New Delhi, December 31
Delhi urban ministry today extended the date for submitting the documents of unauthorised colonies many of which may be authorised in the days to come. The last date now is January 31.

This announcement was made this evening when hundreds of resident welfare association members were standing in a queue to submit their documents.

Being last day today, a few of the RWA members reached the Delhi Secretariat early morning to be first in the line as they had doubt that now the date would not be extended.

A member of Sangam Vihar RWA in South Delhi area said that he reached Secretariat at 8 in the morning and his number was 62 in the queue. He was freed at 2 p.m.

The RWAs said that in 2004 also, the documents were submitted but the government did nothing for regularisation of the colonies.

Again it is being submitted with the hope that all unauthorised colonies would be authorised.

Preparing all the documents are very time consuming and expensive work.

The RWAs have to beg money from residents to prepare colony map and other things, he said.

Meanwhile, BJP MLA from Saket Vijay Jolly said that Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was misleading the citizens in the name of authorisation of the colonies as so far the government did nothing in this connection.

The government should accept the papers submitted in 2004. Asking for documents against is basically harassment. This is very expensive and time consuming work.

Poor people reside in these colonies. They cannot spend money again for one work. He said that the government was not serious to authorise the colonies.

New Delhi, December 31
While the rest of the Capital, like elsewhere, would be busy uncorking the champagne and partying the night away on New Year’s eve, the Goonj team would be driving down the streets, distributing woollens and warmth to pavement dwellers until the next morning.

An NGO (www.goonj.info) operating in 19 states across the country, Goonj, headed by Anshu Gupta, is a group of committed individuals, most of them young volunteers freshly out of college, who work with the aim of resource mobilization - by turning ones’ waste into the others’ basic amenity.

New Year’s Eve, observed as Cloth Day by Goonj, is one of their latest initiatives started on January 1 this year and has fetched them a resounding response.

“The Cloth Day is an extension of what we do on New Year’s Eve, and indeed throughout the winters - of driving to random places and distributing clothes to the needy,” Gupta told IANS.

“But in order to get the public involved and sensitise them to helping the needy, we started the Cloth Day on which we ask people to donate at least one piece of cloth which will go on to give warmth to an unknown person shivering in the cold, in some corner of the country,” he said.

There are an estimated 150,000 homeless people on the Capital’s roads alone. Of them, 10,000 are women who, unlike their male counterparts, don’t even have a shelter home to turn to on bitter winter nights.

On January 1, Gupta and his team received four mini vans loaded with clothes from just four collection camps in the Delhi-NCR region - indicative of how their initiative has managed to touch the masses.

“On the coming January 1, 2008, other than our own distribution centres, which are open throughout the year to receive clothes and other amenities, commercial outlets like Bombay Dyeing and Reebok are also joining in by letting out part of some of their outlets as collection centres,” Gupta said.

“What we are simply saying is that donate at least one piece of cloth and start your New Year on a different note... on a more noble note, by clothing a poor person on the road, in an urban slum or in a village,” he added.

Anuradha Gupta, a schoolteacher in west Delhi who is a part of Goonj’s effort, said that she couldn’t start her new year on a better note.

“On January 1, I am going to be home all day. That’s because I have had my home address printed on all Goonj’s pamphlets and posters as one of the collection centres. So I am hoping that lots of people come to donate clothes on that day.

“Although it is something we all must strive to do each day, but symbolically, I don’t think there is a better way to start the New Year than on this note,” she said.

Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Jalandhar and Hyderabad are Goonj’s five collection centres from which 20,000 kg of clothes go every month to the rest of the 14 beneficiary states, where they operate through 100 local partner groups.

Some of Goonj’s distribution centres are in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash, Sainik Farms and Panchsheel Park area, north Delhi’s Malkaganj area, west Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh and Vishnu Park and east Delhi’s Patparganj.

