Indholdsfortegnelse for February 19, 2018 i India Today

Few politicians can beat the ambition and audacity of schemes conceived by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The latest one is the announcement by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in this year’s budget of the National Health Protection Scheme, or Ayushman Bharat. This tax-financed health insurance scheme for the poor will give 100 million poor families, or around 500 million people, a Rs 5,00,000 cover per family per annum. It is the world’s largest healthcare scheme. Modicare, as it’s now being called, will provide state-funded healthcare to a population bigger than that of South America. Prime Minister Modi, known for his big ideas, called the scheme ‘a path-breaking initiative to provide quality and affordable healthcare’ and said it would usher in a ‘paradigm shift in our health sector’. This is very…

The health ministry, according to reports, sought permission last month from the Supreme Court to declare tobacco to be outside trading norms. This would give the government more leeway to impose controls on the industry, including giving state governments the option to ban tobacco altogether, as some have done with alcohol. A similar decision was taken by the apex court in the 1970s on alcohol. And tobacco, the government argues, has a similarly deleterious effect on public health. The court will hear arguments in March. 70,500 cr Or $11 billion is the size of the Indian tobacco industry; it pays $3.1 billion (approx. Rs 19,200 crore) in excise duty and brings in $768 million (approx. Rs 4,900 crore) in foreign exchange 12% Of the world’s smokers live in India, says…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi knows a thing or two about timing. His book, Exam Warriors—208 pages worth of tips to handle examination-related stress—was launched before the onset of the exam season. It’s also the time of year when the pressure to perform leads to depression- and anxiety-related suicides among students. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar released the book on February 4. The ministers diligently went through every chapter of the book in the two-hour programme before an audience consisting of ambassadors, bureaucrats, journalists, students and teachers. The book is a collage of inspirational words, illustrations, mantras and strategies to calm the young mind. It talks of 18 asanas, gives advice on discipline, how to make mind maps of specific topics, Modi’s personal anecdotes,…

It’s a dream budget for me. I have been waiting for 30 years for this day. The reason is, the government of India has finally accepted that half the population does not have the money to pay for the real cost of healthcare and it has to take care of them. At least, that is the intent. They may not be able to do it in a day or two, but nobody can take the intent away. It’s important now to identify the deserving people. A very complex issue. After years of experience, I would say, Below Poverty Line cards are not the best way to identify who is deserving and who is not. Karnataka, for instance, has more BPL cards than people. The other problem is that there are…

ADVANTAGES Ends a staggered electoral cycle where there is an average of more than five state elections every year overburdening parties and the electoral machinery Cuts back rising election costs, and recurring deployment of administrative personnel as polling staff Reduces the use of security resources/ police personnel for peaceful conduct of polls Enforces the Model Code of Conduct, which suspends administrative activity and stalls routine governance, for a smaller period of time instead of allowing it to kick in over general electoral cycles Fewer elections help curb corruption and reduce the number of conduits and flow of black money Reduces the number of disruptions in the governance process DISADVANTAGES Stifles diversity and coalition politics that add to the vibrancy of a democracy, which, in turn, impacts voter behaviour and electoral…

Initiating one reform and leaving the others will not enable us to achieve quality democracy Simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state assemblies is administratively feasible provided there’s adequate infrastructure. Political parties have not come out with their views clearly even though a parliamentary committee, law bodies and the NITI Aayog have examined the proposal and made recommendations taking into account the pros and cons of the issue. The idea has certain advantages. First, the time and effort needed in conducting state and Lok Sabha polls separately in a country as large as India will be more as recurring conduct of state polls demand more manpower, time and funds. Secondly, the monitoring of political parties is easier if elections are held in one go. Thirdly, electoral violence and vituperative…

