Innholdsfortegnelse for 17 January 2022 i India Today

On January 1, when the Union home ministry revoked the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) registrations—mandatory for organisations to receive and use foreign funding—of 5,968 firms, many were outraged. Critics said the move was aimed at crippling NGOs (non-government organisations) that have either been critical of the BJP-led central government or are run by minorities. Some of the organisations that lost their registrations include the Missionaries of Charity, set up by Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, the Medical Council of India, the India Islamic Centre, the Oxfam India Trust and Common Cause, which have filed several PILs against central legislation in recent times. However, independent observers, including many who lost their FCRA registrations, say this is a consequence of amendments to the FCRA in 2020, which made the process of getting…

BSP supremo Mayawati once called the Samajwadi Party a one-family party. But her party too is now witnessing the quiet political rise of a family in Uttar Pradesh. Not her own, but that of Satish Mishra, the party general secretary. Mishra has been holding public rallies to woo Brahmins while wife Kalpana has been reaching out to women voters and son Kapil Mishra has been conducting youth outreach meetings. Mishra’s son-in-law, Paresh Mishra, handles the party war room while close relative Devi Prasad looks after party activities in Kanpur. An elite Brahmin vanguard for a Dalit party?…

Perhaps nothing better sums up the conquering eclecticism of Hinduism than these lines from the ‘Nasadiya Sukta’ in the Rig Veda, the first recorded rumination in Hindu philosophy on the origins of the universe: ‘Who really knows? Who will here proclaim it? Whence was it produced? Whence this creation? The gods came afterwards with the creation of this universe? Who then knows whence it has risen?’ This hymn is remarkable for its absence of dogma; there are no certitudes; no injunction for obeisance; no religious commands or call to ritual. There is awe, there is wonderment, but, above all, there is inquiry, an emphasis on the need to ask, to probe, to go beyond conventional categories of thought to the realm of speculation, an invitation to ideation. This self-assured non-prescriptive…

The waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, which triggered a global economic recession in 2020, have continued even as 2021 ends. The Delta variant continues to cause much destruction of life, and has forced nearly every country to accept that Covid-19 may never go away. We should know in a few weeks how severe infections from the new Omicron variant can be, and how long the wave lasts (early evidence gives some cause for cautious optimism), but the threat of yet newer variants lurks on the horizon. Irrespective of these challenges, it looks like 2022 could be a very different year for the global economy than 2021. As restrictions on activity eased in 2021, consumer demand rebounded. The boost from fiscal transfers, particularly in the US, was so strong that shortages…

The new normal is anything but ‘normal’. 2022 will be a more unpredictable year than the one we left behind. The Covid-19 virus is mutating all the time and the world is unable to keep up. Just when we thought the worst may be behind us, the more transmissible Omicron variant is spreading across the world. Borders which were being opened tentatively, gingerly are snapping shut again. Airline business, which was limping back to solvency, is likely to face terminal decline and most service industries, such as hotels, restaurants, travel and retail, will further suffer severe blows. The major world economies responded to the health crisis and the acute economic and social disruptions in the wake of the pandemic by expending an estimated $11 trillion (Rs 819 lakh crore) over…

First, a quibble: why on earth is the type so small? A book this ambitious, surely deserves a larger font size. Because, once you’re over that particular hurdle, this is a rewarding volume. I’m not a habitual reader of science fiction. Still, this collection spoke to me, and its major strength is tied root and branch to its ambition. This is not an ‘Indian’ collection. It is truly South Asian and deserves all the flowers it will surely get for bringing those disparate flavours together. If the speculative worlds of authors are rooted in the ‘realities’ they inhabit, then surely casting the net wide can only be a good thing. Nor are all these South Asians currently residing in their lands of origin. To me, the bios at the end…

