Indholdsfortegnelse for March 11, 2019 i India Today

Our cover story, ‘Hard Choices’, last week examined the military options before the Narendra Modi government. One of the five options we reckoned the government might choose to employ to respond to the February 14 suicide bomb attack in Pulwama, in which 40 CRPF troopers were killed, was to target terrorist installations within Pakistan through air strikes. The government’s February 26 air strike against a known Jaish-e-Mohammed base in Balakot in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province took everyone by surprise. It certainly stunned Pakistan because the last time the IAF struck there was almost half a century ago, during the 1971 war. Prime Minister Modi's decision was audacious. Every time there is tension with India, Pakistan does not lose the opportunity to remind us of their nuclear capability. This time, the…

Pakistani writer FATIMA BHUTTO, a woman with some experience of losing family members to violence, tweeted her disaffection with the seeming enthusiasm for armed conflict among people in both India and Pakistan since the Pulwama attacks. Few would deny that India had a right to respond to the death of over 40 soldiers in a terrorist attack in Kashmir, but the narrative around that response—an air attack on a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Balakot, inside Pakistan—has been marked by triumphalism and bloodlust. In India, the media coverage has been dominated by ex-military figures and hawks, with doves significant only in their absence. Give peace a chance?…

General Dalbir Singh Suhag was army chief in 2016 when the Indian army conducted cross-border raids in Myanmar and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. He would’ve been a prize catch for the BJP, had he risen to the bait of a party ticket from Haryana for the upcoming general election. His reply apparently stunned partymen, used to seeing retired government officials beg for sinecures. Gen. Suhag turned down the offer saying he was not cut out for politics and would rather spend time with his family.…

The February 13 Supreme Court order to evict a million or more forest-dwellers has shocked grassroots communities, rights activists and environmentalists. The court has been hearing petitions that challenge the “constitutional validity” of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006, and “questions pertaining to the preservation of forests in the context of [the FRA]”. Its order is based on a seemingly simple logic: if a claim over forest land has been rejected, then the claimant cannot be a right-holder and, therefore, must be evicted as an ‘encroacher’. Unfortunately, this approach is based on a topsy-turvy framing of the problem. The FRA recognises the rights of forest dwelling communities (Adivasis and others) to reside in and use traditional cultivated lands, to manage forests collectively, and to have a say when forests…

Guna MP Jyotiraditya Scindia announced on February 24 that he’d contest the same seat in the upcoming election, scotching speculation that his wife, Priyadarshini Raje, would be contesting. However, speaking at a programme of anganwadi workers in Shivpuri, Scindia said that if the Congress won, 33 per cent reservation for women would be ensured in the legislatures. “I’ll be standing before you as a Saansad Pati then,” he said, referring to the system in which husbands of elected women representatives do their work instead. “Please don’t let me do that because my wife is more capable than me in many ways,” he was quick to add.…

“Amar paribar, BJP paribar.” West Bengal BJP workers have put up notices with this message and hoisted party flags outside their homes. It is meant to be a show of strength against the ruling Trinamool as well as a dare. “The workers who raise the party flag and have stickers outside their doorstep will be seen as fearless,” says a BJP leader. They’ll then be mobilised for booth duty. Party general secretary Sayantan Basu claims close to 400,000 workers have hoisted the flag. There has been no reaction from the TMC yet, given that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had placed enough roadblocks in the way of a BJP yatra in the state. “This shows the TMC goons are scared of us,” state BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.…

His master’s man: The blue-eyed boy of Narendra Modi, he has convinced the prime minister to make several political amends, including the decision to renew ties with the Shiv Sena Deal delivered: Worked out the nuts and bolts of the seat-sharing agreement with the Shiv Sena; persuaded BJP president Amit Shah to pay a courtesy visit to Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray at his residence in Mumbai last year; as CM of Maharashtra, took several administrative decisions fulfilling the wishes of Sena leadership Social media quotient: Has three million Twitter followers; personally writes and posts the tweets Communication quotient: Responds to all text messages he considers important…

Current assignment: While Ram Madhav is the party in-charge of the Northeast, Sarma is the man on ground, who stitches alliances and chalks out local strategy. As NEDA convenor, Sarma has kept all non-Congress political parties in the region united under the NDA fold despite the protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016. Madhav is working to bring estranged ally AGP back to the NDA with the help of NPP head and Meghalaya CM Conrad Sangma; the duo hopes to win 20 out of 25 seats in the Northeast for the NDA Cross-party friends: Sarma’s speed dial list includes all heads of political parties active in the Northeast; also some members of the CWC of the Congress Communication quotient: Madhav is accessible over phone to a select few; Sarma gets…

