let us continue with inflation lower long-term rates by selling
t argeting. Only, inflation short-term government securities
targeting is for the birds — of an and buying long-term securities
By using its ability to create supply of money, the RBI has stripped interest rates of their
archaic vintage, at that. with the money received. The high-
conventional signalling power
Should ordinary people er the price of a bond, the lower the
bother with arcane things like yield on it. When the RBI buys long-
inflation targeting or simply term securities, the demand for
leave these things to technocrats while they get on with paved the way for adoption of inflation targeting in them goes up, raising their price and lowering
their lives? Their lives are shaped by things like India, starts by accepting that “drawing from the their yield. The opposite happens with short-
monetary policy and financial regulation, and if lessons of the global financial crisis, there is a consensus term securities.
ordinary people and their representatives leave policy gathering internationally that monetary policy should In today’s world of globalised finance, fiscal
and regulation altogether to the “experts”, as often move away from its narrow focus on inflation towards a policy, financial regulation and monetary
happens, we end up with things like the global financial multiple target-multiple instrument approach without policy have to work in tandem, to maintain
crisis of 2007–09 that shattered ordinary lives and life swerving from a commitment to price stability over the macroeconomic balance and financial stabili-
expectations. medium term”. Yet, the committee ty. If, for example, a flood of foreign capital
Central banks have sought to opted for inflation targeting, with surges in, strengthening the rupee out of all
pursue multiple goals through their the 2016 Amendment to the RBI Act, proportion to economic fundamentals and
history. The Preamble to the RBI Act saying “the primary objective of making exporters lose competitiveness, it cre-
of 1934 reflects this: “it is expedient monetary policy is to maintain price ates so much liquidity that it alone depresses
to constitute a Reserve Bank for In today’s world of stability while keeping in mind the interest rates and pushes up prices, India
India to regulate the issue of Bank globalised finance, objective of growth”. might need not just higher interest rates but
notes and keeping of reserves with a also some capital controls on inflows.
view to securing monetary stability
fiscal policy, financial i nGrowth and financial stability are
creasingly recognised as Given all this, why continue with the pre-
in India and generally, to operate the regulation and eminently valid goals of monetary tence that India’s monetary policy still targets
currency and credit system of the monetary policy policy, along with inflation. The US just inflation? „
country to its advantage”. To its Fed recently announced that it tk.arun@timesgroup.com
advantage is, of course, a huge
have to work in would allow inflation to rise above
umbrella of goals. The US Federal tandem to maintain 2% for some time, to allow growth to
Reserve’s mandate is to pursue both macroeconomic recover and stabilise. During the
price stability and employment.
Early in the 1990s, New Zealand
balance and financial euro crisis, European Central Bank
chairman Mario Draghi made his
began the fashion of limiting the goal stability place in history with the phrase,
of monetary policy to price stability. whatever it takes. He was not
This consciously eschews use of offering to do whatever it takes to
monetary policy to support growth, contain inflation but to save the euro
the exchange rate or capital inflows. and the eurozone.
In any case, central bankers have to In India, a Monetary Policy
contend with the impossible trinity: a fixed exchange Committee of the RBI was set up, as part of the switch to
rate, free capital flows and an independent monetary inflation targeting, with three members drawn from the
policy cannot all coexist. RBI and three members appointed by the government,
to set policy rates. It has been claimed that independent
Multiple Goals policy rate setting by the MPC has led to better
A major problem with inflation targeting has been that anchoring of inflation expectations among economic
it ignores asset price bubbles, whether in the housing agents. In defence of the inflation targeting policy,
market or the equity market. Inflation was under con- Barry Eichengreen said, in an article in ET, that it has
trol when the sub-prime crisis built up and then blew not prevented the RBI from prioritising growth, when
up. warranted. That being the case, why maintain the
The Urjit Patel committee, whose report of 2014 doublespeak?
04 cover story
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Operation Classroom

BASHA, HYDERABAD
RS Praveen
Kumar, 53
Additional Director
General of Police and
Secretary, Telangana
Social & Tribal Welfare
Residential Educational
Institutions Societies

“I believe in
quantum leaps.
I want to see
Mount Everest
climbers in
every village. I
want coding to
be the fourth
language.... I
wanted to do
all this while I
am still in
service. I don’t
want to retire
with regrets”
In an amazing feat of institutional transformation, an IPS officer turned a moribund
network of state-run social welfare schools in Telangana into a place where students
from the most marginalised communities routinely ace competitive exams and
sports, ultimately changing the fortunes of their families. How did he do it?

:: Indulekha Aravind
W
hen Siddartha Nemali’s teacher first told his class
that there was an opportunity for them to go the US
to study for a year, Nemali thought it was a joke. “For-
get dreaming about going abroad, at that point I nev-
er thought I would travel outside Telangana,” Nema-
li recalls, on the phone from Hyderabad one evening.
Those were the boundaries of aspiration set by the
circumstances he was born into. His family, belong-
ing to a Scheduled Caste called Madiga, lived in a
cramped one-room dwelling in Hyderabad, where
his father worked as a bus conductor and his mother
as a domestic help. But spurred on by his teacher,
Nemali gave it a go and was selected to spend 10
months in the US on a youth exchange programme in
2017. Currently, he is a first-year student of political
science at Ashoka University, the elite private univer-
sity based near Delhi. About a week ago, his family
moved into their first proper apartment, thanks to
his elder brother’s first salary, after graduating from
the National Institute of Technology, Agartala, this
year. For the Nemali family, there is little doubt about
what changed its fortune: the Telangana Social Wel-
fare Residential Educational Institutions Society
(TSWREIS), where both the brothers studied.
Stories like the Nemali brothers’ are legion at the
state government-run TSWREIS and its sister organi-
sation, the tribal welfare residential educational in-
stitutes (TTWREIS), which together run close to 400
Path to Top
1967: Born in 1995: Becomes an IPS officer after 2012: On return to India, requests to be
Alampur village in studying veterinary medicine deputed as secretary of AP’s social
Andhra; mother welfare residential educational
2005: As SP, gets Maoists to the
was an agricultural institutions’ society
negotiation table; many
labourer before
surrendered 2013-14: Introduces rock climbing in
becoming a
schools. Two students, Malavath Poorna
teacher; 2011: Gets into the Mason Fellows
grandparents
and Anand Kumar, scale Mount Everest;
Program to do MA in public
at 13 years, Poorna becomes the youngest
were bonded administration at Harvard
girl to summit Everest
labourers University
schools where over 2 lakh chil- Last month, the institutes
dren study. Over the last five saw a record of sorts with 706
years, these residential schools — students clearing the intensely
which provide free education, competitive Joint Entrance
boarding, food and other facili- Exam ( JEE) Mains (qualifying
ties to Class V-XII children from rate of less than 2%), for which
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled parents typically spend lakhs
Tribes in straitened circumstanc- of rupees on private coaching.
es — have been churning out a string of success sto- This included students like Thummanapally Niran-
ries. Their families might be of modest means, but jan, the son of a farmer who doubles up as a mechan-
the children, often first-generation learners, have ic, who made it to the 99th percentile.
been acing competitive exams, setting records in In the JEE Advanced exam (qualifying rate of less
sports and, at least in two instances, summiting than 1%), 42 students got regular seats, another 138
Mount Everest. have got preparatory seats and all 706 have secured a

