Innholdsfortegnelse for 19 December 2022 i India Today

Gujarat has spoken, and so has Himachal Pradesh. Both in a manner that allows us to reach some significant conclusions for the Road to the 2024 general election. By wresting the highest seat tally that any party has ever registered in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has demonstrated that his brand still carries an unparalleled potency in Indian politics. The other plot elements are fascinating too. Although the Aam Aadmi Party opened its account in Gujarat with only single-digit seats, it garnered a double-digit vote share. It can take comfort in the fact that it is now certifiably a national party. The imploding Congress continued its self-willed extinction with its defeat in Gujarat but saved face by winning handsomely in Himachal Pradesh. That stupendous 156/182 (as of December 8, 8.30…

Back in November 2020, in the run-up to the assembly election in Bihar, it was not just Tejashwi Yadav’s promise of 1 million jobs that caught the electorate’s attention but also his famous announcement that he would withhold MLA salaries if required to pay those he would be recruiting. Two years hence, the mahagathbandhan government in which he is the deputy chief minister, has raised the salaries of MLAs and MLCs, the Opposition BJP is supporting the protesting aspirants of teaching jobs, but is shying from attacking the government’s decision to hike the salaries of lawmakers.…

Bhupendra will break Narendra’s record,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi would declare at every election rally in Gujarat over the past month, accurately predicting how incumbent chief minister Bhupendra Patel, an innocuous political presence otherwise, was in line for having his name inscribed in history—just by being there at the right time. Already by mid-morning on December 8, the prophesy was coming true as the BJP leads crossed the 130-seat mark. (Modi had crafted the party’s previous high, 127 seats, in the 2002 assembly election.) But even that started looking distinctly bantamweight as the day hemmed in on never-before levels. Finally, 156 seats in a 182-member House. A seemingly untouchable record—the 149 seats Madhavsinh Solanki had amassed for the Congress back in 1985 with his KHAM formula—lay broken. No wonder the garba…

↘ BEFORE THE COLLEGIUM SYSTEM, the President appointed the judges in the Supreme Court and high courts acting on the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers and in ‘consultation’ with the Chief Justice of India or other judges of the SC and HCs. The President was, however, not bound by the advice of the judges. ↘ IN 1958, the Law Commission of India argued that this system of appointment did not allow for the best talent to be appointed to the courts ↘ IN 1981, this system of appointment was challenged on the ground that it impedes judicial independence. The Supreme Court held that in the event of a disagreement between the executive and the Chief Justice, the views of the executive would prevail. ↘ ANOTHER CHALLENGE was…

NOV. 13, 2022 In the highest single-day seizure at Mumbai airport, 61 kg of gold worth Rs 32 crore is recovered in two separate cases. Seven passengers, including five men and two women, who land from Tanzania and Dubai, are arrested NOV. 5 A passenger from Kasargod, Kerala, is nabbed at Mangaluru airport. Gold worth Rs 11.78 lakh—concealed in four Nokia phones, two wrist watches and two LED bulbs—is recovered OCT. 28 A resident of Palakkad, Kerala, arriving at Kochi airport from Dubai is caught with 47 grams of gold attached to his pant’s zip OCT. 20 Vijayawada Customs Commissionerate seizes 13.189 kg of gold worth Rs 6.7 crore along with Rs 4.24 crore cash from persons carrying contraband in buses, cars and trains across Andhra Pradesh. Five arrested OCT.…

Love kar ke bhaage hain ghar se, Bihar laut na paayenge, theek hai? (We have loved and eloped, won’t be able to return to Bihar, alright?) Romance is not a light word in India…especially in its hinterland. It is serious business, and can have life-altering consequences. The 2019 Bhojpuri song, which became a chartbuster upon its release in Bihar, spells it out in defiantly simple terms. The old caste order shows no signs of easing in rigidity; indeed, modernity seems to have set off a reactionary surge. But the young people are doing what they have been eternally good at: being young and falling in love. Defying the cast-iron norms of Bihar, they are voting for romance…even if it means having to vote with their feet. In short, eloping to…

