Indholdsfortegnelse for November 16, 2020 i India Today

The recent US presidential election had several binaries: Good vs Evil, Decency vs Indecency, Truth vs Lies, Racism vs Inclusion, Rich vs Poor, Unity vs Division, Reason vs Irrationality, Consensus vs Confrontation, Science vs Stupidity, Globalisation vs Isolationism. Fortunately for America and the world, the better side of human nature prevailed. Just about. I must say I was shocked at the byzantine American electoral process. Completely absurd that a president can be elected even after losing the popular vote—as Donald Trump did in 2016—and the chaotic counting process. We may not always get everything right, but we should feel proud of the efficient way our general elections are conducted, and the results announced. The victory of Joe Biden in a closely fought US presidential election is as much about the…

Mounting protests against the farm bills in Punjab have seen the state BJP unit under siege. Occasion for the party’s only Jat-Sikh MP in the state Sunny Deol to step in, right? Not really. The Bollywood action star is missing from the list of speakers—Hardeep Singh Puri, Hans Raj Hans and Smriti Irani—the state unit has asked the Centre to dispatch to the state. Deol the politician is nothing like his fire-spitting image on screen. He has rarely spoken up in the 17 months that he has been MP, has been absent from his constituency Gurdaspur and has no rapport with either state or central leaders. SKIMMED AID Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has announced Rs 10,000 cash handouts to flood-affected families in Hyderabad. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation…

Romila Thapar has been our mentor and guide over a period of half a century in understanding the Indian past in all its complexity. She has engaged with the presence of diversity, conflict, dissonance and debate in the making of what we see as the past of India. The one idea carved with great clarity from her reading of the archives of the pasts is that to invent an idea of Indian civilisation as a monolith would be both false and debilitating to the project of creating and maintaining a civil society governed by ideas of compassion and the ethic of dissent. This new essay puts dissent at the heart of the formation of India as an idea and as a political entity. In the 1940s, Romila Thapar as a…

Born to Indian and Jamaican immigrants in California in 1964, Harris grew up in Berkeley but visited her grandparents in Chennai; learnt to wear a sari and even speak some Tamil Studied politics and economics at Howard University, a historically Black college, and attained a law degree after that Was California’s attorney general from 2011-2017 Became the first Indian American and second African American woman to join the Senate in 2017; will be the first woman to become US vice-president Harris has advocated for DREAMers (undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children), equal pay and abortion rights; faced some pushback for her allegedly overzealous record as California’s prosecutor Wakes up at 6 am and works out for half an hour daily She enjoys cooking; roast chicken is her…

The festive season is incomplete without the sparkle of lights. In fact, this year, more than ever, with the focus moving inwards, lights will no longer just be an accessory—illumination is in the spotlight. Whether you are planning on using your living spaces to primarily entertain or simply enjoy a family dinner, lighting will have the ability to make or mar the experience. However, with the market full of options, making the right choice can be difficult. Here are the top luxury lighting trends for your home. Dynamic lighting Controllability and comfort are crucial for customers. Currently, people are moving away from traditional chandeliers and conventional lamps towards LED and dynamic lights which can be controlled via mobile apps. These dynamic lights can change colour and increase or decrease in…

Henry Ford, the American car capitalist, is best known for two things: first, the mass-produced, affordable Ford Model; and second, the remark that “History is one damn thing after another”. Much has changed since Model T rolled out in 1908—‘Aspire’ and ‘Freestyle’ Models have now hit the Indian market in the under Rs 600,000 range. We have newer types of histories as well—visual histories, histories of emotions and belief and, as with Lakshmi Subramanian’s new book, a history of music during the heady but difficult times of the Gandhi-led march to our freedom. Singing Gandhi’s India is a title that both entices and provokes. It invites us to share in the devotion, delight and yearning of our colonised people as they broke into dhuns—Ramdhuns as modified by Gandhi, evoking a…

1 Nityan Unnikrishnan’s solo show It is Getting Louder, showing at Mumbai’s Chatterjee and Lal gallery from November 13 to January 2, feels very much like India right now. The acrylic images on khadi spill over with people: reading, eating, dreaming, waiting. The other set of the images, graphite on muslin or bamboo fibre paper, are abstract, filled with black and white forms which could be anything: masts, mountains, plants, porcupines. All that unites them is their jaggedness. 2 Art Heritage Gallery, Delhi, together with Kolkata’s Seagull Foundation, is showing The Self Portrait, a show of early and rare woodblock prints, sketches and watercolours by the late K.G. Subramanyan, who died in 2016, aged 92. They aren’t all depictions of the artist: watch out for ‘Jangpura Women’ (1950), and many…

