Innholdsfortegnelse for 14 February 2022 i India Today

We tend to think the worst of our politicians in view of the past behaviour of some of them. But sometimes, they surprise us. Like Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did with her recent budget. It is generally assumed that the prime objective of a politician is to do whatever it takes to win elections. With five state elections around the corner, including for the critical state of Uttar Pradesh, the general expectation was that it would be a budget full of sops to woo the electorate. However, the FM managed to resist the temptation and present a budget reflecting fiscal prudence despite the pressures of the pandemic. Ninety-three years ago, the Great Depression led to global unemployment, homelessness and collapse of trade. Studying this cataclysmic event, the economist John Maynard…

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan is seldom seen wearing any-thing but his distinctive white mundu and half-sleeve shirt. A two-week treatment in the US seems to have led to a makeover, though—the homebound CM was recently spotted during a stopover in Dubai, where he had a series of official engagements and also met his son, who works there. Vijayan was almost unrecognisable in the full-sleeve white shirt and black trousers. Perhaps that was the idea—the state Opposition has been demanding he return to take responsibility for Kerala’s worsening Covid-19 crisis.…

INDIA’S ECONOMY: THE BIG PICTURE GDP 2019 (constant prices, % change) GDP 2020 (constant prices, % change) Unemployment rate 2019 (% of total labour force) Unemployment rate 2020 (% of total labour force) Abovethe-line additional health sector fiscal measures in response to Covid-19 (% of GDP) Abovethe-line additional non-health sector fiscal measures in response to Covid-19 (% of GDP) Source: World Economic Outlook database April 2021, International Monetary Fund (Maitreesh Ghatak and Raghavan study) THE FIRST FALL The sharp fall in the job market as the pandemic began was not recouped by the end of 2020. The following year saw more woes Income in Jan. 2020 prices, adjusted for seasonality THE VULNERABLE YOUNG In 2020, 32.8 per cent of young workers reported both job losses and sustained unemployment #1: Lost…

BEST 5 IN NUTRITION 1. Kerala 15.29 2. Punjab 22.11 3. Tamil Nadu 24.8 4. Andhra Pradesh 26.38 5. Himachal Pradesh 27.18 BOTTOM 5 IN NUTRITION 1. Bihar 51.88 2. Jharkhand 47.99 3. Madhya Pradesh 45.49 4. Uttar Pradesh 44.47 5. Chhattisgarh 43.02 Percentage of population deprived of nutrition Source: NITI Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, 2021…

Anthony Menezes, a hotelier from Calangute, has seen some crazy twists and turns in his political career. Two decades ago, he had employed a young Michael Lobo as a waiter in his hotel. The street-smart Lobo gradually outgrew his master by a long country mile, becoming a Congress zilla panchayat member in 2005, then finding a propitious godfather in the late Manohar Parrikar and reaching the assembly twice on a BJP ticket. Meanwhile, Menezes too joined politics—a zilla panchayat victory came his way under Lobo’s ‘Together for Calangute’ banner. Today, Lobo is the local Congress head honcho, and is eyeing a third straight win in Calangute. That essentially cut out Menezes, who had joined the Congress in 2020 and had fancied his own chances from the seat. Then his luck…

It didn’t come a moment too soon, the entente cordiale between nephew Akhilesh Yadav and his often petulant uncle, Shivpal. Even just before it happened, no one could have bet on it—after all, the second bahu of the Yadav family, Aparna, had acted on her old threat of joining the BJP. And many speculated that Shivpal would follow, increasing the pain for Akhilesh just before the election. Instead, Shivpal Yadav came back on board. “My supporters wanted me to contest the polls along with the Samajwadi Party, so I joined the alliance,” he said. “In politics, one can’t ignore the voice of the people. Now everything is fine between me and Akhilesh. I want to see my bhatija as chief minister again. His chacha’s blessings are with him.”…

In Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu (2012), arguably one of the more underseen debuts of the previous decade, writerdirector Shakun Batra redefined the rules of romance. He told a love story that didn’t have the kind of ‘happily ever after’ we have been trained to expect or recognise in Hindi cinema. Four years later, Batra followed it up with Kapoor & Sons (2016), a sensational family thriller that underlined with piercing clarity that it’s not always about loving your family—sometimes, what’s harder is living with them. Now with Gehraiyaan (streaming on Amazon Prime Video from February 11), a love triangle starring Deepika Padukone, Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and newcomer Dhairya Karwa, Batra wants to change the way Hindi movies villainise infidelity. Growing up, Batra remembers questioning infidelity and the morality…

