IItf – 2009

IItf stands for India International trade fair. It is a big event that happens at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi once every year. It is a short lived event where entrepreneurs from different parts of the country come and setup stalls to exhibit their products. Pavilions are setup and each state depending on their size and ability are assigned different pavilions, for ex: while states like Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamilnadu had their own pavilions, Uttaranchal, Goa and Lakshadweep shared a common pavilion.

The trade show attracts lots of attention in Delhi. Schools organize field trips to the event and people in general throng to the event. To give an account for the popularity of the event, government of India has arranged park and ride stops for the event, the ticket for the event had a word of caution “In the view of security of the people, Pragati maidan will only allow first 1 lakh people to enter”.

Most states had setup their pavilion to depict something about the state (ex: Assam had Kaziranga National Park as the external theme and Karnataka had Belur temple as the external theme). There was no standard way in which the inside of the pavilions were organized, while some states had some tourism info and the attractions of the state and information on developments made in the last few years, others only had stalls and stores and everything inside the pavilion was for sale. The north eastern states had show cased their bamboo artwork and some of them were really intricate and I could see that lots of attention had been paid to the detail of the work. Most of the stalls were handloom based while very few showcased machine made and some even showcased imported things.

The best of the ones I visited were Kerala, Karnataka, West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh where they had a blend of handloom and tourism and a focus on small business. In Kerala pavilion when I saw the different kinds of halwa (a kerala traditional sweet) I remembered my dear friend Mr. Iyer. The Karnataka pavilion which along with other things showcased KSIC Mysore silk had exhibited couple of sarees that were 50 odd years old and still looked brilliant and bright. The most disappointing pavilion was Gujarat, which didn’t show case anything handloom but only boasted their prowess in technology and service.

The food was setup in a separate pavilion where all different states had their own food stalls; the biggest rush was for Punjabi, Karnataka and Andhra food. I was interested in trying something from Orissa but had to settle for Mysore masala dosa. The others with me tried some kerala food.

On the whole the event was well organized with maps located all over the place and information booths at the different gates. Needless to say security was really tight with armed police patrolling the place.

The only sore eye came in the form of transportation, when we had to get back home and no auto-rickshaws were available. It was truly a struggle even though we had a prepaid receipt for the same. Fighting to get the rickshaw made me realize that people in India are fighters and we have to fight every moment.

The trade show for me showed the potential for manufacturing and market for Indian made goods. There were goods for all price ranges starting from few tens of rupees to few tens of thousands of rupees and there were customers for all the ranges.

BA and Heathrow terminal 5

This was the first time in the past 10 years that I have traveled through London and through British Airways. I am quite impressed by the service of British Airways and even more impressed by London Heathrow airport.

While all other airlines just give a blanket and headphone, BA gave a bunch more goodies. To start with they gave a night cap and a small toothbrush with one time use paste. They also gave a pair of socks, which I didn’t use at all. The staff of BA was pretty friendly; liquor pretty much flowed in BA. During every meal they offered “white or red wine” if you say no to either of them then the list would continue to beer, whiskey and so on. They were pretty generous in serving the same. For once the airline served real milk with coffee and not the creamer; they were not too generous with sugar though. The food in general was good and appeared rightly rationed because by the time they served the next meal my stomach was ready to receive the same.

Now the Heathrow airport, first of all, the terminal was massive. It appeared the new Bangalore international airport is partly inspired by the Heathrow airport. There were some unique things that I observed in the airport, here are some

• There was a pen shop in the airport and the minimum cost of a pen I saw was 9 pounds (or ~ $18), I chatted up with the shop person and she mentioned the pens are unique as in some are made with silver, gold and platinum and so on. She said she had a pen that would cost around 1000 pounds. I didn’t dare to ask her to show me.
• Unlike US where there are water fountains at the intersection of men and women restrooms, Heathrow had only 2 at terminal 5A one on each end of the terminal.
• Unlike US restrooms where they make it optional to use heated air to dry hands, Heathrow makes it the only option to dry hands.
• The Duty Free shop is the biggest I have seen. Needless to say they had an exquisite collection of liquor and chocolates and everything was extremely expensive.
• There were more people at the airport to help passengers than in US and the people were truly helping the passengers.
• I was quite amazed at their security system too; the bins to put our stuff were loaded on rollers. We had to pick up from the bottom set of rollers and place it on top set of rollers and dump our stuff in. After the security, we pick up our stuff and the bins go down to the bottom rollers back to the beginning.
• The people at the security were very helpful for I noticed that in one of the cases they themselves put the liquid container that one of the passengers carrying into a ziploc bag themselves.