Innholdsfortegnelse for January 9, 2017 i India Today

There was little debate amongst India Today editors on who would be Newsmaker of 2016. Even before the fateful day of November 8, he was in the lead, but his D-bomb sealed it. In 2016, no one dominated the country’s discourse and influenced the lives of its people more than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He kept the media busy by ordering a surgical strike on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as a reprisal for terror attacks, he did not extend the term of poster boy RBI governor Raghuram Rajan in spite of a chorus of support, he did not succumb to the rage of veterans on the implementation of One Rank One Pension, and he scored an unprecedented win for the BJP in Assam. As India’s First Diplomat, he travelled to 18…

Manipur today is a caricature. It is a comical charade of democracy and its institutions. It has been so for a very long time, and many have perished along the long unending road to freedom, towards the ‘tryst with destiny’ that most people in the north-eastern region missed out in 1947. The ongoing tragedy in Manipur, a little of which has seeped out to the national media’s consciousness, which euphemistically refers to it as the ‘present situation’, only serves to bring out the finest features of this farcical spectacle that has been acted out for decades. The situation has provoked some to recall other blockades and embargoes in the region—the one in Jaffna in 1987 that provoked the best humanitarian response from India; the one in Kashmir that we woke…

Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan It has become a jan andolan. More than 3 crore toilets have been constructed; over 1.3 lakh villages and 480 towns and cities are now open defecation-free Swachh Vidyalaya 410,000 toilets built in 260,000 schools, within a record one year Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana 2.5 million bank accounts, 200 million RuPay cards. The Jan Suraksha initiative provides 98 million people with accident insurance and 31 million with life insurance MUDRA Over 21 million small businesses avail loans, of which 61 per cent are Dalits and tribals and 79 per cent are women PM Ujjwala Yojana 15 million poor families have got LPG connections; will expand to 50 million families soon. Electricity now reaches 11,400 villages of the 18,452 un-electrified villages UJALA 187 million LED bulbs have…

MUKESH AMBANI, 59 For finally launching the much-delayed Jio and shaking up the telecom sector AFTER DELAYING THE lau nch of his much-touted 4G mobile telephony services by nearly two years, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani shook up the telecom market by announcing on September 1 that Reliance Jio—which uses state-ofthe- art LTE or Long Term Evolution technology—will offer voice calls absolutely free. Jio would also offer data packages at one-fifth the prevailing market prices, while voice, video, music and content would be given free to subscribers for the first four months, beginning September5. Three months later, Ambani extended the offer to the end of March 2017, while announcing that Jio had roped in 50 million customers, well on its way to touch its first year target of 100 million.…

MULAYAM SINGH YADAV, 77 AKHILESH YADAV, 43 SHIVPAL YADAV, 61 For their headline-grabbing public feud in India’s most populous state I NDIA’S POLITICAL CLANS, WITH their cast of colourful personalities, diffused power structures and struggles for authority make for great political soap opera. The Yadav clan which runs Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Samajwadi Party has plenty of characters who run true to this clan norm. The latter half of 2016 was dominated by the political kushti within the extended SP family, as the son of former wrestler and SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, struggled to carve out a political place for himself. Curiously, the opposition to the CM with the development agenda, came from within his family. The Yadav patriarch openly chided his son and pitted…

BABA RAMDEV, 50 For making Patanjali Ayurveda the country’s fastest growing FMCG company posting a turnover of Rs 5,000 crore for 2015-16 I N APRIL THIS YEAR, the baba had the nation in awe when he announced a Rs 5,000- crore turnover for his Patanjali Ayurveda, vowing to double it the next year. With over three lakh franchise outlets across the country, Patanjali products are set to take over the market—from supermarkets to neighbourhood general stores. With an advertising budget of over Rs 500 crore, and with his own ebullient personality— he’s judged dance shows on TV, showed off his yoga moves on stage with a Bollywood actor, even applied a Patanjali cream on Lalu Prasad Yadav—Ramdev dominated the headlines throughout the year. Sometimes, of course, he also did it…

