Global index provider Dow Jones Indexes and Dharma Investments, a private investment firm, today announced the launch of the Dow Jones Dharma Indexes measuring the performance of companies selected according to the value systems and principles of dharmic religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism.

The series includes the Dow Jones Dharma Global Index and four country Indexes for US, UK, Japan and India. The indices are designed to track financial products such as exchange-traded funds and other investable products that enable investors to participate in the performance of companies compliant with dharmic traditions. [BusinessStandard]

So what constitutes as “dharmic”? Well, it’s easier to start with what’s not dharmic:

Excluded from the index are companies from sectors that are deemed unacceptable due to the nature of their business activities and operations. Excluded are also companies that have exposure to unacceptable business practices. Some examples of unacceptable sectors are aerospace and defense, brewers, casinos and gaming, pharmaceuticals, tobacco. Some examples for unacceptable business practices are alcohol, adult entertainment, animal testing and genetic modification of agricultural products. [AlBawaba]

It seems that touting your company as “socially responsible” is a big draw for investors all around the world. I suppose that’s a good thing.

Worldwide, socially responsible investing (SRI), as it is known, has taken off in a big way with assets increasing from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.29 trillion in 2005. In the US, SRI assets represent over 10% of the total assets under management. [BusinessStandard]

So being listed on the Dharmic Index would mean that your company can adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards the competition. The Economic Times has a quote from the CEO of Dharma Investments, with an interesting typo.

“The Down Jones Dharma Indexes bring together a combination of environmental, social, governance and traditional sin sector filters.

As such, the index is unique and will not just have appeal to the religious, but to a far broader audience as well,” Dharma Investments CEO Nitesh Gor told the media. [EconomicTimes]

What exactly is a “traditional sin” anyway? And what’s a non-traditional one, for that matter?

This time, however, the Bongs have gone too far, according to Penguin India. They are suing a Bong group for creating a massive Durga statue set in an intricately-made Hogwarts (that’s from Harry Potter, for those who are living in caves).

The community group is being targeted by lawyers representing Penguin India on behalf of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers who hold the rights to Harry Potter in India. Members say that they make a different model every year – in the past they have built the Titanic.This year they chose Hogwarts School – as well as life-size models of Harry Potter and his friends. Organisers said a mock steam engine train is also being constructed next to it, to resemble Hogwarts Express. Correspondents say the construction is nearing completion and is expected to cost around 1.2 million Indian rupees ($30,000). [link]

Ok, correct me if I’m wrong, but these things are usually the result of people going around door-to-door, collecting money and then using that money to build the mandaps (which is what these imaginative settings for the idol are called). So who exactly are they suing? Is it the lane or apartment building from which the money was collected? And I’m not even sure if these things make a profit. Generally, people give some money when they pray, but it’s not exactly commercially-viable. It’s more like a goodwill thing. Anyhow, apparently the High Court disagrees with me, as does Warner Brothers.

Penguin India’s spokeswoman Nirmalya Roychowdhury told the Associated Press news agency that Delhi High Court has already ruled that the organisers of the Durga Puja festival must remove the display or pay the fine for copyright violation.

“Sadly, the organizers of this large-scale commercially sponsored event did not approach us for permission to go ahead,” Warner Brothers said in a statement in London.

“This event falls outside the guidelines set up by Warner Bros., JK Rowling and her publishers to help charitable and not-for-profit organizations to run small-scale themed events that protect fans and allow everyone to enjoy Harry Potter books, films and events in the spirit in which they were created,” the statement said. [link]

Seems to be one in a long line of frivolous lawsuits that are on the increase in India. Is it a consequence of economic growth? Or is it just another example of the corporate bigwigs frustrated by media piracy, and taking it out on the little guy?

Update: Good news – looks like the courts in India rule in favor of the little guy. Read this:

Indian fans of Harry Potter books welcomed Saturday a court verdict that gave the go-ahead to organisers of a religious event to build a life-size replica of the fictional Hogwarts Castle.

The Delhi High Court threw out on Friday a claim by author J.K. Rowling that the giant structure constructed in the city of Kolkata infringed copyright.

