India Ink: What They Said: Budget 2013-14

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram presented the Union budget in Parliament on Thursday morning. Reactions were mixed from analysts who felt that while the finance minister had delivered a satisfactory budget given the country’s economic climate, more could have been done to attract foreign investment.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking with Doordarshan News:

Given the challenges facing our economy, the finance minister has done a commendable job. India needs to create jobs for our growing labor force to the extent of about 10 million persons every year. To do that, we need to accelerate the tempo of our growth. We need, as the 12th Five-Year Plan has mentioned eloquently, a growth rate of about 8 percent. This is a growth rate which is consistent with our underlying potential. We have to get there. Although this is a difficult journey — it cannot be accomplished in a single year – but the finance minister has taken important steps to reverse the pessimistic view with regard to investment climate, with regard to the growth potential and possibilities of our economy.

The finance minister has laid out a road map. There is plenty of food for every ministry to chew upon. And each one of our ministries has to ask itself this question: If India needs an 8 percent growth rate, growth which is at the same time inclusive and sustainable, what is it that each ministry should do? The finance minister has, I think, mentioned these challenges. It is up to the collective wisdom of my Council of Ministers to convert these challenges into opportunities to accelerate the tempo of growth, to make it more inclusive, to make it more sustainable.

Dinesh Thakkar, chairman and managing director at Angel Broking in Mumbai:

The government’s reform momentum had been so strong since September that there were expectations of some exciting measures in the budget too. That was not the case, but it does not mean the budget was a disappointment. The finance minister has been seriously committed to bringing down the fiscal deficit, and he has delivered on that front, as he did not announce any major populist measure and largely maintained stability in tax policies, save for some tweaking for higher income brackets and corporates. In my view, there were no major positive or negative triggers for the markets or any particular sectors, and I think what the market will look forward to is the reform agenda being continued by the government outside the budget, in the coming Parliament sessions, for which the momentum still looks very much on track.

Anuj Puri, chairman and country head of Jones Lang LaSalle India:

We did not expect this budget to be a game-changer. The realities of the Indian economic situation need to viewed in context with the factors that drive it, not least of all the global economic situation. There is no escaping the fact that the business which comes to India from the European Union and the U.S. has a trickle-down effect on key economic drivers in India, and the Finance Ministry does not control these factors. The Union budget can only hope to address factors within its control.

This was a moderately encouraging budget in general, but tepid for the Indian real estate sector. There has been no proposal on certain key expectations from the real estate sector. These include implementation of the real estate regulator and the Land Acquisition Act. All said and done, Indian real estate will continue to struggle with its larger hurdles. While the affordable housing category has been rightly given due attention, aspects relating to improved transparency and corporate governance within the sector have been largely ignored.

That said, the budget has shown commitment to improving communication on taxation and regulatory policies. This should give more comfort to offshore real estate investors who have been bogged down by the political inertia and therefore unsure of India as an investment destination in the recent past.

Partha Iyengar, country manager for research, India, at Gartner:

The big overarching focus on growth by the finance minister is the fundamental “feel good” factor in this budget. Given the fact that one can argue that a lot of the weakness in the Indian economy is what I call a “sentimental recession,” his strong statement that there is no ground for “doom and gloom” heading into the new year.

The big specific positives of the budget are that he has focused both in terms of the letter and spirit of the budget on the key planks of growth for India and health of every industry, including IT, which is infrastructure, education, skills development and incentives for the growth of domestic manufacturing. Some of the other positive areas are support for entrepreneurship, the M.S.M.E. [micro, small and medium enterprises] sector, both in terms of financial and overall support. The recognition that the overseas “trust deficit” in terms of a comfort level on India’s investment climate has to be addressed is also welcome.

However, the budget is only a directional statement, and the challenge for India historically and even currently is in the execution of the statement of intent outlined in the budget. This has been India’s Achilles’ heel, in that bold pronouncements in the budget never see the light of day or are not implemented as effectively as they can or should be. So it was disappointing to not see any statements on what the government would do to ensure mechanisms and oversight to ensure speedy and efficient implementation of these programs. Overall, a 7/10 score for the budget.