Institutes
At A
Glance
What: Telangana
Social Welfare
Residential
Educational
Institutions Society
(TSWREIS) and Telangana
Tribal Welfare Residential
Educational Institutions
Society (TTWREIS)
Beneficiaries: The government-run
residential institutes give free
education to SC and ST children from
Class V-XII; parents’ income must be
below `1.5 lakh (rural) and `2 lakh
(urban)
Hard life: Many children are first-
generation learners in their families that
are often struggling to make ends meet
No. of TSWREIS institutes: 268
(includes 30 degree colleges for women)
No. of TSWREIS students: 1,50,000
No. of TTWREIS institutes: 179
(includes 22 degree colleges)
No. of TTWREIS students: 1 lakh
2016: Impressed by schools’ 2018: Govt gives nod for 25 more
performance under Kumar, centres of excellence to prep
Telangana CM KCR raises students for competitive exams;
outlay for social welfare and Kumar introduces extensive summer
tribal welfare institutes from activities, including horse riding,
Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,378 crore; filmmaking, aerospace camps
gives nod to set up 30 degree
2019: For the first time, 506 students
colleges for women under
from social welfare and tribal
Social Welfare Residential
welfare schools crack JEE Mains
Educational Institutions Society
future that will lift their families out of pov-
erty. “This is just a humble beginning. I ex-
pect close to 100 seats in the NEET (National
Eligibility cum Entrance Test, a common
qualifying exam for medical colleges) exams.
Imagine, 100 of the poorest of the poor, going
to medical colleges,” says RS Praveen Kumar,
an IPS officer who heads TSWREIS and
TTWREIS as its secretary, and the person
widely credited for leading the remarkable
turnaround of the institutes, with what he
says has been unstinting support from the
state government.
It is an extraordinary story of institutional
transformation, made all
the more powerful by Kumar’s
own background — his grandpar-
ents were bonded labourers, and he
himself studied in an early avatar of such
institutions. It is also a case study in what
can be accomplished by state-run insti-
tutions, with the right support and man-
agement.
Born Out of Ideals
It was SR Sankaran, another dynamic bu-
reaucrat, who set up the network of residen-
tial social welfare schools in undivided
Andhra Pradesh in 1984 to provide quality
education for free to the most marginalised.
Two schools were set up in each district. But
over the years, the institutions, which come
under the social welfare and tribal welfare
ministries and are governed as grant-in-aid
societies, began to suffer from neglect. M
Satyanarayana, who joined the social welfare
schools in 1990 as a physics teacher and is
currently a principal, says that in 1996, when
IAS officer DR Garg was secretary, there were
some improvements. “But after his term,
there was insufficient recruitment of teach-
ers and funds, and the system suffered,” says
Satyanarayana.
Nonetheless, some of the branches, like
the Centre of Excellence in Gowlidoddi,
which provided free IIT coaching, produced
the occasional breakout student like Anand
Kumar Kampally, now an engineer in the US.
Kampally’s is the kind of story that brings a
lump to your throat. The son of a daily wage
labourer, who lost his mother to cancer when
he was 10, Kampally had to delay joining the
residential school in Class XI because he
could not scrape together bus fare. He got
admission for computer science engineering
in NIT Patna, but could not afford a laptop till
his final year, when he secured a grant. It was
only once he got recruited by Ericsson that
his life changed. The difference, he says, is
that back then, stories like his were rare.
“When I was in Class XII, there would be 4–5
such stories. But now you read about hun-
dreds getting admission in good colleges and
universities, getting good jobs,” says Kam-
pally, 27, on the phone from Dallas, US,
cover story 05
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
Academic
Triumphs
From 2014-15 to 2018-19
Number of social welfare school
students in
86
IITs:
NITs: 144
where he now lives.
Medical & dental colleges: 168
That difference, say Kampally and those Delhi University: 158
associated with the schools, was ushered in
by Kumar. A 1995-batch IPS officer, credited Azim Premji University: 74
with two mass surrenders of Maoists, among
other milestones, Kumar took the unusual
step in 2012 of requesting then chief minister
Kiran Kumar Reddy that he be posted as sec-
retary of the social welfare residential Investing in
schools’ society. Till then, this had been a
post held by IAS officers and not a coveted Learning
one at that, with terms often lasting just a few Budget for TSWREIS schools
months. The decision was the culmination of
a host of factors. Kumar had just returned `1,711 cr
from a sabbatical at Harvard University
where he completed his Masters in Public Ad- `1,378 cr
ministration. A conversation with his mother
back in his village on the fringes of the Nalla-
mala forest sparked a train of thought that led `500 cr
to the switch. “She showed me the poverty
that was still around. Many of the men were
stone cutters or farm labourers. Many of the
girls got married early. She asked whether
she should feel proud that her son is an IPS
2015-16* 2016-17 2018-19
* before Telangana was created
officer or ashamed that despite her son being
an IPS officer, her neighbours were still living
in poverty. I didn’t have answers,” says Ku-
mar, on an extended video call from his office
in Hyderabad, immaculately dressed in a
Invested
white, full-sleeved shirt, with rimless glasses
and a ready smile.
in Children
Kumar says it was education that helped Per-student education expense is
his own family escape a fate similar to the `54,000 at TSWREIS schools in
other villagers. His maternal grandparents 2017-18, according to Praveen Kumar.
had been bonded labourers in the fields of a Here is a look at the expenses in 8 states
Reddy family in Parumanchala village in Kur- covered by a survey
nool district. As a child, his mother used to
Tamil Nadu `36,168
Maharashtra `25,500
706 students clear
2020: Odisha `21,179
JEE Mains, including, for Himachal Pradesh `59,449
the first time, students from
particularly vulnerable Madhya Pradesh `23,365
tribal groups; 42 clear
make it to IIT, 138 qualify West Bengal `15,015
for preparatory IIT *
Bihar `9,573
(*one year preparatory course for SC/
Rajasthan `30,865
ST students, after which they will be
admitted to an IIT)
Source: State Education Finances -
Accountability Initiative & Centre
for Policy Reach
work in the fields. One day, two teachers ap-
proached his grandfather and told him they
would take her to school. Kumar’s grandfa-
“The schools are a highly
ther had three brothers. In the entire family,
his mother was the only child who ended up successful model of giving
going to school. She went on to become a quality education for
school teacher and later, a principal. students of SC families;
When he used to go with his mother the CM has thus increased
to her village during the summer the number of schools
holidays, Kumar recalls that they and the required
could only fetch water before
infrastructure”
sunrise or after sunset. “I asked
my mother why that was so, and Koppula Eshwar, Minister,
she said the villagers won’t allow SC Development, Telangana
06
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
it during the day. Mind you, by then my
mother was already working as a teacher,”
he says. He also saw his relatives and neigh-
bours sit on the ground, while the local
landlord always sat on an elevated plat-
form. He emphasises that he does not re-
member these incidents to seek self-pity or
get trapped in a victimhood mentality. “I
want to use them as reference points to pre-
vent thousands of others from being in the
same situation. It is something I’m passion-
ate about.”
His father, too, was a teacher. Growing
up, Kumar himself enrolled in the social
welfare hostels, which preceded the
schools. He decided the time to give back to
his alma mater and to society was now, not
after his retirement.
His appointment was initially met with
stiff resistance from the school teachers,
who went on strike. “He was from IPS back-
ground. We wondered how he would treat
us, coming with a revolver,” Ambadapudi
Sharada, a biology teacher at the time, re-
members with a chuckle. Kumar had to as-
sure them that he was not there to police
them. “I went to the hostels and told them,
I belong to a Scheduled Caste, both my par-
ents were teachers and I studied in social
welfare hostels. I said I wanted to repay my
debt to the institute which is responsible for
whatever I am today. They reluctantly with-
drew their protest,” he says.
The first six months in the new job were
spent visiting schools across what was then
undivided Andhra. “I covered about 100
schools. I spoke to teachers, students, par-
ents and many of the alumni. What I saw
was that students had a lot of aspiration and
energy but were looking for opportunities
— someone to liberate them from comatose
classrooms where they are treated as emp-
ty minds,” he says. But solving that was not
easy, since it involved changing entrenched
systems, mindsets and behaviours.
To help him, Kumar assembled a new
team, with people like academic coordina-
tor George Varkey, who had spent two dec-
ades in private schools and had been a dean
of a group of schools in 2013, when they first
met. “A week after he met me at a pro-
gramme, he called and asked if I would join
him. I said yes, excited at the opportunity,”
says Varkey, who can speak passionately
about the schools for hours. They began by
trying out training programmes for teach-
ers. “But we found that the teachers were
not able to connect with the students and the
training was not percolating down,” he says.
Though the schools were nominally English
medium, many of the teachers could speak
only in Telugu. So the team shifted their fo-
To improve body language, students are
encouraged to practice talking in front of
mirrors in common areas
cover story
Giving
Students Wings
Centres of Excellence
Starting with two, today there are
27 Centres of Excellence run by
the social welfare society. These
give free specialised coaching for
students in Class XI and XII to
prepare them for competitive
exams like JEE and NEET
Freedom Schools
Set up with the idea to free the
children from inhibitions, these
are 87 schools where children
have freedom to decide their
course of study, take part in
school administration and teach
themselves under teachers’
broad supervision
Super Students
Programme
Students are selected to teach
others across the state via live TV
shows, for which they can win a
prize of `1,500 an hour, often
more than what their parents
earn daily. The money goes into
their bank accounts
Summer Samurais
Summer camps with a host of
activities such as horse riding,
filmmaking and music, among
others. About 70,000 students
attend these camps each year.
College-going women are taught
to drive cars and ride bikes to
empower them
Swaero Movement
Praveen Kumar launched the
movement to help students
become more aspirational. The
term Dalit is not used in the
schools because of the painful
history and experiences
associated with it. Instead, the
suffix “swaero” is used — “sw”
stands for state welfare and
“aero” suggests sky is the limit.
The movement has 10
commandments which includes
“I am not inferior to anyone”
E Plus Activities
To encourage students to improve
their English, considered the
language of emancipation, they
are encouraged to write guided
compositions three times a week.
Subject complexity increases
according to the age. The
programme has evolved
over the years
TSWREIS student Sachin Bethamalla is a silver medallist at the 2016 India International Regatta
cus to empowering stu-
dents, from introducing
basic English guided
compositions to a host of
extracurricular activi-
ties. The society also be-
gan partnering with ex-
ternal organisations, to
train faculty and improve
students’ English com-
munication skills.
English, Kumar says, is the language of
emancipation. “Yes, mother tongue is im-
portant, but English is extremely important
for the poorest of the poor, to get into the
core of the economy. Otherwise, they will
always be on the margins,” says the 53-year-
old. No less critical was the focus on extra-
curricular activities. “The easiest way to tap
into the students’ potential was to take
them outdoors, make them feel liberated
and help them express themselves — wheth-
er it is through cinema, theatre or adven-
ture sports.”
Simultaneously, to motivate the teach-
ers, Varkey says steps like a clear pathway to
career progression were introduced,
whereby teachers were monitored, com-
mended and could be selected for posts like
regional coordinator and deputy secretary
of the society. Teachers who were doing
well would receive personal letters of com-
mendation from Kumar and, once a month,
regional coordinators would pick the best
teachers in their jurisdiction for a “Lunch
with the Secretary”. “Dr Praveen made
himself accessible to both students and
teachers,” says Varkey.
While good efforts were rewarded, Ku-
mar gave short shrift to non-performers. GV
Sastry, a retired principal of Kendriya Vidy-
alaya schools who regularly goes on inspec-
tion of the social and tribal welfare schools,
has seen this first-hand. “Once, when I was
inspecting a class, a
teacher was not able to
do division in maths.
He was suspended on
the spot,” says Sastry,
who terms Kumar a
“dynamic individual”
who has overhauled
the system.
The efforts gradually
began bearing fruit.
But it was the year 2014 that became the
springboard for the institutes, thanks to
two major milestones.
That was the year two of the institute’s
students — Malavath Poorna and Anand Ku-
mar — both from historically marginalised
communities and impoverished back-
grounds, achieved the stunning feat of sum-
miting Mount Everest. At 13, Poorna, mem-
ber of a Scheduled Tribe, became the
youngest girl in the world to summit Ever-
est. Kumar became the first Dalit to achieve
the feat. The effect was electric. For stu-
dents of the welfare hostels, it was as if even
the highest peak in the world was now with-
in their reach. The teachers began taking
greater pride in their work, and in the or-
ganisation. “In every organisation’s trajec-
tory, there is a watershed moment. This
was ours — and I will give all the credit to the
two young students,” says Kumar.
It was around the same time that Telanga-
na became a new state, with Kalvakuntla
Chandrashekar Rao as the chief minister.
Impressed by the schools’ performance, Rao
nearly tripled the budget for the institutes.
“The CM said this is the model we have to
invest in for the new state of Telangana, to
improve a generation,” says Kumar. He cred-
its the government’s decision to allow him
stability of tenure and the fact that he never
had to worry about financial resources as the
reasons driving the institutes’ success. “Our
budgets are assured since we are
covered by the Scheduled Caste
and Scheduled Tribe Special De-
velopment Fund, which only
three states are entitled to. For
instance, my budget in 2016–17
was `1,378 crore,” says Kumar.
From 4,000 to 6,000 seats going
empty in united Andhra Pradesh,
Kumar says they now have 1.5
lakh children applying to write
the exam for the 36,000 seats
across schools. “The social wel-
fare residential schools are a high-
ly successful model in terms of
giving quality education for the
 cover story 07
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Success Stories
The Everester
“My life has been transformed. There is before-Everest
Poorna and after-Everest Poorna,” says Malavath Poorna,
who in 2014 became the youngest girl to climb Mount Ev-
erest. She was 13.
The daughter of Adivasi agricultural labourers, who
never went to school, Poorna was picked by the
games teacher at her social welfare school to be
part of a new rock climbing programme launched by
Praveen Kumar after he joined as secretary. She
was then shortlisted for mountaineering
courses in Darjeeling and finally in May
2014, along with fellow student Anand
Kumar, made it to the world’s highest
peak. “I wanted to jump with happiness
but I was too exhausted!” recalls Poor-
na, now 19. She has now completed her
BA, after spending a year in the US as
an exchange student. Having climbed
another six peaks, she has now one
more goal to achieve — become an IPS
officer like her mentor.
Citius, Altius, Fortius
While in Class X, Agasara Nandini faced a tough choice. Her
school, Kendriya Vidyalaya, made it clear to her that if she in-
tended to continue with athletics, she would have to leave. But
Nandini, whose father was working in a tea shop and mother
was a house help, knew where her heart
lay. So she quit the school. With the help
of her coach, Nandini and her father ap-
proached Praveen Kumar, who asked her
to join the nearest welfare school the very
next day. “In the first year after joining
the school, I won eight medals. Now I’m
the fastest athlete in the junior category,”
says Nandini, who bagged a gold medal in
the Khelo India Youth Games in long
jump. “Praveen sir” has been supportive
throughout, whether it be paying for
flight tickets to the competition or giving
cash prizes after every medal win. “I
want to take Praveen sir’s name, Telanga-
na’s name and India’s name to greater
heights,” she adds.
IIT Dreams
If it was Thummanapally Niranjan’s local government school
maths teacher who told him about IITs, it was his English
teacher who told him about the social welfare hostel he need-
ed to join to get into the elite engineering college. “I wrote the
entrance test and got through,” says Niranjan,
whose father is a farmer who occasionally
takes up mechanical jobs and mother does
some tailoring. Their income would not have
been enough for Niranjan to enrol for private
coaching. The Centre of Excellence provides
the same service free. The efforts paid off
when Niranjan, after scoring in the 99th per-
centile in the JEE Mains, secured a seat for
himself in IIT. After completing engineering, he
is gunning for the civil services. He says: “Ini-
tially, I thought of going abroad, earning more
and donating it. But in my second year, I
changed my decision and decided I wa nt to be
a secretary, like Praveen sir.”

