Innholdsfortegnelse for July 18, 2016 i India Today

Political journeys are usually long, winding and arduous. In India, they are either a dynastic inheritance or come from years spent leading student movements, developing an ideology, getting hitched to a godfather in an established political party, tapping into a social or religious group’s anxieties to build a votebank, and steadfastly following the party line while growing within its ranks. While a few leaders deviate from the script from time to time, one politician who has rewritten it completely is Arvind Kejriwal. It was not long ago that Kejriwal was an income-tax officer who ran an NGO, became one of the faces of the Anna Hazare Lokpal movement, and then launched the Aam Aadmi Party as recently as 2012. In less than four years, he has assumed several political avatars.…

Muslim leaders took the legally correct position on Babri Masjid, and it was a mistake. Some times a pedantically ‘correct’ position is a political blunder, perhaps even a moral mistake Even though the Lex Loci Report of 1840 called for uniformity in the codification of Indian laws, the British permitted various Indian communities— not just Hindus and Muslims—to be governed by their own civil codes. This had to do with administrative convenience, the British tendency to avoid interfering in religious customs, and the 19th century colonial view of almost all large states, including India, as containing different ‘nations’. This last aspect largely facilitated the tragic and needless partition of India, once the meaning of ‘nation’ had changed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to become hyphenated with ‘state’.…

ASHISH TALWAR, 44 Political advisor to CM Was part of student wing at Congress and is valued for his knowledge of practically every ward in Delhi. Yogendra Yadav once described Talwar as the better psephologist. He is said to have Kejriwal’s ear on party strategy KUMAR VISHWAS, 46 Prabhari, NRI funding and campaigning Contested Amethi against Rahul Gandhi in 2014. Prone to putting his foot in his mouth, he is now lying low, using his popularity as a poet, his wit and his way with words to raise money abroad ATISHI MARLENA, 34 Advisor to Deputy CM on education One of the few women in an influential position, was spokesperson for the party. It was a fitting role for her intellectual gifts. Her surname, given by her Marxist parents, is…

In the run-up to the 2014 general elections, then BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi memorably told an audience in Amethi, the fiefdom of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi: “Smriti Irani is my younger sister.” Within two years, the pampered sister turned into a liability at the high-profile human resource development ministry, picking fights at the slightest provocation, and eventually locking horns with Big Brother himself. When she drafted a bill aimed at almost destroying the autonomy of the premier Indian Institutes of Management—the PM disagreed but Irani would not budge. Not just that, when yoga guru Ramdev, backed by Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, sent her a proposal on a Vedic Education Board, she turned it down. And then one Tuesday evening, she found herself out of the ministry,…

Bangladesh is still coming to grips with the exceptional brutality of its worst terrorist outrage, the horrific Black Friday attack at Dhaka’s Holey Artisan cafe on July 1. Twenty hostages, including 18 foreign nationals and two policemen, were killed when the six terrorists, said to be an IS-affiliated group, took them hostage. Indian teenager, Tarishi Jain, was among those who were shot, had their throats slit and bodies mutilated. Five of the six terrorists were shot dead after security forces stormed the cafe following a 10-hour standoff. The sixth survived and is being interrogated by security forces. What has shocked Bangladeshis is the profile of the terrorists. Mostly in their early 20s, they were products of the country’s upper middle class elite (one was the son of a senior member…

BHARAT MALKANI DEFENCE AND AVIATION | MAX AEROSPACE, Mumbai AS A CHILD, walking to Jamnabai Narsee School at Juhu airport, Bharat Malkani would see the planes flying overhead and dream of building a military fighter plane one day. Having studied electronics at Manipal University and technology management at Washington University, Malkani, 50, returned to India in 1989. In 1991, he visited the air trade show in Dubai and came back determined to start his own aviation company. With Rs 5 lakh in hand and an 80 sq ft rented space in Vile-Parle, he started a company. It got approval from DGCA for maintenance of planes in 1995. He also began production of black boxes. Earlier, the government relied on the US and Israel for modification of planes. Today Max Aerospace…

