Indholdsfortegnelse for November 7, 2016 i India Today

ON NOVEMBER 5, the Samajwadi Party (SP) celebrates its 25th birthday. It will be, in keeping with large family occasions, a tense affair, rife with resentment, mutual suspicion, sidelong glances and much fevered whispering. Amar Singh will feel right at home. The ‘outsider’ blamed for exacerbating the rift between father and son, uncle and nephew, Singh has made an extraordinary return to mainstream politics. Nominated to the Rajya Sabha by Mulayam Singh Yadav in May, an announcement that shocked other SP leaders who, after six years without Singh around, might have been forgiven for thinking they’d seen the last of his brand of relentless politicking. In September he was made the party’s national general secretary. And, now, with the Uttar Pradesh state elections just months away, the party stands on…

Triskaidekaphobia. Fear of the number 13 is so allpervasive that it has its very own dictionary entry. Hotels refuse to have the 13th floor, vehicle owners pay to avoid the numbers 13 or, even worse, 1313 on their number plates. However, there is one global community that doesn’t subscribe to that superstition. The game of bridge revolves around the supposedly unlucky number and bridge players contemplate the number as a matter of course. They count up to 13 constantly, using groups of four numbers like 5-4-3-1, 4-4-3-2, 7-4-1-1, 4-3-3-3, 6-4-0-3. The best bridge players are the ones who can calculate swiftly and then communicate their counts accurately to partners. About 600 bridge players met in Delhi recently to showcase their skills at the HCL International Championships. The winners took home…

A management fee of 3 per cent for a mutual fund doesn’t sound too high, especially when equity markets are on an upswing. However, fees of this kind can dramatically impact returns on your investment, more so if you’re in it for the long run. It is important to know how much you are paying your fund managers to manage your portfolio. WHAT IS EXPENSE RATIO? The Total Expense Ratio (TER) is an annual charge that a fund levies on investments as management fee. It is calculated as: (Total expenses during an accounting period*100/Net assets of the fund). It includes all costs borne by the fund, such as management and advisory fees, sale and distribution commissions, legal, auditing and service fees, not to mention those paid to registrars and…

SHIVANGI BHAMBANI │ 26 Restaurateur and marketing director, The Factory Outlet and We.Desi Q If there’s one thing you could pick as the most coveted luxury, what would it be? Most of the holidays I took as a student or when I was working were budget holidays—staying in youth hostels and taking economical flights. So now my idea of ultimate luxury is going all out on vacations and staying in luxury hotels. Q What was your most luxurious experience ever? A vacation I took with my husband. We went to New York, Las Vegas and Miami. My husband managed to get us a suite at the Bellagio in Vegas, which was an experience within itself. I almost felt like the entire Ocean’s Eleven cast would pop out from corners. Q…

Living in the City of Joy comes with certain perks. Life can be simple or tough, depending on the way you look at it. One way is to equip yourself with skills. Living with skill is an extension of living with ‘awareness’ and it encompasses everything we do, eat, and how we sleep or breathe. How does one skillfully maximise the benefits of living in a city where everything moves at breakneck pace? Here are few quick tips. Early Morning Detox I am often asked how to release the ever-accumulating toxins that store up, especially the previous nights’ kochuri-aalu and maach mangsho still embedded within the system. I often recommend a simple glass of lime-honey-luke warm water the minute you wake up. Even if you cannot forgo your rosogolla and…

Wrestling in the akhara style has had a long tradition in Uttar Pradesh, dating back to Mughal times. And Yadavs in particular have been ace wrestlers. Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav was a district level wrestler of some repute in his youth. It was at the dangals (wrestling competitions) of his native Saifai village, in Etawah, that he learnt the daopench (hold and grapple) of the sport, which he has since successfully employed in politics to win Uttar Pradesh four times. And each time his loyal brother Shivpal has been by his side, learning tactics from elder brother Mulayam. Both have together championed the old culture of patronage politics, using money and muscle to power their way through politics. Son and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh is neither—he is…

