Hegde’s think tank – Four years ago, Ramakrishna Hegde, the chief minister of Karnataka, setup the Economic and Planning Council (EPC)

Why then hasn’t micro-financing taken off? Ms Nilekani has funded, Sanghamitra, which is a micro-financial institution that’s targeted at the urban poor. If you’re still wondering what such an institution does, well it’s actually pretty simple; It offers loans to the poor at decent rates. View PDF

If you were to ask Saeed Mirza an awkward question, he would probably fling an even more tricky one at you. A very difficult man to corner, Mirza is the most vociferous spokesman on the Parallel Cinema movement in India, Compact, with a straight no-nonsense beard. Saeed Mirza, in his mid-thirties, is still an angry […]

IT companies may bring in their wake a certain culture of work and play which may veer away sharply from Bangalore’s pre-IT days, but the city is trying hard to keep its integrity. “The city has evolved.. It has grown madly in every direction, planned and unplanned, grown with granite and glass, with bricks and […]

This is an edited version of Rohini and Nandan Nilekani’s talk, The Next Big Thing — Quadrum Presents QED.   As Nandan and I travel, we try to watch out for new trends around the world. Even now, the world is divided into countries like ours, where half the population is still in the 19th […]