Innholdsfortegnelse for February 26, 2018 i India Today

“As India emerges as one of the world’s largest economies,” noted the Economic Survey, “it needs to gradually move from being a net consumer of knowledge to becoming a net producer.” But Indian research spending still lags well behind that of other major economies and the quality of education, at both the school and university levels, remains mediocre. Are young Indians prepared to compete in a shrinking job market? Another curiosity is the reluctance of the Indian private sector to spend on R&D, unlike in the US or China, where private spends outstrip government expenditure by far. 1,04,864CR TOTAL SPENDING ON RESEARCH IN 2016-17, UP FROM RS 24,117 CRORE IN 2004-05 AND RS 85,326 CRORE IN 2012-13 0.7% OF INDIA’S GDP SPENT ON RESEARCH—UNCHANGED SINCE 2004-05—COMPARED WITH 2.8% BY THE…

A new committee set up by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has not gone down well with South Block’s defence bureaucrats. The Raksha Mantri’s advisory committee on MoD capital projects, a 13-member panel set up on February 7 and headed by former secretary Vinay Sheel Oberoi, includes retired bureaucrats and armed forces brass and has six months to submit a report on the MoD’s sluggish pace of defence equipment acquisitions and development programmes. Clearly, a can of worms no one wants opened. KHAN VS MODI IN CHINA Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Chinese social media account on the Twitter-like Weibo, launched with fanfare in May 2015 as a direct channel to talk to China, has fallen into disuse, coinciding with a difficult period in ties. The last post was in October, when…

China is determined to demonstrate its oft-repeated assertion that the Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean. And Maldivian president Yameen is happy to be the medium through which this message is being delivered The domestic political crisis in the Maldives may have created fewer waves in India had it not, concurrently, opened the door for Chinese naval power to entrench itself among the islands strung south of the Indian peninsula. President Abdulla Yameen’s regime in Male has—since the illegal ouster of Nasheed in a coup in 2012—systematically sought to reduce political, security-related and economic engagement with India even as it has invited Chinese presence, which has rapidly expanded. It began with the cancellation in 2013 of the Male airport project contracted to the Indian firm, GMR, and its award shortly…

PAKISTAN IS LIKE the bounceback toys sold in subcontinental markets. Hit them hard enough and they appear to topple, only to rebound and, if you are not watchful, whack you. As he nears the end of his fourth year as prime minister, Narendra Modi must be both exasperated and frustrated with the way his efforts to deal with Pakistan have turned out. Whatever he has thrown at Pakistan to bring it around, it never seems to learn, and keeps coming back for more punishment. Rarely has so much hostility been witnessed on the Line of Control (LoC)—where the armies of India and Pakistan stand bunker-to-bunker—since the ceasefire the two sides negotiated in 2003. That agreement now seems as good as dead. Last year, there were an average of three violations…

THE LAST TWO WEEKS in Kashmir have been dominated by episode and apprehension, event and context. Understanding both is essential, as always, to grasping the enormity of the danger that stares nuclear-armed South Asia in the face. The event at hand is the killing, once again, of three young Kashmiri men by the security forces. The circumstances were flagrant enough for the Jammu and Kashmir state government to file, uncharacteristically, a First Information Report (FIR) against a senior Indian army officer. This pursuit for mere information was countered in the Supreme Court of India by the officer’s father, claiming that no such right existed. In effect, that the parents and families of Javaid Bhat, Suhail Lone and Rayees Ganai—the three dead young men—had not the right to even have their…

 Q. Tell us about your role in the film, Jonaki. “I was tall and fair, so I was cast as a vamp. I never had the opportunity to show my talent. This film gave me that chance,” says Lolita It’s about an old woman in coma. The film is all about what is going on in her mind. Q. What was it like working with Aditya Vikram Sengupta and Jim Sarbh? Aditya is very talented, I felt honoured to be working with him. I never had the opportunity to show my talent. This film gave me that chance. Jim is so bright, intelligent, always cracking jokes and such a good actor. Q. What do you think of today’s films? There’s no segregation between the vamp and the heroine. It doesn’t…

