Innholdsfortegnelse for November 15, 2021 i India Today

Humans are social animals—they cannot live without company. The need for mental and physical intimacy is a primal human urge. Relation-ships define us and our lives. So while the Covid-19 pandemic, the biggest global disruption of the past 75 years, adversely affected physical and mental health, it had an equally significant impact on interpersonal relationships. Last year, we retreated into our homes and socially distanced ourselves from each other in one of the world’s harshest lockdowns. Relationships suffered. A global survey by a popular dating app found that 48 per cent of respondents had broken up with or stopped seeing their partner or significant other and had not hooked up since January 2020. Gen Z respondents accounted for 53 per cent of this statistic. When the lockdown eased, there was…

DECADE AGO, A BLINK-AND-YOU-MISS-IT signboard is all that announced Pachpadra, located somewhere between Barmer and Jodhpur on desert highway NH-112. Half a dozen shops and two dhabas were the only things visible as the dust kicked up in the endless sprawl of the Thar. Today, there are at least 200 shops lined up on either side of the road. Every day is like a haat, as shoppers mill around and dozens of under construction multistorey buildings create a new skyline. The Pachpadra tehsil headquarters, part of Barmer district in Rajasthan, is in a traditionally vegetarian part of Rajasthan, but ‘fish and meat’ shops are flourishing, catering to the workers from other states. Most times during the day, the highway and village lanes are choked; some 2,000 vehicles frequent the upcoming…

The 2021 India Today Group survey of the country’s business schools was conducted by reputed Delhi-based market research firm Marketing & Development Research Associates (MDRA). A comprehensive list of B-Schools, offering full-time classroom management programmes (PGDM/MBA), established at least five years ago and with a minimum of three graduated batches, was updated. The objective questionnaire was finetuned to obtain the latest relevant information—current year data—from the institutes on 127 attributes to give stakeholders more realistic, updated and accurate information. More than 2,500 B-schools across India, fulfilling the qualification criteria for participation, were contacted, and despite most B-Schools being closed during the lockdown, 307 institutes across the country submitted their objective data within the deadline. Of them, two B-schools not fulfilling the criteria were excluded from the final rankings table. After…

“Find new friends if your immediate family is not available. It could be neighbours, the milkman, or pets. Engage in some welfare activity like teaching an underprivileged child” 1. Connect with people. Irrespective of age, keep company with those who value you as a person, as well as your advice and counsel. Often, elderly people say they feel ‘useless’ or ‘redundant’. One way to fight this feeling is to keep the people who make you feel happy and valued in your life 2. Remember, you are not alone. Ageing can make one feel separated from others. Make friends among those who are willing to be a part of this stage of your life. In fact, maintain friendships with those who share your concerns and anxieties about old age, while filling…

AMYTHICAL HORSE WAITS IN the ocean deep, holding all of Shiva’s passions and breathing fire. When the world ends, the horse will emerge. That horse also burns in the heart of the young potter Elango. While he churns out domestic cups and giant hotel garden urns to make a living, he diagrams his horse. In his dreams, he shapes and reshapes it. In the meantime, there is the girl he loves, there is the girl he teaches, and there is the dog with whom he has a relationship that seems to run deepest of all. Anuradha Roy’s novel The Earthspinner happens to span the lifetime of this dog, from his helpless infancy to his dignified old age. Chinna is owned by no one, but he is at home everywhere. It…

ARPITA AKHANDA, 28 Currently based in Santiniketan, Akhanda’s practice is mainly shaped by the Partition of Bengal, an event that dramatically affected her grandparents’ life in Bangladesh SAYAN CHANDA, 32 The Kolkata-based Chanda’s textile-oriented work revolves around indigenous ritual objects and materials such as used Kantha quilts from Bengal BHASHA CHAKRABARTI, 30 Chakrabarti uses clothing or articles of personal use to “mend” past wounds and, hopefully, create a new future…

