Innholdsfortegnelse for 30 May 2022 i India Today

On May 16, a day after the Congress ended its three-day-long Nav Sankalp Shivir in Udaipur, the party witnessed a formal gesture. T.N. Prathapan resigned from a post he had been holding since 2017—that of national chairman, the All India Fishermen Congress. He did so in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Udaipur resolution, which, among other things, declared that no person in the party would hold the same position for more than five years. The key question now is: will other stalwarts in the party voluntarily walk the talk when it comes to organisational reforms? That there is an urgent need to make key alterations in the party’s organisational structure if it has to find a road to revival was acknowledged by Congress president Sonia Gandhi herself.…

A round 30,000 vacancies in state-run schools—for the youth of employmentparched West Bengal, it was a once-in-a-decade opportunity. However, for the thousands of diligent candidates who took the State Level Selection Test (SLST), that modest ambition curdled into bitter disappointment. The reason? They were left in the lurch even as many allegedly ‘ineligible’ candidates made it to the merit list and secured jobs. Soon enough, there were malodorous whiffs of alleged political patronage and the sale of posts. All such allegations of irregularities were denied by the ruling Trinamool Congress government. For some 4,000 graduates and postgraduates caught in a limbo, there was nothing for it but to file petitions in courts, and as it slow-cooked there, sit in a dharna in central Kolkata. They endured police batons, arrests, insults…

In 1937, the Allahabad High Court in the Deen Mohammad vs. State Secretary case decreed that while the Gyanvapi complex would be treated as a Waqf property, the Hindu Vyas family would be in possession of the masjid’s basement and cellars. The Narasimha Rao government passed the Places of Worship (Special Provisions) Act in 1991, at the peak of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. The law mandated that with Babri Masjid in Ayodhya as the only exception, the religious character of all other places of worship would be maintained as it was on August 15, 1947. On October 15, 1991, Pt. Somnath Vyas, Dr Ramrang Sharma and a few others filed a suit in a Varanasi court, demanding the construction of a new temple in Gyanvapi complex and permission to worship…

It’s May 11 and day seven of the ongoing Bhent-Mulaqat (a cordial meeting) Abhiyan of Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel. As the helicopter carrying Baghel and his entourage of ministers and officials touches down at Mangrelgarh village in Ambikapur district, it triggers a flurry of activity. Villagers rush to welcome the high-profile guests who have come to solicit feedback from them on the government’s schemes. On the advice of Amarjeet Bhagat, the local MLA and minister for food and civil supplies, Baghel walks from the helipad to a temple dedicated to the Mangrelgarhi deity, after which he settles down under a makeshift shed with a thatched roof made of Saal leaves. “Has everyone’s farm loan been waived?” he asks villagers. “What do you with the handsome amount you earn by…

Shefali Bhushan is no stranger to the legal profession. The filmmaker’s family boasts of several illustrious members in the legal fraternity (legal luminary Shanti Bhushan is her father, public interest lawyer Prashant Bhushan her brother) so developing the Amazon Prime courtroom drama Guilty Minds came easy. Her writing team comprised Manav Bhushan, a biomedical engineer with a law degree, and Deeksha Gujral, a human rights lawyer. They made sure the “line of arguments and sections quoted” were accurate. Shefali also did a tour of the courts with co-director Jayant Digambar Samalkar, her director of photography and the production designer to ensure they got the ambience right. Given this insistence on accuracy, it’s no surprise that Guilty Minds, released late last month, has drawn much praise for its authentic depiction of…

ABHIJAAN (2021) Filmmaker Qaushiq Mukherjee (known to his audiences as Q) always preferred Ray’s calligraphy to his cinema, but despite the great dislike, he readily agreed to play Ray in this Soumitra Chatterjee biopic. APARAJITO (2022) In his film about how Ray’s iconic Pather Panchali (1995) was made, Anik Datta changes all names—Satyajit becomes Aparajito—but he ensures that Jeetu Kamal’s impersonation of Ray is eerily faithful. AVIJATRIK (2021) For many, Ray’s Apu trilogy was the last word in cinema, but director Subhrajit Mitra became obsessed with the last words of Aparajito that Ray had not adapted. Avijatrik finished what Ray had started.…

