Innehållsförteckning för January 28, 2019 från India Today

The Congress government’s slender majority in the assembly is taking a toll on the legislative conventions of the state. The 29-year-old tradition of allowing the opposition the deputy speaker’s post was bypassed, with the Congress appointing one of its own—Hina Kawre—to the post. Former BJP chief minister Sunderlal Patwa had started the practice in 1990, wherein both the speaker and the deputy speaker were elected by consensus. Succeeding regimes—two headed by Digvijaya Singh and three successive terms with Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the chief minister—continued this tradition. Officially, the Congress maintains that the BJP had first broken the tradition by fielding a candidate for the post for speaker and had, thus, defied the tradition of election through consensus. A day before the election, the BJP nominated former minister and tribal…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are in a bind. While the Big Two, it’s reliably learnt, want the party’s election strategy to pivot on the Modi government’s governance record, party workers seem to be animated more by the Ram Mandir issue. This seems to be the major takeaway from the BJP national council meeting at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi on January 12 and 13, in which 12,000-odd chosen party workers and leaders from across the country participated. The party machinery believes Modi still has robust support among the masses, based on the popularity of the government schemes. But his image has taken a hit among his own followers in the party after the interview earlier this month when the prime minister declared that the BJP…

Just before the new year set in, e-commerce firms in India were in for a rude shock. New foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines in e-commerce announced in December by the Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) put e-tailers in a quandary. The guidelines explained a 2017 circular on the operations of online marketplaces—where 100 per cent FDI has been allowed—debarring online retailers such as Flipkart and Amazon from selling products of companies in which they own stakes and disallowing them from entering into exclusive deals for merchandise. Moreover, starting February 1, e-commerce companies cannot enter into agreements for the exclusive sale of products on their sites. The Press Note 3, where these norms were explained, prompted the large players to seek relief from the government. The trading community operating…

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath spoke to Aaj Tak’s Rohit Sardana about the importance of religion and politics working together, and presenting the Kumbh as a tourist attraction on a global platform. Excerpts: Has the Kumbh, a religious event, turned into a tourism opportunity? We have kept the religious aspect of the Kumbh intact, but it is also an opportunity to present Uttar Pradesh and Kumbh as a grand tourist destination before the world. While, on the one hand, the Kumbh is a gala occasion for the devotees, on the other, it is exciting for tourists as well. The arrangements made will cater to both categories. The opposition did not like the renaming of ‘Ardh Kumbh’ to ‘Kumbh’. I did not…

If you’re enticed by stories that repulse, you will enjoy Melmoth It is Gothic gloom all the way, as author Sarah Perry leads the reader along a series of ever-darker, narrower and more harrowing passages towards a satisfyingly bleak denouement. Who (or what) is Mel-moth? Like the Wandering Jew of biblical legend, she is the silent witness, an unquiet spirit who roams through all of eternity stalking those lost souls who have committed some secret sin. She manifests as a swirling mass of darkness, “not an object but a feeling of despair and loneliness made incarnate”. She is the embodiment of guilt. The story revolves around a middle-aged Englishwoman, Helen Franklin, “neither short nor tall, her hair neither dark nor fair… her neat coat belted, as colourless as she is”.…

Light is all its forms, whether bright or dim, can work wonders for any space. The Italian ambassador’s residence in the Capital became ground zero for a unique exhibition called Light First where iGuzzini, an Italian lighting brand collaborated with six Indian designers to create a series of vibrant art installations. The list included Harmeet Singh Issar, Kanchan Puri, Manav Bhargava, Vibhor Sogani, Sarvdeep Basur and Linus Lopez. Interesting installations included Flock by Vibhor Sogani, where a flock of birds in steel came together to create a light feature. Another installation, Yours & Mine by Manav Bhargava, took cues from a conversation between Alexander the Great and the Greek philosopher, Diogenes, while he was relaxing in the morning sunlight. Equally alluring was “WYSIATI” (What You See Is All There Is)...…

Memories in Print Rahul Sadagopan When Rahul Sadagopan, 36, visited an old client at her home in Coimbatore, he was puzzled to see a series of images framed on the wall. They were of the family patriarch enjoying a good laugh. “When I asked them why they had framed those shots only, they said that this was the first time the family had seen him laugh uninhibitedly,” he says. The images had been shot by Sadagopan at the daughter’s wedding. One of the most sought-after wedding photographers in the city, Sadagopan got his first photography assignment in 1996 while he was still in school. “My biggest USP is that I have been in the field passionately and professionally from the generation of film cameras,” he says. However, it was back…

