Innholdsfortegnelse for January 22, 2018 i India Today

Even for a nation in a permanent state of campaign, 2018 is going to be a challenge. In the run-up to the General Election of 2019, there will be eight assembly elections. Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram and Nagaland in the Northeast will be going to the polls, as will Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka. The year will see the BJP-led government’s last full Union budget. It will also be a year when the arts will have to square up against increasingly restive interest groups who have declared themselves to be guardians of public morality. Even as the world seemingly embraces greater technological change, India seems to be regressing into a cacophonous argument with itself, questioning the very foundations of its existence, allowing forces of caste, faith, and ethnicity to be…

The new year began with a jolt for Indians working in the United States on H1B visas, as the department of homeland security was reportedly considering new rules to prevent extensions. The H1B is a six-year work permit. During this time, visa-holders apply to become permanent residents. But with wait times for certain nationalities, including Indians, far exceeding six years, H1B extensions are essential to maintain legal status. Preventing extensions would force Indians waiting for their green cards to leave the US. Fortunately for them, the Trump administration has buckled under pressure and backed off from making immediate policy changes. 65,000 H1B VISAS GRANTED IN A YEAR. A FURTHER 20,000 ARE AVAILABLE FOR APPLICANTS WITH ADVANCED DEGREES FROM US UNIVERSITIES 90% OF H1B VISA REQUESTS ARE FOR JOBS THAT REQUIRE…

On January 5, Nigin Binish, a 25-year-old student, arrived in Delhi, having walked all the way from Coimbatore. He began his trek months ago, in August, and plans to continue on foot all the way up to Kashmir. Moved by the sight of an old woman foraging for food in a trash can, Binish says he hopes his journey will help raise awareness of food wastage in India. The figures are startling. India produces much more food than it needs and still food security is not guaranteed. Tens of millions go hungry. Despite this, tens of thousands of crores worth of food is wasted in India every year. More than a third of Indian children under five are stunted. Surely economic development must include the ability to feed our citizens?…

When pictures emerged on January 8 of smoke pluming above Trump Tower, the US president’s Manhattan monument to glitz, you’d have been forgiven for thinking Michael Wolff was the gleeful arsonist. He had, after all, already taken a flamethrower to the Donald Trump White House. His book, Fire and Fury—available from January 5 after a threatening letter from Trump’s lawyers prompted the publishers to move up the release date—has made Trump look so stupid he took to Twitter to describe himself as a “genius... and a very stable genius at that!” Dominating the headlines and the cable news talk shows—as numerous and noisy as the ones in India—Wolff has reason to be grateful to Trump. His intemperate response to Wolff’s admittedly provocative reporting has made Fire and Fury undoubtedly the…

A powerful explosion on the morning of January 6 killed four J&K police personnel deployed for crowd control in Sopore’s Gole Market, ahead of the call for a shutdown by Hurriyat separatists. Shortly after, the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the Pakistan-backed terror outfit that carried out the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament, claimed responsibility for what was the first use of an IED (improvised explosive device) in the Kashmir Valley since 2015. Coming soon after two terror strikes, including the New Year’s Eve suicide att ack, where five CRPF personnel were gunned down at their heavily fortified camp in Leth pora (Pulwama), it would appear that the outfit has significantly stepped up operations in the Valley. It also points to a worrying possibility that homegrown (Kashmiri) militants may now be joining the…

Three imminent byelections, to the Ajmer and Alwar parliamentary constituencies and the Mandalgarh assembly seat, could well signal the way Rajasthan will go in the legislative assembly elections expected in December. All the three contests will be straight fights between the Vasundhara Raje-led ruling BJP and the Congress, which is looking to make a comeback under Sachin Pilot. With the stakes high, Pilot has sagaciously opted to field Raghu Sharma, a confidant of former chief minister Ashok Gehlot, from Ajmer (Pilot’s home constituency). In doing so, he has not only ensured that the usually inimical Gehlot is compelled to participate in the campaign, but also that the bypoll result does not become a verdict on his own (Pilot’s) leadership. In Alwar, too, the young party chief has had his way…

