The Osian?s auction slated for October 15 in New Delhi is interesting for a number of reasons. The best of these is the database its catalogue provides regarding the market for contemporary Indian art.

For example, the total value of sales of just one artist, FN Souza has risen from Rs 4,248,967 in 1997 to Rs 41,392,040 in 2004?at least a nearly nine times increase in eight years. In the same period, the average value of his works has increased from Rs Rs 1,57,369 in 1997 to Rs 16,55,682 in 2004 showing a remarkable growth in value of works in this period. The average square inch rate has grown from Rs 203.69 in 1997 to Rs 1,505.83 in 2004.

In this period, the average canvas value of Souza has gone up from Rs 1,65,078 to Rs 23,44,295 in 2004, while the price of his average paper work has gone up from Rs 61,011 to Rs 1,98,755. So, while canvases are doing very well indeed, paper works too have shown a three times increase; but obviously canvases still are the best investment.

Vivan Sundaram: The Carpenter and his Wife expected to fetch between Rs 10-12.5 lakh

Among the genres, his landscapes have gone up from an average of Rs 1,84,368 to Rs 13,09,314 in the period between 1997 and 2004, while still life works show a rise from Rs 1,60,494 to Rs 16,17,875 doing better than both ?Heads? and ?Nudes.?

More than that, it is interesting that from January to August 2004, both MF Husain and FN Souza put together, constitute more than 45% of the sales value. However, from 1987-2004 in terms of sales, MF Husain, FN Souza, SH Raza and Tyeb Mehta constitute the top of the pyramid. That is to say that the Mumbai group is still the flagship of Indian art investment. On the other hand, when over the same period, we look at the per square inch sales, we get Rabindranath Tagore at Rs 5,343 topping the list, with Abanindranath Tagore following at Rs 4,903, Chugtai at Rs 3,518 and Ganesh Pyne at Rs 3,456 and Gaganendranath Tagore at Rs 3,217 per square inch.

So we seem to have a neck-to-neck race between the Santiniketan and Bengal School artists. But the essential truth behind both these sets of figures is that whether it was the Bengal artists or the Mumbai group (which emerged out of the Progressive Artists Group), both were opposed to Colonial art and had evolved as a response, if not a resistance to, the colonially imposed art.

So, figures apart, a rule of thumb one can go by is that art that is rooted in our folk other precolonial traditions and is independent of both the past and strictly western, as opposed to universal, trends in modern art. From this perspective, while the Ravi Varma sort of colonial art and the bazaar Kitsch still has a kind of fashionable market, it will not last in the long run as art worth investing in.

What constitutes art for investment today and will in future is art that is the independent expression of the artist linked to a broad-based struggle for freedom from colonial dictation on the one hand and an equal independent approach that while recognising our past development, takes the best from it but does not follow it slavishly.

Moreover, it is an art whose subject matter is the environment, both urban and rural, of the common man, who like Tyeb Mehta?s rickshaw-puller; Husain, Bendre or Raval?s farmers and herdsmen; or even the bandwallahas of Krishen Khanna, are people in the street.

Early Ram Kumar and Souza?s figures too, have the same man-in-the-street appeal. India?s independence movement was a mass-movement and India?s aesthetic response too was one that raised the masses to being the subject of art. Even colonial artists like Ravi Varma could not avoid this pull, as is evident from works like ?Poverty?, one of his most moving paintings.

Similarly, we have Ram Kinkar Baij?s ?Santhal Family? and Sunil Das and Satish Gujral?s series on refugees. There are numerous other artists who have responded not only to the misery of the poor, but also of the grit with which they confront the challenge of poverty.

In this auction, there are a number of such works, but it is Vivan Sundaram?s masterly work, ?The Carpenter and his Wife? that catches this sentiment more authentically than most. Priced at between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 12.50 lakh, it appears to be a little overpriced. But then, so are most of the works. However, that may only be to perk up the bidders.

Still, prices apart, the careful investor can pick up works of the Santiniketan and Bengal School greats, of Jamini Roy and of the Mumbai group with very little soul-searching. They are the best investments being auctioned here.