Innholdsfortegnelse for July 24, 2017 i India Today

October 2016 saw a massive breach of financial data in India, with banks reporting that as many as 3.2 million debit cards had been compromised. State Bank of India, HDFC, ICICI, YES Bank and Axis Bank were among the worst hit. They swung into action, cancelling compromised cards and issuing new ones. The source of the breach was located in China, said to be caused by fraudsters looking to steal money and financial data. This should have triggered an effort to beef up data security, but banks turned their attention to scare-management instead, underplaying the fraud and saying that only 641 customers had complained, involving transactions of just Rs 1.3 crore. In a recent move, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has introduced the concept of ‘limited liability’ for customers…

4MILLION Number of BJP members in Bengal, up from 1 million in 2014 Amit Shah is not happy. At a meeting with Bengal BJP leaders in Delhi (June 27), the angry national president of the BJP wanted to know why the saffron party was not being able to match up to the aggression of the ruling Trinamool Congress. A senior BJP leader says Shah “was not at all satisfied with the way movements were being organised”. What he wants from the state leaders is an effective mix of aggression and approachability. He also wants them out in the streets more, not just for protests but also for religious events. ‘Lalbazar Abhijan’, a saffron siege of the police headquarters in Kolkata on May 25, began with a roar but ended in…

The Pad ma nabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, arguably the world’s richest Hindu shrine, is back in the headlines, following the Supreme Court’s queries on the possibility of opening the last of the temple’s vaults, believed to contain priceless treasures. Chief Justice J.S. Khehar’s observations about Vault B on July 4 provoked a shrill debate on whether tinkering with ‘God’s wealth’ was within the judiciary’s ambit. Aditya Varma, who represents the erstwhile Trav ancore royal family, one of the SC-appointed temple custodians now, objected vehemently, insisting that faith and tradition decreed that Vault B remain untouched. “We will act according to the advice of the chief priest,” Varma said on July 8 The treasures, devotees believe, are contained in 12 iron vases pla ced inside the twin chambered vault that extends…

The geographical boundary of Sohi, a nondescript village near Pahasu in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr, starts with a narrow irrigation canal brimming with monsoon water. At the juncture where the village road, punctuated with muddy potholes, meets the canal, is a dense mango orchard. The serenity of the orchard and the road snaking through the village are a deceptive façade for a village that has been simmering with communal tension in the wake of an elopement and a mysterious murder. On the night of April 26, Yusuf, 25, ran away with Sonia, a 20-yearold Hindu girl from the neighbouring Fazalpur village. According to Hanifa, one of the 35 Muslims living in Sohi, which has a population of 3,000, the next morning, members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), an outfit founded…

S SRINAGAR HAS TURNED sombre. The July 10 attack on a bus ferrying pilgrims back from the Amarnath shrine in Anantnag ominously signals that the new breed of militants in the Valley are intent on pushing boundaries that have long been held sacred amidst Kashmir’s syncretic Sufi traditions. Dangerously pushing the ‘threshold of tolerance’ in the Valley, the incident, coming in the wake of the lynching of a police officer in Srinagar’s Jamia Masjid mosque, the disfigurement of six policemen at Achabal and the coldblooded murder of a young army officer while on leave, raises concerns on the efficacy of New Delhi’s muscular Kashmir policy as well as the Mehbooba Mufti government’s capacity to deliver on the ground. Seven pilgrims from Gujarat and Maharashtra, six of them women, were killed…

Real change is brought about by entrepreneurs and innovators. The government’s job is to facilitate,” said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union minister for law and justice and electronics and information technology, while delivering the inaugural address at the second india today Make in India Emerging Entrepreneur Awards in New Delhi on July 6. Inspired by the Union government’s Make in India mission, the awards were initiated last year to encourage Indian entrepreneurs making a mark in the manufacturing sector. Prasad expressed satisfaction over the momentum building in the new economy from IT-enabled services. India, he said, has emerged as the world’s third-largest start-up hub. Sharing his government’s achievements, Prasad said FDI has increased by 33 per cent in the past three years, taking investment from overseas to a record high. The…