WE HATE TO BE PREDICTABLE, but here it is again: Before the new year begins in earnest, we have invited a panel of leading experts, analysts and columnists to address some of the enduring concerns that preoccupy us, from the inescapable, perennial rubrics of the economy and politics, to hot button issues of privacy and the fate of political debate as indignation and fake news spiral in the echo chambers of social media. Will our northern neighbours be good? Will we ever live in smart cities, or is urban entropy our fate? Does solar energy really have a bright future? Will controversies about ancient monuments continue to hijack the headlines? Is 2018 going to be all about the 2019 elections, or will the Congress face extinction in the assembly elections…

POLICY DEBATES ON INEQUALITY in New Delhi focus on poverty: the worsening Gini coefficient (‘Indian income inequality, 1922-2014’: Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty) or how the top 1 per cent earned 22 per cent of the national income while the bottom half took home just 15 per cent (World Inequality Report, 2017). How should democratic, socialist India share the income pie is the question. Citizens agitating in our streets reflect a different debate about inequality: the inequity in access to opportunity. Intuitively, this makes sense. A per capita annual income of a mere $1,710 (versus $57,000 in the US or $8,100 in China) suggests that most of our growth is ahead of us. Our real wealth, the 450 million citizens below 18 years, are yet to start their game. For…

A MAJOR ISSUE IN THE SUPREME COURT IN 2018 WILL BE WHETHER WOMEN TOO WILL BE LIABLE IN ADULTERY THE HIGH POINT OF THE SUPREME COURT in 2017 was the verdict of the nine–judge bench in the case of Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India, declaring right to privacy a fundamental right. The attorney general defended the Aadhaar scheme by which every resident was required to obtain a UIDAI number and a biometric ID card. The attorney general argued that Indians have no right to privacy under the Constitution. This shocked everybody in the court, both lawyers and judges. The declaration was tantamount to setting back the privacy debate by over 50 years. Most people had taken for granted that there could be no liberty or freedom of expression…

EVEN AFTER ACCOUNTING FOR HIDDEN COSTS, THE COST OF SOLAR POWER IS NOW BELOW POWER FROM NEW COAL PLANTS, WHICH IS ABOVE Rs 4 PER kWh WITH THE COMING OF THE NEW YEAR comes the good news that India’s installed capacity in renewable electricity crossed 62 GW in November 2017 in an overall electricity portfolio of 333 GW, thus representing nearly 19 per cent of the total. The 62 GW number includes 16.6 GW of solar and 32.7 GW wind, with small hydropower and biopower making up the rest. While wind remains the biggest source in the renewables category, solar has been one of India’s major success stories in which outcomes on the ground have well exceeded expectations of only a few years ago. Market factors have undoubtedly facilitated the…

ASTROLOGY IS THE WORST KIND OF SUPERSTITION, THAT MAKES US BELIEVE THAT THE STARS AND THE PLANETARY PLASMAS ARE ALL ABOUT US THE DETACHED PLACENTA REEKS OF CAKED BLOOD. It has the sultry, damp, animal smell of the birth canal and the pickled herring notes of the liquor that bathes the unborn child, but mostly, the fetor of blood. The word comes from the Latin word for cake and that’s exactly what it is: a marbled, blood-logged cake made from foetal and uterine tissues. In the third stage of labour it cleaves beautifully out of the womb, bidden by a slow drag on the umbilical cord, into the cold hands of the obstetrician. In an elective C-section, when the uterus is sliced open, there are no stages of labour. The…