VIRAT KOHLI, 28 For leading Team India from the front, with talent, vigour and vision VIRAT KOHLI HAS BEEN called many things, chief among them being ‘aggressive’. That’s not the whole story—if Kohli were just another brash, testosterone-fuelled boy with an outsize sense of entitlement, ‘aggressive’ would have swiftly devolved into ‘thuggish’, as happened with the littlelamented S. Sreesanth. No, a far better word to describe Kohli is champion. Here are a few reasons Kohli made the headlines this year: ▪ His 2016 record makes for spectacular reading—some 2,600 international runs; the fastest batsman to score 25 centuries in ODIs; the fastest to 7,500 runs in ODIs; and the third captain in history to score three double-centuries in a single year. ▪ Then there’s his captaincy of India’s Test squad,…

MUFTI MOHAMMAD SAYEED Late Jammu and Kashmir chief minister 12 January 1936–7 January 2016 “If we can speak to Pakistan, why can’t we talk to our own people?” PURNO AGITOK SANGMA Former Lok Sabha speaker 1 September 1947–4 March 2016 “PRANAB TOO INTELLIGENT. TRY ME [FOR PRESIDENT].” J. JAYALALITHAA | Former Tamil Nadu chief minister 24 February 1948–5 December 2016 “There is no alternative to Jayalalithaa.” (India Today, April 30, 1987) MRINALINI SARABHAI | Noted danseuse and Padma Bhushan recipient 11 May 1918–21 January 2016 “Creative activity is a presentation in understandable terms of what we are, a picture of man’s inner aspirations, joys and sorrows.” (India Today, April 30, 1987) MAHASWETA DEVI | Writer and social activist 14 January 1926–28 July 2016 “I belong to India. It’s what gives…

SMALL STEPS You are more likely to succeed if you break your resolutions into a series of specific, measurable steps CLEAR GOALS You are more likely to fail if you make vague resolutions. Think about what you really want out of life and make concrete plans JUST REWARDS Failure is more likely if you focus on the negatives. Give yourself small rewards when you achieve a target ONE AT A TIME Create a checklist. Aim for just one resolution at a time, and channel your energy toward changing that aspect Change this one thing: Sleep Resolutions are harder to keep if you are tired. Exhaustion and stress consume willpower. Studies have shown that people who don’t get enough sleep are more irritable, stressed, distracted and less likely to make good…

GO EAST Let’s all move to Sikkim, the first state in India to go all organic with its food cultivation. DEBUTS OF THE YEAR Jim Sarbh was menacing as one of the hijackers in Neerja, and Rinku Rajguru, only 14, was a marvel in the crossover hit Sairat. MR DAREDEVIL Trust Ranveer Singh to be fearless. The actor’s buttflash in Befikre was groundbreaking, passing even the CBFC test. WORD OF THE YEAR Modi’s love for acronyms took a backseat and the term ‘surgical strike’ took precedence, after it was used to describe both the fight against terrorists as well as black money hoarders. IMPORTED WORD OF THE YEAR Most Indians now know of the Produnova—named after a Russian gymnast—thanks to Dipa Karmakar, who was just short of a podium finish…

“CONTRARY TO BRITAIN, WHERE IT IS EXTREMELY VIBRANT, NON-FICTION STILL REMAINS FICTION’S POOR BROTHER IN INDIA.” WILLIAM DALRYMPLE William Dalrymple will speak to us on one condition. “Order tea for me, and make me talk.” When boys in their teenage were chasing girls, he was in the darkroom, experimenting with black and white. “Of course! I never chased girls. I don’t chase girls. I will never chase girls!” he says and hugs the delicate Olivia Fraser, his wife. The location is perfect. Almost. No one disturbs us at the outdoor café ‘Stop ‘N Stare’ in Chandigarh. While Fraser, wearing a permanent smile on her lips ignores us completely and buries herself into a book, Dalrymple, known best for books like The City of Djinns and The White Mughals, between sips…