As the Narendra Modi government nears the halfway point of its five-year term, administrative reforms continue to be a priority. This follows the belief that without transparent administration, its vision of good governance won’t percolate down. After dismantling the transfer-posting raj in Delhi in 2015 and changing the rules for empanelment in 2016—to select the best officers for top postings in Delhi— the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has now embarked upon a comprehensive inter-department service reform, beginning with the Indian Railways. The reform has been seen as necessary to uproot the culture of nepotism that has taken a firm hold, especially in the selection and posting of divisional railway managers (DRMs), zonal general managers (GMs) and members of the Railway Board. These are three of the most important posts in…

While speaking at the opening ceremony of the Madhya Pradesh Global Investors Summit (GIS-2016) at Indore, Union minister for IT and electronics Ravi Shankar Prasad described Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the opening batsman of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Team India. “Shivraj can play inswingers, bouncers and outswingers with equal ease,” he said. Besides reading the statement as a compliment to the CM’s political skill, delegates saw another message: that Chouhan, having successfully batted for farmers, was now bringing his batting abilities to bear on other sectors of the economy. But first, some context. In 2014-15, MP had a GDP of about Rs 5 lakh crore, of which about Rs 1.8 lakh crore came from the primary sector (agriculture, animal husbandry, forests and fishing), Rs 1.1 lakh crore from…

Bank fixed deposits (FDs) provide you fixed and guaranteed returns and are easy to understand—virtues that make them one of the most favoured investment options, particularly among senior citizens and retirees. But interest rates have been falling over the past two years and may dip further. At present, banks are offering 7-7.25 per cent interest on 3- to 5-year term deposits. For a person in the highest tax bracket (30 per cent), the effective rate of return on FDs would be 4.9 per cent— negligible real returns considering that inflation is around 4-5 per cent. WHAT SHOULD INVESTORS DO? Look at options beyond FDs, such as debt mutual funds. Debt funds had a good run over the past two years and some delivered double-digit returns. WHAT ARE DEBT MUTUAL FUNDS?…

A cash crunch at the end of the month or an emergency need not put you through the embarrassment of borrowing from friends or relatives. You could take a personal loan. You could even buy an expensive gadget or a phone and have the cost converted into EMIs since new channels are now available to meet the growing demand for personal loans. Fintech companies have launched mobile app-based lending platforms, allowing users to borrow cash in minutes. For example, Moneytap, a Bengaluru-based fintech company, has launched its app-based credit line with RBL Bank, and provides instant credit. Here’s a checklist of things to consider to get that personal loan right. INTEREST RATE Always compare interest rates before picking a personal loan. It is common for merchants to offer you…

I don’t give a s*** if you don’t like me,” says Sunny Leone at one point in Mostly Sunny, photographer-turnedfilmmaker Dilip Mehta’s documentary about her journey from the quiet, small town of Sarnia in Canada to big city Mumbai. It is one of the many provocative statements that the porn star-turned-Bollywood actor makes in the 94-minute film, in which Karenjit Kaur Vohra tells it as it is. It’s a film she doesn’t want Indians to see. At its India premiere in the Mumbai Film Festival, there are some clues why Leone and Daniel Weber, her husband, manager and confidant, are upset. There are brief clips from her porn films as well as footage from a brazen interview she gave to The Howard Stern Show, declaring that she knew she was…

Dattu Khandavilli, 29 Photographer PICTURE THIS A couple would do almost anything to get that perfect shot, and if the photographer happens to be Dattu Khandavilli, he’ll go a few extra miles and fly them to Dubai, Colombo or Singapore for a great background. One of his favourite locales to shoot at is the Suluban Beach in Bali. “It’s vividly picturesque, there’s ample natural light and romance in the air with hoards of honeymooners. All I have to do is wait for the chemistry between the two to kick in, and voila,” says Khandavilli, who once had an NRI couple from the UK come to Hyderabad exclusively to discuss a photo shoot, and a week later, they were off to Bali with him. Three thousand clicks and 20 hours of…

