Smell the Coffee

Published in October edition of Hardnews , http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/10/3270

For new-age cafés, it's big business. Unlike the dying coffee houses of yore, these swanky joints are a different cup of coffee

Sumiran Preet Kaur, Delhi

The story of the coffee homes reflects the ever-changing socio-economic dynamics of India.
Ram Shastri, a journalist, has been coming to the Indian Coffee House at Mohan Singh Place in Delhi for the past 30 years. From the open terrace of this café in Connaught Place (CP), he has seen Delhi's skyline change. New, fancy restaurants have come up and swanky cars are all over. Another café regular says, "Earlier, I used to catch the first shuttle tempo (phutphatia) from my office at Shastri Bhawan to come here." He still comes here every evening.

Here in the café, time stands still - torn seats, the muggy lobby, familiar faces. A turbanned waiter in dull white uniform serves the coffee. He, too, seems a relic of the past. The only change, a minor one, is in the price of the coffee: from 75 paisa about 30 years ago, it has climbed to Rs 10.
Shastri and others have grown old with the coffee house. But that is threatened to be disrupted now. Anytime this year, the café could close down following a court ruling. To stall that, the café regulars, most of them above 50, decided to form the Coffee Consumers' Forum.

Thinking man's haunt
The history of this café can be traced back to 1957. A decade after Independence, retrenched Class IV employees of the Coffee Board started the café. It is run by The Indian Coffee Workers' Cooperative Society (a workers' union) which was founded during the price-rise resistance movement in Delhi. They had decided to run the coffee house on a no-profit-no-loss-basis. It originally existed in the Theatre Communication building, where today's Palika Bazaar has come up.

Continuing with tradition, the café still hosts dialogues and reading sessions with writers, poets and artists. It was common to hear people get up and recite poems. Nobody was a stranger here. Anybody could join any group or sit solitary nursing a cup of coffee. Civil society and human rights groups would hold meetings. This was a place to fix future appointments, plan a spontaneous resistance, write a letter, conceive a poster/hoarding/wall paper, exchange/read a book, meet friends and foes.

Gossip was a ritual. If you had your ear to the ground, you could catch news breaking in those radio days. One day in the mid-1970s, somebody leaked that emergency was about to be clamped down. This was bad news. The emergency saw fundamental rights crushed. The original coffee house at CP, where there was unbridled freedom of expression, was bulldozed in 1976 by Sanjay Gandhi. After emergency, it got a new lease of life. The NDMC helped it shift to its current address at Mohan Singh Place, behind Regal cinema, next to Rivoli, in CP.
Shastri recalls: "It wasn't just about coffee. It was a home away from home. We sat till the lights were switched off," he tells Hardnews.

Winds of change
The 1990s saw liberalisation of the Indian economy. Private players brought in snazzier options. Around 1995, year-long renovation work by the NDMC added to the woes of the coffee house. Its sales dipped rapidly. To balance the losses, the management pumped in funds at its other branches at Kamala Nagar and Badarpur in Delhi. The café also has branches in Shimla, Chandigarh, Dharamsala, Ludhiana, Jaipur and Allahabad. The Shimla coffee house at the Mall, for instance, is always jam-packed.

In 2008, the Kamala Nagar branch in Delhi downed shutters due to sealing. In 2009, NDMC refused to extend the lease at Mohan Singh Place and asked them to vacate the place in June 2009. The court ruling on September 8 also asked them to vacate the premises. Now, the coffee house management claims there's no choice but to close down. "With a monthly expenditure of Rs 60,000, we cannot afford to run this place. We also have to pay our staff and run the kitchen," says CS Baiju, secretary of the cooperative.

The café is gasping for breath. Coffee vans of the Coffee Board of India that served steaming cups at CP and ITO have disappeared. Now, the board runs only four coffee depots in Delhi. Just across the road from the Indian Coffee House, there is the Coffee Home run by Delhi Tourism at Kharag Singh Marg. It still sells coffee at Rs 10. The official in charge of this café, on condition of anonymity, tellsHardnews, "It's a matter of time before this garden restaurant-cum café shuts down. People come here early in the morning, grab seats, keep talking for hours and order nothing. This is a no-profit place."

It's not just the lack of profit and business, these old cafés in Delhi are also threatened by land sharks since they are located on prime property in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi. The odds are skewed against them.

In a new avatar
For coffee though, the scene is not all that grim. The simple cup of coffee, or kuppa as it is known in south India, is now a measure of your cool quotient. It's now über cool for students and professionals to hang out in new-age, affluent cafés.

