Innholdsfortegnelse for December 23, 2019 i India Today

The World is Flat, read the hopeful title of a 2005 book by columnist Thomas L. Friedman. The metaphor, derived from a statement by Indian IT czar Nandan Nilekani, encapsulated the inter-connected globalised world of liberal democracies that promoted the free movement of goods, capital and people. We are now just days away from the beginning of the third decade of the second millennium. Friedman’s description of the world seems to have been turned on its head. The world is veering away from liberalism towards authoritarianism and from free markets towards protectionism. Growing protectionism directly threatens global economic growth. A 2017 international trade study by law firm Gowling WLG showed that the world’s top economies had adopted more than 7,000 protectionist trade measures, and tariffs are now worth more than…

A DECADE IS BUT A human construct. It was conceived primarily to measure a period of time rather than define a span of human existence. As the English author Rose Macaulay observed, “Decades have a delusive edge to them. They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flowers in a border.” Yet, if a week is a long time in politics (and, as we saw in Maharashtra recently, a night can be even longer), the passage of 10 years in the life of an individual, state or nation is often witness to dramatic changes.…

LIFE, OR HISTORY, someone once said, is just one damn thing after another. Are the trees, the clumps and thickets of events blinding us to the dark, foreboding forest? The economy is slow, jobs are scarce, and the lies we’re being fed are making us turn on each other. Supposedly, it’s been a decade for populist revivals. But should we, the people, be wary of what we’re asking for? 2010 In April, the Right to Education guaranteed free education to all Indian children from the ages of six to 14 Terrorist Ajmal Kasab was sentenced to death on May 6 and eventually hanged over two years later Leaked CBI recordings exposed a discomfiting cosiness among top business people, politicians and journalists, all brought together by influential lobbyist Niira Radia 2011…

THESE HAVE BEEN TURBULENT YEARS for the Supreme Court. The rumblings in court erupted in a press conference when, on January 12, 2018, four of the seniormost judges charged that “of late… cases having far-reaching consequences for the nation and the institution had been assigned by the Chief Justices of this court selectively to the benches ‘of their preference’ without any rational basis for such assignment”. They charged that cases were being taken away midway through the hearing and handed over to handpicked judges. In other words, four judges in the collegium were accusing the then CJI of bench-fixing. The National Judicial Appointments Commission was struck down in 2015 with an extraordinary provision for a Memorandum of Procedure between the government and the court to deal with the fraught issue…

ENTERTAINMENT REQUIRED outings once. You’d have to drive to the theatre or concert hall. Today, however, the films you want to watch or the music you want to listen to are all available on the phone you hold. As a result, there is more of everything else too—more web shows, more podcasts and more stand-up specials. OTT platforms like Netflix inundate you with choices, but in that age-old quantity-quality tussle, it’s the former that usually triumphs. That said, there are exceptions, and we must celebrate them. Here are some events of the 2010s that highlight this decade’s glamour and glory. 2010  COMEDY STORE If the Comedy Store hadn’t come to Mumbai in June 2010, stand-up comedy in India would perhaps still be fledgling. India’s first standalone comedy club is where…

Q. Where were you when you heard you were playing Roger Federer in the first round of the US Open? And what do you remember most from that match? I was getting a massage and I got a text from my fitness trainer Milos (Galecic). I couldn’t quite believe it and was really happy. What I remember is getting a feel of the atmosphere at the Arthur Ashe Stadium, which is a very different setting when compared to the courts that I usually play on. Q. India has never lost to Pakistan in the Davis Cup. But then again, you had never won a Davis Cup tie before this. How much pressure was on you before the two matches last month? I think the only pressure I had was during…

Anyone familiar with designer JJ Valaya’s aesthetic knows how much it revels in drama. Which is present in generous doses in his 2019 annual couture collection, Tabriz, inspired by the Persian culture during the 16th to 19th century. The designer has now released, in collaboration with Delhi-based Tapestry, a home textiles collection by the same name. The range comprises rich silk-stains, jacquards and lush velvets with digital printing and different surface embroideries. “I have always been a royal nomad, traversing the globe to soak in exotic cultures,” says Valaya, adding, “This year’s voyage took me to 16th century Persia to bask in the glory of the Safavids and to discover, possibly, the very beginning of modern Iranian history. Tabriz draws from ancient Persian crafts and architecture, yet romances the verses…