ROUND 1 September 3, 2015 SP kept out of the Grand Alliance before the Bihar assembly election Gainers: Akhilesh Yadav and Ram Gopal Yadav Losers: Mulayam Singh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav ROUND 2 December 25, 2015 Youth leaders Sunil Yadav Sajan and Anand Bhadauria suspended from party just before Saifai Mahotsav. Suspension revoked after Akhilesh objects Gainer: Akhilesh Loser: Shivpal ROUND 3 May 17, 2016 Amar Singh named party candidate for Rajya Sabha election Gainer: Shivpal Loser: Akhilesh ROUND 4 September 13, 2016 Chief secretary Deepak Singhal sacked Gainer: Akhilesh Loser: Shivpal ROUND 5 September 13, 2016 Control of PWD (Public Works Department) taken away from Shivpal Gainer: Akhilesh Loser: Shivpal ROUND 6 September 18, 2016 Seven youth leaders—including MLCs Sunil Yadav Sajan, Anand Bhadauria and Sanjay Lathar— expelled from…

It is poll season in Punjab and the Parkash Singh Badal government has timed its monumental tribute to the war martyrs to perfection. Just a month after terrorists from Pakistan attacked and killed 19 Indian soldiers inside the Army Brigade Headquarters in Kashmir’s Uri town, the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP government is ready with a symbolic riposte to the continuing threat of terrorist violence from across the border. The drive from Amritsar to the Attari-Wagah border is now happily interrupted by a grand new monument: a bared steel sabre shooting 148 ft into the sky, its razor-sharp edge tellingly turned towards Pakistan. It’s the centrepiece of the Punjab State War Heroes Memorial and Museum, located hardly 16 km from the border between Amritsar and Lahore opposite the sprawling military cantonment at…

Days after the September 18 Uri attack in which 19 Indian army soldiers were killed, the higher echelons of government went into a huddle. Military retaliation was among the options discussed by the cabinet committee on security. This was when the forces revealed to the government the critical voids in its ammunition reserves. The army was deficient in four to five critical items of ammunition. These included armour piercing fin stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) ammunition fired by its T-72 and T-90 main battle tanks for which it held just one day of war wastage reserves (WWR). Ammunition needed to meet war requirements during an operation is termed WWR. The IAF’s Su-30 fighter jets and Mi-35 gunships also did not have ammunition. The revelations galvanised the political leadership into action. Bureaucratic…

Gold prices have tumbled after a remarkable year. International gold prices have fallen 8 per cent from a peak of $1,366 per 10 gm in July this year to $1,255. Even after this correction, gold has delivered around 20 per cent returns this year after delivering negative returns over the previous three years. Taking a cue from international prices, domestic gold prices have also come down to Rs 29,773, after going up to Rs 31,529 in July. WHY ARE GOLD PRICES FALLING? Gold prices tend to be inversely related to interest rates. When interest rates are high, gold becomes less attractive as an investment option. This year, there has been a looming fear of the US Fed hiking interest rates. It had projected four rate hikes at the beginning of…

DAZZLING PAST 1 Diwali became a state festival when the Mughal emperor Akbar started Jashne-Chiraghan, writes Abul Fazl in the Ain-e-Akbari. Agra was made dazzling with diyas lit at the royal palace. The emperor began the tradition of distributing sweets on this day 2 Shah Jahan began the tradition of using fireworks, illuminating his palace with ‘akash diyas’, chandeliers, chiraghdaans and faanoos. Chefs from all across the country were invited to prepare a gala feast, with the chhappan thal or platter of sweets from 56 kingdoms, made with ingredients from Persia…

Clouds appear free of care And carefree drift away. But the carefree mind is not to be “found” — To find it, first stop looking around. Wang An-Shih (A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry, translation by J. W. Wallis) If you stop looking around, other than a carefree mind you will also find a perfect travel destination that fits all your requirements (such as affordability and distance) staring right at you, next to the map of your state. So close that it’s barely even considered as travelling to another state, Sikkim’s hill stations offer another kind of unparalleled beauty. It’s a state that has something for every kind of traveller. While the north offers glaciers and icy lakes, the east has more waterfalls and forests. South Sikkim is most accessible…