A SIGNIFICANT NOVEL OF ITS time, Poonachi is a slow burn that pulls you in, bemuses and frustrates you before convincing you to commit to it. Yet it fails to be as compelling as author Perumal Murugan wanted it to be—at least in translator Kalyan Raman’s English version. The story begins with an inordinately tall man, somewhat mythic in proportion, who gives a jet black goat kid to a poor, elderly couple in Tamil Nadu. The kid, Poonachi, is the runt of a litter of seven. She becomes an adopted child, treated differently from the couple’s other goats, something of a blessed creature, surviving being orphaned, hunger, poverty, drought, wild cats and predatory birds. The narrative shifts between Poonachi’s perspective and that of the rural couple as Poonachi grows from…

From the first visit we knew that this site would be a challenge. The plot was irregular in shape and contoured. There was dense undergrowth on site and a terrain, which was unmanageable. It was difficult to plan the architecture of the four-bedroom villa so that it faced the best views. Since the site was contoured we worked on one section at a time. Entry level would have the living space and we could therefore achieve a floor below and above. Regulations permit structures at a height of nine meters above the ground so the contoured site proved to be to our advantage. The Brief It was understood that it was important to maximise the views. Apart from the master bedroom, two additional bedrooms for the client’s children, a guest…

With non-performing assets (NPAs) in the banking sector ballooning beyond Rs 8 lakh crore, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to crack the whip on banks going slow in resolving big cases of bad loans, setting a deadline for resolution of such cases. On February 12, the RBI set a deadline of six months for banks to resolve cases where the NPAs stood at Rs 2,000 crore or more, failing which they will have to compulsorily refer such cases for insolvency proceedings to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The central bank has also notified graded resolution plans along with an indicative list of financial difficulty, and directed banks to share data on defaulters with the RBI on a weekly basis. For accounts with exposures of Rs 100…

Sanjoy Hazarika’s latest book cannot escape a comparison with his previous and much acclaimed, Strangers of the Mist (1994). More than two decades separate the two books. The new title suggests a continuum. It is possible, of course, to read Strangers No More as a standalone text mapping “the subtle changes taking place as the marginalised become the mainland”. So what marks this transformation of the Strangers of the Mist to Strangers No More? The book begins with the strategic location of topography, the historicity of boundaries and the cadastral map. Interesting snippets of the colonial history are disinterred for the reader. The introduction suggests an important way of understanding boundaries as not fixed and sacrosanct, as deemed by the nation state. Maps are essentially incomplete. The disinclination of the…

Valentine Vandals A cheesy holiday in the West—an excuse to sell sentimental greeting cards, flowers and boxes of heart-shaped chocolate—has become in recent years a fiercely contested front in India’s culture wars. EachFebruary14,theself-appointed sanskari police patrol the streets of any given city, picking on young couples. Lucknow University put out an ill-advised circular reminding students that February 14 was ‘Maha Shivratri’ and should be celebrated as such. In Chennai, a group opposing Valentine’s Day married a dog to a donkey. A bizarre protest you might think, except in Bengaluru a group supporting Valentine’s Day expressed their approval by marrying a pair of sheep. Meanwhile, on social media, some fulminated against the wholesale adoption of Western fads by the nation’s youth. Except everyone else was ignoring them to make eyes at…

On February 9, a special Kerala cabinet meeting couldn’t be held as seven ministers were absent. Three days later, CM Pinarayi Vijayan warned: skipping cabinet meets would lead to ejection from the ministry. The same day, in Assam, the assembly was adjourned as no minister was present for the afternoon session. Deputy speaker Dilip Kumar Paul, who was running the House, had to issue a warning to the offenders. Sandeep Unnithan with Ananth Krishnan, Rohit Parihar, Kiran D. Tare and Jeemon Jacob…

May 26, 2014 Modi invites Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, along with other heads of South Asian states, to his swearing-in ceremony August 19, 2014 India calls off foreign secretary-level talks after Pakistani envoy Abdul Basit meets Kashmiri separatists March 3, 2015 Foreign secretary S. Jaishankar (left) meets Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhury as part of Saarc Yatra in Islamabad June 16, 2015 Modi calls up Sharif, greets him on Ramzan and informs him about the decision to release Pakistani fishermen jailed in India July 10, 2015 Modi and Sharif meet in the Russian city of Ufa and issue a joint statement condemning all forms of terror July 27, 2015 Seven people killed as three Pakistani terrorists attack a bus and a police station in Gurdaspur September 2015 NSA-level talks…