In Amitava Kumar’s A Time Outside This Time, his 11th book, three engrossing stories are nestled in a meta-narrative of “writing about writing” during the current era of authoritarianism’s anti-individualism and the Covid-19 pandemic’s social distancing. And though the author has a different identity from the writer, it is clearly Kumar’s alter-ego that is named Satya, given the book’s preoccupations. Satya is at a creative getaway in Italy when Covid hits, searching for the answer to “Who among your neighbours will look the other way when a figure of authority comes to your door and puts a boot in your face?” Satya is simultaneously reading George Orwell’s 1984, a fashionable read in the age of surveillance capitalism and strongman politics. His interactions echo the hesitant human response to the rapidly…

Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani recently said it was time for a leadership change at India’s largest private sector company, which totted up annual revenues of Rs 5.39 lakh crore in 2020-21. Ambani, 64, has been with RIL since 1981, when his father Dhirubhai Ambani pulled him out of an MBA programme at Stanford University to help build a petrochemicals plant at Patalganga in Maharashtra. Mukesh was 24 then. Just over two decades later, in 2002, he took over the reins of RIL following Dhirubhai’s death. Over the past few years, Ambani has been working to get his three children—twins Isha and Akash, 30, and Anant, 26—to take up leadership roles in the company. But he has also set up a framework to groom future leaders…

It looked like a scene from the Ajay Devgn movie Raid, just that it was happening 80 km from Lucknow, in Kanpur. On December 23, a team of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI), Ahmedabad, raided the house of Piyush Jain in the city’s Anandpuri locality. Piyush, 51, is a manufacturer of chemical compounds used for flavouring in the pan masala industry. The DGGI officials had raided the house as part of a swoop on gutka manufacturers in a tax evasion case, when they realised that some of the walls were not quite aligned with the structure of the 3,000-plus sq ft mansion. In fact, they felt hollow. When the walls were broken down, bundles of currency notes, packed in paper and polythene, tumbled out. Soon, there were so…

The start of 2022 finds Prime Minister Narendra Modi facing a quartet of challenges that will test his leadership skills and his governance to the extreme: tackling the third wave of Covid, leading his party to victory in the upcoming five assembly polls, reviving the country’s flailing economy and dealing with an aggressive China. As he hunkers down for the fight, the prime minister must feel like the Indian juggler that the 19th century English essayist William Hazlitt described in an article: “To catch four balls in succession in less than a second of time, and deliver them back so as to return with seeming consciousness to the hand again, to make them revolve round him at certain intervals, like the planets in their spheres, to do what appears an…

On New Year’s day, sarsanghchalak of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) Mohan Bhagwat addressed a gathering of eminent citizens in Bengaluru. He was there not to talk about a Hindu Rashtra or Hindu-Muslim relations, but about paryavaran—the environment. Long considered an NGO domain, the RSS is now looking at it as an area of interest. A new wing, Paryavaran Gatividhi (climate activism), was added to the roster of the RSS recently. And it’s not just the environment, RSS-inspired activism can now be found in many other areas, including healthcare, education and social welfare. ‘Saksham’ is an NGO that works among the disabled, whom the RSS had christened ‘Divyang’ much before the government started using that term. During the crisis months of the Covid pandemic, the RSS quietly organised extensive training programs…

There was much fanfare, thousands of people and a fantastic display of Goa’s pride during its recent Liberation Day celebrations. India’s smallest state was one of the last territories to be freed from colonial rule but has progressed quickly since that momentous day in 1961. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Goa marked the culmination of a year of celebrating the state’s 60th anniversary of its liberation from Portuguese rule. He lauded the state government for its developmental achievements, noting Goa’s success in various governance indices. "The new identity of the state is that of being foremost in every task of governance. In other places where work starts, Goa has already completed it;' he said during his speech at the Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Stadium just outside the capital Panjim…

One of the books of the year for me is Colm Tóibín’s magnificent novel, The Magician, a fictionalised biography of Thomas Mann. Toibin dramatises Mann’s life and times in the most compelling fashion, giving us both a portrait of Mann the artist against the backdrop of 20th century Germany and that of a family man troubled by a lifelong struggle with his sexuality. It should be noted that Tóibín also draws a memorably vivid life sketch of Katia Mann. An epic novel.…