BEING THE OTHER: THE MUSLIM IN INDIA By Saeed Naqvi Aleph Book Company Price Rs 510 Pages 256 Saeed Naqvi was born in 1940, I in 1974. Naqvi went to Lucknow’s La Martinière, I to an Urdu seminary in my ‘unelectrified’ village. After Partition, some of Naqvi’s family moved to Karachi, mine didn’t even make it across Bihar. In 1991, I moved to Delhi. I was a compulsive reader of newspapers, in part to improve my English. The columnists I read included Arvind Das, Dipankar Gupta, Girilal Jain, M.V. Kamath, Sham Lal, T.N. Madan, K.R. Malkani, T.K. Oommen and, yes, Saeed Naqvi. It was a time of grisly mobilisation leading to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The masjid was mostly referred to as the “disputed structure”. Ironically, it became…

THE ADVENTURES OF A RUPEE, BY HELENUS SCOTT, 1782 The ‘itnarrative’ or ‘novel of circulation’ is a venerable genre of fiction that predates any publishing house. Once all the rage, now quite obscure, but never entirely extinguished, these are stories in which the narrator is an inanimate but mobile object—often a coin. It’s a device famously revived by Marguerite Yourcenar in A Coin in Nine Hands, and even briefly in Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red. As forThe Adventures of a Rupee, it was already derivative in 1782—a flagrant attempt to mimic the wildly popular Chrysal or the Adventures of Guinea (1760). But guineas are old hat today, whereas the rupee is…still in circulation. This is early pulp fiction really, and it has its own salacious virtues, including a memorable…

ROOTED BUT RISING Ahalya S, 39, Kanakavalli Kanjivaram When there’s no AR Rahman or Iron and Wine playing at the Kanakavalli boutique, there’s deafening silence. It complements the almost theatrical elegance of the century-old heritage bungalow that has been transformed into a “luxury showcase” of Kanjeevarams and handcrafted jewellery by Ahalya S. “When I started Kanakavalli two years ago, the first few reactions were, ‘Oh who needs another Kanjeevaram saree store?’ But the Kanjeevaram is a luxury sari; it’s handwoven, made of fine silk, zari and has tremendous skill going into it. At its core is luxury. To be selling it without the luxurious showcase it commands, is like having a fantastic meal on takeaway,” says Ahalya S. She embraces the sanctity of the Kanjeevaram from the very first thread…

Jiva Ayurveda Dr Partap Chauhan Established in 1992, Jiva Ayurveda has constantly been working for the betterment of the society in terms of health and wellbeing. Director of Jiva, Dr Partap Chauhan, 46, talks about his journey so far. Q. Please tell us your background and why you set up Jiva? A. I was born and brought up in village Palla, Haryana, to a farmer family. After completing my graduation in ayurvedic medicine, I studied ayurveda under Vaidya Nanak Chand Sharma at Kaya Maya Hospital. My brothers, Dr Satyanarayan Dasa and Rishi Pal Chauhan and I are great believers of the traditional Indian arts and sciences and how they can help us live a more balanced, holistic life. Along with Steven Rudolph, an American educationist and founder-director of Jiva, we…

JULY 4, 2016 “Modi’s FDI strategy, considered objectively, will lift the sagging economic indices on employment generation and secure self-sufficiency in exports—a task the previous dispensation left unattended.” VALLANAD R.NAMASIVAYAM, Nagpur Back to School In my experience as a student, primary-level institutions are focu sed solely on monetary gain (Why India Needs a New Education Policy). Drastic reforms need to be undertaken in government schools. An inclusive education system free of the corrupting influence of politics is the need of the hour. R.K. RANJITHA, Thiruvarur The Bihar topper scam is symptomatic of the crisis in our present education policy. India needs swadeshi education with inputs from the RSS imparted through modern technology. Being an advocate of information technology, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself can monitor the creation of such a…

