New Metro affords a glimpse of a possible India

Delhi Metro docked at the station

NEW DELHI – The train arrives with a rush of cool air and on time, and passengers walk on board in an orderly fashion and settle down into the clean stainless-steel seats.

Cool. On time. Orderly. Clean. These are a few new words to describe New Delhi.

Few Delhiites were quite prepared for the changes that would occur in their lives, both physically and mentally, when the New Delhi Metro officially opened in December 2004. Even today, the nearly 40-mile long - and expanding - Delhi Metro system remains on budget and slightly ahead of schedule. It has the capacity to grow to 2 million passengers per day, 60,000 passengers an hour, eliminating the need - in theo- ry - for some 2,600 of the city's wildly driven buses.

Large-scale public projects - America's interstate highway system, Russia's Siberian railway, Boston's "Big Dig" - have a way of changing the way citi- zens see their country or city, and the construction of a world-class subway system almost inevitably will prompt many Indians to change their expectations for their country's future.

"There are times in the life of nations when they feel confident that they can take on the world, that they are capable of meeting any challenge," Raghuram Rajan, director of research at the International Monetary Fund, said at a speech last year in New Delhi. "One reason such a mind-set is important is that it creates an intolerance for laziness, for shoddy products, for open corruption, and for the usual excuses. When people have a strong conviction that they can achieve the possibilities of the future, it makes them less tolerant of impediments in their way to it."

Indian prime minister Dr Singh (center) enjoying a ride in Delhi's metro

For the time being at least, the Delhi Metro is inspiring a kind of awe among its passengers. At ticket counters, people stand in line patiently, quite unlike the hustle and shoving one finds at a typical Delhi bus stand. The walls and floors are clean, unlike the halls of the typical Indian government ministry, where the reddish stain of paan spit adorns nearly every wall.

A list of rules, in Hindi and in English, specifies the fines for certain undesirable behavior.

Traveling without a ticket - 50 rupees ($1) fine. Drunken behavior - 500 rupees ($10)

Walking on the Metro track without authority - 500 rupees.

Traveling on the roof of the train - 50 rupees.

For those who cannot read, there are stick-figure illustrations accompanying the four big no-nos. No smoking. No littering. No spitting. No food or drink.

Rahul, a 12th-grade student, says that when he sees the gleaming interior of Delhi's new subway, he feels that, finally, India is beginning to show some of its potential as a modern country.

"It makes you feel good, like our country is progressing," he says, standing up to allow a small child to take his seat. "Really, Delhi is getting better and better. After they switched taxis and buses to CNG [compressed natural gas], the air is becoming cleaner. Now this will make things easier to get around."

The cost, at 6 rupees (13 cents) a ride, is no bargain, but is competitive with buses.

One can imagine that the sight of the Delhi Metro would have been a welcome surprise to the satirical Urdu poet Shaukat Thanvi, who once wrote of the shameless behavior many Indians and Pakistanis adopted once they had achieved azadi, or freedom, after the British left in 1947.

I'll spit exactly where I am forbid,
There will be no punishment for any crime I commit.
A tyrant and a despot, inventing new skills,
Freedom has conferred on me the right to do my will.

There's a pungency missing in the English translation. In Urdu, the word spit is "thook."

For Ashok Batra, a government employee and frequent passenger, the Delhi Metro is just one of the major changes that have come online in the past five years, all in preparation for Delhi's planned hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2010. The games are a kind of Olympics for members of the British Commonwealth.

"I've been staying in Delhi for 25 years, and I've seen many changes," he says. "It's becoming more beautiful, advancing day by day."

At Chandni Chowk, passengers exit into a gleaming station but come to an unexpected halt at the escalator. A middle-aged woman in a fuchsia sari hesitates to step on the escalator. "Chalo, Mama," says her daughter, pulling her on. The crowd behind them breathes a sigh of relief.

Up on the street is a Delhi that, perhaps, these folks are more accustomed to. Narrow alleys lined with fabric merchants, the smell of doughy pooris frying in oil, glitzy shops full of chunky golden jewelry, bicycle rickshaw drivers jingling their bells to clear the path ahead, and long lines of Punjabi Sikhs bathing their hands and feet before entering a 300-year-old temple for prayer.