RAMESH KANNAN, 53 | ELECTRONICS | KAYNES TECHNOLOGY From baby steps in a rented space in Mysuru in 1988, Ramesh Kannan’s venture has grown into a Rs 300 crore company leading the domestic market in electronics manufacturing. Kannan launched Kaynes the year he graduated from Mysuru’s National Institute of Engineering, manufacturing printed circuit board assemblies on contract for companies such as Larsen & Toubro, TVS and Wipro. He innovatively used technology instead of manual labour. The ISO 9000 certificate for quality came as a dividend in 1995. The turning point was 2001 when Kaynes entered the exports business and acquired an export-oriented unit certification. It became one of the few firms to have 10 certifications, thanks to Kannan’s emphasis on investing 4 per cent of the company’s revenues in research…

SUNIL KOTAK, 43 | RENEWABLE ENERGY | KOTAK URJA “We are targeting an installation of 100 MW. With the open access policy of various states, people would like to go for alternative power systems” When his firm got into solar installa tions in the ’90s, Sunil Kotak, executive director of the Bengalurubased Kotak Urja, was asked why he wanted to veer from the lucrative family business of power transmission and distribution and dabble in renewable energy. “Awareness levels were so low that some of our clients would cover solar panels so that they wouldn’t become dirty, not realising they were reducing their efficiency,” he says. Things have changed, with the government’s thrust on renewables, esp eci ally solar, and solar tariff dropping to Rs 2.44 per unit for utility scale…

RAJAN ARORA, 45 | LEATHER | SIMRAN INTERNATIONAL Set up in 1972 by Hardip Singh, Simran International is a leading manufacturer of premium leather garments in India. It manufactures for 97 brands globally, spread over Spain, Germany, France, Italy, England, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Australia and Russia, and has partnerships with fashion studios in Paris and Italy. Despite a challenging business environment, Simran International has managed to remain among the top four leather exporters in the country. The reason is not hard to find. The Rs 108 crore company gives a lot of attention to meeting international standards and laws while sourcing raw material and producing the end product at its three plants. Simran is one of the few companies in India to be certified and accredited by Bureau Veritas…

DILEEP HELD THE VICTIM RESPONSIBLE FOR RUINING HIS MARRIAGE WITH MANJU WARRIER W hen Malayalam superstar Dileep was brought to the Aluva subjail near Kochi after his arrest, the waiting mob chanted, “Welcome to Central Jail,” the title of a 2016 movie he starred in that would come to haunt him a year later. The arr est capped five months of investigations into a sordid case, where a contract goon kidnapped and sexually abused a popular actress. The case shocked Kerala and became another challenge for an already embattled state police and the Pinarayi Vijayan government. While the arrest comes as a major victory for the victim and her family, it is also a muchneeded boost for the Kerala police, whose image had taken a beating after a series of…

I t’s hardly a surprise that filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar called actress Kirti Kulhari the very next day after he witnessed her compelling performance in last year’s acclaimed feminist-themed drama, Pink. He gave her a title role she couldn’t refuse: Indu Sarkar, a stammering housewife who takes on the powerful political family and the draconian laws they imposed during the Emergency. Also starring Anupam Kher, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Zakir Hussain, the film releases on July 28. Kulhari, who was born in 1985, says she was stunned to learn the details of the events that unfolded in India from 1975 to ’77. “I had heard about the Emergency but wasn’t too aware of what it entailed,” she admits. “[During narration] At every point, I kept asking ‘Did this happen for real?’”…

Skoolroom TUCK INTO A BOWL OF MAGGI noodles with a side of nostalgia at this newly-opened restaurant in Ulsoor. Just as the name suggests, this one is a trip down the memory lane for adults and an all-too familiar one for students. The tables look like blackboards, cutlery comes in pencil boxes and the décor is reminiscent of school memorabilia. Colour pencils for wall décor, trophies on the shelf, globes cut open to make lamps—there’s something familiar in every corner. While here, dig into a crispy raw mango and papaya salad doused in red chilli dressing while you sip on endless glasses of Rasna. Started by Rashmi Manjunath, 30, and Syed Waseem Ahmed, 34, this two month old restaurant is already a popular spot for students in the vicinity. "Among…