Organisers now have permission to keep the papier mache and bamboo castle in place until Durga Puja, the biggest Hindu religious event in eastern India, on October 26. [link]

The First Article
The first is in the Travel Magazine (called T) by Alex Kuczynski. It talks about Bombay’s upper-crust, the top 1% which has over 99% of the city’s wealth*. The kind that goes clubbing, is dressed in high fashion and eats sushi at the exclusive Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower (called “the nexus for social life in Mumbai” by Kuczynski). For those who watch the Food Network – yes, it’s the same Iron Chef Morimoto.
*These statistics reflect the aforementioned Bombayite characterisitic of exaggerating and are not verified scientifically.

He starts off talking about a fashion show by perennial socialite and now-fashion designer*, Shobha De’s new line of saris, at the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower:
*Wtf? She’s a fashion designer now? Does she have no bounds on spending her spouse’s money? And on pure principle, I refuse to accent her name.

Some of the saris showed the crest of the buttocks, while others soared in potentially scandalous slits up the thigh. But there were no signs of protest from the crowd. This isn’t Delhi, where public outcry ensued after Richard Gere recently planted a public kiss on the actress Shilpa Shetty at a fund-raiser. This is Mumbai, the commercial and entertainment center of India and the country’s fastest-growing city, home to more and more millionaires and Maybachs and restaurants and nightclubs and strip bars and movie studios and immigrants and luxury-goods stores every day. And its citizens ? or some of the privileged ones, at least ? are eating it up, embracing the explosion of luxury culture. [link]

The money quote is from Shobha herself which, I have to (grudgingly) admit, is a good observation. Despite (or perhaps, because of) the fact that it’s made by someone who has put hobnobbing with Bombay’s elite under ‘S’ (for socialite) in the Bombay Yellow Pages.

After her fashion show, D? explained to me Mumbai’s social architecture. ?If you are in Delhi, it’s which minister you know,? she said. ?If you are in Chennai, it’s all about which caste you are. In Calcutta, it’s what your grandfather did. But in Mumbai, it’s not about that kind of rigid social structure any longer. It’s about what you have done.? She paused and added a thought: ?And it is a city that is very cruel to losers. It can be heartless to losers.? [link]

In case you’re wondering why I’m coming down on Shobha and her ilk, I’ll let Kuczynski answer that:

This is a city of almost unimaginable contradiction. It is home to more millionaires than any other city in India yet is also home to the largest slum in Asia. The ladies who lunch don’t speak of their philanthropic work to end the city’s abject poverty. ?There are simply too many suffering,? one socialite explained. ?So we focus on things we can actually have an impact on, like art and gardening.? [link]

With socialites like that, who needs social workers?

And, of course, no article about Bombay in any Western mainstream medium is complete without portraying the stark income inequality* that is becoming more and more a malady of the entire country (as I have mentioned earlier on this blog). In fact, the author spends a fair amount of time pontificating about the divide. Here’s a sampling:
*Can you really blame the Westerners though, when our socialites are so socially aware? Sorry, I’m still not over the last quote.

Directly behind the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, a five-star property built in grand Victorian style in 1903, children bathe in a trash-filled rivulet that runs along the side of the street. (Nearly half the city’s population lacks running water or electricity.)

[...]

As the crowd started flailing to Blondie and KRS-One on the dance floor, Rajesh Mehrotra, who is in the import-export business, jabbed his finger at men around the room and recited net worths: $100 million. $300 million. $1 billion. ?We all own our own businesses,? Mehrotra said.

?So we party until 4. Then we go to work at 11.? [link]

Crawford Market – Outside and Inside

Kuczynski also gives an absolutely brilliant description of the auto-rickshaw, comparing it with Bombay and the balsa-wood infrastructure on which it is becoming an emerging world city. Of course, if you’re talking about a weak infrastructure, the rich-poor divide is a part of it.

The auto-rickshaw is a sublimely apt symbol for contemporary India, one that combines both the desire for progress and the dubious methods by which that progress is sought. Only here, in the most densely populated city in the world, would it have struck someone as a good idea to take an already unstable means of transport ? a seat with no seat belts, a platform with no doors, a steering wheel and windshield, all supported on three small wheels ? and add to it a powerful engine, enabling it to hurtle along a highway at up to 35 miles per hour… The city’s population has swollen at such a pace that it has overwhelmed its economic and physical infrastructures. India is emerging as a world player, while much of its society remains intensely spiritual and extremely poor. [link]

Wait a sec! “[E]xtremely poor” I agree with, but “intensely spiritual”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? See now, that’s the very reason I started this site – to dispel that stereotype.

