Innholdsfortegnelse for January 11, 2021 i India Today

On January 30, India reported its first case of Covid—an Indian student studying in Wuhan, ground zero of the novel coronavirus, who had returned home to Kerala. Over the next few weeks, three more cases were recorded in the state and Kerala’s health department went on high alert, shutting down state borders to contain the virus. There remained a relative sense of calm through the rest of India. “Initially, nobody in the world expected the pandemic to spread so quickly. That is why borders remained open till almost March,” says Dr N.N. Mathur, director, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital (LHMC), Delhi. “A situation like this had not happened in recent memory and nobody guessed that within a few months the entire world would be under a lockdown.” LHMC had…

Munna, 38, from Bihar’s Madhepura district, has set out again for Bengaluru, where he worked as a carpenter before the Covid lock-down forced a return home. Nirala Kumar, 37, of Danapur in Patna, is back in Jamnagar, Gujarat, with his wife and three children, hoping to draw the pre-lockdown wages he earned there as an assistant at a brass melting furnace. These enterprising souls are among the estimated 200 million migrant workers whose lives and livelihoods were turned upside down by Covid-19. With the country’s economy still in the throes of the pandemic, countless others like Munna and Kumar are anxiously waiting to find reemployment in the cities and metros they had fled—perhaps a call from a labour contractor or former employer—while others have made the equally difficult decision to…

When the lockdown was announced, Jayanthi (name changed on request) hadn’t fully comprehended what the next few months would bring. With her husband stuck overseas, the mother of a toddler found herself juggling work from home (WFH), caring for her child and house work, all on her own. With her performance at work inevitably taking the hit, Jayanthi had to eventually move to working part-time for her employers. As the world grappled with the Covid pandemic, many like Jayanthi have been trying to make the best of a hard situation and struggling. Jayanthi is not alone. Covid disruption has altered the career paths of many, especially women. On the positive side, feels Neha Bagaria, CEO and founder, JobsForHer, a career platform for women, the pandemic has prodded companies to re-evaluate…

RITU WADHWA, 40 Asst professor, Amity Business School PRITOM BARMAN, 23 MBA (Finance), Amity University, Noida For Pritom Barman, the shift to online learning came with its own set of challenges. Pursuing an MBA (Finance) from Amity Business School, Amity University Noida campus , Uttar Pradesh, Barman had to leave the residential campus and shift back to his hometown in Arunachal Pradesh when the country went into a complete lockdown on March 24. He left some four days before as did most other students. The Amity Business School, Amity University, shut the campus on March 20 and all students and teachers were informed about online classes. For Barman, who used to depend on class notes and books in the college library, it was a tough call. Back at his family…

On May 26, Fatima Bari received a message that brought back a flood of memories for the 71-year-old widow. It was from an NGO asking people to come to Shaheen Bagh on June 3 to resume the protests against the CAA or the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the NRC (National Register of Citizens). The original protests had begun on December 15 and went on till March 24, when over a thousand police personnel arrived to clear the protest site as the Covid pandemic began. In that time, Bari and her neighbours braved freezing cold nights and threats of violence from pro-CAA groups. On February 22, as the anti-CAA protests intensified, between 500 and 1,000 protesters began a sit-in protest near Delhi’s Jaffrabad metro station. The next day, pro-CAA groups, some…

EIGHT MONTHS ON, THE TWO ARMIES ARE LOCKED IN A STANDOFF WITH CLOSE TO 100,000 SOLDIERS FROM BOTH SIDES DEPLOYED AT EXTREME ALTITUDES OF OVER 12,000 FEET India’s challenges in 2020 included not just the pandemic but also a national security threat on the borders in eastern Ladakh. A series of incursions by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been the biggest attempt to forcibly alter the 1,597 km Line of Actual Control (LAC) since the 1962 border war. PLA troops stepped forward to claim territory on the Depsang Plains and at three other spots, including the shores of the picturesque boomerang-shaped Pan-gong lake. The incursions led to a violent skirmish in the Galwan Valley on June 15 in which 20 Indian soldiers, including the commanding officer Col. Santosh…

