Innholdsfortegnelse for August 23, 2021 i India Today

The past six months have been a nightmare for the nation and the government, as the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hit India between March and April this year. As in several countries, the second wave dealt a double blow—to public health and prospects of an economic recovery—in India too. The surge of infections and deaths overwhelmed central as well as state capacities. Government statistics show that half of the 329,065 Covid deaths in the 14 months since April 2020 occurred in April-May this year. The Indian economy, already on skid row before the pandemic, plunged into negative territory for the entire pandemic year of 2020-21, the first time in four decades. Successive waves of infection have depleted savings, slashed incomes and reduced job opportunities. Infrastructure and construction activity…

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray’s close aide Milind Narvekar recently issued a front-page advertisement in Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna. The ad praised the CM’s younger son, Tejas Thackeray, comparing him to West Indies cricketer Vivian Richards. Later, Narvekar compared older son Aaditya to Sunil Gavaskar. What’s with the hyperbole? The buzz is Narvekar is trying to pre-empt Aaditya from appointing his cousin Varun Sardesai as head of the party youth wing, the Yuva Sena. Tejas is more suitable, seems to be the broad hint. —Sandeep Unnithan with Rahul Noronha, Kiran D. Tare and Amitabh Srivastava…

IN these turbulent times, Neeraj Chopra, winner of India’s first-ever athletics gold in Olympics, is an exemplar of how to overcome adversity and emerge as a champion. Whether it was a debilitating elbow injury or the postponement of the Tokyo Games, the javelin thrower took everything in his stride, training even harder and going on to make history. In doing so, Chopra exhibited outstanding leadership qualities: hard work, self-belief, hunger for excellence, a plan to achieve it, steely determination and a confidence to tackle serious setbacks. With the Covid pandemic, particularly the second wave, devastating both lives and livelihoods, what we collectively need is his kind of belief and resolve to bring us back from the brink. As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” This is…

1. M.K. STALIN Tamil Nadu 42% 2. NAVEEN PATNAIK Odisha 38% 3. PINARAYI VIJAYAN Kerala 35% 4. UDDHAV THACKERAY Maharashtra 31% 5. MAMATA BANERJEE West Bengal 30% 6. HIMANTA BISWA SARMA Assam 29% 7. YOGI ADITYANATH Uttar Pradesh 29% 8. ASHOK GEHLOT Rajasthan 22% 9. ARVIND KEJRIWAL Delhi 22% 10. HEMANT SOREN Jharkhand 19% 11. BHUPESH BAGHEL Chhattisgarh 19% Respondents of every state were asked to evaluate the performance of their own CM. The ratings reflect their opinion. For instance, 42 per cent of respondents in Tamil Nadu and 38 per cent of respondents in Odisha gave a positive rating to M.K. Stalin and Naveen Patnaik, respectively…

The year 2020 accelerated some tectonic realignments in Indian foreign policy. Two of New Delhi’s biggest foreign policy challenges swapped places—China, with its unprovoked border aggression in eastern Ladakh in May 2020, appeared as a threat for the first time in recent years; while Pakistan, with its economic worries and political turmoil, somewhat diminished as a challenge. However, close political, economic and military ties between Beijing and Islamabad have made the prospect of a joint front a bigger strategic headache. The China challenge and the prospect of two live borders with collusive neighbours have led to India reaching out more enthusiastically for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with the US, Japan and Australia. The Quad’s collective heft, New Delhi hopes, will geopolitically address the military imbalance it faces on its vast…

HOME IN THE WORLD A Memoir by Amartya Sen ALLEN LANE ₹899; 480 pages This hard to pigeonhole Amartya Sen. He nearly opted to study physics due to his love for maths. He has taught game theory and done mathematically-driven abstract work on social choice. He has edited and translated a book on Hindu philosophy written by his late grandfather and mused at length on many philosophical questions himself and worked on famines, economic deprivation, class, gender inequalities, etc. If you wanted to know the wellsprings of these divergent interests, this book has some answers. The bald facts, of course, are well-known. Sen has been a leading economist and public intellectual since the mid-1950s, held many academic positions and influenced public policy for decades. Nevertheless, this autobiography is deeply illuminating.…