I t is fairly easy to drive past this partly dilapidated building on a regular day which houses Murray & Co, an auction house dating back to as early as 1927. But not on a Sunday morning. Antique collectors, scrap dealers and those with a keen eye for furniture have flocked at its doors since time immemorial. However, right from the time it was established, Murray & Co has held on to a weekly Sunday auction tradition attended by at least 100 to 150 people. “We have probably missed no more than 20 Sunday auctions from the time we first began,” says Hemant Srivatsa, partner, Murrays & Co. Past Perfect Get yourself registered at their makeshift desk and you’ll be briefed about the auction immediately. A list of items is…

The investigation team tasked by Pakistan’s Supreme Court in April to investigate allegations of corruption against prime minister Nawaz Sharif and his family in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal finally submitted its report on July 10. The scathing 275-page summary not only damned Sharif and his children for forgery and perjury, but also recommended that they be tried for corruption by the National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s anti-graft authority. As parts of the 10-volume report became public knowledge, the stock market tanked by more than 4 per cent, the military declared it would stand by the courts and Pakistan’s raucous media went into hyperdrive, predicting the end of the Sharif premiership if not the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) government itself. Imran Khan, whose Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf campaigned for months against…

Q1. This is a very fat book! Can we expect an update every 10 years? A . I don ’ t know ! I had the energy to do this , and obviously , some quite dramatic developments have taken place over the last ten years , so I put those in . I ’ ll figure out in eight years if I want to do it again . Q2. The book begins with the moment of Independence, Partition riots and ‘parricide’. Given what happened recently in Basirhat, West Bengal, do you wonder whether we remain trapped in the consequences of that moment? A. Yes, to some extent. But I think from the 19th century onwards the question ‘can Hindus and Muslims live peaceably in a single nation?’ had faced the…

1,471 PARTY MANDALS in Uttar Pradesh, so that BJP leaders get to engage with the people As early as 6 am every morning, there’s a rush of people from all over the state waiting to register with the Jan Sahyog Ken dra— the BJP’s public grievances cell at the party headquarters in Lucknow. In just a few hours, over 500 have signed up and are waiting patiently to be heard. After 11 am every day, one minister from the Yogi Adityanath government and two party officebearers assigned to record people’s complaints, show up to give them a hearing. Anand Panday, who reportedly tracks every complaint till it’s resolved, says it’s part of a larger strategy to “pre-empt anti-incumbency” that might build over the next five years in power. A state…

“Their hands were tied. It appears they were hanged after being beaten to death” ANOOP BIRTHARE, SP, Latehar, recalling the killing of two Muslim cattle traders in 2016 in Jharkhand “He was stripped naked and violently pummelled. His arms and legs were bent and broken, just as someone breaks a sugarcane before eating it” J&K OFFICIAL, describing the lynching of DSP Ayub Pandith in Srinagar last month “One of them held my brother from behind, the other stabbed him in the neck, chest, stomach” HASHIM KHAN, brother of Junaid Khan who was killed on a Mathura-bound train last month “While they were beating my father with rods, people were taking videos. Someone even turned his head towards the camera” SHAMA PERWEEN, daughter of cattle trader Alimuddin, lynched last month in…

A familiar grouse against the Congress high command (read Sonia Gandhi and son Rahul) is that it is reluctant to name a chief ministerial candidate in a poll-bound state, even if such a decision were to its benefit. But after being reduced to a rump of a party, they seem to have learnt the lesson. So with nine months to go for the Karnataka assembly elections in early 2018, the all-powerful All India Congress Committee announced that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah would lead the election campaign, ensuring that there was no ambiguity on that score. This was a recognition of the fact that he had performed sufficiently well as CM and remained the party’s best bet to retain power in this crucial state. Keeping in mind the caste equations, the AICC…

