Today was Kite Flying Day in Ahmedabad city in Gujarat State. Its an immensely popular festival in only this city in India (and maybe Surat too) and is actually a government and private business holiday as well. People take to their terraces since 5 am and fly paper kites with string coated with shards of glass. They then engage each others kites in a duel and see who can cut the other persons kite.
You can see some kite flying pictures on google images. Its a lot of fun and in the evenings people tie paper lanterns to the kites with candles burning in them. (yes, sometimes mishaps happen and the odd tree gets burnt down!)
This weekend was also the scene for Vibrant Gujarat which was an initiative launched by the Gujarat government to boost global investment in the state through economic reforms and the creation of a Special Economic Zone. According to todays newspaper, the Chief Minister signed some Rs 460 billion ($10 billion USD) worth of agreements with foreign companies for the creation of energy, oil & gas, petro-chemical and other sector factories and infrastructure. According to one calculation that should bring over 1.2 million jobs to the state over the next few years. Since this is India, a lot of these many never actually get built, but even if 50% of them do it’ll still be a huge boost to the state’s economy.
Ahmedabad’s current population is roughly 5 million and land prices here are booming! I expect this trend to continue for a few more years.