Indholdsfortegnelse for December 9, 2024 i India Today

After the general election five months ago, when the mighty BJP surprised many by failing to get a majority on its own, the recent Maharashtra assembly election was the litmus test of whether its popularity was on the wane. The results dispel that notion stunningly. The party’s 132-seat tally is just 13 short of a solo majority in a house of 288. Its Mahayuti alliance has 235 seats; the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is less than a quarter of that at 50. It is a massive boost to the BJP’s morale, particularly its leadership that was quite perturbed by the general election result. As a corollary, this also ensures the loyalty of its allies, Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu. The INDIA coalition, which thought it was on the rise…

The Gir landscape in Saurashtra, Gujarat, has turned into a textbook case about the struggles of wildlife management in India. In mid-September, the Union government released a draft notification for an eco-sensitive zone (ESZ) around the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary (GWS). Earlier, a 0-10 km periphery around 1,468.16 sq km of the core territory of the GWS was considered a buffer zone which forbade the establishment of heavy, polluting industries and mining. In the revised draft, this area has shrunk substantially—to a minimum of 2.78 km from the sanctuary at some places and up to a maximum of 9.5 km at others. The draft proposes a 2,061 sq km region around Gir as an ESZ spread over 196 villages in Junagadh, Amreli and Gir Somnath districts, including 17 rivers, 24,000 hectares…

By now, the ruling party’s victory celebrations have become a familiar affair for the country. The dhol beats, the firecrackers at the BJP headquarters in Delhi—and this time in Maharashtra too—and, of course, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message of gratitude to his untiring party apparatchiks and workers. After the huge disappointment in the general election this June, where the party fell agonisingly short of a simple majority mark on its own, normal service has been restored. The turnaround victory in Maharashtra—a major factor in that underwhelming Lok Sabha effort—has rubbished any doubts on the core competency of the BJP’s election machinery with Modi as its totem. At the heart of the Mahayuti sweep was the BJP’s solo tally of 132 seats out of the 148 it contested, a near-90 per cent…

↘ Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana Rs 1,500 per month to women from economically weaker sections Beneficiaries: 23 million Cost: ₹46,000 crore* ↘ 100% fee waiver for girls From EWS, OBC and SEBC categories pursuing higher education Beneficiaries: 205,000 Cost: ₹2,000 crore ↘ Annapurna Yojana Three free LPG cylinders for Ladki Bahin and PM Ujjwala Yojana beneficiaries Beneficiaries: 5.2 million Cost: ₹829 crore ↘ Mukhyamantri Baliraja Mofat Vij Yojana Free electricity to agricultural pumps with capacity up to 7.5 HP Beneficiaries: 4.4 million Cost: ₹14,761 crore ↘ Magel Tyala Saur Krushi Pump Yojana Solar powered pumps for farmers Beneficiaries: 850,000 Cost: ₹27,000 crore ↘ Mukhyamantri Yuva Karya Prashikshan Yojana ₹10,000 monthly stipend for youth as part of internship scheme Beneficiaries: 1 million Cost: ₹10,000 crore ↘ Mukhyamantri Vayoshri Yojana ₹3,000…

It was a crisp November morning in Kolkata, the day after the assembly election results in Maharashtra and Jharkhand had been announced. Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Kalyan Banerjee, never much given to censoring his sarcasm, let it rip with one question. “Why shouldn’t Mamata Banerjee lead the INDIA bloc? She has consistently defeated the BJP in Bengal. What has the Congress done lately other than losing elections?” he asked, at a media interaction. That was like a spear plunged straight and deep into the elephant in the room for the Opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). As its self-appointed captain, the Congress was too prone to waxing and waning erratically. Maharashtra and Haryana were seen as eminently gettable targets after its morale-boosting resurgence in the Lok Sabha polls. Instead, the…

Byelections in 4 seats Won by: NDA Led by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won all four seats in the Bihar assembly byelections, bolstering the coalition’s position just months ahead of the critical 2025 state polls. What makes the clean sweep even more impressive is the fact that three of the seats—Tarari, Ramgarh and Belaganj—were previously held by the Opposition INDIA bloc. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged victorious in the first two while Nitish’s Janata Dal (United) clinched Belaganj. In Imamganj, Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular)’s Deepa Kumari secured a win, keeping the seat within the NDA fold after her father-in-law and party’s founder Jitan Ram Manjhi vacated the seat as he moved on to the Lok Sabha. The results were also a stinging defeat for…

