You couldn’t hope for a more perfect climate change victim than Ajay Patra, the head man of Ghoramara — the island in India’s Sunderban chain that is next in line to be submerged beneath the rising sea. You couldn’t hope for a more perfect climate change victim than Ajay Patra, the head man of Ghoramara
Richard Orange investigates endemic corruption, from pilfering and kickbacks to mafia rackets, in the state-owned coal mines that provide almost half of India’s energy needs The first sign of illicit industry in the West Bengal district of Raniganj is the number of bicycles wobbling precariously down its village tracks, their panniers piled to an improbable
Ishaq Chowdhary pulled the top off a wooden crate to show oranges fringed with powdery white mould. It was a freezing morning at the fruit market in Srinagar, capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and market workers, huddling traditional fire-pots beneath their gowns, are sipping tea and starting to unload the day’s
As guests made their way out of the Taj hotel in Mumbai after spending New Year’s Eve in its restaurants, many stopped to study a small memorial plaque erected to commemorate the 12 staff who died protecting guests from terrorists at the end of November. If it has the same dignified simplicity as a British
Richard Orange says the Indian tea industry is enjoying a revival — but that the traditional tea-planters’ way of life, established by the British, is passing into history There is not much to distinguish Dhanesheva Kurmi from the rest of the crowd at the Hautely Tea Estate, a remote garden an hour and a half’s
Gazing out over India’s Gulf of Kutch from the small jetty owned by Essar Oil, you would hardly think you were witnessing the birth of one of the world’s new industrial heartlands. Placid turquoise waters stretch out to the low landmass opposite; behind you lie mile upon mile of shimmering salt pans where flocks of
It’s not often your host has passed up dinner with Mick Jagger and the Maharaja of Jodhpur to take you to his country house for the weekend. But that’s what Rajeev Samant, the pioneer of India’s wine craze, lets slip as we begin the long drive north from Mumbai to his Sula vineyard. Samant has
‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state. ‘This is backwoods, really backwoods,’ says Aditya, as the rackety, jam-packed bus pulls into Rajgarh, a small town in the north-west of Rajasthan, India’s desert state. Aditya is the
Richard Orange says London’s traditional dominance of global dealing in uncut stones is under threat from new players based in India, China and Dubai ‘How does it feel to hold $9 million in the palm of your hand?’ One of the world’s leading diamond buyers, Rajiv Mehta, watches intently for my reaction to this question:
‘We’re always told that Russia is using its economic resources to achieve foreign policy aims,’ President Putin told journalists recently. But, he went on, it is ‘ill-wishers’ in the Western press who paint Russia as a threat to European energy security. ‘That is not the case.’ Yet within minutes of this assurance, Putin issued a
‘This is a celebration of the nerd in each of us,’ declared Partha, the pony-tailed co-founder of Mindtree, an information technology consulting firm, flashing a nervous grin at thousands of young software engineers ranged in a marquee in front of him and going on to read out a dictionary definition: ‘an unstylish, unattractive, or socially
If you built a composite portrait of Leigh Clifford from the handful of newspaper profiles ever written about him, you would be presented with an archetypal Aussie miner, as tough as the rocks his company digs from the earth. Shortly before taking up, six years ago, the post of chief executive of Rio Tinto —
Bill Browder is strangely apologetic for the grandeur of his offices in Hudson House, a Lutyens mansion off Covent Garden. ‘I like the high ceilings,’ he says, scanning the room with a nervous smile, ‘It’s easier to work with some space around me.’ Somehow, though, neither the building’s fine fa