students of SC families. The chief minister

feels the same and has increased the num-
ber of schools and has been providing the
required infrastructure in a phased man-
ner,” Koppula Eshwar, Telangana’s minister
for Scheduled Castes Development, told ET
Magazine.
“The schools are a phenomenal example
of how, given good quality of infrastructure
and instruction, you can bridge the gap be-
tween the upper and lower castes. The hos-
tels were earlier considered poor cousins to
others but they said we want to be the best.
They invested heavily in infrastructure,
teachers, teaching aids and those invest-
ments have really paid off,” says R Sub-
rahmanyam, secretary, Union ministry of
social justice and empowerment. The
schools, he says, were the model for the
Centre’s Ekalavya schools for tribal stu-
dents in higher classes. Kumar, he adds,
“has really built it up beautifully. He’s a fan-
tastic person.”
Padma Shri awardee and Hyderabad-
based social activist Sunitha Krishnan, who
says she has observed the children trans-
form over the years into individuals with a
clear idea of what they want, says political
will is crucial to sustain such reforms. “I
would definitely give a lot of credit to the
leadership: to the government, the minister
and the secretary (Kumar),” says Krishnan.
With adequate funds available, infrastruc-
ture has been ramped up, more schools and
colleges opened (including an armed forces
preparatory college for young women), an-
other 25 schools converted to centres of ex-
cellence to train students to clear competi-
tive exams, and a host of activities intro-
duced, from horse riding to teaching college
girls to drive so that “they don’t have to al-
ways be the pillion rider”, says Kumar.
Becoming Swaeros
Among all the changes he has spearhead-
ed, the one closest to Kumar’s heart is per-
haps the Swaero movement, which he pio-
neered in 2013 and jokingly terms “a start-
up in identity.” The “sw” stands for state
welfare and “aero” for air and sky, indicat-
ing limitless possibility. Kumar says it is a
Village
Learning
Circles
For the students of the social and trib-
al welfare residential schools, Cov-
id-19 dealt a heavy blow to learning
continuity. Coming from impover-
ished backgrounds, these students
could not afford to get smartphones,
tablets and laptops needed for virtual
classes. “Even if they had a device,
connectivity was an issue. Girls were
doubly disadvantaged because par-
ents don’t want to give them smart-
phones,” says Praveen Kumar.
To work around this, the institutes
came up with two solutions. The first
was teachers delivering lectures via
the state-run TV network, which Ku-
mar says was reasonably effective.
The second was village learning cir-
cles, where students taught their jun-
iors. “In every village or basti, we
formed groups of 10 students, man-
aged by a senior student or degree
student. The senior student would get
the inputs from a device or occasional
visits from a teacher, and teach the
others.” By September, Kumar says
there were about 27,000 such village
learning circles, where 1.3 lakh stu-
dents were teaching one another.
chance for the students to break away
from the historic trauma of the Dalit iden-
tity. “The oppression of Dalits is always
there, in one form or the other, but what I
gleaned from my conversations is that the
term was also making the children aspire
low. Their minds would not explore what
they were really capable of. That’s how we
started using the word swaero in the
schools instead of Dalit.” He preempts a
question of how a new term by itself would
usher in change. The children, he says, are
also taught 10 commandments to recite,
starting with “I am not inferior to anyone.”
Kumar says, “We thought by making the
children recite and understand these com-
mandments, through the power of auto
suggestion, the children will start believ-
ing it.” While Kumar has added Swaero to
his Twitter handle, others across the state
have even begun legally changing their
name to include the suffix.
Kumar believes marginalised communi-
ties need to liberate themselves, with the
help of those who have already been eman-
cipated. “Those who are leading comforta-
ble lives must come back to the communi-
ties in a big way and pay it back. It has to be
a big movement, not solitary cases, so that
thousands can be freed from ignorance,
poverty and illiteracy. That’s my vision.”
He adds that he’s someone who believes in
quantum leaps. “I don’t believe in linear
progression — it has to be exponential. I
want to see Mount Everest climbers in eve-
ry village,” he says, with a laugh.
Talking about his own experience, Asho-
ka University student Nemali gives a recent
example of why he prefers the term Swae-
ro. “In class, there was a discussion about
Dalit cuisine, and how it has been excluded
from the mainstream. Every time I heard
the word Dalit, I felt marginalised among
the 40 students. But when someone hears
the word Swaero, we think of people who
climbed Everest, who are studying in Lon-
don. It just makes me feel positive.”
After his degree in political science, Ne-
mali says he hopes to become a judge. “I
initially wanted to become a doctor but af-
ter my stint in the US, I became interested
in politics and governance. Now I think if I
become a judge, I can do the right thing —
do my part for democracy.”
Stories like Nemali’s, Poorna’s and hun-
dreds of others seem to be inspiring a gen-
eration of the marginalised. The model is
worthy of being replicated across the coun-
try. Subrahmanyam says a proposal to this
effect has in fact been submitted to the Cen-
tre. The biggest testament to what the insti-
tutes have achieved is, arguably, the change
in public perception. When Kampally, the
engineer in Texas, was a student, he re-
members that his friends used to tell him,
“those schools are only for SCs”. “Now, eve-
ryone wants their children to get into these
schools. And that is incredible,” he says. „
indulekha.aravind@timesgroup.com
08 the interview
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
Vinod Kumar Yadav, Chairman & CEO, Railway Board

Railways Will Phase Out

Non-AC Coaches in All
Mail, Express Trains
L
ast month you were desig- departments and those of the Railways.
nated as the chairman and Now, under the new arrangement, the
le
leeper class is all set to CEO of the Railway Board. chairman of the railway board and four

S
become history in
b Will the change of nomen- other members can be from any depart-
the next few years, clature help in discharging ment. And being the CEO, the chair-
at least in mail and yo duties?
your man’s decision is considered final.
express trains that Ea
Earlier, we had eight departmental
cover a large part heads and all were ex-officio secretar-
h But the Railways is a mammoth organi-
of long-distance rail ies of the Government of India. At
ie sation with over 12 lakh employees.
travel in India. ttimes, departmental interests took How will the restructuring of the board
Indian Railways has precedence which, in turn, impacted
p help when zones and divisions are still
decided to embark on a
dec tthe Railways’ futuristic policies. For aligned department-wise?
new journey. All trains, eexample, if more train sets are to be We are contemplating the restructuring
barring slow-moving
bar mmanufactured (like for Vande Bharat, of zonal and divisional railways along the
passenger
pa ones and lo- which has no separate engine), the
w same line as the Railway Board. Yes, at
cals, will only have air- Railways should ideally take a call
R present, zonal and divisional railways are
conditioned coaches, a move that will bring in to reduce the production of new working on departmental lines. For ex-
comfort but will also make rail travel costlier. llocomotives. But the board ample, there are chief mechanical engi-
According to a new blueprint, the present mmember (traction) will say: ‘No, neers, chief electrical engineers, chief
sleeper class coach with 72 berths will be re- we need more locomotives.’ So,
w commercial managers, etc. Electrical and
placed by a more compact AC coach with 83 there was always scope for conflict
the civil engineering depots have separate
berths. The new coach, built in the Railways’ between the interests of individual
be non-skilled staff. That compartmentalisa-
Kapurthala factory, is currently under trial. tion needs to go. In the Dedicated Freight
This will essentially create a new class of fares, Corridor, we have integrated mainte-
a tad lower than the present AC fares but high- nance depots where we have a common
er than those for sleeper. “Once the mail and pool of non-skilled staff. That’s the way
Railway Board Chairman and CEO Vinod express trains start forward.
Kumar Yadav says the policy change from We are planning to restructure in such
running at 130
sleeper to AC is aligned with the Railways’ a way that every zone will have four dis-
plan to raise the speed of about 1,900 mail
kmph, non-AC tinct verticals — infrastructure, rolling
and express trains to 130 kmph by 2023 in the coaches will create stock, operation and maintenance, and
golden quadrilateral section and then to 160 technical and other finance just as it is on the board now. The
kmph by 2025, which necessitates the jetti- problems because same reforms finally need to go down to
soning of sleeper coaches that could be of wind and dust” the divisions and then to the level of
slowed down by wind and dust during accel- maintenance depots where depot man-
eration. The move, he says, is to make the agers will be empowered.
journey both convenient and safer.
In an interview with Shantanu Nandan
Sharma over two telephone calls, Yadav gives
some of the key highlights of a blueprint that
spells out the need for a massive restructur-
ing of zonal and divisional railways to end de-
partmental silos, the merger of eight existing
production units into two and the upgrade of
in-house capabilities to manufacture high-
speed coaches. He says the process of build-
ing an aluminium-based lightweight train
prototype, which will eventually replace the
rakes being used in Vande Bharat Express,
has already begun at the Modern Coach Fac-
tory in Raebareli.
The Railways first has to overcome the
Covid-19 phase that has so far paralysed its
passenger train businesses. That is not, how-
ever, its main handicap as the passenger
business is a loss-making venture. For the
national transporter, the larger problem
comes from another quarter — its rising pen-
sion bill, which amounted to `49,000 crore
in 2019-20 — 28% of its total expenditure.
“It’s a historical mistake on the part of the In-
SUNEESH K

dian Railways that it did not create a sepa-

rate pension fund (till 2004),” says Yadav.
Edited excerpts from the interview:
Railways in
Numbers
the interview 09
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

67,415
Total route km*,
4th in the world after We often hear about modernisation of the
US, China and Russia railways, but the reality is, a majority of our
(*Route km is the distance between two trains are still running with outdated technol- “Our existing
points on the railway irrespective of the
number of lines connecting them)
ogy and coaches. Any reforms on that front? train sets (of
Our vision is to first increase the speed of our Vande
trains. In the next two years, all mail and ex- Bharat
37,942
Electrified route km
press trains should run at 130 km per hour
(kmph) in the golden quadrilateral section and,
Express) are
good, but
then by 2025, the speed should further rise to
160 kmph.
they
7,321
No. of stations
In that case those trains will have to stop only
at bigger stations from where we will give con-
consume
more
necting trains to other stations. energy”
4.78 lakh hectares
Railway land, of which
Once all mail and express trains start running
at 130 kmph or more, non-AC coaches will cre-
ate technical and other problems because of
0.51 lakh hectares are wind and dust. So, we will gradually phase out
lying vacant all non-AC coaches in about 1,900 mail and ex-
press trains. It’s a big exercise and we will do it Coach Factory (in Raebareli) and should be cos and the other for coaches. We are waiting