Girish Vanvari, co-head of tax at KPMG:

This budget is along anticipated lines, given the economic scenario in the country. There is a stable tax regime. There is no weird tax introduced; nothing much has been tinkered with. The expenditure outlays of the government have not gone down and so the government is not going to stop spending, which means continued growth.

There is a tax on the super-rich with income above 10 million, but this will only affect about 42,000 people and not impact the larger base. Also, the tax is only a 10 percent surcharge and only effective for one year. In this situation, we have limited choices to manage the fiscal deficit, and the budget is quite good given the situation. It is generally an investor-friendly budget because the crux of this budget is growth. Without growth, the fiscal deficit will not be able to be constrained.

Sujan Hajra, chief economist and executive director at Anand Rathi Financial Services in Mumbai:

Given the macroeconomic climate – slowing growth, stable inflation, high fiscal deficit and current account deficit – this is the best budget that could be rolled out in these circumstances. The overarching priority in this budget is to affect some level of fiscal consolidation, and that has been delivered, having kept the fiscal deficit to 5.2 percent for this year.  The other priority for this budget is to induce financial saving and investment, and many measures have been introduced towards that, such as special incentives for over 1 billion rupees investment, a boost to infrastructure investment, particularly in the power and road sector, widening the scope for investing in mutual funds and the inflation index bond.

Despite this being the last full budget before the next election, the budget has largely resisted taking measures of overt populism. The two largely populist measures taken are the Food Security Act and the Direct Benefit Transfer, and none of these involve any major outlay. The subsidy component of the budget has been reduced rather than increased.

Also there has been some kind of benefit for the bottom of the pyramid with tax benefits for the lowest tax bracket and benefits on housing interest payment for the lower end of the spectrum.

Nobody can term this as a dream budget, but it is trying to address macro concerns and bring about some sort of revival in growth.

Chandrajit Banerjee, director general of the Confederation of India Industry, a trade group:

It is a very well thought through and analytical budget and not a political budget. It is a growth-oriented budget, where the focus on investment has been kept high.

Jaijit Bhattacharya, director for South Asia at Hewlett-Packard:

The IT and electronics manufacturing industry was looking forward to budgetary support to the government’s stated policy of promoting IT & electronics manufacturing in India. But this has not been done in this budget.

Dipen Shah, head of private client group, research, Kotak Securities:

The finance minister has projected a fiscal deficit in line with what he had promised, and it is far better than what the situation was when he had come in. To that extent, he has presented a responsible budget. We believe that the budget focuses rightly on higher investments, which can lead to better growth rates in the future. Several initiatives have been announced in the infrastructure sector. Followup action, in terms of removing infrastructure bottlenecks, will be needed and will go a long way in helping the government achieve the growth targets.

Nishith Desai, managing partner at Nishith Desai Associates, a research-based international law firm:

The budget brings some relief but not much excitement – in particular for foreign investors. It was expected that the finance minister would introduce new tax rates and this did not happen. We expected that estate duty would be reintroduced and this was not done. It was expected that there would be a whole host of new indirect taxes, and that was not done to a large extent. Therefore, it was not the draconian budget expected in the current macroeconomic situation. Only the super-rich have been charged a 10 percent surcharge, which is not too much of a burden, in my view.

However, we expected some big bang reforms for bringing foreign investment to India, which did not happen. The finance minister started by saying that foreign investment is “imperative,” but that imperative was soon lost. There was no assurance made to guarantee a stable regulatory environment and that there would not be any more retroactive amendments in general. It was expected that the finance minister would address cases that involve the offshore transfer of shares like Vodafone so that there could be some certainty, but this was not done.

I believe the finance minister will have to present another round of liberalization and reforms to attract foreign investment. I think that he has tried to please everybody, which is not a bad thing. But at the same time, if you look at this from the viewpoint of attracting the foreign investment necessary for growth – that has not happened.