SINGH, WHO HAILS FROM VARANASI, HAS BROKEN PIGGY BANKS, ENCASHED INSURANCE POLICIES AND SOLD JEWELLERY TO KEEP HIS FILM CAREER GOING Vineet Kumar Singh is not only the protagonist of Anurag Kashyap’s upcoming film, Mukkabaaz. He’s also the co-writer and lyricist of the boxing movie. The 37-year-old actor has appeared in Kashyap’s Gangs of Wasseypur and Ugly, as well as the Bombay Talkies short Murabba. But Mukkabaaz could make him a star: Singh is riveting in his portrayal of a boxer whose dreams are stymied by a ruthless upper caste coach (Jimmy Shergill). Singh and his co-writer Mukti Singh (his sister) set out to present “the pain, the difficulties and rough inner world” of sportsmen, he says. Unlike most Bollywood sports movies, Mukkabaaz is neither uplifting nor patriotic. It delivers…

ASK THE SEXPERT Vaishali Sinha’s documentary, which offers a charming portrait of the 93-year-old sexologist and columnist Dr Mahinder Watsa, is the sex comedy that all Indians need to see.Netflix CHHURI In this delightful short, Tisca Chopra is a wife who cuts her husband’s lover (Surveen Chawla) to pieces with her acerbic wit and calculated brazenness. YouTube THEERAN ADHIGAARAM ONDRU Inspired by true events, this Tamil crime thriller features a commanding performance by Karthi as a cop trying solve a series of murders and burglaries. Amazon Prime…

TAKING STOCK The hype says: Written in his inimitable style and with characteristic wit, former Union minister P. Chidambaram brings together a selection of the most incisive essays published as a weekly column in The Indian Express in 2017. WAR TORN Theiconicnovel, Makam, in English translation, which tells the searing story of the Chinese Indians who came as indentured labourers to work in the tea gardens of Assam and Bengal, until being torn apart by the Sino-Indian war of 1962. NUMBERS GAME The hype says: A book on the significance of numbers in Indian tradition and culture, delving into the Vedic/ Puranic connotations of each key number, its significance in ritual and architecture, and resonances in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist traditions. TO PARAPHRASE THE OLD ADAGE: Those who cannot do,…

Q Never mind the Twitter trolls, what was your latest “epic fail”? We were playing Pictionary for a video promotion for Raabta. I used to be good at drawing once. I couldn’t even manage to make a pigeon. Q If you could do a film with any actor, living or dead, who would it be? I would love to romance Shah Rukh Khan. Q What’s your most prized possession? My house. I recently got it done up. Having a home that has a positive vibe and feels good to return to from work is important for me. Q What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? When I was a model I had done an ad with Aamir Khan and I was struggling with something and said, “Yeh real…

AHEAD OF THE CURVE According to Maison & Objet curved seating is a trend to watch out for this year. So, in this formal living room setting we have played with curved forms of the sofas and teamed it with different textures for a luxe look. “MIX, MATCH AND TURN MUNDANE INTERIORS INTO A THING OF BEAUTY WITH PATTERNS IN EVERY SIZE, SHAPE AND COLOUR” PLAY WITH PATTERNS Celebrating a mix of patterns in one set-up is a big trend in 2018. Therefore in this cosy nook be it the wooden panel backdrop, the upholstered back of the chair, quilting on the seat, plaid cushions, delicate grooves on the marble top and the legs of the tables, patterns are everywhere. “UNLIKE LAST YEAR WHERE METAL WAS LOUD AND OVER-THE-TOP, THIS…

She always felt a strong connection to Persia. Turquoise has arrested her attention for as long as she can remember and the Persian belt has captured her imagination for years. Turkey was the first country she visited outside India. Then in 2014 a friend introduced her to Turkish stoneware art. It was a match made it design heaven. “After all this how could I have remained separated from the most beautiful craft of blue pottery that has Turko-Persian roots?” says artist Lyla Freechild (originally called Chetna Arora, she rechristened herself as Lyla, which is a Persian name). The 28-year-old, who calls Jaipur her home wanted to celebrate sexuality and the body in its natural form so she collaborated with e-commerce website Fanusta (she is now its creative head) to come…