YUAN SONG China may have blocked India’s entry to NSG but Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan returned from a sixday visit late last month stressing closer economic ties. Andhra Pradesh CM N. Chandrababu Naidu followed suit, but wooed investors with a different pitch on his five-day tour— highlighting his state’s common Buddhist heritage. He backed it up with brochu res, a documentary in Chinese and details of two proposed Buddhist tourism circ uits, one covering Visakhapatnam and Kalingapatnam, the other linking Maha yana Buddhist centres of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda. Bri efed about the famed chillies of Ghinzou, Naidu drew parallels with the ones grown in Guntur. TODDY RAP Decimated in the Bihar assembly polls, Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party has found a way to get back. Paswan’s…

CORRUPTION Locked in battle with Centre over who tackles institutionalised corruption A 2016 India Today-GFK Mode survey says there’s been 51 per cent reduction in corruption in Delhi. But minor scandals dog the party. A watered-down version of the Jan Lokpal bill was passed—only to be blocked by the Centre along with all other bills saying procedures were not followed POLLUTION Launched ambitious ‘odd-even’ plan Scheme popular in its first phase as it markedly reduced traffic congestion. But pollution reportedly rose 23 per cent in the second phase. Made a huge impact nevertheless in terms of raising awareness about air pollution. No other government has attempted to tackle pollution so aggressively POWER 50% Subsidy for consumption below 400 units Devoted Rs 1,600 crore in Delhi budget to reducing power bills.…

Late into the night of June 29, a joint task force of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the Telangana police pic ked up 11 youths in Hyderabad. Five were arrested the next day, following raids at 10 places in the city that rapidly unravelled the Islamic State’s (IS) deadly new gameplan. The IS-affiliated module planned to set off a series of improvised explosive devices (IED) blasts across the city. It was a macabre plot that exceeded previous attempts by Islamist militants to cause mayhem in the city. IS is not in India yet, at least not in the manner of previous groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, which infiltrated, recruited and set up modules to carry out attacks across the subcontinent. It has worked to win recruits through social media.…

The germ of an idea that created India’s largest safety shoes company was not born out of any PowerPoint presentations from suited-booted consultants. It was a mere challenge that a co-traveller on a Delhi-Gwalior train journey threw at Nitin Tiwari. “Can you produce this in India?” the person asked, pointing to his safety shoes, worn by workmen on shopfloors. That prompted Tiwari, 43, to explore a new arena and expand his father’s leather business. Today, his firm, Acme Fabrik Plast Co, makes 8,000 pairs of safety shoes a day, has annual revenues of Rs 180 crore and counts companies such as Toyota, Honda, Dow Chemicals and BASF among its clients. The economies of the developed world were built on the edifice of several small businesses over several decades. But nearly…

PATRICIA NARAYAN AND PRAVEEN NARAYAN FOOD PROCESSING SANDEEPHA CHAIN PVT LTD, Chennai BORN TO conservative Christians in Nagercoil, Patricia Narayan bid her family goodbye the day she got herself a Tamil Brahmin husband. But when he turned out to be a wastrel and barely able to hold on to their catering business, she decided to take back her life. “I realised my passion for food would have to double up as my livelihood,” she says. She took a professional course in commercial cooking and set up her first kiosk on Marina beach. Soon she bagged catering contracts for the Slum Clearance Board and the National Institute of Port Management. When, in 2006, she lost her spirit and her newly married daughter Sangeetha in a car crash, her son Praveen quit…

BFFs Khanna and Dingo, the spirited female protagonists of the Y-Films web series, Ladies Room (LR), don’t go to sleep wearing heavy make-up and blingy jewellery. They don’t cry, but they laugh a lot, occasionally even at themselves, swear profu s ely, drink heartily, get high and talk about sex. And all the action happens in toilets. Unlike Shivanya, leading lady of Naagin and the most popular female character on Indian television today, whose special power enables her to turn into a snake, battle a mongoose and dance angrily in temples. Compared to season one of Naagin on Colors, which has an average 16 mill ion viewers every week, the five million plus views for six episodes of Ladies Room may seem tame, but for a young, urban audience allergic…

