INSIDE THIS ISSUE
   
   
   
  01 MAIN
   
   
  02 TRADE & ECONOMY
   
   
  03 INVESTMENT UPDATE
   
   
  04 NEWSMAKERS
   
   
  05 INFOTECH
   
   
  06 CULTURE
   
   
  07 TRAVEL
   
   
  08 CALENDAR
   

   
  HIGHLIGHTS
   
 

Foreign Direct investment in Telcom
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  The Natya Shastra
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  Andra Pradesh
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  04. NEWSMAKERS
 
   
   
  Assocham paper on urban India
 
 

According to the Assocham paper titled "Urban India: Growth, Opportunities and Difficulties" almost 300 million Indians living in major metros and cities would push India's GDP growth by 10 per cent by 2011.

Urban India will emerge as a major epicentre for both domestic economic activities and overseas businesses 		  which will pave the way for a higher urban per capita income of Rs 36,000 per annum by 2011, a Rs 10,000 r jump from the current estimates of Rs 26,000 per annum.

The urban population grew to 27 pecent in 2001 from 25 per cent in 1991 due to migration of labourers from villages to cities for financial security and better standards of living. Towns in India grew by 16 per cent to 4,368 in 2001 from 3,768 towns in 1991 and are expected to touch the 5,000-mark by 2011.

As a result, the urban employment rates would exceed the present 38 per cent, much higher than the rural employment growth rate of mere 16
  per cent, Assocham said.

The Centre, through the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Mission, has already earmarked an outlay of Rs 1 lakh crore for the next seven years to cover around 60 cities with a million-plus population for improving infrastructure, sanitation and housing facilities.

The annual investment for urban water supply, sanitation and roads are estimated to be about Rs 28,035 crores for the next decade, but improving urban transport infrastructure with a population exceeding 1 lakh, would need a whopping Rs 2,07,000 crore in next 15-20 years, the Chamber said. 		 

 
     
 
         

Beauty brand Expo in Delhi In December
Delhi will host its first big beauty trade show. Cosmetics, fragrances, spa products and related products from across the world will be on display. There is a $1.5 billion (Rs 6750 crore) Indian market to be tapped . Professional Beauty Show, the second-largest beauty event in Europe held regularly for the past 18 years, is being brought to India by the London-based Trades Exhibition and Expo Media Group. Foreign brands are already flooding the country.

Madame Tussauds Mumbai
The London museum, famous for its life-like waxworks, will open a branch in Mumbai. Indian celebrities will be measured and their waxworks made and displayed. Most of those featured are likely to be Bollywood stars and cricketers, the mainstay of Indian celebdom. Already on the list are actor Amitabh Bachchan and cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. The forthcoming branch in Mumbai - after New York, Las Vegas,

 

Amsterdam and Shanghai - is part of a concerted push by Madame Tussauds' new owners, the Dubai International Capital, a private equity firm backed by the Dubai government, to expand beyond the United Kingdom.

Rang De... wins Best Film award in Sydney
India's official entry to the Oscars - Rang De Basanti - has won the Best Film Award at the Indian film festival in Sydney according to a press release.

"Rang De Basanti was adjudged the best film from among several Indian films screened during the fourth edition of the Indian film festival at Sydney, by an all Australian jury," the director of the film Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra said in a release here.

Other films in the offering were Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara, Rajkumar Hirani's Lage Raho Munnabhai, Rohan Sippy's Bluffmaster, Apurva Lakhia's Ek Ajnabee, Karan Johar's Kabhi

 

Alvida Na Kehna and Kunal Kohli's Fanaa.

Kiran Desai gets Booker Prize Kiran Desai, daughter of prominent Indian origin writer Anita Desai, created literary history by becoming the youngest ever woman to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the age of 35.

Kiran won the £50,000 prize for her second book, "The Inheritance of Loss", described by reviewers as a "radiant, funny and moving family saga" and 'the best, sweetest, most delightful novel'.

Born in India on Sep 3 1971, Kiran is currently a student at Columbia University's Creative Writing Course. Her first novel "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard" received accolades from many notable figures and an excerpt was featured in the New Yorker India Fiction issue, and in "Mirrorwork", Salman Rushdie's controversial anthology of 50 years of Indian writing.

         
 


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