Innholdsfortegnelse for June 21, 2021 i India Today

India’s floundering vaccine policy has been a case of one step forward and two steps back. Last week, amid much fanfare, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a televised address, took one step forward when he announced that the Centre will now procure 75 per cent of the available vaccines and distribute them free of cost to the states to vaccinate those who are 18 and above, while the remaining 25 per cent will be made available to the private sector for distribution, with clear pricing guidelines. This was a partial reversal of the earlier policy when, beginning May 1, states were encouraged to procure vaccines directly from the manufacturers and vaccine eligibility was extended to the 18-44 age group, thereby putting the onus on the states to get this group…

Prashant Kishor Abhishek Banerjee and ‘PK’ are the power duo in the Trinamool Congress. From joining the party’s core meetings to accompanying Mamata, Abhishek and his mother to a Kali temple after the assembly poll victory to attending Didi’s swearing-in ceremony on May 5, PK appears to have become indispensable. Kishor is also one of Abhishek’s key advisors. Kunal Ghosh As TMC spokesperson, Ghosh did a commendable job of defending the party against a strident BJP election campaign. His elevation to the post of state general secretary is courtesy Abhishek. It was Abhishek who reinstated Ghosh in the TMC in 2020 after he slipped into oblivion following suspension from the TMC in 2013 and imprisonment over his alleged role in the Saradha chit fund scam. Sukhendu Sekhar Ray The veteran…

ALL IN A DAY’S WORK Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a workaholic and he expects nothing less from his underlings. His office is open round the clock, doing three eight-hour shifts a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are served free and officers are required to be available at all times. Sarma begins his day at 8 am and is at it till 3 the next morning. A five-hour breather is all his staff can hope for. Backroom Games BJP national general secretary Kai-lash Vijayvargiya has emerged as a strong contender for the Khandwa Lok Sabha bypoll ticket. The seat fell vacant in March on the demise of BJP MP Nandkumar Singh Chauhan. How did Vijayvargiya make it to the list of probables? BJP sources say Madhya Pradesh chief…

There are now a range of vaccines on the market, with several more being developed COVISHIELD Developed and produced by Serum Institute of India (SII) Type: Viral vector vaccine Efficacy: 70 per cent with India’s current dosing interval Global use: Approved for use in 102 countries When expected in India: Already in use COVAXIN Developed and produced by Bharat Biotech and ICMR. There are plans to entrust production to three PSUs: Indian Immunologicals, Haffkine Institute and Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Type: Whole-virion inactivated vero cell vaccine Efficacy: Overall interim efficacy of 78 per cent in preventing disease; 100 per cent in preventing death Global use: Approved for use in nine countries When expected in India: Already in use CORBEVAX Produced by Hyderabad-based Biological E and developed at the US-based Baylor…

HALF A CENTURY AGO, the Indian armed forces’ campaign with the Mukti Bahini (guerrilla resistance movement in East Pakistan) led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. It decimated the war-waging potential of the Pakistan Army, whose 93,000 personnel were taken as prisoners of war. In all metrics of warfare, this was an exceptional and decisive military victory that should have ensured a politically favourable post-war settlement for the long term. The victory should have buried the intemperate words of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the UN Security Council on September 22, 1965: “We will wage a war for a thousand years (against India)…” Shortly after the 1972 Simla Agreement, Bhutto came up with “…we (Pakistan) will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of…

THE TITLE FOR THIS COLUMN IS meant to be more deliberate than dramatic. Chinese seapower in the western Pacific, its current primary area of concern, is already well and truly multi-dimensional. The PLA-N (People’s Liberation Army-Navy) is its lead instrument. But land, air, space and cyber dimensions are its important and growing partners. That may well be the reality in the Indian Ocean as well a decade from now. The signs are discernible if we wish to read the tea leaves. More specifically, the Chinese navy has grown at a pace never seen before. Even the raising of a navy by the Spartans—a formidable land power—in the Peloponnesian war of 4 BCE, which then defeated Athens, an established seapower, falls short for pace of growth. A recent report by the…

INDIA FINDS ITSELF in a strange situation. On one hand, the Chief of Defence Staff says the Indian Navy does not need aircraft carriers, while the Chief of Naval Staff has been emphasising their continued utility. This needs to be looked at from a deeper strategic perspective lest we straitjacket military readiness at a time when the demands on the Indian Navy continue to rise. With reference to the Chinese Navy’s rising competence, Sir Julian Corbett’s Some Principles of Maritime Strategy is informative. ‘The object of naval warfare must always be directly or indirectly either to secure command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.’ The shifting balance of power, aided by China’s economic rise and the emergence of a powerful Chinese Navy and associated land-based…