AKSHAT BANSAL THE TIDE TURNS Actor Priyanka Bose closes Bansal’s show ‘Mourning of the Marine Life’, at the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai NORTHEAST CALLING NATURE’S WAY A Jenjum Gadi outfit showcased during the Northeast Mojo show at the fashion week SUMIRAN KABIR SHARMA SOUL SEARCH From the designer’s collection Janaza, which uses the metaphor of funerals to highlight emotional baggage USHA SILAI STITCHING LIVES Designers Amit Vijaya (left) and Richard Pandav walk the runway with two women trained under the Usha Silai project LOVEBIRDS & PRINCESS PEA AGE OF FUSION The collaborative collection, Born of Fire, is based on the theme of self-questioning AS MODELS WALKED DOWN THE RUNWAY at the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, wearing the finest organic Ryndia silk from Meghalaya as part of…

Lorenzo Angeloni, Italy’s current ambassador to India and Nepal, has done stints in Uruguay, Germany, Algeria, Sudan and Vietnam. Like several Indian diplomats, he’s also an author, having published numerous works of fiction and non-fiction at home. He spoke about his recent novel, Behind My Scenes. Q. What does it mean when you say Behind My Scenes is “a musing on love”? The book is about relationships and love is just one part of it... because we have love and pain. Relationships is one of the themes I follow with a permanent curiosity, maybe because I come from a Catholic country which adopted a divorce law only in 1974. I was 16 when I found myself in a new situation... when I realised that couples do not have to be…

Who gets to love in India? Section 377 declares sex between same-gender couples illegal. Moral policing troubles unmarried sexual relationships. And vigilantes often attack lovers who cross religious or caste lines. Yet love persists. Eleven Ways to Love, a collection of non-fiction essays, focuses on this persistence, taking as its point of departure the question ‘Who gets to love?’ In ‘A Letter to My Lover(s)’, for instance, Dhrubo Jyoti writes of living and loving as a queer Dalit, wondering aloud to an upper caste ex-lover, ‘Our relationship with feeling less than human spans centuries. What is our love in front of this?’ In ‘The Shade of You’, Anushree Majumdar speaks of dating a Kenyan man in Delhi, where racism envelops their relationship. And in ‘The One but Not the Only’,…

ARUVI A rebellious young woman fights for her rights and a better world. This acclaimed Tamil film features two great newcomers in writer-director Arun Prabu Purushothaman and actress Aditi Balan. Amazon Prime GARDEN PARTY In this Oscar-nominated animated short, an army of frogs have the time of their lives in an abandoned villa. There’s lust, gluttony, sloth and a murky secret. faaf.tv CHASING CORAL An in-depth and troubling look at how climate change is destroying the habitat underwater at an astonishing pace. Netflix…

Shrimp and grits and gas station fried chicken don’t really seem like foods that would be served at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai. And yet, Lousiana Creole cuisine is a great fit at the newly opened ‘Dine at The Quarter’, where a love for jazz runs deep. The menu takes liberties replacing ingredients used in the southern American cuisine with locally found grains, herbs and so on. Neither the shrimp and grits nor the fried chicken are wholly successful. But the farro wheat risotto (sourced from a village in Maharashtra) with mushroom is a revelation. Along with the Louisiana fare, the menu features wood-fired pizzas and other items from the mozzarella bar in the Opera House. It’s the perfect season for dining al fresco, too.…

ENGINEERED WOOD DRAMA OF BLACK AND WHITE If you want a floor that is as striking as it is durable, opt for the engineered wood flooring range by Mikasa, from Green-lam. Featured here is the new Herringbone collection created using Oak Moonlight and Oak Fume woods. PRICE 494 per sq ft www.mikasafloors.com VITRIFIED TILES ADD SHINE AND SHIMMER Orient Bell’s new range of flooring is as smooth as satin. The Gilimkar Tiles manufactured by adding gilimkar granules imported from Spain give the tiles a briliant shine. They are also easy to clean and low maintenance. PRICE 900 per sq m (600mm x 1,200mm and 300mm x 600mm) www.orientbell.com ENGINEERED WOOD BIRCH BEAUTY The engineered wood range called CW Collection from Span Floors has three layers of birch. Innovative polyurethane hot-melt…