The snacks accompanying coffee have changed from the earlier idli-sambhar to pasta and desserts. It's not just crushed chicory anymore. Now there is a wide range to choose from. You can have a cappuccino, a latte or a frappe. You could also ask for Italian or Arabic coffee.

VG Siddhartha's family is in the business of growing and exporting powdered coffee for 139 years now. During one of his foreign trips, Siddhartha came across beer bars doubling up as Internet parlours. He wanted to replicate a similar model in India with coffee at its core. So, in 1996, he opened the first new-age cafe in Bangalore. This was the precursor to the Café Coffee Day (CCD) chain. By 2000, Barista came in with its cosmopolitan café chain.

Even foreign players like Costa Coffee made forays in the Indian market. Italian Lavazza came in 2007 through the acquisition of Barista Coffee Company Limited. According to a spokesperson of Lavazza, Italy, "Today, people have disposable incomes to spend on food and they are hanging out more often. This has given rise to a contemporary café culture. India is a potential market."

Now big players like CCD, Barista Lavazza and Costa Coffee are venturing out of the metros and setting up cafés in cities like Jaipur, Agra and Chandigarh.
With coffee and delectable bites, these cafés offer customers a comfortable seating, prompt service and stylish store design. They keep changing the look and feel of their stores along with the menu to keep up with changing taste. What's more, complements to coffee - music, art, books and even wi-fi connectivity - are on offer.

It's big business
The new-age cafés or coffee bars have got their economics right. They are marketing, selling and brewing a brand. They "sell" the "concept" of coffee. "The USP is 'chill out while you eat," says Santosh Unnikrishnan, CEO, Costa Coffee India, a UK-based café chain. So, how does he see the coffee culture evolving in India? "India has always had a strong coffee culture like the famous filter coffee down south. What has changed is the marketing, branding and packaging of coffee. Now you get high quality coffee, freshly ground from beans in front of you in hygienic conditions. Along with the coffee, you also have a place to unwind," he says.

So, it is old wine in a new bottle. Most of the companies including the Indian Coffee House get their beans from Chikmagalur in Karnataka. But, companies say that the blending and roasting gives each brand its uniqueness. It's the blend that makes the difference.

According to Alok Gupta, director of Café Coffee Day, "India's young and the young-at-heart are exposed to global culture through the media and popular sitcoms like Friends where the café is an integral part of people's lives. The media, too, have made the world a smaller place. So, the need of a young man or woman in Florida is not much different from his/her counterparts in any Indian city," he points out.

For new-age cafés, it's an outright business proposition. Unlike in the coffee houses of yore, here you don't have the luxury of sitting for hours without ordering anything. As soon as you have polished off the last crumbs of a brownie and finished the coffee, a waiter will politely ask, "Anything else, please?" That's the signal: he is telling you to get up and leave, if you are done.

Pricing in these cafés are not uniform either. It is driven by the socio-economic profile of the area it is located in - rent, location and saleability. For instance, a cappuccino costs Rs 49 in Barista Connaught Place while you have to shell out Rs 84 for the same in the chain's posh Khan Market outlet - one of the most upscale markets in the world. All the café chains admit doing it.
According to a Barista spokesperson, "We have divided our cafés into two categories or formats. The outlet at CP is a regular espresso format while the one in Khan Market is the Barista Crème format. The latter has a kitchen attached to it to prepare fresh food. Hence, prices vary."

Though the coffee experience in these cafés comes at a high price, they are usually choc-a-bloc with customers. "With time, preferences and taste of people change. Earlier people wanted an Ambassador for a car. Now, they aspire for swanky, comfortable cars. And, we give them what they are looking for," points out Unnikrishnan.

Customers shell out Rs 100 for a cup of coffee while meeting friends, business associates or spending time with a fiancé. For the daily dose of affordable coffee in Delhi, you can still go to old coffee joints like Depauls at Janpath who brought in the concept of bottled coffee. Its cold coffee priced at Rs 25 is popular among the young and the old.

It is unlikely that this coffee culture will fade away since the new cafes are trying to make their presence felt in various cities and small towns. The cafes are full of youngsters, considering that the target of the cafes is Gen X. "The food here is good and so is the ambience. We have a lot to choose from and we do not get such stuff to munch at home," says Prabhsharan Arora, senior Marketing Manager, Planet X. It is also a place with professional nomads go with their laptops.