RAMESH VANGAL, 62 | PHARMACEUTICALS & BIOTECHNOLOGY | KERALA AYURVEDA THE WAY FORWARD “Our focus for the future is to take more products to the US, and expand our academy there” When Ramesh Vangal, founder-chairman, Katra group, checked into Kerala Ayurveda’s tre atment centre in Bengaluru, little did he know he’d buy it off its Kochi promoters in 2006. Now based in Bengaluru, the firm boasts 440 classical and proprietary formulations and 25 clinic-cum-treatment centres. Chief operating officer J.P. Singh says all its products are made inhouse at its Bengaluru, Aluva and Alappuzha factories. “This is to ensure complete quality control,” he adds. It has conducted joint research with BHU on products for diabetes and inflammation. The launch of Caripill, a drug made of papaya leaf extract to boost platelets…

Their bread and paos with sleek packaging are a common sight on supermarket shelves. You may have also stopped by their kiosks for a cup of coffee and some butter biscuits, but BREA is more than just a bakery. It has its roots firm in the city’s history, dating back to the 1920s when the family operated as a home bakery with an outlet within the house premises. The Historic Connect Famously known as the AM Bakery & Café, the establishment went commercial to bring to the city, the first real confectionery under the name of Crown Bakery. “My great grandparents would bake at home and one of the sons would take care of the delivery,” says Dianath, 43, Managing Director, BREA. Increase the Volume Switch to present day and…

The curator of Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016, Sudarshan Shetty, who managed to get six lakh people from across the world to the tiny coastal town, can finally take his shoes off and peace. He can nurse a single malt, talk about how spacious Chandigarh is, and why it is not just the Biennale and literature festivals that states should be looking at to reclaim their cultural ethos. Ask this 56-year-old artist who has delved in painting, sculpture, installation, sound and performance, if empty spaces came face to face once the Biennale concluded, and he says, “Of course, there was a huge vacuum. Though I had done two shows in-between, but after it ended, I couldn’t think of anything to do.” Stressing that it is the people’s participation that makes the Kochi…

High on Flavours 12 hings to look forward to Punjabis’ love for guns is legendary and their food, evergreen. The city recently opened its doors to The Shooters Café, where you can play a round or two in the shooting arena while gorging on sumptuous dishes. The concept was brought in by professional shooters Manjot Singh and Ankush Bhardwaj and is the perfect hangout in case you’ve had a bad day, for it lets you aim and vent out your anger. Equipped with a 10-metre shooting arena where both amateurs and professionals can practice shooting under the guidance of certified shooters, the café also has some lip-smacking food options. Once you’re done testing your accuracy and speed, head to their cool food zone. With a warm and sober decor, the café…

Two weeks ago, we apparently made another ‘tryst with destiny’ when the newly minted Goods and Services Tax (GST) made its midnight debut in Parliament. Business unfortunately is not too pleased with the ‘single biggest tax reform since Independence’, and protests have mushroomed all over the place since the July 1 rollout. Kite-makers in Gujarat organised a kite-flying festival to protest the new levy as did cloth merchants in Surat and Ahmedabad, who went on a silent march. Idol-makers in Jaipur (photographed here) appealed to the government’s Hindu sensibility to revoke the tax. Good and simple?…

On the sixth day of the comm unal flareup in Baduria and Basirhat, a spearedthroughthemiddle flex hoarding of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealing for harmony, was still standing amid the gutted remains of shops, police vehicles and a palpable sense of fear. Mahmud Ali Ghazi’s medicine shop—one of the 14 torched at the Bank of India building in Basirhat’s Trimonihaat area—is charred beyond repair. A short distance away, Banerjee Babu’s popular tea stall looked equally ravaged. A mob—mostly outsiders, he says—looted the place even as the police personnel stood and watched. An objectionable Facebook post by a Class IX student in Baduria, a neighbouring town, was said to have sparked off the violence that continued unabated for a week from July 3 night, resulting in one death. Baduria, Basirhat, Deganga…