12,147
No. of locomotives
in a phased manner. ready by 2022. The aluminium train set will
have less weight, better acceleration and will
for the detailed study report to be submitted by
RITES (a railway PSU).
Won’t that mean a steep rise in railway fare? consume less energy.
Passengers who buy sleeper class tickets will You are building a high-speed train corridor
74,003
No. of coaches
end up buying expensive AC tickets.
We have already built a prototype of a new air-
How good will be the quality of 150 trains
that you are procuring from private players?
between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. What
about the seven new corridors that are being
conditioned coach at our rail factory in Ka- By 2024, we are expecting to double the capac- planned?
purthala. It has 83 berths instead of 72. Pres- ity of high-density and highly used networks We will have seven more corridors: Delhi-Vara-
ently, it is under trial. We plan to start the pro- (about 34,000 km). That will n a s i , M u m b a i - N a g p u r,
duction of such AC coaches from the next fiscal. create enough room to run Ahmedabad-Delhi, Chennai-
As the coach will have more berths, we will be more trains. Against this back- “For the new AC Mysuru, Delhi-Amritsar, Mum-
able to bring down the fare in those coaches de- drop, we have decided to go for coaches, we will bai-Hyderabad, Varanasi-Kolk-
spite those being air-conditioned. So, we will fix a public-private partnership to ata. These could either be high-
the fare somewhere between the present AC get rolling stock worth `30,000
fix the fare speed, meaning over 300
and sleeper class fares. The trains will continue crore from private players. The somewhere kmph or semi high-speed —
to have coaches such as AC-1, 2-tier and 3-tier. private players will pay for us- between the more than 160 kmph. We will
Those fares will remain unchanged. ing our railway infrastructure. present AC 3-tier take the final call on speed
Types of Train The passenger (slow-moving ones) and local And the bidding criterion is, and sleeper class once the feasibility reports are
trains will remain non-AC for the time being, whoever shares the maximum fares” submitted.
Types No. of but we are gradually replacing those with more
Rakes advanced MEMU trains (electric, non-AC trains Many of these new ventures
Rajdhani 43 for short distances). will need money. Because of
Covid-19, your revenues are going down
Shatabdi/Gatiman 24 Last year, the Railways rolled out two indig- while the salary and pension bills are rising.
Vande Bharat 2 enously designed, stylish train sets named How will you arrange more resources?
Vande Bharat Express. Why did Railways Railways earned `1.74 lakh crore last fiscal. This
Duranto 31
stop its production? year, despite the challenges arising out of Cov-
Garib Rath 26 We developed two train sets that are run as id-19, we are targeting to earn about `1.6 lakh
Humsafar 30 Vande Bharat Express. We will procure 44 more crore mainly due to our robust freight earnings.
rakes through public private partnership, ex- We are trying to bring down our expenditure so
Tejas 4 pecting those to be superior in quality and tech- that we don’t make any loss this fiscal.
Antyodaya 16 nology. At the end of the day, the idea is to have Yes, salary and pension are something that
a technology transfer to our production facili- we can’t touch. Our pension bill is going up
Mail and Express 1,891
ties. every year. Today, the Railways has more pen-
Note: In addition, 3,700 slow-moving
passenger trains and 5,881 local
Our existing train sets (Vande Bharat Ex- revenue with the Railways will get the contract. sioners than employees. On the one hand, we
trains run daily
(Source: Ministry of Railway)
press) are good, but those have some techno- For the Railways, anything that are happy that the life expec-
logical gaps. For example, it consumes more comes to its coffers will be a prof- tancy of our retired railway per-
energy. So, we are now developing a prototype it. We are expecting a quantum “We are sonnel is going up, but on the
of an advanced version of a train set made of jump in the technology being other one needs to acknowl-
New Rail developing a
aluminium. It is being built in the Modern used in those coaches. edge that it’s a historical mis-
prototype of an
Timeline advanced version
take on the part of the Indian
June 2022: Completion
What’s the status of the corpo- Railways that it did not create a
ratisation of railway produc- of a train set separate pension fund (till
of Eastern & Western
“We have already built a tion units? Will you merge the made of 2004). And our operating ratio
Dedicated Freight
Corridors
prototype of a new units into one or two factories? aluminium. It is is not so good (touching almost
air-conditioned coach at our As we want technologically su- being built in the 100, meaning expenditure
factory in Kapurthala. It has perior coaches and locomotives, equals revenue) as we are add-
December 2022: Modern Coach
we have no option but to up- ing pension liabilities to our op-
Completion of 83 berths instead of 72” Factory
grade our production units. We erating expenditure. But in my
Udhampur-Srinagar- (Raebareli) and
are contemplating view, we should not factor pen-
Baramulla Rail Link Project
manufacturing should be ready sion bills while calculating the
March 2023: All high-
coaches for high- by 2022” operating ratio. Minus the pen-
speed trains, too. The sion, the Railways is a highly
density networks to be
idea is to upgrade our profitable organisation.
upgraded to 130 kmph
existing facilities so that we can
manufacture high-speed, semi high- Are you saying the Railways is contemplat-
December 2023: Opening
speed and metro coaches at one ing tweaking the pension?
of Mumbai-Ahmedabad
place. India should emerge as a ma- No. As long as Railways has surpluses, it
high-speed corridor
jor coach-exporting hub. The con- should pay, but if the government steps in to
sensus so far has been to merge eight pay a part of the pension, it will be a big help for
March 2025: Upgrade all
existing production units into two the Railways to invest in future projects. „
high-density networks to
entities — one for manufacturing lo- shantanu.sharma@timesgroup.com
160 kmph
10 centrespread centrespread 11
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020 OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

PENROSE TILING CAUGHT

TILE HIGH PUBLIC ATTENTION
Back in the 1970s, Roger
FOR 2 REASONS
Penrose created a set of
tiles that could be used to First, he found
cover an infinite plane in Second, and even
a way to more spectacular, his
a pattern that never generate infinitely
repeats. His work changed tiles were simple,
changing patterns symmetrical shapes that
our basic understanding using just two
of design, showing how on their own betrayed
types of tiles no sign of their
infinite variations could
be created within a highly unusual properties
ordered environment

KITE & DART PATTERN

Penrose made several versions of his aperiodic
tiles. The most famous is known as kite and dart.
Penrose set one placement rule: Draw circular
arcs of two colours on each side. For a “legal” tile
placement, these arcs must match up, creating
contiguous curves. Without this rule, patterns will
repeat. With this rule, repetition never occurs.
The kite and the dart tile forever, dancing around
their five axes, creating star bursts and decagons,
winding curves, butterflies and flowers. Shapes
APERIODIC recur but new variations keep creeping in.

PATTERNS
PATTERNS
Penrose focused his
attention on design that
was aperiodic or a
pattern that could cover CRYSTALS & ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE
an infinite area without

PENROSE
Penrose tiling is reminiscent of girih — the
a gap or overlap and geometric patterns used in Islamic architec-
look unique ture. Islamic architects were creating quasi-
crystalline patterns some 500 years before
similar patterns were described in the

OF
FAMOUS FIVE West, claimed two physicists Peter J Lu of
Harvard University and Paul Steinhardt of
Princeton University. The 15th century
Penrose worked on pentagons, artisans used complex mathematics to
to create his plane of non- create geometric patterns that adorn
repeating patterns. What was mosques, palaces and other buildings.
remarkable about the Penrose
tiles was that even though he Danny Shechtman at Israel’s Technion Uni-
derived his tiles from the lines
Roger Penrose — the English mathematical physicist who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for the versity showed that the positions of atoms
in a metallic alloy had a quasi-crystalline
and angles of pentagons, his shapes left no awkward gaps. discovery that black hole formation "is a robust prediction" of the general theory of relativity — is also structure. Since then, hundreds of different quasicrystals have been dis-
They snuggled together perfectly, twisting and turning
across the plane, always coming close to repetition, but famous for something more terrestrial: Penrose Tiling. Here’s a look at the other side of the Nobel laureate: covered in nature. Penrose not only defined them, but made them popu-
lar in the modern world
never quite getting there :: Shelley Singh

BUILDINGS THAT USE PENROSE TILING

TRANSBAY BAYLISS BUILDING MIAMI ANDREW WILES CARLETON COLLEGE, US
TRANSIT CENTRE The floor of the atrium of Bayliss
Building, University of Western
UNIVERSITY BUILDING, The tile pattern at the Depart-
ment of Maths & Computer
In 2013 the Transbay Joint Power Australia, uses Penrose tiling In 1979, the university Science in Carleton College,
Authority in San Francisco got used Penrose tiling to
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Minnesota, US, uses just two
approval from Penrose to use his geo- design the Bachelor Hall University of Oxford’s Mathemat- shapes: kites and darts. Every
metrical pattern in the design of the courtyard of the ical Institute at the Andrew Wiles Penrose kite and dart tiling of a
exterior wall of the Centre. The $2.2 Department of Building used Penrose tiling at its plane contains the cartwheel
billion building was completed in Mathematics building entrance, in a redesign in 2013 patch. Understanding its com-
2018 with a lace-like screen using a position is essential to under-
Penrose rhombus tiling pattern and is standing all Penrose tiling
now a part of the rich heritage of the
San Francisco Bay area
Source: businesswire.com, Reuters, nautil.us, claymath.org, math.carleton.edu, physicsworld.com
12 special report
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Har Ghar Nal Se Jal and Namami Gange — Modi government’s two ambitious, water-related
programmes — are making progress despite challenges. The latter will miss the 2020 deadline, though

1 9 7 2 : Accelerated Rural Water 1 9 8 6 : Ganga Action 2 0 1 4 : Namami Gange 2 0 1 9 : Jal Jeevan (Har Ghar Nal Se
FLOW OF Supply Programme launched to give Plan launched to prevent launched to save the river from Jal) launched to provide piped water
EVENTS drinking water connections to villages pollution of the river pollution and to rejuvenate it connection to every house by 2024

NAMAMI GANGE HAR GHAR NAL SE JAL

Aim: Clean Ganga, conserve it Aim: Provide 55 litres piped
:: Prerna Katiyar
and its tributaries drinking water per capita per day

A
t Kasmauli village in Tehri Garh- the last one year and 1-1.25 lakh connections
to 19 cr rural households by 2024
wal district of Uttarakhand, Total budget: `28,854 cr per day are being given even during Covid,”
58-year-old farmer Rai Chand
Ramola walks to a community
Total budget: `3.6 lakh cr Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
told ET Magazine.
Status as on Oct 5, 2020 for umbrella scheme Jal Jeevan Mission
tap at a stone’s throw from his Experts say the success of the scheme de-
home to fill his vessels. His eyes light up as pends a lot on the capacity of various states to
water fills the wares. Kasmauli has 80 fami-
lies. Most residents are engaged in farming. Total projects: 315 Status as on Oct 5, 2020 carry it out. “Gujarat may have achieved 80%
connection through the Netherlands-sup-
Each tap is shared by seven to eight families.
Completed
3.23 cr ported Water and Sanitation Management
But their problems aggravate every new year households had tap Organization (WASMO). We should under-
when the tap turns dry till May as the ground- projects: 130 connections at the time
of launching the scheme
stand that not all states have the political will
water starts depleting. “Can you see that or resources like the Narmada in Gujarat.
mountain?” he asks, pointing to a mountain Amount spent: `2,673 cr 5.58 cr households Similarly, Telangana (98.38% tap connec-
range in the distance. “We walk for 4 km and in FY20 vs `171 crore in FY15 now have tap connections tions) could do it through its widely ac-
two hours to bring water from Bosua natural claimed Mission Bhagiratha. But how will Bi-
spring in vessels,” chimes in his elder broth- 13.47 cr households more har, which has no reservoir, do it? Still, to as-
er Kunwar Chand, who says bears and leop- to be covered pire for water connection for every
ards have crossed his path on such walks. Sewage treatment household is something we must strive for,”
Jal Shakti Ministry’s Har Ghar Nal Se Jal
(HGNSJ), launched last year as part of the Jal
plants to be set up: 151 Functional Tap Connections
says Sunderrajan Krishnan, executive direc-
tor of the Indian Natural Resource Economics
% of households (as on Oct 8)
Jeevan Mission ( JJM), may bring hope for the
Ramola family and other residents of this vil-
Completed: 51 BEST PERFORMERS WORST PERFORMERS
and Management Foundation.

lage. HGNSJ is an ambitious, nation-wide Goa: 100 West Bengal: 2.51 Uneven Performance
scheme that aims to provide piped water 80 Major drains falling in Ganga Telangana: 98.38 Meghalaya: 4.31 Under HGNSJ, the states can utilise the funds
connections to every household by 2024, have been diverted to STPs for taking up schemes in quality-affected and
Gujarat: 80.17 Assam: 4.39
and an allocation of 55 litres per capita per availability-hit areas on a priority basis. “The
day, so that people like the Ramolas don’t Source: Jal Shakti Ministry tender process is going on and we should be
have to walk in bear-infested forests and oth- able to give tap water to 80 villages, including
Length of Ganga: 2,510 km
er treacherous terrains in search of water.
According to the Jal Shakti Ministry, only
29.4% 50% population
Kasmauli, in the next two months,” says SN
Singh, executive engineer, Peya Jal Nigam,
28% of households in India have tap connec- 41 cities & towns on banks of river households have
tap connection
do not have access
to drinking water Muni ki Reti, Tehri Garhwal. Uttarakhand has
tions. “When the PM launched JJM in 2019, 19.86% coverage with 2.9 lakh connections
there were only 3.23 crore tap connections Ganga basin: 5 states 16 of 718 districts provided under JJM.
out of 18.5 crore households. The govern- Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and have 100% functional household
As on October 8, 2020, the best perform-
ment has given 2.3 crore new connections in tap connections ing states include Haryana (76.42%), Guja-
West Bengal
 special report 13
Work to Clean the OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Ganga Will Go On
for Generations
Union Minister of Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat says that
although the pace of implementation of the Ganga cleaning scheme
has picked up greatly, it is a continuous process. In an interview with
Prerna Katiyar, he says the water quality in the Ganga is of bathing
standard at most places now. Edited excerpts:

D
ecember 2020 is the deadline for cleaning the Ganga under the am-
bitious Namami Gange project. Are we going to miss the deadline?
The PM has worked on a mission mode and the results are now showing
in the entire stretch of the Ganga. I can assure you that except for one or
two stretches, where work is under progress, the water is of bathing
standard on the dissolved oxygen parameter. From Gangotri to Rishikesh, no un-
treated sewage will enter the Ganga in the upcoming Kumbh. Rai Chand Ramola says the community tap in The sewage treatment plant at Lakkar Ghat, Uttarakhand,
Kasmauli turns dry during January-April that the PM inaugurated on September 28

But are we not going to miss the upcoming deadline?