Some parts of Delhi don't change.

- Scott Baldauf, The Christian Science Monitor

Couture kitsch puts Indian fashion designer on the map

Fashion designer Manish Arora at India Fashion Week.

NEW DELHI (AFP) - With his unapologetic use of contrasting colours and decidedly-Indian style, designer Manish Arora is drawing international attention to the country's fledgling fashion industry.

The 33-year-old, back from a successful stint at London's Fashion Week, was one of the most sought-after designers at India Fashion Week, which ended Sunday.

He paraded his models in voluminous skirts and empire-line dresses with motifs of London landmarks and garishly-painted Indian gods, leaving buyers gushing.

"It was just fabulous. When you read between the lines, there are some very beautiful pieces," Chantal Rousseau, from US store Bloomingdale's, told AFP.

Arora, who was voted India's best designer by experts in a poll for news weekly Outlook magazine last month, got similarly glowing reviews in the British press after his last outing in London.

Though two consecutive shows at the London catwalk have sealed Arora's reputation, his rise to fame has not been as sudden in India, where the launch of his label in 1997 was positively received.

In a current campaign for sports giant Reebok, Arora wears a pair of psychedelic shoes

"Don't like my designs? You don't have to," Arora is captioned as saying.

It sums him up very well.

A line of T-shirts emblazoned with Indian graffiti -- one of which splashed: "You are not allowed to urinate here", had New Delhi's rich and famous lining up to buy the Manish Arora label.

Another T-shirt read: "Jack and Jill had sex."

The designer followed up on his penchant to shock with subsequent collections: one had skull motifs, while another line had lizards, prompting a fashion writer to ask, "What next? Faeces?"

Arora's designs reflect his eccentricity, which he wears on his sleeve literally: the tattoo on his arm says Ladies Tailor, in a reference to signs on low-brow tailoring shops specialising in salwar-kameezes and sari blouses.

There are two piercings on his eyebrow, and unlike the more well-heeled who choose luxury cars to get around, Arora prefers to drive the bulky Ambassador, a British Morris Oxford knockoff from the 1950s.

His pared-down label is called Fish Fry, roadside Indian English for fried fish, and his shop interiors are often done up to resemble the gaudy colours of Indian trucks.

Critics, some of whom have expressed outrage at his designs, say his ability to turn the low-brow from Indian streets into high fashion sets him apart from his peers, whose mainstay is predominantly bridal gowns, and who are often dismissed as mere wedding tailors.

"If you want kitsch India, contemporary India, Manish is the person," says Sunil Sethi, a buyer for Britain's Selfridges chain.

Arora's former boss and designer Rohit Bal, who handpicked him as his assistant from New Delhi's premier National Institute of Fashion Technology, says Arora's strength is his brazenness.

"The best thing about him is that he is absolutely himself, in his house, in his shop, in his designs. He does not care about anyone else."

- AFP

Giving India the Power to Move Forward

The world continues to marvel at India's growth story -- and with good reason. The economy has delivered roughly 8% annualized jumps in gross domestic product over a three-year period that started in April, 2003. Indian stock prices are soaring. Savings and investment are at record levels. And though the Indian government confronts some real fiscal challenges going forward, a strong balance of payments surplus and some $140 billion in foreign exchange reserves provides a nice buffer against any conceivable external shocks such as a sudden slowdown in the global economy.

The real challenge, however, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government's economic record really lies at home. India's dynamic growth numbers would even be more stellar if the country's archaic power grid and transportation infrastructure networks were brought up to snuff. India simply doesn't generate enough electricity to meet current demand -- a situation that is depressing growth.

Its highway system is also grossly underdeveloped. The country's ports are far less productive than those in China or Singapore. And the biggest complaint, by far, among foreign executives working out of India is the enormous difficulty of moving goods and parts around the country.

Power Play.

