SPAN: January/February 1998

AuteiJO" EXP07(J JANUARY 15·21, NEW DELHI,

IETF 199

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THE INDIAN ENGINEERING TRADE FAIR

12·17 FEB. 1999 NEW DELHI, INDIA AN ALL INDUSTRY

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1998 INDIA

ASIA'S LARGEST ALl·INDUSTRY FAIR

ASIA'S LARGEST AUTOMOTIVE SHOW

12th IETF '97 - in retrospect Highlighu of Auto Expo '98

• Japan - Partner

• Spread over an area of 60,000 sqm • 800 leading corporations from 20 countries single Indian vehicle facturer

• Over 2.00.000 focussed visitors

• Every

• 3 Concurrent Fairs

manu13th IETF'99 with The Republic of

• 17 Global Auto

Majors • 400 Auto Component manufacturers

Country

• Exhibitors from 35 countries

For more details please contact:

Confederation

of Indian Industry

23, Institutional Area, Lodi Road, New Delhi 110 003. India.

Tel: 91-11- 4629994.

Fax: 91-11- 4626149, 4633168. email: Indus%cii@sirnetd.ernet.in

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Korea as the partner

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promises to be an even biggershow.

A LETTER

FROM

ht as been an eventful two months since the last issue of SPAN. One source of excitement is the ongoing investigation of space. The latest U.S. manned mission was completed in December, a feat chronicled in our cover feature about a young woman from Karnal, Haryana, who became the first Indian American woman in space. Mission Specialist Kalpana Chawla's contribution to the successful space shuttle mission-as part of an international team of scientist-astronauts-is something in which both India and America can take pride. Successes in space are heartening to those of us on Earth, partly because the research done in the course ofthese efforts improves the quality oflife for everyone, as the new technologies make their way to the marketplace. On a more spiritual level, the human dream of exploration and new horizons is vicariously fulfilled as we see -on television or the Internet-fellow humans walk in the attenuated atmosphere far above the Earth. Soon we may be able to do the same.

Freeman Dyson speculates on the real possibilities of interplanetary travel in his article "Space Travel on a Shoestring."

Another cluster of events occupying many of us at the American mission has been the visits of senior members of the U.S. Government. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a brief stop in November, a visit that had to be curtailed-much to her regret-by political concerns in the Middle East. Days before Secretary Albright's visit, the new United States Ambassador to India, Richard F. Celeste, arrived.

He formally presented his credentials to the President of India on November 28. Ambassador Celeste, who served at the U.S. u.s. Secretary of State Madeleine Embassy for four years in the Albright meets Prime Minister 1960s, is glad to be back. The 1.K. Gujml during her November Ambassador says in his interview visit to New Delhi. with SPAN, "This is a particularly exciting time to be here, in terms ofthe relationship between the United States and India."

Following the Secretary of State's visit were tours by Public Health Secretary Donna Shalala and Commerce Secretary William Daley.

Secretary Daley and his large business delegation spent six days in New Delhi and other Indian cities talking to prominent people in government and business. Excerpts from his address to the December summitofthe World Economic Forum held in Delhi outline the positive attitude the U.S. maintains about investment in India. Finance Min~ ter P. Chidambaram echoes these upbeat sentiments in his interview with SPAN: India remains open for business.

As counterpoint, Ajoy Bose assesses some of the difficulties encountered by multinational corporations in the Indian market and sug-

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THE

PUBLISHER

gests possible remedies in "The Big Surprise." Leaping from India to the American corn belt, "They'd Rather Be in Omaha" tells the story of how high-tech is transforming the American Midwestern and Plains states into big business centers.

Some people are left out in the cold when it comes to fulfillment, in business or any other way-particularly those disabled by illness or injury. "Challenged in Business," by Steve Espie, profiles Arvind Verma, CEO of leading instruments company AIMIL, who has been in a wheelchair since an accident at the age of 14. Civil servant, writer and lifelong muscular dystrophy sufferer Sanjay Bhatnagarwrites about new hopeforvictims of degenerative diseases offered by an American genetic research team in his article "Cure for Muscular Dystrophy?"

Both India and America have passed legislation to assist the disabled. Activist Ali Baquer comments on the effectiveness of India's legislation, and how his advocacy organization-which lobbied to get the law passed-was inspired by discussions over Worldnet at USIS. "It is not the handicap of the person, but the attitude of society that disables," Baquer says.

Preventing injuries in the workplace is also relevant here. "Safety in the Danger Zone," by Anne Fisher, describes the turnaround of Georgia-Pacific from one of the most dangerous to one of the safest places to work. Another are.a of concern for many of us is in-flight safety. "Toward Risk-Free Flying," by Adam Bryant, discusses ways and means of making flying safer-and whatit will cost the passenger.

Delhi's World Book Fair is coming up, and to whet the appetites of book lovers, we offer two bookish stories. Arun Bhanot interviews Arvind Kumar, head of Scholastic India, subsidiary of Scholastic Inc., one of the largest publishers of children's educational books in America. Then Anne Fadiman describes her rambles through used bookshops in "Secondhand Prose."

Santosh Verma is a Bombay-based photographer who snapped a sleepy American farm town, among other places, during a recent trip to the U.S. There he participated in a workshop in Carthage, Missouri. He writes about his experiences in the text accompanying this issue's photo essay featuring his pictures of "Small-Town U.S.A." More on the subject of visual arts: Vatsala Vedantam's profile of Kannada film director N. Chandrashekhara, whose film America!

America!! has become a smash hitin Karnataka.

The Ninth Triennale, the international art festival sponsored by the Lalit Kala Akademi,just concluded in New Delhi. SPAN focuses on the two U.S. entrants, both women, and both with Indian roots: Sonya Shah and Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper. Sonya Shah writes about coming to India on a Fulbright scholarship and Arun Bhanot talks to Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper about her painted visions ofIndian feminity.

All of us at SPAN hope you enjoy this, our first issue of 1998, and we wish all of you a very Happy New Year.

KALPANA CHAWLA AND THE

SPACE SHUTTLE Indian American Kalpana Chawla was part of the international crew aboard the u.s. Space Shuttle Columbia Flight STS-87 who completed a successful mission last December. While Earth-bound humans were embroiled in politics and other quirks of the third planet from the Sun, the six-member crew space- walked, manipulated remote control devices and orbited millions of miles performing experiments.

NASA's space shuttle proalp ana Chawla says she never dreamed, gram. She was hired as a as a child in Kamal, research scientist at that she would cross the NASA's Ames Research Center in California in frontiers of space. It was enough that her parents al1988, and in 1993 she lowed her to attend engijoined Overset Methods, Inc., Los Altos, California, neering college after she as vice president and regraduated from Tagore search scientist. In 1994 School. Not only did she she was selected by NASA get a bachelor of science for training as an astronaut, degree in aeronautical enwhich she began in March gineering from Punjab Engineering College, but 1995, at Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, she went on to get a masTexas. ter's degree in the United The fourth U.S. States from the University of Texas. She earned her Microgravity Payload shuttle flight STS-87, PhD in aerospace engiwhich completed its 15neering from the Univerday, 16-hour, 34-minute sity of Colorado in 1988. mission on December 5, And last November 1997, was her first time Chawla was the first Indian Orbiter Columbia touches down at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) around as Mission SpeAmerican woman astrocialist. She hopes to do it naut to blast off from the shuttle landing facility on December 5, J 997, after a successful sojourn in space. Commander Kevin Kregel and Pilot Steven Lindsey were at the again. She and her teamlaunch pad at Cape controls. It was the 12th landing for Columbia at KSC, and the 41st KSC mates traversed 10.45 milCanaveral, Florida, and landing in the history of the space shuttle program. lion kilometers during participate in a successful their trip. It was an internamission in space. Her famtional crew, including Mission Specialist Takao Doi of the ily from India cheered along with staff at the Kennedy Space Center as they watched the Columbia liftoff.

National Space Development Agency of Japan-the first Japanese astronaut to do a space walk-Ukrainian Payload Chawla was born in Kamal, Haryana, but is a naturalized U.S. Specialist Leonid Kadenyuk of the National Space Agency of citizen, married to flight instructor Jean-Pierre Harrison. Besides the Ukraine, and three other Americans: Mission Commander being an astronaut, she is licensed to fly single and multi-engine land airplanes, single-engine seaplanes and gliders. She is also a Kevin R. Kregel, Pilot Steven Lindsey and Mission Specialist certified flight instructor. After qualifying as a pilot in 1987, Winston Scott. The crew performed experiments as part of the Chawla began to consider another challenge: applying to Collaborative Ukrainian Experiment.

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Astronaut Kalpana Chawlajlying high in NASA's KC-135 "zero, gravity" aircraft, getting the feel of micro gravity during trainin~.

On the job in space. Chawla on Day 2 of the space shuttle mission.

Some of the experiments involved pollinating plants to observe food growth in space and tests for making stronger metals and faster computer chips-all for a price tag of about $56 million. They also had to deal with recalcitrant satellite Spartan, deployed by Chawla for solar observation. A malfunction gave space-walkers Doi and Scott an extra job to do: retrieval of the $10 million satellite.

Now the work will continue back on the ground as scientists analyze the data.

When the subject of modeling comes up for Kalpana Chawla, it is usually in connection with numerical simulation and analysis of flow physics. When asked what it is like being a woman in her field she replied, "I really never, ever thought, while pursing my studies or doing anything else, that I was a woman, or person from a small city, or a different country. I pretty much had my dreams like anyone else and I followed them. And people who were around me, fortunately, always encouraged me and said, 'If that's what you want to do, carryon.' " D

Suited up in training, Chawla prepares to go underwater for general familiarization of underwater simulations for Extravehicular Activity (EVA).

Portrait of the STS-87 crew. Five astronauts and a payload specialist pose at the Johnson Space Center (JSC). Left to right inforeground, wearing partial pressure launch and entry suits: Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist; Steven W Lindsey, pilot; Kevin R. Kregel, mission commander; and Leonid K. Kadenyuk, Ukrainian payload specialist. In white Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) are mission specialists Winston F Scott and Japanese Takao Doi.

An electronic still camera view of the autonomous robotic camera in the cargo bay of {he Earth-orbiting Columbia.

The camera is a prototype free-flying television camera that could be usedfor remote inspections of the exterior of space stations.

We may boldly go into space like rucksack travelers in the next century.

Budget space travel is in, but that has not diminished the tantalizing possibilities. Cheap manned missions to places like Mars, Europa and Ganymede could be just 50 years away.

bout 12 years ago I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston and climbed around in the space shuttle that is kept there for visitors to examine. That was before the Challenger disaster, when the shuttle was advertised as a safe ride for congressmen and schoolteachers. What impressed me about the shuttle was the immense quantity of stuff on board for the care and comfort of human passengers. It felt more like a hotel or a hospital than a rocket ship. I made rough calculations of how many tons of material were needed to keep seven passengers alive and well for a couple of weeks. I was thinking, Why don't we rip all this out and fly the thing from the ground by remote control?

At that time most of the shuttle missions were carrying unmanned satellites into orbit for various purposes-some scientific, some commercial and some military. These launching jobs could just as well have been done automatically. Only a few of the shuttle missions really need people on board, to do experiments or to repair the Hubble Space Telescope, for example. It would have made sense to reserve two shuttle ships with all their hotel equipment for missions in which people were essential and to use the other two for satellite-launching jobs. A freight-only version of the shuttle could carry bigger payloads for less money than the passenger version, without risking any lives.

Unfortunately, when I suggested this to people at Houston, they did not think it was a good idea. Their whole existence is centered on the training of astronauts and the operation of manned missions.

After failing to eviscerate the shuttle, I wandered into the museum of the Johnson Space Center, where there is a collection of rocks that astronauts brought back from the Moon. Many of the Moon rocks have been lent to scientists in other places, but a

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large number remain in Houston.

Scientists who are interested in Moon rocks are usually also interested in meteorites: their tools for analyzing meteorites work on Moon rocks as well. The spacecenter museum has a fine collection of meteorites, too, some of which were sitting in glass cases next to the Moon rocks.

Among them were two from Mars.

H seemed like a miracle. Here I was, in the museum in Houston, 30 centimeters away from a piece of Mars, with only a thin pane of glass to stop me from grabbing hold of it. In those days the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was talking seriously about grandiose missions to Mars, costing many billions of dollars. One of the reasons for going to Mars was to bring back samples of rock for scientists to analyze. And here were samples of Mars rock already in Houston, provided by nature free of charge. I found it odd that nobody seemed to be studying them. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in Houston who was excited about the Mars rocks. I stood and gazed at them for a long time. Nobody. else came to look at them. I remarked to the NASA people that they might usefully spend some time studying the Mars rocks they already had, instead of planning billion-dollar missions to collect more. At that time the administrators in Houston seemed little interested in anything that did not cost billions of dollars.

Things have changed since then. Now NASA is interested in cheap missions, and many more scientists are interested in Mars rocks. Last year some of the rocks were examined more thoroughly than ever before. Two contain chemical traces that might be interpreted as evidence of ancient life on Mars, and scientists have also found microscopic structures that might be relics of ancient microbes. The evi-

dence that these traces have anything to do with biology is highly dubious; we cannot say on the basis of it that life must have existed on Mars. These traces are important for two other reasons. First, if we are seriously interested in finding evidence of life on Mars, we now know that Mars rocks on Earth are the most convenient place to look for it. Instead of waiting for many years for an expensive sampling mission to land on Mars and return a few small chips of rock to Earth, we can find a supply of bigger chips lying in Antarctica, where meteorites accumulate on the ice and are freely available. Second, these rocks show that if life was established on Mars at any time in the past, it could have been transported to Earth intact. In the first billion years after the solar system was formed, when Mars had a warm climate and abundant water, asteroid impacts .were much more frequent than they are now. Mars rocks fell on Earth in great numbers, and many Earth rocks must also have fallen on Mars. We should not be surprised if we find that life, wherever it originated, spread rapidly from one planet to another. Whatever creatures we may find on Mars will probably be either our ancestors or our cousins.

The Europa Ocean Another place where life might now be flourishing is in a deep ocean on Jupiter's satellite Europa. Jupiter has four large satellites, discovered almost 400 years ago by Galileo: 10, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, in order of their increasing distance from Jupiter. The GaWeo spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter is sending back splendid pictures of the satellites. The new pictures of Europa show a smooth, icy surface with many large cracks but very few craters. It looks as if the ice is floating on a liquid ocean and being fractured from

time to time by movements of the water underneath. The pictures are strikingly similar to some pictures of the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean; it would not be surprising if Europa had a warm ocean under the ice. 10 is blazing hot, with active volcanoes on its surface; Ganymede's surface is icy like Europa's but not so smooth; and Callisto looks like a solid ball of ice covered with ancient craters. All four satellites are heated internally by the tidal effects of the huge mass of Jupiter, but the internal heating falls off rapidly with distance from Jupiter. We should expect that below the surface Europa is much cooler than 10 and much warmer than Ganymede and Callisto. Since 10 is hot enough to boil away all its water, and Callisto is cold enough to freeze solid, Europa might well have a warm liquid ocean. Ganymede might also have a liquid ocean, but it would be covered by a much thicker layer of ice. Of all the worlds that we have explored beyond Earth, Mars and Europa are the most promising places to look for life. o land a spacecraft on Europa, with the heavy equipment needed to penetrate the ice and explore the ocean directly, would be a formidable undertaking. A direct search for life in Europa's ocean would today be prohibitively expensive. But just as asteroid and comet impacts on Mars have given us an easier way to look for evidence of life on that planet, impacts on Europa give us an easier way to look for evidence of life there.

Every time a major impact occurs on Europa, a vast quantity of water is splashed from the ocean into the space around Jupiter. Some of the water evaporates, and some condenses into snow.

Creatures living in the water far enough from the impact have a chance of being splashed intact into space and quickly freeze-dried. Therefore, an easy way to look for evidence of life in Europa's ocean is to look for freeze-dried fish in the ring of space debris orbiting Jupiter.

Sending a spacecraft to visit and survey Jupiter's ring would be far less expensive than sending a submarine to visit and survey Europa's ocean. Even if we did not

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find freeze-dried fish in Jupiter's ring, we might find other surprises-freeze-dried seaweed or a freeze-dried sea monster.

Freeze-dried fish orbiting Jupiter is a fanciful notion, but nature in the biological realm has a tendency to be fanciful.

Nature is usually more imaginative than we are. Nobody in Europe ever imagined a bird of paradise or a duck-billed platypus before it was discovered by explorers.

Even after the platypus was discovered and a specimen brought to London, several learned experts declared it to be a fake. Many of nature's most beautiful creations might be dismissed as wildly improbable if they were not known to exist.

When we are exploring the universe and looking for evidence of life, either we may look for things that are probable but hard to detect or we may look for things that are improbable but easy to detect. In deciding what to look for, detectability is at least as useful a criterion as probability. Primitive organisms such as bacteria and algae hidden underground may be more probable, but freeze-dried fish in orbit are more detectable. To have the best chance of success, we should keep our eyes open for all possibilities.

A similar logic suggests warm-blooded plants as a reasonable target in the search for life on the surface of Mars. By "warmblooded" I do not mean that the plant will have a circulatory system or a precise temperature control. I mean only that the plant will be able to keep its internal temperature within the normal range of a cool greenhouse, roughly freezing to 80째 Fahrenheit. Any form of life that survived on Mars from the early, warm and wet era to the present, cold and dry era had two alternatives: either it adopted an entirely subterranean lifestyle, retreating deep underground to places where liquid water could be found, or it remained on the surface and learned to protect itself against cold and dryness by growing around itself an insulating greenhouse to maintain a warm and moist environment. The first alternative is more likely but would be much more difficult to detect. Organisms living deep underground, without sunlight, would probably be microscopic, like the bacteria that live deep in the Earth. To

find such organisms would require deep drilling and heavy machinery. The second alternative, though less likely, would be easier to detect. The two missions that arrived at Mars this year-the Pathfinder, landing on the surface, and the Global Surveyor, remaining in orbit-are not intended to detect living greenhouses or other possible forms of life. Their purpose is to explore the planet in a general way and to raise questions that later missions could answer.

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any species of terrestrial plants, including the skunk cabbage that sprouts in February in the woods of Princeton, New Jersey, where I live, are warm-blooded to a limited extent. For about two weeks the skunk cabbage maintains a warm temperature by rapidly metabolizing starch stored inside the part of its anatomy known as the spadix, which contains the hidden flowers with their male and female structures. According to folklore, the spadix is warm enough to melt snow around it. The evolutionary advantage of warm-bloodedness to the plant is probably that it attracts small beetles or other insects that linger in the spadix and pollinate the flowers. The spadix is not a greenhouse, and the supply of starch is not sufficient to maintain a warm temperature year-round. No terrestrial plants are able to stay warm through an Arctic winter. On Earth polar bears can flourish in colder climates than trees can. It seems to be an accident of history that warm-blooded animals evolved on Earth to colonize cold climates, whereas warm-blooded plants did not. On Mars plants might have been pushed to yet more drastic adaptations.

Plants could grow greenhouses (so far the idea remains a theory) just as turtles grow shells and polar bears grow fur and polyps build coral reefs in tropical seas.

