It&rsquo;s officially winter, but there are stylish ways of keeping warm.

It's a wrap!

Business Standard

Article 47 of the Directive Principles of State Policy (of the Constitution of India) advises that &ldquo;State shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living of its people and the improvement of public health as among its primary duties and, in particular, the State shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the consumption except for medicinal purpose of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health&rdquo;.

An unhealthy fuss over wine

India Inc isn&rsquo;t in the pink of health. To a large extent, food and snacks served in office caf&eacute;s are to be blamed for this.

Eat (healthy) while you work

In 1946, a book titled The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care hit the stands and went on to become one of the biggest best-sellers ever. Its author, American paediatrician Dr Benjamin McLane Spock, had come with a reassuring message for parents: &ldquo;You know more than you think you do.&rdquo; Over 60 years later, Spock&rsquo;s theory that parents need to rely on their instinct, common sense and their basic understanding of their child&rsquo;s nature still holds strong.

Parenting books: Spock still rules

The big boys of US banks aren&rsquo;t sleeping well. They have been tossing and turning so much, they&rsquo;re losing weight. One bunch, Bank of America in particular, is more restless than the rest. Meanwhile, Julian Assange, Australian mathematical genius and computer hacker &mdash; the new Internet-world James Bond &mdash; is somewhere on Phi Phi, sipping a martini. He is having the last snigger, as he uploads data onto his website, Wikileaks &mdash; a nonprofit organisation that claims it&rsquo;s funded by human rights campaigners, journalists and the public, and promotes information leaks to fight corruption &mdash; of the state and corporations.

Mission expose

What can you buy for about Rs 1 crore in Chandigarh and Mumbai? In one city that budget can bring you a bungalow; in the other, a two-bedroom suburban flat.

City limits

Nandan Nilekani: the face which launched a thousand copies. Eighty-five thousand copies, in fact. The Infosys co-founder is no beauty, but his famous face was the only visual on the cover of Imagining India, his first book and one of Penguin India&rsquo;s best-ever sellers.

Look and sell

I don&rsquo;t know how to leave from here,&quot; Mahbub Ali Khan, the sixth nizam of Hyderabad and one of the richest men in the world, said. That was in 1897, when he stayed as a guest at Falaknuma, the grand palace built by his prime minister and brother-in-law, Nawab Vicar-ul-Umra. The dewan, who had lived in the palace for just four years, gifted it to the nizam (who, naturally, paid him generously for it).

Affairs of state

His film on the Chittagong armoury raids released yesterday.

Celluloid uprising

While our moral universe shrinks and we are condemned to becoming a banana republic, urban India is slated to double in population in the coming decade! This will put unprecedented pressure on both the ethics and practices of city planning. From precedent, we know that the likely outcome will be a crudely put-together patchwork &lsquo;master plan&rsquo; that, at best, will paint a shockingly incoherent future, for the long and short term. And even if the &lsquo;plan&rsquo; has valid vision, its interpretation at the local ground level will be accidentally or purposefully distorted, as it divides itself into &lsquo;mini&rsquo; plans so disparate they appear orphans unrelated to the parent plan. The resulting mayhem becomes, among other things, a breeding ground for scams.

Future shock

No one told me that Harry Potter had gone all Ramayana on us. I never read the last book. But as I started watching part one of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I had a creeping sense of d&eacute;j&agrave; vu.

Shrieking Surpanakhas and Moaning Myrtles

One of my prized DVD buys in recent months is Sony Pictures&rsquo; two-disc set of Peter Brook&rsquo;s Mahabharat. It was a touch expensive (as most legitimate DVDs are in the Indian market), but the packaging and the print transfer were beautiful, and the viewing experience transported me back around 20 years, to when I first saw this six-hour film.

Minimalist epic

Vijay Kelkar, who chaired the 13th Finance Commission of India, is one of India&rsquo;s economic reformers, in the great tradition of I G Patel, M Narasimham, Y V Reddy and others who have created a climate and framework for growth that we have witnessed in recent years.

In the interest of growth

There&rsquo;s no explaining the strange success of Stephen King&rsquo;s Carrie. It&rsquo;s a horror story in which just two things happen. In the beginning of the book a high school outcaste is heartlessly bullied in a locker room when she gets her first period, and about the end of the book she turns into a swan, goes to the prom, gets humiliated again, and burns down the school. But it creeped us out then, when we were teenagers and shocked to read a male author talking about such female things. And it creeps us out now, for very different reasons. Back then it was scary because it was so real, because we all knew a girl or boy who was the class target, for no good reason. Those of us who didn&rsquo;t join in the bullying didn&rsquo;t do anything to stop it, and the handful of us who made friends with that poor target had absolutely no social standing to lose by it.

King of creep

I want to buy an SUV. Please advise me which is the better buy between the Mahindra Scorpio and Tata Safari.

Scorp news

In December 2009, with a series win over Sri Lanka, India gained the number one pedestal in the ICC Test rankings. Present amongst those jubilant cricketers at the Cricket Club of India in Mumbai was one Subramaniam Badrinath. &ldquo;Although I am not part of the first eleven as yet, it is just a matter of time when the moment finally arrives. I intend to make that opportunity count and hopefully my hard work will pay off,&rdquo; he had said looking down joyfully at the huge stack of runs he had scored in domestic cricket.

Almost heroes

    This industry is showing signs of a crisis in India. The creator of Gulliver&rsquo;s Travels was the first to establish it way back in the early 1700s. Name him and the industry.

The Strategist Quiz (#178)

It is growing at a reasonably fast pace and its emerging potential can be gauged by the increasing number of premium luxury brands entering India.

KIT: The luxury goods market in India

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The top 10 business bestsellers

RPG Enterprises has unveiled a new campaign for CEAT tyres. After the rebranding exercise (it changed the CEAT logo in 2008), this is the second-biggest marketing investment. The positioning, &ldquo;Be idiot-safe&rdquo;, builds on the idea of following road discipline, and how good tyres can help a motorcycle rider avoid accidents.

CEAT: Get a grip

A new generation of technology entrepreneurs is trying to build the software product ecosystem.

Ready for the next leap?

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