As far as the deadline is concerned, we must understand that efforts to clean the rat (87.09%), Telangana (98.38%) and Goa Rishikesh zone being a major contributor
river have been going on for generations. And the work will continue for generations (100%), the laggards being West Bengal (70–80%) of sewage load into the Ganga, the
as population increases and puts more pressure on the river. Right now, we are try- (2.51%), Meghalaya (4.31%), Assam (4.39%), treatment capacity has been ramped up from
ing to fill the gap of the last 50-100 years. It will take more time. UP (5.37%) and Nagaland (8.56%). “UP has had 45 million litres a day (MLD) in 2014 to 145
legacy issues with corrupt practices of the MLD now in Haridwar.
When can you completely stop the sewage flow into the Ganga? past. So it is taking time there. Now they have While Delhi and Bihar are the worst, with
We are working on setting up sewerage treatment plants (STPs) in all cities. improved the pace,” says Shek- just two out of 30 sanctioned STPs completed,
For example, in Uttarakhand, 30 out of 32 STPs are now functional and hawat, water minister. West Bengal has completed three out of 22
the remaining two will be finished in three months. Among other As of date, only 16 out of STPs, and UP, where the longest stretch (1,000
states, we have finished 50% of the projects in UP and Bihar. Work is India’s 718 districts have km) of the river flows, has completed 20 of 49
slow in West Bengal but it is now picking pace. We have also begun 100% functional tap con- sanctioned STPs.
work on the tributaries. nections. Out of `3.6 lakh Namami Gange was launched in 2014, with
Unlike the Ganga Action Plan of 1986, we have introduced a hy- crore allocated for um- the target of cleaning Ganga by 2019, with an ini-
brid annuity mode for sewage infrastructure, under which the con- brella scheme Jal Jeevan tial budget of `20,000 crore. With a revised
tractor will get 40% capex on completion and the remaining 60% in Mission, `11,500 crore has budget of `28,854 crore and deadline of 2020, it
annuity over 15 years for maintenance. Under One City One Opera- been allotted for FY21. remains the biggest ever scheme for the Ganga
tor plan, the concessionaire will get a contract for operation and Krishnan points out an- till date. As per ministry data, 130 projects out of
maintenance of the project. All Ganga Grams — and there are 4,500 — other pressing problem: The 315 have been completed till date.
were made open defecation free. scheme has a 50:50 cost-sharing But experts point to a lack of adequate sewer-
Since the entire job of cleaning the Ganga can’t lie with the govern- model with states. “While the Cen- age network in the country. “For a country that
ment, we are involving the community and have trained Ganga Mitra and Ganga tre may have money to spend, states may now needs thousands, if not lakhs, of STPs, we can’t
Praharis for afforestation, cleanliness, maintaining aquatic life, creating aware- have different priorities now due to Covid-19. be content with 151 plants,” says Dr Vinod Tare,
ness, etc. Not all states are on equal foot- professor, IIT-Kanpur, and
ing in terms of water and fund founding head of the Centre for
Recently, the PM talked about stopping India’s water (the Ravi) from entering availability.” PROBLEM Ganga River Basin Manage-
Pakistan. Has the ministry already started working towards this? If schemes such as Ujjwala, ment and Studies. Out of 151
Of the three eastern rivers — the Sutlej, Ravi and the Beas — that came to India as PM Awas Yojana and Ayushman AREAS STPs sanctioned to create 4,874
part of the Indus Waters Treaty, Pakistan (which got the Jhelum, Chenab and the Bharat have been credited with MLD treatment capacity, 51
Sindhu) still gets untapped water from Ujjh, a tributary of the Ravi. I do not want having boosted Modi’s pros- Lack of adequate have already been set up.
to go into any controversy. But as the PM said, we can’t let blood and water flow pects in the 2019 elections, the sewerage network Professor BD Tripathi, envi-
together, we won’t let our people’s share of potable water and arable water go to HGNSJ could be one of the key ronmental scientist at BHU and
Not enough efforts
Pakistan. Irrigation projects are huge but we are bound planks of the 2024 campaign. It expert member of the National
made in rainwater
to finish them on mission mode (to stop this). We would especially be appreciat- harvesting and Ganga River Basin Authority,
will start working once we get statutory sanctions. ed by women voters, who typi- groundwater who has trained 400 Ganga Mi-
We won’t let a single drop of our water flow to cally end up being the fetchers recharging tras for creating awareness
Pakistan. of water from different sources. about Ganga cleanliness, points
Because of its political signifi- No provision for to the need for improving the
What is the progress of the Har Ghar Nal Se Jal cance and because it aims to faecal sludge flow of the river, the lack of
project, which has a deadline of 2024? relieve one of the main pain management in gram which is bound to raise pollu-
When the PM launched the scheme, only 3 crore points of Indian households, sabhas and places tion parameters. “Are we doing
households out of 18.5 crore households had tap the scheme’s progress is being with no sewer system enough to increase the flow of
connections. The government has given 2.45 crore closely watched. the Ganga? We need greater ef-
new connections in the last one year. Even during
Inadequate schemes forts for rain water harvesting,
Covid-19, we provided 1 lakh new connec- Guarding a River
for management of ground water recharging, mul-
solid waste
tions a day. Places with poor quality wa- Meanwhile, back in Rishikesh, tiple use of stored water and
ter and availability issues are getting Vineet Beniwal, the plant man- Lack of coordination reducing wastage in agriculture
precedence. While Har yana, ager of Lakkar Ghat Sewage with states water to maintain the flow,”
Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Tel- Treatment Plant (STP), is ana- says Tripathi.
angana have performed excep- lysing the key parameters of Even as the deadline of De-
tionally well, West Bengal, Ra- inlet and outlet water through a reading meter. cember 2020 for cleaning the Ganga looks un-
jasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar The plant receives sewer water from the entire likely to be met, experts point to the futility of
Pradesh have been low-per- city and treated water is flown back to the Gan- fixing deadlines for a problem that will remain
forming states. UP has had ga to make Ganga nirmal and aviral — a target forever. “More efforts should be made to ensure
legacy issues with corrupt set under Namami Gange, another key water- that no untreated water reaches the Ganga but
practices of the past. So it related initiative of this government. no deadline can be fixed for it. Even if we can
is taking time there. Now Uttarakhand has 30 functional STPs out of clean it once, won’t it get polluted again? River-
they have improved the 32 sanctioned plants. Flow of untreated mu- cleaning can never be a time-bound activity but
pace of the rollout. „ nicipal sewage is the largest source of pollu- a process that will go on for generations. After
tion in the Ganga, and STPs have been key for all, it is not a one-time vaccine,” says Tare. „
Ganga pollution abatement. With Haridwar- prerna.katiyar@timesgroup.com
14 big story
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Turning
the Tables
The restaurant industry, devastated by layoffs
and shutdowns, is looking for a reset. New
business models are emerging, with a thrust on
cost-cutting, technology and food delivery

:: Malini Goyal

I
t was tough. Very, very tough. I wanted to go six months, which saw a pandemic-triggered
hide under my bed,” says Ritu Dalmia, chef devastation of India’s `4.23 lakh crore food
and owner of Diva Restaurants. She cursed services business that employs 7.3 million
herself for chasing a career that entailed tak- people. In July, Dalmia handed over termina-
ing responsibility for so many people. Where tion letters to 100 of her 220 employees.
she had to take such hard decisions. A job, Many had been with her for years. She shut
any job, would have been better than this, she down four of her seven restaurants in India.
thought.
Currently in Milan, Italy,
“My restaurant was my home, but I was left
with no choice,” she says.
w
Manu Gulati, BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
Has launched
where she runs three res- Is there a silver lining? Was there MD, EFFINGUT BREWERIES
taurants, Dalmia was talk- a lesson that was worth learning? Effingut 2 Go,
BEFORE COVID: Had six outlets
ing about the toughest mo- “At one level, I am at peace. This takeaway
ment she faced in the last consolidation was required. I in Maharashtra with 325
am grateful for this knock on employees growler stations
my face,” she says in a thought- for craft beer,
ful moment, as we speak on the phone. COVID IMPACT: With pubs shut
Today, commercial viability and cold ration- and no business, he had to
and started
ale dictate all decisions. Every rupee counts. let go of 70% of staff and home deliveries
From staff to technology, from shutter one outlet
menu to lease rentals —every-
thing is put under the scanner
“Delivery is to push up operational effi-
here to stay. “I can’t stop beaming. The response to our
ciency and cut costs. Dalmia
We are very vows that hereon, expansion takeaway model has been terrific. We have
bullish on will be global, not domestic. got something to hold on to”
the space” Her Italian restaurants have
been doing fine as the govern-
ment there offered tax credit
and wage subsidy. Even as her
booming catering business has shrivelled, new
revenue streams are being explored. Dalmia
INDIA’S RESTAURANT BUSINESS
recently launched Diva Casa, a DIY meal kit for
home-cooking enthusiasts that comes with in- TOTAL TURNOVER REVENUE ` crore
structions and video from Dalmia. “It is doing `4,23,865 cr Quick Service
32,880
very well,” she says. Restaurant (QSR)
TOTAL PEOPLE EMPLOYED: 7.3 mn
Affordable Casual Dining
Seeing Through the Smoke Restaurant (ACDR) 60,255
Never waste a crisis, they say. It couldn’t be ORGANISED UNORGANISED
SECTOR SECTOR Premium Casual Dining
truer for restaurateurs in India. Covid-19 has Restaurant (PCDR) 19,948
forced people indoors, taking away outdoorsy Fine Dining
TURNOVER: TURNOVER:
2,872
Gauri Devidayal pursuits like travel and theatres. Cooped up at
home, armed with Instagram and Facebook,
`1,48,353 cr `2,75,512 cr Restaurant (FDR)
Dessert & Ice
FOUNDER, THE TABLE cooking has emerged as a global pastime and a EMPLOYMENT: EMPLOYMENT: Cream (D&IC) 4,121
popular outlet for indulgences. Outside 3.7 MN 3.6 MN
BEFORE COVID: Had two restaurants, three though, the consequences have been disas- Cafe 9,370
delivery brands and an experimental trous for the restaurant business. Plagued by Pub, Bar, Cafe, and
17,979
kitchen with 175 employees the pandemic, ignored by the government and Lounge (PBCL)
panic-struck about an uncertain future, the Cloud Kitchen 928
COVID IMPACT:Dine-in business ground sector has seen strong waves of layoffs, shut- DELIVERY
to a halt as restaurants are still shut downs and bankruptcies. vs DINE-IN
Samir Kuckreja, founder and
CEO, Tasanaya Hospitality, says Delivery
Big thrust on
BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY: COVID-19 IMPACT:
that up to 35% of the organised `12,140 cr Up to 35% of the
food delivery to Alibaug (daily) restaurant business could get
Dine-in organised sector likely Figures are
and Pune (once a week); has wiped out by March 2021. The
to get wiped out in for 2018-19
mortality rate will be sharply high- `1,36,213 cr 2020-21. Unorganised
Source: NRAI

launched a delivery app er for the unorganised sector.