It’s not a pretty picture. India’s growth has slowed down. Manufacturing and agriculture are struggling, the government’s finances are stretched and tax collections are falling. Advance estimates by the Central Statistics Office put the GDP grow rate at 6.5 per cent in 2017-18, down from 7.1 per cent in the last fiscal and the lowest since fiscal 2015. Gross Value Added (GVA)—the value of goods and services produced—is projected at 6.1 per cent, down from 6.6 per cent in the last fiscal. Manufacturing growth is expected at 4.6 per cent against 7.9 per cent in the last fiscal, and agricultural growth at 2.1 per cent, compared to 4.9 per cent in the last fiscal. Economists blame the slump on demonetisation, transitory disruptions caused by the Goods and Services Tax and…

The new year couldn’t have started worse for Lalu Prasad Yadav. Sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail in one of the multiple Bihar fodder scam cases on January 6, there’s no early reprieve in sight for the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo. Trials in three related cases are expected to conclude in the coming three months. Adverse verdicts, legal experts say, could make it impossible for the beleaguered leader to secure bail pending appeals in higher courts. And it’s not just Lalu. On the very morning that the CBI court convicted him, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed a chargesheet against Misa Bharti, his eldest daughter and Rajya Sabha member, in a money laundering case. And while wife Rabri Devi has chosen to lie low, younger son Tejashwi Yadav too faces prosecution…

At a time when the Narendra Modi government is striving to deliver LPG connections to India’s poorest households, agricultural scientists in West Bengal have revived a traditional foodgrain that doesn’t need to be cooked. Komol—grown over the past decade at the agricultural training institute in Phulia (Nadia district)—is an indigenous strain of paddy that can be consumed simply after soaking for about 30 minutes. Anupam Paul, assistant director at the institute, who helped bring back this and 430 other indigenous paddy varieties, says Komol is a high-yielding variety at 4-4.5 tonnes per hectare, with the added benefit of not requiring any chemical fertilisers or pesticides. After soaking, it can be consumed like ordinary rice and is particularly tasty with curd and jaggery. Agriculture department officers say that many of the…

SHOULD THE CONGRESS LOSE KARNATAKA IN 2018, CONGRESS WILL BECOME A POLITICALLY ORPHANED RUMP THE POLITICS OF 2018 will be about the elections of 2019. This is true of every year that precedes a general election, but since Messrs Modi & Shah live in campaign mode, it’s likely to be even more the case this year. Every central government policy will be read for its electoral implications and each move in the culture wars—cow vigilantism, Ayodhya, love jihad, ghar wapasi—will be seen as a bid to turn a demographic majority of Hindus into a political bloc, to lay the electoral foundations of the Sangh Parivar’s avowed goal, a Hindu Rashtra. The eight state assembly elections scheduled for the year will be important in themselves, but they will also be way-stations…

CHINA DOES NOT LOOK FOR PERMANENT SOLUTIONS. IT WANTS STRATEGIC STABILITY WHICH CAN BE USED TO ITS ADVANTAGE THE DOKLAM STANDOFF last July and August brought back the spectre of an armed conflict in the Himalayas. The Indian and the Chinese troops were once again standing eyeball-to-eyeball in one of the potentially most volatile corners of the world after the Chinese decided to build a road through an area claimed by both China and Bhutan. In the end, violence was averted as both sides announced their respective decisions to pull back from the disputed plateau. But was it, for the Chinese, really about the border? Or a new road? Hardly, but the brief tug-of-war tells us a lot about the different ways in which China and India view treaties and…