Gautam Adani’s biographer calls him ‘destiny’s child’. The 62-year-old chairman of the Ahmedabad-based $30 billion (Rs 2.5 lakh crore) Adani Group has escaped accidents, a kidnapping bid at gunpoint in 1998 and the November 2008 terrorist attack on the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. He also overcame accusations from the US shortseller Hindenburg in January 2023 that the group companies inflated share prices through shell firms and round-tripping funds to India. However, a US court indictment which said that, starting in 2020, top honchos of Azure Power—an Indian solar power producer that was listed on the New York Stock Exchange—connived with Adani and two of his senior executives to give $265 million (Rs 2,236 crore) in bribes to government officials across five Indian states in return for solar power contracts,…

For Indian motorcycling giant Royal Enfield, the Himalayas have been a spiritual home. Over the last 75 years, they have fostered a deep relationship with the region and its people. After steering a few popular sustainability initiatives in the Himalayas, the Royal Enfield Social Mission has announced the inaugural edition of the ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’ festival from December 5-15, 2024, at Travancore Palace in New Delhi. The thought behind this one-of-a-kind event is to offer an opportunity for visitors to discover the region’s unique landscape, crafts, culture, food and people. “We’ve been on this journey for a few years now. Our vision is to empower over 100 Himalayan communities while building resilience against climate change. Alongside, we are going to catalyse a global movement of one million riders who…

Whether he’s been leading you to the most mouthwatering feasts in India in The Great Indian Rasoi, or charming contestants and viewers as the feisty judge on Masterchef India, or sharing rare recipes on his YouTube channel, Chef Ranveer Brar’s face is by now a familiar presence. And yet, the ‘Food Sufi’, as he calls himself, is now following his soul down a different path. In 2022, we saw him essaying an LG-BTQ+ character in the Modern Love Mumbai anthology on Amazon Prime. Now he’s gone full-on Bollywood, playing one of the leads in The Buckingham Murders opposite Kareena Kapoor. “The response has been outstanding. A lot of people who watched it were surprised to see me there. Since then, I’ve got calls from a lot of senior directors and…

In the five years since the world woke up to the realities of the Covid-19 era, there has already been a string of brilliant, inquisitive novels about the unique and unprecedented nature of this time. Ali Smith’s Companion Piece, Louise Erdrich’s Sentence and Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends spring to mind as three novels that approach the problem admirably in very different ways. We can now add Avtar Singh’s Into the Forest to this ‘pandemic canon’. Within a svelte 160-odd pages, Singh has crafted a compelling tableau of characters brought together and torn asunder by migration, epidemic and circumstance. Set in an unspecified small town in Germany during the early days of the pandemic, the book begins when Nabi, a young Afghan refugee and janitor at a local hospital, finds…

Q. What can fans expect from ‘Soul India’, your concert in Delhi? The show will have all my genres—popular Bollywood songs, ghazals and some Colonial Cousins’ fusion, all rolled into one. Q. What have been some of the highlights of your musical career? One was when I got a break in television with Shaam E Ghazal and Aarohi. Later, Jaidev ji gave me a chance in the film Gaman, which was the turning point of my life. In the ’90s, I saw the pinnacle of success. Hazir 1 with Ustad Zakir Hussain was a big hit. Then I started singing in south Indian films, like Roja and Bombay. In 1996, Colonial Cousins happened. Q. What you are working on currently? A ghazal album with Farhat Shahzad, consisting of all his poetry,…

It was to be the mother of all battles between the ruling Mahayuti and power aspirants Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA). Coming after the Lok Sabha election in May, where the MVA swept 31 out of Maharashtra’s 48 seats, the Opposition alliance was perceived to have an edge in what was widely expected to be a photo-finish. In the end, it was the constituents of the Mahayuti—the BJP, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)—that walked away with the prize. Together, they secured a landslide 230 out of the 288 assembly seats in Maharashtra, the BJP winning 132 out of the 148 seats it contested, the Shiv Sena 57 out of 81, and the NCP 41 out of 59. The MVA was…

