Innholdsfortegnelse for December 30, 2019 i India Today

In 2005, then Uttarakhand chief minister Narayan Dutt Tiwari had to withdraw a bill to take over the management of prominent temples in the state after his fellow Congress MLAs revolted. Fourteen years later, on the last day of the winter session, current chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat of the BJP successfully stewarded the Uttarakhand Devasthanam Management Bill through the state assembly. Once this becomes law, the new provisions will allow the state government to take over the management of 51 temples in Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. The Tiwari regime stopped at setting up the Badrinath Kedarnath Temple Committee (BKTC), which continues to manages these temples. The shrines, which are open only in the summer months, received over 3 million pilgrims and donations worth Rs 12 crore in 2018-19.…

On a bone-chillingly cold Monday morning in Delhi, a group of students from Jamia Millia Islamia University were sitting shirtless at the university gates. The unusual protest was to highlight the Delhi police’s high-handedness the day before (December 15), entering the campus forcibly and roughing up students after a march against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act or CAA, 2019, turned violent. Soon, students of over 30 premier educational institutions across India were on the streets in solidarity with their Jamia compatriots and in protest against the controversial act. The main bone of contention here is that the act excludes the Muslim community while making illegal Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Parsi immigrants from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh eligible for citizenship, provided they entered India on or before December 31, 2014,…

“I WANTED TO MAKE A CHANGE IN SOCIETY... DISABILITIES CANNOT RESTRICT YOU FROM DREAMING BIG AND CHASING THOSE DREAMS” M. ABRAHAM JOHNSON, 50 M-tech Electro Digital Industry, KOZHIKODE, KERALA Madathilakathu Abraham Johnson may be the lightest CEO in the world. The 50-year-old polio victim weighs just 20 kg but he has been running M-tech Electro Digital Industry since 1991. The unit, which manufactures LED and solar products, has an annual turnover of Rs 50 lakh and employs around 30 people. Indeed, his innovations and inventions have made him the ‘light man’ of Peruvannamuzhi in Kozhikode district of Kerala. “I never went to school. My life was confined to the walls of my room as I was paralysed. My mother used to carry me in her hand. But God has given…

BABYHALDAR, 46 Author and social worker, KOLKATA “NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER ACCEPT ADVERSITY AS YOUR DESTINY. YOU ARE YOUR DESTINY AND YOU CAN CHANGE IT” Her story is by now well-known. How she was married off to a much older man when she was 13, had three children by the time she was 20, chose to escape her abusive marriage, and landed in the national capital region with her three children. There, she gained employment with Munshi Premchand’s grandson, Prabodh Kumar Srivastava, who found her leafing through the works of Mahasweta Devi and Taslima Nasreen while dusting books in his library. Tatus, Polish for father, as she would call him, encouraged her to read. He also handed her paper and pen to write down the story of her life. That…

PATHIKRITSAHA 26 Food delivery executive, DUM DUM, WEST BENGAL Pathikrit Saha always dreamt of living up to his name, the ‘path-breaker’. The moment came in October 2013 when Saha, then 20, travelled to Belpahari village in West Midnapore to spend a few days in tribal villages. On the day of his return, he asked some children what they would like as gifts. “Tiffin box,” they all replied, to carry home leftovers of the mid-day meals served in school and share them with their siblings at dinner. “I realised what hunger means. I was soon back at Belpahari, with tiffin boxes, clothes and stationery for the children,” recalls Saha. “I REALISED IT WAS EQUALLY IMPORTANT TO NOURISH THE MINDS OF STREET CHILDREN—THROUGH EDUCATION” His next call of awakening came in August…

MADHURIGHOSH, 70 Founder, Bagnan I Mahila Bikash Cooperative Credit Society, HOWRAH In 1971, as part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in the Bagnan block of West Bengal’s Howrah district, Madhuri Ghosh, then in her early 20s, would routinely hear learners complain about alcoholic and abusive husbands. “Our block was notorious for hooch dens and men wasting away their lives,” says Madhuri, who set up the Bagnan Mahila Samiti to empower such women. Using government programmes, she got them vocationally trained—in food processing, tailoring, knitting, etc. Gradually, the women started selling their products in the nearby villages, investing the profits back into their business. But Madhuri realised that budding entrepreneurs would need a reliable credit facility if they were to scale up. In 1997, with 579 women from Bagnan as members…

K.CHANDRASHEKHAR, 53 CEO, Forus Health, BENGALURU ANANDVINEKAR, 44 Ophthalmologist, Narayana Nethralaya Eye Institute, BENGALURU “OUR MODEL ALLOWS THIS CAMERA TO BE TAKEN TO THE HINTERLAND, TO SCAN BABIES EVEN IN REMOTE AREAS” When K. Chandrashekhar, an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIM Calcutta, began his stint in the semiconductor business in 1988, little did he imagine that a couple of decades down the line he would be trying his hand at healthcare. In 2009, he quit his job, and the next year, launched Forus Health, which makes cameras used to diagnose preventable retinopathy (damage to the retina) in adults. Chandrashekhar’s team developed cameras that were portable, rugged, easy to use and affordable. “No one had anything like it in India,” says Chandrashekhar. “When it comes to medical devices in India,…