The state’s top Congress leaders gathered at Lahar in Bhind district on Monday, July 10, for a kisan and yuva sammelan, organised by local party strongman and MLA Dr Govind Singh. The meeting became an occasion to attack Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan over the firing on farmers in Mandsaur. It also gave Guna MP Jyotiraditya Scindia a chance to strengthen his claim on leading the party in the next assembly polls and, most importantly, for the party to recreate the ‘spirit of Dabra’ from 1993. What is the ‘spirit of Dabra’? Just before the 1993 assembly elections, top Congress leaders had come together on the call of the late Madhavrao Scindia at Dabra near Gwalior. The idea then as now was to project a unified Congress state leadership. The…

JUNE 4, 2 014 PUNE, MAHARASHTRA IT professio nal Mohsin Sadiq Shaikh, 24, is killed, allegedly by the Hindu Rashtra Sena (HRS), for uploading ‘derogatory’ pictures of Shivaji and Bal Thackeray on Facebook Arrested: 7 HRS men Political reaction: BJP MP Anil Shirole says the murder is unfortunate but the reper cussions of the post natural MARCH 5, 2015 DIMAPUR, NAGALAND Mob pulls out rape accused Syed Farid Khan, 35, from jail and lynches him Arrested: 18 AUGUST 3 DADRI, UP Three suspected cattle thieves—Anaf, Arif and Nazim—lynched SEPTEMBER 28 DADRI, UP Mob kills Mohammad Akhlaq on suspicion of having beef at home Arrested: 18 people, including BJP leader’s son Political reaction: UP CM Akhilesh Yadav takes two days, PM Modi two weeks, to react OCTOBER 14 SIRMAUR, HP Saharanpur…

N.K. CHAUDHARY, 64 | TEXTILES & GARMENT | JAIPUR RUGS COMPANY PVT. LTD It was 1978. Twenty-five-year-old Nand Kishore Chaudhary, a commerce graduate, found running his family’s company, Bharat Boot House, too boring to be endured. Instead, in 1978, with just Rs 5,000 as starting capital, Chaudhary set up a carpet manufacturing unit, beginning with nine weavers. Ignoring the social stigmas about untouchability, he hired many workers from socially disadvantaged backgrounds— and working with them, in eight years expanded his manufacturing units beyond Churu to 100 looms and 500 weavers. He was able to do this, he says, because “creativity merges all castes into a creative caste”. As business picked up, Chaudhary began to export goods, and in search of more weavers, shifted base to Pardi, in Valsad, Gujarat. He…

D.R. SUBRAMANYAM, 54 & M. ANIL KUMAR, 53 | DEFENCE & AVIATION | SLN TECHNOLOGIES A breakthrough in Indian innovation and technology sits atop a structure as tall as a 15-storey building in Byalalu village outside Bengaluru: Deep Space Network (DSN) antennae capable of communicating with Indian spacecraft over one million kilometres away. The control systems that steer this 400-tonne antennae towards the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan spacecraft were provided by Bengaluru-based SLN Technologies. “It marks the role we’ve played in ISRO’s successful first Moon and Mars missions,” says M. Anil Kumar, who founded the company in 1995 with partner and comanaging director D.R. Subramanyam. The engineering classmates leveraged their skills as designers to create solutions for space and defence applications. Their first order was a simple, customised remote monitoring device…

MUSTHAFA P.C., 44 | FOOD PROCESSING | iD FRESH FOOD PRIVATE LIMITED Spurning a lucrative career in Motorola, Citibank and Intel, Musthafa P.C., an engineering graduate from NIT, Calicut, began selling idli and dosa batter, starting iD Fresh Food even as he did an MBA from IIM Bangalore. What he lau n ched with a Rs 25,000 investment for Bengalurueans in 2006 is today a Rs 145 crore business, in 14 Indian and five UAE cities. Five ultra-hygienic facilities and 1,200 employees churn fresh idli-dosa batter and other semi-processed food like vadas, parottas, chapatis, curd and paneer, sans chemical additives or preservatives. “Our philosophy is to keep home-cooked food in fashion and ease the workload on the homemaker,” says Musthafa. Initially, iD Food had a lot of wastage due to…

