MIGRATION IN PROGRESS: FROM PRINT TO THE WEB   By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, June 30, 2010)   I was dining with John Seeley in the Grill Room of The Four Seasons Restaurant, the one place in New York where the city’s elite habitually congregate for their “power lunch” five days a week. Mr. Seeley, like others in the wood-paneled, Philip Johnson-designed room, is a player – which is to say that, as founding editor of The Wall Stre...

Dubai leads the way in “soft infrastructure”   By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, June 28, 2010)   By now it’s become a cliché that the United Arab Emirates – and Dubai, in particular – enjoy one of the best infrastructures anywhere in the world. As with many clichés, this one has the added value of being true.   “Infrastructure” typically includes roads, power grids, ports and airports, and tel...

THE PAST IS NOT PROLOGUE   By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, June 18, 2010)   I traveled to Boston a few days ago to attend the 40 th reunion of my college class, my first such get-together with former classmates since I graduated from Brandeis University in 1970. I went because I hadn’t stayed much in touch with them, I went because I was curious how their lives had played out over these long years, and I went, perhaps most of all, to revisit the pa...

REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: WILL NAVIN RAMGOOLAM COME INTO HIS OWN? (Published in The Hindu, India, May 9, 2010)   By Pranay Gupte   For an island-nation of barely 1.3 million people who live on a speck of verdant but craggy territory in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius is more riven by the politics of communalism than one might expect in a tiny democracy. Last week’s parliamentary election showed that the enthusiasm of voters for the ballot box notwithstanding, the chal...

Mauritius wants more Indian participation in economic development (Published in The Hindu, India, May 8, 2010)   By Pranay Gupte   Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Rashid Beebeejaun says that Mauritius wants greater participation by Indian companies in developing the infrastructure of this island-nation.   “Our bilateral relations have always been excellent, but we feel that there’s much more room for collaboration,” Mr. Beebeejaun said in an inte...

ELECTIONS IN MAURITIUS OFFER PROMISING PROSPECTS FOR INDIA (Published in The Hindu, India, May 7, 2010)   By Pranay Gupte   Now that the three-party alliance of Navin Ramgoolam has won 41 of the 60 seats in the Mauritius national parliament – more than double the number of Paul Berenger’s leftist Mouvement Militant Mauricien – there is general agreement that the 63-year-old former physician and lawyer has obtained a powerful mandate to implement economi...

THE POSSIBILITIES FOR MAURITIUS AND INDIA   By Pranay Gupte (Published in The Hindu, India, May 5, 2010)   Today (May 5) is Election Day here in Mauritius, and there being no electronic tallying of votes the winners and losers for the island-nation’s 62-member national parliament won’t be known for several hours after the polls close at 6 o’clock in the evening because each ballot cast by 880,000 eligible voters – out of the country’s 1.3 mi...

THE FLURRIES OF VOTING DAY IN MAURITIUS (Published in The Hindu, India, May 6, 2010)   By Pranay Gupte   When I covered politics for The New York Times a very long ago in the United States and in other countries that allowed for adult franchise, a wise old editor would often caution against making projections, particularly on Election Day. Of course, those times were before smart pollsters brought their sophisticated techniques to gauge exit polls and voter sentiments, a...

PORT LOUIS, Mauritius -- Navin Ramgoolam of Mauritius, who’s leading a three-party coalition in the national parliamentary election that is scheduled for May 5, is determined to win a second consecutive term as this island-nation’s prime minister.   Anecdotal observation suggests that he’s likely to win and that, in his next five-year term, the 1.3 million people of Mauritius expect him to lead a government that will heal the growing rifts between the country’s...

By Pranay Gupte (Published in Khaleej Times, April 12, 2010)    Take away the stunning greenery and jagged mountains from Mauritius, take away the rolling pastures, take away the vast sugarcane plantations, and take away the bustling hamlets with their narrow twisting roads – and one could be forgiven for feeling that this is Dubai-in-the-Indian-Ocean, a clean place where waves wash gently on the shores and enterprise is encouraged.   Both entities have po...

By PRANAY GUPTE (Published in The Hindu, April 2, 2010)  PORT LOUIS, Mauritius – When Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam of Mauritius dissolved the island-state’s 70-member National Assembly late Wednesday evening and called for new elections on May 5, there seemed to be an element of political drama to his announcement.   The drama, of course, was deliberate, but it had little to do with the election announcement itself: everybody in Mauritius knew that polls would be...

By Pranay Gupte   He was the last of the giants, those tough men of the Bedouin desert who formed a new nation out of a harsh environment, those visionaries who created a country that would occupy a special place in the global firmament.   Sheikh Mabarak bin Mohammed Al Nahayan, who died on Wednesday, occupied a special place himself in the hearts of fellow Emiratis. He was the first Minister of the Interior of the United Arab Emirates, and he helped start and sustain w...

Twenty-five years ago on this day, my father died in Mumbai. Had he lived, he would have turned 100 today.   I was not with Balkrishna Gupte when he died after a long illness that, to this day, remains mysterious to me. Some physicians said it was cancer of the esophagus, others said it was complications from a botched surgery of the alimentary canal. Still others offered other reasons – unpronounceable medical conditions with fancy names that only doctors could decipher. In...

Paul Goldberger, arguably the world's most respected architecture critic, has written a splendid essay on Dubai's Burj Khalifa. It can be found at: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/skyline/2010/02/08/100208crsk_skyline_goldberger

CLASSIC "DEAR JOHN" NOTE NUMBER ONE: (Woman to Man) There is something the matter. I sense your distance. I sense that this relationship has become a burden for you. Financially, it always was, I guess. But now it is more. Each time we talk, you accuse me of having ill-treated you. I am left feeling guilty that you would come to me but for the fact that my behavior with you has been erratic, neurotic. I accept. You may think I am stupid, but I understand these things. I have been h...