These plants could keep warm by the light from a distant Sun and conserve the oxygen that they produce by photosynthesis.

The greenhouse would consist of a thick skin providing thermal insulation, with small transparent windows to admit sunlight. Outside the skin would be an array of simple lenses, focusing sunlight through the windows into the interior. The

Many of nature's most beautiful creations might be dismissed as wildly improbable if they were not known to exist.

windows would have to be small, to limit the loss of heat from outward radiation.

The plant would also need deep roots, to tap water and nutrients from warmer layers underground. Inside the greenhouse the plant could grow leaves and flowers in an oxygen-containing habitat where aerobic microbes and animals might also live.

Groups of greenhouses could grow together to form extended habitats for other species of plants and animals. An attendant community of microbes and fungi might help the plants to extract nutrients from the local ice or soil. Pores in the outer skin of the greenhouse might open to admit carbon dioxide from the atmosphere outside, with miniature airlocks and cold traps to keep losses of oxygen and water to a minimum.

If warm-blooded plants exist on Mars, they mayor may not be easy to see. We cannot predict whether they would stand out from their surroundings in a visual or photographic survey. Two clues to their presence would almost certainly be detectable: leakage of heat and leakage of oxygen. Neither thermal insulation nor atmospheric containment is likely to be perfect. If we looked for heat radiation from anomalously warm patches on the Martian surface at night, or for anomalous local traces of oxygen in the atmosphere in daytime, we might find places where warmblooded plants are hiding.

That we might find warm-blooded plants living wild on Mars or elsewhere in the solar system, it must be admitted, is only a remote possibility. It is much more likely that we will find Mars to be sterile, or inhabited only by subterranean microbes. In that case warm-blooded plants could be important in a different way-as a tool for human settlement. I now leave the subject of science to talk about human space travel and colonization. Human colonization of the solar system would not be primarily a scientific enterprise; it would

be driven by motivations that go far beyond science.

Confusion of Aims The space-shuttle program was in trouble even before the Challenger accident, because it was based on a confusion of aims. It was trying both to open the way to human adventure in space and to serve as a practical launch system for scientific, commercial and military missions. As I saw when I climbed into the shuttle at Houston, the two aims were never compatible. The shuttle was the result of a political compromise between people who wanted a reliable freight service into space and people who wanted to keep alive the tradition of the manned Apollo missions to the Moon. No single vehicle could do both jobs well. The shuttle tried, but it was too expensive for the first and too limited in its performance for the second.

In the future the two aims of the space program will be pursued separately. The 20 years since the birth of the shuttle have seen spectacular progress in the technologies of data processing, remote sensing and autonomous navigation. With these technologies almost all the practical needs' of science, commerce and national security are now better served by unmanned missions than by the shuttle.

The future shape of a manned program pursuing idealistic aims is the great unknown. The shuttle is inadequate as a vehicle for human adventure. It resembles a Greyhound bus rather than a Land Rover. Another spending spree like the one for Apollo would be inadequate, even if it were politically possible. Does the manned space program have a future?

The confusion of aims afflicting the space program from the beginning was in essence a confusion of time frames. The practical aims of scientific and military activities in space made sense in a time

frame of 10 years; the basic technology for unmanned space missions took only 10 years to develop. The aim of opening the skies to human exploration and adventure makes sense in a time frame of a hundred years-what it will probably take to develop the technologies needed for significant numbers of human explorers to roam space at a price that earthbound citizens will consider reasonable.

The Apollo misslons, tied to a lO-year time frame, gave a false start to human exploration. They were far too costly to be sustained, and at the end of the 10-year program they had reached a dead end. If it had been made clear from the beginning that manned exploration would be a 100year program-one with a stable and affordable budget-we might by now have a light two-passenger spacecraft instead of the shuttle. We might already have a few people learning how to live permanently on the Moon, using only local resources.

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eare now at the beginning of a revolution in space technology, when for the first time cheapness will be mandatory. Missions that are not cheap will not fly. This is bad news for space explorers in the short run and good news in the long run. Finally cheapness has a chance. Missions to the planets have been few and far between in the past 10 years because they became inordinately expensive; they were expensive because of an imbalance in funding between groundbased and space-based science. For 30 years it was easier politically to obtain 10 dollars for a space-science mission than to obtain one dollar for astronomy on the ground. The unfair competition injured both parties, starving ground-based astronomy and spoiling space science. The injury to space science was greater: ground-based astronomy flourished in spite of starvation, while planetary mis-

sions almost came to a halt in spite of big budgets. The rules are now changing, in the direction of fair competition between ground and space. This means that in the future space missions will be cheap. Once the barrier of high cost is broken, missions will be more frequent and the pace of discovery will be faster.

The essential first step in making either unmanned or manned operations cheap is to eliminate the standing army of people at Mission Control who take care of communication with spacecraft day after day.

Spacecraft and the instruments they carry must become completely autonomous.

The second step is to develop new technologies for launching payloads into space cheaply. The current Mars missions are making only small steps toward these goals. The coming era of cheap space operations will begin with unmanned mission, which will exercise the new technologies of propulsion and operation.

Cheap manned missions will come later.

Cheap unmanned missions require only new engineering; cheap manned missions will require new biotechnology. The chief problem for a manned mission is not getting there but learning how to survive after arrival. Surviving and making a home away from Earth are problems of biology rather than of engineering.

No law of physics or biology forbids cheap travel and settlement all over the solar system and beyond. But it is impossible to predict how long this will take.

Predictions of the dates of future achievements are notoriously fallible. My guess is that the era of cheap unmanned missions will be the next 50 years, and the era of cheap manned missions will start sometime late in the 21st century. The time these things will take depends on unforeseeable accidents of history and politics.

My date for the beginning of cheap manned exploration and settlement is based on a historical analogy: from Columbus's first voyage across the Atlantic to the settlement of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts was 128 years. So I am guessing that in 2085, 128 years after the launch of the first Sputnik, the private settlement of pilgrims all over the solar system will begin.

Learning to Live in the Universe The main lesson I draw from the history of space activity in this century is that we must clearly separate short-term from long-term aims. The dream of expanding the domain of life from Earth into the universe makes sense only as a long-term goal. Any affordable program of manned exploration must be centered in biology, and its time frame tied to the time frame of biotechnology; a hundred years, roughly the time it will take us to learn to grow warm-blooded plants, is probably reasonable. The people who decide to go to Mars or Europa will know whether or not indigenous life exists there. If it does exist, they will know how to nurture and protect it when they come to build their own habitats. If it does not, they will bring new life to make good nature's lack. he most important part of their baggage will be the seeds of plants and animals genetically engineered to survive in an alien climate. On a world that has only a thin atmosphere, like Mars, or no atmosphere at all, like Europa, the most useful seeds will be the seeds of warmblooded plants. After a hundred years of development of genetic engineering, we will know how to write the DNA to make plants grow greenhouses. Plants as large as trees could grow greenhouses big enough for human beings to live in. If the human settlers are wise, they will arrive to move into homes already prepared for them by an ecology of warm-blooded plants and animals introduced by earlier, unmanned missions.

Warm-blooded plants will not by themselves solve all our problems. The essential requirement for a successful human colony will be a deep understanding of the local ecology, so that human beings can become a part of it without destroying it. The Biosphere 2 experiment in Arizona, in which eight people tried unsuccessfully to live in a closed ecology for two years, was not a failure but a valuable object lesson. It taught us how human beings without sufficient understanding of their habitat could unexpectedly run out of oxygen.

Why should anybody wish to live on Mars or Europa? The only answer we can

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give to this question is the answer that George Mallory gave to the question why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it is there." There may be economic, scientific or sentimental reasons attracting people to remote places; people always have a variety of reasons for moving from one place to another. One of the few constant factors in human history is migration, often over huge distances for reasons that are difficult to discern. I have little doubt that as soon as emigration from Earth becomes cheap enough for ordinary people to afford, people will emigrate. To make human space travel cheap, we will need advanced biotechnology in addition to advanced propulsion systems.

And we will.need a large number of travelers, to bring down the cost of a ticket.

These are the reasons human space travel will not be cheap until 50 or 100 years have gone by.

The most important fact about the geography of the solar system is that the habitable surface area is almost all on small objects-asteroids and comets-rather than on planets. Planets have most of the mass but very little of the surface area.

Asteroids are usually rock, and orbit in the inner part of the solar system, inside the orbit of Jupiter. Comets are usually ice, and orbit in the outer part of the solar system, farther from the Sun than Neptune. Comets of average size are visible from Earth only on the rare occasions when gravitational perturbations cause them to fall close to the Sun and their volatile surfaces boil off to form bright tails in the sky.

Comets are more significant than asteroids in the ecology of the solar system, and a huge swarm of them can be found in a ring-shaped region called the Kuiper Belt, outside the orbit of Neptune. Only in the past few years have some of the largest Kuiper Belt objects been seen, first with ground telescopes in Hawaii and more recently with the Hubble Space Telescope.

According to my rough estimate, the total surface area of the trillions of objects in the Kuiper Belt is about a thousand times the area of Earth.

Why are comets of greater ecological interest than asteroids? First, they are vastly more numerous. Second, ice is better than

One of the few constant factors in human history is migration, often over huge distances for reasons that are difficult to discern.

rock as a basis for life, and comets contain not only ice but also most of the other chemical elements that are essential for biology. Third, the orbital speeds of comets are much slower than the speeds of asteroids. The Kuiper Belt may seem to us today to be a cold and inhospitable place, but it is probably less inhospitable to life than Mars.

It has the advantage of being an archipelago-a collection of small, habitable islands not too far apart from one another.

Because their relative speeds are slow, communication and travel between islands would be easy. If you were living on a milewide comet in the Kuiper Belt, another mile-wide object would pass by within a million miles about once a month, on average. Objects a hundred yards wide would pass by within this distance every day. It would take only a few days, using a small spacecraft with a modest propulsion system, to hop over and visit neighbors or replenish supplies. If you were bored by the scenery or unhappy with your family, you could move permanently and try your luck on another comet, just as colonists moved to Providence and places west.

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af community occupying a Kuiper Belt object outgrew its habitat and wished to expand, it could increase its living space by attaching tethers to neighboring objects as they floated by. A metropolis could grow in the 22nd century by the accretion of objects as rapidly as Chicago or San Francisco grew in the 19th century by the accretion of real estate. A Kuiper Belt metropolis would probably be a flat, diskshaped collection of cometary objects, linked by long tethers and revolving slowly around the center to keep the tethers taut. To continue the accretion of desirable properties while avoiding destructive impacts, a metropolitan border patrol would engage in an interesting game of celestial billiards, tracking approaching objects with telescopes, nudging them gently with space tugs and

hooking them with tethers.

Recently the inhabitants of Earth have become aware that our planet is exposed to occasional impacts of asteroids and comets that may cause worldwide devastation.

The most famous such impact occurred 65 million years ago in Mexico, and may have been responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs. During the next 100 years, as the technologies of astronomical surveillance and space propulsion move forward, it is likely that active intervention to protect Earth from future impacts will become feasible. We may see a mutually profitable merger of the space-science enterprise with the business of planet protection. The cost of protection would be modest, provided that the warning time before an impact was as long as a hundred years. To deflect an orbiting object enough to cause it to miss Earth, a slow, steady push applied by a solar-powered engine would be much more effective than a nuclear explosion. With a hundred-year warning time the power required for the steady push would be only about two kilowatts for an average-size comet, with a mass of a billion tons. Two kilowatts is power on a human, not an astronomical, scale. Even as far from the Sun as the Kuiper Belt there is enough power in sunlight to supply two' kilowatts with a solar collector of reasonable size. Once human communities were established in the Kuiper Belt, their border patrol would be in a position to offer its services to Earth, to detect objects that threatened to collide with Earth and deflect them in timely fashion at minimal cost.

Another service that Kuiper Belt communities might provide for human beings on Earth is scientific exploration. The belt contains enough unknown objects to keep explorers busy for thousands of years. The comets are cold and ancient enough to preserve detailed records of the formation and early history of the solar system. It is likely that we would find objects there that are older than the Sun. It should be possible to

trace the history of our system back into the pre-solar era.

It could well happen that within a few hundred years most of the inhabitants of the solar system will be living in the Kuiper Belt. Accustomed as we are to living on a high-gravity planet close to the Sun, it is difficult for us to imagine what it would be like to live with low gravity far away. One of the first steps a human colony would take to establish itself in the Kuiper Belt would be to surround its cometary habitat with an extended efflorescence of mirrors in space to collect sunlight. An array of mirrors 100 kilometers in diameter could collect a steady thousand megawatts of energy anywhere in the Kuiper Belt, out to three times the distance of Neptune from the Sun. That is enough energy to sustain a considerable population of plants, animals and human beings with all modern conveniences. The mirrors would not have to be optically perfect. The material out of which to con.struct them, a few thousand tons of metal or plastic, would probably be available on any Kuiper Belt object. After a century of progress in biotechnology we would not need to manufacture the mirrors. We would teach our plants to grow them.

Life in the Kuiper Belt would be different from life on Earth, but not necessarily less beautiful or more confined. After a century or two there would be metropolitan centers, cultural monuments, urban sprawl-all the glories and discontents of a high civilization. Soon restless spirits would find the Kuiper Belt too crowded.

But there would be an open frontier and a vast wilderness beyond. Beyond the Kuiper Belt lies a more extended swarm of comets-the Oort Cloud, farther away from the Sun and still untamed.

0 About the Author: Freeman J. Dyson is president of the Space Studies Institute. He was formerly professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.

Ambassador Richard Celeste presents his credenrials to President K.R. Narayanan during a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi.

"The fundamentals are sound, there is still strong growth in the Indian economy, the source of frustration is a sense that so much more is possible. " -RICHARD F. CELESTE

Richard RCeleste Richard F Celeste, the new ambassador of the United States to India, is no stranger here. First posted at New Delhi in the 1960s as Special Assistant to then Ambassador Chester Bowles, Ambassador Celeste formed ties of affection with India during his four years in the country that brought him back often in intervening years.

Born in 1937 in Cleveland, Ohio, Ambassador Celeste graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappafrom Yale University, and attended Exeter University and Oxford University in England. After

his initial stint in India, he returned to Washington, D.C., where he was Director of the Peace Corpsfor two years, before deciding to enter politics in his home state of Ohio. He ranfor Governor of Ohio and was elected in 1982. He served two terms as Governor, from 1983-91. He then became managing partner in the consulting firm, Celeste & Sabety, Ltd., in Columbus, Ohio.

Along with his duties as head of the American mission in India, Ambassador Celeste is chairman of the GovernmentUniversity-Industry Research Roundtable, chairman of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science Advisory Board, a council member of Appropriate Technology International, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a visiting fellow in public policy at Case Western Reserve University.

Very much a family man, the Ambassador is accompanied in New Delhi by his wife, Jaqueline Lundquist, and his five-month-old son Sam. In an interview with SPAN Editor Lea Terhune shortly after he presented his credentials to President K.R. Narayanan, he spoke candidly and with enthusiasm about his new posting, about the positive developments in Indo-U.S. relations, and how he perceives the future.

SPAN: How does it feel to come back to India after 30 years away?

AMBASSADOR CELESTE: I visited India every four or five years since I left it 30 years' ago, and my most recent visit was just last year in March of '96. It's exciting to be back. This is a particularly exciting time to be here, in terms of the relationship between the United States and India-and I hope we can strengthen that and in terms of all of the things that are happening in India. So I'm delighted to be back here and eager to begin to travel around the country and not isolate myself in New Delhi.

When I was here earlier, I had a chance to get from Ladakh to Trivandrum and from Bombay to Kalimpong and Calcutta. I did quite a bit of traveling when I was here in the 1960s and I'm sure that as I travel I'll be impressed, as I have been in New Delhi, by how much things have changed.

What kind of changes do you see so far?

Do you think it is for the better?

I think, by and large, change is for the better. Clearly, people are living longer.

The quality of life has improved. In the 1960s the issue was "Can India feed itself?" That's no longer the issue. The issue is "Can India get food to those who need it the most?" In the ' 60s there was a question about India's capability of building substantial domestic manufacturing.

Now we just look at the crowds of cars on the road, most of them built in India, that testify to the enormous capabilities of Indian manufacturing and Indian economic strength. I think that the challenge now is not whether India can perform at a high level but whether it can sustain that performance in a very competitive global environment, and whether it can distribute the benefits in a way that can bring along the three or four hundred million Indians who still live in poverty.

How do you see the evolution of the democratic process in India since you were here in the '60s?

When I arrived in New Delhi in 1963, a book had just been published which had garnered a lot of attention, called

After Nehru, Who? The political landscape was overshadowed by the figure of Jawaharlal Nehru. Today we are just witnessing a transition from the United Front Government to a new election, and everyone agrees that India's democratic institutions aren't in jeopardy, that democracy is firmly rooted in this country, that institutions like an independent judiciary, like a free press, like a vigorous political party system are well entrenched, and that free and orderly elections that engage a substantial majority of the electorate are the rule and not the exception.

So my view is that while I never doubted India's commitment to democracy 30 years ago, that commitment is stronger than ever, and to me this country is a global leader, among other reasons, because of the strength of its commitment to democracy. This isn't simply pious rhetoric. This is the untidy reality of democracy.

As far as u.s. policy toward India goes, there is definitely much more interest in cementing good relations-interest on both sides. How would you like to see that develop?

One of the reasons for my excitement is the commitment of President Clinton and of the Clinton Administration to strengthening our relationship with India, and lifting the level of engagement, and broadening the level of engagement. This whole effort has been given the term strategic dialogue. What it means is being willing to work in a systematic way to identify common interests and pursue those common interests. And being willing to discuss in a candid way differences around important interests, but not letting any single difference dominate the relationship.

I am excited to be here as an ambassador at this time because I believe the challenge for me and for everyone who is part of the U.S. mission here-USIS, USAID, everyone-is to determine how we can playa constructive role in the architecture and construction of this new relationship. I would say we were still in the design phase and we can help complete the blueprints, and then we have to help build the structure. And hopefully it will be a structure that will be permanent. It won't be something that shifts with changing political winds in India or in the United States, but it will characterize the way two great nations work for the rest of our history. That's certainly my ambition.

It's not a small ambition, but I really believe I reflect the hopes and expectations of our President in that.

Up until now, since the U.S. policy shift began, the emphasis has been on trade relations. Will that single-pointed emphasis be maintained, or do you see a broadening of issues and areas ofinteraction?

When I was Governor of Ohio, people accused me of being preoccupied with the economy. But my concern about the economy was the result of a sense that we couldn't do any of the other things we wanted unless we had a healthy, dynamic economy. We couldn't put more money into education. We couldn't initiate a new community mental health program, we couldn't undertake new environmental initiatives unless we had a healthy economic foundation on which to build those initiati ves.

So I believe that the Indian decision to

move toward liberalization, to try to accelerate the rate of economic growth here and to engage foreign investment in that process is a healthy decision. It's a healthy foundation for both countries as we think about this new relationship. But we should think of that economic partnership as an ongoing enterprise. It's not a completed piece of work. It will always involve negotiation around WTO issues or business investment opportunities, or just a range of common interests.