He decides on the party’s public stand on key issues. On Pulwama, he opted to go after the Modi government from the very first day even though Rahul Gandhi did not want to and later got Priyanka Gandhi on board to make Rahul change his mind Rahul’s new favourite; shares a great equation with H.D. Deve Gowda and his son and Karnataka CM H.D. Kumaraswamy; keeps the Congress-JD (S) alliance working; finalised seat-sharing deal in Maharashtra with NCP; one of the key negotiators with DMK…

Current assignment: Coordinating with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi on the informal tactical understanding between Congress and SP for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll Deal delivered: In the 2017 assembly poll, she convinced Akhilesh to tie up with the Congress after Priyanka had met with her Communication quotient: A commerce graduate, Dimple is fluent in both English and Hindi, unlike most SP leaders; she is one of the star campaigners for the party Cross-party friends: Has good rapport with Congress women leaders from UP, such as Aradhana Misra, MLA from Rampur Khas, and Aditi Singh, MLA from Rae Bareli Social media quotient: Has more that 200,000 followers on Twitter; tweets herself…

ON MARCH 12, 1930, MOHANDAS Karamchand Gandhi, and 80 comrades, embarked on a march from the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to the village of Dandi on the coast of Gujarat. The march would take 24 days, cover a distance of 241 miles and Gandhi would be joined by tens of thousands of people. A museum has been set up at the very spot where the march ended almost 90 years ago, in an extravagant re-creation of this watershed moment in the long-drawn struggle for Independence. The National Salt Satyagraha Memorial captures, in lavish detail, the storied history of the movement through statues, cast in silicon bronze, of the 80 marchers who set off with Gandhi; 24 narrative murals in deep relief, symbolising the number of days the march lasted; and…

PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. Women from Hapur, a village near Delhi, are empowered after they are introduced to a machine which makes low-cost, biodegradable sanitary pads. The film, based on the project by 10 girls from Oakwood School in Los Angeles and their teacher Melissa Berton, has won an Oscar for the best documentary short. Netflix LORENA On June 23, 1993, Lorena Bobbitt was mocked for cutting off her husband’s penis—after suffering years of abuse, including marital rape. The documentary series revisits the sensational case and seeks introspection on the public response, especially in wake of the #MeToo movement. Amazon Prime MAYA Kirti Kulhari delivers a powerful performance as the daughter of an ailing mother in this affecting short which highlights the challenges of looking after ageing parents, while striking…

Arodent made global headlines last week: the disappearance of the ‘Bramble Cay melomys’ was recorded as the first mammalian extinction credited to global warming. The critters, whose only habitat was a low-lying Australian islet, were wiped out by rising sea levels. It’s small consolation, but those rising tides are also generating a swell of excellent science writing addressing the karmic consequences and dilemmas of the Anthropocene. Swedish journalist Torill Kornfeldt’s The Re-Origin of Species: A Second Chance for Extinct Animals is a remarkably accessible dive into the world of various ‘Lazarus projects’—scientists on the threshold of resurrecting extinct species, from the woolly mammoth to the American chestnut tree. Kornfeldt never sidesteps the complex ethics and motivations of these projects and is clear that, in any attempt to resurrect the past,…

The data of a country is a national asset that the government holds in trust.” So says the e-commerce policy draft released on February 23. Amidst the hyper-nationalism in the air, its title doesn’t seem out of place: ‘India’s Data for India’s Development’. You’d think the headline should have something more to do with e-commerce. But data sovereignty has been the thread tying together new policies in the run-up to India’s 2019 general election, with a strident digital nationalism that I call Swadeshi 2.0. So this draft wasn’t a surprise: data is the new oil, it says pointedly. Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has said that companies should not be allowed to colonise data or unleash ‘data imperialism’. India’s richest businessman Mukesh Ambani has spoken about how bad data…

What is populism? What drives it? Commentators have shed much ink trying to understand this phenomenon sweeping the globe from Turkey to Texas. Former Indian diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri is the latest to wade into this noisy debate. By analysing three cases of populism—Brexit, Trump and Modi—Puri seeks to understand what lies behind the global populist turn. His answer, “delusional politics”, also forms the book’s title. Puri examines what he sees as delusional politics at the global level—in climate change, international trade, and combating terrorism. Delusional politics, according to Puri, is decision-making characterised by “arbitrariness and unilateralism… without regard to factual reality”, exhibited by leaders in a “fit of hubris, megalomania or bad advice…against their own and their country’s best interest in the belief that they are making history”. Puri’s…

