Indholdsfortegnelse for August 19, 2024 i India Today

“ Are loco pilots not humans?” the Congress had asked on social media platforms, after Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, visited a running room, or rest room, for locomotive pilots at the New Delhi railway station last month to review their working conditions. Rahul himself spoke of their “16-hour” workday and “boiling hot” cabins. On August 1, during a budget discussion in Parliament, railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw hit back with some numbers: 558 running rooms across the country have been air-conditioned, said the minister, as have 7,000 train engine cabs. Unfortunately, neither the minister, nor the Opposition, went beyond the general working conditions of loco pilots to talk about the specific grievances that women on the job claim they have been raising for years—the absence…

IN South Asia, power has been increasingly flowing not from the barrel of a gun or the jackboot of an autocrat, but from its teeming masses. Just look around. In Myanmar, the Min Aung Hlaingled military junta, which had sacked the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, today faces a bloody civil war that has seen rebels take control of half its territory. In Sri Lanka, the powerful Rajapaksa brothers, Gotabaya and Mahinda, who as president and prime minister respectively had treated the island nation like a family fiefdom, fled to safety in 2022 after people revolted over high inflation and low incomes. Then, in 2023, the Pakistan army saw the unthinkable come to pass when mobs protesting the arrest of deposed prime minister Imran Khan…

ON August 1, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgment redefining the framework of affirmative action. In a 6:1 majority ruling, a seven-judge bench led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud allowed states to create subclassifications within the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). The aim is to ensure a more equitable distribution of reservation benefits among the most backward communities within these categories. Acknowledging that SC/STs are not homogeneous, the apex court recognised the varying degrees of social and educational backwardness among these communities. It has in effect now allowed states to further demarcate reservations for specific castes within the 15 per cent reservation earmarked for all SCs and 7.5 per cent for all STs. This ruling overturns the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in E.V. Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra…

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For centuries, international artists, photographers and filmmakers visiting India have been captivated by the Taj Mahal. They have all captured the beauty and splendour of this monument with their own methods. For Charles William Bartlett (1860-1940), this method was ukiyo-e, the Japanese art of woodblock print-making and painting. Having travelled to Japan and collaborated with woodblock publisher Shozaburo Watanabe, Bartlett then travelled to India and applied these methods to the sights and monuments of India, especially the Taj Mahal. Bartlett’s stunning ‘Taj Mahal at Sunset (1919, Kokka woodblock on paper, 15x10 inches) is part of the exhibition Destination India: Foreign Artists in India 1857-1947, which covers 30-plus artists—from early luminaries such as Edward Lear (1812-88) and William Carpenter (1818-99) to latter-day practitioners like George Strahan (1839-1911), Walter Crane (1845-1915) and…

It’s as if even the road is afraid to go down that last stretch to the ‘valley of death’. Ten days have passed since a wailing wall of monsoon water and mountain debris cannoned down on two villages, Mundakkai and Chooralmala, leaving only memories, videos and sundered human body parts. But nothing ventures beyond Kalpetta, the administrative headquarters of Wayanad district, which you hit climbing up the hairpin bends from Kozhikode. Only ambulances and police vehicles stir the gravel on those last 21 kilometres. Past Meppadi, you bump into police checkpoints—another reminder that the emergency period isn’t over. Search and rescue operations are still on for the 152 people who have not been accounted for. There is nothing to mark the two villages that have disappeared, except for some broken…

Tejas Majithiya, a resident of Gujarat’s Una town, is a science graduate, has a Master’s degree too in science, has completed a Bachelor in Education (BEd) course and also cleared the state government’s teachers’ aptitude test (TAT, for recruitment as teaching staff in a government-run or aided school) in 2023. Despite these wall-to-wall qualifications, however, the 29-year-old has yet to find a job, allegedly owing to the Gujarat government’s delayed recruitments for teaching jobs. And he is not the only one. There are thousands out there like him. Take 28-year-old Jaymin Patel of Sabarkantha district and 29-year-old Dilipsinh Rathod from Ahmedabad. They, too, have cleared TAT and the teachers’ eligibility test (TET), and completed BEd, and BCom and MCom, respectively, but are waiting to find employment as teachers. It’s been…

The political tug of war between Union minister Anu priya Patel and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath shows no signs of a thaw. The latest run-in has been over the controversial Nazul Properties Bill, which, among other things, allows the state to reclaim public land leased to private individuals after the tenure ends. The Apna Dal (S) chief waded into the brouhaha, saying it was “anti-people”. Last month, she accu sed the Yogi regime of “unreserving” seats meant for the SCs, STs and OBCs during a recruitment drive. She has also called for a caste census—a key poll issue for the Opposition—which insiders say is a bid to spruce up her fading image among her Kurmi community. Yogi’s camp believes Patel wouldn’t be so brazen if she didn’t have the…

PAKISTAN Real GDP growth rate: (-)0.2% GDP: $341 bn Per capita income: $1,407 Population: 240 mn THE CRISIS The 2024 general election sees a coalition government take charge with Shehbaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) as PM. But the economic crisis—an external debt burden and high inflation—threatens its stability along with a resurgent Imran Khan INDIA’S WORRY ↘ The series of terror strikes in Jammu by Pakistan-backed militants reveal the country’s new game plan to disrupt the assembly election in J&K ↘ With Pakistan completely dependent on China for bailouts, Beijing will use it as a pawn to needle Indian security forces MALDIVES Real GDP growth rate: 4.4% GDP: $6.7 bn Per capita income: $12,667 Population: 0.5 mn THE CRISIS Pro-China Mohamed Muizzu wins the election on an…