THE GOVERNMENT TENDS TO TREAT PRIVACY AS A SECONDARY CONCERN, SUBSERVIENT TO OTHER NEEDS, SUCH AS DEVELOPMENT WHEN IN AUGUST LAST YEAR THE SUPREME COURT ruled that—contrary to what the government had held in court—Indians do indeed have a fundamental right to privacy, protected by the Constitution, a new dawn seemed to have arrived. For years now, activists had been sparring with UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India)officials and others in the government about whether or not India’s Aadhaar database posed a threat to the privacy and security of the state as well as its citizens. Much of the government’s approach to those debates seemed to hinge on treating privacy as a secondary concern: one subservient to other needs, such as those of development. The Supreme Court effectively demolished this…

LAKES IN BENGALURU CONTINUED TO FOAM, DELHI’S WINTER AIR HAD ITS ANNUAL APOCALYPTIC ARRIVAL AT THE END OF THE YEAR, I find myself returning to Raymond Carver. Reading his stories, the classic “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” chief among them, had always been a reminder of the slipperiness of meaning. I marvelled at how a writer famous for being so blunt, so direct was the one who really showed us how difficult it was to know what, in fact, we were talking about. The Indian city in 2017 felt like a character from a Carver story. The year has left me wondering: what is it, in the end, that we talked about when we talked about the city? Urban discourse this year was saturated, blustery, bold,…

PALESTINE HAS BEEN DE-HYPHENATED FROM THE INDIA-ISRAEL RELATIONSHIP AS INDIA SEEKS TO BOOST TIES WITH BOTH ISRAEL AND THE SIX GCC COUNTRIES There’s a reason the body language between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu will be closely watched when Israel’s Air Force One lands in New Delhi on January 14. The first ever visit to India by an Israeli prime minister comes just six months after Modi’s visit to Israel, the first by an Indian PM. That visit saw a red carpet welcome in Tel Aviv, personal chemistry with even a photo op of the two PMs walking on Olga beach in Haifa like reunited childhood friends, their trouser cuffs rolled up. This time around, Netanyahu’s visit, equally historic, comes amidst a perceived chill in…

For a single woman, finding a flat to rent in Mumbai is as good as winning a lottery—as filmmaker Reema Sengupta, 27, knows all too well. Sengupta was studying in London when her father told her mother, Surekha, that she’d have to find her own place. “She is an extremely educated and independent woman who had actually been in charge of the house financially for a long time,” says Sengupta. “Suddenly, she was scrambling to find a house and nobody would give it to her because her husband wasn’t by her side.” The daughter’s anger and frustration fuelled the script for her third short film, Counterfeit Kunkoo, which will vie for the international narrative short prize at the Sundance Film Festival later this month. Starring Malayali actor Kani Kusruti and…

MAGICAL THINKING The ongoing battle between rationalists and religious ideologues for dominion over education, science and the historical record gets a new treatment in John Zubrzycki’s upcoming book Jadoo-wallahs, Jugglers and Djinns: A Magical History of India (Picador India, May 2018). Though the subtitle suggests it might have been penned by Dinanath Batra, if not Narendra Modi himself, this rigorously researched and richly illustrated book chronicles how Indian magic has become part of daily ritual and popular entertainment. SOFT HINDUTVA Coming just in time to make waves at the Jaipur Literary Festival in January, Shashi Tharoor’s Why I Am a Hindu (Aleph, January 2018) alludes at once to B.R. Ambedkar and Veer Savarkar and tilts at the BJP’s attempt to own and define India’s majority religion. That alone would be…

Thriller writer Harlan Coben’s last 10 novels have topped the New York Times bestseller list, so it should come as no surprise that his latest book, Don’t Let Go, is already a hit. The stand-alone novel revolves around Napoleon Dumas or Nap, a cop determined to solve the mystery of his twin brother Leo’s death 15 years earlier. Most people believe Leo and his girlfriend Diana were killed by a train by accident or as part of a suicide pact. But Nap isn’t convinced. Then police discover the fingerprints of Maura Wells, Nap’s ex-girlfriend, at the site of a murder of another colleague, Rex Canton. Wells disappeared on the very night Leo and his girlfriend were killed. So Nap figures something must be afoot. Helping him with the case, Nap’s…