DR R.D. RAVINDRAN, 59 | SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP | ARAVIND EYE CARE SYSTEM THE WAY FORWARD “Our future is to sustain growth, multiply delivery capacity and keep developing costeffective solutions to keep eye care affordable for all” When eye surgeon Dr G. Venkataswamy built a low cost, high volume business model in 1976 to provide affordable eye care, it was hard to imagine it would go on to become a case study in social innova tion. Today, Aravind Eye Care System, or AECS, has six outpatient clinics, 63 primary eye care centres and 11 specialty eye hospitals with 4,000 beds catering to four million patients a year. Its innovative pay-as-per-your-ability revenue model ensures AECS provides quality healthcare to the poorest of its patients and yet be sustainable. Seven of 10 surgeries…

I nside Edge, an Amazon India television series about the Mumbai Mavericks, a fictional 20/20 cricket team in an imaginary Power Play League, gets off to a rousing start. While his teammates are frantically searching for him in the underbelly of the huge stadium (he’s next man in and they’ve just lost a wicket), teenage hunk and star batsman Vayu Raghavan (Tanuj Virwani) is pounding away on a blond cheerleader on the brink of orgasm. Vayu makes it to the crease in time and launches his first ball into the adoring crowd for a sixer. Any fears that Inside Edge might be a clichéd glamourisation of the IPL are quickly dispelled. Barely minutes into the first episode, we are introdu ced to Prashant Kanaujia (brilliantly acted by Siddhant Chaturvedi)—a strapping…

WITH ITS MIX OF TRAGEDY AND PRIVILEGE AND HER EVENTUAL FAILURE, INDIRA’S LIFE WAS SOMEWHAT SHAKESPEA REAN Sagarika Ghose has become one of those journalists who attracts near continuous abuse on social media. For the Modi bhakts, she represents ‘sickular’ Lutyens Delhi hypocrisy, a well-heeled liberal unable to accept her irrelevance. So she must have anticipated the frosty reception from some quarters for her new book, Indira: India’s Most Powerful Leader. Indeed, almost 90 per cent of the reviews on Amazon give the book one star out of five. Many of them appear to have been written even before the book was available to buy. The notoriety of both subject and biographer has certainly created a buzz, whether or not it boosts sales. In the preface, Ghose notes that publisher…

The Fat Boy LIFEpartners, Raman Singh, 32, and Randeep Kaur, 31, spend 12 hours a day working together—dishing out hand-stretched, Nepolitan style wood-fire pizzas. The Fat Boy, their café style pizzeria in Alwarpet opened to a raging response in May this year and boasts of as many as 16 varieties. They serve finger food, sandwiches, milkshakes and desserts but insist they are a pizzeria first. “Every day begins with an inventory check and ingredients are procured fresh and every dip and sauce made inhouse,” says Raman, whose passion for food made him give up the family trading business. Randeep, an engineer by profession, went on to become a home-baker before becoming a part of The Fat Boy team. After a year-and-a-half of research and building a brick oven from scratch,…

The conversation starts with kabaddi and hockey he played during childhood in Punjab’s Bareta town where he was born. It then shifts to Ramlila, where he played both Ram and Laxman. He seldom mixed up lines. In between his ambitious plans for Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi(PLKA), which he is now heading as its President, Chandigarh-based conceptual photographer Diwan Manna also curses that not many shops in Chandigarh can boast of good-quality samosas. This 59-year-old, who passed out in 1982 after completing his five-year diploma in painting from Government College of Art in Chandigarh wanted to take up cinematography after religiously watching world cinema. “And that is how photography happened,” he says. Manna, who is credited for devising a new ethos by looking at the world through a combination of film…

Acouple, perhaps newly in love, is sitting very close. The stern looking woman is saying something to the boy. Two joggers appear from behind the trees, the logos on their track pants fairly prominent. The area is Nepli, a rare spot in Chandigarh’s vicinity that’s straight from the soil. No concrete or forced order here. Only rich melancholy and intense craving. It has been secretly decided that the place needs to be reintroduced through someone else’s eyes, but the few people here seem busy. Very busy. Under the trees on both the sides is a mud path. On the left is the artificial lake Sukhna, which dries up every summer and all conversations in the city’s page 3 circuit and newspaper supplements revolve round that. Straight ahead is an invitation…