There’s a new ice cream store on the block and it is serving up cookie dough topped with a flavour that could well come out of your wildest dreams. At Batter, the batters are half-baked and you could choose from triple chocolate brownie, fudgy chocolate cake, chocochip cookie dough, caramel cake and blondie. While in concept it sounds intriguing and makes the little outlet smell of freshly baked cookies at all times, we suggest you focus on their ice cream. The flavours are the really star here and the creamy, mildly sweet texture is what will make you come back for more. Try the Rose Pepper which packs a punch or the White Chocolate Maltova Crumble which is inventive but comforting with the familiar cookie crunch. There’s also Cement, which…

A strategy document prepared for the four-nation European consortium’s Eurofighter by middlemen Christian Michel and Guido Haschke—one which they were lobbying for—purportedly links the two defence deals currently at the centre of a controversy. The document, evidently a 2008 sales pitch prepared for Eurofighter against the French Rafale in the UPA-era deal for 126 fighter jets, was handed over to the CBI by Italian investigators in 2016. It is not clear whether Michel, extradited from the UAE to India last December 4, actually won the contract to lobby for the European jet. But the document has become a useful missile in the ongoing war of the defence deals between the Congress and BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s oblique reference to the revelation at a January 9 rally in Solapur does,…

In line with a sustained cooling of prices across the board, retail and wholesale inflation in India for December 2018 were down at 2.2 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively. While retail inflation was at an 18-month low, beating the estimates of research firms, wholesale inflation in the country recorded an eight-month low. The sharpest fall in prices has been in the food and beverages segment. While this has helped consumers, it has aggravated rural distress, with farmers continuing to get low prices for their produce. The Wholesale Price Index (WPI), or the price of a diversified representative basket of wholesale goods and services, showed that prices of primary food articles were down in the negative zone (when the inflation rate falls below 0 per cent) for six months…

Every crossing in Lucknow was swathed in red and blue hoardings bearing pictures of Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati on January 12, the day the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) announced their decision to ally ahead of the Lok Sabha election. Addressing a joint press conference with Akhilesh, Mayawati declared that her party had “decided to ally with the SP in the national interest”. Both decided to contest 38 seats each, leaving two constituencies for the Congress and two for other allies. An earlier SP-BSP alliance in 1993 had ended in two years when the BSP withdrew support. Amid increasing bitterness, SP workers had attacked Mayawati in Lucknow’s VIP Guesthouse in 1995. The incident turned the allies into arch enemies. Twice mentioning the ‘guesthouse incident’ at the…

Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy is evidently more confident in 2019 than he was in the run-up to the Andhra Pradesh assembly and Lok Sabha polls in 2014. Having completed his 3,648 km Praja Sankalpa Yatra over 341 days on January 9, the YSR Congress (YSRC) chief plans to shortly set out on a ‘bus yatra’ to reach assembly segments missed during his foot march. Until now, Jagan has covered 2,516 villages, addressed 124 public and 55 community meetings across 134 of the 175 assembly constituencies in the state. “Raavali Jagan, Kaavali Jagan (Jagan should come, we want Jagan)”, a slogan he hopes will catapult him to power, rent the air wherever he went. He hopes to cash in on the anti-incumbency against the N. Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party government…

Adense forested hill on one side and barren plains—randomly excavated in search of coal—on the other, Lumthari is a tiny, almost inaccessible hamlet in one of the remotest corners of the Jaintia Hills in Meghalaya. At first sight, the village looks a picture of pastoral bliss: men and women basking in the winter sun, children playing with puppies and piglets and pulling carts made of the bark of betel nut trees. But under the bright facade lurks a shadow of gloom: three of Lumthari’s young men, trapped in a coal mine in Ksan—21 km away by motorable road and a 15-minute trek through the hills—since December 13 last year might never come back again. For most part of the last month, 40-year-old Jostina Dkhar has not budged from the doorstep…

On April 17, 2014, the National Green Tribunal (NGT), while responding to a petition filed by the All Dimasa Students’ Union banned coal mining in Meghalaya. The petitioners contended that illegal, unregulated and unscientific coal mining in the state had resulted in air, water and soil pollution and the death of many mine workers. The NGT also based its verdict on a report prepared by O.P. Singh, a professor in the North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong. Its order stated: ‘A reading of the said scientific study made by (the) learned professor on the subject shows an alarming situation existing in the state of Meghalaya, especially in the Jaintia Hills, wherein rat-hole mining has been in practice for a long time. We are of the considered view that such illegal and unscientific…

IT WAS A DATE WITH THE ‘INDIA of today’ and the ‘India of tomorrow’ at the India Today Mind Rocks Youth Summit 2019 in Bhubaneswar on January 10. The excitement within the packed auditorium of the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology was palpable. The students watched in awe as celebrities from the world of entertainment, sports and politics came on stage and shared personal stories of trials and triumphs, along with tips for their young audience on how to persevere in life. The celebrities had been invited to speak at the summit and, over the course of the day, amid hip-hop performances, some impromptu waltzing and an overall exchange of notes, the event gave insight into how young India thinks and what it believes in. Whether it was with the…