If India is going to advance to Chinese growth rates of about 10%, a goal set by India's Harvard-educated Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, and continue to improve the living standards of ordinary Indians, some real progress must be made. Many years of reduced funding from government, in an environment that simply did not facilitate private investment in critical infrastructure projects, has led to a huge mismatch between demand and supply in these sectors.

India's latest budget for the new fiscal year sets out to change that. Total infrastructure spending on roads, ports, telecommunications, and power grids over the fiscal year that began on Apr. 1 is set to increase more than 20%. Money will be spent on, among other things, rolling out power connections in rural areas, five big power project contracts, road development, and a feasibility study for a deep-water port in West Bengal.

Given India's robust economic growth, now is the time to make such big-ticket investments. But money alone will not solve India's infrastructure woes in the long term. State governments, which wield plenty of political autonomy in India, have to loosen their grip on the infrastructure assets they control. For instance, due to heavy regulation at the local level, it is very difficult in India to develop an efficient national electricity power grid that would reallocate surplus in some regions to others facing shortages.

These reforms face enormous resistance from employees of state-owned power systems and consumer groups that feel threatened by economic reform. This could well prevent the good intentions in the budget from translating into action. India's government should somehow neutralize the resistance and ensure that state governments stay on the reform track.

Good Intentions.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough evidence of these control changes in the budget. As a consequence, even as the budget has succeeded in pointing in the right direction, it hasn't yet laid out the incentives necessary to get moving. One can only hope for the reforms to be put in place soon. If they're not, an otherwise robust and sustainable growth process could literally run out of power.

India aspires to lift millions more of its citizens out of poverty, develop its manufacturing sector, and evolve into a 21st century economic power. It surely has the potential to get there. But short-term, it must focus on the essential business of making sure it has the energy, roads, and ports to do so.

- Subir Gokarn, Businessweek

A New Generation of Pilgrims Hits India's Hippie Trail

Photograph showing a sea front property in Goa

AS a crimson sun sets over the Arabian Sea behind her, the British singer Helen Jones leaps onto the stage of the oceanside Cafe Looda, grabs the microphone and unleashes a fiery anthem to the crowd amassed under the thatched roof of the open-air bar.

"There ain't nothing like this in the real world!" she sing-shouts, flinging her strawberry-blond hair as an Indian-British-Iranian backing band called Sattva (Sanskrit for "righteousness") kicks out a wailing funk jam. The beer-drinking throng, which appears to include European rock chicks with nose rings, goateed Israeli beatniks, Australian Green Party voters and a miscellaneous coterie of hipster backpackers in every imaginable type of sandal, nods in rhythm as the music resounds along Anjuna Beach.

"Come to Goa! Change your mind! Change your way!"

There ain't nothing like this in the real world. Come to Goa. Change your mind. Change your way. It's hard to imagine a better jingle for this sandy strip of India's western coast, a venerable Catholic-Hindu enclave where American hippies came to turn on, tune in and drop out in the late 1960's, and where globe-trotting spiritual seekers, party kids, flag-wavers of the counterculture and refugees from the real world have fled ever since.

It's a place where the palm trees bear a strange fruit —fliers for crystal therapy, Ayurvedic healing and rave parties — and every road seems to lead to an organic restaurant or massage clinic. At the yoga centers, postures are manipulated by top Indian and international instructors. In clubs, where trance music is the favored genre, D.J.'s carrying myriad passports provide the mix. Bodies receive needle-inked adornments at skin-art parlors; minds seek enlightenment, or at least expansion, at many meditation clinics.

Foreigners have flocked to tiny Goa — whose statewide population of 1.4 million is about one-tenth that of Mumbai, 300 miles north — ever since the Portuguese established a Spice Route colony there in the 1500's. The port flourished into one of Asia's most splendid cities before disease, vice and trade competition sank its fortunes. (Its remains are still visible in Old Goa, a Unesco World Heritage Site near the current state capital, Panjim.)

The Indian Army seized Goa from Portugal in 1961. But new colonists, the Haight-Ashbury crowd, soon showed up. Seduced by the same landscapes that appeared in Portuguese spyglasses centuries earlier — untouristed beaches, green jungle, dramatic cliffs — the former flower children traveled overland on "magic buses" from Europe and created in northern Goa a free-spirited, budget-friendly new world among the laid-back native Goans. The village of Anjuna became its wildly spinning center, with the quieter communities of Arambol and Vagator emerging as hemp-clad satellites.

