on countless tourist posters and has probably had more camera shutters clicked at it than any other edifice on the face of this earth how easily one forgets that this unequalled monument of love is in fact a tomb the burial place of a woman who suffered 13 times the pain of childbirth and died in agony at the 14th attempt perhaps that makes it all the more appropriate as a symbol of india a land of beauty and grandeur amidst suffering and deathtata the dynasty that long represented the acceptable face of indian capitalism efficient progressive productive honest profitable and socially conscious the tatas gave india its first indigenous steel industry its first fivestar hotel its first company town jamshedpur and its first airline when jamsetji tata set up indias first steel plant in the late 19th century in the teeth of british opposition a prominent englishman dismissed the endeavour by saying that he would personally eat every ounce of steel an indian was capable of producing last year the tatas purchased british steel as part of corus i am not sure which is more symbolic of the reversal of fortunes that an indian company now owns british steel or the earlier purchase by the tatas of the premier british tea company tetleys that each sup of tetleys tea puts money into indian coffers is poetic justice for which we must always be grateful to tata tendulkar sachin the sobriquet little master was already taken but sachin tendulkar was our sole boy wonder by the time he was 14 people were speaking of him as potentially indias greatest batsman ever and after breaking onto the international scene as a precocious 16yearold he proceeded to fulfil that potential brilliantly his records will long remain the stuff of cricketing legend but what future generations will never know is the extraordinary weight of expectation that sachin carried on his young shoulders every time he went out to bat and the palpable sense of deflation that accompanied his every return to the pavilion tigers are indias most significant yet most fragile conservation achievement in 1900 there were about 35000 tigers in india by the time tiger shooting was banned under a 1972 law there were only 1872 left a decimation rate of 95 in 70 years thanks largely to project tiger established in 1973 that figure has slowly climbed up towards 3000 again the problem is that the tiger remains gravely endangered and conservation requires political sacrifices that are not easily made notably relocation of villages to create tiger sanctuaries and maintenance of adequate prey to sustain tiger populations tigers need large areas of land relatively free from incompatible human uses but how can india reconcile the agreed ecological goal of protecting tigers with the pursuit of equitable socioeconomic development for the people of the affected areas the pms tiger task force came up with ideas that conservationists agree have not yet solved the problem unless real political will is put