LE MUSK Rahman takes the director’s chair for this English-language musical. Shot in Rome and featuring an international cast, Le Musk’s three episodes are set to be a multi-sensory Virtual Reality experience. MAAJJA Earlier this year, Rahman launched ‘maajja’, his own label that helps independent artistes release and distribute music. By not owning any rights, Rahman allows musicians to retain copyrights and control. ‘HINDUSTANI WAY’ Since there’s a Rahman song for every occasion, it made sense to see him give us one for the Olympics. ‘Hindustani Way’, the cheer song he made with singer-songwriter Ananya Birla, is a patriot’s anthem.…

ALLIANCE-WISE PARTY-WISE NDA: BJP, AD, AGP, AIADMK, AINRC, BDJS, DMDK, HAM(S), JD(U), JJP, KC(T), LJP, NDPP, NPF, PMK, PNK, PT, RLP, SKM, TMC(M) UPA: INC, AIUDF, DMK, IUML, JKNC, JMM, NCP, RJD, RSP, SWP, VCK Others: AAP, AIFB, AIMIM, AITC, AJSU, AMMK, BJD, BSP, BVA, BPF, CPI, CPI(M), GGP, GJM, INLD, JCC, JD(S), JKPDP, KEC(M), MDMK, MNF, MNM, RLD, RLSP, SAD, SDF, SHS, SP, TDP, TRS, YSRCP, Independents and Others Note: The following political developments have been considered: RSP is with the Left alliance (others) in West Bengal and with the UPA in Kerala; there are two Independent candidates who won with UPA support, and hence have been counted as part of the alliance…

During the monsoon session of Parliament, there were at least three joint meetings of the floor leaders of Opposition parties—including a breakfast hosted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi—to chalk out a common strategy to corner the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government on the alleged state-backed Pegasus snooping scandal and farmers’ protests. A general sense of despair among the people, triggered by the Covid pandemic and its impact on the economy, seems to have given Modi’s rivals fresh hope of piercing the cloak of electoral invincibility around the BJP. What fuelled this is also the drubbing the saffron party got at the hands of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in the West Bengal assembly election earlier this year. In public perception, as reflected in the August 2021…

The second wave of Covid-19 hit India like wildfire. On March 25, the country reported 59,000 new infections. Ten days on, we accounted for one in every six new infections globally. May 5 brought even worse news with India becoming the first nation to cross over 400,000 new infections in a day. While the case load began to decline thereafter, by June 1, we had added 16 million cases to our total confirmed cases during the second wave alone. In comparison, the 13 months before the onset of the wave had seen a total of 11 million cases. The alarming statistics sparked a series of questions—most importantly, what had triggered the second wave—so that the knowledge could be used to prevent a repeat of such an unprecedented crisis. The July…

Film stars aren’t as luminous as they once were. With theatres largely shut due to the pandemic or otherwise running at 50 per cent occupancy in the first half of 2021, and big-ticket releases largely on hold, film actors had little opportunity to be seen, let alone make an impact. This year, both Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar held on to their respective top two spots, but their popularity saw a dip of five and six per cent, respectively. The Bachchan-starrers Chehre and Jhund are still awaiting a release, as are the Akshay Kumarled Sooryavanshi and Prithviraj. Those who did manage to have a film out—like former Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll hero No. 1 Salman Khan, whose ZEE 5 release Radhe was more a source of unwarranted amusement…

POLICYMAKER’S JOURNAL From New Delhi to Washington, D.C. by Kaushik Basu SIMON & SCHUSTER INDIA ₹699; 384 pages In 2011, (roughly half-way through this memoir), Kaushik Basu’s curriculum vitae had 23 pages. Last year, it had 34 pages. He has written 197 papers—roughly one every quarter—and 21 books. He is a man of considerable activity and a prolific writer, used to recording what he does. This volume is a memoir of seven of his 69 years—three spent as chief economic advisor to the ministry of finance in Delhi, and four in the World Bank in Washington. In Delhi, Basu had a friend and fellow economist in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whilst finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was little interested in economics. He did not have much work for Basu, whilst Manmohan…

