Innholdsfortegnelse for October 11, 2021 i India Today

BULLET FOR BULLET Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray seems to have put the brakes on one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects--the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train. Two years back, Thackeray had noted how it seemed to benefit Gujarat more than his state. The project is likely to miss its 2023 deadline because land acquisition in Maharashtra has slowed down. The Shiv Sena supremo now seems to have a pet project of his own. He recently suggested the Centre build an 844km high-speed line linking Mumbai with its second capital, Nagpur. He clearly believes in keeping it within the state. Jailhouse Blues Kailash Vijayvargiya, the general secretary in charge of the BJP’s West Bengal unit, faces arrest if he enters the state. Reason? Over two dozen FIRs were registered against him…

Even as the Congress seemed to be imploding in Punjab, the grand old party was putting another plan in motion else-where. On the afternoon of September 28, it welcomed two young, promising leaders in its midst in the presence of Rahul Gandhi—the 34-year-old political activist Kanhaiya Kumar and the 38-year-old Gujarat Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani. The latter, though, has not joined the Congress formally. The Congress move may well be a first glimpse, a sort of sneak preview, of how the party wants to approach its Lok Sabha 2024 campaign. In days ahead, election strategist Prashant Kishor, mandated by the Gandhi siblings to prepare the Congress blueprint, is possibly looking at more lateral inductions, with some emphasis on younger leaders to reinvigorate the party. Having been routed in two consecutive…

VARIANT: C.1.2 • A sub-lineage of Lambda, which is still a variant of interest for WHO • C.1.2 was first detected in South Africa in May 2021 MAJOR MUTATIONS IN THE STRAIN • D614G mutation found in the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants, which can increase viral replication • The N501Y mutation—also found in Alpha, Beta and Gamma and which improves spike protein binding to cellular receptors—makes the virus even more infectious • The E484K mutation—found in Beta and Gamma variants as well—helps the virus evade neutralising antibodies generated through vaccination or previous infection • C.1.2 also carries mutations N679K and Y449H. Their impacts are under study COUNTRIES WITH C.1.2 CASES 130 cases around the world Source: WHO…

IN 1983, eight Assamese indigenous youths were killed by suspected illegal immigrants, causing massive outrage IN 1993, the Congress govt. allotted 5 bighas each to 199 Bengali Muslim families in Phuhuratoli. Next year, this was found to be illegal as the area was a VGR. Eviction orders were issued. No action was taken. IN 2013, an RTI found that 77,420 bighas of government land had been encroached upon in this area IN FEB. 2015, Kobad Ali, president, Dakhsin Mangaldai Gowala Santha, filed a case under Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2010, in Mangaldai district court seeking eviction of illegal occupants from 77,420 bighas IN 2020, another person, Lalit Das, of Kuruwa went missing. Locals claimed he had been killed by encroachers. IN JUNE 2021, 49 families were evicted by the…

ON August 27, Ramalingam Sivanantham, Tamil Nadu’s commissioner for archaeology, found himself floored by a report by the Miami-based Beta Analytic Testing Laboratory, which had performed a radiocarbon dating of the contents of a burial urn recovered from a dig in Sivagalai, in the state’s Thoothukudi district. The report concluded that the contents of the urn—including rice and soil—dated back to 1155 BCE, indicating that an agrarian civilisation was flourishing in Tamil Nadu at that time. The news travelled quickly up the ranks—Sivanatham shared the report with Tamil Nadu archaeology advisor Prof K. Rajan, who passed it on to the state’s minister for archaeology Thangam Thennarasu, who informed Chief Minister M.K. Stalin. The findings were kept under wraps until Stalin revealed them in the state legislative assembly on September 9.…

Two worlds—the decaying and the emergent—fused and merged in 1857. Pathos, confusion and conflict reigned supreme. Out of this disarray, two figures emerged: both, unexpectedly, women when there were hardly any women in the public do-main. They never met yet both occupied a moment in time that was brimful with possibilities, possibilities that these women, from modest families though married into royalty, seized with great enterprise. They were Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh. A Begum & a Rani is their story. With four well-researched books on the events of 1857 behind him, Rudrangshu Mukherjee notes in a wry admission: “I am not at all sure if I chase the revolt or it chases me.” Here, he plucks two seemingly disparate figures, one a “widowed rani…