FOOT CARE If you have pronated or flat feet, opt for motion restriction shoes. For high arch feet, cushioned shoes are recommended. People with hip/ knee pain or high arch feet should never wear thin sole footwear. Always buy footwear in the evening for your foot is at its maximum size at this time. Take a picture of your soles to rule out any swelling, wounds, ulcers, callus and corn on a daily basis. If you are a diabetic, avoid walking barefoot for diabetic neuropathy will not allow you to know what has pricked you until the damage is already done. Always make sure your footwear is protective, cushioned and does not have hard edges as this will harm your feet. GYNAECOLOGY Indian women have a lot on their plates…

Get ready to party as Holi Moo! is back in the city with its 12th edition. Inspired by the festival of colour, Holi Moo! combines the traditional revelry and irreverence of the festival of colour, with a mix of music, art and culture. With people coming from as far as Australia and Columbia, this is a must-visit event of the year. On March 2 At Asiad Village Lawns Time 12 noon to 7 p.m. Tickets Early bird tickets at Rs 2,000; regular tickets are priced at Rs 2,500 Details holimoofestival.com…

New World Wealth, a South Africa-based global market research group, in its latest report, confirms India’s seat at the top table of the world’s wealthiest nations. As India’s number of ‘high net worth individuals’ grows at a dizzying pace, vast swathes of the country are left farther behind. The wealth concentrated in Mumbai, for instance, makes it one of the 15 richest cities in the world. The ‘total’ wealth of countries in the report refers to estimates of private wealth, the assets of individual citizens including property, cash, equities and business interests. 6 India’s rank among richest nations, with $8,230 billion in total wealth; the US at $64,584 billion tops the list 25% Rise in India’s wealth since 2016 (160% since 2007), the fastest growing; China, growing at 22%, was…

The three constituents of Goa’s ruling coalition are at loggerheads over a rather curious issue—the installation of statues to honour their preferred icons. It all started with the Goa Forward Party (GFP) demanding a statue of Jack Sequeira, who was instrumental in preventing Goa’s merger with Maharashtra back in 1967, in the state assembly complex. And while Congress MLAs supported the move, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party wanted a statue of socialist icon Ram Manohar Lohia instead. Not to be left behind, the BJP legislators said it ought to be none other than their beloved Chhatrapati Shivaji. State town planning minister Vijai Sardesai of the GFP insists that Sequeira had to be honoured for keeping Goa’s identity intact. It was, after all, on his initiative in 1967 that Goans voted to…

CANADA’S PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU’S youthful, charming style has proven to go a long way and, for most of 2018, he has taken it on tour. He spent much of January holding town halls across the country, slipped down to the US to meet with heavy hitting entrepreneurs, including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and will soon arrive in India. The US visit came as talks to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) are under way and with Toronto on the shortlist for the new Amazon headquarters coveted by many US cities. He did not meet with President Donald Trump. On the world stage, the Canadian leader has come to represent the ideals of progress: collaboration, civility and equality and his trip to India will offer him yet another…

It was my first trip abroad,” says Ere Gowda. And the 37-year-old filmmaker isn’t talking about an ordinary holiday. He’s talking about his trip to the 47th International Film Festival of Rotterdam this month, where his film won the prestigious FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) award in the Bright Future section. “It was cold outside but the people were warm. They connected with, and understood, my film set in a small village,” he says. Gowda’s Balekempa (The Bangle Seller) is set in his native village of Doddabyadarahalli in Karnataka’s Mandya district. Through its protagonists Kempanna and Saubhagya, caught in an incompatible marriage, it tells the story of secret relationships and desires in a patriarchal, agrarian setting. “I grew up hearing that such intimate relationships are customary in the big…

IN THE BOOK Hunters of Katpadi, author Pradeep Sebastian imagines an India where not just a handful of readers and publishers are obsessed with the bound and printed word, but also a legion of typesetters, printers, booksellers and book collectors. In this utopia, the passionate bibliophiles meet regularly to discuss the physical book as a form of art and go to any lengths to outbid each other at thronging auctions of rare first editions. This fantastical Chennai makes a terrific setting for a promising debut billed as India’s first “biblio-mystery”—a genre made famous in recent years by novels like Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose and Carlos Ruis Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind. When the two women who own Biblio, an antiquarian bookshop in Chennai, learn that some…