With the second wave of Covid putting a stop to all activity, most of Bollywood lay low in May. Not Huma Qureshi, though. First up was promoting the Hollywood action thriller, Army of the Dead, in which she has a brief part as a desperate mother stuck in a zombie-infested Las Vegas. Thankfully, Qureshi is spared a gruesome death—a routine feature in director Zack Snyder’s films. She doesn’t seem peeved about her limited screen time, though. That’s because back in India, she has the spotlight to herself in SonyLIV’s political drama Maharani. Qureshi plays the titular character, the wife of Bihar’s chief minister, forced to fill the seat of political power. In the time not spent shooting, Qureshi has been raising funds for the ‘Save the Children’ initiative, which will…

Leopards in India are relegated to a strange oblivion despite their big cat status, captivating beauty and mysterious ways. The few times they are reluctantly thrust into the spotlight are when human-leopard conflicts flare, often ending in devastating consequences for the leopard. This vastly misunderstood and harassed animal can be found across India, with an estimated population of about 13,000. Their habitat, however, is increasingly fragmented or disappearing, leading to more and more leopards finding refuge amidst human settlements. Seeing how stealthily they live and thrive around humans, it would be easy to assume that leopards, adept at adapting to changing environments, have found a way to coexist with humans. But in Leopard Diaries, Sanjay Gubbi dispels that myth and shines a light on the creature’s elusive ways, the several…

Sandeep aur Pinky Faraar’s theatrical release was fraught with challenges, but it later found an audience on Amazon Prime Video. In hindsight, was direct-to-streaming the way to go? The producer/ director wanted a big screen release, but it needed the right conditions. That didn’t happen. We were going to release the film in March 2020 when the lockdown happened; we rescheduled it for March this year, but then the second wave of Covid struck. Given your film choices lately, is there a conscious effort to mix it up, break the mould? I want to do everything. I liked doing Anees Bazmee’s Mubarakanand also Dibakar Banerjee’sSandeep aur Pinky…. I just have to follow my heart, which is tough sometimes as you tend to start believing your own hype as a mainstream…

For sharp analysis on topical issues by the editors of INDIA TODAY, log on to www.indiatoday.in/india-today-magazine-insight Has Mamata emerged as a contender for the PM’s post? by Romita Datta After defeating the BJP in the 2021 assembly election, the West Bengal chief minister’s position within the Opposition has risen. But there’s still a long way to go https://bit.ly/3pE7OsL Covid-19: Tourism sector in Kerala hit hard by the pandemic by Jeemon Jacob The industry has seen a Rs 35,000 crore revenue loss in the pandemic. Tour operators, caught in a debt trap, see no ray of light https://bit.ly/3wczgA8 Why the Centre’s ban on memoirs from former security officials is controversial by Rahul Noronha A May 31 order banning former security and intelligence personnel from publishing memoirs has invited criticism. Former bureaucrats…

WHEN WORD CAME THAT Prime Minister Narendra Modi would address the nation at 5 pm on June 7, the pandemic-afflicted nation was at a critical crossroads. On a positive note, the Second Wave was clearly on the wane, with new cases of Covid-19 infection dropping from the daily peak of 400,000 to under 100,000 by June 1. Yet, they were still higher than at the height of the first wave, which meant that the red signal remained on, and the unlockdown process had to be gradual. On the negative side, the carefully-calibrated Covid vaccination programme was threatening to descend into a self-inflicted anarchy. The liberalised vaccine regime that the central government had announced on April 21 allowing states their own purchase and pricing for vaccinating the 18-44 year age group…

THE YEAR 2020 WILL ALWAYS be remembered as a defining year in the 21st century for Indian military affairs. It was when India finally opened its doors to historic military reform by appointing a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and integrating the services into the ministry of defence (MoD). The year 2020 was also when another set of doors—the possibility of a trans-Himalayan conflict—were kicked open by an old adversary: China. Both events had been in the making for decades. In 2000, the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) recommended the appointment of a CDS. In 2001, four Groups of Ministers (GoMs) undertook independent India’s first comprehensive national security overhaul. The crux of the KRC and GoMs’ suggestions—the appointment of a CDS and the integration of the three services—were implemented two decades…