The Pune Biennale is back at the beginning of the new year, taking art closer to the people of Pune. The art movement will run for close to a month along the city’s landmark locations such as the JM Road, Pataleshwar Caves, Balgandharva, Z-Bridge, the Jungli Maharaj Temple, PES Modern High School and bustling public gardens, prominent art galleries and even shipping containers. On the Easel The Biennale will showcase artworks from close to 300 artists in flagship and other participatory projects. The flagship exhibition, Habit-co-Habit is curated by art historian and curator Zasha Colah and art critic Luca Cerizza and aims to present different forms in which artists reflect on topics such as cohabitation, adaptation, and assimilation. The title emerges from a wordplay between habit and cohabit, which the…

DECEMBER 26, 2016 “Scientific advances will make our lives better, easier and longer, but will also make us slaves to technology. Man’s creations going out of control—the stuff of science fiction movies— may well become reality!” KRISHAN KALRA, via e-mail Didi on the March Romita Datta’s story (Didi Eyes Delhi) is very incisive and covers virtually all aspects of the matter. Though I firmly believe that Modi remains politically invincible, and the BJP will once again sweep the polls in 2019, I do agree with Sukhendu Shekhar Ray’s comment that Mamata is the only one who can lead a coalition of opposition parties. The other regional satraps are mired too deep in their own problems to offer the credibility that she can. That she is ambitious, there is no doubt:…

IN TROUBLED WATERS Andhra Pradesh social welfare minister Ravela Kishore Babu is in a spot. Guntur zilla parishad chairperson Janimum has lodged a police complaint alleging ‘threat to her life’ and harassment by him for the past nine months. Babu denies it all, but CM Chandrababu Naidu has set up a threemember TDP team to examine the matter. REVENGE OF ‘DRAUPADI’ The BJP’s Roopa Ganguly is recovering from a haematoma. Her party blames a TMC assault for her condition. Ganguly says she hasn’t been able to oil or comb her tresses properly—a throwback to her role as Draupadi, in the TV series Mahabharata? Whatever will be her revenge this time? PM’S PR BRIGADE Public support for demonetisation at stake, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has instructed ministers to visit their home…

Full text of the exclusive interview: LET ME BEGIN BY ASKING YOU about the ‘financial Pokhran’ you set off on 8 November by announcing the demonetisation of high-value notes. There has been both praise and criticism of this historic decision. Are you satisfied with the way it has been implemented? You have termed this decision ‘historic’. You have called it the ‘financial Pokhran’. You have probably used the term in the context of the water-tight secrecy that was maintained through the process. I am glad you have recognised both these important aspects of our decision and its implementation. This decision is so huge that even our best economists remain confused in their calculations. India’s 1.25 billion citizens, however, have welcomed it wholeheartedly and supported it even in the face of…

JUSTICE T.S. THAKUR, 65 For speaking truth to power and holding firm to his ideals in challenging times NOT MANY CHIEF JUSTICES become famous. They are not easily approachable. They are not instantly recognisable media figures. And underneath their public robes, they lead very private lives. But the 43rd CJI, Tirath Das Thakur, 65, is an exception. It’s hard to think of a month when he has not been in the news. The chief justice had barely warmed the top court benches before the nation woke up to photographs of him carpooling to work on January 1 despite being exempt from the Delhi government’s oddeven vehicle rationing formula. That no-excuses leadership was what the nation expected. His predecessor, Justice H.L. Dattu, had told journalists that he was handing over the…