“HAVE A MAN IDOLISED BY MANY HOLD A NAPKIN, AND HALF THE TABOO IS DISPELLED,” SAYS TWINKLE ABOUT CASTING AKSHAY ARUNACHALAM MURUGANANTHAM’S CURIOSITY and defiance have brought him both infamy and fame. “In the early marriage days, you try to impress your wife. I did the same,” says Muruganantham in the popular TED Talks video uploaded on YouTube. So he brought Shanthi a packet of sanitary napkins, after he saw her using a rag cloth which was so dirty he wouldn’t use it to clean his two-wheeler. Only Shanthi wasn’t thrilled that he’d cut into their monthly household budget. The Coimbatore-based school dropout and welder then decided to make a pad on his own. Unable to find volunteers in his family or in the local medical college to test his…

The India Art Fair transforms Delhi into the capital of Indian art each winter, attracting lakhs of visitors. More importantly, perhaps, Delhi is already abuzz with exhibitions every evening, highlighting the huge influence the mass-market event has had in creating an ‘art season’. Founded in 2008 by Neha Kirpal, the art fair (previously known as the India Art Summit) has grown exponentially in its first decade. And following MCH Swiss Exhibitions (Basel) Ltd’s purchase of a majority stake in 2016, this year, Jagdip Jagpal, a former international programme manager at the Tate, UK, takes over the show. Jagpal has already spoken of a South Asia focus in the current edition of the fair that will be held between February 8 and 11 at the NSIC exhibition grounds in Okhla in…

 Pratibha Umashankar-Nadiger’s long overdue English translation makes it clear why Shikari, originally published in 1979, is perhaps acclaimed Kannada writer Yashwant Chittal’s best-known novel. Offbeat and absorbing, it provides a stirring portrait of urban Bombay, and a rare insight into Indian corporate life under the Licence Permit Raj. Shikari is Chittal’s big Bombay novel, an ode to its streets Chittal’s narrator Nagappa (often modernised to Nagnath, and further to Nag) was born, like the author, in Hanehalli village in Karnataka, and his memories often take him back there. But the novel unfolds in the Bombay bylanes of Khetwadi, Prarthana Samaj, Charni Road, Grant Road, Chowpatty and Dhobi Talao—as Nagappa’s distracted meanderi ngs guide his thoughts. Passing the Communist Party press reminds him of health hazards at his company’s Hyderabad factory.…

NEGATIVE SPACE A son recalls how he connected with his barely-at-home father over the art of packing a suitcase. This Oscar-nominated short has the visual appeal of Wes Anderson and the poignancy of an Alexander Payne drama. YouTube COMEDIANS IN CARS GETTING COFFEE Jerry Seinfeld gets the witty and quirky side of American comedians, actors, filmmakers and the odd President in this talk show. Netflix THONDIMUTHALUM DRIKSAKSHIYUM In this acclaimed Malayalam black comedy, a newly married couple find themselves battling with a clever thief as they try to get back the gold chain he has swallowed. HotStar…

Registering them in Delhi may soon prove impossible. But worldwide, vintage and classic cars and motorcycles aren’t just historical artifacts but also appreciating assets. Thanks to the maharajas, India boasts a massive number of these machines. Firangs happily flew into India and snapped them up to spirit them back home. A lot has changed since those days. By banning vehicles over 15 years of age in a bid to curb pollution, the government last year condemned these beautiful machines to the garage, display case, or the crushers. After a long court battle, vintage cars more than 50 years old can be used under extremely special conditions. But that’s hardly a victory for fans of the classics, captured beautifully in Gautam Sen’s new coffeetable book, The 101 Automotive Jewels of India.…

Q. Everybody says poetry is dead. But your books are bestsellers. How’d that happen? I ask myself that all the time. Never in a million years when I started 10 years ago did I think this is going to become what it has. But what everybody says to me is: “You put words to feelings I did not have the words to describe.” Q. Why do young people love you? My peers are probably going through the same things and we are growing together, so it makes sense that would be my readership. Q. You’ve been called an “Instagram poet”. Did the internet boost your career? My parents were immigrants, my mum didn’t work and my dad sacrificed himself just to put food on the table. I turned to social…