JABIRKARAT, 30 Founder, Green Worms, KOZHIKODE Born to a middle-class family in Thamarassery, Kerala, Jabir Karat always wanted to do something different. A postgraduate in History from Delhi University, he opted to work in the Mumbai slums as part of the Gandhi Fellowship he won in 2012, designing learning ability improvement programmes in Mumbai Municipal Corporation schools. Surrounded by a pool of waste and garbage, and seeing the utter neglect by civil authorities, Karat became determined to find ways to manage waste scientifically. To gain first-hand knowledge of waste disposal and understand the challenges it entailed, he even worked as a garbage collector for a while. In November 2014, he founded Green Worms, a start-up for waste management solutions in Kozhikode, Kerala. “We started small, managing 300 kilos of waste…

RISHI TIWARI, 49 Founder-secretary, RSSWLD, GREATER NOIDA, UP CHANGE METER By setting up libraries in jails, Tiwari has helped improve literacy rates among prisoners and reduce violence and suicides “WE HAVE ESTABLISHED 11 LIBRARIES IN DISTRICT JAILS IN UTTAR PRADESH, INCLUDING GHAZIABAD, LUCKNOW, MEERUT, ALIGARH, AGRA AND MATHURA” Rishi Tiwari is founder-secretary of the Ranganathan Society for Social Welfare and Library Development (RSSWLD), an organisation working to disseminate knowledge, especially in rural areas and jails. “My father was an officer in the MP police department,” says Tiwari. “While he was posted at Bhind we lived near the district jail. That was when I noticed inmates—living in isolation, which led them to depression and frustration.” After joining the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH) foundation as head librarian in 2005, Tiwari,…

PATKURI BASANTH REDDY,44 Social worker, MANOHARABAD, TELANGANA On September 25, 33-year-old Sheikh Farooq from Telangana, who had been working in Riyadh as a chauffeur, was found dead there. It took over two months for his remains to be brought home because of a lack of funds. This is the plight of many who migrate to Gulf nations as menial workers. At least 34,000 such Indians have died there in the past five years, including 1,200 from Telangana. “MY OWN EXPERIENCE AS A CONSTRUCTION WORKER IN BAHRAIN OPENED MY EYES TO THE EXTRAORDINARY EXPLOITATION” For over six years now, not a day has passed without Basanth Reddy attending to distress calls from such people overseas or their relatives in India. “My experience as a construction worker in Bahrain opened my eyes…

RUBINA MAZHAR, 56 Founder & CEO, SAFA, HYDERABAD Eleven years ago, Rubina Mazhar courageously shut down her successful travel industry training facility to start a social enterprise. She describes the move as a call of conscience—to use her education and privileges to give something back to her community. From a small room with two old sewing machines in the Bhola Nagar slums of Hyderabad’s tony Banjara Hills, Mazhar has scaled up to 11 community-based centres for women and youth, running 14 skilling and education projects that benefit some 3,000 people every year. “Bhola Nagar had high crime and illiteracy, and is still considered a challenging area to work in,” says Mazhar. “I am an educated Muslim woman, and I feel that is the right of poor Muslim women too. If…

B.M. BHARDWAJ, 52 MADHURI BHARDWAJ, 48 Founders, Apna Ghar Ashram, RAJASTHAN BM. Bhardwaj and Dr Madhuri Bhardwaj set up Apna Ghar Ashram in 2000. Friends since school and now spouses, they both had the same dream—to help the destitute and needy. Armed with degrees in homoeopathy, the two have devoted their lives to the rehabilitation of the abandoned. In his youth, Bhardwaj had been moved by the death of a local milkman in his village in Aligarh who, because of lack of dedicated full-time caretakers, passed away after an injury. “People want to help but are afraid of taking responsibility, so we set up Apna Ghar,” says Bhardwaj. Apna Ghar’s journey began after the Bhardwajs took in a group of abandoned people they came across at hospitals, bus stands and…

“MY EFFORT IS LIKE A DROP IN THE OCEAN OR A GRAIN OF SAND IN THE DESERT. BUT I KNOW THAT IF ALL OF US PLANT TREES, WE CAN FIGHT DESERTIFICATION” RANJEETA RAM BISHNOI, 81 Farmer, EKALKHORI VILLAGE, RAJASTHAN Two hours away from Jodhpur, at the end of a drive along potholed roads, you reach an oasis in the middle of the Thar desert. This oasis is completely man-made—the handiwork, in fact, of one man. You come across him, a man 81 years of age, but standing tall, carrying a bamboo pole across his shoulders, with two pitchers of water hanging on the sides. Rana Ram ji, we ask him. Yes, indeed, he replies, “Ranjeeta Ram in documents.” He was 18 when he realised there was no official effort to…