A 19-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped and tortured on a farm in Uttar Pradesh’s Hathras district on September 14. She died in a Delhi hospital two weeks later, battling multiple fractures, spine damage and other injuries. The Uttar Pradesh police performed the cremation the same night the woman’s body was brought back to her native village—allegedly against the family’s wishes. The incident, yet another in the spate of sexual offences against Dalits in India, sparked an outcry not only because of the brutality of the assault but also due to the administrative apathy that followed. Conspiracy theories, such as honour killing and plot against upper castes, floated to debunk the case, only exposed the caste fault lines in our society. Sexual crimes—disturbingly involving unspeakable violence—against Dalit women are rampant…

Q. About 25 years ago, you made your TV debut with A Mouthful of Sky, the first English show on DD National. To what extent has Indian entertainment come of age? A The opportunities are getting bigger, not only because of the size of the audience but with the freedom of expression you have on OTT platforms. You are seeing a change in formats and stories, and new actors. What we have been missing so far though are stories steeped in Indian culture, even though there have been Mahabharata and Ramayana. If those come, it will be a gamechanger. Q. You sport a nose ring, bindi and long tresses for your role in AltBalaji’s Paurashpur. Tell us about playing Boris. A He is a eunuch. We wanted to approach him…

For sharp analysis on topical issues by the editors of INDIA TODAY, log on to www.indiatoday.in/india-today-magazine-insight The mini political tsunami brewing in Madhya Pradesh By Rahul Noronha The Chouhan government is in a pickle, a 2019 CBDT search had indicted Congress legislators who are now in his BJP government https://bit.ly/3hssQ9L The season of parting in Bengal By Romita Datta Mamata goes into damage control mode after Suvendu Adhikary and others jump ship to join the BJP https://bit.ly/2La2CfP Government jobs in J&K: Testing times By Moazum Mohammad A 14-year delay in filling government vacancies, with candidates who applied in 2006 being asked to sit for examinations in 2020, has left many disillusioned and questioning the “structural failure” https://bit.ly/3pvS0qw How states are building a legal wall against religious conversions By Kaushik Deka…

“The outlook for business is not very rosy” Like most business owners in the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) sector, Ashish Sirsat had a harrowing time during the first 45 days of the lockdown. He had to shut down his 10-person factory in Thane, near Mumbai, which makes equipment for bakeries, like ovens and mixers. However, he had to pay his staff their salaries, even as his own payments, including those from the government, weren’t forthcoming. Moreover, the government diktat that staff be paid in full despite factories being closed came as a shocker. (The Supreme Court’s intervention asking the Centre not to take any coercive action against private companies on this issue was a major relief.) By mid-May, when industries were allowed to re-open, Sirsat, who started his…

“There is more respect for our work now” As Delhi witnessed its second wave of Covid cases in October, Hiba Hasan’s family members reiterated their concerns for her safety. It was acceptable, they said, for her to quit instead of risking her own health looking after Covid patients. But Hasan was determined. “I stayed at the staff hostel for two months and worked shifts to look after patients. I didn’t meet my family to protect them. But I was clear that I myself would continue with my work because nursing is my calling,” says Hasan. From a young age, Hasan wanted to enter the medical field and when she finally decided to pursue nursing, her family and friends were less than enthusiastic. “Most people asked ‘why do you just want…

Madhuresh Kumar Singh wants to erase the painful memories of the Covid lock-down and look forward to better days in 2021. Singh, 35, landed in Mumbai in 2012 from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, to make a living and take care of his wife, two sons and four brothers back home. He stayed in a tiny room, along with two other auto-rickshaw drivers, in Juhu and earned around Rs 30,000 a month. Singh says he could comfortably pay his auto-rickshaw loan instalment of Rs 5,000 a month, the room rent of Rs 2,000 and meet other expenses. Every month, he would send a big chunk of his earnings to his family. “Life was going smooth, though I had higher aspirations,” he says. Singh’s life took a U-turn with the lockdown in end-March.…

It has been nearly 10 months since K.L. Narasimhan and his family stepped out of their three-bedroom home in Kalkaji, New Delhi. When the lockdown was announced, Narasimhan, his wife Deepa, a school teacher, and two children had to quickly adapt to working and studying from home. The initial days were challenging. There were bandwidth issues to be dealt with, a working space for each family member had to be set up. With his son Abhinav, in class 12, and daughter Ritu, a college student, making the switch to online classes, the transition period was tough on the family. His wife was initially using the iPad to teach her classes, but she eventually had to upgrade to a laptop, at which point his son got the iPad. “We had to…