FUNERAL NIGHTS by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih CONTEXT ₹899, 1,024 pages The Moby-Dick of Meghalaya, this is a challenging read but ultimately rewarding. The term ‘ambition’ has become a cliché but this one genuinely has it, in spades. A group of friends set out for a funeral ritual and tell each other Canterburyesque tales along the way. SISTERHOOD OF SWANS by Selma Carvalho SPEAKING TIGER ₹499; 184 pages It is always a risk to put a farouche character at the centre of a novel. Carvalho finally raises the curtain on the lives of the diasporic Indian and the result is disturbing because you feel like you are entering the conscioussees ness of a young woman who far too clearly for anyone’s good. THE EARTHSPINNER by Anuradha Roy HACHETTE INDIA ₹599; 232…

FICTION RUN AND HIDE by Pankaj Mishra (Juggernaut) In his first novel since The Romantics (1999), Mishra tells the story of three IIT friends—Arun, Aseem and Virendra. While the first two choose to pursue wealth, Arun opts for literature and quiet. SOJOURN by Amit Chaudhuri (Faber) In 2005, an Indian writer arrives in Berlin. His disorientation only amplifies. Eventually, he says, “I’ve lost my bearings—not in the city; in its history. The less sure I become of it, the more I know my way.” CITY OF INCIDENT by Annie Zaidi (Aleph) Living in cities, we don’t see our neighbours, much less those who live on urban peripheries. Zaidi’s stories of 12 struggling men and women might well be a revelation. THE LOVES OF YURI by Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger) Pinto’s…

RIL BOARD EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS Nikhil R. Meswani Hital R. Meswani P.M.S. Prasad Pawan Kumar Kapil NON-EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS Nita Ambani Dipak C. Jain R.A. Mashelkar Adil Zainulbhai R.S. Gujral Shumeet Banerji Arundhati Bhattacharya K.V. Chowdary Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan THE AMBANI SCIONS OTHER BUSINESS HEADS/LEADERS Industry veterans in the 50-65 age group DIGITAL SERVICES SANJAY MASHRUWALA & MATHEW OOMMEN Presidents, Reliance Jio PANKAJ PAWAR Business Head, Jio OIL TO CHEMICALS P.K. KAPIL Executive Director SANJIV SINGH Group President SRINIVAS TUTTAGUNTA Director RETAIL SUBRAMANIAM V. MD, Reliance Retail AKHILESH PRASAD CEO, Reliance Trends DARSHAN MEHTA CEO, Reliance Brands BRIAN BADE CEO, Reliance Retail DAMODAR MALL President & CEO, food & grocery retail FINANCE ALOK AGARWAL Group CFO SRIKANTH VENKATACHARI Group Joint CFO SOME FUTURE LEADERS In the 35-50 age group, being groomed for…

On New Year’s Eve, Kashmir was a picture-perfect destination with peaks and meadows draped in snow and visitors crowding tourist destinations for night-long celebrations. But as morning arrived, Srinagar’s Gupkar Road—home to three former chief ministers, along with government officials and the offices of security establishments—saw chaotic scenes, with barricades and security personnel blocking vehicular traffic toward the highly secured area. The move was aimed to scuttle the joint protest scheduled for later in the day by the leaders of the PAGD (People’s Alliance for Gupkar Declaration)—Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar and Mehbooba Mufti—against the ‘divisive’ delimitation commission draft. Then, the inevitable: the three, along with PAGD spokesperson M.Y. Tarigami, were also put under house arrest. On December 20 last year, the delimitation commission, led by retired Supreme Court judge…

Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan has held additional charge as Puducherry Lt governor since last year. She has now persuaded Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to permit direct flights between the states that she refers to as her “twin babies”. A direct flight will also shorten the governor’s travel time between the two Raj Bhavans. A short commute is clearly a great motivator. —Sandeep Unnithan with Prashant Srivastav, Amarnath K. Menon, Jeemon Jacob and Romita Datta…