Since then, each generation of global nomads has carved its niche: New Age devotees of the 1980's; global ravers and electromusic pioneers of the 1990's (who initiated a tradition of all-night beach parties and made Goa trance music a worldwide phenomenon); and the yogaphiles and Burning Man groupies of today. The result is the globe's most enduring and constantly adapting tropical getaway for alternative living. When the summer monsoon blows past, the world's fringes unite.

"Goa is a paradise that is accessible to one and all, in true Indian style: age, shape, color, size, planet," said Deepti Datt, a filmmaker who splits her time between Goa, Bombay and Southern California. Her restaurant and D.J. bar, Axirvaad (Sanskrit for "blessing"), was long a legend for its "lounge groove space temple" nights. (The restaurant, temporarily closed, will relocate in the Goan village of Tiracol next year.) Goa, she goes on, "is a happy playground for grown-ups."



A visitor seems to be mixing music in the open in Goa.

On a Wednesday in November, a chain of minivan taxis and autorickshaws is disgorging bodies into Goa's most celebrated playground, the weekly Anjuna flea market. Started decades ago by Anjuna's hippie community (for whom it was a vital form of income), the humble local enterprise has mushroomed into a sprawling international affair. Many of the hundreds of closely packed stalls are now run by vociferous sari-clad Indian women in jingling jewelry, but the carnivalesque atmosphere has multiplied. "Look at my shop! Look at my shop!" they beckon, all smiles. "Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!"

Navigating the come-ons is the latest wave of Anjuna's antiestablishment arrivals, from ponytailed Finnish rockers to cornrowed Iranian girls. Mixed within the throng is another curious species: middle-aged European package tourists. (The towns of Baga and Calangute, just south of Anjuna, have exploded into an Indian Cancún in recent years, troubling their northern neighbors.)

Stalls burst with carved Hindu deities, richly colored textiles and bins of pungent saffron and coriander. Indian women with syringes provide swirly henna tattoos. Indian men armed with thin sticks remove ear wax. A white-bearded Australian man passes out fliers for Reiki healing. "It's your pathway to God," he says.

Byzantium, William Butler Yeats famously said, was no place for old men. The market, with its hawkers proposing every conceivable good and service, is no place for weak men. He who balks at saying no risks emerging from the fray wearing pashmina scarves, sporting sequined slippers, smoking from a hookah and drinking from a coconut while trying to avoid being checkmated on a tiny sandlewood board held by a solicitous Indian salesman yelling, "Chess, Boss!? Chess, Boss!?"

"This guy's been following us for three hours," says a tattooed 20-something Briton named Gareth Harrison, a five-time visitor to Goa, as he haggles for 20 wooden bracelets with an assertive Indian boy. The wails of snake-charmers' horns mingle with the smells of cow manure and burning incense. Finally, Mr. Harrison gets his price: 50 rupees, about $1.10, at 22 cents to the rupee. "We started at 500," he says.

Sipping cold drinks at a makeshift cafe, a 30-ish couple from Slovenia, Polona Volf and her boyfriend, Bostjan Mohar, survey the pageant. "We wanted to go to Bali," says Mr. Mohar, a special-ed teacher in a tank top and shorts. "But we saw a documentary called 'Last Hippie Standing,' so we changed our plans."

As midnight approaches, the $5-a-night guesthouses empty and the sloping roads leading to the Paradiso nightclub fill with rented motorcycles and scooters. (Any innkeeper can arrange one with a phone call.) Their small headlamps appear from around curves, swerving through the blackness like fireflies as they pass low-lighted seafood shacks and Goan curry joints along the dark seaside roads.

A beacon in the sky explains the heavy traffic: a full moon. Decades ago, Goa's hippie settlers would hold beach parties on full moon nights. When the rave generation showed up, it appropriated and expanded the ritual, orchestrating D.J.-fueled blowouts in specially designated outdoor expanses like the famous Disco Valley. The tradition has waned, though full-on outdoor raves still occur, generally in December and January. Meanwhile, clubs like Paradiso and Nine Bar pick up the slack.