That economic platform should be the basis for thoughtful, active programs to protect the environment; thoughtful, effective programs to promote public health; thoughtful, sustained programs to expand educational opportunities, especially for young women, and others who have not enjoyed those opportunities.

From my perspective, if we don't have a healthy collaboration on economic issues, it makes all other collaborations more difficult. But we shouldn't be totally preoccupied with economic issues. We should see those as providing the wherewithal, the resources-the financial resources, the physical resources and the human resources-to address a wide range of global issues of mutual concern.

How do you view the current slowdown in the economy?

It's ironic that people are talking about a slump in India. I think the answer, the reality, is that the fundamentals in India are strong. Inflation is low, the growth rate is twice the growth rate of the United States today, on obviously a lower base. The commitment to liberalizing the economy is sustained with pretty much a common consensus across political parties. So I would say I'm cautiously optimistic, particularly comparing what's happening to India in the most recent time period to what's happening in East Asia where the setbacks are much more severe.

The reason I think people are frustrated is because everyone senses that India can do better. Indian businesspeople sense this, many Indian political leaders sense this, those of us who are friendly observers of India sense this. There is an

enormous pent-up capability in this country, and the constraints are insufficient infrastructure: highways, transportation systems, power of all sorts, telecommunications, education. These are the four critical infrastructure areas. There is frustration when we don't see, for example, faster action to help so-called fast-track power projects to move forward. Because every day that's lost, that's power that's denied a farmer who needs it for a tube well, or that's denied a new small businessperson who wants to link up his or her company to a power source. That's energy that isn't available for the new software developer in Bangalore or the new manufacturer in Mumbai.

So I guess my' feeling is the fundamentals are sound, there is still strong growth in the Indian economy, the source of frustration is a sense that so much more is possible. And much of the inhibition and the lag in the system is the result of how long路 it takes to get decisions made, and how long it takes to get coordination among public agencies and the private sector.

You are here with your family, including anew baby.

Yes, my wife and baby have arrived.

We all are really happy to be here. Two of my older children were born in India.

I have always felt that India is an enormously family-friendly country, and especially small children are very affectionately regarded here. So I am delighted that I am here with my five-month-old son Sam and I think that he, in the next three years, will become very much a creature of India. I am sure his taste buds will be influenced by India, and his sensory perception will be affected by India, and hopefully he will have some friends and playmates who will be part of his future as he grows up. We won't get that far away that he can't come back.

As I travel, and particularly after Sam is a little bit older, I hope that we can travel as a family as well, that not all of my trips are just me, the ambassador, doing the traveling. My wife, who was with me on my visit to India last year and cried when we left, is eager to be traveling. It's a very exciting place to be with a family.

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Challenged in Business

Arvind Verma Makes itWork Getting to the top of any field isn't easy, but Arvind Verma has taken on tough challenges all his life, particularly since an accident made him a paraplegic at 14.

Now CEO of leading instrumentation company AIMIL, both his life and his business reflect a tenacious commitment to excellence.

une 1967. Mussoorie. Fourteen-year-old Arvind Verma was hiking through the mountain forest. Night was falling. He knew he needed to speed up his return to his family's cottage.

Seeing a steep grassy slope that looked like a good shortcut, he sat on the slope, gave himself a push and started sliding down the grass. His speed accelerated. Bushes and trees hid the danger below. Suddenly the slope changed to a vertical precipice and he

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fell through the air. His back smashed against rocks, knocking him unconscious. A week later, after surgery on his back, the doctors told him he would never walk again. Three ribs had pierced his spinal column.

October 1997. New Delhi. Forty-four-year-old Arvind Verma is driving to his office in his Cielo. He has been a paraplegic for 30 years. The car is specially equipped so that he can do every-

thing with his hands. We are driving from his home in Greater Kailash to Naimex House on Mathura Road, headquarters of AIMIL (Associated Instruments Manufacturing India Limited).

Arvind is the CEO and managing director of AIMIL, India's premier instrumentation company. The official driver sits in the back seat (occasionally Arvind chooses not to drive). I've never been in a car where a person drives his chauffeur.

I had just retired from a two-year tour as editor of SPAN, an era in which we gave the magazine a business orientation with many articles on Indian companies. But I did not know much about what an Indian business firm was really like. A friend introduced me to Arvind and AIMIL and suggested I "live with" the company for a few weeks and do an in-depth profile of AIMIL and its paraplegic CEO "because there's a good story there." I liked the idea; I'd get to know an Indian business. For several weeks I stayed in the guest flat on top of Arvind Verma's Delhi residence and spent mornings in Naimex House. I'm not sure how much I learned about "Indian companies" but I learned a lot about one particular companyand the remarkable man at the helm. rvind is outgoing, suave and friendly, though now and then in the office he gets angry when something isn't done well.

Driving the Cielo, he negotiates the morning Delhi traffic with dexterity and precision, at one point squeezing at medium speed between two cars to free himself from impending gridlock. The effortless flow of his driving reminds me of the book Zen and the Art of Archery. When I comment on this, he says, "Actually I did a lot of archery in the rehabilitation hospital in the U.K. to strengthen the arms and hands."

I ask him to tell me the story of the rehab, of his conquest of paraplegia and of coping with being handicapped in India.

Arvind asks me to tell his personal story but also the story of AIMIL, because his life is AIMIL's life. Since we're caught in a massive traffic jam near the Baha'i Temple, it's a good time for him to start the story.

About his paraplegia, he says, "I never thought of it in negative terms. Even from early childhood I had this strong belief that one shouldn't think about problems, one should solve them. As a small kid I used to believe it was challenging and interesting to solve difficult problems. So I saw coping with paraplegia as a difficult problem that would be challenging and interesting to solve. To use an AIMIL slogan- 'Beyond options. Solutions.'

Laying on my back in that hospital bed I was not thinking of options but solutions."

His parents' reaction to his paraplegia was very supportive.

"They thought we should immigrate immediately to England where there were better facilities for the handicapped. But my fa-

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ther was in mid-career and in the U.K. we would, in a sense, have to start from scratch. We had family discussions. I talked them out of moving to England. I told them that India was our country and I would find the willpower to cope with my handicap in our own land.

"But they sent me to the U.K. for rehabilitation-to the Stoke Mandeville Hospital for spinal injuries. The National Spinal Injury Centre of the U.K. was located there. So I spent 20 months 16 days in rehab, a record for the shortest rehab period at Stoke Mandeville.

"When I arrived the doctor sawall kinds of contraptions on me. 'Get those off,' he ordered. They put me in a wheelchair and told me to learn to use it. There I had to learn to do things for myself.

"The routine began. Every day was a challenge. Every activity was a challenge.

Physiotherapy.

Swimming. Archery and table tennis to strengthen my arms. After it was over, my parents took me on a vacation to Switzerland where I had my first experience of living in the world as a paraplegic. There were no special public facilities for the handicapped in that era, and not much 'disability awareness' among people, even in progressive Switzerland."

Arvind was not depressed by this.

He says, "I had no time. I was too busy thinking about how I was going to solve the problems of leading an open life, which I was determined to lead. Anyway, after the Swiss vacation we went back to India. At St. Mary's Roman Catholic School, where I had been doing my secondary education, I was almost a year behind.

But I made it up and matriculated on time. I ranked fourth in my class. I never missed a day of school.

"During this period, an American neighbor, Ernest Torrella, befriended me. He worked for the U.S. Embassy. He took me swimming everyday in the pool at Roosevelt House, the Ambassador's official residence. I was embanassed to swim in front of other people, so Ernest arranged for the pool to be empty when he brought me. For six months I went swimming with him there for an hour almost every day, with no else watching except the lifeguard. I still love swimming and table tennis. In backstroke and breaststroke I exceeded the qualifying speed for competition in the Para Olympics."

As an adult, Arvind has been active in the Rotary movement for 16 years. When he tried to join, the club members were reluctant-"He's handicapped, how can he contribute?" He told them he would show them how. Over the next few years, he held every major office in the club and was elected president at age 36, one of the youngest presidents in the history of the Rotary Clubs of Delhi. He won the award for best Rotary Club president in his district of 70 clubs, and numerous other Rotary

awards. He soon moved into higher Rotary realms. Today he's adviser to his own club's president and also to the Rotary District Governor.

Arvind studied economics at St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, declining the choice to do a correspondence course. He arranged for boys to carry him upstairs for classes, demonstrating that he could manage as well as anyone. He received his BA degree with honors in 1973.

Arvind wanted to become a chartered accountant, so he joined Price Waterhouse and enrolled in the National Institute of Chartered Accountants. He worked at Price Waterhouse by day and attended classes in the evening. In four years he passed his exam.

Eventually the traffic jam clears and we're buzzing down Mathura Road. Arvind's mobile phone rings and he answers it.

Soon we reach Naimex House. The driver brings a wheelchair to the car door. Arvind climbs into it unassisted. spendmany days watching Arvind work. When he wants to speak to a person in a way that needs a one-on-one meeting rather than a phone call, he will almost always wheel himself to that person's office.

As we sit in the drawing room of Arvind's residence, he tells me that AIMIL was founded as a British firm in 1932 to sell British precision instruments to India and Southeast Asia. "From the very beginning," Arvind says, "it focused on the quality of its products and on the service it gave its customers in using them."

AIMIL became an Indian company in 1960 and gradually began selling instruments from American, European and Japanese companies. Today it represents scores of American high-tech companies. AIMIL serves customers in industry, infrastructure, education, research, labs, and the space and defense sectors of the government.

AIMIL also sells environment-monitoring instruments and expects that to be a growth field. Arvind feels that in the 21st century, environmentalism will be the big global issue. He wants to be in the forefront of India's corporate concern for the environment and this was one of the motives for setting up a joint venture with the French company, Groupe TAl, for bringing reinforced-earth technology to India. For civil engineering projects, reinforced-earth is more environmentfriendly than other technologies. It's cleaner and speedier, and the constructions are designed to integrate into the natural environment.

Arvind continues with the history over lunch the following day in the AIMIL conference room. "In the 1950s, there was a huge number of

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construction projects in India, so AIMIL established its first manufacturing facility to make instruments for soil, cement and concrete testing. Before that AIMIL had never manufactured any instruments. In the 1960s, electronics was the buzz word. We set up the first calibration center in India. In the 1970s and 1980s, India was getting into space programs, atomic energy and strengthening its defense technology-all of which meant there would be an enormous investment in R&D. We were ready and waiting-selling many basic research instruments such as electron microscopes, mass spectrometers and chromatographs. In fact, AIMIL was the first manufacturer of chromatographs in the country.

"The 1990s has brought a free market and a liberalized global economy. Our thrust now is on consistency of quality through ISO 9000 programs, elevation of quality through quality assurance tools and enhancement of productivity through automation tools. We take pride in being at the cutting edge of whatever is happening. My father always wanted AIMIL to bring the newest and be3t technology to India and I want to follow that tradition."

Arvind's father, H.C. Verma, was chairman of the company until his death in September 1996 at age 72. The elder Verma was a legendary figure. As I speak to various senior members of AIMIL, I realize how much he was loved and respected.

H.C. Verma owned 20 percent of the stock when Arvind joined the company in 1977. He quit a promising future at Price Waterhouse because he wanted to rescue AIMIL. It was in financial trouble. His father and the two other major stockholders wanted to sell it. Arvind thought the potential buyers were offering a bad deal. Ht? told his father not to sell. He also told him to buyout the other main stockholders so he would have majority control of the company.

The company was in the red and in danger of losing its market share. After six months, Arvind got it back in the black. In a year-and-a-half, he downsized the company, increased productivity and completely reorganized AI MIL. At first he handled manufacturing but eventually got into marketing and exports. By the time he was made CEO in late 1996, he had been involved in every aspect of . the company.

When H.C. Verma died, many AIMIL people thought the company would go under because for decades H.C. and AIMIL had seemed synonymous. "We thought no one could replace his father," says one senior staffer, "but Arvind has done so and now we realize that for the 21 st century a young man is needed."

A senior director of the company, K.B. (Bhushan) Uppal tells me much of the company spirit was gen-

erated by the late H.C. Verma.

"There's always been a family atmosphere in AIMIL. He sawall of us as members of his family. He loved to talk to us. He'd say to a salesman, 'Go out and sell and then come back and we'll talk about it.' He always encouraged employees to speak about AIMIL to the outside worldto project our corporate image of quality and commitment-to go to ministries, institutions, foundations, places where he himself was always giving speeches.

"Arvind has inherited a lot from his father," says Bhushan.

"He has the same devotion to quality. He has a gift of expression.

He would have done well as a journalist. He coined the company slogan, 'We Make It Work.' Arvind and I have been the best of friends since 1977 when he joined the company. You see, I have made AIMIL my home. It is a total commitment. For me, I live and breathe AIMIL." I know there are many other "family companies" in India so I ask Bhushan if this family feeling is common in all of them.

"I wouldn't know," he said. "I've never worked for any other company."

I learn more about AIMIL by speaking to Dr. VM. Sharma, the head of its consultancy division, ATES (Advanced Technology and Engineering Services). Dr. Sharma is a scientist and a past president of the Indian Geotechnical Society.

By setting up the consultancy division, the company is now solving customers' problems for them. AIMIL brings the instruments, sets them up, takes measurements, interprets and analyzes the data.

"We currently have six projects," says Sharma. "One is the metro being built in Athens, Greece, which is using the software that Dr. Biswajit Das Gupta has brought us from ITASCA company in the U.S. for whom he worked, in Minneapolis. This is numerical modeling, one of the newest computer softwares for civil engineering measuring and monitoring. You see, civil engineers want to know if an earthquake hits the dam or metro they're building, what will happen?

Numerical modeling gives answers. This is another example of how we're bringing in the latest American technologies.

We are the only authorized agents in India for ITASCA's numerical modeling."

At a week-long conference of staffers and distributors from all over India I meet AIMIL's director of marketing, Ashok Swarninathan, who is based in Bangalore, and who has been with AIMIL for 20 years. I ask him to tell me about AIMIL from the marketing point of view, and what kind of corporate image they want to project.

"We are changing our image. We have to. We have always been seen as conservative, solid, stable. A bit laid-back but a

company with a great commitment by its management. Our image fitted in perfectly with what India was. But India is changing, as is the world.

Today, for a company to survive, it has to grow, it has to take risks, it has to be entrepreneurial. So we have to rebuild our company accordingly, to fit the times, to fit what we're now doing. We are at the cutting edge of technology in India and that's where we want to remain."

I ask Swaminathan, who has known Arvind Verma since childhood, to tell me a little about the CEO. "Arvind? He faced his status as a paraplegic very boldly. Right from the beginning he acted as if nothing had happened. He acted the same way he always did. He was able to completely put aside the problems of being a paraplegic. In my opinion, nine out of ten people in the same situation could not have lived life as completely as he has. He didn't let his handicap interfere with his life.

He was willing to do anything, travel anywhere." e're at one of my last lunches with Arvind, Bhushan and Dr. Sharma in the conference room, eating fresh fruit being peeled and cut by Bhushan-juicy oranges and apples, guavas at peak of ripeness. I tell Arvind I get the impression AIMIL has no problems. "It's all good news. What's the bad news?"

"Well, we do have ~ome problems-with pricing, with delivery, with instilling a devotion to quality into everyone at every level. I want everyone to have the vision I have, and sometimes I get impatient if I find employees without that total commitment."

"Can you tell me the vision?"

"AIMIL today is a company synonymous with instrumentation, a company that brings the latest technology to Indian instrument users, a company devoted to commitment. But I have a vision for the future-for AIMIL to become the most customer-satisfying company. I have a vision for us to become the best technology company in its fields, a company that meets its commitments, a company where it is a pleasure to work, a company totally committed to its customers, its employees and its partners abroad."

"Isn't AIMIL all of those things now? That is the feeling I have after spending weeks talking to your staffers and distributors."

"Yes, but we've got to be even more so. We've come a long way since 1932. But India is very much part of a new world and we have quite a way to go. We've got to dream together-and then act together to convert those dreams into reality."

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About the Author: Stephen Espie is a/ormer editor a/SPAN magazine (1972-77 and 1995-97). He now lives in Bangalore.

ewlegislation in India gives hope to disabled people, but Professor Ali Baquer, who heads an advocacy organization for India's disabled citizens, Concerned Action Now, says more work needs to be done, now that a solid law has been passed. Ali Baquer, behavioral scientist, author, documentary filmmaker and activist, has championed the disabled for three decades.

According to Baquer, the disability movement in India is just getting started, and although the Indian Disability Act was passed in 1995, awareness of it is not widespread. 'The Government of India has not announced it as much as it should have," he says. "In any case, in a country like India with 900 million people or more, so many languages, it is not that easy to make people aware of their rights.

So in the last two years since it has been enacted, I find that awareness of the legislation is rather poor."

Lobbying and activism by his organiza-

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tion was instrumental in passage of the la:-v Disabled entrepreneurs recruited by Coca-Cola which, Baquer says, is a sound law. "I think gather in New Delhi. Selling soft drinks has helped many of them start new, better lives. it is very powerful. We have been inspired by other countries which have enacted similar laws, the first being the Americans with Pity, which was being released in India. It Disabilities Act. We were interacting with was thought that we should assemble acthe activists in America and Britain and tivists and send people there. We talked to other countries and trying to learn from Joseph Shapiro, and after that we decided them the kind of provisions that ought to be to form a group in India to demand the there, so that it would be a comprehensive law. So the birth of the Disabled Rights Group happened in the basement of the and progressive law. Fortunately, I would as it say that our law is as good as those in any American Center. This group-DRG was called then-became very dynamic, other country, probably better."

Discussions via satellite hosted at the very powerful, very visible."

The DRG contacted influential people American Center by USIS New Delhi as part of the Worldnet program sparked the and began a letter-writing campaign that idea of disability activism. "The idea of targeted Indian politicians. Contacts with lobbying came at the American Center. A other activists in America and elsewhere Worldnet program was organized at the helped win the battle. Baquer explains, "We wanted to know their experience of American Center by Mr. David Andresen passing the law in America. The message for disability activists in Delhi and Washington, D.C. The American panel in- was that all disability groups should work cluded Judith Heumann, Justin Dart and together. And secondly, disabled people themselves should demand their rights. It Joseph Shapiro, author of the book No

was all very well for other people to speak on their behalf, but disabled people themselves should be counted in demanding their rights. So these two things were very important at that time. The secret of the success in the enactment of Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 was the strong self-advocacy element. We followed this advice implicitly, and it succeeded. We held meetings, lobbied and succeeded in impressing upon the members of Parliament that there is a need for the law. It was passed on the last day of the Parliament session, on the 22nd December, 1995. It was a very important day for us."

Now that the law has been passed, the challenge is implementation. Challenges vs. Responses, a book by Ali Baquer and Anjali Sharma published in 1997, explores the logistics of implementation.

Baquer estimates there are at least 90 million disabled individuals in India, roughly 10 percent of the total population. With the change of pace and style of life, he says, turning the provisions in the Indian Disability Act into a reality is vital. He acknowledges it will take time, but progress can be slow and steady. Plans that do not work well should be re-thought and researched carefully, so more effective programs may be evolved.