Thus, like every year, this December 31 too, Gupta, his wife, his eight-year-old daughter, friends and the Goonj team would be on the roads 11 p.m. onwards until the wee hours of the morning celebrating the New Year in their own way.—IANS

New Delhi, December 31
The Delhi Consumer Commission has directed a bank here to return the guarantee papers along with damages of Rs 25,000 to city businessmen.

Taking umbrage at the fact that the Central Bank of India had refused to return documents to them despite the debtor having paid off a loan for which the papers were kept as a guarantee, the commission’s president justice J D Kapoor termed the bank’s act as an unfair trade practice.

Jai Prakash Gupta and Rajinder Prashad Gupta had stood guarantors for a loan sanctioned to a ceramic firm here by the Lawrence Road branch of the bank. Even after the firm paid back the money, the bank had refused to return them the documents contending that some more money still had to be paid back by the duo, prompting them to file a consumer case in 2003 with a district forum.

The forum, however, opted to dismiss their complaint on the ground that the matter was sub judice before a debt recovery tribunal.

But the complainants’ effort paid off as the commission allowed their appeal in a recent decision. The moment the said loan was paid by the principal debtor, the bank had no business to retain those documents and was obliged to return the documents to them, it noted.

Vexed over the fact that the bank had seized the documents as the firm had allegedly defaulted in another loan transaction with it, the commission said that such a practice was nothing short of arm-twisting, unfair and uncouth.

The liability of a guarantor ceases to exist and licences extinct the moment the principal debtor discharges the debt.

New Delhi, December 31
The North district police arrested one Ashvini Sisodiya for impersonating as a Delhi Police constable and cheating people.

The suspect, dressed in a police uniform, introduced himself as constable Rakesh Kumar. He took a lift from the complainant on a highway and asked him if he was interested in buying old police cars from the Ashok Vihar police station. Following this, the complainant went to the police station with the suspect and clinched a deal for one Indica car worth Rs 30,000. Later, on the pretext of getting some transfer papers signed, Rakesh took the cash from the complainant and left the police station.

The fake constable was identified as Ashvini Sisodiya, who duped people on the pretext of selling auctioned cars.

New Delhi, December 31
Detours from convention, digitisation and a ringing till! Bollywood never had it so good.

The year 2007 rained largesse on the world’s second largest movie industry with hits like “Chak De! India”, “Bheja Fry” and “Taare Zameen Par” - three medium-budget movies with rather unconventional plots. Bollywood raked in a profit of Rs 4 billion. And there’s quite a lot that’s waiting to happen in 2008.

“In my opinion, 2007 will be remembered for a Hollywood Studio’s (Sony Pictures) first Indian venture ‘Saawariya’. The film grossed over $19 million, which was more than recovering the cost of production,” Vikramjit Roy, head of publicity, Sony Pictures Releasing India, told IANS.

Vikas Mohan, editor of Mumbai-based trade magazine Supercinema, said Bollywood’s profits this year were not more than Rs 4.5 billion.

“Although corporate houses claim that investment in Hindi films was over Rs.6 billion, actual investment was about Rs 4.5 billion and we have doubled the money we invested in films,” said Mohan.

The Rs 8,400-crore Indian film industry is expected to touch the Rs 17,500 crore mark by 2011, said a FICCI report on the industry, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Corporatisation and digitisation are going to be the important factors in taking the industry to a greater height, the report added.

Although regional cinema industry barring Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films is not growing at the same rate, digitisation will open new avenues for them as well.

India’s economic boom has expanded the consumption list of the middle class, which is expected to push up industry profits. India’s one billion people spend close to Rs 80 billion ($2 billion) on movie tickets each year, a figure expected to grow by 30 per cent over the next five years, said a new report, Cinemagoing India, prepared by Britain-based analyst Dodona Research.

Another major change that has taken place is that India has emerged as a cinema market with huge potential. Shekhar Kapur, the Hollywood-based Indian director, was quoted as saying that Asia was no longer a hub for ideas but a huge market for many international releases.