Every day was a fan boy moment. We would turn into viewers and clap at the end of a shot,” says Karthik Subbaraj about directing his childhood idol Rajinikanth in Petta. The film makes no bones about being a tribute to Rajinikanth, giving ample play to his style and “Rajinisms”, and peppering the story with references to his 90s’ films . And despite being a film for the fans, the director’s touch is unmissable. The layered plot with its twists and turns keeps you at the edge of your seat despite a high runtime. His penchant for thrill, both atmospheric and story-driven, stays intact. With his first outing with the superstar, Subbaraj joins the league of Pa Ranjith (Kaala) and Vetrimaaran (Vada Chennai), working with a commercial superstar and larger…

For artist Veer Munshi, his installation, titled ‘A Place of Repose’ is a reminder of the perils of making art in a region torn by conflict. A wooden replica of a Sufi shrine in Kashmir, where such shrines are often burned or attacked, its symbolism is heightened by the setting of the exhibition. Like Kashmir’s many exiles, the travelling Srinagar Biennale has no home, so it’s showing from a pavilion in Kochi. “Homes don’t get demolished. They live within us,” a visitor tells Munshi, and he smiles and tells her about his lost home. Inside his dargah, you are confronted with 14 caskets and a cross-shaped piece of a graveyard where he has left two spaces unmarked for more bodies to arrive. Children die in conflict, he says. First announced…

India is developing rapidly today; our country’s urban population is projected to grow from 30 per cent to 50 per cent over the next two decades. Our cities, however, are in the state of an “urban emergency,” and face diverse challenges—from infrastructural inadequacies to pollution and climate change. If we are to create a sustainable future, architecture will need to address the following. RESOURCE OPTIMISATION It is imperative to understand that sustainable architecture can mitigate environmental impact only as long as it is affordable and widely accessible. Resource and energy optimization, therefore, are crucial to sensible design. URBAN DILEMMA With increasing urban density and paucity of land resources, there is a need to look for solutions that allow our cities to expand, not implode. High-rise developments are undoubtedly the way…

INSIDE THE BOX When many generations of the same family live together, then the common areas are perhaps the most challenging ones. Architects Amit Aurora and Rahul Bansal took this challenge head on for one of their projects, the Jindal residence. “The design of the Jindal residence in Delhi began as an exercise in trying to provide personally identifiable living spaces to all members of the family—spanning three generations—under one roof,” says Aurora. The main entrance opens into a foyer that provides access to the drawing room and to a corridor that acts as the circulation spine of the residence. “Natural materials and finishes—exposed brick walls, stone flooring and sandblasted wood—have been used in tandem with contemporary art and furniture pieces to give a sense of eclecticism,” says Bansal. The…

In the fallout of the internecine warfare between former CBI chief Alok Verma and his deputy Rakesh Asthana, Supreme Court judge A.K. Sikri has had his reputation shop-soiled by allegations of being Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stooge. Justice Sikri was appointed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, in his stead to the three-man committee, including Modi and leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, to decide Verma’s future after the Supreme Court reappointed him as CBI chief pending the committee’s decision. Given that Modi would not go against his own government and Kharge was bound to go against Modi, Sikri was effectively the tiebreaker. By deciding to agree with Modi and put Verma out to pasture, barely a day or so after he’d been reinstated, Sikri infuriated the prime minister’s…

In 2014, Pahlaj Nihalani released a short song video titled ‘Har Ghar Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi’ pledging his support for Narendra Modi in the Lok Sabha election. His contribution to creating the Modi wave was rewarded with a chairmanship of the Central Board of Film Certification. This time round, the efforts to build up the prime minister are even bigger. First up will be a biopic that comes with the lofty tagline—’ Deshbhakti hi meri shakti hai’ and features Vivek Oberoi, prosthetic nose, heavy make-up and all, generating much mirth in the Twitterverse. Meanwhile, BJP MP Paresh Rawal, 63, who won acclaim for his portrayal of Vallabhbhai Patel in Ketan Mehta’s Sardar and more recently played a mobile phone-breaking security advisor reminiscent of Ajit Doval in Uri: The Surgical Strike,…

Angry over delayed payments for their sugarcane produce, farmers torched the offices of six sugar units in Sangli and Satara on January 12. Their payment were two-and-a-half months overdue. The Sugarcane Control Act mandates release of payments within 14 days. Facing a cash crunch owing to a slump in the price of sugar, the mill managements said they were ready to release partial payments, but agitating farmers insisted on full payment. The Centre has fixed the minimum selling price for sugar at Rs 29 per kg, which is lower than the production cost of Rs 35 per kg. This season, the government sanctioned a fair and remunerative price (FRP) of Rs 2,750 per tonne of sugarcane, where the recovery was 10 per cent—and Rs 275 more for every 1 percentage…