FLOOR SHOW The Whiteteak Company has introduced, a range of floor lamps under their Industrial Collection. Featured here is the Filament Tall Floor Lamp. PRICE 14,625 AT whiteteak.com silver.com MUG SHOT With designs that are a blend of modern art and pop culture, Arttd’inox’s latest collection mugs are as unique as they are striking. Shown here is a black and white mug called Annie. PRICE 990 to 2,965 AT www.arttdinox.com CRYSTAL CLARITY These pretty crystal glasses from the Desire Collection are co-designed and co-created by Thailand-based Lucaris and the Hong Kong Sommelier Association. PRICE on request AT www.lucariscrystal.com COOK UP A STORM Want to eat healthy? Get a hold of TREO’s new La Culinaire steamer and multi-purpose cooking pot. Besides making idlis and momos; it doubles up…

WATER WORLD The Z9 RO from AO Smith uses reverse osmosis and silver charged membrane technology along with an eight-staged purification process to clean water. You can also warm and heat the water. PRICE 27,250 AT www.aosmithindia.com STEAMY SCENE Inalsa’s Steam Master is ideal for quick wrinkle removal in garments. It comes with an 360° rotating hanger with clips, 1.5 L detachable and transparent water tank, adjustable pole height, boil dry protection, auto shut off and 45 seconds heat up time. PRICE 5,995 AT www.inalsaappliances.com WASH UP Godrej Appliances has launched a range of front loading fully automatic washing machines under its sub brand Godrej Eon. They come equipped with Allergy Protect feature, a wash programme that is effective in getting rid of seven common allergens and bacteria while removing…

“India will burn if the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), producers or cinema hall owners release the film [Padmavat] on January 25.... We will go... with lathis and petrol, and term them phool and Gangajal.... Having set the cinema halls on fire, we will show them placards with disclaimers saying no one should get offended as we have just offered phool and Gangajal.” SUKHDEV SINGH GOGAMEDI, leader of the Shri Rajput Karni Sena, was not pacified by the many changes demanded by the censor board, including dropping the ‘i’ in the title of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s troubled epic, formerlyknownas Padmavati. Now set to release across most of India on January 25, Padmavat will still be banned in Rajasthan. Isn’t it time governments step in to stop the goons rather…

Cow Spat As India lurches from state election to state election—each covered more intensely than the last by desperate, content-starved TV news channels—on its way to the 2019 general election, our national white noise is the squabbling of campaigning politicians. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to tune out the incessant din. With elections in Karnataka only four or five months away, Adityanath is visiting Karnataka to stir the Hindutva nest, referring to Congress as worshippers “of Tipu Sultan rather than Lord Hanuman”. In Siddaramaiah, though, he has an opponent willing to stoop to his level, going toe to toe on such pressing issues as who spends more time grazing cows and picking up their dung. Jignesh Jitters? You could forgive the right wing their moments of social media schadenfreude…

The Great Indian Bustard is endemic to India and was to become the country’s national bird but for the worry that its name might be misspelt! The death blow to the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB) may come from unexpected quarters—renewable energy projects. As 2017 drew to a close, one GIB crashed against a power transmission line, one of the few remaining that criss-cross its last stronghold—the Thar desert in Rajasthan. Its burnt, ravaged carcass was found the next day, making it the ninth GIB to be killed by a transmission line, mainly of wind power, in the past decade. In July 2017, for instance, a GIB collided with a 33 KV transmission line connected to wind turbines in Naliya, Gujarat. With fewer than 150 birds remaining in the…