“For many international releases today, where 80 percent of the revenue was earlier coming from the US box office, today it is only a third. Two-thirds are pouring in from outside US markets. And in future, this would do down to just 10 per cent.

“European economy today is middle-aged. India and China are bringing in the young audience. The balance of 90 per cent will come from the young markets and people understand that,” Kapur said.

Another important change that the director of “Elizabeth - The Virgin Queen” pointed out is the multiple revenue streams and changing consumption pattern.

“Not just a shift in consumption, but there has been a shift in the pattern of media consumption as well. From being back office boys or doing ‘second hand’ work, Mumbai and Singapore are the next hubs. We have the markets here, a large talent pool and a lot going for us - it has to happen that way,” Kapur said.

“Today, it is obsolete to not include changes in the digital space. Something like YouTube can really wake you up. What did Lilly Allen do? She put her song on MySpace, it became the number one there and then Sony BMG came to her. She didn’t go to them!

“The spread of technology is so wide today that a maker will soon beg: ‘please protect my copyright for a day’. After that, he knows, everyone would have access to it,” Kapur added.

Rajat Barjatya, younger brother of director Sooraj Barjatya, has taken the first step in this direction by releasing his home production “Vivah” simultaneously on Internet and theatres.

He has also developed special content for the new media and is all set to launch India’s first soap for mobile phone users in January.

Increasing market penetration, technological advancements, new platforms for content delivery and a surge in foreign and private equity fund investments will not only fuel Hindi film industry’s growth but trigger phenomenal growth in the entertainment sector.

Digitisation is seen as a major relief as it offers cost benefits. It has reduced the print duplication cost. Earlier, copying a movie print cost Rs 60,000. Thanks to digitisation, now the same job costs just Rs 5,000, says an Assocham report on digitisation of media.

Digital delivery of films will enable maximization of reach on the first day of theatrical release, thereby significantly reducing the release window for each platform. This will enable filmmakers to capture revenues within a shorter span of time, the report added.

As digital cinema accumulates a sizeable mass, film distribution costs will drop further with the advent of central transmission centres akin to television broadcasting. This would help worldwide release of a movie on day one, cut short the theatrical window.

With companies like UFO Moviez and Pyramid Saimira taking the lead with a special focus on Tier II and Tier III cities, India is expected to have 2,000 digital screens in the next three year. — IANS

New Delhi, December 31
Meet India’s first artist duo of Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra, aged 30 and 28 respectively. The communication designers with black spectacles, nerdish faces and little goatees paint the angst and aspirations of Punjabi youth hooked to fake designer labels and a passage to “Amreeca”.

In November, T&T, as they are monikered, converted a gallery in New Delhi into a “departmental store selling fake goods” for their art exhibition.

The Gurgaon-based designers told IANS they are now innovating on their pet peeve - Bosedk - a kind of Anglo-Punjabi slang that the artists have coined to mock their “traditional elders”. Bosedk, chorus Thukral and Tagra, is a series of paintings, installations and computer graphics.

Indian contemporary art is changing. The widespread use of technology, coupled with a fresh burst of creativity, exposure to new knowledge pools and cultural assimilation, has fuelled a new wave in Indian art. It reflects the emerging identity of a globalised India.

New York-based French diplomat Jerome Neutres, an Indophile and art researcher who has edited the country’s first volume on contemporary art, told IANS: “The new artistic wave is marked by maturity, wisdom, freshness of the youngest nation in the league of global superpowers.”

His book “New Delhi New Wave”, which features 14 contemporary artists, hit selected stands in the country Saturday.

“New Delhi New Wave”, unlike the name suggests, is about artists from diverse corners of India. Each one of them has been captured in their studio - from Gurgaon on the outskirts of the national capital to Vishakapatnam down south - and given a geographical perspective through photographs of the milieu they work in. They all have one thing in common - they are the first generation of globalised artists from India who are carrying forward the country’s rich tradition of figurative art in their own creative ways.

