Your columnist traces his roots to the Paliwal Brahmins of Rajasthan’s Thar Desert, a once-prosperous community that turned the sands of Pali into farmland and bustling trade. Their abrupt exodus centuries ago, driven by excessive taxes and the cruelty of rulers, left over eighty villages deserted.

Many migrated to other parts of Rajasthan, UP, Punjab, Haryana and the Himalayan foothills, carrying with them the habits of enterprise that had made them flourish. Some, drawn to the ascetic spirit of western India, embraced Jainism and spread further across the subcontinent. What was lost was not merely a people, but a finely balanced economy. Their story endures as a warning that when political greed overwhelms productive energy, even the most resilient societies can wither into dust.

The attached podcast explains.

India’s cities, once symbols of ambition, are now choking under filth, traffic and civic neglect. The solution will not come from politics but from enterprise. A “Clean Cities Compact” could unite business groups, local chambers and civic volunteers under a common banner to fund pilot projects, benchmark urban performance and publicly rate municipalities.

City leadership awards and transparent audits, modelled on corporate disclosure standards, could shame or celebrate performance. The aim is not to replace government but to compel it to function, backed by business skill and sustained public pressure. Only then can India’s cities become places where people wish to live, not merely work.

The attached podcast explains.

Continuing our series on India’s merchant classes, this week’s column turns to the Armenians, who arrived during the reign of the Great Mughals. Scattered at first, they later anchored themselves in Calcutta and Madras, then the twin capitals of British India’s trade. A small community remains in Calcutta, but most departed around Independence, to Britain, Australia and later Armenia after 1991.

Your columnist, while at school in Asansol, remembers a few Armenian classmates, pale-skinned and brown-haired boarders from Calcutta, who spoke Bengali and Hindi with ease and were as Indian as the rest of the lads. Like the Chinese of Tangra, they were as Indian as the rest of the lads

These essays aim to trace how such merchant communities, foreign in origin but Indian in spirit, shaped the country’s commercial and architectural fabric.