The Congress president’s Rs 70,000 Burberry jacket may have been the talk of town, but the party itself is in a dire funds crunch. Rahul Gandhi admitted as much at a recent interaction, saying the party’s financial strength was ‘way below’ the BJP’s, and that his NRI outreach programmes in the UAE were essentially fund-raisers. Last August, a Delhi-based think-tank said the Congress received Rs 198 crore from corporate donors as opposed to Rs 706 crore for the BJP in the three years from 2012. Rahul is optimistic their war cry of Sachche Din will prevail. “In Gujarat,” he said, “we spent less than a tenth of the BJP, yet we got a great response.” SOUL SISTERS West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has never hidden her admiration of Sonia…

Finance minister Arun Jaitley referred to the annual Economic Survey, presented in Parliament on January 29, as a “must-read... document on the Indian economy”. This year, the cover was a pale pink, a nod to the worldwide movement to end violence against women. Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian noted in the survey that while there were several government schemes aimed at the education and empowerment of Indian women, much was still left to be done for their social uplift. 63 MILLION Girls in India ‘missing’ due to India’s skewed sex ratio, 943 girls/ 1,000 boys, according to 2011 census 21 MILLION Girls estimated to be ‘unwanted’ by the Economic Survey. Parents who have boys tend to stop trying 24% Women in the Indian workforce in 2015-16, compared with 36% in 2005-06,…

Coll’s prose is lucid, breezy and compelling. Those with even a passing interest in these matters will find it to be an utterly absorbing account Steve Coll is no stranger to reporting on South Asia. In the early 1990s, he served as the correspondent of The Washington Post in New Delhi. During this time, he reported on the withdrawal of the Soviet Union’s forces from Afghanistan, the outbreak of insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and the aftermath of the Indian financial crisis of 1991. At the end of his tenure in South Asia, he wrote a marvellous volume of vignettes based on his time in the region. Later in 2004, he published Ghost Wars, a monumental account of the CIA’s attempts to hunt down Osama bin Laden, which won the…

The announcement of ‘Ayushman Bharat’ in Budget 2018 is a clear and welcome declaration of action by the government. Affordable healthcare is the foundation for any just and equitable society, the vital blueprint ensuring a productive and prosperous life for citizens. In a country where health expenditures push 63 million people below the poverty line every year, it has been an existential need for long. A starting point was needed. For people who could not access decent healthcare for so long, the time starts now. And it starts right in their village, within their community. It’s now the government’s job to align the nation’s health with state policy, call on the healthcare sector to help develop the framework progressively—so that the mission can be accomplished. First, those outside the healthcare…

The BJP’s manifesto for the 2014 elections proposed simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha, vidhan sabhas, panchayats and municipal bodies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue and the debate has continued ever since. The government referred it to the Law Commission, the Election Commission and a Standing Committee of Parliament which gave the following reasons in support: 1) Huge expenditure is incurred on holding separate polls. 2) The model code of conduct leads to a policy paralysis. 3) Delivery of essential services is affected. 4) Burden on manpower disrupts functioning of offices. Let’s first analyse the issues raised. First, the cost includes the expenditure incurred by the government on conducting the elections, and campaign expenditures borne by the political parties and candidates. Secondly, only new schemes are stopped as…

Marg, India’s oldest art magazine, is celebrating its 71st anniversary by launching its digital archive. The collection, a total of 270 editions, is invaluable for its insight into Indian and South Asian arts and culture. The history and significance of the quarterly is inextricably linked to the passion and personality of author, thinker, activist Mulk Raj Anand. Anand returned to Bombay from the UK in 1946, when India was on the brink of becoming an independent nation. He, along with art critic Anil de Silva and architect Minette de Silva from Sri Lanka and Bombay-based lawyer and art connoisseur Karl Khandalavala, decided the best way to contribute was to publish a magazine of the arts. In October that year, Marg (which stands for Modern Architectural Research Group, but also means…