Barista managers suggests that with increasing income and the rising tendency to spend within the affluent urban society, their have been an unprecedented growth in the trend of "out of the home segment eating and drinking". Barista is now planning to open high-end liquor bars in select places, beginning with posh Khan Market.

No wonder, the new concept is a big hit among the rich and upwardly mobile, especially the young. Indeed, Cafe Coffee Day boasts of 65 per cent of India's Rs 400 crore 'coffee bar market' with its 800 outlets, while Barista commands 25 percent with 230 outlets across the country.

Swan song?
So, why do people still go to the musty coffee house behind Regal? Says Shastri: "The new cafes are doing well. But can they inspire an intellectual environment? Wo jazbaa nahi hai (The passion is no longer there)."

The forum led by Shastri wants the government to declare the Indian Coffee House a heritage site and allow it to run. However, by the time you read this, it's possible that it might have served its last cup of watery coffee. A legacy would have ended. Or will the Coffee Consumers' Forum fight a last-ditch battle for victory?

OCTOBER 2009

Cyberspace enters the last journey

The last episode in a person's life can now be watched on internet and film in a collective sharing of personal tragedy
A video package by Sumiran Preet Kaur and Sheeba Naaz
Voice Over - Sumiran Preet

tibetan movie industry

Video package on the rising music and movie industry of Tibet,
made by Sumiran Preet Kaur and Sheeba Naaz, Dharamsala
Voice Over- Sumiran Preet Kaur

‘Try to live with as less as possible’

French photographer flies on hot air balloons and records how a ravaged planet called earth prepares for apocalypse now!
Also an interview with R.K Pachauri, director-general of TERI who has served as the chair of the IPCC since 2002
Sumiran Preet Kaur Delhi
Published in December edition of Hardnews


"An unknown world lies ahead in the next 10 to 15 years," said Yann Arthus Bertrand, 63, French photographer and documentary filmmaker. Photographing the earth from helicopters and hot air balloons and making documentaries on global warming made him see that the world is changing drastically. "The quantity of information in circulation has never been greater. All of this is positive. The negative aspect is that despite knowing what is happening and being aware of the irreversible change we are bringing in nature, we are not acting fast enough."

For more than 10 years, Yann Arthus Bertrand has been drawing the portrait of the planet with his aerial pictures and films. These years of travel have given Bertrand a global vision. "I realised how fast the world was changing due to human activities and was certain that it was heading in a bad direction," he says. It was then that he realised the power of pictures to convince people to change. He felt that people will believe what they see.

He was right. In 2009, he released his documentary, Home. The film, entirely composed of aerial shots of various spots on earth, shows the diversity of life and how societies are threatening the ecological balance of the planet. The movie was released simultaneously in cinemas, on television and You Tube on June 5, 2009, the World Environment Day, in 181 countries.

The following Sunday, the 'ecologist 'parties in the European Union elections made an unexpected high. The people wanted change. Beautiful aerial photography, an omnipresent music score and great post production details makes this an extraordinary movie. "It is an educational movie," he says.

Bertrand, when he was 30, went to Kenya to work in a national park. He also lived among the Massai tribes for three years to study the behaviour of lions and took daily pictures. It is here when he discovered his new passion for landscape pictures from hot air balloons. He came back to France in 1981 and became an international reporter and photographer, specialising in documentaries on sports, wildlife and aerial photography. He also founded the Altitude Agency in 1991, the word's first press agency and images bank on aerial photography. In 1994, he did more research on planet earth. In 2005, he founded the international environment organisation 'Good Planet', his 'best time'.

"While making one of my films, The Earth from the Sky, I often asked myself what I could learn from men and women I glimpsed below. I dreamt of understanding their words, feelings and concerns that linked us. From up there, the earth looks like an immense area to be shared," he said. During shooting he felt that something was missing in his films - sound, words, the people's language. He started interviewing people and launched the project - 6 Billion Others.

With this, the cameraman travelled to 75 countries in four years to interview the inhabitants of earth. The '6 Billion Others' project records testimonies of people in their original language. "In many struggles, like the struggle against poverty and climate change, we need small community efforts. We cannot ignore what links us to each other and the responsibility this implies. There are more than 6 billion people on the earth and there will be no sustainable development if we cannot live together. Each one of us has to reach out and listen to other people and contribute to the life of 6 billion others," he feels.

This is the logic which brings him to India. His exhibition 'Earth From Above' and the screening of Home will be held in Mumbai near Marine Drive in December. "India is a beautiful country but since I usually come for work, my tight schedule does not let me explore the country. India is one of the toughest countries to shoot in. There is a lot of bureaucracy. India is very image conscious. They think we are spies," he laughs. "These are the challenges that a photographer has to face."