On september 24, the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex touched 60,000 points, a new high and yet another exhilarating moment for the Indian stock markets, which have been unusually buoyant for the past few months. The rise of the Sensex this year follows big slumps last year—on February 28, 2020, as Covid-19 cases began to rise, the market saw one of its worst single-day crashes, losing 1,448 points to close at 38,297; on March 23, again, it recorded its biggest fall ever—3,935 points—after the Centre announced the national lockdown. However, by the latter half of 2020, it was climbing again—back at 45,000 in December and past 50,000 points on January 21 this year. From then on, it took the Sensex just eight months to add another 10,000 points: on September…

Administering 871 million doses of Co-vid vaccines between March 1—when India opened up the vaccination drive to its general public—and September 28 is no mean feat. Given the country’s size and population, not only did officials and vaccinators have an enormous target to chase, but they also encountered infrastructure challenges, difficult and remote terrain, cultural sensitivities and a great deal of misinformation among people, leading to vaccine hesitancy. The dedicated and tireless efforts of thousands of healthcare workers employed under the national vaccination programme helped beat the odds and gave us some heartening success stories. Take, for instance, the case of 92-year-old Mad-havi Pillai from Kerala’s Palakkad district. A widow who lives under the care of two full-time house helps, Pillai had little hope of making it to the nearest…

↘ The Indo-Pacific region includes the world’s most populous country (China), the most populous democracy (India) and the most populous Muslim-majority state (Indonesia) ↘ Seven of the 10 largest standing armies in the world are based here ↘ The Indo-Pacific includes six members of the G20 and generates about 40 %of the global wealth ↘ Two-thirds of the global container traffic by sea plies in the region ↘ In 2019, the region’s CO2 emissions accounted for 45% of global emissions—30% from China. Five of the 10 largest greenhouse gas emitters are here: China, India, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia…

When Madhusudan Ghosh, a daily wager in Taatipara in Birbhum district who made Rs 3,000 a month, approached software engineer Subrata Bose in January 2014 for Rs 500 to buy text books for his son Bapan, Bose was reluctant to extend charity. It was only when Madhusudan showed him his son’s marks that Bose realised his help could go a long way. A Class 9 topper at Taatipara High School, all Bapan wanted to do was become an engineer and fix his father’s rat-infested mud house. He would deliver milk and muri (puffed rice) to households in the mornings before going to school, do odd jobs in between and then stay up all night to study. Bapan’s case got Bose thinking about helping children who had merit but not the…

Q. What got you interested in Deep6? Madhuja Mukherjee, the writer-director, was my point of inter-est. She was the co-writer of Qissa and we have known each other since then. I loved her screenplay. It questions what is real and what is not. Also, past and present smash into each other and make the future almost impossible. It was, also, perhaps the best-looking screenplay I had seen, with painting references for a lot of the scenes. Q. In the past, you have talked about being used to the idea of your films not releasing in India. Did Sir’s OTT release change that? It definitely got us into people’s homes in a way that we had never experienced before. It felt like a glitch in the system, as if the algorithm…

“I wanted the power and courage of male officers,” a lady cop tells the camera, “I didn’t even know women could be policemen.” Another inspector describes the helplessness he feels when he sees his autistic child: the contrast between being in control at work, with people saluting him, and being vulnerable at home. Wearing the police uniform is like wearing steel, yet another cop says—you feel excited when you put it on in the morning. These are vignettes from the new docu-series Crime Stories: India Detectives, made in cooperation with the Bengaluru police as they investigate four unrelated cases: three murders and the kidnap-ping of an infant (possibly for an occult sacrifice). This might sound like material for juicy stories with twists and expositions, but Crime Stories isn’t that kind…

At around 3 pm on September 28, Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee (PPCC) chief Navjot Singh Sidhu tweeted his resignation, once again setting the proverbial cat among the pigeons. Soon, two of his known supporters, cabinet ministers Razia Sultan and Pargat Singh, also put in their papers. Apparently, Sidhu was upset with new chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi for taking an independent line on crucial appointments, among them the inclusion of controversial legislator and liquor baron Rana Gurjit Singh in the state cabinet; appointing A.P.S. Deol as state attorney general and Iqbal Preet Singh Sahota as DGP; and handing the home portfolio to Sidhu’s bête noire Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa. Till late on September 29, the party high command had not accepted the resignations. In the run-up to the assembly election in…