PRATEEK SHARMA, 27 Founder, Nasofilter, NEW DELHI He was in his fourth year of college at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi when he began looking for ways to help his mother who was suffering from asthma. And that became the impulse behind Nasofilters, the nanotechnology-based company he founded with four others from his alma mater. Using technology to tackle air pollution, the company manufactures products that range from nose filters that people can stick up their nostrils (they’re very comfortable) to filters people can attach to their airconditioning units, virtually turning air conditioners into air purifiers. Now, he is taking it a step forward. He is launching nanofibre-layered window nets, a boon for those living in mosquito-ridden cities like Delhi. “WE PROVIDE ONE SOLUTION BUT WHO IS GOING…

PRATYAYA AMRIT, 52 Principal Secretary, Bihar Energy Department and State Disaster Management Department, PATNA When torrential rains wreaked havoc on the city of Patna last September-October, Pratyaya Amrit, principal secretary, Bihar energy department and state disaster management department, would get out at 5 am. Dressed in T-shirt and shorts and armed with an umbrella, he would be on NDRF boats to personally oversee the evacuation of the trapped people. In one week, the state disaster management department rescued more than 62,000 people from their water-logged houses in Patna’s low-lying areas. Having excelled in whichever department he has helmed, this 1991 batch IAS officer has come to be known as the turnaround man of Bihar. On central deputation in New Delhi, Amrit was called to the state in 2006 to revive…

The first issue of INDIA TODAY arrived on the stands at the worst time for press freedom. It was December 1975 and just four months after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government had declared an Emergency. Press censorship was the order of the day. “To stop the spread of rumours,” as Mrs Gandhi’s Goebbelsian information and broadcasting minister Vidya Charan Shukla told a press conference in the capital on June 25. Censorship was just one thing. Civil liberties were curbed, Parliament was suspended, the Opposition jailed and, yes, as the wry trope went, the trains ran on time. The Emergency, as Abu Abraham’s iconic cartoon in The Indian Express showed, was President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signing ordinances from his bathtub. Since then, the sketch pens of INDIA TODAY’s iconic political cartoonists—from…

If the home, as Tagore once suggested, is a microcosm of the world, then the Bengali home, in particular, is a shrine to a simpler yesterday. Here you’ll find Boroline, a cream that possibly cures everything but cancer; Aqua Ptychotis, a syrup that is for bowel movements what morphine is to pain, and Jabakusum, an oil that gives your hair the hibiscus it never knew it needed. All strangely well-meaning, these brands have survived the influx of multinationals (and in some cases, the advance of scientific reason), because they offered remedies to problems that niggled Bengalis every day. On the national level, swadeshi products like Amrutanjan and Mysore Sandal Soap are ‘Make in India’ pioneers whose relevance doesn’t hinge on reinvention. Even if some of these household products might have…

Cars were arguably the definitive product of 20th century globalisation—perhaps even the Anthropocene—so is there really anything distinctive about the Indian romance with the automobile? In fact, since the story of the Indian car industry runs almost parallel with that of the republic itself, there’s a case to be made for an auto-centric analysis of our national history. It might begin with the first indigenously manufactured car, the ‘Hindustan 10’ of 1949—which had a very British constitution of course—and go on to the ‘Amby’, that emblem of the cosy compact between big business and the Nehruvian state in which our economy was swaddled through the 1960s, ’70s and much of the ’80s. The psychodrama of Sanjay Gandhi’s Maruti and its ultimate apotheosis as that Oedipal herald of liberalisation, the Maruti…

Looking back at the Berlin Wall collapse, experts say that it was around 1989 that jeans became a symbol of youth empowerment. In India, however, denim empowered the masses sooner. Shortly after Indira Gandhi lifted her Emergency, India was switching to jeans with a new desperation. Fashion has always had a lot to do with freedom. Fabric and garment manufacturers like Vimal and Raymond realised that early on. With their ads and jingles, they wanted us to believe we would feel freer in their clothes. Today, it’s not their suits we’re nostalgic for. We only long for the days they made us feel free. Bath Towels In 1973, Maneka Gandhi, then a model, appeared on billboards wearing only a DCM towel. Other brands like Bombay Dyeing later played the environment…

