Features

There is a supply chain management (SCM) axiom that says that it is all about having the right product in the right place at the right time at the right price. Competition has ensured that manufacturing keeps pushing the bar in productivity and efficiency, and marketing becomes more aggressive and precise. Today, survival depends considerably on how much a company is able to streamline it all – from the beginning till the end. It’s a lot about logistics. Logistics is defined in Wikipedia as “the...

In mid-2015, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) carried out a well-publicised event in New York city’s Times Square. It crushed seized ivory items weighing one ton (equivalent to 2000lbs or 907kg), as crowds cheered on and photographs with the hashtag #CrushIvory flooded Twitter. Then came the post-event rhetoric about how “we’re not just crushing ivory; we’re crushing the blood ivory market.” It would seem illegal ivory trade had already come to a grinding halt. The New York event...

The annual odyssey of migratory birds is unique, spectacular, fascinating. It is also fraught with danger, not just from poachers and hunters and the new threat called climate change, but from us too – people who wouldn't want any harm to come to these creatures. The newest nemesis for these birds is our insatiable need for energy. Hundreds of thousands of birds die annually from electrocution the world over, and tens of millions of birds from collision with power lines alone. Just as the...

It's getting better; maybe marginally, but better nonetheless. The global apparel industry is expected to grow at 3.5 per cent. The rate of growth will be the same as that last year, marking a leisurely but steady recovery process. In 2013, the industry had grown at 3 per cent, and 2.5 per cent the previous year. The period between 2008 and 2011, during the peak of the global downturn, had seen the growth rate of the industry dwindling to a paltry 1 per cent. The worst, on the face of it, is...

News about solar and wind energy have been making headlines over the past few months. And not because renewable energy is a focus area of the present government in India, but because it’s a need-based practice that is fast catching on at the global level. There are reports of cities meeting most of their energy demands through solar/wind energy, and there are examples of governments making a push for renewable energy at the policy level. It is not that climate change has suddenly become the top...

His devilishly handsome looks only added charisma to the chiseled visage. His burning, azure eyes only made the penetrating gaze pierce right through you. And when all this came with that immaculate accent and flamboyant dialogue delivery, he did not have to be that gaunt 6'2'' to tower over anyone else. But that Peter O'Toole did, portraying the relatively diminutive TE Lawrence, the British archaeologist, soldier and adventurer who led Arab tribesmen against the Ottoman Turks during World War...

Some fifty years ago, a relatively unknown Italian filmmaker, Sergio Leone, was egged on by a well-meaning friend to go and see Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Leone did so, and immediately recognised the potential for remaking it as a Western. He had his own good reasons. Leone had already been taken in by the success of German Westerns that had been running to packed houses across Europe, and believed that he too could make one. Yojimbo only made his resolve more resolute. Leone first approached...

Every industry has its own singular set of problems. So has the animation industry, fledgling as it is as yet in Bangalore. The animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (or, AVGC for short as it is popularly known in the industry) sector in the city is roughly 10 years old, though the first players had probably started tricking in some 18-20 years back. It took a while for the early explorers to grope around and get a feel of things. It was only around six years ago that industry leaders...

When someone organises a retrospective of as many as 71 young artists, that too from the state, you are likely to do a double take. And when you are told about the sheer scale of the project, of which the said exhibition is only a launch, you are going to sit up and be all ears. And that’s what it will be like when KalaRasa’s inaugural art exhibition Rendezvous with 71 opens for the public come Sunday. Simply put, KalaRasa is an art studio – complete with a gallery, workshop space, resident...

At the turn of the millennium, if 5000 copies of your book were sold, you would be a best-selling author. Then, in the next few years, the Indian publishing industry expanded by leaps and bounds. As the industry burgeoned, there was this author whose re-print runs usually exceeded 500,000. He was described by the New York Times as “the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history” and many others ascribed to him the “phenomenon” tag. The man in question, Chetan Bhagat, changed...