sector will fare far worse

AD Singh
MD, OLIVE GROUP OF
RESTAURANTS
Had 30
BEFORE COVID:
outlets across brands like
Olive Bar & Kitchen, The
Fatty Bao and Monkey
Bar with 1,450 staff
Little income
COVID IMPACT:
with high fixed costs,
including rising interest
on debt; layoffs of staff
BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
Sell equity to service
debt, delivery-friendly
menus and tie-up with
a unicorn betting on
hub-and-spoke food
delivery business
“We are re-strategising on a new vision to be a successful
delivery business. We are in the process of tying up with a
unicorn looking at food delivery space”
Six months after India declared its first Many are rolling out a range of tweaks to
lockdown, living with the pandemic is tickle the taste buds of homebound custom-
slowly becoming the new normal. Zomato ers. A strong thrust on delivery business
says food delivery recovery is now at pre- runs across formats — from luxury dining
Covid levels. Quick service restaurants outlets at the Taj Hotels to QSRs like McDon-
(QSRs) like McDonald’s and KFC have re- ald’s. There is a big buzz around technology
gained 50-60% of their pre-Covid business. and automation because of the need to offer
“Customers are preferring brands they a contactless experience amid this pandem-
trust,” says Kuckreja. ic. Some, like Gauri Devidayal of The Table in
Foodpreneurs of all shades — from own- Mumbai, are building on their farm-to-fork
ers of dhabas and roadside kiosks to ce- differentiation of offering natural
lebrity chefs and celebrated restau-u- and organic produce by launching
an
rateurs — have been gasping for sur-- an app and delivering even in Ali-
a
vival. They have had to lay off staff,, baug ad Pune.
b
consolidate outlets, prune brandss Even in normal times, food
and renegotiate lease rentals. business isn’t for the faintheart-
b
Smita Jatia
MD, HARDCASTLE RESTAURANTS INDIA
BEFORE COVID: Had 320
McDonald’s outlets with
10,000 employees in 42
cities
COVID IMPACT: Dine-ins and
outlets in malls badly
affected
BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
Consolidation, with a
thrust on drive-throughs
and on-the-go channels
where e-orders are
delivered to one’s car
“Pandemic has disrupted personal and professional lives.
A new normal is inevitable”
big story 15
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
ed. The failure rate is
Ritu Dalmia
OWNER, DIVA RESTAURANTS
unusually high. The past
five years have been par-
BEFORE COVID: Had 7 dine-in
ticularly rough, as the indus-
restaurants in India and 3
try reeled from a series of
shocks — from demonetisation to in Italy with a staff of 220
GST. The lockdown has been the last
nail in the coffin. COVID IMPACT: Closed 4
However, it may also prove to be an in- restaurants in India. Laid
flection point for the industry. The ques- off 100 employees
tion is, can it reinvent itself for the digital
age where millennials rule? “You become BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
lazy when things are going fine. Crisis Latching on to spurt in
makes you more agile,” says Anjan Chat-
terjee, founder of Specialty Restaurants, home cooking, she
which has over 100 restaurants across launched Diva Casa that
brands like Mainland China and Oh! Cal-
cutta. He has moved to revenue-sharing delivers DIY dishes at
arrangement with 90% of landlords and is one’s doorstep
planning 18 new cloud kitchens.
Foodpreneurs, following their passion
and chasing flavours, have often struggled
to keep a tight focus on their bottom lines.
“At one level, I am at
That is changing. Having cried themselves peace. This consolidation
hoarse about the rout, they are looking be- was required. I am
yond petitioning the tight-fisted govern- grateful for this knock
on my face”
ment to craft their future. The smarter ones
are retreating into their kitchens to intro-
like attendants in restrooms to hand over
tissues and valet parking have been dis-
spect and create new recipes for the future. pensed with. Instead, multitasking is in
They are thinking hard about cost econom- where managers double as cashiers. Cor-
ics, staff strength and productivity. “Seis- porate office costs have been slashed by
mic shifts are underway,” says Riyaaz Am- 80% as marketing and accounting have
lani, CEO, Impresario Entertainment & been outsourced.
Hospitality. Most of them acknowledge that Delivery business is getting a lot of atten-
whoever survives this storm will emerge tion. At McDonald’s, while dine-in has yet
stronger and better pre- to pick up, delivery and
pared for the future. “In the long term, takeaways are doing very
we will see focus on well. “Delivery as a (growth)
New Course business viability, lever will explode. We are
“We are doing everything pivoting our entire supply
automation and
we can to keep our heads chain to this new behav-
above the water,” says Pri-
digitisation” iour,” says Smita Jatia, MD,
yank Sukhija, MD of First Samir Kuckreja, Hardcastle Restaurants,
Fiddle, which owns brands founder & CEO, which is the master fran-
like Lord of the Drinks and Tasanaya Hospitality chisee for McDonald’s in
The Flying Saucer. Pre- western and southern In-
Covid, it had 25 outlets in dia. Even Indian Hotels
seven cities, employing 1,200 Company Ltd (IHCL), which runs
people. Today, footfalls stand at the luxury chain of Taj Hotels, are
25% of peak capacity. Staff count betting on delivery to tide over
is 250 with 30-40% salary cut, the difficult times. Praveen Chan-
and the menu has been trimmed der Kumar, area director of West
from 150 dishes to 50, with zero India, IHCL, and general manager
discounting and ad spends. “We have of Taj Lands End, Mumbai, says they
learnt to be more efficient with fewer have rolled out their own delivery app
staff,” says Sukhija. Puff staff and services called Qmin in 10 cities.
16
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
“Aggregator commission
is so high that there is no money
left on the table. We are building
our own delivery ecosystem”
For Vineet Manocha,
executive group chief,
Lite Bite Foods, even as de-
livery business has grown
from 15% to 60% of the total
pie, the focus is on explor-
ing new businesses. Lite Bite
— which has 23 brands, 218
outlets and 4,500 employees
across brands like Punjab
Grill and Zambar — foresees
the closure of some of its 58-
odd outlets at the Mumbai airport.
It is foraying into cloud kitchens, with
plans to open 30 in three years. To build a
new revenue stream, it has ventured into
products like frozen momos and bottled
Asian sauces and is also expanding from
B-to-B to B-to-C segment. It will soon be
rolling out its product offering in Delhi,
followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Like everyone else, Amlani too is focused
on digitisation, trimmed-down menus, ra-
tionalisation of staff costs and multitask-
ing. “Delivery business has seen a growth
of 200-300%. Going forward, it will be at
the heart of our plan,” he says. His chain
Smokehouse Deli has seen delivery busi-
ness trebling from 2-3% in pre-Covid times.
Amlani is creating his own delivery ecosys-
tem, including app, fleet of delivery boys
and dishes that can travel well. “Aggregator
commission is so high that there is no mon-
ey left on the table,” he says.
Meanwhile, AD Singh, MD, Olive Group
of Restaurants, is exploring new tie-ups
and partners to build a new vertical. “We
are re-strategising on a new vision to be a
successful delivery business,” he says.
Even as he tries to sell equity to service his
debt, he is “in the process of tying up with a
unicorn, looking at food delivery, to open
kitchens and delivery channels for our
brands. We are looking at 60-70 smaller
kitchens in a hub-and-spoke model,” he
says.
In a sea of hurting entrepreneurs, Maha-
rashtra-based Manu Gulati, founder of
“Crisis makes you more agile. We need to
disrupt every part of our business. New
world is a different world”
big story
Riyaaz Amlani
CEO, IMPRESARIO ENTERTAINMENT
& HOSPITALITY
BEFORE COVID: 57 restaurants
in 16 cities across brands
like Social, Smoke House
Deli and Mocha with
3,500 employees
COVID IMPACT: Business has
dipped 50-75%
BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
Simpler menu, cloud
kitchens and a better
delivery ecosystem to
cut costs and push sales
craft beer Effingut Breweries, is a breath
Dragonfly Experience, Delhi, has
of fresh air. “I can’t stop beaming,” he
acrylic pods to keep the patrons says. The smiles have returned after many
at a safe distance from each painful nights and a business pivot. As
other during Covid-19 pubs closed down, his business ground to
a halt. In September, Gulati rolled out a
new format — Effingut 2 Go, takeaway
“We are learning to growler stations for craft beer. He is add-
be more efficient ing ready-to-eat food like bar bites and
with fewer staff. plated meals to the offering. Sticker prices
We have dispensed are now one-eighth or even one-tenth of
fares in the bar.
with valet parking The response has been tremendous. As
and restroom against a monthly target of 1,500 litres,
attendants” they sold 1,000 litres in five days. The costs
have come down, too: if a brew pub costs
Priyank Sukhija,
`5 crore and a pub `2.5 crore, a growler sta-
MD, First Fiddle
tion costs about `30 lakh. The staff count
Restaurants
has dramatically reduced. A 200-seater
bar would typically have 40-60 employ-
ees. Now, just two people can manage a
growler station. With the Maharashtra gov-
ernment allowing doorstep delivery of al-
cohol, they also do home delivery. The
new model has improved the company’s
profit margin — its EBITDA (earnings be-
fore interest, taxes, depreciation and am-
ortisation) is up from 15% pre-Covid to 20-
25% now. Bullish, Gulati plans to set up 16
growler stations in Maharashtra this fiscal.
“The economic toll on our patrons will be
huge and they will become tight-fisted.
With the takeaway model, we have got
something to hold on to,” he says.
There is a growing realisation among
foodpreneurs that the restaurant business
Anjan Chatterjee, in India is built on shaky grounds — high
rent and low revenue had made it unsus-
FOUNDER, SPECIALTY RESTAURANTS tainable even in normal times.
“We
We need to shatter the pre-Cov-
BEFORE COVID: Had 109 restaurants, 31 id business models and disrupt
b
confectioneries and 14 cloud kitchens every
e aspect of our business,”
with over 3,600 staff across brands like says Anjan Chatterjee, who
Mainland China, Oh! Calcutta & Sigree started his food business in
the 1990s. “It is like a startup
COVID IMPACT: Sharp dip in footfall. Moved to for me,” he says about his
revenue-sharing arrangement with 90% new steps in the business.
of landlords, may close 10% restaurants The push for more technol-
ogy and better productivity
could see the front-end staff
18 new cloud
BOUNCE-BACK STRATEGY:
getting reduced by 30% over
kitchens, tech drive to trim staff by the long term, he adds.
30%, mini kitchens within kitchen “The new world is a different world. We
are trying to learn,” he says. „
malini.goyal@timesgroup.com