Constructed of mud and perched on a cliff overlooking the sea, Paradiso's vast three-tiered space has a grottolike prehistoric feel, complete with hobbit-worthy nooks. A large, blue-lighted statue of Shiva shines in a corner, his many arms extended as he dances his cosmic dance. Under the moon's and Shiva's glow, a Lollapalooza-looking crowd dances to the distinctive, deafening explosions of Goa trance music. Underpinned by a rapid-fire drumbeat and punishing basslines, the many layers of dark, minor-key synthesizers open cyclonic swells of sound. Strange snippets of speech, scarcely recognizable, float across the mix and fade.

Developed in the still-insular Goa of the 1980's, the scene's signature sound was intended as a digital-age descendant of tribal drumming, shamanistic ritual and druggy psychedelia. By the 90's, it began to catch the ear of some top international D.J.'s, notably the founder of Perfecto Records, Paul Oakenfold. Those impresarios' production skills and clout did much to transport Goa trance onto the international club circuit. Today, Goa trance parties and CD mixes abound worldwide.

For the far-flung disciples of Goa trance, a journey to Anjuna is a bit like a Christian pilgrim's trip to Bethlehem.

"I've been dreaming about coming here since I was 14," says Omri Lauter, a shaggy-haired unshaven Jerusalem native and trance music fan who looks to be around 25. The swirling crowds surround his cross-legged perch on the ground. "This is like an Eden."

"The only place I can compare it to is Ibiza," says the club's owner, Nandan Kudchadkar. He explains that many of the D.J.'s he invites, who come primarily from London, Scandinavia, Russia, Japan and Israel, try out their newest trance mixes here before recording them or bringing them to other sites worldwide. Anjuna's discriminating clubbers, he goes on, need constant novelty. "You can't repeat a track here for 15 days or people will shout and yell."

Come daylight, Goa's dedication to partying is matched by its dedication to the healing arts, the yang to the night's yin. At Purple Valley yoga center, rejuvenation might take the form of ashtanga poses or vinyasa flow exercises, two of the daily courses offered. The leading name on Goa's yoga circuit, the center has brought in pretzel-limbed luminaries from the globe's four corners, including the sometime teacher of Madonna and Sting, Danny Paradise.

But Goa's most authentic spiritual experiences require a taxi ride into the past.

Snaking south into the lush Goan countryside, the cracked asphalt roads out of Anjuna pass scenes of daily Indian life that seem a world away from the Birkenstock-trod paths behind: fires burning amid roadside shanties; little boys playing cricket in an overgrown field; elderly Hindu women walking barefoot with baskets on their heads; ancient peepul and banyan trees. The succession flickers quickly past the half-lowered window like film images carried by the warm breeze.

The heads seem to bow especially low upon entering the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, the ghost town of Baroque edifices that was once the splendid seat of Portugal's Indian trade colony. The reason for their reverence lies in a deep alcove, where a fabulously wrought silver casket holds the remains of the most famous Western spiritual seeker ever to reach Goa's shores: St. Francis Xavier.

Dispatched on a missionary voyage to the East in 1541, St. Francis, a Spanish-born Jesuit, stepped off a ship the next year and found himself in a prosperous international metropolis larger than London. As one French traveler observed, Goa's boulevards were lined with "goldsmiths and bankers, as well as the richest and best merchants and artisans."

St. Francis journeyed all over the East, returning frequently to Goa before his death in China in 1552. His body was taken to Goa two years later. Today, Baroque churches, convents and cathedrals testify to the former splendor. Whitewashed, the spectral relics stand out against the green grassy expanses and encroaching jungle like a Catholic version of the Angkor temple complex.

A few miles farther south, outside the tiny village of Priol, the faith changes from Christian to Hindu. Wearing colorful saris and Madras shirts, Indian travelers carrying wreaths of orange flowers stream into the 17th-century Shri Manguesh temple and lay down their offerings. The air hangs with incense and quiet muttering. Old women selling bananas work the crowds outside.