The year 2021 started in an exhilarating manner—with the promise of vaccines and lowering cases in India, against a background threat of what was called the UK variant at the time (now known as alpha), for which flights from the UK were temporarily halted. India’s vaccine story was progressing, even though it was already clear that the rosy projections of timelines and number of doses made by the leading manufacturers were not being met. This reflected later in the year with the slow increase in vaccination and the struggles to obtain doses in the first half of 2021, even though after an initial sharing of doses as purchases and donations, India shut down vaccine exports to serve its own needs as cases increased through the latter half of February and…

IN 2021, THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS LIKELY TO HAVE GROWN ABOUT 5.8 PER CENT, UP FROM THE -3.3 PER CENT REGISTERED IN 2020 It’s now been nearly two years since the pandemic began, and we are still not out of the woods. The Omicron variant is still spreading and the Delta wave is not yet over. But this is not 2020. Unlike then, we today have several vaccines and at least two therapeutic drugs in production and others in the pipeline. While vaccination rates differ widely across the world, the days of lockdowns and other extreme forms of social distancing are likely behind us. As such, we expect the strong global economic recovery underway to continue, perhaps with a few stumbles. In 2021, the global economy is likely to have…

Driven by metrics like daily active users, companies strive to engage all of us in online commerce, media, entertainment and social connections, among others. But these are all activities that we do in addition to work. We arguably spend more time at work than on most other activities every day. Work is an important part of our intellectual and emotional lives. It gives us financial security and a sense of purpose, meaning and identity. Hence, what we do at work and how we do it matters. Today, office work has become digital work and the pandemic has accelerated this shift. Communication and productivity tools have helped streamline digital work to make it more efficient and less cumbersome. However, what is not well-understood is how we work—do we all work the…

When it comes to climate change, three truths must define the way the world, and India, act to combat this challenge. First, we must recognise the urgent reality of extreme weather, attributed to emissions from burning of fossil fuels, that is devasting the entire world. Therefore, the world must act to reduce green-house gas emissions, fast and drastically. There should be no arguments on this. Second, greenhouse gas emissions, mainly emitted from burning of fossil fuels, are related to economic growth as we know it and, more importantly, the emissions have a long life in the atmosphere. So, when the world talks about an agreement to mitigate emissions it is discussing sharing the growth between nations and between generations. This is why global action to reduce emissions must be differentiated,…

THE LIGHT OF ASIA The Poem that Defined the Buddha by Jairam Ramesh PENGUIN; ₹799; 448 pages Ramesh’s biography is of poet Edwin Arnold and his poem’s subject, Buddha. Both glow in this marvel of archival excavation and narrative mastery. A BEGUM & A RANI Hazrat Mahal & Lakshmibai in 1857 by Rudrangshu Mukherjee PENGUIN ALLEN LANE ₹699; 256 pages Mukherjee vivifies the lives of two amazing women, one of who is justly famous and the other unjustly forgotten in the saga of India’s transition from servility to defiance. THE GREATEST TAMIL STORIES EVER TOLD by Sujatha Vijayaraghavan & Mini Krishnan (editors) ALEPH ₹699; 312 pages These 30 stories hold the Tamil world like a beeda does its areca and coconut filings, pinned by the ‘clove’ of a great translation’s…

You’re flying a plane with 144 people on board, when you are told your family at home has been taken hostage. You have to choose: either crash a plane full of civilians and save your wife and two children, or save the plane and watch your family die. This is the dilemma thrust on Captain Bill Hoffman, a pilot with Coastal Airways when Falling opens. It’s a promising premise and a turbo-charged read from debutant novelist and former flight attendant T.J. Newman. Bill leaves home, after a cold exchange with his wife Carrie, to fly from LA to New York. Soon after take-off, he learns of his unthinkable Cornelian dilemma when the hostage-taker video calls him with his loved ones in captivity. Trying to alert anyone or asking for help…