Priyanka Gandhi Vadra does it differently: the Congress’s UP-East in-charge has come across as a responsive leader, promptly replying to text messages and emails, taking calls and even proactively calling junior party leaders. Brother Rahul, in contrast, continues to keep partymen guessing. A picture of him engrossed in his smartphone while paying tribute to the Pulwama martyrs went viral recently. In another interaction with students, he walked around, eyes firmly fixed on his smartphone. Yet, the Congress president remains inaccessible to the seniormost leaders of his party. They are expected to call his office, but are not assured of a response. Curiously, Rahul’s phone keeps beeping WhatsApp messages regularly. One can only wonder at the lucky few who do have direct access to the hard-to-get Gandhi.…

War is the unfolding of miscalculations, Barbara W. Tuchman, a contemporary military historian, observed. If India and Pakistan find themselves on the brink of a major confrontation, you could add misadventures, misgivings and misunderstandings to the list. The leaders of the two countries tend to look at managing relations between them as akin to playing poker—apart from strategy and skill, they employ brinkmanship to win rounds. Till Pulwama, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan and the deep state that controls him believed they held all the high-value cards to challenge India. They had the Terror card, which they regularly used to bloody effect. The Kashmir card to create disaffection in the Valley. The Muslim card which they flaunted to keep the West at bay. The Nuclear card to prevent India from…

A Mumbai-based macro economist, on a tour across the global financial centres of Asia, has had to modify his advice to investors every day since February 25. The day began with an assessment of the economic blowback from a retaliation by the Indian side to the Pulwama terror attack. On February 26, the world woke up to the news of air strikes by India, destroying the Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp in Balakot, Pakistan. With the government packaging it as a “non-military, pre-emptive action”, the economist reasoned that the conflict wouldn’t escalate. On February 27, as news of Pakistan’s tit-for-tat strike against India beamed across television channels, he was worried. A lot has changed since the last time India witnessed such an escalation in 2001, after the attack on the Indian Parliament.…

Telangana Rashtra Samithi chief K. Chandrashekar Rao has decided against an early announcement of the 16 candidates for the Lok Sabha poll from the state, unlike the 105 contestants he named in one go for the 120-seat assembly poll soon after dissolving the House in September. The delay, say sources, could also be because TRS plans to field new aspirants in at least six constituencies. KCR has asked partymen to leave the choice of contestants to him and focus on increasing the voting percentage in the villages. Individual candidates, he feels, matter less in a Lok Sabha poll.…

Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha, created in 2015, may not have contested a single Lok Sabha poll, but the Bihar ex-chief minister is still pulling his weight in the run-up to the LS poll. He first spoke of “one seat more” than Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Samta Party; now the Dalit leader says he needs more seats than Congress or he’ll contest 20 of Bihar’s 40 seats on his own. Manjhi also met Lalu Prasad Yadav to settle the seat deal.…

All eyes are on Vaibhav Gehlot to see if he’ll drop any hints about his electoral debut. Being Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son will help Vaibhav’s chances of winning from one or two seats, and winnability will be the sole criterion for the Congress. Though Vaibhav has been in the party for more than 15 years, he has never been given a ticket. On the other hand, former chief minister Vasundhara Raje has been quick to refute any suggestion that she might contest in place of her son Dushyant from Jhalawar-Baran.…

Current assignment: Poll in-charge of Rajasthan and Karnataka Deal delivered: He was the key negotiator in the renewed alliance between the BJP and Shiv Sena; held multiple rounds of talks with Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray Social media quotient: Has 1.5 million followers on Twitter; often responds to public grievances The survivor: In Rajasthan, the BJP was thrown out of power. In Karnataka, despite emerging as the single-largest party, it failed to form the government. Yet Javadekar escaped blame Who knew? When Modi first picked him as minister and later gave him a Cabinet rank, many were surprised: he was a protégé of the late Pramod Mahajan who wanted Modi ousted as Gujarat chief minister following the 2002 riots in the state…

Current assignment: To maximise Congress seats in UP; has already met Dimple Yadav, wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav Advisor-in-chief: Is the ultimate sounding board for Congress president Rahul Gandhi; helped him finalise the CM names for the three states won by the Congress in December 2018; convinced him to attack the Modi government over Pulwama attack Hands-on: In terms of working style, she is the exact opposite of Rahul; is spontaneous, takes instant decisions, doesn’t believe in processes but ensures she is not seen as a counter force to Rahul Social media quotient: Has 200,000 followers on Twitter; has not tweeted yet…

