For the past few months I have been spending time at one of Mumbai&rsquo;s most notorious red light areas, assisting a photographer friend on his book project.

Mumbai's grey area

Business Standard

The United States of America has dominated the world economy since the 1920s, and its decline has been predicted for even longer. Edward Luce&rsquo;s new book, Time to Start Thinking, begins thus with the rather doubtful premise that nobody has bothered to consider why, precisely, America is apparently in decline. In actual fact, of course, there is a small cottage industry devoted to producing such theories. The title also reveals, accurately, that this is a statement of the problem rather than an attempt to suggest coherent solutions. Not that there&rsquo;s anything wrong with that &mdash; but readers who&rsquo;ve already been exposed to those arguments, be warned.

America's eternal 'decline'

As a result of the 2G spectrum scam, Uninor faces an uncertain future.

Hanging by a thread

It&rsquo;s great to be a fan. Quite uncharacteristically, back in 2000, I became a fan of Harry Potter. This meant doing the things that (grown-up) fans do &mdash; obsessing over idiotic little details, getting onto the mailing lists, writing faux-scholarly essays, taking at face value &ldquo;Harry Potter seminars&rdquo;, buying the action figures, watching the first movie four times over even though it was terrible, drinking deeply from the turbid ocean of fanfiction, and so on.

Learning by owl

When the sun rises over this southern metropolis, salesman Samil Malhotra&rsquo;s workday is just ending.

Breakfast in Bangalore

At the age of 25, she has all the four Grand Slams in her kitty.

Grand slam queen

An upright piano stands inconveniently at the park entrance. A sign on the piano announces that the musician obliviously playing a nondescript tune intends to take it to 100 locations in Manhattan this year. A scratched map records his journey through the city so far. Another sign declares to every passerby, &ldquo;You owe it to yourself to do something Remarkable with your Life.&rdquo; Aptly, perhaps unknowingly, the pianist sits today under one such remarkable achievement: the High Line.

Toeing the high line

The Tal Memorial has seen very hard-fought games including a few productions that looked absolutely insane at first or even second glance. First Radjabov and then Morozevich led. After six rounds, Moro and Kramnik share 1-2 with four points each. Carlsen, Radjabov and Caruana share 3-5 spots with 3.5 points each.

Chess (#1005)

Petrol prices are on the up and up while petrol car sales are going down and down. So what makes Volkswagen think that the market is in need of a petrol-powered Jetta? The engine is a bit unusual &mdash; it is of a small displacement but is turbocharged &mdash; and it is being used in a large-ish D-segment car. What gives? Well, read on.

Jet-set-go!

I&rsquo;ve been getting that spooky feeling lately, of walking in the door to find that things are unusually quiet. There are signs that someone was just there &mdash; soiled coffee cups on the table, still-smoking cigarette butts crushed out in the ashtray &mdash; but your hollered hellos go unanswered. You pick up the phone and dial, but that seriously annoying fake-chirpy voice comes on: &ldquo;The number you are trying to reach is currently unreachable. Please try again, or call later.

Latchkey nation

Think of the Peugeot name and one of the first things to come to mind is the Peugeot 309 of yore. Well, fans of the 309 have something to rejoice about. This new sedan that Peugeot has planned for developing markets, called the 301, takes a leaf right out the 309&rsquo;s book &mdash; it&rsquo;s simple, robust, has a penchant for bad roads and is expected to become one of Peugeot&rsquo;s best-selling cars in the world.

Re-entry!

Neocon, the contract furniture trade show held in Chicago every year, is the place to go for businesslike items like a conference-room table or motorised blinds. The show fills several floors of a gargantuan brick block of a building with products designed for commercial and institutional settings: schools, hotels, hospitals and especially offices. Typically, the scene is a field of laminates and steel.

Laid-back attitude

Anurag Kashyap&rsquo;s much-awaited new film, Gangs of Wasseypur, is based on the coal mafia of Dhanbad. The film, over five hours long, was shown during Directors&rsquo; Fortnight at the recent Cannes film festival, and received good reviews. It releases on June 22. But, it has been reported, Kashyap has got into a spat because he doesn&rsquo;t want to put out a disclaimer right at the beginning that &ldquo;it is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to &hellip;..

The mafia acts

I own a Maruti Suzuki Dzire petrol which is around two years old and want to replace it with a CNG version of a Maruti car. I would personally prefer to upgrade to an SX4 CNG and at the same time want the lowest possible running cost. Hence the Wagon R is also on my radar because of its proven performance. Can you let me know how much difference would be there in the mileage for SX4 vs Wagon R? The cost of the car is not an issue.

Gas gas

This happened as recently as December 2008. An angry Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, had convened a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) after terrorists had attacked Mumbai killing more than 170 people, to send a strong message and also pave the way to sack some ministers. Gandhi didn&rsquo;t lose her temper but let principal troubleshooter Pranab Mukherjee do as he liked.

Centre forward

IIn India, films are treated as Coca-Cola bottles &mdash; commodities that you consume purely for pleasure or entertainment. So, a film studio may not be ready to even spend one-twentieth of a Singham or a Rowdy Rathore&rsquo;s budget on a no-frills, serious and meaningful feature film,&rdquo; says first-time director and writer Karan Gour of yesterday&rsquo;s release, Kshay.

A tale of obsessions

In the aviation sector, FY 2012 will be remembered for record losses, downsizing of Kingfisher, Air India&rsquo;s constant labour crisis, IndiGo&rsquo;s rapid rise &mdash; and Jet Airways&rsquo; continued dominance of Indian skies. No wonder, the stock market just loves India&rsquo;s largest airline by market share. Shares of Jet have jumped almost 30 per cent in a month, outperforming other airlines.

Jet soars in cloudy sky

A consortium of media owners, advertisers and media agencies says it is pleased with the results of two pilot tests, commissioned more than a year ago, that are intended to help improve and modernize the way video viewership habits are measured &mdash; all the better to cash in on those new habits.

Tracking viewers from TV to computer to smartphone

More startups fail due to people not taking the leap than for just about any other reason. Deciding to quit a steady job is hard, especially if you have a family, a mortgage, or other obligations. If you're not in or fresh out of college, one of the best ways to get a taste of what a startup is like is to join an existing one. Big-company employees and executives often have the most difficult time adjusting to the reality of a startup.

How to get your company off the ground

It&rsquo;s not unusual. Ask people from any walk of life and you will find the most successful are usually the ones who get the rub of the green. They seem to be at the right place at the right time and the best jobs always drop on their laps without so much as a warning.

Get luck on your side

There are many different crowdsourcing models in use today. Two of the most common involve one-time activities and on-going communities. Contests are a popular example of a one-time activity (for example, create a new advertisement, design a new logo, propose a new packaging concept). Ongoing communities typically involve groups of customers or passionate individuals for a particular brand.

'Crowdsourcing is a new label for some very old activities'

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