Alfred Assollant’s Once upon a Time in India, under its original 1867 title of Aventures Merveilleuses mais Authentiques du Capitaine Corcoran (The Marvellous yet True Adventures of Captain Corcoran) was apparently a favourite of both Jean-Paul Sartre and Antonio Gramsci, according to journalist and translator Sam Miller’s introduction to this new edition. It’s nice to think that Sartre’s otherwise unremittingly grim childhood and Gramsci’s imprisonment by Mussolini were cheered by something, but as far as today’s reader is concerned, this is a novel to be filed more under ‘curiosity’ than anything else. Captain Corcoran himself is a dashing Breton hero, and cast in the mould of dashing heroes in boys’ fiction of the time: swashbuckling, iconoclastic, preternaturally accomplished in the fight, able to speak a variety of useful languages fluently…

1 HWEALTH CAFE WAIT NOT WAIST NOT The eternal culinary conundrum—can one eat pasta and burger but not wallow in self loathing right after?—has everyone constantly having to choose between their favourite grub and well... salads. Enter, Hwealth Cafe, a cosy little joint just around the corner from Defence Colony market, which is as endearing in its decor as it is healthy in its fare. Their menu is customisable on request, and the friendly staff is more than happy to help you pick a healthy offshoot of the extensive assortment of already existing dishes. We highly recommend the egg and tuna salad, with its generous dose of leafy greens and perfectly boiled eggs stuffed with fish; the chicken burger—with its succulent patty, wholewheat wholegrain bun, slathered with hummus and filled…

In Kejriwal, they have the middle-class’ favourite muckraker and also an unlikely candidate for charisma. The former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer is neither the conventional orator, nor does he have the moral authority of Hazare. His extraordinary appeal lies in his ordinariness. And what Yogendra Yadav, political scientist and undeclared ideologue of Team Kejriwal, calls his “energy, the capacity to cut through the clutter, ability to vibe with ordinary people, and his absolute integrity”. It comes from utter incorruptibility, immense self-belief and powerful convictions. Kejriwal has shown flashes of all before. His brief stint of seven years in the Income Tax Department brought him face to face with the extent of corruption in the government system. When studying at IIT, Kharagpur, he was rejected for a campus placement job…

TOTAL NUMBER OF MINISTERS 79 78 NUMBER OF MINISTERS IN UPA-II GOVERNMENT AFTER RESHUFFLE IN OCTOBER 2012 HIGHEST POSSIBLE NUMBER 82 FIVE AMONG THE 19 ARE DALITS, AN ATTEMPT TO COUNTER THE ANTI-DALIT IMAGE AFTER ROHITH VEMULA’S SUICIDE TWO TRIBALS AND TWO MEMBERS FROM MINORITY COMMUNITIES INDUCTED STAR of the Show PRAKASH JAVADEKAR is elevated to Cabinet rank and given prestigious human resource development ministry So SARI... SMRITI IRANI moved from HRD ministry to textiles WINNERS ANANTH KUMAR Minister for chemicals and fertilisers gets additional charge of parliamentary affairs M.J. AKBAR is appointed minister of state in the external affairs ministry ARJUN RAM MEGHWAL is new MoS, finance VIJAY GOEL becomes sports minister (independent charge) Minister of state for railways MANOJ SINHA will be MoS (independent charge) for communications ANIL…

June 29, 2016 NIA and Telangana police arrest five youth on charges of plotting to carry out terror attacks August 2014 Hyderabad police detain 17 youth indoctrinated over the internet and planning to travel to Turkey to fight with IS February 21, 2013 Twin blasts kill 13 people in Dilsukhnagar shopping area. IM responsible August 25, 2007 Twin blasts in Lumbini Park and Gokul Chaat Bhandar kill 42; 19 unexploded bombs with timers recovered the next day. IM responsible October 12, 2005 Bangladeshi suicide bomber blows himself up in front of the STF headquarters; one home guard killed. Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) responsible…