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Why Jennifer Aniston Kept Her Hair Down on Oscar Night

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02/26/2013 at 02:30 PM ET

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Her longtime stylist, Living Proof’s Chris McMillan, says the star wanted to stick with what works. “She wanted to keep the makeup natural and the hair natural,” he says in the exclusive clip above. “I think it’s about, at this point, being really comfortable on the red carpet.” Amen!

To hear more on Aniston’s Oscar night look, and to hear McMillan give a how-to on the night’s hot short hairstyles (his faves were Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron), watch the clip above. Tell us: Did you like Aniston’s natural hair and makeup on Oscar night? 

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Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

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It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

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India Ink: Revisiting the Horror in Sri Lanka

NEW DELHI — In the series of photographs shot in 2009, the bare-chested boy is first shown seated on a bench watching something outside the frame. Then he is seen having a snack. In the third image he is lying on the ground with bullet holes in his chest. The photographs, which were released last week by the British broadcaster Channel 4, appear to document the final moments in the life of 12-year-old Balachandran Prabhakaran, the youngest son of the slain founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The images are from the documentary film “No Fire Zone,” which tells the story of Sri Lanka’s violent suppression of Mr. Prabhakaran’s equally violent revolution, which had come very close to securing a separate state for the Tamil minority of Sri Lanka. After 26 years of civil war between the Tamils, who are chiefly Hindus, and the Sinhalese majority, who are chiefly Buddhists, the Sri Lankan state won decisively in 2009. Human rights activists say that hundreds of Tamil fighters, political leaders and their families, including Mr. Prabhakaran and his family, did not die in action but were executed. They estimate that more than 40,000 Tamil civilians died in the final months of the war.

Within its borders, the Sri Lankan government appears to wink at its Sinhalese population to accept their congratulations for ending the war, but it maintains a righteous indignation when the world accuses its army of planned genocide.

“No Fire Zone” includes video footage and photographs shot on mobile phones by Tamil survivors and Sinhalese soldiers that were somehow leaked. The film’s director, Callum Macrae, told me that it will be screened at the 22nd session of the U.N. Human Rights Council, now under way in Geneva, where the United States plans to introduce a resolution asking Sri Lanka to investigate the allegations of war crimes by its army.

It is not clear what such a resolution will achieve because Sri Lanka’s powerful president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has a rustic swagger about him and a manly black mustache, is the triumphant face of Sri Lanka’s victory in the war. The Sri Lankan Army is unambiguously under his control. Whatever the worth of the resolution, India is expected to support it more enthusiastically than it did a similar resolution last March.

Over the years, the shape and location of Sri Lanka have inspired several Indian cartoonists to portray the island nation as a tear drop beneath India’s peninsular chin. This is an illogical depiction of Sri Lanka’s trauma because a tear drop is not sorrowful; it is a consequence of someone’s sorrow. Some caricatures that appeared in the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, showed the Indian peninsula weeping and Sri Lanka as the consequent tear drop. This imagery had a stronger logic. India’s history with Sri Lanka is, in a way, about a bumbling giant being hurt by a cunning dwarf.

Under the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the type of strategists who imagine they are great Machiavellian characters, and love to add the prefix “geo” to “politics” to feel good about their advisory jobs, ensured that India armed and financed the Tamil rebels. In 1984, when she was assassinated and her son Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister, Sri Lanka was engaged in a full-fledged civil war. Now, India wanted to play gracious giant in the region and bring peace to Sri Lanka. In 1987, it sent troops to achieve that end. It was a disastrous move, and resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 Indian soldiers and thousands of Tamil fighters. In an act of vengeance, Mr. Prabhakaran made his greatest strategic blunder: ordering the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.

On the early morning of May 22, 1991, as the news spread through Madras (now Chennai) by phone and radio, I saw people run out of their homes in some kind of delirium to pick up the newspapers from their porches. The city had just woken up to the improbable fact that a suicide bomber had killed Mr. Gandhi the previous night in a small town not far from Chennai. Until then, the southern state of Tamil Nadu, whose capital is Chennai, was a haven for the Tamil Tigers. Bound by a common language, the masses of Tamil Nadu felt a deep compassion for the struggle of Sri Lankan Tamils. But Mr. Gandhi’s assassination was seen by them as an act of war against India. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu at the time, Muthuvel Karunanidhi, who was accused of being a friend of the Tigers, went around Chennai in an open-roof van, standing with his palms joined in apology. That was not good enough. In the 1991 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, his party won only two seats.