As the INDIA TODAY Tourism Survey & Awards, 2019, recognised the best and the most popular destinations at an event in Delhi this week, speakers from both the industry and the government expressed concerns regarding the lack of new tourist circuits and the high rate of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on hotels. There was a general unanimity among both the public and private stakeholders that the vast tourism potential of the country lies untapped. Arjun Ram Meghwal, the Union minister of state for water resources, river development, Ganga rejuvenation plan and parliamentary affairs, agreed that, at 28 per cent, the GST on hotels was too high. “Tourism contributes 10 per cent to the GDP and generates 13 per cent employment. Yet, it does not get the status of an…

The evidence of the government’s own numbers suggests terrorism has risen substantially in Kashmir since 2014. Correspondingly, unemployment is higher than the average in the rest of India. Tourism numbers have fallen off the cliff. The BJP was part of the state government in Jammu and Kashmir for the first time in 2015. Predictably, its odd-couple alliance with the PDP, led by Mehbooba Mufti, collapsed in June. Will more economic growth and development stem the apparently increased radicalisation of young people in Kashmir? The signs are that economic activity must be accompanied by an openness to dialogue. Whether there is much appetite in the central government for talks rather than demonstrations of authority remains open to question. 614 Terrorist incidents in Kashmir in 2018 alone, compared to 222 in 2014,…

At the inauguration of the National War Memorial in Delhi on February 25, Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a couple of digs at the Congress for having failed to complete a project decades in the making. His opponents found his politicking distasteful, arguing that the solemn occasion merited something more profound and unifying than just another stump speech. With elections close, the BJP is hoping to spin the escalating regional tensions into political gold, capitalising on the jingoism that becomes a feature of the national ‘mood’ in times of war. The war memorial, though, was a minor project, in both cost and scale, compared to the new statues, symbols of the Modi government’s muscular ‘new India’. 15.5 METRES high obelisk is the centrepiece of the new National War Memorial in…

Any business has to regularly interact with various agencies of the state. The roadside paan vendor cannot wish away his weekly transactions with the beat cop; a factory owner must have regular exchanges with various inspectors; and a large infrastructure provider has to frequently interact with government offices, ministers and senior officials. Through myriad laws, rules and procedures, the state creates for itself powers to permit or refuse; accommodate or hold back; fashion beneficial conditions or obstacles; and, by doing so, gains the currency to collect rents and favours in one form or another. A few countries—such as New Zealand, Singapore, the UAE and the Scandinavian nations—execute such powers in a transparent, rule-driven and enterprise-friendly way. Most do not, because complex opacity is the high-octane fuel for rent-seeking. The essays…

Ashok Gehlot has always been an enthusiastic fund-raiser for good causes and on March 3, the Rajasthan chief minister will be hosting an auction of mementoes and souvenirs in Jaipur. The funds so generated will be given to the families of soldiers killed in action. He has done this in his earlier tenures too, including a similar auction after Kargil. He keeps reminding guests at events to donate generously instead of spending money on garlands and gifts.…

The 71st birth anniversary of the iconic AIADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa on February 24 came in handy for the party and its allies in harking back to the past. While the ruling party released a CD of propaganda songs ‘Ammavin Arasu’ (Jayalalithaa’s reign), chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS) and deputy chief minister O. Panneerselvam (OPS) led the celebrations by cutting a 71 kg cake at the AIADMK headquarters. EPS also launched a drive to plant 7.1 lakh saplings across the state. Down the line, middle- and lower-rung party leaders also flagged off welfare initiatives across the districts, picking on 71 as the lucky number to woo voters. They believe the first major election post–Jaya can possibly be won by invoking the towering leader’s name, though EPS and OPS, dubbed…

On a December morning in 2016, Dimple Yadav, Lok Sabha MP from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and wife of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, received a call from Aditi Singh, the Congress MLA from Rae Bareli. Singh had a special request for her friend Dimple—Priyanka Gandhi Vadra wanted to meet her. Dimple happily agreed and later introduced Priyanka to not only Akhilesh but SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav. A month later, the SP and the Congress announced their alliance for the 2017 assembly election—a deal that fructified primarily through the efforts of Priyanka and Dimple. Cut to the 2019 Lok Sabha election. While the SP has tied up with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), officially discarding the Congress, Dimple and Priyanka—now the Congress general secretary in charge of…