Unnerved by the outburst of Dalit anger across Maharashtra in the wake of the January 1 attack on the community in Koregaon-Bhima, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had asked the state police to give the protesters a long rope. Caught in the raging Dalit versus Maratha tug of war, Fadnavis refrained from taking sides. So while he managed to restore a semblance of normalcy in just two days, analysts say his image has taken a big hit. Dalit leaders accuse Fadnavis, who also heads the home department, of failing to deploy adequate security in Koregaon-Bhima, where over 350,000 Dalits had gathered to commemorate the 1818 battle when some 500 Dalit soldiers (of the British forces) had held a 4,000-strong Maratha army led by Peshwa Bajirao II. “It was sheer negligence,” says…

THE DOMINANT NARRATIVE ABOUT INDIA’S current economic slowdown can be summarised in two words: bad timing! Just when the global economy entered its strongest cyclical lift since 2010, India was beset by the unfortunate but unintended consequences of a series of policy decisions—demonetisation, teething problems of the Goods and Services Tax, and the restructuring of bad debt in banks—that have temporarily disrupted domestic supply chains. Once these fade, the global tide will lift India to higher growth. Meanwhile, reforms should continue focusing on easing the cost of doing business, while monetary and fiscal policies should provide short-term relief to ease the burden of adjustment. Thus the call for cutting the policy interest rate, a weaker currency and tolerating a higher fiscal deficit for this year and next. Given the languishing…

CONTINUING TERROR ATTACKS HINT AT A REGROUPING OF EXTREMIST GROUPS IN PAKISTAN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT frequently collide in Pakistan. The 70th year since the founding of Pakistan was also the 40th anniversary of General Zia-ul-Haq’s coup and the 10th of the siege and storming of Lal Masjid. The shadows of these seminal events have remained to interrupt Pakistan’s endeavors to script a new history. As the order came from the Supreme Court on July 28, disqualifying Nawaz Sharif as prime minister, many in Pakistan wondered, with some merit, whether they were watching the re-run of an old clip. The prime minister, the court held, was in conflict with articles of the constitution that provided that the people’s representatives be ‘sadeeq’—truthful—and ‘ameen’—righteous. These were provisions introduced by General Zia…

THE YEAR BEFORE THE BIG ELECTION WILL SEE A SOCIAL MEDIA OVERDRIVE: FAKE NEWS, ULTRA-NATIONALISM AND TROLL ARMIES SAM BOURNE’S 2017 THRILLER To Kill the President starts off with high drama in the White House. Its star figure is launching a nuclear strike on North Korea and China—because the former has just taunted him as ‘a coward and a small man’. Bourne’s fictional president is a strange man, big, loud, given to outbursts on Twitter, with a fondness for women, and a love for Fox News. In the real world, Donald Trump returned from vacation and spent the first few of days of 2018 attacking foreign governments on Twitter. He denounced Pakistan for its “lies and deceit” and support to terrorists. He denounced Iran, and Palestinians. Then the president turned…

EVEN A-LIST MONUMENTS LIKE THE TAJ MAHAL ARE CONTROVERSIAL, BECAUSE CONSERVATION POLICIES IMPOSE CONSTRAINTS ON PEOPLE THE WORLD OF BUILT HERITAGE—traditionally the domain of the experts who list, protect, restore and interpret monuments and sites—is expanding its role in the public sphere. This rise in profile is to be welcomed, though it brings with it hazards as well as opportunities, as the hegemony of the experts is challenged by others who stake their claims. This was apparent at a recent event in Delhi that, on the face of it, marked a good end to 2017 for the experts. From December 11 to 15, they gathered in force to host the triennial General Assembly of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). This was a hugely prestigious event. With a…

On January 7, Shobhaa De turned 70, celebrating it by releasing a new book with a self-consciously ‘irreverent’ title: Seventy... and to Hell with It! Most famous as a racy chronicler of the (imaginary) love lives of the rich and famous—India’s Jackie Collins, though she has admitted to despising the sobriquet—De is also a prolific columnist, offering opinions several times a week in several newspapers. She is a public figure, a voice with considerable reach, even influence. “One tweet from you shakes up Parliament!” she quotes an enthusiastic presenter at an awards show saying by way of introduction. And when an industrialist friend introduces De to Narendra Modi, she quotes him thus: “Who doesn’t know her? For years and years I have been at the receiving end of her criticism!”…