AFTER BEING SINGLE THROUGH THE PANDEMIC, Shamita Kulkarni, a French translator in Delhi, decided to give dating a go again about six months ago. Double vaxxed, date night outfits all set and with masks to match, she felt ready to dive back into the dating pool. What she had not anticipated, though, was FODA—the ‘fear of dating again’. Unsure about her online dating skills, it took her another month to set up her Tinder profile and enter the dating circuit. It’s a feeling familiar to many in the post-pandemic world. With their love lives Covidated—cancelled or altered by the pandemic—many ended up as Covidivorcees. According to a survey popular dating app Bumble conducted among 2,000 users in India in June, 28 per cent of the respondents said they had broken…

٭Hinge USP: Based on a Nobel prize-winning algorithm, the app promises to find singles great offline dates; and ensures the relationship proceeds beyond just virtual chats Age group: It is popular among those looking for serious relationships. One estimate suggests 90 per cent of its users are between 23 and 32 years. ٭Tinder USP: The ‘vibes’ feature allows singles to connect with others who share similar interests, like music, art, sports or gaming Age group: Current estimates suggest 83 per cent of Tinder users are below 34 years of age ٭OkCupid USP: An in-depth personality quiz helps singles find a match percentage with potential dates Age group: Most users in India belong to the age group of 25-35 years ٭TrulyMadly USP: With over 8 million downloads in India, the app…

Six months, five days—that’s how long Bhuvan Bam, one of India’s most successful YouTubers, was away from the platform that has given him his fame. The reason behind his absence is one that countless Indians will find familiar. As the second Covid wave crescendoed in the capital earlier this year, Bam lost both his parents. In a June 12 Instagram post, the 27-year-old wrote, “Ek mahine mein sab bikhar chuka hai. Ghar, sapne, sab kuchh… Ab shuru se jeena seekhna padega [Everything has been shattered in a month—homes, dreams, everything. Will have to learn how to live from scratch].” While his grief, of course, will take its own course, Bam has now discovered a resilience that is giving him the confidence to create and make people laugh again. The first…

Sometimes a novel receives so much press attention that reviewers find themselves reviewing the spectacle around publication as much as the novel itself. Book reviewing as the ninth circle of hype? Anindita Ghose’s debut The Illuminated has created what passes for a tempest in the staid, self-involved and very, very small world of Indian literary fiction. Cue the clutching of faintly woody, camphor-scented, bibliosmic handkerchiefs to gently dampening brows. Reader, don’t be suckered by the swooning critics. The Illuminated promises plenty but, like a skimpy supermarket sandwich, delivers shockingly little of nutritional value. Much, for instance, will be made by anyone who reads this novel of the sometimes comic, mostly sinister presence of the Mahalaxmi Seva Sangh, whose sometimes comic, mostly sinister strictures for women are interspersed throughout the novel,…

Q. You have published many, many books, but does this anthology feel special in any way? Every time you write a book, you hope it will be an enduring work, but this volume has almost been created to be enduring. It has been made out of 40 years of published books and commentary. There is some of my best prose here—fiction as well as non—and David Davidar [of Aleph] even persuaded me to throw in a few poems. This volume, in many ways, really spans a lifetime’s work. Q. A lack of time, writer’s block—you don’t seem to suffer any such afflictions… When you have other commitments and deadlines, you push aside other distractions and focus rapidly on the writing. Also, I cheerfully use for myself a phrase that American…

Talk of a united opposition against the BJP for the 2022 UP assembly election is in the air. Quite literally. On board a Delhi-Lucknow flight late last month, Congress general secretary and UP in-charge Priyanka Gandhi had a brief chit-chat with SP (Samajwadi Party) national president Akhilesh Yadav. No one knows what they discus sed. Leaders of both parties called the meeting a coincidence. But then, nine days later, Priyanka flew out of Lucknow on a chartered jet with RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal) chief Jayant Chaudhary. Chaudhary was in the lounge of the Lucknow airport when Priyanka persuaded him to fly to Delhi. What’s brewing? Priyanka paradropping on the SP-RLD alliance?…

➽“Let’s be like Covid and catch each other” ➽“Wash your hands so you can hold mine” ➽“Down to mask up and meet up” ➽“You cannot spell virus without ‘u’ and ‘I’” ➽“If the coronavirus does not take you out, can I?” ➽“Are you the Covid vaccine? Because I would never turn you down” ➽“You can’t spell quarantine without ‘uraqt’” ➽“Are you a pandemic? Because you’ve got my heart on lockdown” Top mentions “Masks”, “Environment”, “climate change” and references to parody video “Rasode Mein Kaun Tha” Top shared experiences Baking banana bread and making dalgona coffee together…

