bases in Western and Eastern India, respectively. They’re also the regular target of smear campaigns by wealthy political rivals and their corporate backers. With the interests vested in politics here, things can get really dirty.
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Rajiv>
Don’t get me started on simstars cashing in on their popular- ity to get elected.>
Smeeta Smitten>
What about Mahmet Khan? Convicted-mobster-cum- Senator? Notoriety seems to work just as well.>
DelhiKC>
Delhi is home to some of the Indian kingpins, greasing the cor- rupt bureaucracy and political cogs. Politicians’ ties to organized crime are as universal as kickbacks from megacorp lobbyists.>
KalkiThe current hot issue—–besides brewing North/South antagonism, Muslim rights and the air pollution bill that has corps up in arms—has to do with the privatization (or not) of major stretches of the Golden Quadrilateral, a debate destined to turn vicious. Concluded after immense delays during the Thirties, a huge diamond of highway, rail and fiberoptics was laid around the nation, branching highways linking to major cities not on the route. Mounting maintenance costs are allegedly behind the IUC’s proposal to privatize (more likely lobbyists from Saeder-Krupp, Renraku and Shiawase). The BJP are radically against the move, arguing extraterritorials already control too much of the nation’s wealth.
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Good, Indians’ favorite pastimes have always been cricket, religion and politics.>
Bindi Babe>
S-K and Renraku see the Quadrilateral as a “Golden” opportunity for expansion, but MCT and Shiawase aren’t just going to roll over. The inevitable logistics and network oppor- tunities have even Transys and Wuxing waiting in the wings, and since neither has much local presence, they’re bringing talent in from abroad to ensure a piece of the action. The backroom dealing and black ops are going to be a boon for the local shadowscene.>
ChamundaI should mention that India’s criminal underworld is par- ticularly violent. Loyalties are easily bought and kidnappings, murders and so on are everyday affairs. Some of the players prefer to bring in outside talent as bodyguards and security, thinking they’ll be more reliable.
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Downright lucrative is what it is.>
NomaCALCUTTA: ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE
India’s crown jewel and high-tech hub, Calcutta (also known as Kolkota) took over as the economic capital of India after Bangalore was crippled by VITAS and the Crash. It’s with- out doubt the country’s most developed sprawl, mixing colo- nial West with high-tech East. But it’s also a study in modern India’s successes and failures.
The heart of the city, picture perfect with its opulent corpo- rate arcologies, towering skyscrapers and constant development projects, encircles the preserved Victorian grandeur of the gran- ite and red sandstone colonial center, now the seat of provincial government. Walk a mile in any direction, though, and you’ll find yourself in one of the shanty towns that wrap around the city and press in like a cancerous growth. The twilight residential and leisure neighborhoods, buffering downtown from the impover- ished masses, are starting to show the strain.
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Calcutta’s air pollution problems haven’t been totally resolved despite regulations, and there’s a major ghoul prob- lem in the outskirts. So no, the Jewel of India isn’t without its blemishes.>
Humphries>
Calcutta is also shadowrunning central for the region. Not only where a lot of the action is concentrated, but the perfect place to pick up corp work all over the Union.>
Bhima>
Yeah. As long as your kshatryia fixer doesn’t play favorites and hires his own caste rather than shudra or vaishya!>
Nikula>
That’s why Indian runners gather in jatis—think of them as vocational sub-castes—that look after their own. Runner soci- ety is just as stratified as regular civvies, though it’s also slightly more flexible when necessary.>
Yudhishtira>
Foreigners have it a little easier. That whole thing about being outside the system means you can get together with any jati. Remember: running the shadows in India isn’t an issue of falling through the cracks. It isn’t inherently “wrong,” because the Hindu “moral compass” is entirely different. Many modern ksha- triya youths see it as the only way they’re going to live up to their varna’s warrior dharma, and vaishya think it’s a good way to turn a rupee and put their skills to the test.>
Arjuna>
This also reflects a trend in Indian, and occasionally Asian, soci- ety, where augmentation doesn’t have the same negative social and cultural connotations it has in the West. In a cosmolo- gy where all are part of greater whole, implanting cyber frees a part of one’s atman (soul) to return to the cycle, so it is not “lost.”>
SahadevaThe Red Mile
Calcutta boasts the biggest megacorporate presence of any Indian metroplex. Renraku divides the roost with Saeder- Krupp. Their subsidiaries, Simscapes and RajGrid, are respec- tively India’s two biggest MSPs and network providers. Yamatetsu, Tan Tien and Shiawase also maintain operations; major labs and research centers take up Calcutta’s famous “Red Mile” (for the red sandstone used in most buildings), alongside the assorted local software development concerns that are constantly cropping up and vanishing.