ARUN JAITLEY, 63 From a high of getting the GST bill through, the finance minister now has his hands full dealing with the fallout of demonetisation O FTEN REFERRED TO AS ‘yaaron ka yaar’, finance minister Arun Jaitley’s friendships cut across party lines and politics. It’s his camaraderie with political leaders of all parties and his astute negotiation skills that pulled together the numbers in the Rajya Sabha to pass one of the most sweeping tax reforms, the Goods and Services Tax bill. Whether it was multiple meetings with the late Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalitha, who would not support the legislation but agreed to abstain which helped the NDA make up the numbers, or negotiating with the traditional Congress allies and finally bringing the Congress itself onboard, Jaitley…

ZAKIR NAIK, 51 His brand of religious edutainment has followers in 200 countries, but now it’s accused of fomenting terror IN JULY, FIVE EDUCATED, middle-class young men held a cafe to hostage in an expensive part of the Bangladesh capital Dhaka. Twenty-nine people, including the gunmen, policemen and hostages, lay dead when it was all over. Scrutiny of the attackers’ social media accounts showed that at least one of them was a regular follower of Peace TV and its founder, the Mumbaiborn Salafi preacher Zakir Naik. It was not the first time Naik had been accused of fomenting terror. The Indian governm ent quickly banned the channel, and in November passed an order banning Naik’s Islamic ResearchFou ndation (IRF) for five years. The IRF helped fund Peace TV and the…

P.V. SINDHU, 21 SAKSHI MALIK, 24 DIPA KARMAKAR, 23 For showing that India can do more than lose nicely in the global arena WHEN P.V. SINDHU WON A CLOSE first game against Carolina Marin, the Spanish world champion and then world No. 1, pumping her fist and crying out in triumph, a nation started to believe it might have its first female gold medallist (and only its second ever individual gold medal in its mediocre Olympic history). It wasn’t to be. Still, Sindhu had done what no other Indian woman had done, joining two wrestlers and a shooter as one of India’s few Olympic silver medallists. Even more than Sindhu’s athletic game, it was her fierce competitiveness that endeared her to Indians, long used to losing nicely. Sindhu was not…

SYED HAIDER RAZA | Painter 22 February 1922–23 July 2016 “It is a man and a woman coming together. Either they fight or they make love. Whatever style one may have, this relationship of colours remains true, remains the geometry of life.” (India Today, March 9, 2015) LT GEN J.F.R. JACOB 1971 war hero, former governor of Punjab and Goa 1923–13 January 2016 “A hero to my mind is someone who does not show fear. When you are a leader of men, you rise above your fears and lead by personal example.” (India Today, December 27, 2010) A.B. BARDHAN Leader, Communist Party of India 25 September 1924–2 January 2016 SAROSH HOMI KAPADIA Former chief justice of India 29 September 1947–4 January 2016 GEN K.V. KRISHNA RAO Former army chief and…

She walks in slowly and enters the under-construction site selected for the photo- shoot. Takes off her glasses, looks around at the post-nuclear landscape. There is a hint of sun piecing through a window’s broken pane. The actor knows her light. She takes that on her face. Picture perfect. Though it has been three decades that Shernaz Patel has been around—in theatre (Love Letters), in television (Khaandan) and films (Janam, Black, Guzarish, Rockstar and Azhar), the desire to challenge herself to a new role refuses to go away, maybe the reason she is experimenting with newer formats like the web and starring in short films. “Which actor can undermine the power of a role that challenges you to stretch your creativity to the hilt? The internet is allowing us to…

If you are looking to tone up your body, Ozi Gym is where you should be headed. Its outlets across the Tricity (Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali) have in-house dieticians, physicians and an impressive one-trainer-for-fourclients ratio. There are high-end imported equipments to try for a vigorous cardio session as well. A visit to their inhouse spa for some steam and sauna is a must-do. Manbir Malhan, founder and partner of the gym says that an increasing number of people are getting fitness conscious. Being an expert in Taekwondo, wrestling and cycling, the entrepreneur gives a lot of importance to fitness himself. Ask Malhan how people, who prefer to work out at home can stay fit, and he says, “one must devote at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity on…