Q. What prompted you to turn your 450-year-old home in Goa into a costume museum? I have been collecting Goan costumes for 17 years. It’s been my dream to leave a Goan Costume Museum as a legacy for my home state. We were looking for a place and I said to myself why not turn my home into the museum? Q. Who was the curator? When I began to research the Pano Bhaju costume at the request of my friend Mario Miranda, I realised that I was the best person to research the history of Goan costume. I interned at the National Costume Museum, Lisbon, and the Museum at FIT, New York, to study museology. Q. Tell us about the museum. The Moda Goa Museum is based on my book,…

Innovation is important; especially in interior design. That’s why designers are always on the lookout for new ways to redefine spaces. Using the floor area to add new elements and complement the design is a tried and tested method. Since the flooring sets the rhythm, it acts as a foundation, and all the other pieces are picked to balance and enhance this base. We tend to pick neutral materials, colours and patterns for the floor. Favourites include the evergreen wooden flooring and simple beige or grey marble and tile floors. Such neutral floor options are then usually layered with bolder pieces of furniture and with colourful accessories to build a room that bursts with personality. However, over the last few years, flooring has stopped being just another factor and has…

The essence of a culture is rooted in its people and the homes in which they reside. Goa is characterised by a mix of unique Indo-Portuguese architectural influences. The good news is that the launch of Airbnb Goa Insider’s Guide gives unprecedented access to homes and hearts, which best embody the spirit of Goa. The villas, mansions, and homes are a breathtaking combination of Goan heritage and modern day amenities. Here is my list of five homes from the list that stand a cut above the rest in terms of design. 1 Summertime Villa, Calangute Set in two acres of landscape gardens on a hilltop in Calangute, Summertime is a plush three suite villa with an infinity pool, a lounge pool, a koi pond, and a waterfall. Inside, the double…

It’s true that mountains and hilly terrain are ethereal and magical especially for city dwellers. After spending a few years working on products (furniture) keeping in mind the sustainability of my process the obvious next step was to look at the idea of sustainable design at a more holistic and larger scale. But there was a disconnect between the uniqueness of living in the mountains and poorly executed homes that lay nestled here. So, in 2016 I decided to work on a cabin in the Himalayas. Located 13km from Mukteshwar in Uttrankhand and a few kilometres away from the small settlement of Dhanachuli lies a slice of paradise. A SUSTAINBLE MODEL This cabin has been built by artisans and masons from in and around the vicinity and uses locally sourced…

Your to-do list this February need not comprise the same old passe picnics, walks in the park or sipping warm tea in the sun. Head to a trampoline park, sample creative cocktails at a new restaurant and go wild at a forest eco-resort. Indulge in the best of food, getaways and entertainment the season has to offer with our curated list. GETAWAYS The Oberoi Back in 1965, Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi, a pioneer in luxury properties, gave New Delhi a hotel that was going to set a new standard in the hospitality industry with its ideology, ‘The guest is always right.’ Loyalists will be grateful to the management which is still a stickler for details, much like their founder-chairman who was as finicky about the gleam of restaurant cutlery…

There is fantastic news for all party animals and food lovers in Noida. If you’ve been slogging all week and wrapping up work early on Fridays only to fight traffic to get to some swanky bar in Delhi, you need not worry anymore. Touted to be Noida’s longest bar, Time Machine offers a panoramic view of the city’s skyline and is the latest addition to the hospitality and nightlife industry in this region. And yes, the place comes well equipped with kinetic objects, mechanical gears and rustic lightings. The interiors resemble an industrial area which adds a raw feel to the restaurant. The king-sized lounges and an overwhelmingly impressive steam-punk concept of a time travel journey will instantly transport you to a new time zone. Make the most of the…

IN IT’S 17TH YEAR NOW, DELHI’S favourite restaurant, Olive Bar & Restaurant still continues to wow its patrons with inventive offerings every season. This winter, Chef Dhruv Oberoi came up with a menu that celebrated fresh ingredients presented in an artisanal fashion, where all platters looked like works of art showcasing contemporaty techniques and bold flavours. Deeply inspired by the bio-diversity of the country and his explorations of the sea, hills and fields, Chef Oberoi crafted this special menu as a complete sensory experince for connoisseurs of exceptional food. We suggest you head here before March end to relish these sensational seasonal delights. Our favourites from the menu Burrata Tatin—burrata heart with glazed tomato jam on a crispy pastry with herb pesto served with a medley of seasonal tomatoes and…