The documentary will also be shown in the forthcoming Copenhagen climate summit. The Good Planet Foundation will be there to show its projects and work with other NGOs on climate change. "It is all a paradox. People are not taking anything seriously. It is not that they are not aware. They don't want to hear the truth. The pace at which we are going is too slow."

So what's the solution: "In democratic countries, governments do not tackle many issues since they fear they might become unpopular with the people. Hence, nobody is serious about climate change. Democracy kills people. The change has to start from you and me."

On April 22, 2009, he was designated as the United Nations Environment Programme Goodwill Ambassador (UNEP) and received the 'Earth Champion' award. "Try to bring change as individuals - that is the toughest thing to do," he says. "Try to live with as less as possible. Whatever you do, do it with passion and think how you can benefit others. I am a photographer, so I look for ways of how my profession can help others. This is what I will keep on doing. Due to effects of global warming, many people are dying every year. We have spoilt ourselves. We can't do that anymore. A difficult world lies ahead."


'More catastrophes will make us suffer'

RK Pachauri is director-general of TERI and served as the chair of the IPCC since 2002. On December 10, 2007, Al Gore shared the Nobel with the IPCC. Based in Geneva, IPCC was established to provide decision-makers and civil society with objective information on climate change. Yann Arthus Bertrand interviewed RK Pachauri in Delhi.

Bertrand: In the fight against global warming, it does not seem that India is really doing enough...
Pachauri: India is a strong, developing country, but certainly not exemplary. We all know that the average Indian today emits far less carbon dioxide than, say, the average American. It is 1.3 emissions per capita for Indians. In USA, it is 19.7 emissions per capita. In such circumstances, a developing country cannot tell its people to live in misery without development while others are happy in other parts of the world. We certainly cannot deprive them. Developed countries must show generosity. They have to be magnanimous. They have to initiate in a big way.

Is the Indian government convinced to change?
Yes. It is visible in its various policies. India is targeting the generation of 20,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 in the National Action Plan for Solar Mission. We have to look for alternatives. We cannot depend on oil imports as it spreads too much pollution. India has to go ahead with solar generation and keep looking for alternatives.

Do you compromise with your findings and studies?
No, every report that we do, we send it to the government to be approved. At times, the government is amused by our statements and wants a few things to be changed, but we do not want to compromise on science.

You say that we have only 10 years to change. But ten years is nothing.
Yes, but we cannot wait till tomorrow. And the way to start is to start at individual level in a big way. It is not only the responsibility of the government any more. We need the involvement of people. We can do things like taking public transport in a big way. Invest in it. Whatever we do today, will help our future generations. We cannot leave a messed up world for them.

The world is already in a bad direction.
We have to be optimistic. And what makes me optimistic is that if awareness continues to grow we will bring a change.

Are meetings like Copenhagen etc, part of a paradox?
Yes, even I fly so much for my meetings, we waste so much fuel and pollute the atmosphere. We should go for bio fuel. Media has to get active. We have to boycott things on big scale. People should form groups. If we do nothing, we will have catastrophes like the heat wave of Europe of 2003 which claimed many lives. Many more catastrophes will make human beings suffer. Why wait till some tragedy happens? Sea levels have risen by 17cms, glaciers are melting, there has been an impact on agriculture and there is a problem of water supply. The efforts for tomorrow will have to begin today.

http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2009/12/3381

Not easy for women in a Police Station

By Sumiran Preet Kaur

If educated women or those from influential families find it difficult to engage with the police, what can poor women in the margins do?

It's almost impossible for educated or professional women in Delhi to go to a police station, especially in the night. The affluent society women might never have visited a police station in their lifetime, unless it's a case like Jessica Lal, when socialites and fashionistas were made to answer questions. Even in daytime it is plain difficult for ordinary Indian women from the margins, or who don't have any influence whatsoever, to enter police stations. This is not a general rule but a repetitive narrative.

And if this is the scenario in Delhi, it's like a nightmare in mofussil townships and interior villages. Witness for instance the police stations in western UP, Omkara territory, where between crime and law and order, the lines are so terribly blurred. Tribals and Dalits, especially women, are routinely refused entry in police stations. In a classically perverse sense, it is often the typical scenario shown in old parallel cinema like Aakrosh - check out innumerable stories of women assaulted, degraded and humiliated in Indian villages, or where movements against displacement are consolidating like in Lalgarh, Kalinganagar, Kashipur or Dantewada, or close to the capital in the caste khaps of Haryana and western UP, in the lynching and public spectacles of torture and death sentences given to women in the form of honour killings.