Says Baquer, "For thousands of years disabled people have been looked after by their families. It was easier in simpler societies like villages. Even today that still happens. But the whole situation in India is changing because urbanization is taking place, extended and joint families are breaking down, so it is becoming more and more important that some formal support structures should be created for the disabled people. When we start talking of the quality of life, we have to think of some formal arrangements.

"The aspirations of the disabled and the people who work for them, with them, or on behalf of them have also changed.

They are demanding different kinds of recognition-equality and rights, not welfare, pity and charity."

Even the causes of disability are changing with the times, Baquer says. "There are hundreds of causes in a country like

ours where most of the births take place outside hospitals. At the time of birth, accidents take place, and infants can become disabled as a result of that.

Malnutrition is a big problem that can lead to disability. Apart from that, there are 350 other causes of disability. Some can be controlled, and we are trying for that. The Government of India has a policy of immunization and training midwives, so hopefully this will reduce the number of disabled. But then, society is changing in such a manner that more accidents take place. Delhi has become one of the most dangerous cities as far as traffic is concerned. People are becoming disabled every day on the roads of Delhi and cities like Delhi. And then, the pres-

"It is not the handicap of the person, but the attitude of society that disables. Frame of mind is the real disability." ence of disabled individuals in our society is now much longer than ever before because of improved health services."

Concerned Action Now remains an advocacy group, focused on dissemination of information rather than hands-on provision of services. Baquer wants to see more grassroots involvement, both in education and in providing services. He complains' that when it comes to funding, big-name NGOs get most of the contributions. "I wish there could be more just distribution of resources, because I think the more growth points we create at the periphery, the stronger the movement can become. If we hold these powers in the hands of the few, this will be denied."

A recent entrant into the sphere of raising awareness and giving opportunities to the disabled are multinational corporations. A few months ago Coca-Cola appointed a fleet of handicapped people as official soft drink vendors. Some who had formerly been reduced to begging began making a good income selling Coke from their tricycles around Delhi. Baquer says

this is just the kind of thing that helps the disabled integrate into society and maintain their self-esteem-and there could be much more input from big business. "I welcome any number of such efforts where general awareness is being created

by Coca-Cola, or any other big company.

It is their duty to sensitize people to the rights of the disabled, the dignity of the disabled. After all, these are people who are consumers of Coca-Cola and Opel cars and whatever. It is a good thing that everyone chip in and provide support."

And, he points out, new technology can help tremendously in breaking down barriers and bring the disabled out of their isolation. The media also could do better: "The media coverage of the disabled is very poor. If it is there, it has the stereotyped images, prejudiced views."

Uninformed condescension contributes most to marginalization of the disabled, according to Baquer. He calls it "disablism," the entrenched attitude which he sees as "a social construct and a flaw in the thinking processes of society." Who is actually disabled, he asks: the man with no limbs or the person who is incapable or afraid of interacting with him? "It is not just the disabled, it is the whole society .that should become more enlightened, because it is the society that is disabling. It is not the handicap of the person, but the attitude of society that disables." He continues, "Frame of mind is the real disability."

Baquer suggests that attitudes can change only through education and, more important, one-to-one interaction between the physically fit and the physically challenged. In addition to offering employment opportunities, he says, efforts must be made to understand the needs of the disabled in a personal way. "We should become more inclusive, more participatory, and the law suggests that we should do that, that it is desirable to do that. There are such trends already, and we must strengthen them." The Indian Disability Act treats disability as a civil right rather than a health and welfare issue, and Baquer emphasizes the importance of this.

The disabled do not want pity, they want opportunity. They want a life in society as much as anyone else.

0

Cure lor Muscular Dystrophy?

American Genetic Pioneers Think So And so does the author, a muscular dystrophy patient who went to the United States three years ago specifically to work with Dr. Peter Law, founder and chairman of the Cell Therapy Research Foundation. A recent breakthrough reported on their Internet webpage put Sanjay Bhatnagar back in touch with Dr. Law and with new hope of a cure. fthe doctors have their way, as they normally do, I will be living with Lasix the rest of my days.

Lasix is a diuretic, or to put it simply, something that reduces the accumulation of excess fluid around the vital organs of the body. It is standard therapy for high blood pressure, edema and a host of other ailments. While it is efficacious, it has difficult side effects which include nausea, loss of appetite, a mouth like sandpaper and a mood as blue as they come. Even though I am known as a "sunny" person, Lasix casts a deep and looming cloud of depression over my doings. Even my "wheels" have not cast such a shadow on my life.

Wheels? I guess it would be better to say wheelchair-for I use a wheelchair to navigate the ups and downs of life. I am stricken by Becker's muscular dystrophy-a crippling neuromuscular disorder, which strikes males only, with potentially fatal consequences by age 40.

Though I have had a fairly smooth

I

ride on my "wheels" these last 37 years, having had quite a successful career in the Indian bureaucracy, incluQing a three-year stint at the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., the Lasix nightmare has me virtually gasping for breath. Doctors tell me that it is vital for my system as my heart has become sluggish owing to muscular dystrophy, which is steadily gnawing away at my life.

Just when all seemed painted black came a piece of news over the Internet which brought the sunshine back into my life, and dispelled the darkening clouds of doom. "Muscular Dystrophy Patient Walks After Years in a Wheelchair" ran the headline on the Cell Therapy Research Foundation (CTRF) webpage. The CTRF is a nonprofit organization headed by Dr. Peter K. Law in Memphis, Tennessee. This was enough to set my heart racing, for Dr. Law is the same person I had met during my stay in the U.S. and with whom I discussed possible inclusion in the

clinical trials pioneering a therapy for muscular dystrophy called myoblast transplantation.

However, I was not able to take part in the trials because doctors in the U.S. had changed my diagnosis from the more severe Duchenne muscular dystrophy to the more benign Becker's MD which bears a slightly better prognosis.

I skimmed over the story rapidly.

David Plemmons, a North Carolina resident suffering from Becker's muscular dystrophy like me, had taken his first steps after years in a wheelchair following myoblast transfer therapy (MTT) as part of CTRF's Phase II clinical trials. Two months after receiving the therapy, Plemmons took his first assisted steps. "That was the most important day in my life," says Plemmons. "I thought I would have to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, but now I'm able to walk"-with minimal assistance of his parents and girlfriend.

"I've got a new shot at life."

"This is the culmination of 28 years'

work," says Dr. Peter Law, CTRF's founder and chairman. "We are overjoyed for David. Our goal is to develop myoblast transfer therapy to treat people throughout the world who are stricken with genetic diseases."

Myoblast transfer therapy involves transplanting immature muscle cells, which carry a full complement of normal genes, from a healthy donor into the muscles of an individual with muscular dystrophy. The transplanted cells repair and replace degenerating cells in the dystrophic individual. The new muscles then produce the missing protein known as dystrophin, allowing the muscles to gain strength. In theory, enough muscle cells could be transplanted into a patient to reverse the devastating effects of muscular dystrophy.

The term muscular dystrophy refers to a group of genetic diseases marked by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal, or voluntary muscles, which control movement.

The

muscles of the heart and some other involuntary muscles are also affected in some forms of muscular dystrophy, and a few forms involve other organs as well. All forms of muscular dystrophy are caused by gene defects. What escaped scientists for decades was the identity of the responsible genes, the proteins they code for, and the specific abnormalities involved.

In 1986, Muscular Dystropy Association-funded researchers made medical history. A Boston-based team of scientists discovered the gene that, when defective, is responsible for Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophies. One year later, the same research team identified the crucial proteindystrophin-which, if deficient or abnormal, causes both diseases. These breakthroughs were the culmination of many years of painstaking research by MDA grantees. One such grantee was Dr. Peter K. Law. Beginning in 1975, Dr. Law hypothesized that degenerative muscle dis-

eases could be ameliorated, if not cured, by transferring healthy donor cells into a subject. As the genetically defective cells wither and die, the healthy cells from a donor's normal genes would grow and replace the dead cells; donor cells would also insert their nuclei or the normal genetic "blueprint" into the defective cell to effect genetic repair. This procedure subsequently became known as myoblast transfer therapy. Following a decade-and-a-half of experimentation with mice at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and then at the U ni versity of, Tennessee Medical School in Memphis, Dr. Law headed the first attempt at MTT in humans in 1990.

Dr. Law found that his academic duties increasingly compromised the路 amount of time he could devote to reSanjay Bhatnagar and genetic researcher Dr. Peter K. Law at the Cell Therapy Research Foundation, Memphis, Tennessee.

Author Bhatnagar in front of Cell Therapy Research Foundation in Memphis.

search. At the onset of human trials of MTT in 1990, Dr. Law resigned his tenured professorship of neurology and joined the members of his laboratory research team in forming the Cell Therapy Research Foundation.

His first success came in 1990 when an experimental transplant in the big toe muscle of patient Sam Looper of Pickens, South Carolina-a 9-year-old stricken with Duchenne muscular dystrophy-was reported to be a success.

The news clipping in the New York Times of June 3, 1990, reporting this miracle was sent to me from America by my cousin. I immediately wrote to Dr. Law detailing my case and expressing a desire to be included in the clinical research trials. To my delighted surprise, I received a reply from Dr. Law by return mail accepting my case for the trials.

I sought a posting at the Indian Embassy in Washington, D.C., to enable me to participate in the trials. With the support of good friends and the help of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, I was given the posting. I arrived in Washington in March 1992, as second secretary (information) and editor of India News in the Indian Embassy.

Now I could keep my tryst with Dr. Law. I flew into Memphis with my brother Girish, who jokingly refers to himself as his "brother's keeper," for I can't stir an inch without his physical

support. It was a wintry wind-swept November morning. "Moriah Woods Boulevard," we told the cabbie, and he expertly drove us through the somnolent town, famous for Elvis Presley's mansion Graceland.

Seventeen seventy Moriah Woods Boulevard was a single-storied, redbrick structure. Could this simple exterior hold the key to my dreams of being whole, of being able to walk again? I looked at my brother as he zipped up my jacket against the gusts of cold wind. He grinned and gave the thumbs-up sign. "Let's go," I said and he wheeled me in past the glass doors into the hospitable and warm atmosphere of "Cell Therapy," as they call it. It was as if I had come home. A short wait and Dr. Law came out. His face crinkled into a warm smile as he came forward and shook my hand.

"You must be Sanjay. Welcome to Cell Therapy," he said as he ushered us into his office. Like him and everything else at CTRF, it was informal and spartan. Time raced by and before I knew we were accompanying Dr. Law on a tour of the facility. We met a couple of patients-young kids who had either undergone experimental therapy or were to take part in future trials. Dr. Law evinced great interest in the plight of muscular dystrophy sufferers in India and in fact was very keen to cooperate with some agency in South Asia so that the fruits of his efforts could also be made available to the thousands of MD sufferers in India who do not have access to diagnostic facilities because these are simply

not available in the country. "Don't worry," he assured me, "I am approaching the FDA for permission for myoblast trials in Becker's MD and I shall take you on the trials."

On my return to India on the expiry of my tenure in the Indian Embassy, I set up the Muscular Dystrophy Foundation in Delhi to translate Dr. Law's dream-and mine-into reality.

I have stri ven to set up a database of MD sufferers in the country, which is why I check CTRF's website frequently.

When I learned about the breakthrough, I immediately wrote to Dr. Law congratulating him on his success. Data for proving the safety and efficacy of MTT is being accumulated in the trials, and each success brings the therapy closer to acceptance. Dr. Law remembered his word and has accepted my case for ensuing clinical trials.

In the meantime, however, my disease has progressed.

Doctors tell me that both my respiratory and cardiac muscles are involved now and I have no time to lose.

Even as my case travels through the Indian bureaucracy for another diplomatic stint in the U.S., I am certain I will make it. I see Dr. Law's smiling face before me and his soft voice reassuring me "Don't worry, we will make it."

0 About the Author: Sanjay Bhatnagar is deputy secretary in the Department of Education, New Delhi. He is an activistfor the disabled, and authored a book on rehabilitation programs for the disabled, entitled Breaking Free.

Information and Help The Internet is a good source of information on muscular dystrophy and other degenerative diseases. Sites are maintained by organizations and educational centers, providing facts about various diseases and disabilities, latest research, therapies and clinics specializing in treatment. http://www.mdausa.org -a site maintained by the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America-is a good place to start. There are chat rooms, and if you need specific advice, it is possible to E-mail experts.

ONTHE LIGHTER

SIDE

"I leave everything on thef/oor 'cause that's the only place I can reach. " Reprinted from the Saturday Evening Post. Reproduced Further reproduction prohibited.

with permission.

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Drawingby

(

D. Barstow. Reproduced with permission.

Further reproduction prohibited.

SMAll路TaWN U.S.A. AN INDIAN JOURNEY A Bombay-based photographer, whose experiences in the United States led him to a special appreciation of its people, captures small-town America in this series of photos taken during a recent workshop at the Missouri School of Journalism.

He writes about facets of the American character that inspired his pictures.

AMERICA.

The very name is loaded, charged. It isn't just a geographical location or simply another country like, for example, Germany or Switzerland, names which bring to mind certain national characteristics or peculiarities. America seems to go beyond geography or even being a country. It is a personification; it takes on a completely human character.

I noticed this during my visits there, in my own responses and in the responses of my friends, colleagues and family. Whenever one spoke of America-and of course we spoke of its natural beauty, the landscape, the autumnone unconsciously spoke of it in terms of human qualities: warmth, home, love, diligence, commitment, leadership, even its tragedies and failures. For all its vastness, grandeur and ruggedness, the landscape that stays in your mind is a landscape of the people.

My first visit was several years ago. Freedom House, one of the oldest, prestigious human rights organizations, invited me. I was the lone photojournalist in a group of 30 social workers from Southeast Asia. "Come and see the problems we have and how different people and different organizations are helping to solve them," they seemed to say in their invitation and program agenda. We visited scores of homes, institutions, courts, schools and neighcliniborhoods. They showed us everything-diligently, cally and ruthlessly-with a scholarly and academic attention to detail. It undid everything one had come to believe, to hold precious and true, about America.

Merciless as a documentary photograph, it brought me face-to-face with the unromantic: throwaway children, juvenile courts, crime, domestic violence, child/sex abuse ....It was a revelation. I was appalled and amazed.

Appalled by what I saw, and amazed at what was being done to help. Why should these people bring me here to show me the unpleasant, the uncomplimentary?

What would I carry back? And, above all, what would they gain? Their openness astounded me.

Then in 1997 a scholarship from the Missouri School of Journalism for Documentary Photography took me back to America, to the small town of Carthage, Missouri. An army of about 40 photojournalists descended on the town in search of a story. Each of us searched and researched the town from City Hall, Main Street, the avenues, lanes and by-lanes, instituti"ons and homes. Each of us scoured small, quiet Carthage in cars, on cycles and on foot. We succeeded because of the peoples' willingness to let us into their lives and into their families and homes. We were virtual strangers. Absorbed by the extreme demands and the schedule of the workshop, my own family-my wife and my two small daughters, aged six and three years-became a part of a local family. This family amazed us by their trust, their warmth and their friendship.

In Carthage, during the workshop and during my visits to other towns and cities, all the grand old virtues came to the fore: diligence, courtesy, trust, labor (here it sounded so dignified, so different), responsibility, honor and professionalism. All this was present in the ordinary business of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. I returned from the experience breathless, but restored.

I don't know what my visit did for America, but it did a 0 lot for me.

Right: A portrait of American labor. "Old World simplicity, Old World foundation-strong support to lean on, " says Santosh Verma.

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:=== --==== === --==

== --,..

Left: Eyes on the highway. Americans have a love affair with the open road, integral to work and play. Above: For some, all roads lead to Times Square, New York City, where the unusual is commonplace.

Above: Companionable chess players in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. The game goes on well into the night in the open-air park.

Right: William and Wilbur Jones in their farm house, Carthage, Missouri.

"Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. " -Thomas Jefferson

Labor of love: after the wheat harvest.

Above: A single mother coaxes her daughter to walk to school, New York City.

Left: Friends share a laugh at McDonald's, Carthage, Missouri.

T~_EBIG SURPRISE ne of the more telling ironies of India today is the great multinational invasion that never happened. Not so long ago, the single most debated issue in the land was the pros and cons of multinational companies opening up shop here. On one extreme end, leftist radicals, Gandhian socialists and Hindu nationalists were unanimously convinced that the opening up of the Indian marketplace to international competition in 1991 was the beginning of the end. They even compared the coming of global brands to the arrival of the East India Company two-anda-half centuries ago which had led to the establishment of the British empire. This gloom-and-doom scenario was fiercely countered by free market economists, professionals and

O

Has the rising tide of multinational corporations been stemmed by the realities of the Indian market?

company executives who were equally convinced that the Indian market was just waiting to be taken over by multinationals.

They, however, welcomed the advent of globalization, seeing in it salvation for the country's long protected but stagnant economy.

Today much of the sound and fury generated by this debate seems pointless. Although the war of words between the detractors and supporters of multinationals splutters on sporadically, it is fast losing relevance.

Street hoardings, media advertisements and the shelves of posh retail stores in metro cities across the country do lend high visibility to multinational brands. But they appear to have made no impact whatsoever on the overwhelming majority of Indian consumers. In fact, there is good reason to believe that barring a few exceptions, most multinational companies

((TheIndian Economy Is Opening) and it Will Continue to Open Up)) P. Chidambaram is one of the architects of the economic liberalization which began in 1991, while he was Minister of State for Commerce. Since then he has steered the policy through numerous political shoals, most recently as Finance Minister. Chidambaram spoke to SPAN Editor Lea Terhune about the current state of the economy as it relates to foreign investment.

SPAN: What is the attitude of the Government of India toward foreign investment?

P. CHIDAMBARAM: It was and continues to remain positive. We recognize the key role that foreign direct investment will play. We also recognize that foreign institutional investment will help us deepen the capital market. There's no change in policy.

The United States is India's largest trading partner, and commerce is high priority in Indo-U.S. relations.

You recently addressed a meeting of American businessmen in Washington, D.C. Was their interest still keen despite the current slump in the Indian economy?

There's a slump in many economies. I do not think it is right to characterize what is happening in the Indian economy as a slump. The economy is not equal to industry alone. The economy is industry, plus agriculture, plus services.

Agriculture and services are doing very well. I think American businessmen understand that business goes through cycles, and some businesses are more affected by business cycles than others. And they recognize that given the basically strong fundamentals of Indian economy, industrial

production also will show an upturn sooner than later.

What does India need in the way of investment in terms of volume? What areas need it most?

Well, we need a staggering amount of investment, both domestic and foreign. In fact it has been estimated that our infrastructure requirements alone are about $50 billion within the next five years. The bulk of it, of course, will come from the Indian savings, but as a margin we would still require a significant amount of foreign savings, which is foreign investment. We need investment in power, telecom, petroleum, roads, ports, mining.

These are the key sectors, and many of them, as you would notice, are infrastructure sectors.

Recently Undersecretary of State, Timothy Wirth, commenting on the climate change negotiations, mentioned the desirability of developing a cooperative package to bring U.S. clean coal technologies and more efficient power generation technologies to India. Is this something that is being considered?

Yes, I discussed this with Secretary Pefia in Washington and he has discussed this with his offi-

cers, and I have conveyed to the Ministry of Coal that they should get together and try and find ways in which we can cooperate on clean coal technology.