But now, the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils has returned as a passionate political issue in Tamil Nadu. Mr. Karunanidhi is too old to stand anymore but even as a patriarch who uses a wheelchair, he is a useful ally of the Indian National Congress party, which heads the national government. He has often demanded that the accomplices of Mr. Gandhi’s assassin now on death row in India be pardoned, and that President Rajapaksa be tried on war crimes charges. Last year, when the United States introduced a resolution against Sri Lanka, India was reluctant to back it for strategic reasons, including that it has commercial interests in Sri Lanka, which China is fast grabbing. But Mr. Karunanidhi and public sentiment in Tamil Nadu finally persuaded the Indian government to support it.

In a few days, when the United States introduces its new resolution against Sri Lanka, the brute forces of politics and practicality will ensure that the Indian government led by the Congress party, whose leader is Sonia Gandhi, will join other nations in asking Sri Lanka to explain how exactly it eliminated the organization that made her a widow.

Manu Joseph is editor of the Indian newsweekly Open and author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People.”

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Jennifer Aniston & Justin Theroux's Wedding Planning Underway

02/27/2013 at 07:50 AM EST

She conquered the Oscars, and now Jennifer Aniston is preparing for another very big day.

The actress, 44, is in the process of planning her wedding to screenwriter-actor Justin Theroux, 41 – and she has already checked off some major tasks on her to-do list, including choosing wedding bands, setting a date and narrowing down dresses.

Just don't expect the wedding, which is likely to take place soon after Aniston wraps her current film in Connecticut on March 8, to be a lavish production.

"It will be a small affair with their closest friends," a source close to Aniston tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story.

In the meantime, the bride-to-be is enjoying life with her future groom.

"Jen seems more confident than ever," says the source, "and they've become a great team."

For much more on Aniston and Theroux's wedding plans, their romantic Oscar night and look inside their relationship, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE

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Advanced breast cancer edges up in younger women

CHICAGO (AP) — Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease is still uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads about possible reasons.

The results are potentially worrisome because young women's tumors tend to be more aggressive than older women's, and they're much less likely to get routine screening for the disease.

Still, that doesn't explain why there'd be an increase in advanced cases and the researchers and other experts say more work is needed to find answers.

It's likely that the increase has more than one cause, said Dr. Rebecca Johnson, the study's lead author and medical director of a teen and young adult cancer program at Seattle Children's Hospital.

"The change might be due to some sort of modifiable risk factor, like a lifestyle change" or exposure to some sort of cancer-linked substance, she said.

Johnson said the results translate to about 250 advanced cases diagnosed in women younger than 40 in the mid-1970s versus more than 800 in 2009. During those years, the number of women nationwide in that age range went from about 22 million to closer to 30 million — an increase that explains part of the study trend "but definitely not all of it," Johnson said.

Other experts said women delaying pregnancy might be a factor, partly because getting pregnant at an older age might cause an already growing tumor to spread more quickly in response to pregnancy hormones.

Obesity and having at least a drink or two daily have both been linked with breast cancer but research is inconclusive on other possible risk factors, including tobacco and chemicals in the environment. Whether any of these explains the slight increase in advanced disease in young women is unknown.

There was no increase in cancer at other stages in young women. There also was no increase in advanced disease among women older than 40.

Overall U.S. breast cancer rates have mostly fallen in more recent years, although there are signs they may have plateaued.

Some 17 years ago, Johnson was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer at age 27, and that influenced her career choice to focus on the disease in younger women.

"Young women and their doctors need to understand that it can happen in young women," and get checked if symptoms appear, said Johnson, now 44. "People shouldn't just watch and wait."