THE INDIAN ARMED FORCES ARE rebalancing along the northern borders. The total number of troops in super-high altitudes (over 12,000 feet) will increase manifold. Rebalancing additional forces into super high altitudes has implications on operational efficiency, financial impact and logistic viability. Our experience of last year’s confrontation with the People’s Liberation Army of China in eastern Ladakh, more than three decades on in the Siachen Glacier and other super-high altitudes in the north and the east indicates that we must invest in certain technologies to contend with China effectively along the LAC (Line of Actual Control). Very importantly, super-high altitudes are like space—devoid of resources where survival is the first mantra. Significantly, these areas will not always require the latest technologies. They require ones that can survive the environment and…

THE DESTRUCTION UNLEASHED BY armed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) of Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia last year has brought these systems to the centre-stage of the security arena. The earliest demonstration of UAV capability was by Israel during the Bekaa Valley conflict with Syria in 1982. Unmanned drones launched by Israel had activated Syrian radars, thereby giving away their locations and Israeli fighter aircraft subsequently destroying them. Syrian aircraft that gave fight were blinded by electronic jamming. The result was the loss of 82 Syrian fighters as against a single Israeli aircraft. India’s adversaries are in the fast lane. China is a world leader in UAVs while Pakistan has an indigenous R&D and manufacturing base for them In the South Caucasian conflict, Azerbaijan started with a similar feint, using…

When intimated by an appropriate government agency, any unlawful information in relation to the sovereignty, integrity and security of India, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court and defamation must be removed from a platform within 36 hours Under the garb of these categories, the government can ask for the removal of any content critical of its action or performance An intermediary must retain registration details of a user for 180 days after he or she quits the platform This violates the privacy of the user who may not like to give consent to retention of such details All intermediaries must establish a grievance redressal mechanism to resolve complaints by users within 15 days and also appoint a grievance officer in India. Social media…

In the early years of her career, Annet Mahendru, an Indian-Russian actress, never fit Hollywood’s template to play a Russian character. “I wasn’t blonde or blue-eyed, so I wasn’t ‘Russian enough’,” says the 35-year-old. Things changed, though, when actor-director Adam Arkin, who was helming the first season of a period spy drama, The Americans (2013-2018), came across her show-reel on IMDB and she booked her first big gig—the role of Nina Krilova, a KGB spy. What started out as a recurring character quickly went on to become a pivotal one through the show’s six-season run. The actor currently plays the character Huck on The Walking Dead: World Beyond (Amazon Prime Video), a spin-off of the popular post-apocalyptic zombie horror series, The Walking Dead (Netflix). Born in Afghanistan to a journalist-educator…

Madhya Pradesh Rs 5,000 monthly pension till the age of 21 (or 24, if they decide to pursue higher studies); free education Delhi Rs 2,500 monthly pension till the age of 25; free education Chhattisgarh Rs 500 monthly pension till the age of 12; thereafter, Rs 1,000 monthly pension till the age of 18 Himachal Pradesh Rs 2,500 monthly pension till the age of 18 Punjab Rs 1,500 monthly pension till the age of 21 Rajasthan Rs 500 monthly pension till the age of 18 Gujarat Rs 4,000 per month till the age of 18; thereafter, Rs 6,000 per month till age 24 Uttarakhand Rs 3,000 monthly pension till the age of 21 Telangana A Rs 10 lakh fixed deposit in the child’s name, to be given when s/ he…

The protests came just as India was trying to stabilise its relationship with China in the aftermath of Sumdorong Chu The period from 1989-1991 was a historically significant time that continues to shape the world we live in today. Bookending it were the Tiananmen Square protests, the subject of former Indian foreign secretary and ambassador to China Vijay Gokhale’s book. The critical months of April-June 1989 in China have sometimes been overlooked, but Gokhale makes a convincing case that it is crucial to understand the developments around the protests because they shaped the China that India and other countries face today. From his vantage point then as a young diplomat at the Indian Embassy in Beijing, Gokhale describes China’s political and geopolitical landscape leading up to the protests, the regime’s…

A SHOT IN THE ARM (projected vaccine availability Jun.-Dec. 2021, millions of doses) FAR BEHIND Percentage of population fully vaccinated DAILY DOSES NEED TO TREBLE THE INJECTIONS PER DAY AGE-WISE VACCINATIONS VACCINE PURCHASES Sources: GoI data (MoHFW and others), Bloomberg World Vaccine Tracker (Data as on June 8)…

Consult a doctor if your child has fever for more than four consecutive days If your child has underlying health conditions, consult a doctor from the onset of symptoms itself Do not treat children yourself with medication meant for adults Children with mild symptoms of cough and fever can be treated at home Cases of severe disease in children are rare. However, call a hospital if the patient develops breathing difficulties, confusion, bluish lips or an inability to keep down liquids Try to keep your child in positive spirits as mental trauma adds to the stress of being unwell Children require rest, plenty of fluids and a healthy diet when recovering from the illness Those who have had severe Covid need to continue with follow-up consultations with the doctor even…

