Innholdsfortegnelse for 14 March 2022 i India Today

At a time when the Cold War is history and the world is infested with nuclear weapons, a land grab of a large neighbouring country was considered incon-ceivable. But that is exactly what happened when the inscrutable and implacable president of Rus-sia chose to launch a vicious attack on Ukraine, a country of 44 million people with a democratically elected government. Although Russia vastly outguns its neighbour to the west of the Don, Ukraine is proving to be no pushover. Instead of rolling over and waiting to die, as Putin perhaps expected, Ukrainians are showing incredible fortitude, resilience and pluck, a touch of the old Cossack combat-readiness. They are the new indomi-table Gauls, on the opposite side of Europe. Putin, meanwhile, is filled with revanchist visions that would place him…

Going by the several rounds of meetings among Opposition leaders, you would think they are ready with a united alliance against the ruling BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. But the real motive behind these parleys seems to be finding a common candidate for the July presidential election. Sources in the Opposition camp claim Nationalist Congress Party patriarch Sharad Pawar has expressed an interest. In the past three months, two chief ministers—West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee and Telangana’s K. Chandrashekar Rao—have met Pawar in Mumbai. The expectation is that the BJP’s numbers in Uttar Pradesh will go down, helping the non-BJP forces put up a tougher contest against the saffron party’s candidate. However, an unscheduled meeting between Union minister Piyush Goyal and Pawar at the latter’s Mumbai home on the…

Budgets are one time opposition parties can corner ruling governments, but in Rajasthan the BJP ended up scoring a self-goal. First, state BJP chief Satish Poonia compared the budget with a “dark-complexioned bride who is made to look good with make-up at a beauty parlour”. Then, he apologised for the sexist comment but tried to get even by announcing that he and other BJP MLAs will return the iPhones the Ashok Gehlot government had gifted all MLAs. These days, local media is agog with how many BJP MLAs have returned the iPhone, willingly or otherwise, how many have already started using it and how many have gifted it to their wives or children.…

B.N. GOSWAMY’S REGULAR columnin Chandigarh’s newspaper The Tribune is titled ‘Art and Soul’. His selection of 125 short pieces written over 25 years, now published as a book, is titled Conversations. “Between whom?” he invites us to ask, before gamely admitting he doesn’t know. Well, they read like conversations between him and us, so easy-going is his style, anticipating our questions. They are chats about art, and about old friends. We will come to the friends presently, but we might first query the publisher’s subtitle: ‘India’s Leading Art Historian Engages with 101 Themes & More’. Sparing his blushes over ‘leading’, I ask, being named as an art historian, does he consider it to be a genuine discipline? Given that he founded the Department of Art History at Panjab University in…

In 2006, the Kolkata author, a college teacher, set himself a modest project of investigating the puzzle of primary school dropouts in rural West Bengal. As he explains in his preface, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan had caught on; there seemed a change in the air. A few years later, the churning that swept out the well-entrenched Left Front also happened. He began tentatively, asking around, getting in touch with friends who travelled to the countryside—an intrepid photographer, a classmate who had given up a corporate job to run a school in a remote area, a taciturn colleague who disappeared every weekend to his village in the Sunderbans. As he travelled, Kolkata became remote. Middle-class life seemed like an apparition. The disconnect between the rural poor and the educated urbanised seemed…

On February 23, when Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot tabled his fourth budget, it sent ripples across India. Social welfare was the big focus, and a major announcement was that the Congress-ruled Rajasthan government will skip the National Pension System (NPS) and revert to the old pension scheme for its staff. At a time when the demand for reverting to the old pension schemes has been growing in many states, Gehlot’s declaration is clearly aimed at wooing voters in the next election due in December 2023. In Uttar Pradesh, where elections are being held, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party have already promised that they will revive the old pension system. The chorus has begun in other states too, led by the Congress. Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder…

Place of Publication: New Delhi Periodicity of Publication: Weekly Printer’s Name: Manoj Sharma Nationality: Indian Place of Publication: New Delhi Periodicity of Publication: Weekly Printer’s Name: Manoj Sharma Nationality: Indian Publisher’s Name: Manoj Sharma Nationality: Indian Address: A-3/723, Tower-8, Silver City, Sector-93, Noida-201 301, Uttar Pradesh Editor’s Name: Raj Chengappa Nationality: Indian Address: C-31, Defence Colony, New Delhi-110 021. Names and Addresses of individuals who own the newspaper and partners or shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital: Owner: M/s. Living Media India Limited, F26, Ist Floor, Connaught Place, New Delhi – 110 001. Shareholders holding more than one per cent of the total capital of the owner company: I, Manoj Sharma, hereby declare that the particulars given above are true to the best of my…

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao dispensed with the convention of the governor addressing the legislature at the start of the budget session, which fell on March 7 this year, also the first session of 2022. His logic? The previous session of the legislative assembly, which ended on October 8, was not prorogued. KCR was also peeved that governor Tamilisai Sounderarajan did not rely entirely on the government’s text in her Republic Day address. Moreover, KCR, along with other states, is bracing for a pitched battle for federal rights against the Union government. —Kaushik Deka with Amarnath K. Menon, Kiran D. Tare, Romita Datta and Rohit Parihar…

IN HOMER’S EPIC ODYSSEY, Ulysses, the legendary Greek king, while journeying on the Mediterranean, found himself caught between Scylla and Charybdis, two mythical sea monsters that inhabited the opposite shores of the Strait of Messina near Italy. He was advised to lose a few sailors to Scylla rather than surrender his ship and entire crew to the more-feared Charybdis. Aeons later, Russian president Vladimir Putin believed he was confronting a Ulyssean dilemma. A creeping effort by countries allied to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to encircle Russia—a containment strategy unfolding over a span of three decades—posed an existential threat to his once-great nation. His choices? Either wage war on Ukraine, Russia’s immediate neighbour, which was keen to join the western alliance, or swallow the affront and watch Russia being…

