Trying to overtake the West, the Chairman drove his nation to disaster. The countryside starved but food export targets were met. Bhupesh Bhandari reviews a new book on China&rsquo;s Great Famine.

Mao, the grim reaper

Business Standard

Avirook Sen went on the road in America during Barack Obama&rsquo;s election year.

Travelling for answers

From heart rate monitors and iPods packed with coaching advice to shoes with special chips, Sohini Chattopadhyay checks out some cool running accessories.

Joggers' park

No, the headline does not refer to the name of a new wine label &mdash; that&rsquo;s &lsquo;wines from Haryana&rsquo;, which are being rolled out under the &lsquo;Luca&rsquo; label across north India even as we speak.

Haryanvi wines

Can I have my soup inside the dumpling today,&rdquo; I jokingly ask. &ldquo;Certainly Ma&rsquo;am, give me eight minutes.

Momos by another name

Ribandar is a large village halfway between Panaji, with its modern pleasures and conveniences, and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Old Goa, with its cathedrals and museums. It lies along NH4A and the Mandovi River, and has been called an &ldquo;artisans&rsquo; village&rdquo;. There is a ferry jetty at Ribandar.

Choice matters

May you live in interesting times,&rdquo; says the Chinese curse, but life in Shanghai does make time interesting! With its elevated flyways that appear infinite to the naked eye, and maglev trains travelling at breakneck speed, both running a parallel discourse to the local metro trains&hellip; all these snake above and below, making a convoluted and quite literally head-spinning experience. As if these did not offer enough contortions for the neck, there are at least 200 buildings over 300 metres high scraping the sky of this city. Largest, tallest, biggest, all lit up, converting the city centre into a massive neon billboard &mdash; one whose sole purpose seems to be to cause jaws to drop! A far cry from the tanks of Tiananmen, the image of this sensationalist architecture succeeds in instilling awe even in the most sceptical.

Good sense in 'Shanghaism'

From managing India&rsquo;s largest IT services firm to completing marathons, it&rsquo;s all in a day&rsquo;s work for N Chandrasekaran.

Running the show

On weekend mornings, techno dance fans emerge from the basement of a vast, disused power plant in central Berlin, blinking in the daylight like moles.

Disused Berlin power plant turns art centre

Optimism can make or break a team, but few leaders think it is worthy of being worked on.

Optimism as a management tool

On Wednesday, Australia lost a one-day international to Sri Lanka. That is no longer the rarity it used to be. What made the match remarkable was that Sri Lanka came back from a hopeless position. It lost its eighth wicket at 107, with 133 more to get and Malinga, a bonafide number 10, at one end.

The shoe is on the other foot

The aura of Kapil Dev&rsquo;s 175 against Zimbabwe in the 1983 World Cup lives on.

The ghost hundred

Magnus Carlsen won Nanjing decisively with 7 points from 10 games (+4,=6) for a 2900 level performance. It could have been even bigger if he had put away either of two clear winning chances against the second-placed Anand. Anand ran up 6 (+3,-1, =6) to take clear second with a 2829 performance. Etienne Bacrot was third with 5 points. Gashimov, Topalov (both 4.5) and Wang (3) all landed minus scores.

Chess #638

Want a fun motorcycle but can&rsquo;t afford one? Well, you can now! Kartik Ware finds out more.

Biking season begins!

I drive a Hyundai Santro and am looking to upgrade to a sedan. My budget is a maximum of Rs 7 lakh. I am looking for a diesel car and have shortlisted the Tata Indigo Manza, Ford Fiesta, Maruti Suzuki Dzire, Hyundai i20 and the Volkswagen Polo. My daily driving is 35 km within the city and once a month out-of-town drive of approximately 1000 km. I am confused and want to consider every aspect like service support, parts availability, fuel efficiency and driveability.

Easy going

    Which corporation is considered to be the first to use the technique of benchmarking in the late 1970s? It took all the key parts of business, from production to sales and maintenance, and measured them against their counterparts in other companies abroad as well as at home.

Answers to last week's quiz (#173)

    Recently, this brand had to revert to its original logo after users on social media sites rejected its new look. Name it.

The Strategist Quiz (#174)

Telecom operators are ready to roll out 3G or third-generation cell phone services in the country.

KIT: The 3G opportunity in India

Two years ago, 83-year-old Kerala-based Dhanlaxmi Bank decided to expand to the rest of India. For that, it needed an aggressive front-end workforce. The challenge was to bring the brand up to speed to connect with the rest of India, which would not relate to its tradition-laden banking history in Kerala. At the same time, the bank could not alienate its traditional customers either.

Dhanlaxmi Bank: Brand new

A cheeky outdoor campaign on Linking Road, Mumbai, announced a new brand&rsquo;s entry into the footwear market through an exclusive store. The brand is Tashi and it comes from Tata International, the Tata group&rsquo;s global trading arm. Tashi is derived from Tata and ashi (Japanese for footsteps). &ldquo;Tashi also means good luck and prosperity,&rdquo; says Tata International Vice-president (retail) Deepak Deshpande.

Tata International: Footwear walk

In search of paper to pack its cigarettes, ITC had set up a pulpwood plantation and paperboard factory at Bhadrachalam in Andhra Pradesh in 1975. In 2010, the plant not only supplies the bulk of packaging paper to India&rsquo;s manufacturing industry but also fuels another revenue stream for ITC &mdash; stationery. Somewhat lost in the noise of ITC&rsquo;s cigarette, fast-moving consumer goods, food and retail divisions, it has quietly reached Rs500 crore in size.

Notebook battles

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