Civil-military relations in India are sensitive, tense, fraught with dread and involve three parties—the armed services on one side and the tag team of politicians and bureaucrats on the other, tussling on eggshells. In this fandango, more effort is expended in turf battles, ego-status hassles, and furthering sectional interests than in working cooperatively to obtain speedy results expeditiously. Enjoying superior position, the tag team mostly has its way, leaving the military to make do with what is offered. Reduced almost to an afterthought, national security is not served well. There is so much so seminally wrong with the existing system of national defence, it is hard to know where to start or whom to blame for the mess. In this book, Anit Mukherjee, a former armoured corps officer-turned-academic, identifies the…

“FARMING IS DONE BY THE TREES AND BEES. YOU LET THEM BE IN A NATURAL WAY AND THEY’LL GIVE YOU A WONDERFUL, ORGANIC HARVEST” PATANJALIJHA, 58 Vanya Organics (food forestry), KHALGAT, MADHYA PRADESH Patanjali Jha is a man on a mission. The 1986 batch IRS officer (currently D-G investigations, Karnataka and Goa), when not chasing tax evaders, is busy creating awareness about the pitfalls of conventional, chemical fertiliser-aided farming. Patanjali’s food forestry farm on the banks of the Narmada river at Khalghat in MP’s Khargone district is proof that it’s ‘natural’ farming can be made a success. Inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s seminal work on natural farming, The One Straw Revolution, 17 years ago, Patanjali and five others, including investment banker Sandeep Kothari, bought a 60-acre plot in village Akbarpur. The…

SANJAYAGARWAL, 43 Secretary, Bihar transport department, PATNA The increase in the penalty for violating the Pollution Under Control (PUC) certificate norms to Rs 10,000 posed a huge problem for Bihar motorists. While more than 175,000 vehicles are registered every year in Patna alone, there are a mere 100 pollution test centres in the city. Sanjay Agarwal, secretary to the state’s transport department and a 2002 batch IAS officer, was quick to identify this gap. Besides opening new centres, he also launched a ‘Mobile Pollution Check Vehicle’ just a fortnight after the new Motor Vehicles Act came into effect. Patna now has 10 such vehicles available on call. “THE INITIATIVE IS HELPING RURAL CONSUMERS MORE SINCE WE HAVE FEW POLLUTION TEST CENTRES IN VILLAGES” “People can now call these vehicles to…

NIRMALCHANDEL, 53 Social activist, HIMACHAL PRADESH Widowed at 23 and blamed for the misfortune, Nirmal Chandel spent a year in a dark corner of her in-laws’ home. “I thought of ending my life once, but life had some other role for me in mind,” says Chandel. Thirty years on, Chandel, now 53 and living in the Sarkaghat area of Mandi district in Himachal Pradesh, has not only transformed her own life but become a beacon of light for other single women in the state. She leads the over 16,000-member-strong Ekal Nari Shakti Sangathan (ENSS) and fights for the rights of poor widows, divorced, deserted and unmarried women in Himachal villages. In 1990, a year after her husband’s death, Chandel left her in-laws’ home to work independently with Social Upliftment through…

KEEPU T.LEPCHA, 79 Social activist, LEPCHA COTTAGE Lepcha Cottage was started in 1989 with 20 children at Keepu Tshering Lepcha’s six-room house in Chanmari, a few kilometres away from Gangtok in Sikkim. Over the years, the number grew. Now the cottage houses 55 children from the Lepcha tribe. Even though a majority are orphans, Keepu is particular about not using the term for her children. “How can you call them orphans when we are here for them?” she asks. And true to her words, Keepu is their “nyukung (grandma)”. Two-year-old Lee Nor is sleepy and she can’t go to sleep unless nyukung tells her a bed-time story. If it is snack time, the children will settle down with their bowls of savoury and tumblers of tea with nyukung reminding them…

PANKTIJOG, 38 Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel, AHMEDABAD Pankti Jog’s work can only be described as an essential service, especially in the times that we live in. She and her team at the Mahiti Adhikar Gujarat Pahel (MAGP) have helped train thousands of people in RTI (Right to Information) filing techniques across eight states, including Kashmir. Dipak Chauhan, a farmer in Punagam village in Bharuch district of south Gujarat, sums up the effort, “RTI is a weapon to get justice, not just for individuals but for society too.” Chauhan was not getting an electricity connection for his tubewell even months after applying it. He did a short training course in a workshop organised by Jog and then filed an RTI asking the state government for details on the connections released in…

SANJAY PRASHAR, 48 Shipping company owner, MUMBAI When an Indian sailor is stuck overseas, he usually remembers Captain Sanjay Prashar. The Mumbai-based shipping company owner is the lifeline for any Indian sailor in distress anywhere in the globe. “HAVING BEEN PART OF THE SEA-FARING COMMUNITY FOR OVER 20 YEARS, I KNOW THE HARDSHIPS THEY UNDERGO... I CONSIDER IT MY DUTY TO HELP THEM” Approximately 300,000 Indian sea-farers make up 10 per cent of the global sea-faring community. This workforce crews and sails thousands of merchant ships plying the globe and their numbers are swelling by 20 per cent each year. There is, however, a dark side to this sunrise sector—shady fly-by-night companies who find it easier to abandon ships and crew in foreign destinations rather than pay their dues, or…