SITARAM SHAH AND VANDAN SHAH | AUTOMOBILES | SIPRA ENGINEERS PVT LTD, Mumbai AFTER A master’s in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1964, Sitaram Shah worked in the UK for three years, but returned to India to launch Sipra Engineers in Mumbai, which produces die casters for the automobile industry in 1968. A relative helped him get his first major client in Bajaj Auto Limited. After a decade, Shah took his plant to Nashik. His association with Bajaj came to an end and he struggled for a while. He then took to exporting the readymade die. It worked. Son Vandan, a graduate in industrial engineering, took the Nashik plant to the next level as its MD. Today, the company’s turnover is close to Rs 150…

PAUL NEEDHAM | RENEWABLE ENERGY | SIMPA NETWORKS PVT LTD, Noida A SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR once employed by Microsoft, Needham saw opportunity in the dusty bylanes of India’s small towns from his cosy office in North America. “The situation was complicated: one, there was no or partial access to power; two, there were people who could not make upfront payment for solar installations,” he says. He co-founded a company, along with two microfinance experts, Jacob Winiecki and Michael MacHarg, to give small solar house systems on a pay-as-you-go model in India. They manufactured a unique electricity meter that allowed people to recharge, track and control supply. They could buy energy for Rs 10-20 a day. For Rs 20, they got a fan, three light points and a mobile charger. Today, 20,000…

Sumukhi Suresh The Common Woman A sardonic sketch in which a traditional housewife ‘shares’ her deeply disconcerting views on domestic violence, women’s rights et al, in turn shocking the progressive man “Main bahut free hoon. Mujhe apne limits pata hain. I should feel very lucky that a man is forcing me to do things.” Aditi Mittal The Arranged Date Song Written by the comedian, the video is all about what parents say and do to get their daughter (Richa Chadha) married, including setting her up on a terrible date “I don’t know cooking or stitching. I definitely don’t do yoga. Find out I’m not a virgin, pata nahin tab kya hoga.” Mallika Dua S*** People Say: Sarojini Nagar Edition In this hilarious skit by Little Black Book and A Little…

When a publishing house wants to fill out its list, it heads to the public domain. Apart from the classics heaped in every book stall, e- and nearly free books are put out by heavyweights such as Project Gutenberg or really by just about anyone. In our connected age, books are no longer lost. There’s a pile of colonial, native and ancient writings of India at Asian Educational Services. Then there are the gems you find under the library table—politically incorrect, historically inaccurate, unEnglish and loaded with transfats. You can digitally borrow any obscure find from Open Library. Or you can get it printed and bound on demand. Sam Miller’s translation of Once upon a Time in India, a 19th century French novel by Alfred Assollant, straddles that space between…

Hero of the week GURPREET SANDHU The 24-year-old goalkeeper, who plays for Norwegian club Stabaek FC, became the first Indian to play in the Europa League Villain of the week ABHIJEET The singer was back in the news again for his foul-mouthed tirade against a female journalist online KNOTS & TIES Samantha Ruth Prabhu may soon become part of Telugu filmi royalty. The South actress, best known for Eega and Theri, looks set to get eng aged to frequent Telugu co-star Naga Chaitanya, son of Nagarjuna Akkineni. THE RADICAL TURN It’s good to be in Freida Pinto’s shoes now. The Slumdog Millionaire actress is promoting girls’ education with Meryl Streep and Michelle Obama; has been inducted as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences which votes…

Gift of Life Dr Rajesh Aggarwal, 58 Senior Consultant, Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute On the evening of March 23, this year, Bhopal Singh Aarya lost his daughter, but his quick thinking helped saved five lives. Aarya’s 18-year-old daughter, who was the casualty of a road traffic accident, is one of the few rare people who donated through cadaveric organ transplant, a procedure where organs are taken from braindead patients. Doctor Rajesh Aggarwal was in charge of the team conducting the transplantations. “Her kidneys, her liver and her corneas were each given to five different people. If others are as well-informed as her father, Bhopal Singh Aarya, many lives can be saved within a matter of seconds. There is an urgent need of cadaveric organ donation awareness,” says Dr Aggarwal.…