On balance, it’s probably fair to say that the pandemic has proved to be the greatest leveller of our time. Lives and livelihoods have got punctuated by new challenges and everyone’s everyday has transformed in ways that recall apocalyptic zombie movies. As Anurita Jalan, associate professor of sociology at Maitreyi College, University of Delhi, says, “Covid-19 has redefined relationships from macro to micro levels, impacting society, individuals and the family and their inter-relationships. With individuals carving out work spaces within their homes, gender relationships are being redrawn.” Unfortunately, a common work-home physical space has not just meant shared household chores, it has also manifested itself in the form of increased domestic violence against women and children. According to Dr Samir Parikh, director, department of mental health and behavioral sciences, Fortis…

IN her over two decades in the entertainment industry, Ekta Kapoor has seen plenty of highs and a few lows but nothing prepared her for the upheaval that was the pandemic-induced lockdown. With production of her TV shows halted for four months, the daily wage labourers who relied on the shoots were left with no source of income. “We felt stuck,” says Kapoor. “We tried to take care of as many employees and freelancers as we could. But one can’t deny that the impact was very painful and caused unemployment.” As one wing of her entertainment empire struggled, the other, the streaming platform ALTBalaji, had its best showing in 2020. Its direct subscription grew 100 per cent with most of its new audience coming from Tier II and III cities.…

Yet another poll victory, yet another term as chief minister, but Nitish Kumar would be the first to admit the year was far from being a blazing success for his government. The first crisis came in March with Covid-19 and the devastation it wrought. For Bihar, it wasn’t just a medical crisis but also a humanitarian one as more than three million Biharis—rendered jobless by the lockdown—returned to the state. Rehabilitating them was a challenge and Nitish was lauded for the direct transfer of relief to Bihari workers stuck in other states (though he also got flak for delaying their return). The Bihar government set up of hundreds of quarantine centres to limit the spread of the infection; at one point, there were more than 1.5 million people secluded at…

“I WANT YOUNG WOMEN AND GIRLS TO KNOW ‘YOU ARE POWERFUL AND YOUR VOICE MATTERS’” Kamala Harris’s political journey is the stuff of the great American dream—where upward mobility is possible for anyone. Born in 1964 to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father in Oakland, California, Harris grew up in a politically active household. She studied political science and economics at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington D.C., went on to earn a law degree from Hastings College in 1989 and passed the Bar in 1990. She joined the Alameda County prosecutor’s office as an assistant district attorney and rose through the ranks quickly, eventually serving as San Francisco’s district attorney from 2004-11. Thereafter, every professional milestone she passed also marked a glass ceiling shattered: she served…

THE STIMULUS ₹ 20 LAKH CR. Size of the Atmanirbhar Bharat stimulus STIMULUS: GLOBAL RESPONSE India’s stimulus was by no means small, but experts say more needs to be done THE OUTLOOK In the next three fiscals, India’s GDP growth is forecast to be above the world average, but below its own long-term trend Sources: Ministry of Finance, CMIE, IHS Markit, GSTN, MOSPI, Crisil 10 PER CENT Size of the stimulus as a percentage of GDP ₹ 8.04 LAKH CR. The RBI’s measures included in the stimulus…

Shubham Gupta is a first-year student of BCom (Honours) in Delhi’s Hansraj College. Yet the 18-year-old hasn’t set foot on campus even once since he took admission in September. He has taken a virtual tour of the college and has been taking lessons through his mobile phone and iPad. And Shubham isn’t alone in this. That’s how the batch of 2020—the Covid-19 generation—has been experiencing institutional education in a world disrupted by an unprecedented pandemic. Because of this, 47 per cent students have decided against migrating to another city for higher education, revealed a study titled the ‘Big Qs Student Survey’. Fifty per cent respondents have also abandoned plans to pursue higher education abroad. Over 2,000 kilometres away from the national capital, in Assam’s Barpeta district, Nibha Choudhury, a 41-year-old…