Are Indo-U.S. joint ventures going well, in your opinion?

I think so. More and more people are coming in and promising more investment. For example, General Motors chief John Smith recently promised greater investment in India.

It can only show that the current investments are doing well. In fact there are many American companies with investments that are doing extremely we]] here.

The rupee maintained relative stability during the Southeast Asian currency crisis, though it fluctuated against the dollar, while remaining relatively stable against other currencies. Why is the rupee less affected?

Well, I think there are a number of reasons. The basic reason is that the Indian currency is not exposed to hedging and other practices as are the currencies of some other countries.

Current account deficit is lower, debt profile is much better. Banks are not as exposed to the real estate market, and we are moving cautiously on capital account conversion. Many transactions which are capital account transactions cannot be freely done. All this, I think, has to some extent-and I underline to some extent-insulated the Indian rupee from . the turmoil that happened in Southeast Asia.

The buying power of the Indian middle class has not met the expectations of some entrants into the market.

Sales are low. Also, there is concern about a certain vagueness in economic policies. Mixed messages come from the government: broadcasting

and aviation policies, for instance.

Serious investors seize opportunities which are available and they are immense and large. It's only the complaining types who are looking for more, and more, and more. The Indian economy is opening, and it will continue to open up, but at a pace with which we are comfortable. Why don't you look at the hundreds of opportunities that are available for foreign investment rather than look at one broadcasting sector which has not been opened up or one aviation sector where the policy is in the making? Nine out of ten are serious investors and they are quite happy with the opportunities that are available in India.

We have an open and transparent policy of foreign investment. We have clear sectorial policies. In telecom, power, roads. ports, refineries, mining, we have clearly laid down transparent investment policies.

Those who are serious will and do take advantage of these policies.

Many American companies are taking advantage of these policies.

What about delays and licensing procedures that frustrate some businesses? Will that change?

They have already changed substantially. As J said, the serious investor looks to the positives, the opportunities that are available to him, rather than look at the negatives.

You've been an integral part of the development of economic policy since the beginning. How do you assess the past few years? How do you project the future?

I am never satisfied. There is much to be done. There is a very long, unfinished agenda, and we'll simply get on with the job, and do it as quickly as possible, and do it as efficiently and as well as possible.

0

Far from swamping the Indian consumer, multinational brands have labored to get a tiny fraction of the giant middle class with purchasing power. have struggled here over the past six years since economic liberalization.

The exact dimensions of this failure of global brands to capture the Indian marketplace remain a closely guarded secret.

Representatives of multinational companies are perhaps understandably guarded about the slow and tortuous progress they have made. Figures of sales and market share are kept highly classified and out of bounds from public domain. Indeed, it is virtually impossible to get multinational executives operating in this country to give even a broad overview of their experience and future strategies. Attempts to talk with executives about it are usually rebuffed.

Yet the buzz in the marketplace is unmistakable. Despite their huge financial resources and professional organization, international companies who dominate across the world have mysteriously floundered in India. Pierre Cardin and Ray-Ban, Kelloggs and Baskin Robbins, LG and Sony, Mercedes and Ford, Levis and Reebok, Whirlpool and General Electric are all in the same boat. Far from swamping the Indian consumer, these multinational brands have labored to get just a tiny fraction of the supposedly giant middle class with purchasing power. In some cases, most notably the recession-hit automobile industry, sales graphs of foreign luxury cars are actually going down.

What has gone wrong? Why has the multinational invasion feared by its detractors and welcomed by supporters petered out? How have marketing strategies so hugely successful in other parts of the globe, including the developing world, failed to make a dent in the market here?

These questions have no simple answers. But it is becoming increasingly clear that multinational companies may well have themselves fallen victim to the hype raised by their advent here. For instance, they obviously had not done sufficient homework in estimating either the actual size of the Indian market for global brands or the complex consumption patterns prevailing here. Instead, multinationals appear to have been dazzled by the prospect of entering Ali Baba's cave.

Statistics have also contributed to the myth of the Indian market. Seven hundred and eighty million consumers of cooking oil. Seven hundred and six million consumers of tea. Four hundred and fifty million buyers of casual footwear. Forty million television set owners. Two-and-aquarter million automobile owners. On the surface, the list of India's consumption potential is tempting. Along with such indicators has been the propaganda blitz launched across the world by the government over the past several years offering a magical 250 million middle class consumerbase.

In reality, the task before multinational companies in India is a far more formidable one. Some pointers are to be found in a pioneering countrywide survey conducted by the Delhi-based National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER).

Although the survey has found a consuming population ranging between 168 million for durables and 504 million people for consumables, the actual number of consuming households for durables like refrigerators, motorcycles and scooters and cosmetics like nail polish and lipsticks are not more than 10 million.

However, even these estimated 50 million consumers can by no means be seen as a ready market for global brands. In fact, most of the products sold by multinational companies in India are out of reach for an overwhelming majority of the upper end of the consuming classes. Multinational brands for a number of reasons including price, positioning and distribution remain the exclusive preserve of the very rich consumers who are the only ones who have the money to buy premium quality.

Significantly, the number of very rich

households have been projected by the NCAER survey as merely one million.

There are a number of reasons for this remarkably shrunk market in which global brands have to operate. The first and foremost is the price factor which, more than anything else, determines consumer behavior in India. Clearly the income levels of the entire middle and lower end of the consuming classes ensure functional and need-based purchases alone. But even in the upper end, Indian consumers constantly strive to get the best value for money.

While brand image for this segment may be important, anything priced significantly

Historically, Indians have not only been nurtured in a tradition of "save first, spend later," but also used to a limited number of choices in the marketplace. higher gets automatically relegated to a window shopping item to be admired but not acquired.

This means that the cautious approach of the Indian buyer is not necessarily always linked to his lack of financial resources. Indeed, the failure here of elsewhere successful marketing ploys by multinationals to herd consumers to buy global brands may well lie beyond economic backwardness.

Historically, Indians have not only been nurtured in a tradition of "save first, spend later," but also used to a limited number of choices in the marketplace. But even rapid urbanization, massive expansion of the electronic media and the availability of multiple consumer choices in cities and towns over the past one-and-a-half decades have only partially altered the Indian mindset.

A good indication of this is the continuing disinclination oflndian consumers as a whole to discard any possession which still has some utilitarian value. This deep-rooted instinct to preserve previously acquired goods has, for instance, played havoc with the automobile industry, which thrives

internationally on the purchase of new models. The abandoned car junkyard will perhaps always be an anomaly in this country. Significantly, one of the few genuinely successful marketing ploys by a multinational here has been the novel offer of the Japanese television giant Akai to offer generous discounts on television sets in exchange for old ones.

Yet it is not merely the unique profile of the Indian consumer that has posed so many problems for multinationals. It is also the fractured mosaic of the marketplace here, which abounds with local brands. These have competed for every inch of the turf with multinationals who despite vastly superior financial backing and professiqnal skills have found it difficult to match the price and reach offered by the competition.

There are interesting lessons to be learnt from the few multinational brands which have made some headway in the Indian market. The cell phone boom in recent years is one instance. Brands like Motorola, Noika and Ericsson have done brisk business taking advantage of the disastrous telephone network across the country and in the absence of local competition.

Similarly, soft drinks giants like Coke and Pepsi are steadily acquiring a monopoly over drinking habits here by keeping prices down and reaching out beyond metro centers. These rare success stories underline the preference of the consumer toward a better and affordable alternative to what is locally available.

Clearly, multinationals have to review their strategy toward the Indian market if they are to tap even a fraction of its potential. So far, much time and money has been wasted by international corporates in getting the consumer here to change his ways to suit multinational brands rather than vice versa. This is easier said than done, particularly if it involves significantly lowering prices of products of a standard quality sold across the world. But, it is only by going native that the multinational can hope to ultimately conquer the Indian marketplace.

D About the Author: Ajoy Bose,jonner executive editor of The Pioneer, is a political columnist.

India, the U.S. and the ChaUengeof theGlobai Economy

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram meets U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley during the latter's December visit to India.

By WILLIAM DALEY

US. Commerce Secretary William Daley made a six-day, four-city India tour in December, heading a large trade delegation. The purpose of the trip was to strengthen Indo-US. commercial ties, and the message was commitment to the ongoing process of engagement. Secretary Daley met business leaders and government officials, and said he was happy with the results: "I leave with a sense of optimism about the future of India and the US.-India relationship." He added, "In talks with officials from

ifty years ago, on the eve of India's independence from British rule, the new prime minister challenged the Indian people with this question: "Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?"

This is a question we can all ask ourselves today-a time of dramatic change throughout the world. Political and economic headlines tell the story of change in India. News reports from East Asia remind us that the path to prosperity will present many challenges and also difficult choices.

But we should not lose sight of the big picture. As we sometimes say back home, we must keep our eyes on the ball. The most important economic story of our time remains the same: the global economy, in which the United States and India are key participants, will continue to be characterized by expanded trade and rapid technological innovation. It will also present challenges that are best met by cooperative and coordinated responses.

President Clinton has said to the American people, "We have no choice but to embrace change and make it work for us." I believe the U.S. and India are two countries well positioned to take advantage of the current forces of change at work in the global economy.

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the central and state governments, with Indian business leaders and with Americans doing business there, the focus has been on India's economic future and the need for continued market liberalization.

There is clear recognition that by working together and meeting challenges as partners, both countries will prosper. " The following are excerpts from a speech delivered

by Secretary Daley to a meeting of the World Economic Forum in New Delhi on December 8, 1997:

That is why I've come to India with a large American business and government delegation at this time of transition in India.

President Clinton has asked me to help him strengthen America's important relationship with India. Our business development mission is a statement of the President's coIllIltitment as well as a recognition of the ties that bind our two great countries. Those ties are political and cultural-after all, we both understand the challenge of being a vibrant democracy with a diverse and lively society-but, of course, our ties are commercial as well. We are proud that the U.S. is India's number one source of foreign investment and its number one trading partner. Our ties will deepen further as India continues on its path of economic reform, and I firmly believe the result will be beneficial to the people of both countries. e believe that India and other emerging markets offer enormous, mutually beneficial opportunities for engagement and expanded commercial ties. For example, India's economic reforms and modernization are creating a need for the kinds of advanced technologies and services that are represented by my mission delegation. This clearly is good for U.S. firms seeking business in India. But this economic exchange is also important for

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India's development and for the welfare of the Indian people. As trite as it sounds, America's gain is not inconsistent with India's gain. Indeed, mutual benefit is the very nature of trade.

U.S. companies can provide a wide range of technologies that can contribute to India's infrastructure development and industrial modernization. Power generation is a key new sector where U.S.-India commercial cooperation can help India to meet needs that are expected to double in the next decade-and to help reduce the climate impact of greenhouse emissions. U.S. firms also are working to provide telecommunications products and services that India needs to expand and modernize its network.

The scope for U.S.-Indian commerce is almost limitless. We are far from reaching the potential, but India's new economic policies and more open approach to trade and foreign investment have fostered much of the momentum of recent years.

Between 1991 and 1996 bilateral trade rose 83 percent. In the first eight months of this year, it has risen another 18 percentmaking it likely that bilateral trade will pass the $10 billion level for the first time ever this year.

Our bilateral commerce takes place in a new and growing global economy that challenges all of us to participate-and waits for no one. ur new world trade system brings with it opportunities-and responsibilities. It requires us to adapt so we can achieve the competitiveness a global marketplace rewards, but it can sometimes subject our industries and workers to tumultuous change.

This often fosters anxiety and cynicism about trade and its benefits-with the fear of lost jobs overbalancing the benefits of the creation of new ones.

Certainly, these concerns were reflected in the debate that led to the postponement of fast-track trade negotiation legislation in the United States and to the ongoing debate here in India about the pace of reform and market-opening measures.

All nations must address and overcome these anxieties if the full benefits of open markets are to be achieved. As government and business leaders, we must accept the responsibility of preparing our working men and women for the future-if we truly believe that future will be improved by an open world trading system.

Here we face a critical choice: Will we stick our heads in the sand and hope the concerns and anxjeties of many of our people will go away? Or will we squarely meet the challenge of economic dynamism? To do this, we must actively craft pragmatic solutions that will pave the way for greater prosperity.

Because of his firm commitment to U.S. competitiveness in a vibrant global marketplace, President Clinton is pressing in the United States for strengthening our educational system, worker retraining and community assistance where industries are in transition. These efforts will ease the adjustment process that accompanies greater trade.

Recent developments in some Asian financial and currency markets prompt a similar call to action. These problems have no doubt made many in the region wonder whether they might be

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safer if they were more insulated from the global economy. But going backwards is not the solution. Corrective measures should produce a stronger structure for long term growth. And, as a recent report in the New York Times suggested, much of Asia is still expected to grow by rates that are faster than the pace of the American economy. Assuming that the affected countries follow through with the appropriate measures, we are confident they can overcome the current financial problems.

In addition to trade, technological innovation is another critical factor driving the global economy, and India is in a strong position to reap the benefits of this phenomenon. As the Financial Times reported, India's software industry has become a "beacon of success," proving that "given the right framework, India can compete globally." India's entrepreneurial zeal also has much to do with this achievement. Entrepreneurship is a key ingredient in almost all high-tech successes, which bodes well for India's prospects in other technology fields.

Today more people around the world have access to advanced technologies than any other time in history. Take the Internet, for example. As many as 50 million people in 150 countries now are on the Net. Internet hosts in Asian countries have grown 550 percent in the last two years, the fastest growth in any world region.

The Internet promises to be the most potent commercial vehicle of the 21st century. Trade on the Internet is doubling or tripling every single year. It only makes sense that thjs new medium will revolutionize the way we do business.

This emerging electronic marketplace will increase efficiency, reduce the need for capital and cut costs for businesses and consumers alike.

Rapidly developing nations with strong high-tech sectors, such as India, are well p'ositioned to take advantage of this revolution in electronic commerce. And smaller, isolated firms with little capital may gain the most from the "anytime, anywhere" nature of electronic networks. The Internet can place even the smallest, newest firms before customers all over the world and within arm's reach of potential business partners. This fact should hold special appeal to India, with its strong entrepreneurial spirit.

Technology also will play an important role as governments seek ways to deal with the threat that climate change presents.

The Clinton Administration is, in the President's words, deeply committed to giving our children a world worth living in. At the same time, President Clinton and Vice President Gore strongly believe that environmental commitment can complement economic objectives. We also believe it is important for all countries to participate in a "global solution" to a "global problem."

The challenges lie before us: the new global economy, rapid technological change, and common threats to future generations.

If we work together, with courage and perseverance, to meet these challenges, we will have met our responsibility to leave the world better than we found it.

Fifty years ago, Nehru said, " ...it is the future that beckons us now. That future is not one of ease or resting, but of incessant striving so that we may fulfill the pledges we have so often taken."

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n the morning of my 42nd birthday, my husband informed me that I was about to be spirited to a mystery destination. I followed him to the subway. We got off at Grand Central Station, where he commanded me to stand at a discreet distance during his sotto voce procurement of two round-trip tickets to somewhere. After a half-hour's ride through the Bronx and Yonkers, we disembarked at a town called Hastings-on-Hudson. What could possibly await us here? A three-star restaurant? A world-class art collection? A hot-air balloon, stocked with a magnum of Veuve Clicquot and a pound of caviar, from which we would achieve a hawk's-eye view of the Hudson Valley?

I trailed George along the sleepy main street and down a steep hill. "We're here," he said.

Then I saw it: a little weather-beaten shop, perched on such a declivitous slope that it looked in danger of sliding into the Hudson River, with a faded blue sign over the door that said BOOKSTORE. Inside were a maze of out-of-plumb shelves, a flurry of dust motes, and 300,000 used books.

Seven hours later, we emerged from the Riverrun Bookshop carrying 19 pounds of books. (I weighed them when we got home.)

Now you know why I married my husband. In my view, 19 pounds of old books are at least 19 times as delicious as one pound of fresh caviar. You may prefer Veuve Clicquot for your birthday, but give me (actually, you can't, because George beat you to it) a ninedollar 1929 edition of Vincent Starrett's Penny Wise and Book Foolish, a tender paean to book collecting that contains the following sentence: "Every new search is...ajourney to the end of the rainbow; and whether or not at the end there shall be turned up a pot of gold or merely a delightful volume, there are always wonders along the way."

Not everyone likes used books. The fingerprints, blots, smudges, underlinings

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and ossified muffin crumbs left by their previous owners may strike daintier readers as a little icky, like secondhand underwear.

When I was young I liked my books young as well. Virginal paperbacks, their margins a tabula rasa for narcissistic scribbles, were cheap enough to inspire minimal guilt when I wrote in them and bland enough to accept my defacements without complaint. In those days, just as I believed that age would buffet other people's bodies but not my own, so I believed my paperbacks would last forever. I was wrong on both counts.

My college Penguins now explode in clouds of acidic dust when they are pried from their shelves. Penny Wise and Book Foolish, on the other hand, remains ravishing at the age of 68, its binding still firm and its bottle-green spine only slightly faded.

After paperbacks lost their allure, I converted to secondhand books partly because I couldn't afford new hardbacks and partly because I developed a taste for letterpress printing, bindings assembled with thread rather than glue, and frontispieces protected by little sheets of tissue paper. I also began to enjoy the sensation of being a small link in a long chain of book owners. The immaculate first editions cherished by a rare-book collectors-no notes, no signatures, no bookplates-now leave me cold. I have come to view margins as a literary commons with grazing room for everyone-the more, the merrier. In fact, the only old book I am likely to approach with unease is one with uncut pages. On an earlier birthday, George gave me a two-volume set of Farthest North, Fridtjof Nansen's account of his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole by ship.

The edges were unopened. As I slit them, I was overcome with melancholy. These beautiful volumes had been published in 1897, and not a single person had read them. I had the urge to lend them to as many friends as possible in order to make up for all the caresses they had missed during their first century.

"Alas!" wrote Henry (Continued on page 53)

Text by ARUN BHANOT Photographs by HEMANT BHATNAGAR

Fun and learning, adventure and mystery, fact and fiction, sugar and spice ...with Scholastic's rich range of reading and learning materials, the Indian child finally has a choice. hen Arvind Kumar, managing director of Scholastic India Limited, talks of wanting to revolutionize children's literature in India, he is not indulging in idle daydreaming. As managing director of the newly launched Indian subsidiary of Scholastic Inc., the world's largest publisher and distributor of children's books and other reading and teaching materials, Kumar is in a unique position to do just that. Consider the following statistics: the U.S.-based company distributes more than 250 million childen's books every year, and its products are used in nine out of ten classrooms in America. The company publishes 37 classroom magazines with a combined reach of 25 million students worldwide, from preschool through high school. In 1996 alone, Scholastic organized more than 120,000 book fairs worldwide. The company has subsidiaries in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and now, India.

"Scholastic books will kindle creativity and inculcate reading habits among children," says Kumar, his voice ringing with conviction. A former director of the National Book Trust, Kumar is no stranger to the world of books. His father, Om Prakash, was one of the founders of

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Rajkamal Prakashan, the renowned Hindi publishing house started in 1948. "I was less than four when my father got into publishing, so I literally grew up among books and writers," Kumar recalls.