According to legend, Shiva —Hinduism's supreme creator and destroyer — once played a game of dice against his wife, Parvati, and lost everything. Dejected and unburdened of his worldly things, he did what many have done since: he took refuge in Goa, on the spot of this very temple. Parvati eventually followed and beseeched him to return. He agreed, and they were reunited.

Shiva, you might say, came to Goa, changed his mind, then changed his ways.

WHEN TO GO

The season surrounding the summer monsoon, basically November to May, is the best time to visit Goa. The week between Christmas and New Year's is very popular — especially for the Anjuna rave scene — and hotel rates typically double or even triple. A visa, obtained in advance, is required for United States citizens.

GETTING THERE

There are no direct flights from the United States to Goa. The best option is to fly to Mumbai and get a connecting flight to Dabolim Airport in Goa. Air India was offering round-trip fares from Kennedy Airport in New York to Mumbai for $1,041, including taxes and fees, for this month. Several discount Indian airlines operate between Mumbai and Goa, including Air Deccan (www.airdeccan.net), Spicejet (www.spicejet.com) and Jet Airways (www.jetairways.com).

GETTING AROUND

Hiring a prepaid taxi at Dabolim Airport (located in the city of Vasco da Gama) is the easiest way to reach Calangute, Baga and Anjuna, which are about 45 minutes north. The taxi counter (0832-254-1235) is just outside the baggage claim area and a bit to the left, on a traffic island. Expect to pay 640 rupees ($14.35, at 50 rupees to the dollar) to these destinations.

As for addresses, most hotels, restaurants and shops don't have numbered street addresses as such, so always carry the most detailed map you can find. Taxi drivers can often (but not always) find places with only a name and a village.

WHERE TO STAY

Palacete Rodrigues, Mazal Vaddo, Anjuna, 91-832-227-3358. A centuries-old Portuguese mansion transformed into a guesthouse. A little dilapidated, but the staff is friendly. Doubles from 850 rupees. The lone air-conditioned room, a twin, is 950 rupees a night.

Guru Guesthouse, Anjuna Beach, 91-832-227-3319. Backpackers, bohemians and barflies will like this no-frills dirt-cheap hotel, which has a meditation area and an adjacent bar with sublime views of the Arabian Sea. Rooms from 250 rupees.

Pousada Tauma, Porba Vaddo, Calangute, 91-832-227-9061, www.pousada-tauma.com. This cluster of red templelike stone buildings is the fanciest boutique hotel in the Baga-Calangute strip. Guests can dip in the sprawling pool, undergo ancient ayurvedic treatments in the spa and dine on tasty local Goan cuisine in the highly regarded Copper Pot restaurant. Standard rooms cost 130 euros ($159 at $1.23 to the euro) to 370 euros a night ($453) depending on the season.

WHERE TO EAT

Martha's Breakfast, 907, Monteiro Vaddo, Anjuna, 91-832-227-3365, is a shady patio serving robust and cheap meals that almost make taking your morning antimalaria drugs a pleasure. Offerings include American pancakes (65 rupees), banana porridge (45 rupees) and fruit lassis (from 35 rupees).

Hanuman Bar and Restaurant, North Anjuna Beach, 91-832-309-0442. The eclectic menu at this laid-back beach restaurant includes Indian, Chinese and even Israeli dishes. A meal for two, with drinks, will rarely run more than 400 rupees.

Britto's, Baga Beach, Bardez, Goa, 91-832-227-7331. A very mellow oceanside restaurant with a lovely view of the sea serves everything from full English breakfasts (180 rupees) to Indian curries and tikkas (80 to 140 rupees) to fresh seafood (300 to 700 rupees), notably pomfret, kingfish and tiger prawns (from 300 to 700 rupees).

Sublime Bistro, Baga River, 91-982-248-4051, showcases the skills of its chef and co-owner, Chris Agha Bee, who trained at the Culinary Institute of America. A daily shopper for produce at the markets in Mapusa and Calangute, he serves up dishes like crab-prawn cakes and grilled marlin on lentils in mustard sauce. A three-course meal for two costs around 1,200 rupees.