From the chief minister’s colonial-era bungalow on Ranchi’s Kanke Road, once considered jinxed for its occupant, to the stark windowless confines of a room in the Enforcement Directorate’s office basement, and ultimately to a cell in Birsa Munda Central Jail…. The world of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) scion Hemant Soren had contracted dramatically earlier this year. Arrested on January 31 by the ED for his alleged involvement in a land-grab case, the 49-year-old Adivasi leader’s political ambitions were shackled at a critical juncture—in the very runup to the Lok Sabha election. So write down the JMM-led alliance’s impressive victory in the assembly polls first and foremost as a riveting saga of individual grit. Denied any reprieve to campaign for the parliamentary polls, his political rivals thrived. The BJP-led NDA swept…

Byelections in: 9 seats Won by: NDA 7; SP 2 The atmosphere at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state office in Lucknow was electric on November 23. As the BJP surged ahead in the byelection results for nine assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh, leaders and workers gathered in droves, celebrating to the beat of drums. By 3 pm, with the BJP-led alliance’s victory confirmed in seven seats, the celebrations hit a crescendo as Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath arrived, marking the moment with firecrackers and reiterating his slogan, “batenge to katenge” (Divided, we perish). The BJP’s decisive victory is the result of a meticulously crafted strategy centred around Yogi’s leadership, which was facing intense scrutiny after a lacklustre performance in the recent Lok Sabha election. Organisational strength played a key role,…

Byelections in: 7 seats Won by: BJP 5; Cong. 1; BAP 1 Just ahead of his first anniversary in power, Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma has led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a remarkable victory in the Rajasthan bypolls. The party secured five out of seven seats, a dramatic improvement from holding just one of these constituencies previously. The scale of the bypolls, with seven constituencies spanning diverse caste and religious demographics, would be a tough litmus test for Sharma’s leadership. He successfully rose to the challenge, personally leading 14 rallies and conducting 44 meetings with social groups. Not only does the outcome accord stability to his regime, it also showcases Sharma’s ability to subdue rivals within the cabinet and the party. BJP general secretary Radha Mohan Agarwal has…

Byelections in: 3 seats Won by: Cong. The outcome of byelections to three seats—Channapatna, Shiggaon and Sandur—wouldn’t have made any difference to the clear majority that the Congress enjoys in Karnataka’s legislative assembly. But it was critical to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who faces an ongoing Lokayukta investigation in the Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) corruption case. Not just that, the contest at Channapatna pitted two political heavyweights—deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar and Union minister H.D. Kumaraswamy—in yet another turf war in the Vokkaliga-dominated Old Mysuru region. In the parliamentary polls, Kumaraswamy’s Janata Dal (Secular), in alliance with the BJP, had handed a decisive defeat to Shivakumar’s younger brother D.K. Suresh. Pulling off a coup of sorts, Shivakumar inducted and declared BJP turncoat C.P. Yogeshwar—a former minister and local Vokkaliga leader—as…

Shoojit Sircar has learned to love the hospital. In 2004, he spent three months in one, being by the side of his comatose mother. It would lead to October (2018), which took audiences deep into the abyss of one and captured in vivid detail the uncertainty that comes with being on the premises. But more than that, Sircar is fascinated by death so much that it has become a leitmotif in his films, as can be seen in the gutwrenching Jallianwala Bagh massacre sequence in Sardar Udham (2021) where the titular character witnesses it in such close proximity that it scars him, or how its fear lurks around Bhaskar in Piku (2015). Says Sircar, “After Vicky Donor (2012), I was like, let me face death straight on. I have to…

Nothing helps the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) succeed like a bout of failure. Just six months ago, in the Lok Sabha election, the party fell 30 seats short of the majority mark of 272 in the lower house. Even though Narendra Modi was sworn in as prime minister for a historic third consecutive term, there was a sense of defeat in that victory. The BJP had vowed to storm back to power with a mammoth majority of more than 350 seats on its own rather than depend on its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners for support, as it does now. For the Congressled Opposition bloc, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), the 234 seat tally may not have been enough to form a government at the Centre, but denying…