Current assignment: To prepare a list of winning candidates in Uttar Pradesh; also work with contacts in SP and BSP to break the SP and BSP alliance Core strength: Absolute control over the organisation; executes plans fast Sore point: Does not share a good rapport with UP CM Yogi Adityanath Social media quotient: Has 600,000 followers on Twitter; has built up a strong social media team in Uttar Pradesh in the past two years…

Current assignment: To generate resources for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, keep line of communication open with probable allies; working along with West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on several proposed rallies of all opposition parties at different locations in the country Man for all seasons: He has the ear of the old as well as the new guard in the party. He’s the preferred Congress contact of several party leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, N. Chandrababu Naidu, M.K. Stalin and Farooq Abdullah Man in command: He has loyal colleagues and protégés in almost every state—Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan, Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra, D.K. Shivakumar in Karnataka Social media quotient: A reluctant beginner; he is now active on Twitter; has 600,000 followers…

Current assignment: Has been travelling around Bihar to understand the “region-wise, micro-level dynamics of state politics” and prepare the RJD for the 2019 Lok Sabha election; also evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the alliance candidates Past performance: In the run-up to the Bihar assembly poll in 2015, he dug out Mohan Bhagwat’s statement seeking a review of reservations and helped the RJD leadership make it a big electoral issue; this particular Bhagwat interview had almost gone unnoticed Data defence: When the BJP attacked the RJD’s past regime as ‘jungle raj’, which always put the RJD men on the defensive, Sanjay dug out the GDP and crime data from 1961 to prove that Lalu Prasad Yadav’s tenure was not so bad…

1 Best Adventure Destination Chadar Trek, Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir 2 Best Beach or Coastal Destination Palolem, Goa 3 Best Heritage Destination Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park, Jodhpur, Rajasthan 4 Best Mountain Destination Gulmarg, Jammu and Kashmir 5 Best Wildlife Destination Gir National Park, Gujarat 6 Best Festival Destination Kumbh Mela, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh 7 Spiritual Destination Golden Temple, Amritsar 8 Most Scenic Road Srinagar-Leh via Kargil, Jammu and Kashmir 9 Iconic Landscape Sundarbans Mangrove Forests, West Bengal 10 Best State for Travel Goa 11 Editor’s Choice Arunachal Pradesh…

“No producer was willing to fund Birds of Dusk... It won awards in San Francisco and Chicago” Writer-director Sangeeta Dutta, whose latest film Bird of Dusk—a tribute to the late filmmaker Rituparno Ghoshwas recently screened in Delhi, insists that she did not want to make a conventional documentary, preferring a fluid treatment with several layers, just like Rituparno’s cinema. Q Why was it important for you to make this film? We were friends from our Jadavpur University days. Also, I had worked as associate director in six of his films, including Chokher Bali (2003). After editing a book on him— Rituparno Ghosh: Cinema, Gender and Art (Routledge, 2017)—I felt the need to make this documentary. In India, archiving is a big problem and in showbiz, public memory is very short.…

A good-natured, informative and age-appropriate sex-ed book for Indian pre-teens, How I Got my Belly Button uses a framing narrative of two 9-year-old siblings (the twins Neal and Kiara) quizzing their very well-prepared parents about life’s mysteries. While there’s no shortage of answers here, curmudgeonly, age-inappropriate readers may leave the book with more questions than they began with. We wonder, firstly, why it’s being promoted as ‘India’s First Kids’ education book’. A Google search reveals at least 11 precursors from a variety of Indian publishers, notably Tarshi, Zubaan and Menstrupedia. Some passages seem cloyingly coy and quaintly gender-normative (‘A man and a woman’s body are like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle’). That said, we read it after binge-watchingSex Education and BigMouth on Netflix and all that puberty-com did leave…

Q. Tell us about your character in Sonchiriya? I didn’t know this guy, Lakhna, and I think I have played him honestly. There was nothing more I could have done. This, according to me, is my best performance till date. Q. Many actors have a go-to song while preparing for a part. Did you have any? I search for tracks that make me feel like the film. I had Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Chhoti si Umar from Bandit Queen on loop. A version of it also appears in our film. Q. You were supposed to work with Shekhar Kapur, the director of Bandit Queen. We thought we would work together (Paani), but couldn’t. Along with Dibakar Banerjee and Abhishek Chaubey, he is one of my favourite filmmakers. He is my…