On November 1, Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan, while in Gilgit amid an election campaign there, announced: “Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) will be given provisional provincial status.” Khan, though, did not indicate any time-frame. It was in September that his government’s minister for Kashmir affairs and GB, Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, had given indications of such a move. Yet, in an interview to an Indian platform in October, Moeed W. Yusuf, special assistant to the Pakistan PM on national security, had stated categorically that no such decision was being considered. For over 70 years, Pakistan had kept GB out of its constitutional jurisdiction to ensure that its people voted in favour of Pakistan whenever a plebiscite mandated by the UN is held. Why then is Islamabad contemplating changing the status quo of…

HARRY S. TRUMAN 1945-1953 HIGH: Emergency wheat loans to India LOW: Rankled by India’s neutrality in Cold War JOHN F. KENNEDY 1961-1963 HIGH: $1 bn aid for Third Plan. Steel plant in Bokaro, N-plant in Tarapur LOW: Criticises India’s annexation of Goa RICHARD NIXON 1969-1974 HIGH: Waives interest payments on $3 bn worth of rupee payments for food LOW: Sends US navy into the Bay of Bengal JIMMY CARTER 1977-1981 HIGH: US becomes India’s largest trading partner LOW: US ire over India’s refusal to condemn Soviet invasion of Afghanistan BILL CLINTON 1993-2001 HIGH: State visit, vision statement underlining India’s rising economic potential LOW: Sanctions against India for 1998 Pokhran tests BARACK OBAMA 2009-2017 HIGH: Recognition of India as a major defence partner on par with closest allies LOW: Failure to…

Luxury by definition cannot be seasonal. The pursuit and the subsequent attainment of an object of one’s desire is equivalent to a love affair. This year, more than any other, it is about preciousness. Time is precious, friends are precious, while occasions are smaller. Therefore, people are focusing on making gifting and décor more intimate and special. It is not just about a few cushions and lights any more, people are investing in bespoke items for their homes. This festive season is about luxury you can invest in and not an object for one-time use. Semi-precious stones such as onyx and malachite have a timeless appeal that is worth spending on. We are seeing them on everything—from plates to accessories and lamps. Another material that’s gaining momentum for the right…

Mumbai’s Akara Art gallery’s latest, Pilgrim Souls, Soaring Skies, Crystalline Seas, opened recently with Covid guidelines in place. The show, on till December 10, covers Jehangir Sabavala’s seven-decade-long artistic sprawl with 15 paintings from different phases of his life. “At least 11 of these have never been in public view before,” promises Akara Art founder Puneet Shah. One of them, ‘Elegy’ (1967), was traced to a private stash in Switzerland. Rendered in a mixture of abstract and cubism with a tender palette, ‘Elegy’, the owner had hoped, would “someday return to India, where he felt it truly belonged”. For long, Sabavala’s fame was obscured by the haze of the more popular post-Independence artists such as M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza and Tyeb Mehta. But in the past few years, demand for…

France: Learned that mass gatherings had to be prevented after a single wedding in Paris led to 76 people getting infected. Earlier, weddings were permitted with 200 guests; now, all wedding functions are banned Ireland: Despite having fewer cases than other European countries, it imposed a strict lockdown with a 5 km travel limit. Pandemic unemployment payments of €350 a week have helped gain public cooperation Scotland: A survey showed that around 26 per cent of all cases in July were linked to visits to pubs or restaurants; all pubs and restaurants now closed Australia: A 112-day lockdown in the state of Victoria led to zero new cases on November 1. The lockdown was supported by public engagement, police enforcement and an economic stimulus to keep the unemployment rate low…

The byelections for the 28 seats in MP recorded an average polling percentage of 70 per cent, about 3.5 percentage points lower than that recorded in the same seats in the 2018 assembly election. Of the 28 seats, only seven—Bhander, Karera, Pohri, Ashok Nagar, Biaora, Agar and Suwasara—recorded a polling percentage higher than in 2018. The lower turnout has been attributed to Covid and to the ongoing kharif harvesting (which is still not complete in many areas) while rabi sowing has also begun. It remains to be seen which political party gains or loses as a result of the lower turnout. Reacting to the turnout, Kamal Nath claimed the results on November 10 will “surprise everyone”.…