WHAT WORKED FOR THE MAHAYUTI ↘ Revdi politics, especially the flagship Ladki Bahin scheme ↘ OBC counter-mobilisation against Maratha hegemony ↘ Majoritarian assertion with slogans like ‘Batenge to katenge’ and ‘vote jihad’ ↘ Micro-management by BJP and Sangh Parivar cadre ↘ Early announcement of candidates CHALLENGES BEFORE THE MAHAYUTI ↘ Balancing politically-beneficial ‘laabhaarthi’ politics with development of state ↘ Changing power equati ons in BJP’s favour without antagonising Shiv Sena or NCP ↘ Ensuring issues like agrarian distress and caste conflicts do not come to a head ↘ Meeting expectations of leaders and legislators for cabinet berths and sinecures ↘ Ensuring their brute majority does not lull them into making political blunders WHAT WENT WRONG FOR THE MVA ↘ Over-reliance on the sympathy factor ↘ Inability to counter BJP’s polarising agenda…

SYMPATHY WAVE ↘ Hemant Soren leveraged the sympathy generated by his arrest in January and five months in jail to gain trust of tribal voters KALPANA STEPS UP ↘ Kalpana Soren addressed over 100 public meetings, forged a connect with women WOMEN VOTERS ↘ The Maiya Samman Yojana, launched in August, provides Rs 1,000 a month—to be hiked to Rs 2,500—to over 5 million women. In 68 of 81 constituencies, women voters outnumbered men—a significant majority favour the INDIA bloc COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE BJP TACTICS ↘ BJP’s allegations linking the Sorens with “Bangladeshi infiltrators” backfired, strengthened sympathy wave for Sorens ↘ Its attempts to fracture JMM’s tribal-Muslim coalition (comprising 41% of the population) by invoking the threat of land-grab through infiltration rejected by voters TRIBAL TRIUMPH ↘ By securing 27 out of 28…

Byelections in: 6 seats Won by: TMC Just two months ago, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had offered to resign amid a tense standoff with junior doctors up in arms over the brutal rape and murder of a colleague at the R.G. Kar Medical College & Hospital in Kolkata. Come November 23, and Mamata led the Trinamool Congress (TMC) to a clean sweep in the assembly bypolls, not only retaining and expanding its margins in five seats but also winning Madarihat—earlier with the BJP—for the first time. This win, despite initial waves of public anger, underscores the enduring loyalty of Bengal’s rural electorate, largely attributed to Mamata’s welfare schemes. The R.G. Kar protests, which once seemed a potent threat, now appear unlikely to sway the narrative leading up to…

Byelections in: 4 seats Won by: AAP 3; Cong. 1 A day before the results of the Punjab bypolls were declared, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) announced significant changes in its state unit. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann was relieved of his duties as state convenor, replaced by cabinet colleague Aman Arora, while MLA Amansher Singh Shery Kalsi took over as working president from CM loyalist Budh Ram. These changes, reflective of the central leadership’s growing influence, did little to disrupt the party’s grassroots grip. AAP secured victories in three of the four constituencies: Dera Baba Nanak, Gidderbaha and Chabbewal, all previously won by the Congress. Notably, in Chabbewal, Ishank reclaimed the seat his father, Raj Kumar Chabbewal, who had defected to AAP and now serves as Hoshiarpur MP, had vacated.…

Byelections in 2 seats Won by CPI(M) 1; Cong. 1W While the spotlight remained on Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s maiden electoral victory in Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, two key assembly bypolls in Kerala—Chelakkara and Palakkad—delivered mixed results for the state’s dominant alliances. In Chelakkara, the CPI(M)’s U.R. Pradeep retained the seat for his party, hence ensuring that the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) maintains its dominance with 98 legislators in the 140-member assembly. Meanwhile, in Palakkad, a Congress bastion since 2011, its candidate Rahul Mamkootathil secured a win for the United Democratic Front (UDF), which has 41 legislators. The LDF was facing a crucial test in Chelakkara—a seat it has not lost since 1996. The win came as a big relief for Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who credited it to continued…

The ninth edition of the SERENDIPITY ARTS FESTIVAL will be held in Panjim, Goa, from Dec. 15-22, ’24 “We don’t say this publicly, but it is probably the largest multidisciplinary festival in the world, with artists from about 30 countries participating. We see some 100,000 footfalls a day,” says Sunil Kant Munjal, chairman, Hero Enterprise, of the Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), which he founded in 2016. The ninth edition of the festival will be held in Panjim, Goa, from December 15 to 22, 2024, and will span everything from the visual arts to music, theatre, dance, culinary arts, craft and more. The seeds of the mega festival were sown long ago. Munjal, now 66, was inducted into the arts at an early age. As a child he saw Ravi Shankar…