"The office was on the mezzanine floor of the house on Ansari Road in Delhi's Darya Ganj area. We occupied the first floor, while my uncle lived on the top floor. So it was very much an extension of the house. We had famous writers dropping in all the time to meet father. Some even used to stay with us."

Rajkamal was one of the earliest to launch Hindi paperbacks in India. It was also the first Indian publishing house to come out with a Hindi literary magazine, Nai Kahaniyan. It was an immediate success, and prompted Bennett Coleman and Company, publishers of Times of India to come out with their Hindi magazine, Sarika. "I must say that I probably saw Indian publishing at its best," says Kumar.

The period from the 1970s and 1980s saw a decline in the publishing sector, which, Kumar believes, had nothing to do with declining in-

terest in reading. Says he, "When I was director of the National Book Trust I traveled across the country, and met and talked to an sorts of people at various levels. I also participated in the preparation of the national book policy. It gave me an opportunity to test my beliefs about publishing. I discovered that the readers were being deprived of books because good books were simply not available. The prices were beyond their capacity. Also, what the publishers offered was not adequate." He was convinced of one thing: you don't really need to promote reading, but to facilitate reading. "And the best wflY to do this is to make good books readily available."

Now in this collaboration with Scholastic, Kumar hopes to turn back the clock and revive the glory days of book publishing, when commercial interests alone did not dictate

to Indian publishers and books were developed with readers as their targets.

Scholastic India has developed a unique marketing strategy to reach school-going children. It markets its books exclusively through school book fairs and book clubs. By offering children a wide selection of books and related material through the school system, the company hopes to provide them an opportunity to read by choice and not by compulsion. Explains Kumar: "The advantage of the school book fair is that the books can be physically handled and selected. With school book clubs we can reach out to hundreds of thousands of children simultaneously."

Launched in October 1997, the company has already organized several book fairs in Delhi. Says Kumar, "Initially I expected sales of

Scholastic India's Arvind Kumar (opposite page) plans to reach children through school book clubs and bookfairs, such as this one held recently in New Delhi.

Rs. 20,000 per fair. But in just one school, in a mere four hours, we sold books worth Rs. 40,000. In yet another premier school, we netted more than Rs. 200,000 in just two days. It just shows how starved the market really is.

"The book club is our way of addressing the child directly. To begin with, we have taken the age group preschool to路 class three. Later, we'll take on more classes," says Kumar. The book club functions through the school. The company reaches the child at school with an offer of attractive

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reading material and an order form. The child carries it home. Those who want to order can order any number of books.

The company then picks up the orders from the school and supplies the books to the child through the school. The school does not have to spend anything. As an incentive to the school, the company works to activate and strengthen the school library. "We organize workshops, hold interactions, speak to children, teachers and parents," says Kumar. "We also gift books to the school library, books that they choose."

Another novel feature introduced by Scholastic is the three-tier system of pricing: the normal trade price, lower than that is the book fair price, and still lower is the book club price.

Besides, Scholastic offers not only its own titles but also those by local publishers.

How has the arrival of Scholastic affected the Indian publishing scene?

Kumar feels the change is already palpable. "Two positive things are happening, which we expected would happen but not so soon. One, the publishers are willing to improve the quality of their books as per our suggestions. Two, some publishers are showing willingness to undertake new publishing programs to meet our requirements. For example, we have good fiction for teenagers but I feel we need more nonfiction. Recently, a couple of publishers have come forward to develop nonfiction material for Indian teenagers. I am glad they are willing to grow, because unless they grow, we can't grow."

At present establishing its network in Delhi and state capitals in North India, Kumar is keen to take Scholastic to other metropolitan cities like Calcutta and Mumbai. In five years, he hopes to cover the entire country. The company has several other ambitious plans as well, like promoting Indian titles and authors and setting up a co-publishing program to assist regional publishers bring out quality books in Indian languages. "My mission is to reduce the knowledge gap in our children by producing quality children's literature," says Kumar. "We believe in the power of books to change and improve a child's life."

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Danser ZOne Once, you weren't considered a real Georgia-Pacific mill guy unless you were missing a few fingers.

Now, after a corporate makeover, safety comes first. he forest-products business is definitely not about glamour. Paper mills, sawmills and plywood factories are dangerous places, full of constant deafening noise, gargantuan razor-toothed blades, long chutes loaded with rumbling tons of lumber, and giant vats full of boiling water and caustic chemicals under tons of pressure. People working around all that stuff tend to sweat a lot.

People used to bleed a lot too. Seven years ago, the 241 plants and mills operated by Georgia-Pacific (G-P), the Atlanta-based forest products giant with $13 billion in annual revenues and more than 47,000 employees, had an unenviable safety record, pretty bad even for a notoriously hazardous industry. There were nine serious injuries per 100 employees each year, and 26 G-P workers had lost their lives on the job between 1986 and 1990.

All that began to change when A.D. "Pete" Correll, a former boss of forest products at Mead, took over as president and chief operating officer of Georgia-Pa~ific in 1991. (He became CEO two years later.) Soon after settling into the president's job, Correll called in Mike Skinner, G-P's director of workers' compensation, for a chat about safety. Skinner recalls the meeting all too vividly. "He said, 'So, Mike. What are we going to do about this?' It was one of those bet-your-career moments."

Skinner still has his job, and plenty of other people have managed to keep their arms, legs, fingers and lives as well. For the past four years Georgia-Pacific has recorded the best safety record in the industry. Fully 80 percent of its plants operated last year without any injuries at all. Best of all, nobody died anywhere. The company's mill in Brunswick, Georgia, a vast, hot, clamorous place that produces more fluff pulp (the stuff in disposable diapers, among other things) than anyplace else in the world, now records injuries of 0.7 per 100 workers annually.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that is about one-third the injury rate at the average bank-a place where the scariest piece of machinery around is most likely a photocopier.

How did Georgia-Pacific pull this off? The work itself hasn't changed. But the way people think about it, and do it, has. Barry Geisel runs the company's plywood factory in Madison, Georgia.

He says that most mistakes in any industry aren't caused by the nature of the equipment itself-such as, for instance, the 140centimeter knife blade in his plant that, whirling like a giant's

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pencil sharpener, peels a 30-year-old tree down to thin air in just eight seconds. Rather, the trouble comes from people's attitudes and behavior-like, for instance, hauling that blade around without wearing protective gloves or trying to clean it while it's running. Workers routinely attempted both procedures in the past, often with bloody results. .

G-P people are a little sheepish when they talk about it now, but a macho factor operated in the past as well. Before 1990, workers whose parents and grandparents had toiled in the same mills and factories sometimes took deadly chances as a way of proving their mettle. "People now understand that the same ac- . tions that used to make you a hero are just going to get you in trouble around here," says Geisel, who has fired people for ignoring safety rules. "The biggest challenge has been trying to change everybody's old habits and assumptions."

Georgia-Pacific's safety crusade has worked so well that the company has begun applying'the same principles to improving other areas of its business, including quality and customer service. Any company-even, say, a bank-that wants to learn how to alter a stubborn coiporate culture could do a lot worse than to ponder how Georgia-Pacific got safer. It boils down to 10 ideas.

1. Realize that you can change how people work.

"Everybody in our industry always paid lip service to safety, but nobody ever did much about it," says Mike Skinner. Why not?

"We all assumed we had no control over whether accidents happened or not." As recent experience has proved, that's just wrong.

2. Whatever you do, don't call it a program. At least, not if you want results. "Most companies have more programs than Carter has liver pills," says CEO Correll. "Programs don't work because nobody believes they're for real." Instead, make it clear that the new order of things is not a passing phase but a pervasive and permanent commitment.

3. Be sure you understand why you have a problem in the first place. This is tricky, because it usually entails abandoning a few preconceptions of your own. "In the old days we approached accidents in a disciplinary way, like, 'Why did this idiot stick his hand in this machine without shutting it off first?' " recalls Ray Powell, director of human resources at the Madison plant. "Now we ask the same question but in a very different

way: 'Why did he do that?' People do not generally do things without a reason that to them looks pretty good. So if you really want to solve the problem, find out what the reason was-then fix that."

In a plywood factory, a sawmill or a paper mill, as in any commodity business, one big reason workers took dangerous risks was to keep the line moving. The not-so-subtle message from the top of the company: Get the product out-no matter what.

Georgia-Pacific took care of that by redefining its own priorities.

Now any worker can shut down any production line rather than take a chance on an injury (or worse). The welcome irony is that as accidents have declined to the disappearing point, productivity has soared. Notes Bobby "Shug" Newsome, who runs a GeorgiaPacific sawmill in Warrenton, Georgia: "It usually takes just a few minutes to prevent a serious injury. But if you have one, it shuts things down for hours."

4. Be consistent. Go to any Georgia-Pacific division meeting, read any internal how-we're-doing memo or listen to any speech Correll or any manager under him ever gives, and the first thing on the agenda is always safety, safety, safety. "Of course, finances and such may come a real close second," observes Steve Church, a senior manager at Georgia-Pacific's headquarters in Atlanta. "But what would be the point in saying something is your No.1 priority if you're not really going to treat it that way?"

Following through on what you say will probably cause traditional hierarchies to blur a little. That is a good sign, because it means people believe you are serious. Everyone at GeorgiaPacific, from Correll on down, has to wear the same safety gear (earplugs, hardhats, goggles) even for the briefest of ceremonial plant visits. Alex Hopkins, a forester by training who heads up the company's $2.4-billion-a-year lumber group, proudly tells of getting chewed out by hourly workers in a sawrrUll when he carelessly stepped too close to the business end of a chipper that could easily have turned him into mulch, silk tie and all.

"Normally these folks aren't accustomed to telling guys in suits what to do," says Hopkins, beaming.

S. Reinforce your message every way you can (humor helps). On top of formal training sessions and weekly safety meetings at all its plants, Georgia-Pacific hammers home its "safety first" message in a way that is extremely thorough, not to say obsessive. Posters, stickers (often seen on hardhats), buttons, T-shirts, jackets-exhortations about safety turn up on every available surface. All this may sound a little too much like life in a Stalinist regime, but people have learned how to have fun with it. Wilson "Safety Elvis" Pittman, an employee at the Brunswick mill, has enlivened safety meetings with all kinds of stuff-from dressing up as Elvis Presley (the resemblance is remarkable) and singing about safety ("Don't step on my steel-toed shoes") to inventing a game that tests workers' knowledge about hazards.

Pittman is a popular guy, and no wonder. Says Skinner: "There's no good reason why, just because something is important, it also has to be boring."

6. Reward good behavior. If you really want to change how people work, there is no substitute for money. Georgia-Pacific's supervisors and managers are evaluated, and compensated, based on how they do in four areas. Safety-formerly an afterthought, with no impact on paychecks-is now one of the four and carries the same weight as that old be-all and end-all, production.

7. Take advantage of people's natural urge to compete.

For the past few years Alan Ulman, Georgia-Pacific's director of internal communications, has been researching what motivates people to change their work habits. The biggest surprise that turned up in his annual (anonymous) employee surveys: Even more than not wanting to be hurt or killed, workers want to do their jobs more safely to avoid letting down their teamwhich is competing against similar teams companywide to see who can claim the fewest accidents. Every plant keeps track of how many consecutive hours it has gone without an injury, and those figures are posted at plant ~ntrances and widely publicized elsewhere. Nobody wants to be the bozo who resets his plant's clock at zero.

8. Don't let a "rightsizing" distract anybody from the task at hand. In a cyclical business, buffeted by the vagaries of pulp and paper prices, Georgia-Pacific needed to cut overhead. So last year it did away with about 2,500 salaried jobs, including dozens of first-line supervisory slots. Still, safety performance in the plants continued to improve. By that time, after six years of constant emphasis, employees had bought into the new ways of doing things-even without a boss on hand to remind them.

9. Share su~cess stories throughout the company.

Technology helps here: The company's SafeTY network beams question-and-answer sessions via satellite to about 350 GeorgiaPacific sites around the U.S. It also produces and distributes documentary videos for use in safety meetings at the plants. These are filmed by Georgia-Pacific employees, who love the chance to be director,路 producer and star. The success stories tend to describe near misses-like the 1,300-kilogram forklift in Bellingham, Washington, that almost crushed someone but didn't-and discuss ways of avoiding coming even that close to an accident. You don't have a TV network, you say? No problem ..

Near-miss reports are also written out on index cards, faxed all over the company, and posted on bulletin boards just inside plant entrances.

10. Never let up. "We know we can't ever stop emphasizing and reinforcing this, because if we do, our safety record could start to slip again real fast," says Hopkins. Correll agrees. "Don't paint us as perfect, because we're not," he tells a reporter. "Our goal is zero accidents. We haven't reached our destination yet.

We're on a journey." Aren't we all?

0 About the magazine.

Author:

Anne

Fisher

is a staff

writer

of Fortune

Memories & Visions A Multicultural

Mosaic

The Ninth Triennale-India 1997, the country's most prestigious art event held every three years, saw the participation of two American women artists with strong Indian ties: Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper, a New Delhi-based painter of Indian and African descent, and Sonya Shah, a first-generation Indian American based in New York who came to India on a Fulbright grant.

Home Away from Home

Portraits of Women: Art and Artist

By SONYA SHAH

By ARUN BHANOT

I grew up in New York City in the heart of Manhattan.

Due to my upbringing I have been concerned with urban development and cities. Impressed in my memory is an urban landscape of buildings, bricks, cars, noise, the subway and all of the feelings of being trapped and suffocated that go hand in hand with living in a city environment. As an artist, I wanted to express these entiments in a visual language. I tried to do so in New York but felt I first needed to understand urban development in another culture quite different from America. I was curious to know if people in Hong Kong or Mumbai were having the same frustrations as I was-or were mine site-specific? I wondered how Indians were coping with the rapidly changing landscape of their country.

In this spirit I came to India over a year ago on a Fulbright grant. India was my choice for more personal reasons as well: being of Indian ancestry and living in the diaspora, many nomesident Indians have a yearning to "get back to the roots." Actually, my yearning was quite the opposite. I was interested in confronting modem India instead of searching for my past traditions. I also had a deep-seated fear of making it alone as a woman in India. "Out-of-doors" India is the world of men. I wanted to live, work and interact with outside India and not feel afraid to leave the sheltered inner room. How would people react to me? Could I maintain my assertive nature or would I be crushed and succumb quietly? Could I understand the relationship between a man and woman in an Indian context or am I too "liberated" as an American woman to compromise?

In my installation entitled Home, at the Lalit Kala Akademi for the Ninth Triennale-India, I have tried to answer some of these questions. Home was built after more than a year of travel from Himachal Pradesh to Tamil

"Like birds of brilliant plumage, from poor rural village to urban metropolis, women established their presence with their clothing, even when they were covered up, specially when they were covered up, as the路 personality and features become secondary to the statement of their dress."

That is Lucilda Dassardo-Cooper, the New Delhi-based American painter describing her latest series of paintings featuring women. Titled "Veiled Presence: Women of the Indian Subcontinent," the series was exhibited last August at the Parish Gallery in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the 50th anniversary of India's independence. In December, Dassardo-Cooper unveiled the paintings at the Ninth Triennale-India 1997 in New Delhi, as one of the two American participants. The other participant was 25-year-old installation artist Sonya Shah.

In "Veiled Presence" Dassardo-Cooper has painted women in boldly designed bright-colored saris. The painting was done carefully in layers- three, as she explains, to provide richness and translucency. The intense colors dance across her canvas with tremendous clarity. It is almost photographic realism. ''I'm trying to create a presence for these women. Painting in layers makes the work very rich, the colors very saturated and also creates the illusion of depth," she says sitting surrounded by easels, paints and finished and empty canvases in the tiny studio attached to her home in posh Vasant Vihar. From where she sits, Dassardo-Cooper can look out through the window facing the street. It was while gazing out of this window one sunny wind-swept morning that she first spied the woman who inspired her to do the series of paintings that became the "Veiled Presence."

"I just happened to notice this woman walking down the driveway," she recalls. "Her head was covered. The wind was blowing her sari, the sun was shining. It was just so beautiful, what with the color, the light, the movement of the sari, and the way the fabric created movement of form." When the woman, a maid, returned the next day, DassardoCooper asked her whether she could take a photograph of her walking.

She agreed. So the painter took some shots, and began work on the first of her veiled women.

Nadu, months of research and work in Baroda and intensive project-based work in Kerala and Delhj. One description of Home I wrote earlier says: "Living day to day my mind skips from thoughts of motherhood to the gas connection to an encounter I had with a stranger to the disposal of garbage. Home is a delicate intermingling of these unusual experiences, common frustrations and long lasting relationships we have everyday. Home is an installation between brick, text, sculpture and two-dimensional imagery that represents my experience of living in an urban environment in the 1990s. Each brick construction carries an intangible element of life. These intangible elements are represented by a literal anecdote of an experience or emotion and maybe furnished with an 'interior.' The interiors are a visual manifestation of the intangible elements. The text, the molding of the bricks and concrete, some twodimensional imagery dyed on fabric and other real

Above: Home, the lO-piece installation, created by 25-year-old Sonya Shah (right) at the Rabindra Bhavan in Delhi.

While painting Dassardo-Cooper gradually began noticing the rest of the women on the street walking along in brightly-colored saris. She began to appreciate the clean, crisp color, the design of the saris, and how the women managed to portray dignity and a strong elegant presence even while doing menial chores like sweeping the streets. All her paintings in "Veiled Presence" show the women occupying the same space on the canvas. "I did that so that it becomes a sort of a repetitive statement," says Dassardo-Cooper. "This is my way of making their presence so strong that they seem to grow out of the frame."

The artistic vision and expressions ofDassardo-Cooper are very much informed by her multiracial and multicultural heritage. Her grandfather emigrated from an unknown part of the Indian subcontinent about 100 years ago and settled in Jamaica. About 25 years ago, Dassardo-Cooper immigrated to the United States, graduating from the Massachusetts College of Arts, Boston, in 1979. But even in Jamaica, where she was born and grew up, she always knew she wanted to paint. Her childhood fascination for nature in its myriad forms and colors sought expression on canvas. "I was trying to represent things the way I saw them," she

Above: Lucilda DassardoCooper poses with two of her paintings at the National Gallery of Modern Art. Right: Veiled Presence #11; oil on canvas; 64 x 90 ems; 1997.

ready-made objects make up each of the 10 Homes."

Six months ago I started writing. Writing about basic things that I saw every day while living in Baroda. If I saw a child sitting in a puddle I wondered, why is he there? Where is his mother? And I felt the instinct as a human being to reach out and provide some warmth for that child. I had the unfortunate experience of being propositioned by men on scooters almost daily and was actually arrested once by the Baroda police for sitting out on a bridge under a neon street lamp with a male friend at 11 at night because they thought I was a prostitute.

These are experiences that I can now laugh about but they hurt me deeply at the time. I thought a lot about the 12- and 13-year-old students I had taught for a year in an alternative school in New York and compared their passage into adulthood with that of the children I worked with in Kerala. And for months I was writing, writing about my everyday life. These writings expressed my confrontation with modern-day India. They were filled with experiences that could easily have occurred in America, and some which were more site-specific.