“The first 10 days of Covid were very stressful for the family” When the country went into lock-down in March, New Delhi-based homemaker Priyanshi Kapoor decided to make good of a bad situation. “We played board games and tried new recipes. My elder child took to painting and sketching and we all got to spend quality time together,” says Priyanshi, who lives in a joint family in New Friends Colony. But the lockdown brought upheaval on the work front as their showroom, Sham Di Hatti (SDH), in Khan Market and import firm, SDH India, had to be temporarily closed. “After a point, things got monotonous at home,” says Priyanshi. “There were mood swings. My younger son was only a year old. Just when he was beginning to understand the world…

“We were the first people to do this experiment, and had little clue on how to go about it” A day after the nation went into lock-down, actress Shreya Dhanwanthary found herself stuck in Mumbai and, in a strange twist, inspired. On a call with filmmakerRajNidimoru(of Family Man fame), she bemoaned the lack of realistic female narratives and the need to tell stories which reflected the women she knows. “The women we see are carved out of marble,” said Dhanwanthary. “Why can’t we tell something fun and all-encompassing?” Dhanwanthary wrote about a social media influencer who finds her big fat wedding derailed thanks to the pandemic. Shooting from homes began in late March, with eight actors attending Dhanwanthary’s daily video briefings, discussing scenes, clothes and shooting angles. By April end,…

STAR SPORTS SA WITS VIEWSHIP SOAR 23% ITS 2019 FIGUARS This year would have been a washout for sport in India if not for the Indian Premier League (IPL). Holding the tournament during the pandemic wasn’t easy, but the Board of Control for Cricket in India and Star Sports managed it. “After almost six months of social distancing, the IPL created a sense of community and togetherness that was sorely lacking,” says Sanjog Gupta, head of sports at Star India. Barring a few hiccups during the two-week quarantine phase, the IPL went on smoothly thanks to four bio-secure bubbles in Mumbai, Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. With no spectators allowed, an audio library of crowd cheers and even chants was created to replicate the atmosphere of earlier editions. Virtual reality…

“DELHI IS SEEING A NEW KIND OF POLITICS: THE POLITICS OF GOOD ROADS AND MOHALLA CLINICS... THIS IS THE POLITICS OF 21ST CENTURY INDIA” In 2015, AAP (Aam Aadmi Party), the party Arvind Kejriwal and his cohorts had formed just three years ago, trounced the two national parties—BJP and Congress—to storm to power by winning 67 of the 70 assembly seats in Delhi. Five years later, he almost repeated the performance, winning 62 seats. More importantly, he ceded little space to the saffron party, which fought the polls on a viciously polarising communal campaign. Kejriwal’s magic mantra for victory was simple. He did not take the BJP’s bait of communal politics and played according to his strengths—a mix of populism and performance. Kejriwal’s confidence came from his government’s focus on…

“THE BJP WAS DETERMINED TO TOPPLE ME, OFFERING HEFTY BRIBES TO OUR MLAS. BUT WE SURVIVED AND EMERGED STRONGER BECAUSE MY PARTY AND MLAS HAD FAITH IN ME AND WERE DETERMINED TO RESPECT THE PEOPLE’S VERDICT”—Ashok Gehlot In March 2020, the Congress dramatically lost power in Madhya Pradesh after 25 party MLAs resigned from the state assembly and defected to the BJP. Just eight months ago, ‘Operation Lotus’ had seen Karnataka slip out of the Congress’s hands. It seemed that Rajasthan would be next, but Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot stopped the BJP juggernaut dead in its tracks. Gehlot faced an open revolt in July from his deputy Sachin Pilot, who camped in Gurugram in BJP-ruled Haryana with 18 Congress MLAs and three Independents and demanded the CM’s post. But the…

THE MODI GOVERNMENT HAS OFFERED AMENDMENTS BUT REJECTED THE FARMERS’ DEMAND TO REPEAL THE THREE LAWS The three new central farm laws, billed as turning points in Indian agriculture, ironically, vexed the very farmers whose fortunes they were supposed to turn around. Some 40,000 of them, from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, laid siege to the national capital in end-November, blocking passenger and goods movement at several border points. The ongoing protests—among the biggest in decades and led by 40 farmers’ organisations—have demanded the repeal of the three laws passed by Parliament on September 21. But the Centre says the laws will create markets beyond APMCs (agricultural produce marketing committees) for farm produce, attract private capital and usher in the next revolution in agriculture, which employs half of the…