Q. In Badhaai Do, your character is a lesbian in a marriage of convenience with a gay policeman (Rajkummar Rao). What can we expect? The beauty of the film is that it makes you laugh, but not at the cost of the two characters. It looks at samesex relationship from a humane perspective. Sumi [her character] is like anyone—she seeks love and freedom. She’s a coward at times, but then very brave at other times. Q. Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, Saand ki Aankh, Sonchiriya, Bala…you lean towards films that touch on social issues. Do you think films can change people’s mindsets? I really hope so. Cinema needs to have a larger meaning. The idea of Badhaai Do is that we and our families accept us for who we are. That…

Budget 2022-23 had far less money to offer for healthcare than was expected in the face of the onslaught of Covid, which claimed over 200,000 lives in India during the second wave. At Rs 86,200.65 crore, the budget estimate (BE) for FY23 is about Rs 12,000 crore higher than last year’s BE of Rs 73,932 crore, but it is just Rs 200 crore more than the revised estimate (RE) for FY22 (Rs 86,000.65 crore). India ranks 179 among 189 countries in priority given to healthcare in government budgets. On the brighter side, a national telemental health programme will be launched through NIMHANS, Bengaluru. “A national network with 23 centres to provide online mental healthcare is a welcome step considering how the pandemic has triggered a silent global mental health epidemic,”…

After months of doubt, cryptocurrencies finally made their way into Budget 2022, inviting mixed reactions. India has recently seen a considerable surge in crypto adoption, making it a global leader in this area. However, there are still many grey areas investors should be aware of. The government has defined a new asset category—‘virtual digital assets’—which includes cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). There are two key implications of this. Firstly, by not defining cryptocurrencies separately, the Centre has not considered their merits as currencies, which was actually the primary reason tokens like Bitcoin were created. The government has made it quite clear that it does not want to give cryptocurrencies a standing on par with the Indian rupee. The second is that the definition of virtual digital assets is so broad…

BJP STRENGTH In power for a decade with a strong organisational network WEAKNESS Anti-incumbency, rebellion within party ALLIANCE PARTNER None CONGRESS STRENGTH New faces in the fray WEAKNESS Poor organisation ALLIANCE PARTNER Goa Forward Party AAM AADMI PARTY STRENGTH Contact with the masses in south Goa WEAKNESS No vision for the state except freebies ALLIANCE PARTNER None TRINAMOOL CONGRESS STRENGTH Impressive campaign WEAKNESS No mass connect ALLIANCE PARTNER Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party…

Volleys of allegations and ripostes. A high-acidity campaign that breaks the sound barrier—and the civility barrier. Friends-turned-foes. Fiery speeches. Punjab’s Amritsar East is right now a red-hot tawa, on which sizzles a Subhash Ghai-style masala blockbuster. In one corner is perhaps the most inflammable substance in Indian politics, Navjot Singh Sidhu—for whom, appropriately enough, they’ve reprised Churchill’s old line, “the bull who carries around his own china shop”. Now, Sidhu is the sort to hurl himself like a petrol bomb at anything that stands in the way of his ambitions, including his own party! Who would want to take him on? Who else but the controversial Bikramjit Singh Majithia, Akali Dal No. 2. Armed with a last-minute Supreme Court stay on arrest, and haunted by charges that paint him as…

There are no signs of two impish hired goons on the horizon. So this is a Sholay where Thakur has to do it alone…er, make that Mathur. The hurly-burly of campaigning brought a nasty little accident for 66-year-old Pradeep Mathur, Congress candidate from Mathura and a four-time MLA. His left hand bore the brunt of it—Xrays showed multiple fractures. But Mathur is loath to pull out. Instead, he has postponed his operation to continue campaigning, adapting the famous movie dialogue for a new slogan: “Ek haath hi kaafi hai BJP ko haraane ke liye”. Mathura, which votes on February 10, is among those few constituencies where the Congress is in a direct one-on-one fight with the BJP. Unlike the Thakur of Sholay, Mathur of Mathura is also banking on sympathy.…

In 2021, National Award-winning filmmaker Nagraj Manjule was slated to make his widely anticipated Hindi debut with Jhund, the sports drama headlined by Amitabh Bachchan. But with theatres being shut due to the brutal second wave of the pandemic, Jhund didn’t end up releasing last year. In 2022, Manjule quietly flips the script with Vaikunth, his 25-minute short in Unpaused: Naya Safar, Amazon Prime Video’s lockdown anthology. Not only does Vaikunth—easily the most accomplished film of the lot—now mark the Marathi filmmaker’s Hindi acting and directing debut, it also paints a haunting portrait of Covid mass cremations. Q. You’ve co-written, directed, and acted in Vaikunth. Looking back, what was the most challenging part of pulling the film off? I’m more comfortable when I’m directing. When I’m acting, I feel pressured.…