Q. In Shershaah, you play a real-life hero. Do you feel an added responsibility? It is a lot of pressure, more so because I feel responsible towards the family. Theirs is the only review I’m waiting for. The attempt was not to copy his mannerisms but to bring out his essence. I connected with the Batra family. I also come from a middle-class Punjabi household with an army background. My grandfather fought and was injured in the 1962 Indo-China war. My family is very happy that I am finally playing the role of an army man. Q. Indians are partial to the war-action genre. What do you think is the appeal? I think audiences have seen heroes pull off impossible things for so many years that now when you see it,…

Prakash Shah, Anand Patwardhan and Ganesh N. Devy, the three who initiated a nationwide objection to the government’s project to turn the Sabarmati Ashram into “a world-class memorial”, are, first and foremost, artists with a conscience. While Gandhi features in some of Patwardhan’s remarkable documentaries, the film-maker is not a conventional or even unconventional Gandhian. Devy is a famed linguist-novelist, and Shah, founder-editor of the Gujarati journal Nireekshak, is the current president of the Gujarati Sahitya Parishad. If someone like me readily signed their statement (which was preceded by a strong media article by Ramachandra Guha), it was not because I’m a Gandhi descendant, not even because I’ve studied Gandhi at length. I’ll soon give my chief reason, but a compelling one was the thought of a touristy constellation of…

The India Today Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll was conducted by Karvy Insights between July 10 and July 22, 2021. Due to the Covid-imposed limitations, a mixed methodology was adopted—50 per cent face-to-face and 50 per cent telephonic interviews. A standard structured questionnaire, translated into regional languages, was used. A total of 14,559 interviews were conducted, 71 per cent in rural and 29 per cent in urban areas, spread across 115 parliamentary and 230 assembly constituencies in 19 states—Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, MP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In each assembly constituency, a fixed number of interviews were conducted. The fieldwork was conducted under the supervision of Ranjit Chib, chairman of Karvy Insights, assisted…

Perception management is a critical factor in determining the popularity of a chief minister. No one exemplifies this better than Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who faces an assembly election in barely six months. Once again, he has emerged as India’s best-performing chief minister in the August 2021 Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey, albeit with a significant decline in popularity—from 25 per cent in the MOTN January 2021 survey to 19 per cent now. Adityanath, with a firebrand and doer image, is distinct from his predecessors in several ways, such as his focus on infrastructure development in Uttar Pradesh and rejig of the social arithmetic with a mix of nationalism and micro-caste management. There was buzz about some in Adityanath’s cabinet wanting to be projected as the BJP’s…

Concerns among Indian citizens about their rights, privacy and personal privileges run deeper now than earlier. Apprehensions about democracy in India are growing. The latest Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey shows that 45 per cent of respondents believe democracy is in danger—a 3 percentage point rise since the MOTN poll in January 2021. A little over half of those surveyed (51 per cent) feel people are scared to protest or offer views publicly, which reflects a disturbing trend. Forty-one per cent of respondents want the Union government to restore Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood. Fifty-seven per cent want the Centre to amend the newly-introduced farm laws. The section of respondents who believe that communal harmony has deteriorated under the NDA rule has gone up by 12 percentage points—from 22 per…

INDIAN TRACK & FIELD ATHLETES are no strangers to early exits from Olympic arenas, not counting the storied near misses of Milkha Singh, P.T. Usha and Anju George. Even those ‘almost-there’ stories are too few and far between. The question we got tired of asking was why a nation of a billion-plus cannot produce a track & field medal. On the day of his qualification for the finals of the men’s javelin event, Neeraj Chopra too left the stadium early. But his was the stride and demeanour of a man who had unfinished business. He had made short work of the qualification, with a monstrous first throw of 86.65 metres (the qualifying mark being 83.50 metres), topping the qualification charts and becoming the first Indian to make the final of…