The film is a reminder that finding a partner is as tough as finding a flat in Mumbai In Netflix’s first Hindi original, Love Per Square Foot, it’s the common dream of home sweet home in Mumbai that brings two people together even if they are polar opposites. Sanjay Chaturvedi (Vicky Kaushal) has grown up in the tiny quarters of a railway colony with his parents (Supriya Pathak and Raghubir Yadav). Karina D’Souza (Angira Dhar) and her mother (Ratna Pathak Shah) reside in a dilapidated apartment in Bandra lent by a relative. Both the twentysomething professionals crave for space and privacy and seek a new beginning. The film is a reminder that finding the ideal partner is as hard as finding a flat in Mumbai. Written and directed by Anand…

“Businessmen are fearful of speaking to us on the phone because our phones are being tapped... When I was the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, we used to do that to terrorists. You have reduced all of us to terrorists... Fear is not a good thing, especially in a democracy.” In a wide-ranging condemnation, senior Congress leader GHULAM NABI AZAD railed against the BJP government in the Rajya Sabha. He argued that freedom of speech and even freedom of doing business, language the government should appreciate, was being steadily eroded. It’s a familiar refrain from Azad.…

Turkish Cyber Invasion Over the last couple of weeks, a small group of hackers, apparently Turkish, were attacking the Twitter handles of mostly rightwing media figures in both the United States and India. In the US, a number of Fox News presenters were targeted for some fairly amateur trolling. While in India targets included actor Anupam Kher, BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, Rajya Sabha MP and former journalist Swapan Dasgupta and Puducherry lieutenant governor Kiran Bedi. If in the US, the hacked accounts were essentially used to tweet pro-Erdogan messages and warnings to not discriminate against Muslims, in India the hackers added a personal touch. “I love Pakistan,” they tweeted from Madhav’s handle, which is worth at least a weak chuckle. More seriously, questions continue to be asked about Twitter’s…

With the approach of the 2019 general elections, it wouldn’t have been clever to shower favours on India’s tiny middle class The poor are those who are not rich or middle class. Middle class is an intriguing concept; it sits awkwardly between the rich and the poor. It really belongs to Europe, and especially to Germany, whose Mittelstand has displayed important political and economic virtues. It was the product and pioneer of economic enterprise, a bulwark against royal tyranny, and subsequently the backbone of state finances. It dominates most West European countries, where prosperity and progressive taxation have depleted the numbers of the rich and the poor. A similar middle class was on the point of emergence from business and bureaucracy in British India, but socialist policies after independence squeezed…

Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has embarked on a politically precarious venture by taking on an issue that has vexed the state’s economists and industrialists for over two decades—rejigging the free power subsidy that has been bleeding Punjab’s finances. It’s a path few governments, including Singh’s earlier one (2002-2007), have dared to tread. Consider this: starting at just under Rs 4,000 crore a year in 1997 when the then SAD-BJP government first introduced free electricity for the farm sector, the power subsidy bill last year (2017-2018) soared to a staggering Rs 6,000 crore. So last December, the state government signed an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Plan (J-PAL) South Asia. MIT economists, in collaboration with Punjab’s power and irrigation department, will steer a…

ON FEBRUARY 1, ABOUT 41 MINUTES INTO HIS BUDGET 2018 speech, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley delivered the piece de resistance: “Madam speaker, my government has now decided to take health protection to a more aspirational level.” With cabinet colleagues cheering him on, he outlined the National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), offering hospitalisation coverage of Rs 5 lakh a year to 100 million poor and vulnerable families, or 500 million Indians. “This will be the world’s largest government-funded healthcare programme,” he promised—a nod towards ‘New India 2022’, and ‘universal healthcare’. A smile creased Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s usually inscrutable demeanour as he thumped the table in robust approval. Modi knows how to capture the magical power of dreams. In his last 44 months in power, the premier of the world’s…