The authors reviewed a U.S. government database of cancer cases from 1976 to 2009. They found that among women aged 25 to 39, breast cancer that has spread to distant parts of the body — advanced disease — increased from between 1 and 2 cases per 100,000 women to about 3 cases per 100,000 during that time span.

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About one in 8 women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, but only 1 in 173 will develop it by age 40. Risks increase with age and certain gene variations can raise the odds.

Routine screening with mammograms is recommended for older women but not those younger than 40.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society's deputy chief medical officer, said the results support anecdotal reports but that there's no reason to start screening all younger women since breast cancer is still so uncommon for them.

He said the study "is solid and interesting and certainly does raise questions as to why this is being observed." One of the most likely reasons is probably related to changes in childbearing practices, he said, adding that the trend "is clearly something to be followed."

Dr. Ann Partridge, chair of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's advisory committee on breast cancer in young women, agreed but said it's also possible that doctors look harder for advanced disease in younger women than in older patients. More research is needed to make sure the phenomenon is real, said Partridge, director of a program for young women with breast cancer at the Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The study shouldn't cause alarm, she said. Still, Partridge said young women should be familiar with their breasts and see the doctor if they notice any lumps or other changes.

Software engineer Stephanie Carson discovered a large breast tumor that had already spread to her lungs; that diagnosis in 2003 was a huge shock.

"I was so clueless," she said. "I was just 29 and that was the last thing on my mind."

Carson, who lives near St. Louis, had a mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and other treatments and she frequently has to try new drugs to keep the cancer at bay.

Because most breast cancer is diagnosed in early stages, there's a misconception that women are treated, and then get on with their lives, Carson said. She and her husband had to abandon hopes of having children, and she's on medical leave from her job.

"It changed the complete course of my life," she said. "But it's still a good life."

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Online:

JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/index.htm

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Wendy Greuel acquired a love of politics from working with Tom Bradley

In the early 1980s, Wendy Greuel was at a crossroads. In one direction was the family building supply company housed in a dusty North Hollywood warehouse. The other way, a career at Los Angeles City Hall in Mayor Tom Bradley's administration beckoned.

Bright, young and ambitious, Greuel had balanced duties on the high school cheerleading squad and as student body president with part-time work at Frontier Building Supply — where she kept the books, drove a forklift and answered the phone that sometimes rang for her mother's side business, the White Lace Inn.

The 17-year-old Greuel, raised a Republican, was star-struck when she first met the Democratic mayor during a youth leadership ceremony atop City Hall. "Here was this 6-foot-5 inspirational leader," she said, "and as I've jokingly said, I fell in love that day."

When Bradley handed her an award, her course was set. Over the next decade, she would join a group of young aides who drove the five-term mayor's agenda, from the inspiring run-up to the 1984 Olympic Games to the difficult rebuilding after the city's 1992 riots. Her portfolio at City Hall — homelessness, housing, child care and AIDS — took the young UCLA graduate from the conservative enclaves of the Valley into the most destitute corners of South and East L.A.

"I used to call her the mayor of hopeless causes," former Bradley Deputy Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said. "She had all the really tough, intractable issues … and she dove in."

Now a leading contender to follow her political hero to City Hall's top office, Greuel says she learned from Bradley the skills the job demands: a tireless work ethic, an ability to glide between city factions and a relentless focus on basic city services.

"What I really learned from all of those years was that the details matter," said Greuel, whose admiration for Bradley's zeal in reporting potholes led her to style herself as the "pothole queen" when she later represented the San Fernando Valley on the City Council.

But critics contend that as Greuel, currently the city's controller, raised her political profile she shied away from the imaginative and idealistic projects that were a hallmark of her years in the Bradley administration. Councilman Richard Alarcon, who worked with Greuel in Bradley's office, said he endorsed Greuel's chief rival, Eric Garcetti, after watching her gravitate toward politically safe initiatives.

"When Wendy was with Mayor Bradley, it was all about action — all about creating projects, ideas, L.A.'s Best," Alarcon said, alluding to the acclaimed after-school program that has now expanded to more than 150 Los Angeles schools. "We were doing a lot more than filling potholes."

