Indholdsfortegnelse for December 7, 2020 i India Today

Among the images we have come to live with as 2020’s new normal are those of Prime Minister Narendra Modi holding video conferences with the chief ministers of all states. These webinars have discussed everything, from the imposition of the lockdown to its easing, and, more recently, critical questions like the distribution of vaccines. India’s cooperative federalism is a given but rarely has it been so visibly and reassuringly seen in public as it was this year. It is against this changed landscape that we commissioned our 19th State of the States (SOTS) study. The Covid-19 pandemic, now in its 11th month, has wreaked unprecedented havoc. With 9.2 million cases and 134,699 deaths, India is the second-most affected country globally after the US, even though mortality rates are low and…

Patna’s 5, Deshratna Marg bungalow continues to gain notoriety for being unlucky for its deputy chief ministerial occupants. Tejashwi Yadav, who was allotted the bungalow, lost the post in July 2017. He vacated the bungalow only in February 2019 after the Supreme Court dismissed his plea to retain it and slapped a fine. The next occupant, former deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, has been dropped from the new NDA government in Bihar. It’s not clear which of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s two new deputies will get this sprawling house, but one of them, Tarkishore Prasad, is already in a row over his incorrect date of birth in election affidavits.…

In 2001, the year Tarun Gogoi took charge as the chief minister of Assam, 224 people were killed in terror-related activities. The state was also reeling under the spectre of “secret killings”, a series of state-sponsored murders. Family members of militant leaders were being eliminated to put pressure on the rebels to surrender. The Bodo-dominated areas of Assam and the hills sandwiched between the two valleys—Brahmaputra and Barak—saw regular bloodshed. A sense of fear and despair gripped the collective psyche of a state already facing economic bankruptcy. In 2016, when he left office after 15 years, having set the record for the longest-serving chief minister of Assam, only 45 people died in terror activities. But more than the statistical headcount, terrorism was no more the dominant discourse in the state.…

SCAM 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) (SonyLiv) Based on true events, the drama set against the backdrop of the Bombay stock market is a tale about a man who dreamt and dared and ultimately saw things fall apart SACRED GAMES (Season 1) (2018) (Netflix) Netflix’s first Indian original set the ball rolling for other platforms with its well-mounted account of the rise and fall of a gangster and the troubled inspector pursuing him SPECIAL OPS (2020) (Disney+ Hotstar) The espionage thriller follows a dogged R&AW officer who spends close to two decades hunting down a terrorist mastermind THE FAMILY MAN (2019) (Amazon Prime Video) Manoj Bajpayee stars in this action-drama series which showed us that juggling the roles of a dutiful husband and parent, and a spy is no…

Q. What made you want to pick Nishedh Alone Together for your digital debut? Honestly, I wasn’t thinking that this will be my first project. Creating awareness and breaking the stigma around tuberculosis was more pertinent to me. I felt I could give a voice to the cause, especially in times of a pandemic when health is so imperative. Also, TB has not been getting its due awareness because now when people cough they think they have Covid. Q. Two years after the birth of your son, you made your comeback in January with a title in Hobart. Then, your plans were cut short. I could have played, but I need to think as a parent and not just an athlete. It was difficult to travel with him in this…

The theatre is closed thanks to the pandemic; so, backstage workers are coming out to perform. We have just had the memoirs of Montek Singh and his wife; now comes NK. In the short while we coincided in the finance ministry, I never heard anyone call NK anything else. Now I learn that Pranab Mukherjee, who became minister many times, president once, and missed being prime minister at least once, called him Nandu. Another Singh once said to me about a third Singh: “You had better get on with him! He has worked with three prime ministers. He is indispensable.” He did not say that about NK, but was just as indebted to him. NK traces his ancestry on his father’s side to Narayan Singh, a zamindar in Rajasthan in…

IN the past few months, the novel coronavirus has killed millions of people across the world. But it is not the fatalities alone that have made the viral infection lethal. It has also taken the oxygen out of the global economic order, dealing a body blow to the livelihoods of many millions. India is among the countries worst affected by Covid-19, more so on the economic front. The mortality rate in India is on the lower side compared to many other countries, but the country’s GDP growth has shrunk to abysmally low levels. Yet, as India battles the virus, there has also been a collective effort to revive the flagging economy. And like India’s growth story, states will take the lead in India’s post-pandemic recovery. This is the moment India…

This year, India saw a convergence of multiple security threats—economic, military and health-related. A pandemic triggered an economic crisis and a military deployment by China triggered anxiety on the country’s northern borders. But, as they say, sometimes it takes a crisis to kickstart reform, especially in the defence sector. In May, the ministry of defence (MoD) rolled out some of its biggest policy incentives to boost indigenous defence manufacturing. The biggest post-Independence reforms announced over the past year include the appointment of a new chief of defence staff (CDS), a decision to corporatise the 40 defence ordnance factories and banning certain defence imports. These will help India address the twin challenges of modernising its ageing military hardware and indigenising its military to achieve self-sufficiency. The first India Today Defence Summit,…