Journalist P. Sainath’s latest book is titled The Last Heroes. It’s a phrase that applies to the book’s author alongside the freedom fighters he profiles. Because in a fraught and divided media landscape, Sainath is among the very last of India’s journalistic heroes. Certainly, he is the only well-known journalist left in India who makes it his business to focus on the travails of the rural poor, who still make up the vast majority of the country and who remain underserved by the government and media alike. In keeping with his lifelong endeavour, Sainath tells the stories in The Last Heroes of ordinary people, of “farmers, landless labourers, workers, couriers, forest produce gatherers, homemakers, domestic help… even a couple of rebel members from families of landed gentry”. He tells the…

Q. Helicopter Eela, Tribhanga and now Salaam Venky—all these films show different hues of motherhood. Would it be fair to say it’s a role that’s never easy, no matter how familiar it is? But women make it easy because we are taught to multitask from the time we are children. We are told that you will never have just one role in life and you will have to satisfy all of them, all the time. We put unexpectedly strong expectations on ourselves, not realising we are human beings, too. Q. Seen together, the films show that no mother is the same, yet there’s a lot that binds them… Everybody goes into parenting thinking of their own childhood, and not wanting to repeat their parent’s mistakes. Yet, everyone comes out doing…

For sharp analysis on topical issues by the editors of INDIA TODAY, log on to www.indiatoday.in/india-today-magazine-insight Why RSS affiliates are focused on ‘data sovereignty’ in proposed data privacy bill By Anilesh S. Mahajan With the latest data bill in the picture, the RSS and its affiliates want the focus to be on data being considered a national asset and protected https://bit.ly/3Y8nsgD SPOTLIGHT: Is Rahul Gandhi a ‘chunavi Hindu’? By Kaushik Deka While Rahul’s temple visits may not always be synced with electoral campaigns, the assertion of his Hindu identity is part of the Congress’s repositioning in a new India https://bit.ly/3Fb8HRS SPORTS: CRICKET What Surya Kumar Yadav’s 25-ball second ODI inning against New Zealand shows By Amitabh Srivastava With excellent visual-motor skills and super synchronisation between body and bat, Yadav has redefined…

Bhim Army chief ChandrashekharAzad, seen campaigning for the Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal candidates in the recent Uttar Pradesh bypolls, is likely to go with the same alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha election too. RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary had a big role in bringing Chandrashekhar into the opposition fold. Though he lost his security deposit in the last election when he contested against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Gorakhpur, Chandrashekhar’s latest collaboration is being seen as a win-win for both the alliance and Dalit groups. Quite popular among Dalit youth in western UP, Chandrashekhar now seems all set to take on the BJP with his new friends.…

Narendra Modi is never one to rest on his laurels. On December 5, the final day of the voting, when it was evident that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was heading for a historic win in the assembly election in his home state, the prime minister was already thinking ahead. He has set his eyes on the bigger prize—the 2024 General Election—which he wants to win for the BJP for a third consecutive term. Soon after he made a public show of casting his vote in Ahmedabad’s Nishant High School—which had the Opposition crying foul, claiming that it violated the election code of conduct—Modi took a flight back to the national capital. From the airport, he drove straight to the BJP’s headquarters at Deendayal Upadhyay Marg to conduct a…

Political parties other than the BJP and Congress have significant electoral influence in 11 states, occupying the state government in nine of them. These states account for 366 Lok Sabha seats; yet only 145, or less than 40 per cent, seats were cornered by non-BJP, non-Congress parties in the 2019 general election. The challenge for these parties will be to improve their scores in their respective areas of influence if they want to see a non-BJP government at the Centre in 2024 AKHILESH YADAV SP Uttar Pradesh 80 5 18.1% MAYAWATI BSP Uttar Pradesh 80 10 19.4% The two were in alliance last time, but broke up after the election UDDHAV THACKERAY Shiv Sena Maharashtra 48 18 23.5% Was with the BJP, then joined the Congress and NCP, now solo…

It’s time for the upper reaches of Himachal Pradesh to receive the initial layers of seasonal snow, and meteorologists are keeping a hawk’s eye on how the winter progresses. The days have been too warm till now—one is speaking purely of the weather here—but the mid-Himalayan state seems on course for a white New Year. Temperatures, meanwhile, were soaring to a merry high on Shimla’s Ridge on December 8 as the local Congress throngs brought out the celebratory marigold garlands, beat the nagada and trumpeted a rare moment of triumph on the curved horns of the ransingha. Yes, Himachal Pradesh does tend to swing from one party to the other every five years—and it kept that pattern alive this time—but then a victory against the BJP does not come every…