CHALLENGE Rise in prices of raw materials. Steel mills have increased their prices by up to Rs 4,500 per tonne from June this year, and aluminium prices have been rising steadily since January this year SOLUTION The Centre needs to monitor price movements of key raw materials and refer cases to the Competition Commission of India, if necessary. MSMEs also want the Centre to rationalise import duties, and bring down duties on key raw materials to zero CHALLENGE Scarcity of shipping and high transportation costs. Shipping costs have doubled globally. With over 80 per cent of all goods trade transported by ships, the rise in transport costs has caused prices to surge SOLUTION Indian authorities need to rationalise the taxes on fuel so that local transportation is cheaper CHALLENGE High…

THE TIME YOUR GAME IS most vulnerable is when you are ahead,” said Australian tennis legend Rod Laver. That could perhaps describe the biggest upheaval seen in the 2021 edition of the India Today Group’s annual rankings of B-Schools. Prepared by premier market research agency Marketing & Development Research Associates (MDRA), this year’s rankings saw the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C) topple the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) from the top position—for the first time since 2016 when the methodology of the study was changed for qualitative improvement. The ‘vulnerability’ shown by IIM-A in maintaining its leading position is only indicative of the intense competition among the country’s premier management institutes. If IIM-A topped in three of the five parameters—learning experience, living experience, and selection process, governance and…

THE MOMENT HAS arrived. Finally. A fact we IIMcians always knew, but which was not acknowledged by the media. So, it gives me immense pleasure that INDIA TODAY has finally recognised that my alma mater, the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIM-C), is the best business school in the country. This is not the biased assertion of a former student. I’m stating this based on what I learnt at this great institute and how those lessons shaped the lives of thousands of alumni, including mine. The biggest differentiator between IIM-C and other management institutes is its resolute focus on the quantitative and numerical. This is unlike some of the other top business schools, which are more focused on the qualitative and on presentations. Before you jump the gun, let me…

LIKE SO MANY THINGS, SHAKESPEARE had it right when he wrote “beware the Ides of March”. In March 2020, the pandemic plunged India into an unprecedented lockdown. When it became apparent that normalcy would not return soon, every industry and individual hunkered down and started planning for survival and revival. Ingenuity flowered as digital technologies came to the rescue in many cases, and business models were adapted to operate in this new reality. The education sector also responded with alacrity. At the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR), we were able to shift to an online model within 48 hours of the lockdown. We progressed, programme by programme, to become fully operational, reconfiguring our content, instructional approaches and schedules. SPJIMR’s approach is unique in how it blends classroom…

Only a handful of actors in the web series universe have come to enjoy the distinction of being synonymous with the character they play. After Mirzapur (2018—), for instance, Pankaj Tripathi grew used to fans addressing him as Kaleen Bhaiyya. Similarly, Jitendra Kumar is now accustomed to being referred to as Jeetu Bhaiyya, a mentor to IIT aspirants in the series Kota Factory (2019—). So successful was the first season of this TVF (The Viral Fever) show that Netflix picked it up for a second. Ever since season two’s release in September, Kumar’s popularity has soared. An IIT Kharagpur graduate, Kumar used his own observations and experiences of Kota to develop the character. “He is larger-than-life. You will hardly get to see a Jeetu Bhaiyya in real life,” says Kumar.…

On display at New York’s James Cohan gallery until November 13, Gauri Gill’s photographs have been described as “rich” and “remarkable” by The New Yorker, and as “visually spellbinding” by The New York Times. Neither review is off the mark. It’s hard to look away from Gill’s work. While some images make you laugh, others demand longer consideration and empathy. Having travelled to Ganjad in rural Maharashtra, Gill met Warli painter Rajesh Vangad in 2013. As she heard him talk about the landscape, the rituals of Ganjad, Gill felt there was a gap between her contact sheets and all that he was saying: “While I saw the village through the lens of my education, urban privilege and camera, he saw it through memory, his intimate lived experience.” Gill began photographing…