Being the centrally located state of the nation, and being geographically located in a plateau with the Narmada river serving most of it's water needs - the Malwa Plateau, MP, and it's cities had an advantage for almost all kinds of industries.
Unfortunately, the lack of political will and focus on some real development for the state has landed this state into more of a dependent status than being independent and contributing to the nations' GDP.
Though things are likely to change, it takes a huge amount of time in this state to take decisions, most of them being passed around like a bucket of popcorn.
The Global Investor's meet in Indore, that the MP government called for last year should have probably taken off in a huge way, had things really been moved positively.
Several reknowned people and companies did agree to participate then. I was not able to find out about any further details on the success of the meet and any action items highlighted in the same.
Things still are at a very basic level of planning even today, and implementation details are thus awaited.
On a personal note, I know of one company - SemanticBITS which wanted to invest in Indore, but has backed out and decided to locate in Hyderabad. I'd say, a loss for the state. Another level of loss comes from the relocation of existing companies like CSC, who, finding infrastructure development very slow have decided to get most of their work moved to locations like Hyderabad, Chennai and Noida.

I hope though that the state does a lot more to invite companies, esp. by ensuring quick deployment of infrastructure and power and zero red-tapism for companies to set up and do uninterrupted business in the state.

All over the world, one thing that really stands out in stark contrast is the amount of destruction that mankind unleashes in the name of development.
So also, in a city like this, I was appalled when I came across the fact that the so called city planners were totally unprepared at the influx of people into the city and over the last 5 years or so, have unleashed unplanned development projects in the city... at the cost of high amounts of destruction - of nature.

The first prime targets of all development are the lungs of a city, the trees.

The destruction of trees in Indore began almost 4 years back, at various locations including the existing A.B.Road which passed outside the erstwhile old Indore city. The excuses given by the city planners was that the trees were a hindrance for development and hence they must go....

I wonder what kind of qualified planners these people are that they failed to recognise the need for building their designs around existing natural structures than destroying the structures to the extent that the whole city feels the impact.
Almost 40 odd trees were cut down on the Starlit road to widen it to accomodate more traffic and more commercial structures.
Around 100 odd trees were cut down on the A.B.Road all along from the outer ring road on the South till Scheme 74 on the North, under some plan, where they were to widen the road.
But today, the plan has been scrapped and no one has bothered to calculate and consider the loss they have unleashed by destroying trees that were probably more than 100 yrs old.

Open lands have been usurped by the builder politician nexus, killing the real spirit of progress for the city.

Unfortunate again, that the common citizen in that part of the country is one who seeks for his self, there is no collective conscience that the citizens bring together to ensure that their city preserves it's charm at least for the sake of the Nature that it was known for;

Shab-e-malwa - the glorified evening of Malwa - an erstwhile oft repeated Urdu phrase that described succinctly the glory of the breezy evenings of the Malwa plateau that Indore is part of, now no longer retains it's meaning or charm.
The balmy breezy evenings have been replaced by hot dusty winds that bring in dust covering everything in it's path, turning the landscape into a bleak, dreary, hot parched brown cover.
So much so the price to pay for development in once upon a time beautiful city.

61 years - 61 summers 61 winters 61 monsoons, 61 billion and counting…- this is the story of what came to be called the Golden bird, the land of Spiritual renaissance, the elephant that was learning to dance, the tiger that never got it’s due and the abode of Gods.

The sum of the age digits add up to 7 - a lucky number for some, probably has several hopes pinned on now to hold lucky for not just an individual but for an entity, a nation.
India’s astrological star sign is the Leo – the Lion, if it ever means that India was really ‘born’ on 15th Aug 1947.

Though it existed long before it was born, discovered or for that matter ‘created’, India – a capricious notion - existed in various states, geographies, beliefs and spirit much before it was ‘still-born’ in it’s 19th century polity that the planet Earth is actively keeping history of now.
So after 61 years of that fateful midnight, a conflicting and fighting mass of people was shorn off - a forced caesarian of sorts of a predominantly British mother – to be recognized as an individual polity/entity, albeit with a polit-o-genetically misaligned twin attached at it’s head - a head that today is very messed up.

The train of fate for these, almost million odd men and women, fighting, conflicting at various levels of existence, hurriedly switched tracks to rush off into an unknown direction - much like a toy train that, totally ignored by a bored child - that accidentally slips off it’s toy tracks and veers off trying to balance on it’s tiny toy wheels, till either the child turns it’s attention to put it back on it’s tracks, or is left to crash somewhere, unattended.
Today, 61 years later, the toy train, is really ‘lucky’ for not having been pulled down by gravity - gravity of the situation it has found itself in, since then.
Lucky – to be still on it’s wheels, trembling, shaking, teetering on a path not designed for it’s wheels, but yet, somehow keeping itself up, balancing, yet chugging along laboriously with increasing mass - the bored child nowhere in sight - looking for those lost rails that it was probably smoothly running on up until 300 years back.
Even after 61 years, with its hurriedly chopped off psychogenesis umbilical cords still dangling from it’s disintegrating and misappropriating spirit and it’s unattended psychopathology, this entity is alive, and is considered an anomaly of sorts by – pardon the pun – even God.

Today, this growing, once-upon-a-time-stillborn entity, is still a kid at heart, though 61 years old.
The kid that wants all that the world can give it’s consumerist population; the kid that still wants to be on the stage struts its glamour stuff with the grandeur of cinema, music, with it’s ill-kept but still considerably beautiful contrasts of human life with nature; the kid that cries loud for a seat in the security council yet not being able to get past the bullies that guard the seat; the kid that wants to grow into a mature adult, but ‘luck’ in one form or another hushing down it’s need for growth…

So what does it mean - to be an Indian - 61 years later - today??? I say -

It would be incomplete if I mention Indore and do not mention my alma mater - St. Pauls H. S. School, Old Sehore Road, Indore.