The Second Article
Speaking of income inequality, the second article (in the Travel Section) is by Matt Gross. As the Frugal Traveler, he spends a weekend in Bombay on a budget of only $500 or 21,500 rupees. This article is more an entertaining description of the city, without any serious social commentary. It’s written more for the armchair tourist or potential Bombay visitor than anyone else. Still, this journo certainly has a conscience.

Let’s be honest: in a city like Mumbai, that’s a phenomenal amount, enough to sustain a backpacker for a month or one of the city’s seven million slum-dwellers for a year. The idea of blowing it all in 48 hours made my stomach queasy (no, it wasn’t the tap water), so I’d arranged to offset my indulgence with altruism: Sunday morning, I’d teach an English class for the Bombay Leprosy Project, a nonprofit group that helps victims of the disease. [link]

Due to circumstances beyond his control he doesn’t end up teaching there, but he does a bunch of touristy things over the course of the weekend, like going to a night-club (Priv?), eating at Trishna and even gets some shirts custom-tailored for himself (at Bombay Electric), amongst other things.

What struck me as strange was the fact that when he wanted a Gujarati thali he ended up going to some place called Golden Star instead of going to Rajdhani. Everyone knows that Rajdhani is the best thali in town. Disclosure: I’m biased towards Rajdhani, so don’t take this personally, Golden Star fans.

Also, neither of them go to the Mohammed Ali Road-Bhendi Bazaar-Chor Bazaar section of town (although they do both go to the infamous Falkland Road). For one thing, they miss out on the food. And another, they miss out on an entire sub-section of the population.

These Amreekan journos need to brush up on their research and/or contacts, I’m tellin’ ya.

Check out the two articles and their respective slideshows.

Update: Matt Gross emailed me and justified his visiting Golden Star over Rajdhani.

I would’ve loved to go to Rajdhani over Golden Star, but (1) I wanted to see where a taxi driver would take me based on my request, and (2) I’d heard Rajdhani (which is right around the corner, yeah?) can be too packed to bear. Plus, I figured everyone was already writing about Rajdhani, so who needs me to do so as well?

Makes perfect sense, Matt. Also, like I said, I’m biased and loyal to Rajdhani but I have (admittedly) heard good things about Golden Star.

Picture via Flickr user chinese_fashion

A “creative” Ganesha statue…

But there’s hope yet: The folks at Fropper.com are promoting a site – EcoGanpati.com – started by some people who are trying to salvage what?s left of the Arabian Sea. Here’s what they say:

The idols are made out of Plaster of Paris(PoP), which casts typically disintegrated water, thus making it necessary to be non-suitable for bathing, showering, or other activities involving contact with water.

These idols are then painted with ?some? dyes which contain poisonous elements like lead,mercury,carbon and cadmium. [link]

Well, it’s no joke. Take a look at the post-visarjan remains on the beach from a pic that I grabbed from their site. It’s pretty devastating.

Picture source: EcoGanpati.com

The post-immersion devastation

All this awareness is well and good, but what do they plan to do about it?

So, what we intend to do is:

• Spread knowledge
• Seek public interest
• Learn more ways and ideas of celebrating the occasion with more purity
• Share the results of this activity with the Government, the Mayors of Mumbai and Pune and the other concerned authorities. [link]

But that’s not all.

*** I intend to take print-out of the Petition page and, personally, deliver it to the concerned ministers and the Mayors.

***Also, the matters will not end with just submitting the petition, I will keep on updating about the action being taken by the authorities in this matter and will follow up diligently. [link]

You can support them by signing their petition. Go ahead and do it now – it only takes a second.

For those in the dark, Ganesh chaturthi or the Ganesha Festival is a period of ten days during which Ganesha is worshipped and elaborate idols are placed in homes and on street-corners. The festival culminates in the statues being immersed in bodies of water (in Bombay’s case, the Arabian Sea). Here’s an animated short by a National Institute of Design student which explains everything, and is pretty entertaining, too:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

A buff Bollywood actor (whose half-naked pic I have gratuitously posted for the viewing pleasure of our thus inclined readers) decides that he wants to visit a Ganesha puja in Bombay. What happens next? A Muslim “clergy” (sic) from Bareilly issues a fatwa against him.

Mufti Fakidr Qadri Mohammad Farukh Gafrutula issued the fatwa on behalf the Ifta-Manzar-e-Islam on the issue of idol-worshipping by any Muslim.