SECLUDE Lansdowne, Uttarakhand A jungle terrain that ends in a cottage surrounded by ancient oak trees, which, if you’re lucky, will soon be covered by a picturesque layer of snow. ACCESSIBILITY Umari Khal village, 14 km off Lansdowne MUST-DO Nature walks, BBQ- bonfire night, trek RATES Starting at Rs 5,510 per night CONTACT Seclude.in/ 9810743242 VALLONNE VINEYARDS Sanjegaon, Igatpuri, Maharashtra A four-room boutique hotel in the middle of a 10.5 acre vineyard on the banks of the Mukhne Dam, Vallonne offers stunning views of the Sahyadri mountains MUST-DO Drink wine, sample local food. RATES: Starting at Rs 8,500 CONTACT Vallonnevineyards.com/9769130305 MAACHLI, FARMSTAY Parule, Tal-Vengurla, Sindhudurg, Maharashtra Maachli is a conceptual, theme-based, experiential homestay in a dense plantations of coconut and betel nut trees. MUST-DO Walks through the plantation, sunset hike…

Laws specifically on so-called ‘love jihad’ have been proposed by at least five BJP-ruled states so far—MP, UP, Assam, Karnataka and Haryana. On November 24, the UP cabinet passed a draft ordinance to check “unlawful religious conversions” and “inter-faith marriages with the sole intention of changing a girl’s religion”, with provision for jail terms up to 10 years Anti-conversion laws come under state governments, and currently exist in some form in eight states. Over the years, some states have tried amendments—of which many have faltered—but among those that have some form of law governing conversion, Odisha was the first (1967) to try to pass such a law, followed by MP (1968); Andhra Pradesh (1978); Gujarat (2003); Himachal Pradesh (2006); Chhattisgarh (2013); Uttarakhand and Jharkhand (2017) Most state laws are prefixed…

On November 20, less than two weeks into the Congress’s desultory performance in the Bihar assembly election and the Madhya Pradesh by-elections, party chief Sonia Gandhi constituted three internal committees to “consider and discuss issues and policies” related to the economy, foreign affairs and national security. The move came amid growing calls for introspection and action by senior party leaders, including the group of 23 who had written a letter to her in August to demand an organisational overhaul. By seeking an “active and available” leadership, they had also questioned the current party president. What surprised many in the Congress was that four of the ‘letter writers’—Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Veerappa Moily and Shashi Tharoor—were included in the three committees. In August, Sonia completed a year as interim president…

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath does not own or use a mobile phone, but gets regular updates on fake news circulating on social media about him and his government. Recently, Adityanath got the state information department to launch the @InfoUPFactCheck Twitter handle to track and counter fake news. Till November 23, the five-member team manning the account had struck down four fake news items, including those about the kidnapping of a ‘businessman’s son’ in Hamirpur and the rape of two women in Fatehpur.…

In today’s world, when a divisive discourse dominates the political landscape, Ahmed Patel stood apart. He built his influence and legacy by mending bridges, bringing together people from across party lines. The Congress Rajya Sabha MP, who was also the party treasurer, was called many names—backroom boy, power broker, trouble-shooter—but his mantra for solving any crisis was to build consensus and avoid confrontation. Though a devout Muslim, he was never a community leader nor did he ever aspire to be one. The only identity he wore with pride was that of a Congressman in the Nehruvian sense. For the masses in his home state Gujarat, he was Babubhai, the brother next door who was their friend, philosopher and guide in times of crisis. In today’s world, when a divisive discourse…

IN this year’s INDIA TODAY State of the States study, we have added a new category—leader in the fight against Covid-19. Like the rest of the world, India has been in the grip of the pandemic for almost a year. While the Narendra Modi government has led the country’s collective fight against this deadly virus, state governments have played a key role in executing the centrally monitored initiatives. This special one-time ranking is an assessment of the performance and preparedness of the states in combating the spread of the virus and reducing fatalities. However, this ranking must not be taken as the final assessment because the surge in infections and the responses of states have been as unpredictable as the virus itself. This evaluation is based on government-provided data as…

In the year of a global pandemic, the honour of the biggest release of 2020 belonged to a web series—season two of the Amazon Prime Video show, Mirzapur. With more politics and a marginally lower body count compared to season one, the crime drama, as per Amazon, was watched in over 180 countries within a week of its launch on October 23. Nearly half the viewers binge-watched the 10 episodes in just two days. The success of the series suggests that OTT audiences have a healthy appetite for gory, often gratuitous, violence and coarse language. These are now standard fare on all streaming platforms. So much so that if there was one common feature in many of the 2020 shows, it was how the protagonist, male or female, had easy…

Before picking up fan fiction, some readers are tempted to first revisit the original work. But since a reworked and retold tale is unlikely to match the power of the original, it may be better to come to Stephen Alter’s Feral Dreams: Mowgli & His Mothers without paying one’s respects to Kipling on the way in. Alter’s sullen young hero, found in the jungle and adopted by a missionary, is nothing like our Mowgli with “a brave heart and a courteous tongue”. Kipling’s vast wilderness surrounded the small villages and their ploughed lands, while the hero of this novel wanders a park infested with poachers in jeeps, and it is civilisation that is everywhere. In a series of nested narratives, Alter tells us the story of Daniel Cranston, all except…

I am skilled in plagiarising—from life,” Sai Paranjpye writes in her candid memoir, A Patchwork Quilt. The immediate context is a millworker’s remark that Paranjpye incorporated into her screenplay for the 1990 film Disha, but reading this book one realises that such skilful “plagiarism” applies to much of her output over a long, versatile career. During a phone interview, she elucidates by recalling a scene in her short film Angootha Chaap, about a village elderly who learns to read and write. He is sitting on a bullock cart with his grandson, slate in hand, and stumbles when he sees the Devanagari symbol for ‘M’. Is this the ‘Bh’ sound, he wonders—and just then a goat nearby bleats ‘Maa’ and he gets it. “That’s how I have worked too,” Paranjpye says,…