Greuel says Bradley inspired her "passion to fight for social justice" and to stand up for the most vulnerable. But some saw her City Council focus as tending toward the more narrow — modernizing parking meters and synchronizing traffic signals.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, the former police chief who is supporting Greuel's rival Jan Perry, said that Bradley created the downtown skyline, rebuilt the airport and brought the Olympics to L.A.

"He had a variety of legacies — most of them were big-picture ideas," Parks said. "In Wendy's era on the council…it was more of the mechanics of dealing with transportation and potholes."

In the early years however, Greuel's drive on those social issues was unquestioned.

Olivia Mitchell, Greuel's first boss in Bradley's youth development office, described Greuel as the ultimate "go-getter." At night, Greuel volunteered to be Mitchell's driver, ferrying her boss to community gatherings, prisoner probation meetings and continuation high schools in her brown Camaro.

"She wanted to know everything I knew and the people I knew," Mitchell said. Later, colleagues would tease her about being willing to "go to the opening of an envelope," Greuel said.

Former Bradley aide Donna Bojarsky said Greuel sought out "high-value, low-glamour" assignments. She also cultivated long-term political relationships that have helped her stack up endorsements in the current race.

Fellow Bradley aide Kerman Maddox noted that she was the one staffer who went to every group's party.

"We're talking 1980s Los Angeles, a tough, gritty, racially-balkanized city," Maddox said. "We'd tease her: 'How many white girls are hanging out in South L.A? It's just you.' But that's her.... She could move from camp to camp, faction to faction, because she got along with everyone."

Greuel was tasked with developing programs to deal with the city's burgeoning homeless population, which was threatening Bradley's drive to redevelop downtown's Bunker Hill. Greuel was in the thick of the issue when tensions grew over a proliferation of urban encampments, including the much-publicized "Justiceville."

Ted Hayes, Justiceville's leader and an advocate for the homeless, recalled that he and Bradley were at sharp odds because "I ran like a buzz saw right smack dab into his plans." Greuel began showing up at the camp, wandering among the plywood and cardboard structures in her prim navy suits.

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India Ink: Narmada Devi, the Housewife from Uttar Pradesh

Why do millions of people, from entire Indian villages to urbane middle managers to foreign tourists, brave the crowds at the Kumbh Mela? During this year’s 55-day pilgrimage, to Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, an estimated 100 million Hindus and others are expected to take a holy dip in the Ganges River to wash away their sins. India Ink interviewed some of them.

Narmada Devi, 45, a housewife from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, was one among them. This is what she had to say.

Why did you come to the Kumbh Mela this year? Is it your first time?

This is my fifth time. I came with family. We had a tough year last year. We wonder if it is because of the sins we have committed. We came here to wash them away.

How have you found it so far?

I love the excitement here. I am also fortunate that I am here on Mauni Amavasya, one of the main royal bathing days. They say that if we manage to take a dip today, we would be internally cleansed.

Describe your journey to the Kumbh. Did you travel alone? How long did it take?

We traveled in a horrible bus from Benaras. It took us longer than it should have. I don’t know how much time we spent on that bus, but it was an awful journey. I threw up the whole time.

Do you consider yourself a religious person?

We are Hindus. We follow Hinduism and worship Hindu gods. We have a pandit, or priest, in our town who we believe in, and we do whatever he asks us to – with respect to our profession, our future, etc. Apart from that, I don’t know what you mean by being religious.

Who do you think is going to win the 2014 election?

We don’t care if it is the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party. We just want good governance. I can’t tell you how much we have suffered because of bad administration. Higher crime rates, not enough good education for my sons and my husband’s shop was also looted. No authorities came to our rescue.

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Cheers! Hollywood Toasts the Oscars

From Elton John's celebrated bash to Vanity Fair's annual soiree, see how George & Stacy, Adele, Jennifer Lawrence and more marked Hollywood's biggest night

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Updated: Monday Feb 25, 2013 | 11:30 AM EST
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Koop, who transformed surgeon general post, dies

With his striking beard and starched uniform, former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop became one of the most recognizable figures of the Reagan era — and one of the most unexpectedly enduring.

His nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians, who complained President Ronald Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon and evangelical Christian from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views, especially his staunch opposition to abortion.

Soon, though, he was a hero to AIDS activists, who chanted "Koop, Koop" at his appearances but booed other officials. And when he left his post in 1989, he left behind a landscape where AIDS was a top research and educational priority, smoking was considered a public health hazard, and access to abortion remained largely intact.

Koop, who turned his once-obscure post into a bully pulpit for seven years during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and who surprised both ends of the political spectrum by setting aside his conservative personal views on issues such as homosexuality and abortion to keep his focus sharply medical, died Monday at his home in Hanover, N.H. He was 96.

An assistant at Koop's Dartmouth College institute, Susan Wills, confirmed his death but didn't disclose its cause.

Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as surgeon general a decade ago under President George W. Bush, said Koop was a mentor to him and preached the importance of staying true to the science even if it made politicians uncomfortable.

"He set the bar high for all who followed in his footsteps," Carmona said.

Although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy, Koop described himself as "the health conscience of the country" and said modestly just before leaving his post that "my only influence was through moral suasion."

A former pipe smoker, Koop carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States; his goal had been to do so by 2000. He said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine. And he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.

Chris Collins, a vice president of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, said many people don't realize what an important role Koop played in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

"At the time, he really changed the national conversation, and he showed real courage in pursuing the duties of his job," Collins said.

Even after leaving office, Koop continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.

"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.

In 1996, he rapped Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco was not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."

Although Koop eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, his nomination met staunch opposition.

Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."

But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.

In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.

He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households, the largest public health mailing ever.

Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how HIV was transmitted.

Koop further angered conservatives by refusing to issue a report requested by the Reagan White House, saying he could not find enough scientific evidence to determine whether abortion has harmful psychological effects on women.

Koop maintained his personal opposition to abortion, however. After he left office, he told medical students it violated their Hippocratic oath. In 2009, he wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, urging that health care legislation include a provision to ensure doctors and medical students would not be forced to perform abortions. The letter briefly set off a security scare because it was hand delivered.

Koop served as chairman of the National Safe Kids Campaign and as an adviser to President Bill Clinton's health care reform plan.

At a congressional hearing in 2007, Koop spoke about political pressure on the surgeon general post. He said Reagan was pressed to fire him every day, but Reagan would not interfere.

Koop, worried that medicine had lost old-fashioned caring and personal relationships between doctors and patients, opened his institute at Dartmouth to teach medical students basic values and ethics. He also was a part-owner of a short-lived venture, drkoop.com, to provide consumer health care information via the Internet.

Koop was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, the only son of a Manhattan banker and the nephew of a doctor. He said by age 5 he knew he wanted to be a surgeon and at age 13 he practiced his skills on neighborhood cats.

He attended Dartmouth, where he received the nickname Chick, short for "chicken Koop." It stuck for life.

Koop received his medical degree at Cornell Medical College, choosing pediatric surgery because so few surgeons practiced it.

In 1938, he married Elizabeth Flanagan, the daughter of a Connecticut doctor. They had four children, one of whom died in a mountain climbing accident when he was 20.

Koop was appointed surgeon-in-chief at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and served as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

He pioneered surgery on newborns and successfully separated three sets of conjoined twins. He won national acclaim by reconstructing the chest of a baby born with the heart outside the body.

Although raised as a Baptist, he was drawn to a Presbyterian church near the hospital, where he developed an abiding faith. He began praying at the bedside of his young patients — ignoring the snickers of some of his colleagues.

Koop's wife died in 2007, and he married Cora Hogue in 2010.

He was by far the best-known surgeon general and for decades afterward was still a recognized personality.

"I was walking down the street with him one time" about five years ago, recalled Dr. George Wohlreich, director of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a medical society with which Koop had longstanding ties. "People were yelling out, 'There goes Dr. Koop!' You'd have thought he was a rock star."

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Ring reported from Montpelier, Vt. Cass reported from Washington. AP Medical Writers Lauran Neergaard in Washington and Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.

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