According to the fatwa, if Salman wants to become a Muslim again, he will have to read the ‘Kalma’ again. [link]

Well, if it isn’t one Salman, it’s another. Parents, whatever you do, do not name your kids Salman. It just spells f-a-t-w-a.

But there’s more: The cleric’s fifteen seconds of fame ran out before he could finish telling everyone his full name and the name of his organization. So he expanded the fatwa, not just to Salman, but to every Muslim who’s ever been in a temple or a church ever.

The clergy, however, maintained that the fatwa was not specifically for Salman, but it was for every Muslim who has worshipped idol. [link]

Does that include worshipping food? Because the other day, we had some excellent Szechuan with a Muslim friend, and he used words like “divine” and “heavenly” to describe it. I’m just curious. No, really.

Mr. Premji’s rise is already inspiring some Indian Muslims to embrace the modern, globalized world…[But t]hough the country’s economy is growing at 9% a year, the vast majority of India’s estimated 150 million Muslims — the largest Islamic population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan — remain socially marginalized, badly educated and mired in deep poverty.

How badly are the Muslims faring? The answer is minutes away from Premji’s home in Bangalore.

A Muslim school a half-hour’s drive from Mr. Premji’s Bangalore home reveals the chasm between this globalist success story and the country’s Muslim masses. Students sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Masjid e Takwa madrassa spend their days memorizing the Quran in Arabic — a language that neither they nor their teacher understand.

But Premji is not affected by these things.

Mr. Premji bristles impatiently when the plight of the broader Muslim populace is cited. “This whole issue of Hindu-Muslim in India is completely overhyped,” the 62-year-old executive says.

He is, in fact, quite removed from religion entirely.

Mr. Premji has mentioned his Muslim background so rarely in public that many Indian Muslims don’t even know he shares their heritage.

…Mr. Premji scoffed at the idea he should display his Muslim identity or champion the cause of Muslim advancement in India. “We’ve always seen ourselves as Indian. We’ve never seen ourselves as Hindus, or Muslims, or Christians or Buddhists,” he said.

How does that show up in his company?

None of Wipro?s senior managers aside from Mr. Premji himself are Muslims. The company maintains normal working hours on Islamic high holidays. Among its 70,000 employees, there?s only a ?sprinkling? of Muslims, according to Sudip Banerjee, president of a division that accounts for a third of revenue.

Yet, the company balks when discrimination is mentioned.

…company officials say they seek to hire the best regardless of creed. They say that among the reasons few Indian Muslims meet Wipro’s stringent standards is that they often study in Urdu rather than English, and rarely pursue engineering degrees. Urdu, which is also the official language of Pakistan, is intertwined with Islamic identity on the subcontinent. In southern India, where most of the country’s technology industry is based, Hindus speak a number of regional languages and are more likely to study English.

“All our hiring staff are trained to interview in English,” Mr. Premji says. “They’re trained to look for Westernized segments because we deal with global customers.” Out of every 100 r?sum?s received, only one or two usually come from Muslim applicants, according to a former manager in Wipro’s human-resources department. [link]

I don’t think Wipro is discriminating against Muslims, but I do think that there are fewer opportunities available to them, which prevents them from obtaining a job in one of India’s top companies.

Besides, I think two inequities are highlighted here. First off, is the obvious Hindu-Muslim imbalance. But then, there’s also the rich-poor divide. Obviously, Premji’s family wealth gave him his education (St. Mary’s school + Electrical Engineering at Stanford) which, in turn, gave him him access to a plethora of opportunities to which other poorer Indians, and Muslim Indians in particular, have no access. And that has also led to his secular outlook on life in India, and his belief that the “whole issue of Hindu-Muslim in India is completely overhyped”. I disagree with that particular statement – the Hindu-Muslim issue needs to be brought up to the surface, and not pushed further down. But I applaud his secular view and his position as India’s richest Muslim is a great place from which to perpetuate it.

Yet, it seems more and more to me that just as literacy was a huge issue for India in the twentieth century, income inequality (between, as well as amongst, Hindus and Muslims) will be the next big problem to resolve for the twenty-first century. Here’s the last paragraph of the article:

Many [Al-Ameen college, a progressive Islamic school] graduates have already gotten jobs at companies like Wipro and Infosys, says the college’s principal, Mr. Javeed, and have started to earn salaries well above those offered outside the booming technology industry. “This has brought awareness to the Muslim community about the need to pursue higher education,” he says. “People are beginning to realize that education is power, that education is money, that education is an opportunity.”