In early September, Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee received his third summons—in as many weeks—from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged money-laundering case relat-ed to a coal smuggling scam in West Bengal. Before he received the order to appear at the ED office in New Delhi on September 21, Abhishek had already faced a nine-hour grilling by ED officials on September 6 and ignored—on a short-notice plea—another summons to show up on September The ED, on September 1, had filed a chargesheet in the 2016 Narada sting operation case against TMC ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, party MLA Madan Mitra, former Kolkata mayor Sovan Chatterjee and former IPS officer S.M.H. Mirza. On September 14, the agency summoned law minister Moloy Ghatak for questioning in the…

1.0(2007-2017) In 2004, in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, India, Japan, Australia and the US created an informal alliance to collaborate on disaster relief. In 2007, then Japanese PM Shinzo Abe formalised the alliance as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or the Quad, primarily to contain China. But with the other three nations wanting it to keep a low profile, Quad lay dormant for a decade. 2.0 (2017-2019) In 2017, with the Xi Jinping-led China flexing its muscles, the Quad was revived with the broader objective of establishing a rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific region. But while its ambitions were lofty, it was hamstrung by the lack of a permanent decision-making body. It focused instead on expanding existing agreements between member countries and was seen more as a…

THE POPULAR BADE HANUMANJI MANDIR on the banks of the Sangam (where the Ganga, Yamuna and mythical Saraswati rivers meet) in Prayagraj (earlier Allahabad) opened as usual on September 25. But for the first time in 17 years, the puja of the rare lete hue (supine) Hanuman idol took place without Mahant Narendra Giri, the peethadheeshwar of the Baghambari Muth that runs the temple. Giri had allegedly committed suicide on the evening of September 20, and the temple complex had been closed to devotees—again a first in many decades; the temple was open for darshan even at the height of the Covid pandemic. The body of Narendra Giri, who was also the secretary of the Niranjani Akhara as well as the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP), was…

On a September morning, Waqil Hussain sits on the bank of a small stream of the Brahmaputra river. It’s a scorcher of a day and the gentle breeze fails to bring relief to the 18-year-old who rests under a tree, consumed by the news on Assamese news channels playing on his smartphone as he tries to make sense of the events of the past week. Hussain, a carpenter’s assistant, is among the many in Dholpur village in the Sipajhar area of Assam’s Darrang district who lost their homes in an eviction drive started by the state government on September 20. Dholpur, a sandbar sandwiched between two streams of the Brahmaputra, lies 70 km northeast of Guwahati. Hussain’s home was just 100 metres away from where he sits now. And though…

LOVLINA BORGOHAIN Bronze medalist at 2020 Tokyo Olympics “Spending time with mummy, papa and my sisters, something I could not do for almost eight years makes be happy, actually super happy. Every moment spent here in my home town with my folks gives me the right energy” TIPS FOR HAPPINESS KAMNA CHHIBBER Head, Department of Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare 1. Engage in things you like and that give you pleasure. 2. Spend time on yourself. Self-care is critical to happiness. 3. Be grateful for the things you do have in your life. 4. Value and cherish relationships. Nurture them to create effective support systems. 5. Find contentment in what you have achieved so far even if you continue to strive towards larger goals. 6. Manage your emotions…

NO LAND’S MAN No Land’s Man sees Nawazuddin Siddiqui play the lead in a quirky film about immigration. Directed by Bangladeshi filmmaker Mostofa Sarwar Farooki, it also counts A.R. Rahman as one of its producers. PEDRO Natesh Hegde’s directorial debut Pedro is the first Kannada film to be screened at Busan. Hegde’s father, Gopal, plays the protagonist—a lonely, middle-aged electrician living in a remote forest village. KALKOKKHO (HOUSE OF TIME) Directed by Rajdeep Paul and Sarmistha Maiti, Kalkokkho mixes horror and magic realism to tell the story of an apathetic doctor who gets trapped in a scary house with three women during a pandemic.…