“THE CAMPS INSIDE PANNA HAVE HELPED PRE-EMPT POACHING AND ACTED AS DETERRENTS TO WILDLIFE AND FOREST CRIMES” K.S. BHADORIA, 58 Field Director, Panna Tiger Reserve, MADHYA PRADESH Whether it’s the timber mafia in Raisen or the sand mafia in Hoshangabad, 2000-batch Indian Forest Service officer K.S. Bhadoria has always evolved strategies to be one up on those who threaten wildlife and forests. In August 2018, Bhadoria was appointed field director of the 1,600 sq. km Panna Tiger Reserve. Just a decade ago, the park had lost its entire tiger population, mainly to poaching. Bhadoria’s plan was two-pronged: engage with villagers living in the periphery of Panna to turn them into co-conservationists and improve vigilance by putting more boots on the ground. By December 2018, 61 temporary monitoring camps came up…

DHARAM VEER JAKHAR, 36 Founder, Aapni Pathshala, CHURU, RAJASTHAN Dharam Veer Jakhar had done his BEd and was set to become a teacher when he got selected as a constable with the Rajasthan Police in 2011. During a posting at the police lines in Churu, he was part of an annual one-month drive that took child vagrants off the roads. The children rounded up were handed over to the social justice department for counselling before they were released, but Jakhar found that almost all of them returned to their old activities. So he decided to hold classes for these children. “The only way to help such kids was to give them some informal schooling and also teach them basic hygiene,” says Rahul Barhat, then Churu SP. “ONCE THE KIDS BECAME…

P. VIJAYAN, 51 Inspector General of Police, KERALA Kerala inspector general of police Puthiyottil Vijayan is credited with introducing unique reform models and changing the image of the police in the state. In 2010, as Kozhikode city police chief, Vijayan started the ‘Our Responsibility to Children’ (ORC) programme to help reform juveniles who have committed crimes without sending them to detention homes. In 2015, the state’s social justice department adopted the ORC programme under its Integrated Child Protection Scheme to address deviant behaviour among adolescents. ORC runs in 303 schools and covers 100,000 children. The stakeholders—teachers, community leaders and volunteer counsellors—pay attention towards providing emotional support to children from dysfunctional backgrounds and motivate them to change their attitudes and improve in academics. “Children from problem families need our mentoring. We…

NAVDEEP ASIJA, 42 Transport specialist, Founder, Ecocabs, PUNJAB Back in 2007, it was a tough call for Navdeep Asija to quit his job at an MNC in Delhi and return to his hometown Fazilka in Punjab to set up an NGO, the Graduate Welfare Association Fazilka (GWAF). The aim was to make the roads in his town safer, ensure right of way to pedestrians, and upgrade urban planning. “It required the youth to have pride in their roots, and in the town’s heritage and resources,” he says. In 2008, his efforts at creating a dedicated call centre to book rickshaws, ‘Ecocabs’ (or dail-a-cycle rickshaw), made national headlines and was subsequently awarded the National Award of Excellence by the Union ministry for urban development in 2011. “I used the award money…

VIJAY DHASMANA, 45 Rewilder, GURGAON, HARYANA In times when degradation of forests and loss of green cover have become corollaries to development, Vijay Dhasmana is on a noble mission—growing forests. His “rewilding” initiative re-introduces native species of wild foliage on a large scale to sites stripped of green cover and recreates natural habitats. This is different from reforestation which uses only well-known trees or ornamental plants that need a lot of resources to maintain. “It is not about planting trees, but creating self-sustaining ecosystems that don’t need human control,” says Dhasmana. This is easier said than done. Apart from meticulous research of the habitat and the native flora, the biggest challenge of rewilding is to find ways to regrow plant species that grow only naturally. Finding seeds of these wild…

You are what you eat, they say. If that’s true, the Indian consumer would be a fragrant confection of such ingredients as Rooh Afza, Dalda, Isabgol, Old Monk rum and Kailas Jeevan ointment. But why be literal about it? The fact is that most of what we consume is digested not in our guts but in our heads—in which case we are surely some Rajinikanth-style robot-transformers, part human part Maruti. And part-Suzuki, of course… Our consumerist DNA is tightly wound around a love-hate complex about foreign goods and brands. This famously achieved peak irony in 2005 when Indian hearts swelled as the patriotic businessman Sanjiv Mehta acquired the firm that once owned India—the East India Company. As it turns out, Mehta is a Brit. But never mind—in these fractious times,…