Rashi Mehra works with Sweccha, a NGO. She was the president of the Gargi College Students' Union in Delhi University, when, on September 16, 2007, she saw it point-blank - male, machismo's perversity as a public spectacle. A gang of nearly 300 young men who had come to appear for the 'constable exams' in Delhi Police, went berserk around the north campus of Delhi University, attacking, abusing and molesting female students.

"I was in the south campus when we heard of this. We spoke to the girls who were molested. Since they were shocked, and shy of approaching the police, we formed a Joint Action Committee Group (JACG). We, a group of girls from Lady Sri Ram, Hindu, St. Stephen's, Kamala Nehru and Gargi College, went to the Maurice Nagar police station, which has north campus under its jurisdiction. But the FIR was not lodged. "We were told that you cannot lodge an FIR as we were not the ones who were molested. Do we have to be raped or molested first to get an FIR lodged for a woman who has been brutally attacked?" questions Rashi Mehra angrily.

"The police categorically told us that since we were not the ones who were molested and there were too many men it was not possible to recognise and arrest them. We requested them that the FIR can surely be lodged on somebody's behalf, since it happened in a public place. No luck. Next time, when our group went again to the police station, they said, so where all did the guys touch them? It was so embarrassing," she says

Now if the police has behaved like this in the capital of India, where will the other girls go ?"

After two weeks, the JACG met the then Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh. They also approached the National Commission for Women (NCW). Two weeks later, an FIR was lodged. "How come the delayed FIR was lodged this time? The atmosphere in the police station was very intimidating. The police did not seem approachable at all. Even the women constables were of no help. They were rude and asked all sorts of questions which made no sense," says Rashi.

Beena Thakkar (name changed) was frequently abused by her husband. She had gone back to her parents' home several times, but had to come back to her husband's house since her parents insisted that "like all women she should make adjustments". "One day, he came back home drunk and forced me to have sex with him. I didn't want to. He beat me up. That day it was so severe that I went to the nearby police station. There was no woman official there. I was highly uncomfortable telling all the details. My FIR was not lodged. The experience was traumatic. Maybe it's because they knew my in-laws," says Beena stoically.

Beena, now a 'contract teacher' in a government school in Delhi and divorced, has come a long way. She is trying to find her feet again with great difficulty, but at least she does not have to face the violence of that man day after day. But she has little faith in the government, or the police. She is on her own, like many other women survivors of male violence in this country.

Most women feel that there should be sensitivity within the police force with regard to women's complainants. Rashmi Anand of Lawyers Collective, who herself has been a victim of domestic violence, feels that women have different kind of needs which has to be dealt with extra care and sensitivity. "Sometimes, because of the background they come from, they are shy of discussing everything with the men. So we need people who can listen to them patiently. We have to deal with their apprehensions. Indeed, it is possible to solve their problems."

Anand works with the Delhi Police Women's Cell based in Nanakpura in Moti Bagh, to provide free legal aid to those whose cases have been referred to them by the womens' cell.

Enter the womens' cell in Nanakpura and you can hear subdued female voices in the counselling rooms. The women are discussing their problems in the presence of a counsellor. Asserting that women have different needs when compared to men, ACP Pratima Sharma says that the cases that come to them get individual attention.

"The entire city comes under our jurisdiction. We have female police officials here. If it is a family problem and there is any scope of reconciliation, we go for counselling. The female counsellors are from TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai) and funding is given by the NCW, while the infrastructure is provided by Delhi Police. If counselling fails, and couples want mutual separation, we go for a mediation process where we explain all the legal aspects. But in cases where they are adamant to lodge an FIR, we first explain the repercussions, and then lodge an FIR. Then the case goes to the court. In such cases we have NGOs like the Lawyers Collective which comes to the cell on specific days and gives free legal aid."

However, the fact is there is only one cell of this kind in Delhi. Is it not less for women who want to lodge a complaint or seek police help?

"What if a woman out on the road is having a problem? She can contact a nearby PCR van or police station. Indeed, in such cases, you cannot always have a woman police official on duty. The solution does not lie in opening new women's cells, but in social sensitisation. The attitude of the police and people has to change. When we approach them, they either ask us to disappear, go back home, or start moral policing. I have been asked by the police: what kind of a college president are you, why do you smoke, or what are you doing at this hour?" says Rashi Mehra.

published in February edition of HARDNEWS
http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/02/3442