TOWARDS THE END of his address on the opening day of the ongoing Budget session of Parliament, President Ram Nath Kovind made an impassioned plea for a serious debate on simultaneous elections. The ruling party, the BJP, has been vigorously advocating the idea, the clubbing of state assembly elections along with that to the Lok Sabha. This, despite the political and economic concerns many, particularly in the Opposition, have expressed. Only four times in the country’s electoral history were both polls held together: the very first general elections after Independence in 1952 and the next three till 1967. The historic split in the Congress in 1969 ultimately led to the premature dissolution of the Lok Sabha, thus disrupting the simultaneous elections pattern. Another factor that deepened this disruption was the…

The Indian general election is the largest peace-time event-management exercise on earth. The logistical challenge of holding near-simultaneous elections to 543 Lok Sabha seats—involving 930,000 polling stations and a staggering 900 million voters—is hard to overstate. India also has the distinction of having the highest number of eligible voters anywhere in the world, and has earned for itself the reputation of conducting among the most credible elections. Simultaneous elections do hold the promise of some resource optimisation but they are fraught in other ways. Here’s a measure of the challenge for 2019: 900 MILLION, the estimated total number of voters in 2019 1.6 MILLION VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail) slips will be used 930,000 the number of polling stations 10 MILLION, number of personnel engaged as polling officials to…

Care Today A/C TV Today Network LTD (FY 2014-15) Summary Total CSR funds received in FY 2014-15: Rs 93,25,944 Total CSR expense incurred: Rs 93,25,050 Total household toilets constructed: 463 TV Today Network Ltd donated Rs 93,25,944 to Care Today Fund for FY 2014-15, consistent with Section 135 of Companies Act, 2013. Care Today Fund established Care Today A/c TV Today Network Ltd (FY 2014-15) and deployed these funds to implement three projects aligned to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Care Today Fund implemented one of these three projects in partnership with Nageshwara Charitable Trust, an NGO based in Nagpur, Maharashtra. Under the project, the Nageshwara Charitable Trust received a grant of Rs 33.75 lakh to construct 225 household twin-pit toilets in the villages of Paoni (119), Khaparda (23), Swangi (19), Moudi…

Renowned for his poetry and films, Gulzar belongs to the generation of great writers who witnessed the Partition and worked in the Bombay film industry—Ismat Chughtai, Saadat Hasan Manto, and Bhisham Sahni among them. It is fitting, therefore, that Two, Gulzar’s first novel, translated from the Urdu and also published in Devnagari as Do Log, is about the Partition and narrated as a series of vivid cinematic vignettes. The story follows a group of Hindu and Sikh refugees being driven in a truck by Fauji, a Muslim, from their hometown of Campbellpur (now Attock in Pakistan) in the winter of 1946-47. Some have paid Fauji to drive them to safety. Others Fauji has taken on for personal or humanitarian reasons. But the main reason Fauji has undertaken this dangerous mission…

 What does it take to run a music festival? To find out, we talked to Nikhil Barua, founder of Bengaluru performing arts venue The Humming Tree, which will stage a day-long concert, Backdoors, this month. The event, headlined by hip-hop star Anderson .Paak, will be held in Mumbai (February 14) and Bengaluru (February 17) Right now, anyone doing anything big in music in India is doing it just for the love of it Q. How do you recover the costs for an event like this? Anyone who’s trying to do anything big in India right now is pretty much doing it for the love of the music. There are only one or two festivals here that manage to recover costs, because we just don’t have the numbers, in terms of…

The future may be electric but the present is still petrol and diesel—at least based on the latest edition of India’s largest automotive show. Running February 9 to 14 at the Indian Expo Mart in Greater Noida, ‘Auto Expo—The Motor Show 2018’ will host some 42 manufacturers displaying their two-wheelers, cars and commercial vehicles. Of particular interest, Kia will unveil its made-for-India SUV, the ‘SP-Concept’, which will give competition to Hyundai’s Creta later this year. Maruti-Suzuki will have a couple of concepts on display, including a forerunner of an SUVtype compact car. It will also launch the new third-generation Swift. Main rival Hyundai will display 15 different models, including the electric, hybrid and plug-in Ioniq as well as compact SUV ‘Kona’, an electric vers ion of which may be launched…