Long-time US senator from Delaware (1973-2009); was the fifth youngest senator in history; will be the oldest sitting president—he will be 78 at his inauguration Has endured personal tragedies; lost his first wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972; lost his eldest son to brain cancer in 2015 A Washington insider, Biden commuted by train for more than 30 years between Delaware, where he lived, and Washington D.C. As V-P, an influential advisor to Barack Obama. One of the reasons Biden didn’t run for president in 2016 is that Obama believed Hillary had a better chance to defeat the Republican nominee Ran for president in 1987 and 2008 Favourite movie: Chariots of Fire Biden owns a 1967 Corvette Stingray The Bidens earned $15.6 mn from book deals and…

‘NO FREE PASSES’ ASHLEY J. TELLIS Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC Biden will be in the mould of a traditional US president. Externally, there will be a recommitment to US leadership, reinvestment in our alliances and re-engagement with multilateral institutions. The US-India relationship is at a good place and the Biden administration will want to protect and build on what Trump left behind. However, Biden won’t give India a pass on three issues: 1) Liberalism and the changing character of Indian democracy; 2) What India’s self-reliance push means for their trade ties; 3) The US’s attitude towards countries like China and Pakistan. With Pakistan, I see greater continuity and not a fall back to the old US policy since its utility to the US is minimal…

The coronavirus and its socioeconomic impact on India and the world is unprecedented. No report, no survey could have predicted a six-month lockdown and life as we knew it coming to a standstill. But then that’s a pandemic for you. And while we are yet to come out of it completely, the Indian luxury industry has been amazing in its bullishness to get back on its branded feet. Even though the past seven months or so of forced confinement have made the well-read and aware consumer introspect more profoundly on their spends, what it has also done is reassured them that their investment in luxury products was never misplaced. Mind over matter Luxury is a state of mind achieved by an assurance of unparalleled quality and refinement. People have realised…

In February 2010, the famous Mont-blanc Company withdrew the sale in India of their luxury Mahatma Gandhi pen, priced at Rs 14 lakh a piece. Good sense and the threat of legal action had prevailed, for the Swiss producers were in clear violation of the Emblems and Names (Prevention of Improper Use) Act, 1950, which, incidentally, brought “the name or pictorial representation of Mahatma Gandhi” within its ambit only in 1959. The company, whose trademark Mont-blanc pens stick demonstrably out of the pockets of our elite countrymen, were clearly appealing to the vanity of the super rich: with a little pressure of the writing finger, blue or black ink would flow literally through a small opening in the left shoulder of a stenciled image of a gold-plated Walking Gandhi. At…

Fatima Sana Shaikh had it all going for her. After a couple of blink-and-miss roles, she bagged a key part in Dangal, playing the rebellious daughter to Aamir Khan’s stern patriarch Mahavir. The film earned Rs 374 crore at the box office, second only to Baahubali: The Beginning, Indian cinema’s highest-earning film. She soon landed a plum role in Yash Raj Films’ Thugs of Hindostan with Khan and Amitabh Bachchan as her co-stars. It seemed that nothing could stop Shaikh from fulfilling her dream to be successful in the industry in which she started out as a child actor (Chachi 420). However, after Thugs crashed at the box office, Shaikh wondered if her days were numbered. “It was hated and how!” says Shaikh. “I was heartbroken.” She lost projects. It…

Q. You have two online releases—Ludo and Chhalaang—coming up. Is 2020 when the lines between OTT and theatre get blurred? Certainly. The kind of love shows like Paatal Lok and Mirzapur have got is huge. The actors in it have become popular, like Jaideep [Ahlawat], my classmate from FTII. OTT will be a very strong, parallel industry. People want to see good content regardless of medium. Q. Jaideep, you and Vijay Varma are graduates of the 2008 acting batch. Back then, did you imagine that you would find a foothold in the film industry? That was the plan but we didn’t think it would happen. When I see people from FTII—Divyenndu, Rasika (Dugal) or Faisal (Rashid) on screen, I get so happy. After watching Paatal Lok, I was so proud…