Living in India has helped me get back to basics and think simpler. I have been impressed by the narrative style of contemporary Indian painting. The narrative sense of Indian artists has indirectly helped me to clear my own narrative and tell my own stories. Being a visual artist, I also have the need to visualize my stories. I thought about building little brick homes for each text but did not have a proper site. The Ninth Triennale came at the right time and provided the proper venue for my Homes.

It was not only through individual project work but through my collective year-and-a-half of experiences that I came to terms with being a woman in modern India. I spent a month in Delhi with masons, carpenters, construction suppliers and laborers designing, building and giving orders. Here, people are not used to seeing a woman like me holding a pickax walking though the heart of Chuna Mandi telling people what to do. Slowly I made my presence known to the staff at the Lalit Kala Academi. The suppliers and local craftsmen and people got used to seeing a semi-crazy 25-year-old at work. I tried to challenge the role of a woman of my "status" by laying bricks, picking up garbage, doing exactly those things that I am not "supposed to do." I am very conscious of the stark dichotomy between rich and poor and my own hypocrisy. I am trying to actively cross through and over "roles" we are delegated in an effort to promote respect and appreciation for any person-something we seem to be lacking today. Living in Baroda where I had taken a flat alone, was a difficult but very crucial experience for me. By living alone in a culture that is so familyoriented, I was able to realize why I wanted a family, what is so beautiful and special about Indian families, and what a true friend is.

0

says. "That for me was quite challenging, trying to capture the way light hits the tree, the way flowers looked in the sunlight. I think a part of my work over the years has been to try capture the feeling of light on canvas." Ever since, the bright tropical light of her native Caribbean sun has imbued Dassardo-Cooper's oils with a translucent gemlike quality, even when she lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and now for the past two years in New Delhi where she lives with her husband Ken, who is South Asian bureau chief of the Washington Post.

Of course, Dassardo-Cooper's notions of art formed in those formative years in Jamaica conflicted with the prevailing art trends in America. Art school was a big disappointment. She soon learned that instead of teaching techniques and ways of working with materials, the emphasis was on trying to change perceptions and attitudes of the students, an attitude she resented fiercely. Firm in her conviction that her perceptions were personal and that her individuality was borne from her background and culture, she continued to work in the figurative style, though it did result in creative isolation of sorts. "I wanted them to teach me how to express myself in art, but nobody was doing figurative work during the 1970s and '80s," she recalls. "I found I was a pariah!"

Fortunately, she says in vindication of her stand, figurative art is making a comeback in the U.S. even as that atti tude spreads to the rest of the world. According to Dassardo-Cooper, "The problem with abstraction is there are no defining boundaries, no limits for the artist to struggle against. I always felt that it was like writing a book using words that didn't mean anything. When you take away the meaning, the context, what do you have left?" She happily notes that many of her contemporaries who were earlier very involved in abstraction and nonrepresentational art are now retuming to figurative work.

She credits her clarity of perception to her practice of hatha yoga, which she began learning while still in the U.S. In fact, yoga has been the prime influence on her life and work, leading her to a realization that "the space that I get into as an artist is the same state I experience during meditation. All creativity spills from this space." While in Washington, D.C., Dassardo-Cooper did a series of paintings based on hatha yoga postures. "What I tried to convey in that was the sense of energy in the postures, the feeling of light that comes from them and the flow of energy," she says. "In fact, what I consider my signature works are more symbolist-oriented works that can also be described as realist. Some people call it visionary art, which has a spiritual presence."

Before coming to India, Dassardo-Cooper was familiar with the paintings of Rabindranath Tagore and the Bengal School and appreciated the "soft and nice atmosphere" and the unique watercolor method . he evolved. And while she is impressed with the Indian art scene, what she's really excited about is her current project, which is to arrange an exhibition of transportation art of the subcontinent in America. She is referring to the "truck art" as seen on the colorfully decorated trucks in Pakistan, India (especially Kerala) and the cycle rickshaws of Bangladesh. "I've been working on this for a year-and-a-half, taking photographs, doing research, and talking to the artists," says DassardoCooper. While arranging the funding and sponsorship for the show, she is also talking to a Pakistani filmmaker Sehmad Sabai to produce a film on the subject.

One last word about art. "I realize we paint ourselves in the paintings.

We paint our attitudes, feelings and concerns in art. I've always felt that 0 art is a search for meaning."

§t:condhand PrO§f:

continued from page 43

Ward Beecher, "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore!" Mine is relatively strong at Barnes & Noble, because I know that if I resist a volume on one visit and someone else buys it, an identical volume wilI pop up in its place like a plastic duck in a shooting gallery. And if I resist that one, there will be another day, another duck. In a secondhand bookstore, each volume is one-of-a-kind, neither replaceable from a publisher's warehouse nor visualIy identical to its original siblings, all of which have accreted individuality with each change of ownership. If I don't buy the book now, I may never have another chance. And therefore, like Beecher, who believed the temptations of drink were paltry compared with the temptations of books, I am weak.

At least my frailty places me in good company.

Southey, noted one observer, could not pass a bookstall without "just running his eye over for one minute, even if the coach ~ which was to take him to see ~ Coleridge at Hampstead was within the time of starting." Of Macaulay, it was said there was "no one so ready to mount a ladder and scour the top shelf for quarto pamphlets, or curious literary relics of a bygone age, and come down after an hour's examination covered with dust and cobwebs, sending for a bun to take the place of his usual luncheon." And when the 18th-century London bookseller James Lackington was a young man, his wife sent him out on Christmas Eve with half a crown-all they had-to buy Christmas dinner. He passed an old books hop and returned with Young's Night Thoughts in his pocket and no turkey under his arm. "I think that I have acted wisely," he told his famished wife, "for had I bought a dinner we should have eaten it tomorrow, and the pleasure would have been soon over, but should we live 50 years longer, we shalI have the Night Thoughts to feast upon."

When I visit a new bookstore, I demand cleanliness, computer monitors and rigorous alphabetization. When I visit a secondhand bookstore, I prefer indifferent housekeeping, sleeping cats and sufficient organizational chaos to fuel my fantasies of stumbling on, say, a copy of Poe's

Tamerlane, like the one a fisherman found under a stack of agricultural tracts in a New Hampshire antiques bam in 1988 and purchased for $15. It was auctioned at Sotheby's later that year for $198,000. I might note that people too well bred to mention money in other contexts do not hesitate, if they think they have gotten a bargain, to quote the exact sum they have spent for a used book. Charles Lamb wrote Coleridge, "I have lit upon Fairfax's Godfrey of Bullen, for half-a-crown. Rejoice with me." And he wrote Southey, "I have picked up, too, another copy of Quarles for ninepence!!! 0 temporal 0 lectores!" (I came across Lamb's cries of jubilation in volume 1 of The Life and Works of Charles Lamb, an undated two-volume "Edition de Luxe," complete with illustrations, which I purchased for $15. Rejoice with me.)

The only problem with lugging home 19 pounds of books from ~ Hastings-on-Hudson was that sevI..

J eral thousand pounds of books ~ already overcrowded our shelves.

Over the years, as our loft has come to look less and less like a home and more and more like a secondJ;1and bookstore, I have frequently fantasized about making the designation official. Wouldn't it be fun, when the children are grown, to become bookdealers ourselves-"coLT & FADIMAN, Old Books Bought and Sold, Dog-Eared Volumes Our Specialty"?

Alas, I fear the reality might be a rude awakening. In a 1936 essay titled "Bookshop Memories," George Orwell recalIed his days as a clerk in a secondhand bookstore. The shop was freezing, the shelves were strewn with dead bluebottle flies, and a large fraction of the customers were lunatics. Worst of all, the books themselves lost their luster. "There was a time when I really did love books," he wrote, "loved the sigh t and smell and feel of them, I mean, at least if they were 50 or more years old.

Nothing pleased me quite so much as to buy a job lot of them for a shilling at a country auction ....Rut as soon as I went to work in the books hop I stopped buying books. Seen in the mass, five or ten thousand at a time, books were boring and even slightly sickening."

Was this an inevitable response, akin to

l\

the ice-cream disenchantment that reportedly overtakes every Baskin Robbins employee, or was it (as I hoped) just Orwellian cynicism? I consulted my friend Adam, who had spent every Saturday of his sophomore and junior years at Harvard working in the Pangloss Bookshop in Cambridge. He confessed that he had been similarly disilIusioned.

"I came to feel that a book without a home is a pointless thing," he said, "and in a bookshop, that's all you have. This really hit me when I visited the apartment of John Cli ve, the historian, after he died in 1990, to pack up his library and move it to our store.

I had taken Clive's class on the British Empire that semester, but he was an unflashy lecturer iilld I hadn't felt 1'd gotten to know him. It was only when I saw his bookshelves-James Bond paperbacks cheek by jowl with 19th-century parliamentary proceedings-that I got a sense of who Clive was. His intelIectual furnishings· explained him in a way his lectures hadn't.

"We took the books back to the store and divided them up by topic-history on the left wall, literature on the right, philosophy in the back alcove-and somehow, all of a sudden, they weren't John Clive any more.

Dispersing his library was like cremating a body and scattering it to the winds. I felt very sad. And I realized that books get their value from the way they coexist with the other books a person owns, and that when they lose their context, they lose their meaning.

"When I was leaving work that day, I noticed that the proprietor had put one of Clive's books in the 50-cent cart we kept on the sidewalk. It was an Edwardian compact Shakespeare with an ugly typeface and garishly colored plates. Inside, in a round adolescent hand that must have dated from his teens or early twenties, Clive had written his name and the lines from The Tempest, 'We are such stuff/As dreams are made on, and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep.' " I asked Adam what he had done with the book.

"I bought it," he said, "and took it home."

0 About the Author: Anne Fadiman is a contributing editor for Civilization magazine.

Even though air travel is considered the safest way to get around-much safer than highways, for instance-specters of past plane crashes haunt most people who fly. The New York Times recently made this survey of ways to make the safest mode of transport safer, and what it would cost the average passenger.

Would you be willing to pay 35 cents more for a safer flight?

How about another $5 for each round-trip ticket? What about $30?

Why not, if that's all it would cost to add another warning system for pilots, to install more sophisticated radar at airports or to screen luggage for explosives? No one wants to share the fate of the doomed passengers on last year's TWA Flight 800 or on the Valujet plane that crashed into the Everglades. Those disasters and

others have prompted a number of recommended safeguards in the United States, many of which have been collected and realized on the fantasy jet below. With the help of industry experts, we have assigned a cost to each upgrade for America's busier airports and fleet of 5,000 jets, and spread out the expense over tbe roughly 850 mmion round-trip tickets expected to be sold over the next five years. The cost to each passenger for all this insurance (excluding the antimissile system, an exotic notion to all but aJew people): about $60 a trip.

A small price to make the skies safer and save lives, right?

Not necessarily. There is an industry rule of thumb that the number of passengers will drop 1 percent for every 1 percent rise in fares. Some people will pay $430 for a ticket, for example, but not $435, whereas others see $450 as their limit. And if people decide that air fares are too high. and instead drive several hundred miles, they will face greater risks of dying in a car accident on America's highways. Good ideas, in other words, may not translate into good public policy.

The same logic is behind the U.S. Federal Aviation Adminis-

Antimissile System

Children's Safety Seats

A device for the really paranoid: to ease the fear of travelers who think a missile brought down TWA 800, install an anti missile system on each jet. Cost: $25 billion, or $29.41 per round-trip ticket over five years.

Pilot Scrutiny

Improved Security The bomb theory behind the downing of TWA 800 has been ruled out, but airport security remains geared toward a hijacker's weapon, rather than a terrorist's bomb.

Install devices to screen every piece of luggage, including carry-on bags, for hard-to-detect explosives. Cost: $26.46 billion, or $31.13 per ticket.

Make pilots' long-term performance records available to all airlines so they can better weed out applicants with questionable histories. Cost: $1.2 million, or less than a penny per ticket.

Put every child in a seat.

The 50 percent discounts for children recently announced by major airlines will put more babies in seats, but parents still have a choice. If the rules were changed to require all children under two to be strapped into their own seats, the airlines would rejigger fares to get most families back on planes. Cost: Modest increases for parents with young children.

Reprinted fxom the New YQrkTimes Magazine. Copyright Š 1997

by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Install stronger seats that can withstand 40 G's of force, instead of the current 16 G's.

Build the seats with shoulder harnesses and higher backs, and have them face backward to support the head and neck in case of a crash. Cost: $2.85 billion, or $3.35 per ticket.

Smoke Hoods

Ground Warning Devices Install enhanced groundproximity warning systems.

Current systems warn pilots when they are too close to the ground. The enhanced versions warn them if they are headed for a mountain. Such a system might have prevented the American Airlines crash in Cali, Colombia, in 1995. Cost: $300 million, or 35 cents per ticket.

Grown-ups' Safety Seats

Smoke Detectors Install smoke detectors and fire-suppression systems in the cargo area and passenger cabin to prevent fires like the one that brought down the Valujet DC-9 in 1996. Cost: $1.61 billion, or $1.89 per ticket.

Store a smoke hood in every seat back. Some experts think passengers would spend too much time fumbling with the hoods instead of exiting the plane if there was a fire, but flight attendants could give demonstrations to prepare travelers. Cost: $86 million, or 10 cents per ticket.

tration (FAA) regulation that enables children under two to sit on their parents' laps rather than requiring that they be strapped in. If parents had to buy seats for their babies, even with steep discounts many families might be priced out of the air and take to the more dangerous roads instead.

Other reasons, all studies in logic, also slow the pace of developing safety improvements. Even though travelers might want to pay extra for some of these upgrades, the FAA decides whether the benefits of installing new devices justify their costs, using a U.S. Department of Transportation formula that places a value of $2.7 million on a human life.

In some cases, the technology is still being refined. And even though the cost may be small to each passenger over five years, who will put up the money in the first place? These days, legislators are increasingly looking to the industry and its passengers as easy tax targets, not as big capital drains.

Perhaps emotion should trump logic when it comes to aviation safety, and planes should be made as safe as possible. That certainly seems to be the new standard after a passenger jet crashes,

Fuel-tank Safeguards

More Rigorous Safety Briefings

Guard against explosive mixtures by, among other things, completely filling a plane's belly tank.

Because fuel is chilled in underground storage tanks, the cold fuel in the plane's tank could hold down temperatures and reduce the chance of fumes exploding. The National Transportation Safety Board suspects that a mechanical failure ignited vapors in a tank on TWA 800. Cost: $10 billion, or $11.76 per ticket.

Many lives have been lost because pilots grow complacent and passengers do not pay attention to briefings.

Train flight attendants to focus passengers' attention on safety briefings by shouting like drill sergeants. Maybe there should even be a drill sergeant to bark at pilots to stay alert.

Nominal cost for additional training.

when aviation officials typically promise to redouble America's commitment to safety and to strive for no accidents. But as each day goes by without another crash, the urgency drains away. When still another safety commission confirms the obvious-that flying is indeed safe but could be safer-its report is quickly forgotten.

Momentum is dissipated by disagreements among government agencies and airlines and other industry groups over which safety improvements to implement first.

Granted, it is not an easy choice, since no one can predict the most likely cause of the next crash. But adopting every good idea-and there are many beyond those mentioned on these pages-is not much of a choice either; planes would grow so heavy and expensive that hardJy anyone could afford to fly anymore.

Then again, that may be the quickest and easiest way to reduce the accident rate to zero.

0 About the Author: Adam Bryant covers the airLine and aerospace industries for the New YOlk Times.

Wing De-icers

Upgrade Radar

Install more sophisticated ice detectors and deicers. Ice can disrupt airflow over a wing and cripple its performance, a condition that has caused many deaths. New devices can help insure that a plane is free of ice.

Cost: $98 million, or 12 cents per ticket.

Install better navigational equipment. There are a number of more advanced systems available to warn air traffic controllers and pilots about wind shears, potential runway collisions and other hazards. Cost: $4.8 billion, or $5.65 per ticket.

Better Black Boxes

...

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Bird ProteetiOD Build tougher engines. Birds of a certain size or number can do considerable damage to engines and have caused many accidents over the years. Blades made with stronger composites would stand up better to ornithological intrusions. Cost: $6.38 billion, or $7.51 per ticket.

Flight-data recorders, or black boxes, help explain why a plane crashed and may prevent a similar accident. Relatively little information was recorded on the USAir plane that crashed mysteriously near Pittsburgh in 1994. The most advanced black boxes record so much about a plane's movements that not much is left to guesswork.

Cost: $325 million, or 38 cents per ticket.

~

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Tighten Maintenance Checks To guard against counterfeit used in repairs, require each accompanied by paperwork to its original FAA-approved Cost: $50 million, or 6 cents

parts' being part to be tracing it back manufacturer. per ticket.

A low-budget Kannada film, America! America!! surprised many by becoming a box-office hit in South India. It is now making the rounds abroad. At least as interesting as the film is the filmmaker, N. Chandrashekhara.

agathihalli in 1966 was like any other South Indian village. Dirt roads. Tiled roof cottages. A rundown school building. Papanna, the village schoolmaster, cycled to neighboring schools to teach, while his lO-year-old son Chandru painted signboards in the market square to supplement the family income. It was a hard life, but it had its compensations. From where he worked, the young artist watched trucks speeding past on the adjoining Bangalore-Hassan highway. He had visions of becoming a truck driver.

Then, he would scan the night sky and weave stories about the stars. The future creator of America! America!! had already found his cinematic theme. Someday, he would travel to far-off lands. He would also write about people who had the brilliance of the sun, who basked in reflected glory like the moon or who patiently endured like the earth.

What Chandrashekhara did not know then was the charisma of those far-off lands. It took him nearly three decades to understand their magnetism. It was a startling discovery that resulted in an impartial examination of a civilization which attracts and repels at the same time. His America is a strong country. It is a land of

N

opportunities. It can make people excel.

But, it is also a cruel country which does not suffer weaklings. It has no patience with mediocrity. It can be ruthless.

Chandrashekhara's thought-provoking film America! America!!, followed by his recently released book by the same title, views American society from an Indian perspective. They also reflect the creative genius of a many-faceted personality.

Teacher, writer, critic, environmentalist and filmmaker-with three novels, six short story collections and two travelogues to his credit-"Chandru" has taken the celluloid world by storm with this blockbuster, which won the coveted Rajat Kamal (Silver Lotus) for the best Kannada feature film of 1996, and the national award for best direction at the National Film Festival earlier this year. Unlike the stereotyped Bollywood fare, the film skillfully combines a serious issue with popular appeal. A "bridge" cinema, as its creator would like to call it, America!

America!! has completed its silver jubilee week in Bangalore. At the time of writing, it was being screened in major U.S. and Canadian cities for the benefit of those who inspired it in the first place.

The U.S. Department of Justice permit-

ted its filming in the USA on the grounds that it would "facilitate greater understanding between two countries with the aim of minimizing the effect of conflicts brought on by cultural differences." The filmmaker was even allowed to take his own crew of 10 technicians and six amateur actors-one of them a retired Air Force officer. Several institutions, some from Hollywood, lent their support. The Antioch Delta Memorial Hospital threw open its doors for the shooting of the final scenes, with its faculty physician, Dr. Savage, getting into the act himself. The result was a runaway success in South India.