A political life has a way of bringing a measure to things. If not in a starkly spartan way, Bhajan Lal Sharma retains that good country feel to his daily rhythms: up at sunrise, a brief stroll in the sprawling lawns where the two cows he keeps are always indulged with a spot of patrician patting, and then a busy day interspersed with simple, home-cooked vegetarian meals. A calendar bustling with meetings means he often ends up skipping—or delaying—his early dinner. His demeanour, though, is not devoid of rosy reminders of his carefree, younger days when he was fond of eating—he even won a bet once by consuming over two dozen laddoos at a wedding feast without any water in between. In December 2023, no one would have grudged him…

The key to unlock the many doors of opportunities, education is the most powerful weapon that can teach us to adapt, grow, think critically, and intensively. It’s only the ignorant who despise learning. The importance of education, therefore, can’t be understated. Debating on the changing landscape of the Indian education sector, the far-reaching reforms enlisted in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, and the problems of revamping the entrance examinations, the India Today Group Education Conclave 2024, presented by the Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, was an engaging and insightful affair attended by some of the leading lights of the Indian academia. Some of the vital issues that hold the power to change the education sector in times to come were discussed and delved into at length. Right from…

Singer/songwriters seem to be everywhere right now, and though most tend to release singles rather than albums, a handful have found a comfort zone in the middle ground that is the EP: collections of three to six tracks that allow them to express their ideas more completely. Here are four recent releases by a mix of established and upcoming stars. Frizzell D’Souza In My Asymmetry Frizzell D’Souza’s sophomore EP adds bubbling synths and orchestral soundscapes to the kind of acoustic guitar-driven tunes that featured on her 2022 debut, the wellreceived The Hills Know Of You. Blessed with one of the best voices to emerge out of the Indian indie scene in recent times, she charms again with songs variously dedicated to lovers, family and friends, each of which matches her technical…

Crisis brings understanding. The ruling BJP has tamped down on the row emanating from a minister’s rebellion, but it has left it acutely aware of the price it is paying for favouring defectors over party loyals. The story began in a mundane manner: on July 21, Ramniwas Rawat, a six-term Congress MLA who had switched to the BJP before the Lok Sabha election, was allotted the forests and environment portfolio in the Mohan Yadav cabinet. It was a reward for delivering Morena—the Lok Sabha seat where the BJP was faced with a tough fight. So far, so normal. But the very next day, Nagar Singh Chouhan, a tribal leader from Alirajpur, raised a banner of revolt. To satiate Rawat, it was Chouhan, a four-term BJP MLA and first-time minister, who…

In the last week of June, a high-profile delegation from Pakistan travelled to Jammu and Kashmir to inspect hydropower projects covered under the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), marking the first such visit in over five years to address differences between the two South Asian nations over shared water resources. The delegation, part of a Neutral Expert panel set up by the World Bank at India’s request, was airlifted by helicopters amid tight security to Srinagar and Jammu’s Kishtwar, where the disputed Ratle project is located. Accompanied by 25 liaison officers from the J&K administration, the full panel comprised at least 40 members from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Russia and other nations, alongside Indian and Pakistani representatives. This visit, coming amid frozen bilateral ties, has reignited discussions about the treaty’s…

My home in Dhaka is in Dhanmondi. Paddy Market. Dhaka’s frenetic growth has ensured that for decades there hasn’t been such a market in the vicinity. Since mid-July, there hasn’t been much peace either. On July 14, PM Sheikh Hasina angered students who were protesting restrictive quotas in government jobs for families of freedom fighters from 1971—even their grandchildren. She indirectly referred to the students as “razakars”, pro-Pakistan collaborators during 1971. As students of private universities joined colleagues in public universities, the government banned both in-person and online classes in an attempt to stanch protests. Cloddishly, the government didn’t factor in Gen-Z’s proclivity for social media. It also hadn’t factored in their distress, anger, energy and resolve. Police and cadres of the ruling Awami League and those of its youth…

Any discussion of 20th-century Bombay art history is usually dominated by the illustrious Progressive Artists’ Group, which makes the ongoing exhibition at Chatterjee & Lal a welcome departure. Resemblance: The Art of Rustom Siodia and Cumi Dallas is a joint showcase of the father-daughter duo who left a lasting impression on Indian art. The 40-odd artworks encompass landscapes, portraits and history paintings in mediums like watercolours, oil on canvas and graphite and ink on paper. Born in 1881, Siodia was a painter, illustrator and essayist. The first Parsi (and the second Indian) ever to study at the Royal Academy, London (1908-1913), he was a student of John Singer Sargent and his early paintings—particularly the vivid landscapes—show influences of the famed American painter’s style. The high point of Siodia’s career came…

There are 14 mountains in the world that stand above 8,000 metres. Only a few of us are likely to rattle off all their names. Most won’t go beyond a handful, but almost everyone will name the highest of them all, Mount Everest. A lot remains the same when it comes to the climbing aspirations of the majority today. This, at a time when there is ambiguity over the very definition of mountaineering. Here’s why. There was a time when climbers would stand at the base of a mountain and gaze at it objectively to figure out a feasible route to the summit. These days, behemoths like Everest are roped from bottom to top by high-altitude guides. There’s every facility available at a price. And it’s accessible for anyone who…