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath is into his second term and one of the changes he is ringing in is a softening of the ardent Hindutva warrior image that he has been cultivating all these years. Recently, the CM visited his mother—after five years—in Pauri Garhwal district in Uttarakhand while on a three-day trip to the state. Pictures of Yogi with his mother and of his stay at the ancestral home (after 28 years, say reports) went viral, even eliciting comparisons to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s own infrequent but much publicised visits to his mother. According to party sources, it’s all part of an effort to exude a more sensitive and inclusive persona as an administrator. So, even as the accusations of ‘bulldozer politics’ continue, Yogi 2.0 is trying…

Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren has some real firefighting to do in the coming days if he wants to continue in his post. Everything seems to be going wrong at once. On one flank looms an Election Commission notice asking him why he should not be disqualified for holding a mining lease from the government (an office of profit offence). On another, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 11 arrested state mining secretary Pooja Singhal, the officer he had handpicked in August 2021 to lead the department. The EC has given time till May 20 to Soren—who also holds the mining portfolio—to explain why he owns the lease, a violation of Section 9A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951. The apparent coincidence—ED conducting raids on Singhal on May…

BAKSHISH DEAN, 51 Chef and hospitality industry veteran, Delhi Dreams fulfilled Went on close to 20 holidays, including to Dubai, Sri Lanka and the Maldives; bought an SUV way above his budget How Covid changed me “As messages of death and disease became more commonplace, I realised we don’t have as much time as we think we do. The pandemic is a high price to pay to arrive at the realisation, but it’s all about being bold and daring to take that first step” All of us know, from experience, that something we cannot even see has changed us. That nothing is bigger. No community, no nation, no borders, no government. That something microscopic, which goes by the technical-sounding name SARSCoV-2, could dwarf all else. A world that has seen…

Q. What is the objective behind the Bhent Mulaqat Abhiyan? We introduced many schemes, but were unable to go to the ground, to the villages, to see their rollout in the two Covid-hit years. So, the idea is to come to the villages, see the impact of the schemes and hear from people if they are genuinely getting the benefits. I will go to three villages in each assembly constituency, sit under a tree or in a bageecha with villagers. If things are satisfactory, it’s fine. Any scope for improvement can be suggested and if lapses are found on the part of officers, immediate action will be taken. Q. Most schemes of your government, be it loan waiver, paddy procurement, cow dung procurement or money to landless labour, are rural-oriented.…

THE LINCOLN LAWYER (2022-) Netflix Based on Michael Connelly’s bestselling novels, the series tells the story of Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an iconoclastic LA criminal defence attorney whose office is, oddly, his SUV (a Lincoln Town Car in the original novels) PERRY MASON (2020-) Disney+ Hotstar Adapted from the fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner and set in booming 1932 LA, the show follows Perry Mason (Matthew Rhys), a down-and-out attorney who is suddenly handed the case of a lifetime BETTER CALL SAUL (2015-) Netflix The show is a prequel to Breaking Bad (2008-13), yes, but is also so much more. It is riveting to see ex-con Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) transform into morally challenged lawyer Saul Goodman…

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On May 11, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had a one-on-one meeting with leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav, ostensibly to decide when to hold a statewide caste census in Bihar. But any meeting with the de facto Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief raises the political heat in capital Patna, especially since Nitish’s Janata Dal (United) and alliance partner BJP have been having a testy time of late. Tejashwi later told the media not to attach any political meaning to the tete-a-tete but the fact that no other leader was present—not even any bureaucrat to explain the nitty-gritty of a census—only fanned speculation about a political realignment. The two former allies have been at loggerheads since July 2017 when Nitish dumped the RJD and Congress and joined hands with the…