America! America!! discusses the conflicts faced by Asian Indians in an alien. land which benefits them financially, but diminjshes them otherwise. It depicts their struggle to be accepted and absorbed into that great melting pot. The story line is simple. Shashank, a young professional from South India, is fired by the great American dream. Like others before him, he is tempted to migrate with his bride, Bhoomika, to a country which has much to offer. There, he discovers, a little too late, that demands of the new life take an equal toll. Lured into a false lifestyle and hunted by a consumerist culture, he finds

Director N. Chandrashekhara discusses a scene with a Hollywood colleague on the set.

On location in San Francisco, Chandrashekhara (extreme right) watches Akshay Anand and Ramesh, who play Shashank and Surya, during a street scene shoot.

Karen Vasudevan and Krishna Mitty play Linda and Seethamma, who try on each other's dress and culture in the film.

An Interview with N. Chandrashekhara VATSALA VEDANTAM:'How does America! America!! differ from the usual Bollywood offering?

N. CHANDRASHEKHARA: Bollywood films generally use foreign locations for their song and dance sequences, whereas the story line of my film itself took shape in the American soil.

Serious themes are not necessarily crowd-pullers. How does your film manage to draw full houses?

Because this is bridge cinema in the true sense. It is not intellectually taxing. Nor is it downright commercial in its formula. It is realistic and easily understood, so that different sections of the audience can relate to it at different levels. I blended a serious theme with a love story to create a new kind of viewership.

How do you expect NRIs in the U.S. to react to your film?

Are Indian films popular in America and other countries?

To the first part of your question, I expect widely different reactions. America! America!! may even generate extensive debate in the U.S. I am prepared for both, because I am quite concerned about the issues presented in it.

Regarding the second, there is no regular system in the U.S. for screening Indian films. Judging from my own experience with Kotreshi Kanasu in 18 American cities, T feel that there will be a positive response if you screen good Indian cinema.

What are the present trends in Indian Hollywood been a major influence?

himself hopelessly caught in an uncaring society which hires and fires, and drags its victims into a quicksand from which there is no escape. Shashank's tragic death in a strange land marks the end of his American dream.

On the other hand, there is Surya who comes to America as a professional on equal terms and "not with a begging bowl." With his feet firmly planted in his own native soil, he succeeds where his weaker counterpart, who fled his country for greener pastures, fails. The third protagonist, Bhoomika, emerges a stronger

cinema?

Has

Barring a few exceptions, Indian cinema is purely formulabased entertainment. Yes, we do see Hollywood influence where the technical aspects are concerned, but the stories, sentiments, songs and dances are our own.

You are also an environmentalist and teach Kannada as well. How did you get into films?

Some of the ideas I wished to express demanded a visual media, hence my entry into films. Again, having been a writer helps me in several aspects of filmmaking like visualization and narration.

Who are the filmmakers who have influenced you?

Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Mani Ratnam.

What prompted you to make a movie on Indians in America?

The many interesting features of NRI life in America which I witnessed during my earlier travels there.

How will America! America!! impact Americans?

Some of the Americans you see in this film not only enjoyed getting involved, but they were also surprised that a story based in the U.S.,should have been explored in a remote, regional language medium like Kannada.

"Doyou think r.egionallanguage cinema is limited in scope?

Is it now on the verge of greater exposure?

Yes. Regional language filmmakers have to work under severe budgetary constraints, which is a deterrent to ambitious film projects like working on a large canvas. This has naturally brought them closer to experimental films on low budgets which could have a wider audience reach.

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he fumes about his own country. Then. woman as a result of her association with adds, almost in the same breath, "Just bea country which, unlike her own, gives her the freedom to think for herself. However, cause your mother wears a tattered sari, you cannot give her up for a stranger clad for the vast majority of NRIs who spurn the land of their origin for the one they _in costly silk."

What kind of reaction does have adopted, America is a mirage where they hang in midair "like Thrishanku."

Chandrashekhara expect from American Chandrashekhara conveys the social and nonresident Indian audiences to his outspoken theme? The filmmaker prefers and emotional impact of these complex issues with remarkable objectivity. As a "to wait and see." If they find their mirror image uncomfortably close to life, they committed artist, he takes no sides. He does not gloss over truths either. may distance themselves from it, or simply brand the film "phony." Chandrashekhara "What is the use of a 5,OOO-year-old culture which does not respect women?" is prepared for both. As far as he is con-

cerned, he has done his homework thoroughly over a period of five years before translating his impressions to paper and celluloid. To him, his characters Surya, Shashank and Bhoornika are real. So are others like Subbulakshrni, Seethamma and Sreenivasiah. They reflect the hopes and fears and conflicts of countless Indians who go to the West in search of fulfillment.

Some find it, like Surya. Some don't, like Shashank. Yet, some more, like Bhoomika, may gain in stature. Again, there are Seethammas who learn to adapt, while the Subbulakshmis merely ape. Finally, it is people like Sreenivasiah (so touchingly portrayed by Dattatreya) who are able to appreciate the wisdom of both cultures.

Like when he says: "No civilization is lesser or greater-it is the human being who matters."

Significantly, America!

America!! opens with the shot of the Statue of Liberty beckoning all immigrants. It ends with the Air India jumbo jet carrying Surya and Bhoomika flying higher and farther away from the Stars and Stripes.

They are the ones who assimilated the best of Uncle Sam's culture and overcame its stranglehold as well. According to Chandrashekhara, U.S. audiences have no reason to resent these truths. As the blurb on his book jacket proclaims: "I am not a gnani. I am not even a scholar. A wanderer and vagabond, I have merely narrated my surprises, which occur every time I go to America."

Chandrashekhara can best be understood in the context of his latest film. The writer, critic, artist and environmentalist have all come together here. Even the teacher in him played a crucial role when he researched material for the film between 1990 and 1995. During his three visits to American universities and other institutions, he met students, teachers and professionals in various disciplines. He distributed questionnaires and built up data banks. He visited their homes, talked to their families, interacted with their ethnic clubs and associations. He spared no effort to study and understand how Asians of Indian origin adapted themselves to a new cultural milieu. He even studied the doctoral thesis of a friend who had re-

searched on the sociological problems of nonresident Indians living in the U.S. Chandrashekhara firmly believes that a creative artist has a social obligation other than merely expressing his own feelings.

His earlier feature film, Kotreshi Kanasu (Kotreshi's Dream), which won the National Award in 1994, and which ran to crowded houses in the U.S., also explored a serious issue of caste prejudices in rural India. Then also there was resentment and criticism from those who recognized their own failings. Chandru's response is simple. "The truth has to hurt somebody," he says. "It's a creative inevitability." orn in 1956 into a rural family, Chandrashekhara was the third of six children. He received an indifferent primary education in a government school. But he was inspired by the emdition of his father who related stOlies from ancient Indian epics. Chandrashekhara's later concern for the environment had its OIigins in these experiences. As a teenager, he started writing essays and poems in Kannada. He also sat outside tent theaters, drawing cinema posters for a pittance. Chandm's childhood was dogged by poverty which affected his studies. He failed miserably in his school final examination.

He got a break, however, when he joined an undergraduate program in Mysore with Kannada as a major subject.

He worked as a casual laborer in a local dairy so that he could attend evening classes in the Maharaja's College. He also began his writing career by freelancing for popular Kannada newspapers. Chandru's short stories became popular television serials. A two-year stint at Manasa Gangotri (Mysore University) while working night shifts at the dairy enabled him to end his unique academic career with eight gold medals and a master's degree.

Armed with these qualifications, the would-be truck driver landed in a university college in Bangalore to teach comparative Kannada literature to undergraduate classes. At the same time, he came under the influence of the eminent author and environmentalist, Shivaram Karanth, and threw himself into the "Save the Western Ghats" crusade. He produced 16mm docu-

B

mentaries for schoolchildren on this and other environmental issues. He also made audio cassettes on similar themes to promote awareness among villagers. He joined the anti-nuclear agitation. Whether it was the teacher, writer or filmmaker, Chandrashekhara's goal at that time was the preservation of the environment.

When asked why he switched over to social themes, he explains: "I felt lowed something to society-especially rural society-which is in a critical state. Then, my own childhood experiences were there.

Our difficult existence, the poverty ....:' His voice trails off.

Yet, Chandrashekhara is no pessimist.

Despite the tremendous pressures involved in filmma)cing, added to his academic commitments at college, Chandru finds time to shop around for producers and stars every time he feels the need to make a film. America! America!! was preceded by three others which were cine- . matic triumphs, although box-office failures. In fact, Kotreshi Kanasu was a financial disaster, which would have discouraged a lesser artist. But Chandru remained unfazed, and launched his next venture with no reservations.

"My wife Shoba is a great support to me at such times," he says, and reminisces how she stood by him during those crucial college years when he was not sure where his next meal would come from.

Chandrashekhara's intercaste marriage to Shoba is in itself an affirmation of his faith that, if a creative artist persists, a new social order will come about. Their only daughter is named Kanasu-which means "a dream."

It has been a long journey from Nagathihalli to New York but it has brought ample rewards to an author and filmmaker who wanted to build bridges which surpass the Golden Gate in San Francisco, which-incidentally-forms the backdrop to his film.

0 About the Author: Vatsala Vedantam, a former associate editor of the Deccan Herald in Bangalore, writes for various newspapers, notably the Hindu. In 1994 she won the Commonwealth Media Awardfor excellence in journalism.

No longer mere truck stops on the long, dull drive across the prairie, cities in the American Plains and Midwestern states are giving traditional trade capitals on the East and West Coasts a run for their money.

sedto be, about all Omaha had going for it was Warren Buffett. If it weren't for the superstar investor, who maintains his offices in a construction company's headquarters and lives on a busy street in a modest Omaha

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neighborhood, the largest city in Nebraska might not even exist on the mental maps of New Yorkers and Californians.

No longer. Today Omaha is clicking and it's for many more reasons than the beneficence of a reclusive billionaire. The city on the Missouri River has emerged as a big telecommunications and computing hub, while preserving its traditional strengths in agribusiness and insurance.

First Data Resources, the $5 billion-ayear processor of credit card transactions, is the largest technology-based company in Omaha. But others such as Internet access provider MFS (now a unit of WorldCom), Inacom, PKS Information Services and American Business Information are growing so fast they need to import top managers and technical talent from California and elsewhere. Out-ofstate companies such as MCI, Caterpillar Logistics, Union Pacific, Ford Credit and Marriott have located big data storage or information systems in Omaha, taking advantage of lower costs and skilled labor.

All told, 85 percent of the workforce is in the service sector, which depends heavily on technology.

Help wanted. Partly as a result, Omaha has reversed the decades-long outflow of people from Nebraska. Since civic leaders launched an effort to revitalize the city three-and-a-half years ago, Omaha has attracted 40,000 people from all over the country, boosting the metropolitan area's population to 680,000. The trend is likely to continue. A year ago, Mayor Hal Daub told a national television show that anyone who wanted to work could come to Omaha; so far, his office has received 7,500 calls-plus a letter from France.

The reason Omaha needs people is that its unemployment rate is a microscopic 2.4 percent, about half the national rate.

Omaha's experience is being replicated throughout the heartland. Technology-driven industries are taking firm root in once troubled cities of the dozen or so Midwest and Plains states, altering the structure of the region's economy. "A lot of us have put technology and communications infrastructures into place," says Paul Helmke, mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and new

president of the 650-member U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Gateway 2000, for example, has seemingly come out of nowhere-North Sioux City, South Dakota-to become a $5 billion-a-year maker of personal computers.

National Computer Systems, a $330 million-a-year information services company, is taking out ads in national newspapers trying to lure software developers (salaries ranging from $40,000 to $65,000, plus a signing bonus of a month's pay) to Iowa City, Iowa. Sprint, which started out in Westwood, Kansas, has helped turn the Kansas City area into a center of research in such technologies as digital personal communication systems.

Cities whose names once were synonymous with Midwest rust and decayToledo, Ohio; Joliet, Illinois; and Fort Wayne-are betting that they can ride technology to a brighter future.

Obviously, all this is good news for Midwest and Plains states, which are enjoying the lowest unemployment levels in America. But the success of cities like Omaha in using technology to spur growth augurs well for the American economy as a whole. The ability of companies to shift technology-based activity to lower-cost regions suggests that the New Economy isn't likely to encounter an inflationary spiral because of shortages of skilled labor. Moreover, the nation's economic expansion, now more than six years old, is less dependent on a single region of the country, like the Sun Belt or' California. "The whole economy is more balanced," says Ruth Fitzgerald, head of economic development for Joliet.

The origins of the heartland's technology boom are decidedly modest. Because of the Central time zone and relative lack of regional accents, many companies located labor-intensive call centers and 800-numbel' telemarketing operations in these states. But more sophisticated operations have gradually moved in, too. Oklahoma, for example, is home to the reservation services of Hertz, Avis, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, as well as the service center for America Online. As cities strive to create and attract adequate supplies of technical talent to operate and

maintain these complex systems, hightech entrepreneurs have begun to flourish. Maxwell Steinhardt, for example, moved from California's Silicon Valley to Stillwater, Oklahoma, to become chief executive officer of TMSSequoia, a rapidly growing document-imaging firm whose sales have reached $6 million.

"Technology has allowed businesses to become more footloose and locate in parts of the country they wouldn't have even thought of 10 years ago," says Mark Zandi, chief economist of Regional Financial Associates in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

E-mail, faxes, satellites and video conferencing help companies in central regions manage national and international businesses. So, too, is the increased availability of overnight delivery services and upgraded regional air service. The finances of Midwestern cities in general have improved, allowing them to build new zoos, theaters and other lifestyle en- . hancers. Affordable real estate, low crime levels and good public schools are also attractive to technical and professional talent. Howard Singer, a partner in charge of Grant Thornton's site-selection practice, moved with his family from Miami to Appleton, Wisconsin; the head of the Gartner Group's integrated logistics practice, Art Mesher, resisted moving to headquarters in Connecticut and lives instead in a log cabin in Prescott, Wisconsin.

They're able to manage challenging careers from these smaller places.

The Omaha case is deeply revealing both about how technology is dispersing economic activity and about how parts of the country once perceived as remote can develop and attract knowledge workers.

Omaha is benefiting not only because it sits astride major East-West and NorthSouth fiber-optic lines but also because it has a backup phone switching center for the entire city; locals joke that their city was "born to be wired." Omaha developed the telecom capacity in part because the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the nation's nuclear weapons, is buried deep in the rolling countryside a few miles south of town. Hundreds of military technicians have seeded local companies in recent years.

Information, please. Taking advantage of what Omaha had to offer, MCI closed an old data center in Rockville, Maryland, and opened its newest, most sophisticated data center on a hill in northwestern Omaha. Mainframe computers in the $200 million, 17,300-square-meter facility can hold 10 terabytes (or 10 trillion bytes of information) online at any given moment.

That's the equivalent of 400,000 sets of encyclopedias. The company needs that capacity to generate phone bills and keep records. Most of the technology companies in Omaha rely on a similar combination of massive computing and telecommunications power, plus modestly priced labor that's willing to work around the clock. From First Data Resources' tornado-proof, top-security command center where workers have to scan their handprints to gain entry, technicians oversee a system that processes 153 million credit and debit card transactions a year.

It's the creation of spinoffs and upstarts that typically indicates whether a region is developing momentum as a "hot spot"and Omaha has its share. Just as Gateway 2000 now competes with such giants as Compaq and IBM, Inacom is emerging as a player in the information systems consulting business. Inacom customizes computer and communications gear from IBM, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard and Lucent Technologies for business customers. It was originally a unit of Valmont Industries Inc., the $650 million-a-year irrigation-equipment manufacturer, but is now far bigger than its parent. Revenues were about $3.1 billion in 1996 and are expected to reach $4 billion this year. The company goes head to head with such behemoths as EDS and Arthur Andersen in consulting work. It also is trying to persuade corporate customers to let Inacom remotely manage their information systems from a futuristic command facility built in a former cornfield.

As with many technology companies today, the biggest constraint to Inacom's growth is people. The company currently has 3,700 employees across the country and 900 in Omaha, but it needs to recruit at least 300 more workers. About 75 percent of Inacom's executives in Omaha

Technology -driven industries are taking firm root, and cities whose names once were synonymous with Midwest rust and decay hope to ride technology to a brighter future.

have come from such places as Washington, D.C., and Chicago and from companies like NCR, IBM and AT&T. The company also needs entry-level programmers and technicians and has formed an eight-person recruiting group that scouts colleges, handing out T -shirts, buttons and posters at job fairs to attract 20-something programmers and engineers.

The good life. The company's recruiting effort also relies on Omaha's modestly priced real estate, good public schools, vibrant civic life, excellent medical care, sparse traffic and easy access to culture in the form of a regional symphony and a beautiful Art Deco museum whose director was trained at the Louvre in Paris.

Corporate policies are family-friendly, encouraging employees to attend their children's Christmas concerts at school, for example. The company is betting that this quality-of-life formula will attract enough employees. "People are saying, 'If you keep me competitive and let me raise my family in a good place, I'm happy,' " says human resources chief Larry Fazzini, a former Sears executive from Chicago.

Another intriguing growth story is American Business Information (ABI), which Vinod Gupta, an immigrant from India who attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, founded in his garage (see SPAN, September 1994). What started as a one-man operation that combed through the yellow pages across the nation compiling lists of trailer parks has now blossomed into a $190 milliona-year company that collects information on 11 million businesses. Some 1.2 mil-

lion customers in search of sales leads buy the information over the Internet, by mail-order or on CD-ROMs. It is basically a scrappy, down-market version of Dun & Bradstreet.

As ABI has boomed, Gupta has hired from local universities and recruited highlevel technical and professional talent from around the nation, offering beginning salaries as high as $200,000. Jon H. Wellman, who was a partner with Coopers & Lybrand in San Francisco, is chief operating officer and one of eight managers Gupta recruited from California, New York, Texas, Illinois and Minnesota. "I told the recruiter, I honestly can't imagine living in Omaha," Wellman says. His children were 17 and 13 at the time and in private schools in San Francisco, but both entered Omaha's public schools. He used to have to get up at 5 a.m. for a tee time at a municipal golf course. Now he plays whenever time permits. And he doesn't spend an hour-and-a-half commuting to work each way. Omahans complain about any traffic delays at all, but says Wellman: "It's very difficult to say the word traffic here with a straight face."

For the same reasons, a surprising number of companies make Omaha their headquarters for international activity.

Caterpillar Logistics Services Inc., a subsidiary of Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, manages inventory and parts distribution systems for corporate customers in South America and Europe. The aggressive independent power producer, CalEnergy, run by former Nebraska farm boy David Sokol, conducts about a third of its business in Asia and another third in Europe. Mogens C. Bay, a Dane who has. lived in Madrid, Hong Kong and Beijing, is chief executive officer of the irrigationequipment company Valmont, which conducts about 20 percent of its business abroad. Half-a-dozen different nationalities pepper his senior management ranks.

"We could be in Chicago or New York but we decided we wanted to live here," says Bay. That says a lot about what's happening in the cornfields of Omaha.

0 J. Holstein is a News & World Report.

About the Author: William senior writer for

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