April 2000 The erstwhile Andhra Pradesh police kill Azam Ghori, a Pakistani ISI agent, in Jagtial, Karimnagar district November 2002 Dacoits K. Satyanarayana and Sammaiah are killed in an encounter at Palamakula, in former Ranga Reddy district March 2004 Alleged criminal Ch. Venugopal is shot dead in an encounter near Ammuguda, Secunderabad May 2008 The gangster Aziz Reddy is gunned down at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad July 2008 Extortionist G. Suresh is shot dead in an encounter near Begumpet December 10, 2008 In an incident that took place on International Human Rights Day, three youths who had allegedly attacked two female college students in Warangal with acid are killed in an encounter following a state-wide uproar over the attack. The police say they opened fire in self-defence, killing the three…

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THIS.Republic 2.0 is coming. At any rate, a serious attempt is being made to usher it in. The second decade of the 21st century could well go down in history as the beginning of a conscious, deliberate and determined effort by Narendra Modi’s government to create the Hindu Republic of India. The logic is this: if Pakistan and Afghanistan can call themselves Islamic republics, and if another Muslim-majority neighbour, Bangladesh, can declare Islam to be its state religion, why can’t Hindu-majority India become a Hindu Republic? The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill is a foretaste of this change in the years and decades to come. India has witnessed 17 parliamentary elections since 1952. Political parties have won and lost elections. Governments and prime ministers have…

THE ECONOMIC PHILOSOPHY that guided policymakers in the decade of the 2010s was the antithesis of the reasoning that influenced the previous decade. The Indian government’s policy framework too swung from one extreme (free-market thinking) to the other (a command-and-control economy, with a bias towards socialism). Meanwhile, in the corporate world, one witnessed the bonfire of the vanities, as many old business tycoons borrowed heavily for unrestrained expansion—and then came crashing down. In banking and finance, sterling reputations, built over decades, were ground to dust. And a new breed of entrepreneurs came into the limelight—young engineering wizards using digital technology to disrupt old business models. With a free flow of dollars from enthusiastic venture capitalists, these newbies burnt cash and disregarded profits in a bid for scale and market dominance.…

AS TIME AND TECHNOLOGY LEAVE US atomised, we tend to forget that the collective has a power that we, as individuals, very often don’t. Protests, for instance, mark the whole of history, but the 2010s, in particular, were significant for those who sought to challenge our status quo. In India, states were formed, laws enacted and reservation given as a result of fasts that threatened to last unto death and blockades that altogether paralysed the State. Globally, too, we fought for democracy and against climate change, but the turning point for many of these protests was, sadly, violence. The questions remain—why must a crowd become a mob? Why must governments thwart dissent with their guns? PROTESTS IN INDIA 2010-2012 TELANGANA PROTESTS Few politicians have protested half as much as K.…

ZOOM AWAY FROM our planet on a spaceship, and it fades into insignificance, a grey-blue speck with 8 billion people fighting over insignificant things. But that pale blue dot near an average sun is building up quite a database. By 2020, the amount of data on Earth should reach 44 zettabytes, each making up a billion terabytes. That’s 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable physical universe, 90 billion light years across. When the history of this millennium is written, it’s very likely that its second decade will be remembered as the one when data exploded, driven by smartphones, 4G and the internet. Over 4.5 billion internet users are churning out a couple of trillion photos every year. They are uploading 300 hours of video every…

IF TINDER CAME LATE to some homes, it didn’t come to mine at all. My cousins and extended family found it supremely normal to ignore because we are still learning how to negotiate love-marriage discussions with our Dalit parents. Girls in my immediate world continue to have sari-related troubles with love and relationships more than anything else. In 2013, a cousin was made to leave an ongoing conversation with a prospective groom to go wear a sari and ‘show’—she promptly went to her room, locked herself in, and watched Grey’s Anatomy on full volume for the next 30 minutes. Her embarrassed parents and his slightly angry ones spent the next 30 minutes nursing their teacups and smiling painfully at each other. Or, like in 2018, when another cousin was almost…