Master Divider Once in a while in a nation’s life, one man emerges from the shadows and shatters the idyll. Suddenly he is an emperor amidst the wreckage, his eyes surveying a grand tomorrow and his feet trampling on the dead residue of yesterday. He becomes the sole arbiter of that space between fear and freedom, anxiety and adoration. The man becomes a force, an idea, that storms the minds and hearts of a people, and forever shifts the centre of political gravity. The national script is rewritten: he against the Other. He divides and dominates. Such men are the frontbenchers of history. There are many synonyms for them. Dictator. Liberator. Redeemer. Revolutionary. Their temptations have powered some of the most captivating national sagas, both great and grotesque. Their dreams—and…

RATAN TATA, 78, AND CYRUS MISTRY, 50 For the unfortunate corporate battle over the iconic 148-year-old Tata Group’s operations WHEN RATAN TATA, 78, hung up his boots at the Tata group in December 2012, leaving the reins of the over $100 billion business empire to ‘insider’ Cyrus Mistry, now 50, he probably would never have thought he would be back at the helm once again. What unravelled on October 24, 2016 was that Mistry wasremoved “with immediate effect” to bring back Tata as an interim chairman. It left corporate India in shock. Mistry’s sudden removal dented the group’s reputation as one of India’s most trusted business conglomerates. What followed was a long list of allegations and counter-allegations, with Mistry speaking of the Tata Trusts’ overarching powers in thegroup. Mistry’s four-year…

BOUQUET Feminism had a strange bed-fellow: Chetan Bhagat. In his latest blockbuster, One Indian Girl, Bhagat held forth on the new tribe of women: “Strong Independent” but a-b-s-o-lu- t-e-l-y cute. October BRICKBATS It was meant to be a grand theft, but things went awfully wrong for four young men in Guwahati, Assam, who stole a State Bank of India passbook machine, thinking it was an ATM. October 45th US President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was predicted a day before voting began in the US, by a ‘psychic’ Flowerhorn fish with a hump on its head. Named Chanakya, it chose Trump and nibbled on his picture. November of Indian respondents were planning a gastronomic getaway in 2017, said Tripadvisor. October 1,200 CARS AND 400 APARTMENTS were gifted to 1,600 employees by diamond…

The Story of a Brief Marriage: A Novel by Anuk Arudpragasam HarperCollins Pages 193 Price Rs 499 Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm.” From the inver ted Austenian ring of its first sentence, Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage establishes that it’s no ordinary war novel. It is more a wartime- sensorium, taking us through 48 hours of the brutal end of the Sri Lankan civil war in May 2009. We spend all of this time in a sliver of a coastal camp, where our narrator Dinesh lives with fellow evacuees from villages in…

Our hearts, minds and souls are made of stories. Words and music that have travelled down centuries. Anecdotes and tales shape us. Rhythm of ghazals teaches the eyes how to appreciate beauty, in all its manifestations. My state of Punjab is the land of mingling and separations. This dichotomy is not tragic. In fact, it makes us richer. But the contemporary phase of separation is becoming too long —a divorce from our culture, sensibilities, and our language. Khalil Gibran once said that ‘a great singer is he who sings our silences’. Look around, do you see anyone talking about our wounds, the souls that are bruised beyond healing? The lips from where voices just refuse to come out? Those blank gazes? Switch on the television and you will be bombarded…

I n an age of fast food and quickfix meals, the concept of sitdown multi-course dinners by The Cooking Culture Classe, comes as a welcome concept in the food world. After its debut in Ahmedabad a few years ago, the brand is now in Pune with the first fine-dine restaurant that showcases global cuisine in pre-plated courses, all set amidst a soothing and plush ambience. Dark wood panelled walls, scalloped lattice screens, mesh curtains around each table and low lighting lend it a nostalgic old world charm. On the Plate The menu is pre-set and every course is an experience in discovering new flavours, tastes and textures. With a minimum of five courses for business luncheons, the portions are small to ensure you enjoy every course. Dinnertime is more formal…