Commander Igor scans the skies as another air raid siren goes off in Ukraine's capital Kyiv. The Russians have systematically targeted Ukraine’s airfields and air defence assets. Igor’s unit has been tasked to defend the main axis to Kyiv from the east. Young soldiers use earth movers and diggers to dig trenches and build fortifications. Civilians, including women, rush to help, bringing food, water and even manning barricades and roadblocks, checking for suspicious activity or subversive elements. “Russian special forces and Chechen fighters are coming to assassinate President (Volodymyr) Zelensky… we have to stop the enemy at the gates,” he tells INDIA TODAY. For the defence of Kyiv, multiple levels of security are in place. The army with its tanks and armoured personnel carriers backed by troops with anti-tank guided…

Think of it as an Uttar Pradesh within an Uttar Pradesh. The perfect microcosm. Except in the cardinal direction it marks out—the east, rather than the north—Purvanchal is for UP what UP is for India. It would report a high match on almost all other parameters. Especially in terms of that ironic equation: it’s the poorer part, yet the one that holds the decisive casting vote over the whole. If a sovereign command over UP tilts the power balance in India, the victor in the Bhojpuri-speaking eastern belt may well get to hold that sceptre in Lucknow. The 19 districts that vote in the last two phases of an epic election hold approximately a total population of 35 million—enough to rival any East European nation on their own—but they are…

For the past half century, India’s natural world has been governed by the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972 (WPA), a broad legislation that covers everything from protected areas and wildlife crimes to hunting and legal safeguards for various species. It has been amended many times, with a latest round of revision in late 2021, when the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change invited public comments and proposals on a new draft amendment. One of the ministry’s proposals was to ease restrictions on declaring certain species as ‘vermin’, without which culls of dangerous animals cannot be conducted (see Culling a History). y Though this was a narrow, specific proposal, the public comments showed opinions fiercely divided over the core idea—hunting. Some public proposals to the minis ministry’s amendment seek relaxed…

Realising perhaps that the pen is mightier than the sword, Trinamool Congress strongman Anubrata Mondal has written an autobiography, titled Khela Hobe. The memoir traces his transition from the unassuming boy Keshto to the hard-hitting politician who is alleged to have won several political battles by flexing his muscles. Also known for his unparliamentary language, laced often with the choicest invective, the book comes as a refreshing change. Instead of dripping poison, the pen has produced some insight.…

On February 28, after the first round of ceasefire talks between Ukraine and Russia failed, satellites revealed a 64 km-long convoy of Russian vehicles heading toward Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. News anchors described the scene as reminiscent of Europe during World War II, except that it was unfolding on millions of screens around the world in living colour. The death and devastation of WWII resulted in a new world order, as countries rebuilt their economies after the smoke cleared. A week into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rumblings of a huge economic shake-up are being felt again, this time across a hugely interconnected globe with countries just limping out of yet another wave of the devastating pandemic. The economic consequences of Russia’s invasion have been immediate, with crude oil now at its…

PM E-VIDYA It was launched in 2020 to unify all efforts related to digital and on-air education to enable multi-mode access to education. The initiative includes the following components: DIKSHA Or the Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing was a portal launched in 2017 for teachers and students. Accessible after scanning the QR code provided in NCERT books, it allows one to study any subject of their choice in 18 languages. NISHTHA Or the National lnitiative for School Heads’ and Teachers’ Holistic Advancement is a training programme for teachers hosted on the DIKSHA platform. Available in 11 languages. SWAYAM The Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds is an online platform that facilitates hosting of all courses taught in classrooms from Class 9 till post-graduation. Accessible by anyone, anywhere,…

Early on in The Eastern Gate, author Sudeep Chakravarti visits a heroin hutch in Moreh on Manipur’s border with Myanmar. Here, a “portly, jolly matron” measures out the drug from a hollowed-out bamboo bowl into a tiny metal container called kokta, usually used for tobacco or ground spices. Just months before his visit to this place, in February 2014, a colonel of the Indian Army and five others had been arrested on charges of ferrying pseudoephedrine tablets from Imphal to Moreh, valued at Rs 15-20 crore. The colonel’s car sported defence ministry plates and a beacon. “You have heard about the arrest of a colonel,” an official with a central intelligence agency later told Chakravarti in Imphal. “If he can do it at his level, then what about brigadiers, senior…

Documentary filmmaker, editor, and Indo-German journalist Navina Sundaram comes from a family of artists who have shaped the landscape of art and culture in India. Her grandfather, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, the eldest son of Raja Surat Singh of Majithia, was born into the Punjab aristocracy. He was also a scholar of Sanskrit and Persian and was considered to be one of the pioneers of photography in India. Amrita Sher-Gil, a pioneer of modern Indian art, is Sundaram’s aunt. And her brother, Vivan Sundaram, is one of India’s foremost visual artists. The Fifth Wall, a digital archive of Sundaram’s body of work culls over 40 years of her work in public television. Created by Berlin-based novelist, screenwriter and film producer Merle Kröger and multimedia artist Mareike Bernien, it features films, reports,…

Q A Q. The pandemic hit the performing arts hard. How challenging was it for you? For the first few weeks, I withdrew. After that, I felt I had to fill myself with positive energy. The only thing I have been able do in the past two years is dance. I have never taken a two-year gap in my life. Left to myself, I became a student of dance once more. Q. Many took to doing online shows. Did you do any? I didn’t feel the need to. If I was on social media, I might have generated some work, but I am not on any platform. I liked being away—the most conversations I had in the past two years were with dance, and hopefully dance spoke back. Now I…