HOOKED
TO HEMP
A new crop of entrepreneurs says better
regulation can help them unleash the
medical and industrial advantages of
cannabis and its byproducts
:: Shailesh Menon
S
ayed Tahir Hassan is not your regular fami-
ly doctor. Tahir, who completed his MBBS
from Karnataka University in 1998 and his
DNB in 2003, is among the very few mod-
ern medicine practitioners who use canna-
bis-based drug composition to treat pa-
tients. But Tahir, a member of California-
based non-profit Society of Cannabis
Clinicians, loses hope when cannabis is
relegated to being just a herb that gets peo-
ple stoned. “There is a lot of misun-
derstanding around cannabis,”
$103.9 bn
he says, pointing to recent
news reports that some ac-
projected
worth of legal
tors used cannabis-based
products. This was re-
cannabis
market by
2024
vealed during investiga-
tions following the death of
Sushant Singh Rajput.
The controversy has started a
debate around medicinal cannabis
and the utility value of cannabis plants.
There are other users too. For example, a
type of cannabis called hemp is used to
make textiles, footwear, skin products and
construction material, among others.
There are nearly two dozen startups in In-
dia that use cannabis plants as their prime
raw material. Yet it is a highly regulated
crop: commercial cultivation of
cannabis is permitted only in
$62.7 bn Uttarakhand through a state-
projected worth issued licence.
of global “There is a need for right
medicinal policies and laws,” says
cannabis market Yash Kotak, cofounder of
by 2024 Boheco, which makes
hemp-based textiles and can-
nabis-based healthcare and nu-
traceutical products. “The cannabis
plant also has over 25,000 industrial
applications. The medicinal proper-
ties of cannabis are well document-
27 mn
Indians
ed in ayurveda and other forms of
consume
traditional medicines.” bhaang
Pharma companies are trying to
make cannabis-infused prescription
drugs that can provide relief or cure
some diseases. Companies deal-
ing with skin- and hair-care
$584 mn products are seeing increas-
projected ing interest from custom-
worth of India ers. Hemp fibre producers
cannabis have started receiving or-
market by ders from large branded ap-
2024 parel manufacturers, while
hemp-blended clothing is
becoming popular among
certain customers. Hemp compa-
nies manufacturing nutraceuti-
16 mn
Indians use
cals are seeing good demand after
illegal cannabis
the pandemic.
products
Most cannabis or hemp-based
startups in India are bootstrapped.
HEMP HELPS
Medicinal
Pain management, cancer treat-
ment, mental disorders and meta-
bolic disorders
Textiles & footwear
Hemp fibre used to make clothing
and sturdy material
Cosmetics industry
Hemp seed oil & base formulations
for skin- and hair-care
Construction
Hempcrete used as construction
blocks; processed hemp wood as
building boards
Pulp
Hemp pulp is used to make paper,
packaging material
Automobile industry
Hemp sheets are used for padding,
insulation
`8
average cost
They see a potential to grow per gram of
but feel crimped because cannabis
of poor regulation.
“Companies are unable to
scale up because getting raw ma-
terial is still a big challenge,”
says Varun Gupta, founder of
Hemp Republic and India’s first
hemp product store, Hemis.
Startups such as Boheco and Vedi Herb-
als use cannabis leaf extracts to make lo-
tions, oils and creams. Products intended
for medicinal use (including oral prepara-
tions) are manufactured according to the
guidelines of the AYUSH Ministry. Start-
ups such as Satliva, Hemp Republic and
Health Horizons make a range of skin- and
hair-care products using cannabis.
They sell nutraceutical products
such as hemp seed-based pro-
tein powders.
Some of these players have
also branched out to hemp-fi-
bre-based clothing — which is
comparable in quality with top-
in focus
Under the
Legal Lens
C annabis has been a regu-
lated plant in India for
close to 100 years. The nar-
cotic act and excise laws in
several states restrict peo-
ple from consuming canna-
bis or any of its compounds
or byproducts. Violating
the law could result in an
imprisonment of six
months, a fine of
`10,000 or both.
To understand can-
nabis laws, one must
know the plant better.
The flower and bud have
high levels of psychoactive
elements and are regulated
as a narcotic substance.
“Under the NDPS Act, it is
illegal to be in posses-
sion of cannabis flow-
ers and buds and any
byproducts made of
these two parts of the
plant,” says Anay Shukla,
a founding partner at Arog-
ya Legal.
But the leaves and seeds
get off lightly. “The act does
not view cannabis leaves or
seeds as having the poten-
tial to be abused. There-
fore, it does not make their
possession and consump-
tion illegal. But one must
remember that some states
consider the leaves of the
cannabis plant (used to
make bhang) as intoxicants
and so their consumption
could get you in trouble.
Seeds of the cannabis plant,
however, are not regulated
and are freely available.”
17
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
line cotton and linen apparel. GreenJams, a Vi-
sakhapatnam-based startup, makes hempcrete —
a biocomposite material used in place of concrete
blocks in construction.
Though a quantifiable market size is hard to
come by, the wide variety of applications can
make this a multi-million dollar industry. But for
the industry to bloom, one needs to understand
the cannabis plant better. The psychoactive ele-
ments in a cannabis plant — tetrahydro-
cannabinol and cannabidiol (THC
`10,000 and CBD ) — are present in flowers,
buds and leaves. CBD yields
fine and/or
6 month health benefits of cannabis with-
imprisonment for out giving the user a high, while
Illegal use of THC is highly psychoactive.
cannabis Cannabis seeds don’t have nar-
cotic properties but are rich in pro-
Source: Prohibition
Partners
tein and healthy fatty acids. The stem
is fibrous, making it ideal for several
industrial uses. Industrial hemp is gen-
erally derived from the Cannabis sativa genre of
the plant. The flowers, leaves and buds of this vari-
ety have lower THC and higher CBD ingredients.
“Cannabis can cure a lot of ailments,” says Tahir,
who is also the chief medical consultant at Vedi
Herbals. It has anti-inflammatory properties, he
says. “It can also help people suffering from anxi-
ety and depression.”
Cannabis-based medicine manufacturers rarely
make THC-based preparations in bulk. These
drugs are only prescribed to patients suffering
from ailments that cause acute pain — such as can-
cer or multiple sclerosis. Indian companies ex-
tract CBD and THC from cannabis leaves because
the NDPS Act only probihits the use of flowers and
buds, not leaves. (See Under the Legal Lens).
According to startups that use cannabis as raw
material, there is no formal ecosystem in India to
popularise the positive uses of cannabis. Many of
these startups are not able to scale up as their raw
material supply is very limited, and subject to
various state government rules. Harshaavardhan
Redi Sirupa, founder of Satliva, which focusses
on a range of beauty products, says the skin and
hair-care segment is doing well for many players
in this space. “But this industry remains in a very
nascent stage.”
Removing some of the stringent laws should
help the cannabis market grow naturally. „
shailesh.menon@timesgroup.com
18 food & drink
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020
:: Vikram Doctor
CUTTING EDGE
T
he Abbe Faria statue in Panjim is dramat-
ic. It shows the Goa-born priest who
achieved fame in Europe as a pioneer of
hypnotism (and, fictionally, in The Count
of Monte Cristo) controlling a woman
through hypnotism.
A dramatic story is also told of the first
time the young priest preached in Portu-
gal. When he saw the massed Portuguese
congregation, his courage failed, but
then his father, who was also there,
hissed in Konkani: “Hi sogli bhaji! Kator
re bhaji!” Meaning: “They are just vege-
tables! Cut those vegetables!” Faria gave
his sermon and started thinking about
the powers of suggestion, which led to
his theories of hypnosis.
The story made “Kator re Bhaji!” a Goan
slogan of support and protest. It also em-
phasises the importance of cutting vegeta-
bles in India. In the West, where large
chunks of meat or fish were commonly
cooked and served up whole, knowing
how to cut them up, in the kitchen or at the
table, was important. Most Indian dishes
use meat or fish already cut up and this is
usually expertly done by the
butcher or fish seller.
But that still leaves piles of
vegetables to be dealt with.
We are all familiar with the
sight of someone patiently
ploughing through peeling and
cutting vegetables, even in unlikely set-
tings. In The Lunchbox Nawazuddin Sid-
diqui’s character cuts vegetables in a
Mumbai local train, us-
ing his office files as a
chopping board. In re-
ality, this is more likely
to be seen in the wom-
en’s compartment,
with the ladies who do
it more practically cut-
ting the vegetables into
plastic bags that pre-
vent anything spill-
ing as the train
moves.
Cutting has dif-
When Abbe Faria saw ferent reasons and
the massed congregation results. I realised this
in Lisbon, his courage after watching a devout
failed, but then his Jain dissect a cauliflower
father, who was there, with the patient skill of a
hissed in Konkani: “Hi surgeon. He explained it
sogli bhaji! Kator re had to be cut very small to
bhaji!” Meaning: “They ensure there were no tiny
are just vegetables! Cut creatures lurking inside
those vegetables!” Faria that might be killed while
gave his sermon and cooking. The identically
started thinking about sized cauliflower frag-
the powers of
ments that re sulted
suggestion, which led to
cooked almost instantly
his theories of hypnosis
when tossed in hot oil, so
the taste remained fresh
even when fully cooked.
Many recipes insist on specific sizes,
shapes and sometimes even a certain
amount of peel left on (particularly for
karela), all of which makes a big differ-
ence to the final taste and texture of a
Indians have yet to really appreciate their
indigenous knives — from bonti to kuruni —
and the fine art of chopping vegetables
The one really distinctive Indian
cutter is the fixed blade called
bonti, vili, arivalmanai or other
names in Indian languages
dish. A Gujarati lady once lamented to
me the problems in running a kitchen
for her two sons, husband and brother-
in-law, who all loved bhindi but each
insisted on it being cut differently —
small dice, big dice, lengthwise or left
whole with a slit for the seasoning, each
style resulting in a very different dish.
Increasing appreciation for vegetables
in the West has resulted in books like Cara
Mangini’s The Vegetable Butcher which ex-
plains the techniques for preparing a vari-
ety of produce that were in the past only
learnt by young chefs. But an equivalent
appreciation seems absent in India,
where preparing vegetables is still rele-
gated to servants, or now supermarkets,
which sell ready-to-cook vegetables in
Dismissing Indian knives, Tim plastic packets that might be convenient,
Hayward says many are made from but are probably neither fresh nor cut in
“the leaf springs from scrap cars”. the best way for a dish.
Rather than reason for scorn, There is also little appreciation for the
this should be seen as a sensible instruments used for cutting. “India
way to recycle the high-quality steel doesn’t have a distinctive, indigenous culi-
of leaf springs nary knife,” writes Tim Hayward dismiss-
ively in The Knife: The Culture, Craft and
Cult of the Cook’s Knife. This disdain is ech-
oed by many Indian cooks who obsess
about German high-carbon steel knives,
Chinese cleavers or Japanese santokus,
while ignoring how cheap and humble In-
dian knives do their job quite as well. I was
once offered some Sheffield kitchen knives
that a Parsi man who had studied at Oxford
decades back had got for his mother. They
were rusted and unusable since she sensi-
bly preferred her cheap Indian knives.
Hayward even shows a picture of some
Indian knives, noting how many are made
from “the leaf springs from scrap cars”.
Rather than reason for scorn, this should
be seen as a sensible way to recycle the
high-quality steel of leaf springs. Even
worse, Hayward seems ignorant of the
one really distinctive Indian cutter – the
fixed blade called bonti, vili, arivalmanai
or other names in Indian languages. (He
mentions other fixed-blade cutters like
French mandolines and Japanese kat-
suramukis, both boxes with fixed blades
that shave paper-thin slices.)
Chitrita Banerji’s wonderful essay “The
Bengali Bonti” offers the best answer.
She describes how they are meant for
traditional Indian kitchens where all
the work happens at floor level
(much better for the backs and
knees of cooks). They require a very
different kind of force where “run-
ning it into the blade makes the act of
cutting a relatively softer, gentler mo-
tion than the more masculine gesture
of bringing a knife with force on a hard
surface: the food is embraced even as it is
dismembered”.
Banerji explains the different types of
bontis, like the ansh-bonti used to scale
and cut fish, the massive bontis used by
fish sellers (who, in a curious reversal
from other parts of India, are mostly men
in Bengal) and the kuruni, which has a
round serrated tip for grating coconuts.
This is standard in the vili or advolli of the
Konkan where coconut is used much
more. Banerji even explores a hidden
erotic history of bontis as shown in a
1930s collection of photographs of fa-
mous Calcutta prostitutes, shown deco-
rously dressed and seated before bontis.
Banerji concludes her essay wondering
mournfully if bontis will have a future in
modern kitchens where cooks work
standing up and Western knives domi-
nate. But she was reckoning without the
internet, which has documented and dis-
seminated videos of many traditional
techniques, including those showing cut-
ting with bontis.
Modern versions of bonti are available
online — these are smaller, so better suit-
ed for counter-tops, and come with vacu-
um sealing bases to compensate for the
cutter’s foot that held the bonti in place.
Perhaps even the enforced home isola-
tion and cooking during Covid-19 might
help cooks rediscover and appreciate the
many skills that come with cutting up veg-
etables in India. „
 tech talk 19
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