The state government’s U-turn in handing liquor sale back to private players—20 months after it took over the business—has provoked the opposition to claim that with assembly polls due this year, the move will help the ruling BJP squeeze election funds from liquor syndicates. The Raghubar Das government announced this rollback—evidently driven by revenue losses—last month and will hand over the business to private players in April. REVENUE LOSSES AND MANPOWER SHORTAGES PROMPTED THE MOVE Taking over all liquor vends in 2017, the state-run Jharkhand State Beverages Corporation Limited (JSBCL) had set an ambitious annual revenue target of Rs 1,500 crore. However, earnings from liquor have been declining—from Rs 957 crore in 2016-17, when the business was privately run, to Rs 846 crore in 2017-18. In the current fiscal, too,…

Rat-hole mining involves digging very narrow tunnels into the ground. There are two types of rat-hole mining—box cutting, which is done on plain surface and when the coal seam is found much deeper into the ground, and side-cutting, in which rat holes are dug on hill slopes. In the box-cutting method, a rectangular opening is created. A vertical pit of 100-400 feet is dug. Workers enter the pit using cranes or ladders. Once they reach the point where the coal seam is, they dig horizontal tunnels of 1-3 feet height and crawl into these. Because the tunnels are so narrow, children are often employed for mining. The extracted coal is brought out using a conical basket or a wheelbarrow. In the East Jaintia Hills, it was this kind of rat…

While inaugurating the INDIA TODAY round table on the Kumbh, ‘Confluence of Minds’, at Lucknow’s Indira Gandhi Pratishthan, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath said the Kumbh “symbolises the confluence of three rivers, the holy Ganga which represented the ancient tradition and heritage of India, the Yamuna representing modernity, and the invisible Saraswati, representing wisdom.” Speaking a day after the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party had formally stitched up an alliance here, Adityanath, raking up the internal differences within the SP, said, “Younger brother Shivpal Yadav has already offered (party patriarch) Mulayam Singh Yadav a ticket from his party (the newly formed Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party-Lohia). Also, son Akhilesh Yadav needs to tell the public whether he will support father Mulayam’s candidacy for prime ministership, or whether he will back…

Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy stalks girl, goes deep into her social media life and inserts himself into her real one. You may be forgiven for thinking this is a Hindi film, which legitimises stalking as romantic. It is actually the premise of the new Lifetime show, YOU (availableonNetflix). Dysfunctional relationships are great television, mixing in drama, emotion, violence, sex and love in one appealingpackage. YOU takesthisone (psychopathic) step further. Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley), a bookstore manager, falls for customer Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail) and the attraction quickly turns obsessive. Over the course of the season, we are taken deeper into Joe’s obsession, through a constant voice-over, as he spies on her and clones her phone to read her texts. This is harmless compared to the zeal…

The wood models of a massive proposed law university in Nagpur and a school in Ahmedabad mirror Arjun Malik’s mind, both as an architect and a father of a six-year-old. There is ample use of open spaces and play areas; the bulk of the building is on the top two floors while the lower level transforms into shaded open spaces that seamlessly blend into the entire campus. “For our climate, all you need is shade and proper ventilation to use open areas. Children should be encouraged to run around and explore without determining specific entry and exit points,” says Arjun. In the past decade the Columbia University alumnus has worked on a series of projects with his 30-member team of architects led by his father Kamal Malik. WHAT IS YOUR…

Ever wanted healing products developed with century-old Ayurveda to give you a beautiful glow, healthy skin and luscious hair in the comfort of your home? Try neoVeda Spa & Lifestyle products by Craft House. The new launches, designed to balance three bio energies—Vatta, Pitta and Kapha—are also free of parabens, and harmful chemicals like sulphate, silicone, mineral oil, Trethanolamine and Phenoxyethanol. At Craft House, The Metropolitan Hotel & Spa, Delhi…

1 Feast and Shop HOW MANY times have you marvelled at the decor of a restaurant and wished you could at least buy one of the things from there? Well, your wishes have been answered by restaurateur Priyank Sukhija’s latest venture, Plum by Bentchair. The concept restaurant, which recently opened its doors in Aerocity, which is soon becoming the city’s latest foodie hub, it is one of India’s few retail restaurants, where you can buy everything you see—from the chair you sit on to the eye catching cat lights. And while you choose your favourite decor items, treat your tastebuds to some of the finest Asian fusion dishes in the city including light pillowy baos, sushi, cold pizzas and burgers. WE RECOMMEND Sriracha Bloody Mary and Mushroom Bao PRICE ₹1,800…