Ravinder Reddy, born in Suryapet in Andhra Pradesh and based in Vishakapatnam, sculpts female icons of Indian deities. He kneads them in clay and pours them into resin or less frequently in bronze casts and paints them red, yellow and blue.

The artist, a lecturer at the Vizag Art Institute for the last 17 years, has created a foundry in the woods and a studio in the town. Reddy travels the world through his art.

“This place is perfect for working. No one comes to see you, no one disturbs,” says the sculptor.

Baba Anand, who has elevated poster making to a highly evolved collage art through his embellishment of Bollywood movie posters, feels that in another 10 years there will be no galleries.

“Only the artist and the Internet. Art can be transacted online,” Anand told IANS.

The Gurgaon-based artist, who showcases his work on a 3-D virtual portal on the Internet will build his e-studio in “six months”. The new-age “innovator” as he is dubbed, repaints and embellishes Bollywood posters with “bric a backs like sequins, lost and found objects, beads, tinsel and crystals.” His “remixes” of the posters of Indian superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s blockbusters and Raja Ravi Verma oleographs are widely acclaimed.

Subodh Gupta, a 43-year-old artist from Bihar’s Khagaul district, is obsessed with kitchens.

“Since childhood, I have been in love with the kitchen. It was a kind of place of worship... spiritual. Eighty percent of Indian kitchen utensils are made of stainless steel. The metal is contradictory. It attracts light, shines and is deeply associated with popular culture. That is why I have been working with stainless steel for the past nine years,” says Gupta.

He also experiments with buckets, canes, dishes, helmets, country-made guns, and cow dung at times in his installations, paintings and video art.

“New Delhi New Wave”, says author and art critic Diego Strazzer, has been culled from a recent exhibition of contemporary Indian art of the same name at the Marella Gallery in Milan, Italy.

“It is a continuation of the 672-page volume on contemporary Indian art ‘Made by Indians’ published by Enrico Navarra Gallery,” says Strazzer.

For Neutres, who toured India for 1,500 days to put the artists in their milieu and became a “complete Indian” in the process, the book is a tribute to his “adopted country and the GenNext of Indian art”. — IANS

E. Niwas is ready to present “My Name is Anthony Gonsalves”. In an attempt to do everything right for his film, the director brings on board music wonders like Pritam and Himesh Reshammiya. He even ropes in new composer, Sachin-Jiggar for one track. But all his efforts go down the drain.

The album starts off with Sachin-Jigar’s “Allah Beli”. Romantic with a slight base in soft rock and jazz, “Allah Beli” doesn’t turn out to be a bad attempt. However, the song sung by KK cannot be termed a chartbuster.

The next number is “Jaane maula jaane khuda”. The moderate track wouldn’t hurt anybody but skipping it wouldn’t hurt either. Amit Kumar renders to Pritam’s composition who, for one, hasn’t given his best here. Even Sameer’s lyrics do not heat up this lukewarm number.

Then follows “Tere bina”. Sunidhi Chauhan takes up the mike for the number composed by Pritam. An impressive track would be expected from a composer-singer duo of such mettle, but the team clearly fails to do so. Overall, the track just fizzles out.

Surprisingly, it is Himesh Reshammiya who manages to break this chain of unexciting numbers. His composition, “Tum mile” stirs the senses. Sunidhi and KK pair up to render the number that features several key instruments.

“Ya baba” is like those typical dance numbers that first appear in movies and are later played in clubs for the hip-shaking, Bollywood music lovers. Pritam hasn’t worked hard on this song which ends up spoiling the singers’ chances as well. Sameer appears average with his lyrics and Sunidhi and Shaan can’t do much to impress the masses.

Himesh Reshammiya is the winner among the trio of composers roped in for the album. While Sachin-Jigar show promise, Pritam is most disappointing. For someone known for belting out hits like “Jab We Met” and “Life... In A Metro”, “My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves” wouldn’t be a career highlight. — IANS