Innholdsfortegnelse for August 16, 2021 i India Today

During every Olympics, the country goes through the usual hand-wringing over why the Indian contingent doesn’t perform to its potential. The Tokyo Olympics this year are no different. Team India’s overall showing has been dismal. On August 5, India languished at the 62nd spot out of 85 medal-winning countries, behind even tiny Qatar and Kosovo, which won two golds each. Many of our athletes failed to live up to their promise. The collapse of the Indian shooting team is a case in point. Two of India’s most decorated boxers were ousted in the first round. Remarkable. Before getting to the Olympics, Indian athletes have to jump multiple hoops—abysmal sporting infrastructure, politicised sporting bodies and insensitive officials. There are deeper issues at play once our sportspersons reach the world’s ultimate sporting…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to IPS probationers on July 31 has triggered a flurry of activity among Madhya Pradesh’s IPS officers. The PM said that most cities with a population of over a million are heading towards a police commissionerate system and the ones that haven’t yet will hopefully follow suit. MP does not have this system, mainly because of resistance from the IAS lobby. But even as the police circulates clips of the PM’s speech hoping CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan pays heed, the question remains—will the powerful IAS lobby stand for it?…

7% of all vaccinations done since May 2021 have been at private clinics and hospitals 830,000 doses (approx.) administered since June 15 by private hospitals; a total of 12 million doses were ordered 463,000 of 3.5 million vaccine doses given to private centres in Andhra Pradesh administered. The rest remain unutilised. In some states, more doses lie unused; in Tamil Nadu, only 5 per cent of the doses have been given at private hospitals 30 million unutilised vaccines remain with states and private centres, as of July 31…

While the roles Anna Ben has essayed all seem straightforward on the surface, each had a twist of its own Despite growing up with a screenwriter father (Benny Nayarambalam), Anna Ben didn’t consider becoming an actor till about three years ago. “It was in 2018 that I thought I’ll experiment with a few auditions here and there. I never imagined I would get callbacks. It was only something I wanted to ‘try out’ in my early 20s,” says the 26-year-old actor. Though she knew the workings of the Malayalam film industry well, Ben hadn’t thought she would one day be a part of it. “It was only after I got a callback for my audition for Kumbalangi Nights that I told my mother. She has been supportive about everything I…

Mamata Banerjee’s recent whirlwind tour of Delhi made it clear that the West Bengal chief minister wants to play at the national level. Her ‘Khela hobe’ (Game on) election slogan, inspired by the rap number written by a young Trinamool Congress worker, is being adopted by other parties too. Akhilesh Yadav’s SP wants to adopt a modified version—‘Khela Hoi’—as it prepares for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly poll. Mamata has also requested lyricist Javed Akhtar to help translate the song into Hindi for a pan-India appeal.…

“I WAS IN TEARS AFTER LOSING IN THE SEMIS.MY COACH, PARK, REMINDED ME THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BRONZE AND FINISHING FOURTH. THAT HIT ME—I KNEW I HAD TO GET THAT MEDAL”P.V. SINDHU, 26 BRONZE, WOMEN’S SINGLES, BADMINTON “I WAS DEJECTED AFTER THE RIO GAMES. AFTER WINNING THE 2018 COMMONWEALTH GAMES, I HAD DREAMT OF WINNING AN OLYMPIC MEDAL. IT HAS FINALLY COME TRUE”MIRABAI CHANU, 26 SILVER, WOMEN’S 49KG WEIGHTLIFTING “I HAD LOST TO N.C. CHEN FOUR TIMES. FOR ME, THE CHALLENGE WAS TO PROVE TO MYSELF THAT I COULD BEAT HER. I DIDN’T HAVE A STRATEGY. MAIN KHUL KE KHELI”LOVLINA BORGOHAIN, 23 BRONZE, WOMEN’S WELTERWEIGHT BOXING P.V. SINDHU HAD JUST WON her second Olympic medal and the few of us from India who were in the stands…

WOMEN POWER In the party organisation, 5 of the 12 vice-presidents are women, 10 of the 75-member national executive too. The Union cabinet has 11 women ministers now NEXTGEN LEADERS MoS for home Nisith Pramanik, 35, is the youngest cabinet member; K. Annamalai, 36, is Tamil Nadu unit chief. The average age of the state unit chiefs is 55; for the national council members, it is 58 OBC & DALIT PUSH The cabinet now has 27 OBC ministers, 12 of whom are Dalit. The party is also giving backward leaders more responsibility at the district/ state level BRAHMIN/ BANIA PARTY NO MORE The BJP is gradually moving out of this caste combine, which has dominated the party and the Sangh Parivar since the Jan Sangh days…

WHY WE NEED MITIGATION MEASURES FOR BIRDS AND ANIMALS India’s forest cover is 21.34 per cent of its total geographical area, of which 4.89 per cent is protected area comprising 103 national parks, 536 wildlife sanctuaries, 67 conservation reserves and 26 community reserves. Roads pass through 26 tiger reserves, hampering generic flow of fauna In 2018, the number of wild animals lost in road and rail accidents was 161. Two hundred elephants have been lost in rail accidents in three decades, 65 in the past three years. Power line collisions have killed one per cent of India’s sarus crane population. COST OF SAVING WILDLIFE FROM LINEAR INFRASTRUCTURE ₹ 22,000 CRORE Estimated cost of undergrounding powerlines in the Great Indian Bustard habitat in Jaisalmer. Most of it is linked to solar…