A NOVEL TRIBUTE On the occasion of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak 1469 Original launched designs under Bring Guru Nanak Home. Featured here is an installation called Rabab-e-Kirtan from the collection. The highlight is a ceramic plate with kirtan written in Gurmukhi and a wooden slipper (kharhawaan) that Guru Nanak used to wear. PRICE on request AT 12, Janpath Market, Connaught Place, Delhi ARGENT APPEAL As the party season continues, serve your guests in these beautiful hand beaten silver bowls by Episode. PRICE ₹1,500 onwards AT www.episodesilver.com ART OF CRAFT Zanaat, the Turkish word for craftsmanship is a befitting name for the new flagship store in Delhi by Gautam Dhawan and Ruchika Baid. On display are expertly crafted coffee tables, wall art, lights, bathroom concepts, handles, planters and gift…

■ The Citizenship Amendment Bill 2019 aims at providing citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian refugees from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. A person belonging to these faiths who came to India on or before December 31, 2014 can apply for citizenship ■ With the CAB now a law, any legal proceeding pending against an ‘eligible’ illegal immigrant stands ‘abated’. They cannot be barred from applying for citizenship on grounds that proceedings are pending against them ■ Though the act of applying for citizenship under this provision indicates the person entered India illegally, he/ she will not be deprived of rights/ privileges enjoyed till then ■ Applicants who qualify are eligible for citizenship by naturalisation if they can establish residency in India for five years, instead of the…

TECHNOLOGY DEFINED THE 2010-2019 decade and promises to drive the next into uncharted waters. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, machine learning and bionics graduated from science fiction to practical reality. Digital technologies ruled, and data became the new resource. Technology has emerged as the currency of power and is beginning to transform geopolitics. Confronted by an unfamiliar terrain and still prisoner to outdated templates, states succumbed to nationalist and nativist urges, creating political fractures precisely when the world in the making demanded responses that transcend national boundaries and compel collaboration. Digital technologies became pervasive, permeating social processes and human interaction. The world has become densely interconnected and information flows are instantaneous. This reinforces democracy through easy access to information even as it enables state authority to deploy more refined instruments of…

ON NOVEMBER 15, 1948, India’s Constituent Assembly rejected an amendment proposed by K.T. Shah (Bihar, General) to Article 1. It read that ‘India shall be a Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States’. He was told that the Constitution is but a mechanism for the purpose of regulating the work of the various organs of the state. “It was somewhat new to me,” responded K.T. Shah “to hear that a Constitution is a mechanism…and that any desire to include in it any aspiration of the people might be regarded as somewhat out of place”. But the incorporation of aspirations is not enough. Citizens have to be protected against the fatal tendency of all governments to wield awesome power. The Constitution, thereby, institutionalised power, established procedures to regulate its exercise, set up…

IN 2010, MARK ZUCKERBERG beat the likes of Julian Assange and Hamid Karzai to become Time magazine’s Person of the Year. At the time, Facebook was six, and Zuckerberg, 26, both young enough to be cute. We asked Zuckerberg innocent questions then: Does social media impact reality or does it reflect it? Can we become ‘addicted’ to Facebook? Will social media make us asocial? Today, however, Mark Zuckerberg is being forced to answer questions less innocuous. Did Facebook help Donald Trump game the 2016 presidential election? Is our data safe with him? What has he done to curb online hate? At the point of their inception, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram heralded a new optimism. If all of us were using the same apps on similar smartphones,…

VERY RARELY HAS IT HAPPENED in a country’s history that a decade starts as an opportunity and also ends as one. We blew the opportunity the Commonwealth Games (CWG) offered in 2010, and it is critical for the future of Indian Olympic sport that we make full use of Tokyo 2020 to bring things back on track. India, for the record, won 101 medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Yet what people remember about the Games is a story of mismanagement; it is corruption that takes centre stage in public memory. The fact that India won three medals at the Beijing Games in 2008 in its traditionally strong disciplines—shooting, boxing and wrestling—meant that a real national sporting turnaround looked possible at the start of the decade. Initially,…

GO FOR BOLD “Whether your personal style includes more of a traditional touch or something with a modern twist, there are simple ways to ensure the festivities last longer. Focus on colour fusions. For instance, pops of reds on neutral bases with a touch of green invoke an instant festive feel. We have used good quality faux flowers, votives and candle holders in gold, greens, whites, and reds. Every element on the table should enhance to the setting. Even the napkins, they can be folded in a host of innovative styles. ” If there’s one colour that’s synonymous with merriment, it’s red. But too much of this bright hue can overpower the entire look. That’s why white and gold have been introduced through crockery, cutlery and the votives. Lavender flowers…