Kolkota Integrated Talent and Technologies (KITT) is India’s single AA-listed corporation. It’s a multifaceted con- cern capitalizing on Calcutta’s and new India’s prime asset: the pool of educated and tech-savvy workers born of the government’s multi-decade plan to make Calcutta a shining example of India tomorrow. KITT provides services in a vast range of fields from biotech and pharmaceuticals research to software development, financial consulting and think-tank services. CEO Vasant Almavala has built it into India’s fastest growing multinational, constantly branching out in unexpect- ed directions and forming lucrative partnerships with major players like Mitsuhama (upgrading MCT’s CitiNet gridlink sys- tem), Shiawase (developing their SXT software suite) and CATCo (for whose Asian affiliates it handles marketing and financial analysis).
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Calcutta sees a lot of shadow action. Fortunately, with the heavy megacorporate presence, foreigners don’t stand out as much as they do elsewhere, and the whole caste thing is less obvious. Since corps control the local airports, Johnsons can arrange easy entry into the country, too.>
Skanda>
The Red Mile and other corp enclaves are the jurisdiction of private security firms, so tread carefully. Calcutta itself is one of the few sprawls to use non-govpol cops, contracting policing out to ProTek, a subsidiary of Petrovski Security/MCT.>
Karma Singh>
Calcutta’s also home to an underground counterculture developing from bohemian Sutran and bhangtrance youth culture bent on undermining the traditional order. This finds echoes in the numerous Jain-backed otaku clans and the neo- communist policlubs that boast ever-increasing popularity.>
Harijan CoolTHE MBC AXIS: OPEN HEART
The MBC Axis, otherwise known as the Mangalore- Bangalore-Chennai corridor, is a major three-sprawl project put forward by the MBC Consortium (involving Renraku, Shiawase, Zeta-ImpChem, HKB, Yamatetsu and Transys, among others) to revitalize the old southern Indian tech hubs. The high-tech real estate developments and a new high-speed monorail link are designed to maximize the potential of local expertise. Bangalore still excels in cyberware and software design, Chennai is a mecca for pharmaceutical and genetech
developers and Mangalore is world-renowned for advances in holistic medicine and biotech. In Mangalore, Zeta-ImpChem, Yamatetsu and Cross Biomed currently lead the pack, but Pala Health and Pharmaceuticals, a local up-and-comer, is causing a lot of buzz by delving into both traditional and unconven- tional medical and biotechnologies.
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I’ve heard through the grapevine that Yamatetsu is working on something they’re calling ”chakraware.” Anyone have more?>
Kephalos>
Dr. Aishwarya Nair was doing some theoretical work on cura- tive and somatic enhancing abilities of the chakras at Calcutta University before she was kidnapped last year. Her insurance company paid the ransom, but Nair was never returned and her body never showed up. Makes you wonder.>
The Smiling Bandit>
Any news on the Shiawase/Pala project down in Chennai to develop a HMHVV vaccine for India’s ghoul problem?>
Dr. Magick>
Vaccine my hoop! I got a peek at some reports from a friend of a friend. They’ve decided since they can’t nail the damn thing, they’ll use it instead—working on an HMHVV cannibal variant of the Jarka-Criscione strain. You heard it here first, boys and girls: a vamp that eats vamps.>
Lone Gunman>
Will be interesting to see how some react to the news.>
DeVriesBOMBAY: BOLLYWOOD MELODRAMA
For the most part, the coastal media capital of South Asia isn’t very inspiring to look at. Life in Mumbai (also known as Bombay) is almost exclusively geared toward the entertain- ment world. With hundreds of different productions going on at the same time, the city has a perpetual boomtown-type atmosphere of relentless activity and business. It’s a frenetic hub of all kinds of chaotic and stressful showbiz-related enter- prises and activities, against which the city’s rundown colonial stateliness and turn-of-the-century upmarket urbanism seems rather drab—except for a few high-class neighborhoods where the stars make their homes, of course.
Inevitably, Mumbai hosts India’s biggest media corpora- tions and producers. Foremost among these is Regency Productions, which has a hook in every form of media imagin- able: sims, trid, Matrix entertainment, print, music, fashion, advertising and so on. Asia’s insatiable hunger for just their type of melodramatic all-singing, all-dancing extravaganzas has made Regency and its competitors multi-billion nuyen con- cerns that export their productions to every country from Egypt to the Canton Confederation.