It has been 15 years since Spike Lee used A.R. Rah-man’s ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ in the opening credits of his 2006 film, Inside Man. What was refreshing was how the song didn’t feel ‘exoticised’ and how it blended in with Terrence Blanchard’s trumpet-heavy score for the film. Two years later, Rahman became something of a household name in the US after his Oscar and Grammy wins. It was around this time that Sunny Jain, born in Rochester, NY, founded Red Baraat. “My background as a jazz drummer started to shift and I fell in love with the dhol. The intention was to have a band bringing in diverse influences, with the guiding force being the Indian marching band tradition coupled with jazz,” says Jain. The result was a sound that was…

Q. You and Parvathy feature in a short on fear. Your Twitter account shows you’re not afraid to speak truth to power, but are you wary of the consequences this time? I’m hoping the director cast us as actors, not as our true selves. In the past 15 years, I have tried to live without fear. It comes from being a very secure person. As an actor, you worry about doing your job well, having the wherewithal to do it. In real life, if you stand by your intent, then you are prepared for the consequences. Q. The past two years have seen a series of anthologies on OTT platforms. Do you think the format is ideal for digital? Personally, I am not a fan of anthologies. I am not…

There is a classic clip out there of Ian McKellen rehearsing Hamlet’s deadly soliloquy, “To be or not to be”. It is an actor’s nightmare, a set of lines so familiar that there is a distinct possibility that, pretty soon, most audiences will start intoning the rubbed-down words and phrases along with the hapless actor. It takes an actor of McKellen’s calibre to make those words sound fresh, as if being heard for the first time, rich with nuance and insight. It is a challenge that Irwin Allan Sealy will recognise. Ashoka’s conversion to Buddhism after the carnage of the Kalinga War must be one of the most famous conversions in the history of the world. Every schoolchild knows about it—but beyond that, all we know is that Ashoka was…

1 PHANIGIRI Interpreting an Ancient Buddhist Site in Telangana by Naman P. Ahuja (Editor) THE MARG FOUNDATION ₹1,800; 228 pages Phanigiri is Telangana’s most important Buddhist archaeological site and this book meticulously catalogues its sculptures and inscriptions, built between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD 2 BUDDHA IN GANDHARA by Sunita Dwivedi RUPA ₹795; 336 pages The Buddhas of Bamiyan have been desecrated, yes, but Dwivedi finds in her travels through Pakistan and Afghanistan more signs of Buddhist influence—broken sculptures, even Buddha’s begging bowl 3 RETURN OF THE BRAHMIN by Ravi Shankar Etteth WESTLAND ₹399; 342 pages What did Ashoka do after embracing Buddhism? Compared to what Etteth imagines, history seems all too staid. According to this novelist, the emperor kept busy by fighting Khandapati, an invisible foe…

The animosity between former allies Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray and opposition leader Devendra Fadnavis is well known. But things, it seems, are changing. On the morning of July 30, their paths crossed during an inspection of flood-hit areas in Kolhapur. The meeting was brief but convivial and, as it later emerged, scripted. Thackeray’s personal assistant Milind Narvekar had coordinated the meeting with Fadnavis’s team. The parties seem to be softening their stance towards each other, too. Later on the same day, a BJP leader, requesting anonymity, told some reporters in Mumbai that senior party leaders from Delhi had asked him to refrain from making personal allegations against Sena leaders. Is the Sena-BJP alliance back on track?…

LOVLINA BORGOHAIN 23 BOXING “There was this belief that my parents must have done something bad in their past lives to have deserved three daughters,” said Borgohain, recalling the taunts her parents faced in Bara Mukhia village in Assam’s Golaghat district. That all three took to a combat sport like muay thai didn’t help. While her twin sisters gave it up, Lovlina persisted, later switching to boxing. Now, all anyone can talk about is her Olympic medal and how it has transformed the village. Her bronze medal has paved the way for a concrete road to ensure her smooth homecoming. RANI RAMPAL 26 HOCKEY Growing up in a tiny one-room house in Shahbad, Haryana, Rampal knew early on that picking up the stick could be a way out…

Manoj Bajpayee will tell you he doesn’t aspire for stardom: “Keep giving me good work and give the superstar tag to someone else. What I long for is great work. I am greedy in that I don’t want anybody to take any good character away from me.” Though the actor’s humility and dedication are inspiring, it must be noted that the pandemic has changed the very definition of stardom. Theatres are today struggling to lure audiences and the Rs 100 crore film seems like an impossible dream. The protagonists of web shows have come to rule the roost. With both seasons of Bajpayee’s The  Family Man (2019-) having unanimously been declared hits, he is now not just an acclaimed actor but also a household name. This week, Bajpayee returns to…

TAMIL VAAZHL (SonyLIV) Director Arun Prabhu Purushothaman shows how strangers come to impact our lives. Starring Pradeep Anthony, the film is so stunning that the seamless script works doubly hard to keep up with its visuals. TELUGU NARAPPA (Amazon Prime Video) This adaptation of the Tamil Asuran (2019) is ably carried by its lead, Venkatesh. A saga of sacrifice and revenge, the film keeps you glued by giving that haves-and-have-nots tale several dramatic twists. MALAYALAM SANTHOSHATHINTE ONNAM RAHASYAM (Neestream) The devices filmmaker Don Palathara uses—a single continuous take, a fixed camera—aren’t exactly new, but the way he employs them to tell the story of a bickering couple in a car is altogether novel…

Q. What was your reference point for the Disney+ Hotstar series City of Dreams? My inspiration was The Wire. One of the most amazing things about the show was that the creators took different aspects [of Baltimore] for each season and explored it in depth. I wanted to explore Bombay without offending people and give audiences a peek into what happens in the so-called ‘city of dreams’. The series format allows you to explore many different lives. There were no boundaries. Q. You shot Season 2 in the middle of a pandemic. Tell us about that. It went from being one of the most enjoyable shoots to one of the most torturous. Everything was humming along [in March 2020] and we were 18 days away from wrapping the show. We…