ANURADHA ROY IS BACK IN 2018 with an epic literary novel that spans Indian history from the 1930s to the 1990s. A veteran of the Man Booker longlist—for Sleeping on Jupiter(2015)—Roy’s next book,All The Lives We Never Lived (Hachette, April 2018), traces the fraught life of Gayatri, as pieced together by her son, Myshkin. Contrasting the rise of the Nazis in Europe with the freedom struggle in India and the rival ideas of Gandhi and Tagore, it promises to resonate deeply with India’s contemporary political concerns. ANURADHA ROY’S latest work contrasts the rise of the Nazis with the Indian freedom struggle…

ART AND LITERATURE The Jaipur Literature Festival (Jan. 25-29) brings its usual mix of literature and tamasha at the Diggi Palace. The Kala Ghoda Arts Fest (Feb. 3-11) will come again to Mumbai with curated performances. The India Art Fair (Feb. 9-12) and India Art Festival (Feb. 15-18) follow close on each others’ heels so Mumbaikars and Dilliwallahs are spoilt for choice. The Serendipity Arts Fest (Dec.) and the Kochi Muziris Biennale (Dec., 12, 2018-Mar. 29, 2019) will close the year. MUSIC February brings you the SulaFest (Feb. 3-4) in Nasik. There is music and there are vineyards. Pune ups its music game with the VH1 Super Sonic (Feb. 9-11) bringing artistes from across the seas playing rock, blues, metal—you name it, they have it. This year expects Marshmello, Major…

An old house full of secrets, an eccentric father, the underdog hero and a magical world that’s rubbing shoulders with everyday reality—Saad Hossain’s Djinn City has all the tropes of a fantasy novel. But this is no desi Harry Potter. Even though it’s full of incantations and fantastical beasts (there’s even a dragon!), Djinn City is not for kids. This is magic for grown-ups, complete with murder, treachery, torture and terrifying evil. Ten-year-old Indelbed lives with his drunk father Kaikobad in the Khan Rahman family home in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The house and Kaikobad are equally ruined. Occasionally, the extended family intervenes half-heartedly on behalf of Indelbed. But no one expects anything to change—until Kaikobad slips into a mysterious coma, Indelbed discovers his mother was a djinn and his father a…

FURNISHINGS Heritage Weaves with a Modern Twist Some trends are seasonal. For instance, heavier textiles are used during the cold, winter months while summer sees lighter, more airy furnishings. That said there are annual trends to follow. Since 2018 is all about who you are rather than what you have, furnishings are more individualistic and make a strong personal statement. Heritage Inspired As the land of rich textiles it comes as no surprise that we turn to our heritage weaves and blocks when it comes to home furnishings. Beautiful Rajasthani blocks of leaves and paisleys and intricate weaves have been interpreted as wallpaper art. Be it cushions, rugs, window blinds or wall paper, influences in terms of motifs, embroideries and textures will come from textiles. There will be restricted fluidity.…

Béton, the French word for concrete is at the heart of every design. The second edition of Dalmia Bharat group’s Craft Bénton has on offer 48 handmade cement pieces. The 2018 collection has four internationally-acclaimed designers—Iti Tyagi (India), Somesh Singh (India), Cynthia Mijres Rodrigue s (Mexico), Alan Saga (Mexico) and Miroslaw Baca (Poland)—creating designs ranging from lifestyle and jewellery to home accents and furniture. Their USP, besides turning a mundane material into an object of beauty is the fact that they use the world’s greenest cement. PRICE 6,000 to 75,000 AT Mumbai from January 12 to 14 at the Indian School of Design and Innovation, Delhi from January 29 to 31at Bikaner House; www.craftbeton.com…