Whatever people say about Indians and punctuality, we have always treasured our watches. Mahatma Gandhi was famously obsessive about checking his Ingersoll pocket watch—call it a tic—and made a point of spelling out that the swadeshi boycott of foreign goods should not be extended to timepieces: “I do not want to shut out English lever watches.” However, time soon ran out for imported watch brands all the same and in 1961 the state-run HMT began manufacturing its range of Indian watches, albeit with mechanicals courtesy Citizen of Japan. ‘Made in India’ can mean many things. Since then, the pendulum has swung to the return of foreign brands and back again to the nostalgic fetishisation of vintage brands, whether Indian or foreign. ANGLO-SWISS and WEST END Less ‘made in India’ than…

India always had a diverse motorcycling culture. Right from the exotic Nortons, BSAs and Triumphs being imported to the rather rudimentary mobikes made in India. It is astonishing how the culture developed from being a performance-oriented one to ‘ kitna deti hai (what’sthemileage?)’,andback again. But apart from the regular lot, there are a few of them you barely remember. Through the grease-stained goggles of nostalgia, it seems some bikes like the Yamaha RD 350 were way ahead of their time while others like the Bullet seem to have risen from the ashes. Then there’s the saga of the scooters, which went from commanding a waiting period of years to going out of production. Here’s our selection of two-wheelers that made a mark for better or worse. Royal Enfield Bullet Originally…

One of Sathiyan Gnanasekaran’s favourite games as a child was to practise his table tennis skills against the walls of his home in Chennai. Each wall was named after a player he looked up to, one of them being the former World No. 1 Timo Boll. In November this year, Sathiyan had the opportunity to play the German in real life at the World Cup in Chengdu. By then, he had beaten the higher-ranked Simon Gauzy and Jonathan Groth. He picked up the first game against Boll, but, eventually, went down 1-4 in the Round of 16. Once known for his defensive approach, Sathiyan has transformed into an attack-minded player As he wrapped up his kit, he heard the Chinese spectators break into a rousing applause. He turned to look…

The four-month-long internet shutdown and uncertainty in Kashmir has been almost a death blow for start-ups in the Valley. Take Tul Palav, an online apparel brand known for fine Kashmiri garments. Before the government pulled the plug on internet services on August 4 in the run-up to the abrogation of Article 370, the company was on tight deadlines ahead of Eid. The current internet shutdown has been the longest, surpassing the previous 133 days when Hizbul commander Burhan Wani was killed in July 2016. Today, brand owner Iqra Ahmed is struggling to keep the company afloat. From the 30 big orders every month, the past four months saw only five orders on their social media page, says the 27-year-old. “I could not update samples of the new collection. Also, I…

AKASH BADAVE, 31 CEO, Bhoomgaadi, DANTEWADA “OUR AIM IS TO DEVELOP MARKET LINKS FOR LOCAL PRODUCE AND SHARE PROFITS AMONG FARMERS” It was a desire to do socially useful, environmentally sustainable work that made Akash Badave quit his job as a banker in Pune and come to Dantewada. Today, he works with more than 10,000 farmers—mostly tribals—helping them access markets for their produce while nurturing traditional agriculture. In 2011-12, he had applied for the Pradhan Mantri Rural Development Fellows (PMRDF) programme, asking to be assigned to Dantewada. Soon after, he realised that farmers needed to be organised and that traditional varieties of crops needed to be preserved. “Dantewada is home to more than 150 varieties of rice, whose crop cycles range from 60 days to six months,” he says. He…

BHARTIKASHYAP, 52 Co-founder, Kashyap Memorial Eye Hospital, RANCHI Dr Bharti Kashyap was only 15 when she lost her father. Fighting a losing battle against lung cancer, he left her a letter with a life mantra: ‘Live your dreams. Results matter the most in the real world. You need to work harder than “good enough” to fulfil you desires.’ Bharti would realise the true weight of those words years later, when, as an ophthalmologist, she found her true calling extending medicare to people living in the remote parts and Maoist strongholds of Jharkhand. “The poor and marginalised people in Jharkhand’s back of beyond are suffering, but extremism dissuades doctors from reaching out to them,” says Bharti, who established the Kashyap Memorial Eye Hospital with her husband, Dr B.P. Kashyap, in Ranchi…

MANORANJANBYAPARI, 69 Writer and activist, KOLKATA Manoranjan Byapari, the celebrated Dalit Bengali writer, has taken on many odd jobs in life—as a rickshaw-puller, a sweeper, watchman, cook or whatever else came his way. Through all this, though, he stuck unwaveringly to his one and only passion—writing. His pen, soaked in the sweat, blood and angst of the people who exist on the margins of society, has won him literary accolades over the years, most recently the Hindu Literary Award (non-fiction category) in 2018. “THERE ARE TWO CLASSES OF PEOPLEGAMCHHAWALAS ANDTIEWALAS. MY GAMCHHA SHOWS THE PEOPLE THAT I AM WITH THEM, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE TO MINGLE WITH THE TIEWALAS SOMETIMES” Byapari is one of those writers who write about the struggle they have lived. In the 1970s, following a scuffle…

