Investment is not merely following stock market trends and just fishing for what may be there under the water. The modern investor must be above the level of the hunter and gather to become a Bill Gates or a Premji and rise above the level of a mere coupon-clipper. The investor must be armed with a vision. That will determine the quality of the investment of the future.

Art, because it involves both an object and the discussion on it, definitely needs vision much more than stocks and shares to allow one to invest properly. Just studying the prices is not enough.

This vision calls for three levels of assessment at least. First, the work of art must be an aesthetic object embodying not only serious content but also excellence of execution based either on exceptional talent or good disciplined training.

This brings us to the second criterion. The artist must have a good enough track record to be regarded as a genuine practitioner. In other words, the artist must have a body of work that is broad enough to be assessed objectively.

And finally, what is the original contribution of the artist concerned to the evolution of the art form beyond its past and present. For, if an art fails to develop with the times or be relevant to them, it is no longer a good investment. It may have an element of rarity and museum value. Like a dinosaur?s egg, but its price will behave as the prices of contemporary paintings do. It is that robust price rise that has made our contemporary art worth investing in. And it is the way it continues to maintain its momentum that has even convinced banks to think of investing in our contemporary art as part of their stock.

A work by Jogen Chowdhury

The most important contribution to this development has been that of artists of the Mumbai group that evolved out of the modern vision of the progressive artists group that developed all over India. A mapping out of these artists would be helpful to the investor.

The core group at present consists of the most independent ? MF Husain, FN Souza, Tyeb Mehta ? and to a lesser extent, SH Raza. To these, I would add VS Gaitonde, KH Ara, Akbar Padamsee, Krishen Khanna and GR Santhosh. From Kolkata, one would access Rathin Moitra, Nirod Majumdar, Benodi Bihari Mukherjee, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Ram Kinkar Baij, Bijon Choudhary, Sunil Das, Ganesh Haloi, Nikhil Biswas, Ganesh Pyne, KG Subramanyan and Jogen Choudhary. From Delhi Santoz Mookherjee, Ram Kumar, Vivan Sundaram, Arpita Singh, Arpana Kaur and for those who are willing to invest in and project rare art, Gauri Pant. From the South, I would think of KCS Panicker and Laxma Goud. This list is not exhaustive. It does not include Amrita Shergil, AR Chughtai and A Ramachandran for example, each for different reasons. But it is one that is workable at present.

I would recommend a visit to the Alliance Francaise exhibition, to which 100 artists have contributed works to support that organisation, and the stock rooms of CIMA in Kolkata, Kejrivals in Bangalore, Sakshi in Chennai, Pundole and Chemould in Mumbai and the Dhoomimals, Kumars and Vadheras in Delhi for large stocks. Individual works, of course, are available with smaller galleries. But this is meant as a general guide. There is always more than meets the eye where good investment is concerned. The more enterprising must ferret those works out and bring them to light. Only then can the future be secure.