The new DMA, with the CDS as its Secretary, is staffed by senior personnel and directly involves the military in the formal deliberative structure of the government IN HIS SECOND TERM, Prime Minister Narendra Modi completely reshaped the defence ministry architecture, going well beyond the demands of the armed forces and the national security community. In his own words, “the creation of the Department of Military Affairs (DMA) and the instituting of the post of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is a momentous and comprehensive reform that will help our country face the ever-changing challenges of modern warfare.” With this, India once again has a CDS. Under the British Raj, we had a CDS of sorts—the Commander-in-Chief of India, the Jangi Laat. This decision by Prime Minister Modi partly reversed…

THE DELIVERY OF INS SHANKUL in 1994, the second submarine built at Mazagon Dock Limited (MDL), effectively marked the end of the scandal-hit HDW (Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft) programme. An attempt was made in the late 1990s to use the “option clause” to build two more submarines of this successful design but in vain. Meanwhile, South Korea and China embarked on their programmes in collaboration with Germany and Russia, respectively. Both countries have since developed their own designs and have a robust building programme. India’s 30-year submarine construction programme, officially titled, ‘National Competence in Submarine Building’, was aimed at creating indigenous designs and build capability so as to “insulate us from submarine technology control that may be imposed”. A stated long-term programme commitment through policy formulation was also intended to motivate the…

GERMAN GENERAL Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s remark—‘The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters long before the shooting begins’—highlights the central role of logistics and supply chains in conflict. The outcome of a war hinges on a country’s industrial might and ability to quickly convert technology into engineered products. India’s current strategic planning and defence acquisition suffer a lack of processes to map requirements and incorporate a realistic estimation of technology and engineering capabilities while developing a roadmap. Arming without Aiming—the title of this 2013 book by Stephen Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta sums up the conundrum of India’s defence development and procurement process. Bureaucratic lethargy and lack of focus have left us unable to leverage our skills as an IT-ES (information technology-enabled services) powerhouse. In stark contrast, China has…

Nov. 2017 Obtains citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda under an investment scheme Jan. 1, 2018 He and nephew Nirav Modi leave India Jan. 29 Punjab National Bank (PNB) files a police complaint against Choksi and Modi for LoU (Letter of Undertaking) fraud worth Rs 2,800 crore Jan. 31 CBI files FIR against Choksi, Modi and their family members Feb. 15 PNB files two more complaints. Scam now worth Rs 13,500 crore Dec. 13 Interpol issues Red Corner Notice against Choksi Mar. 19, 2019 Modi arrested in London. Extradition trial begins May 23, 2021 Choksi goes missing in Antigua; resurfaces in Dominica, another island-nation 180 km to the south. Family alleges kidnap bid by four UK nationals May 27 He is arrested in Dominica for illegal entry. India initiates case for…

In an exclusive interview with Deputy Editor KAUSHIK DEKA, the Union minister for electronics and information technology RAVI SHANKAR PRASAD talks extensively about how the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines & Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, will impact the privacy and democratic rights of an Indian citizen in the virtual world. He also addresses concerns raised by social media intermediaries and claims that the only goal of these rules is to empower ordinary users and protect them from abuse on digital platforms. Edited excerpts from the interview: Q What will be the impact of these new guidelines on a regular internet user? Can the Union government categorically assure citizens that these rules will not curtail their privacy and freedom of speech? A. As the Union IT minister, I offer categorical…

At a time when Japan, South Korea and, of course, China had no automotive industry to speak of, India was already assembling Fords, Buicks, Chevrolets, Wolseleys and Morris cars, among others. In the 1930s, India was already the eighth-most important automotive market in the world, while Japan, for instance, manufactured a mere 500 cars in 1930. Since then, the automotive pecking order has been upended and is today dominated by China, followed by the US. While we have resumed our global position as a major automotive nation, the journey was far from smooth, but no less exciting. Very soon after the first rudimentary automobiles started trundling around in Europe, Indian royalty acquired them, initially as playthings. Soon the automobile became an expression of their wealth and taste, leading to some…

AHA Telugu With over 10 million downloads, the platform’s audience is spread across the globe. Its originals have featured actors like Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Priyadarshi Pulikonda. Aao Nxt This “one-stop destination for Odia entertainment” runs a premium section with original web series, films and shorts. There’s content in English, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bangla, too. Talkies Tulu, Konkani and Kannada audiences can get their fix of films, web series and TV shows through this app. It also promotes traditional theatre with a catalogue of Yakshagana plays.…