APARAJITAGOGOI, 51 Head, Centre for Catalyzing Change, DELHI In 2001, on a bright sunny day, around 5,000 social activists marched towards Taj Mahal, India’s most celebrated tourist destination, to bring one very disturbing statistic to the attention of the policymakers—that a woman dies every five minutes during child birth in India. Why Taj Mahal? The monument was built in memory of the empress Mumtaz, who too had died during child birth. Leading the march was Aparajita Gogoi, a 33-year-old woman from Assam. “The situation hasn’t changed in the 1,400 years since. When it comes to women’s health, we are still in medieval times,” says Gogoi, who heads the Centre for Catalyzing Change (C3), an NGO which she joined as an executive more than a decade ago. It aims to “equip,…

PAYALJANGID, 17 TARABANJARA, 16 LALITADUHARIYA, 15 Teenage activists, RAJASTHAN Payal Jangid (17), Tara Banjara (16) and Lalita Duhariya (15) are the success stories of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), an initiative of Noble laureate Kailash Satyarthi. Jangid was recently conferred the Changemaker Award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in recognition of her work towards abolishing child marriage in her village Hinsla in Rajasthan. The village is categorised as a “child-friendly” village under the BBA’s flagship programme Bal Mitra Gram (BMG), meant to create an empowered ecosystem in villages where the rights of children are protected. Satyarthi along with his wife, Sumedha, selects a village and works on making it child-friendly by engaging with children already in schools. Launched in 2001, BBA has set up 540 BMG centres in…

“I DECIDED TO ENGAGE IN SOMETHING THAT WOULD IMPACT LIFE IN INDIA’S VILLAGES,” SAYS SUNIT ARYA, THE CURRENT CHAIRMAN OF MERA GAO POWER MERA GAO POWER, 2010 UTTAR PRADESH Having had a long stint in the power industry, working with clean-tech and high-tech companies, Sunit Arya, chairman of Mera Gao Power (MGP), says, “I decided to engage in something that would impact life in India’s villages.” MGP was founded in 2010 by Nikhil Jaisinghani, Brian Michael Shaad and Sandeep Pandey with a simple idea—use solar power to light up villages in the backward districts of UP at a cost lower than the price of kerosene used to light lamps. For households that have no access to electricity grids, the company’s SolarHome project was a ray of hope. Each project comprised…

ANANTH PRABHU G., 34 Cyber-security expert, MANGALURU As a cyber security guest faculty at the Karnataka State Police Academy and Karnataka Judicial Academy, since 2011, Ananth Prabhu Gurpur has shared with his audiences all that he has learned about cyber crimes against women. “I was terrified thinking what if crimes like these happen to someone in my family or with my friends. So I started the #cybersafegirl daily posts, using info-toons to highlight cyber crimes, the modus operandi of the criminals and how one could stay safe,” says Prabhu. When the number of identified common cyber crimes—based on calls for help from women—reached 15 by 2018, Prabhu compiled them into a book by the same name. As new crimes came to light, he added another 10 and launched the book’s…

BIPIN DHARE, 30 Founder of school for underprivileged children, ASSAM Like any middle-class Indian, Bipin Dhare’s parents had a simple dream that their son should acquire a good education and have a stable career. The Satara-based couple worked hard for this and was very delighted when Dhare got admission at IIT Kharagpur and bagged a job in Singapore. But three years on, he was a restless soul. Since childhood, Dhare wanted to help those in need. In college, he would teach the children of lowly-paid workers in the campus. In 2015, just as Dhare made up his mind to quit his job and return to India to do something ‘meaningful’, he chanced upon a Twitter handle that posted enchanting photographs of Assam’s Majuli river island. Conversations followed and he got…

ABHISHEK BONEY SINGHA, 30 Health activist, GOLAGHAT, ASSAM In 2017, Abhishek Boney Singha from Golaghat, Assam, went to see a carpenter in a neighbouring village. While he was there, the carpenter’s wife, who had a packet of sanitary napkins in her hand, was asked by her friend, in her 30s: “Is that a new biscuit brand?” Singha was stunned. He couldn’t imagine that women living less than 10 km away from his home in the city were unaware of this essential feminine hygiene product. “Besides economic backwardness, a lack of awareness and the social taboo around periods prevented women from using sanitary pads,” he says. “MY JOB IS NOT JUST DISTRIBUTING. I TAKE REGULAR FEEDBACK FOR SUSTAINABLE CHANGE” No stranger to social activism—in 2012, he had set up All and…