WHERE TO PARTY

Paradiso, North Anjuna Beach. Cover charge is 200 rupees.

Tito's, Tito's Lane, Baga, 91-832-227-9895. Cover charge, 300 rupees.

Mambo's, Tito's Lane, Baga, 91-832-227-9895. Cover charge, 200 to 300 rupees.

- SETH SHERWOOD, The New York Times

Major players head for India in tussle for the student dollar

Outoing Harvard president Larry Summers with the chief minister of Indian state of Rajasthan in India.

MUMBAI (AFP) - In India's fast expanding job market Rajendra Balsaraf wants to stand out from the crowd. That is why the 23-year-old aspiring Indian hotelier plans to study in Britain.

"The number qualifying in hotel management is increasing day-by-day in India, the competition is getting harder," he says at an office of the British Council in Mumbai where he is investigating post-graduate opportunities. "To stand apart from others you have to do something different."

Provided he has the cash, Balsaraf should have plenty of options -- governments and educators from around the world have embarked on major campaigns to lure thousands like him to their institutions.

With the Indian economy rising and a wealthier class developing, students from the vast country represent a multi-billion dollar business opportunity.

Australian and British officials are now targeting them to try make up ground on the clear market leader, the United States, where Indians represent the largest group of foreign students.

Financial necessities are driving the effort by universities to woo overseas students in an increasingly competitive world market. In Australia, foreign students' fees make up about 30 percent of universities' operating budgets.

The heads of Harvard and Oxford both toured India in March and Australian education leaders joined Prime Minister John Howard to promote the country as an affordable destination for higher education.

"The fees are an important part of a university's budget," says Professor John Webb, Australia's counsellor for education and science, based in New Delhi. "Oxford, for all its financial strength, is still worried about its budget."

More than 80,000 Indians study in the US and the number is growing faster than from any other country.

Australia, with more than 26,000 students, says it is closing in on Britain in second place. Britain, although it had about 20,000 foreign students in 2004/05, specialises in short year-long or 18-month postgraduate courses with a higher turnover and issues more visas than Australia.

All three countries have seen sharp increases in enrolments with the Indian contingent to the US doubling in six years and numbers in Australia growing from fewer than 1,000 six years ago.

India's booming economy, growing at eight percent per year, has increased opportunities for many youngsters to study abroad with Indians favouring management, information technology and engineering courses.

Oxford University Chancellor Chris Patten said before visiting India that he wanted to alter the balance from US "Ivy League" institutions such as Yale and Harvard to leading British ones.

British Prime Minister
Tony Blair said in a video-link to New Delhi earlier this month that Britain offered "tremendous benefits" for Indian students.

Foreign students from outside the
European Union are an increasingly lucrative source of income for British universities as they pay higher annual fees than their home-grown and European Union counterparts.

But only 133 of Oxford's 17,700 students were from India, compared with 547 from China for in the past academic year, an Oxford University spokeswoman told AFP.

Patten was followed to India by Lawrence Summers, the outgoing president of Harvard University, who announced education tie-ups between the two countries as he travelled to New Delhi and Mumbai.

US officials say they remained confident of continuing as number one choice for Indian students.

"The US system of education is flexible and cutting edge and prepares them well for careers," says Jane Schukoske, executive director of the US Educational Forum in India.

However, leading Indian institutions said they were were also seeing growing numbers of students applying for places on their domestic courses.

One of the country's leading business schools, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, says more than 150,000 people have applied for one of the 250 spaces on its elite two-year post-graduate management programme.

"The number of candidates seeking admission to our programmes has not been impacted at all" by the overseas recruitment drive, says spokesman Ashok Shah.

But for Balsaraf, India is not an option.

Australia is his second choice and he considered the US but thinks he can make up the 18-month living expenses and course fees of about 15,000 pounds (26,000 dollars) through work placements in Britain.

"I worked in one of Mumbai's top hotels for six months but I wasn't happy with the career and growth opportunities. Doing this, you gain a lot of international exposure," he says.

- AFP