ADAM by S. Hareesh; translated by Jayasree Kalathil VINTAGE ₹399; 192 pages In this collection of nine unusual short stories, S. Hareesh, a winner of the JCB Prize for Literature, makes sense of emotions we find hard to contain—lust, anger, envy, vengeance, greed. CHAMOR by Sheba Jose VINTAGE ₹599; 312 pages Seen through the eyes of its young protagonist, Chamor and its many events can be both delicate and devastating. Set in a Kerala family plantation, Jose explores childhood as sharply as she does loss. FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS: The Insane Life of an English Smuggler in Bombay by Godfrey Joseph Pereira SPEAKING TIGER ₹499; 296 pages This novel tells the story of Charlie Strongbow—a renegade Englishman, mercenary, philosopher and schizophrenic—who embarks on a bizarre journey that will see him…

It hasn’t been a good start to the year for Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. First, R.P.N Singh, once a close friend, crossed over to the BJP. Then, during a recent visit to Punjab, the former Congress president found both Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu wanting to be named the party’s chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming poll. Even as Rahul deferred that decision, saying the party would consult its workers, discord brewed in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh too, with state health minister T.S. Singhdeo saying he was promised the CM’s post in rotation with current incumbent Bhupesh Baghel. Troubles, it seems, come in battalions.…

INDIA’S POOREST LARGE STATES 1. Bihar 51.9 2. Jharkhand 42.4 3. Uttar Pradesh 37.8 4. Madhya Pradesh 36.6 5. Assam 32.7 INDIA’S LEAST POOR LARGE STATES 1. Kerala 0.7 2. Tamil Nadu 4.9 3. Punjab 5.6 4. Himachal Pradesh 7.6 5. Andhra Pradesh 12.3 % of population that is multidimensionally poor* *MPI captures overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards and complements income poverty measurements as it measures and compares deprivations directly TOP 5 LARGE STATES IN HEALTHCARE 1. Kerala 2. Tamil Nadu 3. Telangana 4. Andhra Pradesh 5. Maharashtra BOTTOM 5 LARGE STATES IN HEALTHCARE 19. Uttar Pradesh 18. Bihar 17. Madhya Pradesh 16. Rajasthan 15. Uttarakhand Source: NITI Aayog’s Healthcare Index 2021 FIVE LARGE STATES WITH HIGHEST SCHOOLING DEPRIVATION 1. Bihar 26.7* 2. Jharkhand 18.32 3. Uttar…

Opinion polls, in their wisdom, have suggested an edge for the ruling BJP in Manipur. But fate is ensuring that the passage to that victory, if it comes, is paved with potholes—some perhaps even the size of constituencies. First, the saffron party lost its ally NPP, which has decided to go solo. The seat-sharing with NPF was less than smooth too. And almost incongruously, even Apna Dal (S), a BJP ally in Uttar Pradesh, has decided to field a candidate in Manipur! Then ticket distribution brought more than the usual quantum of chaos—the high number of aspirants first forced a delay, even as Congress and NPP released their first lists, and when the names did come out, near-riots broke out at party offices across the state. Add to all this…

Alot of talk in politics is, by definition, ageist. Buzzphrases like ‘the Young Turks’ or ‘youth dividend’ seem to shine like dew when juxtaposed against ‘the old guard’ or ‘margdarshak mandal’. But there are two veterans in the game who refuse to show any signs of retiring. One is an octogenarian who has opted out of the contest rather reluctantly. The other, 11 years older, is actually contesting. It was circa 1947, a full three quarters of a century ago, that Parkash Singh became the sarpanch of his village, Badal. As a mere 20-year-old, the Dhillon Jat Sikh, who went on to adopt his village name as the customary surname, would perhaps have been the youngest amongst his peers. On January 28, when he filed his nomination papers from his…

When all else fails, are we necessarily forced to seek refuge in the inanimate objects encircling us? Does the comfort routine add some personality to our days? American novelist Don DeLillo, in his 1988 novel Libra, makes a startling observation—“Some people don’t believe in God but they colour eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.” Sonal Kohli’s debut collection of short stories is not a study of loneliness, far from it. It is neither an indictment of a country weighed down by its pre-liberalisation era blues, nor a criticism of our plodding ways as a people sceptical of change, of sudden economic shifts, and who fear the stranger. But the people inhabiting these worlds do indeed “colour their Easter eggs”. In ‘10 Bela Road’, we see…