LAKHIMI BARUAH, 70 MD, Konoklota Mahila Urban Cooperative Bank, ASSAM It was in February 1990 that Lakhimi Baruah, an employee in a state-owned cooperative bank, happened to read an article about an all-women cooperative bank in Surat. The fact that such a bank existed encouraged Baruah to work towards realising a dream she had been nurturing for years. In her career, she met underprivileged women, most of them illiterate, often clueless about bank procedures and with personal issues they could not share with male employees working the counters. “A woman abandoned by her husband did not know what to write in the place of husband while filling the form. These women needed handholding on how to utilise that money,” she says. Though many of these women were engaged in some…

SHRITI PANDEY, 28 Founder, Strawcture Eco, DELHI With a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from an institute in Ghaziabad and master’s in construction management from the New York University, Shriti Pandey’s life took an unexpected turn in 2016. Dogged by a feeling of unfulfillment, she decided to quit her job with a consultancy firm in New York and return to India. She spent the next 13 months in a remote village learning how to work in rural communities as part of a fellowship. The idea for Strawcture Eco came to her while learning how to farm. “The inspiration came from a research paper that talked about the importance of circular economy and how something is considered waste only because we are limited in our imagination to turn it into something…

MOHAMED SHAMNAD, D.S. MIDHUN, ROJAN JOSEPH, PRASOON PRAKASAN, 33 Our Family Clinic, KOCHI After a five-year stint at village primary health centres in Kerala, four young doctors decided to quit their jobs. The four friends—Mohamed Shamnad, D.S. Midhun, Rojan Joseph and Prasoon Prakasan—decided to reinvent the ‘family doctor’ concept, offer quality service at an affordable cost in rural and semi-urban areas through a chain of Our Family Clinics (OFCs). They set up Satkriya Healthcare Innovations Private Limited in March 2015 to operate as a social service/ business venture with an authorised capital of Rs 89.25 lakh. Today, OFC has 11 centres in Kerala with specialty clinics, pharmacies, diagnostic labs and 24x7 doctors on call. “We have designed an innovative family- and patient-centred healthcare model delivered through a chain of family…

No matter how durable an electronic good or home appliance, chances are that a better, snazzier variant will leave it outmoded in time. The retro movement—which claims that it’s not about choosing between old and new, but more about having both—offers hope. You might have no need for your Murphy’s or Grundig radio, but you’ll still hang on to it because it looks just too good to throw. LPs, strangely, make music sound better, and your grandmother’s casserole keeps food hotter. The age of the consumer is now passé. It’s the age of the hoarder that is now upon us—old will one day be gold. Agfa Isoly camera Made in Germany, assembled in India, the Agfa Isoly was a boon for Indian photography enthusiasts in the ’60s. Its 4cmx4cm format,…

Mohammad Ikhlas Shaifi was born into a family of fourth-generation watch traders, but his lifelong tryst with horology was a coincidence. Atfer finishing his schooling from St. Columba’s in Delhi, Shaifi found that he had missed out on the dates for admission to IIT Delhi. His father wrote a letter to the Swiss watchmaker Favre-Leuba, who they already had a long relationship with, asking them to help with getting young Ikhlas enrolled into a relevant technical course in Switzerland. He enrolled for a degree in micro engineering in the Technicum institute in Le Locle, a small town in the Jura Mountains that was home to reputed Swiss watchmakers Tissot, Zenith, Ulysse Nardin. Favre-Leuba was grooming Ikhlas to run their factory in Hyderabad, which had been set in collaboration with French…

We can’t help but be nostalgic for childhood. Simplicity and innocence are both attractive. Invariably, though, it’s the objects we long for—scented erasers, ink pens, typewriters—that tell the more surprising story. Long before screens replaced books, pieces of stationery recorded a history of new enterprise. Between Independence and liberalisation, education was fetishised by our parents, while we distracted ourselves with its tools. Pen and paper, we saw, clearly matter more than pen to paper. Typewriters It provided notaries and novelists their livelihood, but the typewriter far exceeded its cliché. When Godrej typewriters challenged Remington’s monopoly in 1955, it quickly became a symbol of Indian industry. Right until the early 2000s, those ribbons were synonymous with our collective application. India Ink Graduating from the primary section of your school afforded one…

The title of this collection of essays sets up a binary that sits uneasily with the work of the urban historian this book seeks to celebrate. Jim Masselos is much more than a researcher of Bombay’s colonial past. He is also a flâneur of the city’s present, and it is through his wanderings that he was able to delineate both communities and identities in the metropolis. The outcome of an international conference held at the University of Mumbai in 2017, this book brings together the work of several scholars whose research on the city is well known. These essays foreground lesser-known aspects of the city related to specific communities, the spatial development of the city, notions of power and its mobilisation, both through philanthropy and social control and the specific…