MSI Prestige 14 A10RAS

A QUESTION OF BALANCE
It blends style and substance but you might want more for this price

:: Debashis Sarkar
rkar

T
he MSI Prestige
estige 14 has been around for some time. The pad as well.
p
company has bumped up the specs and has intro- Overall, the
duced a newew Rose Gold colour that reminds of The feedback from
fe
Pink Panther
her Show. This laptop bets big on style. the
th trackpad and
Thankfully, you may ay get it in white and grey colour options keypad is good
ke
as well depending on the hardware configuration. and there shouldn’t
Amazon Smart Plug The MSI Prestige e 14 A10RAS is a premium Windows 10 be any
a complaints.
laptop and is in the territory of Macbooks in terms of pric- This laptop claims
Th
ing. It is targeted att content creators. The design will not to be lightweight at
attract gamers anyway. way. However, it is hard to differenti- 1.29kg but MSI could
ate the requirements nts of both these groups. done a little more
have do
We used a MSI Prestige 14 A10RAS- to shave off some extra
099IN model with h 10th-gen grams a as the low-cost
Intel Core i7-10510U 0U Moderna 14 A10RB
Modern
processor with h 1.19kg.
weighs 1.1
16GB of RAM,, Prestige 14 A10RAS
MSI Pre
512GB of internal nal comes wit with Windows 10
storage and NVIDIA DIA Ge- operating system, out-
Home opera
Force MX330 with th 2GB GDDR5 of-the-box.
f connectivity ports are
As far as conne
graphics. On paper, r, this sounds like a decent concerned, the device offers two USB Type-C and

LINK TO
machine for content nt creators who are just starting out two regular USB ports, audio combo jac jack, and microSD
and need a reliable e system within a reasonable budget
budget. GET IT FOR: reader. There is a HD webcam too
card reader too. You can charge
If you are looking for a more pocket-friendly option the laptop using the Type-C port with any charger. Bat-
EASY LIFE
`1,23,990
from MSI, you may consider the Modern 14 A10RB. tery life is average at best.
The MSI Prestige 14 A10RAS comes with 14-inch 1080p HIGHLIGHT: The MSI Prestige 14 A10RAS is a stylish device with
By making appliances smart, it Full HD IPS display which is average at best but gets the Attractive slightly better specs than the affordable A10RB. It is a
job done. The viewing angles are decent and the screen design, decent laptop for average users looking to get office
ensures you don't have to get out of is not reflective. The display has thin bezels on the sides. work done, edit videos for their YouTube channels or
the bed to turn on a TV or a charger The trackpad is centrally located and is quite wide.
decent play some games. „
There is an integrated fingerprint scanner on the track- performance The writer is with gadgetsnow.com
:: Aabhas Sharma

S
mart devices still hold a niche spot de-
spite Alexa and Siri becoming house-
hold names. Cost, utility and the hassle
of setting up deter people from them.
Amazon has launched a Smart Plug to take on
this issue and quickly turn “dumb” appliances Poco X3
into smart ones.
The Smart Plug works in tandem with an
Echo device or even a Fire Stick. That is not all, WORTHY will impress you during long
gaming sessions as you will nev-

it is also compatible with Alexa-enabled devic-
es. Setting up the plug is easy: you have to just
follow a few simple steps if you have an Alexa
app on your smartphone.
The WiFi-enabled plug looks like any other
three-pin socket design. There is an on/off but-
ton on the left and an LED indicator in the
front. The Smart Plug has a 6A power rating
UPGRADE
er notice any glitch or lag even
with graphic-intensive games
like Asphalt 9. You can also easily
The smartphone is a switch between apps and edit all
complete package in the your photos on the smartphone
under-`20,000 segment without experiencing any kind of
slowdown in performance.
Like other Poco smartphones, this
:: Heena Gupta

and is rated for 220V to 240V,
50/60hz. This means that you GET IT FOR:
cannot operate an AC, geyser,
`1,999
water heater or any other
heavy appliances using this. HIGHLIGHT:
We found the plug to be Ease of use
handy while charging our
phone. All we had to do was say: “Alexa, turn
on mobile charging.” The plug did the rest. The
same goes for TVs, lamps and other such de-
vices especially if you want to switch off these
without getting out of the bed.
Priced at `1,999, the Smart Plug is a good op-
tion for those who already have Alexa-enabled
devices. It doesn’t cost too much and makes
life a bit simpler but the lack of support for ap-
pliances like AC does rankle a bit.
The Smart Plug is Amazon’s attempt to push
buyers deeper into the smart device ecosys-
tem. Alexa is the enabler, Echo or Fire Stick is
the hook, smart plug and other such devices
the bait that is fed to ensure you enter the smart
world created by Amazon, Apple, Google and
other Silicon Valley biggies, and never leave. „
The writer is with gadgetsnow.com
T
he X series smartphones from
Poco aim to offer powerful
specifications at an affordable
price. Last year, the company
launched Poco X2, one of the more pow-
erful smartphones in the sub-`20K catego-
ry. This year, it has come up with its succes-
sor — Poco X3 — which starts at `16,999.
The X3 features a 6.67-inch full HD+ display with
1080x2340 pixel resolution. A coating of Corning
Gorilla Glass 5 protects the display from scratches
and support from HDR10 enhances the user ex-
perience. The smartphone display offers rich and
vibrant colour reproduction, which makes binge
watching enjoyable. Users are also allowed to custom-
ise the colour scheme for better viewing experience.
We did not face any issue with the brightness of the
display when we used the phone under direct sunlight.
The smartphone is powered by a mid-range Qual-
comm Snapdragon 732G processor paired with 8GB of
RAM. It offers 128GB internal storage, which can be ex-
panded up to 256GB by adding a microSD card. The
phone managed to offer a smooth and lag-free perfor-
mance with the help of this 8nm processor. Poco X3
one also comes with a layer of MIUI 12
based on Android 10. In terms of soft-
ware, the phone has borrowed the best
features from Xiaomi and improved them.
The user interface is pretty clean and is easy
to use. However, like the other Xiaomi smart-
phones, this one also comes with some use-
less pre-installed apps.
Poco X3 sports a quad-rear camera setup,
which comprises of 64MP main camera with
f/1.89 aperture, 13MP 119° ultra-wide sensor with
1.12 m, f/2.2 aperture, 2MP depth and 2MP 4cm
macro sensor with 1.75 m, f/2.4 aperture. Selfie lov-
ers get a 20MP front shooter with f/2.2 aperture. The
camera clicks detailed and vibrant images. The shots
taken using the ultra-wide angle lens also offered dy-
namic range and a good amount of detailing.
GET IT FOR:
The smartphone is backed by a 3000mAh battery
Starts at ` that lasted more than a day on a single charge of mixed
16,999 usage. The 33W fast charger ensures the handset is
charged up within 2 hours. The X3 is definitely a wor-
HIGHLIGHT:
thy successor to the X2. It is one of the most affordable
Smooth smartphones to offer a 120Hz display. Poco X3 is a com-
performance plete package under the budget of `20,000.„
The writer is with gadgetsnow.com
 20 feel smart
OCTOBER 11-17, 2020

Cronutt THIS WEEK,

PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS BEYOND HEADLINES
THAT YEAR
OCT 11-17

Oct 11, 1984

Astronaut Kathryn D Sullivan,
part of the crew
of space shuttle
Challenger,
becomes the
first American
woman to walk
in space.

Oct 12, 1999

The dessert that’s a cross
between a croissant and a
doughnut?
Nope, and that has a single
"t". This here is a sea lion in
California.
Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff
I see. What happened to Pervez Musharraf, while
him? Or is it her? returning from Sri Lanka after
It’s a him alright, and he an official visit, seizes power
recently underwent brain through a bloodless military
surgery to reverse epilepsy. coup in an effort to invalidate
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s
Oh! Good luck to him. How
did that happen though? attempt to replace him.
That’s awful! effective in treating epilepsy in mice.
That’s the interesting part. More and
more sea lions and sea otters are Indeed. We humans have a lot to
Wow. Sounds groundbreaking. Oct 14, 2012
falling victim to epilepsy, and that is answer for. But scientists hope this Base jumper
because of climate change. surgery could be of help in this Exactly. Cronutt is the first higher
epilepsy epidemic. mammal it is being tried on. If it’s Felix
successful, it can be used on others. Baumgartner
Explain.
Was it complicated? sets a world

Source: The New York Times

With oceans getting warmer, there are
It sounds like it. The surgery was done How is he doing after the surgery? record for
more algae blooms around, which
create toxins when they are eaten by by three neurosurgeons, who normally It’ll take about a month to see if he will skydiving an
fish like anchovies. When these fish operate on humans. They bored a hole truly bounce back but the day after estimated 39 km, reaching an
are eaten by sea lions and otters, their in his skull and implanted brain cells the surgery, the signs were promising. estimated top speed of
brains get damaged, resulting in extracted from a 35-day-old pig. It’s a 1,357.64 km/h, after he jumps
epilepsy. method that has turned out to be Fingers crossed, then.
to Earth from a balloon in the
Text: Indulekha Aravind
stratosphere.

Oct 16, 1986

Buzz in a Bottle
Source: disgustingfoodmuseum.com, winespectaror.com, livescience

Reinhold Messner scales the

Lhotse, in Nepal, becoming the
As countries remove restrictions on commerce and restaurants open up, the first person to climb all the 14
eight-thousanders – mountains
Disgusting Food Museum in Malmö, Sweden, has again opened its doors with
that are more than 8000 meters
some more exhibits. Here are some that might send you back to quarantine. above sea level.
Anty Gin The explorer has
Each bottle of this beverage distilled in nine "World's
the UK is infused with the "essence" of Firsts" in the
about 62 red wood ants, apart from Guinness World
botanicals. The manufacturer, Records.
Cambridge Distillery, says the ants lend
“sharp citrus notes” to the beverage.
Oct 17, 1972
Marshall Bruce Mathers
Fishky III is born in St Joseph,
The single cask
Missouri. Though he
whisky is aged for
starts rapping at 14
three months in
barrels that stored as M&M, he later
herring. “... it has changes it to
been described as Eminem.
End of History the worst whiskey
Made by BrewDog, Scotland, this beer has 55% ever made," says Source: onthisday.com, timeanddate.com
alcohol — the strong beer category in India usually has museum director
8%. If that does not get you intoxicated, check this out: Write to us with feedback
Andreas Ahrens.
the packaging is in a taxidermied squirrel. etmagazine@timesgroup.com
Compiled by: Ram Mohan

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