I plan to thave a series of thoughts on my alma mater as time and inclination permits.

Let me start this series by touching upon the latest news from the school - a memorial day event. An event that began a a homage to departed souls of the 1988 batch, who once upon a time were my playmates and lab mates and house-mates.

But this day has been eternalised as a day to pays homage to all students of the school who now rest in peace due to their untimely departure from the living world.

The 1988 batch was first of it's kind
- a batch that was the first class XII (10+2) batch of the school
- the first batch to get a general promotion (GP) by the then CM, Arjun Singh
- a batch which had almost 40 of it's students getting selected in PET for engineering college admissions

The pictures here should suffice to say that under the initiative of some die-hard St. Pauls alumni, the Smruti Divas (Memorial day) has been launched officially.

I would fail if I do not mention a few of the wonderful teachers who have been with us through these years guiding us in their own way, with their invisible presence in our lives, who have shaped us the way we are today.



Mr. Amitabh Saraswati - the man with the western look way back then, never was able to understand if he was the rebel with a cause or without one.

Indore as a city has evolved like the other cities of the nation, albeit in a different way. The city earlier was not so well known for it's education prowess, but it was since 1995 that some inroads began into the city for the education industry. This was esp. possible because the city began to have a better connectivity to the North and West by rail and road.

It was a fact since a long time that Indore produced some very talented people in the media industry. Some very familiar names are Lata Mangeshkar & Kishore Kumar(who studied in Indore, though he came from Khandwa) from the music industry, Vijayendra Ghatge from the acting field, Salim Khan, the script writer of Salim-Javed duo who wrote for Sholay (dad to the most popular Khan - Salman) and in the last decade names in the National News presenters - Akash Soni and Siddharth Sharma.

So the city has created an image for itself of being a city of opportunities. Indeed the opportunities have emerged and along with it, have people. Pouring in from the smaller cities, the city has seen exponential population growth though infrastructure has been slow to catch up, as usual.

The changes that the city has seen have put pressures on several aspects. One is safety and security.
- of vehicular traffic drivers
- of Senior citizens
- for children being ferried to/from schools
- of houses from burglaries

Pressure is there on infrastructure development at the cost of losing the green cover.
Impacted by the loss of green cover is the increasing levels of air pollution, heat levels, decreasing water content and impacts on the psyche to develop related diseases.

So also with increasing number of people from the nerby cities, when they come to the mini metro, they come with a set mindset that the big city will give them all the freedom to live and exist the way they want to - away from the pressure of family control.
It is this attitude that needs a huge change.

Unfortunately, it has been seen that the mindset of the people who come from the rural areas is initially very much self oriented. They do not understand the complexities of living in a city life compared to the small rural life they had. As a result of this notional belief, very often the city life is very disillusioning. This kind of an attitude leads to inflated ego levels.
People think they have a right on everything and anything.

Indore suffers from this attitudinal inflation in a huge way. Most often you will find that people want to show off themselves in a lot of ways. They get into fights in the smallest of incidents, they try to ensure that they are in the center of the limelight by adopting shortcuts in life.

It is this that makes people very vulnerable and also very dangerous.
The need of the hour in the city and in the state is sensitization.
Sensitization towards all the above problems and their associated side-effects and how individuals need to have a broader perspective when they live in a city.


Unfortunately, in this age of rapid fire progress, people can't stop for a minute. People are in a rush to live and make it better than they were. In the process they lose more than they gain. But they do not stop to think.

It is the importance of this Pause that is very much needed to be 'taught' to the people in a variety of ways. the media is one such agent. But the media itself in such cities needs to first grow up and over their smaller interests that they had earlier.

The media and the law of the land have to be the first participants in this change by being abreast of all impacts of change and ways to handle this impact.
They should then become guides to people who are experiencing and causing the changes in their individual and collective city lifestyles.

Not sure if people in these times still understand the tradition and concept of 'city elders' but it is the city elders who have to change for the better, First.
The movie 'Happy Feet' depicts beautifully, what I am alluding to;
Maybe something of a change can come in slowly in the outlook of this city from such media.

Giving thought to my connection with Indore again, I see, given the current situation that though th city has created an aura about being an 'educational center', the mentality of the locals is still not as progressive as they are teaching through the institutions.
And hence I am not able to decide, that as an IT professional, where in Indore can I really fit in with my experience and outlook that I have developed in a cit like Bombay.

the current issue there with communal riots, an indefinite curfew and the recently unearthed terrorist links puts the city law and order situation in quandary and also puts the image of Indore as a 'global outsourcing destination' into deep dire straits.

The city has an IIM and the city is expected to get its IIT also shortly.

For educational institutions to meet their goals and the students to get the most out of them, basic law and order is a must. Students need to attend classes regularly. Given the fact that IIM and IIT students live on campus, the impact might be less. But nevertheless, the fear factor will always be there.

Given this, and the growing number of cases of burglary, murders and inability of the police system to even identify a pattern, leave alone the culprits, is a huge lacuna in the overall governance system which has in a way left the residents in fear, in several areas.

Senior citizens are the most prone and it has actually caused a lot of stress for me to try and keep myself from being carried away with my parents' welfare there. There are several families there where the old parents live by themselves. Imagine how a curfew like situation will affect such people. Does anyone for that matter think about such impacts?