HEAT WAVE DAYS BETWEEN MARCH 11 AND APRIL 24 STATES ON FIRE Highest recorded temperature in 2022 (in Celsius) 39 Indian districts reported a maximum temperature of 45OC or more on May 15 HEAT WAVE DEATHS Heat waves have claimed more than 10,000 lives in 20 years NATURAL KILLERS Heatstroke is one of the top three killers in the country (2000-2014) 8.9% Spike in energy demand in March this year 215-220 GIGAWATTS Expected peak demand for power in May-June 2022 KEY HEALTH IMPACTS A heat wave compromises our ability to regulate body temperatures and can result in a cascade of illnesses and conditions of hyperthermia, including heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heatstroke EFFECT ON AGRICULTURE The excessive heat, and so early in the year, has damaged the country’s wheat harvest…

Cryptocurrencies have been tumbling worldwide as the Ukraine war prolongs and the spectre of still higher crude prices and inflation haunts countries. In over six weeks, the global crypto market has lost around $830 billion, hurting investors, even as stock markets remain highly volatile globally. On May 16, the global cryptocurrency market capitalisation (m-cap) was $1.27 trillion, less than half the $2.83 trillion in November last year. Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, was trading at $29,505 (around Rs 23 lakh) per coin, compared to $64,862 (around Rs 50.5 lakh) in November. The big fall, however, came in the second week of May, led by the crash of “stablecoin” TerraUSD (code-named UST) which fell to $6.16 billion (Rs 47,934 crore) in m-cap, a 63 per cent fall from a month ago.…

On May 16, chants of ‘Baba mil gaye’ came to fill the streets outside Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque. A court-mandated survey of the masjid had reportedly thrown up evidence strengthening the suspicion of several Hindu believers and religious outfits: Gyanvapi could have been built on the foundation of the famed Vishweshwara Temple that Aurangzeb destroyed in 1669. The floral motifs on the mosque walls were a clue of sorts, but it was, finally, the apparent discovery of a linga-like structure that had devotees excited about parts of a temple lying buried below. As news spread that a purported ‘shivalinga’ had been found inside the masjid compo und, Varanasi resident Manju Vyas wanted to immediately go inside Gyanvapi for “darshan”. When told that women weren’t allowed inside Gyanvapi, she retorted, “We’re going…

ON MAY 14, THE COUNTRY BANNED all shipments of wheat “with immediate effect”. In a circular, the Union commerce ministry said that export of all wheat, including of the high-protein durum and normal soft bread varieties, has been moved from the “free” to the “prohibited” category. The only relief exporters have is the window left open for two kinds of shipments—to honour committed exports where letters of credit have already been issued, and where the government bas made a commitment to ‘vulnerable’ countries, that is, those that depend on imports for their food requirements or are facing the brunt of natural calamities. The move has triggered a global uproar, with developed countries saying India’s decision will aggravate the food crisis precipitated by Russia’s continuing aggression in Ukraine. Industry watchers are…

It was a grand occasion where the two pillars of democracy—the executive and the judiciary—came together to create frameworks for faster and inclusive delivery of justice in India. Held after a gap of five years, and addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Justice of India N.V. Ramana, the joint conference of chief ministers and chief justices of high courts at Delhi’s Vigyan Bhawan on April 30 laid bare one of the biggest challenges facing the judicial mechanism in the country—a serious shortage of judges, particularly in the high courts. The 25 high courts across India have 1,104 positions for judges, but 378 of them lay vacant as on March 31, 2022. Nine new high court judges were appointed after the conference. In the lower judiciary, there are 24,521…

Part of the tributes and events in Satyajit Ray’s centenary year, Iti, Satyajit Da: Letters to a Friend from Satyajit Ray (on display at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity until June 7) makes for an engrossing visit. Curator K.S. Radhakrishnan assumes that most visitors will be thoroughly familiar with Ray’s films and his multi-faceted output as graphic designer, writer, publisher and music composer. There are, therefore, no hagiographic panels explaining who Ray was or how he was one of the great directors of world cinema. As we enter, we are greeted by clusters of photographs. While many are familiar with the work of Nemai Ghosh, here you can see Ray portrayed by other photographers as well. We see the director shooting on location or on the sets in Tollygunge. Some…