Judicial appointments in the Supreme Court and high courts are governed by the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP), a collaborative framework prepared in 1998. The process for appointment of high court judges begins with the high court collegium—a body comprising the chief justice and other senior judges—recommending names for appointment. The recommendations are then sent to the state government, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Union law ministry. Once cleared, the ministry forwards them to the Supreme Court collegium, consisting of the Chief Justice of India and other senior SC judges—for approval. The SC collegium sends the final recommendations to the law ministry. In case the government has any reservations, the name(s) are returned to the collegium for reconsideration. If it reiterates its recommendations, the Centre is bound to make the…

Most of the gold smuggled into India via airports arrives through passengers from Dubai and also some from Bangkok, and via land routes from Myanmar and via sea routes from Sri Lanka. Some cargos from China hide big quantities of gold too. Authorities are yet to identify organised gangs abroad but here’s how they operate MOULDING OF GOLD It is a sort of an industry where gold is moulded in choicest forms such as rudraksh, wires, machine tools, threads etc. There are many in India who have their people abroad helping them in this process IDENTIFICATION OF CARRIERS The carriers are often innocent passengers who may not know that gold is hidden in the product they have been asked to carry for a few thousand rupees SMUGGLING TRICKS Gold is…

↘ Bihar has registered a sharp rise in elopement cases. Police records suggest that there’s been a 36 per cent spike in elopement marriages in 2022, over the figures for 2020 ↘ Almost all elopement cases have IPC 366 slapped against the boy by the girl’s family, which technically qualifies them as cases of abductions. The police are dutybound to investigate those, so couples often post videos online to prove it’s consensual ↘ If the runaway couples try to win acceptance from their families, it is at their own peril. NCRB data for 2020 shows 170 killings over love affairs; in 2021, the number was 174…

Bharati Asha Sahay was born in Kobe in 1928, to a Bengali mother and Bihari father. The parents, being fervent nationalists, named their first-born after Bharat and Asha for the hope for independence. Bharati’s father, Anand Mohan Sahay, worked with different leaders of the independence movement in India and with Rashbehari Bose in Japan. When Subhash Chandra Bose (no relation) finally escaped from the British, he made his way from Hitler’s Germany to Tojo’s Japan in 1943. Rashbehari, who had founded the Indian National Army, handed over command to Subhash. Bharati, called Asha-san by her Japanese friends, is 15 years old, and to all purposes a Japanese schoolgirl of Indian descent, when she first meets Netaji Subhash. In her diary—originally written in Japanese—she states: ‘The soldiers of the INA will…

Randeep Hooda says it like it is. Just because everyone was jumping on the web series bandwagon never meant that he had to. “It’s a longer format, it is a lot many more days,” he says. “I was not looking [at it] to exploit my talent.” Hooda’s reluctance was finally broken when his friend and manager, Panchali Chakraverty, and director Balwinder Singh Janjua came to him with an offer he couldn’t refuse—a show set in Punjab. “At the core, it had an emotional story, but it was also an espionage thriller. There’s a lot happening in it,” says Hooda. In the Netflix original CAT (releasing on December 9), the actor makes his OTT series debut as Gurnaam Singh, “a common man thrown into uncommon circumstances”. The show will see him…

Working as a professor at Chicago’s Art Institute, Shaurya Kumar, 43, enjoys a ringside view of sorts. He can see how visitors engage with artefacts in the Chicago Art Museum, especially the Indian Gallery. One Ganesh Chaturthi, he saw a group of women huddled around a Ganesh idol they felt they could recognise from their village. “They were about to pray to the statue, but the guard stopped them. He said what they were seeing is a stone sculpture, not their god.” Kumar has seen similar scenes in Sarnath and Sanchi, too. These encounters made him ask: what happens to temples after their gods leave? If, like Kumar, you count yourself among the faithful, then a visit to the Threshold Gallery in Delhi might prove to feel both entertaining and…

Q. Why the name ‘Infinite Light’? More than 50 years ago, when I was only seven, growing up in my hometown of Tamluk, I realised there is no life without light. Even today, I like sitting out and enjoying the light at all times of day, be it noon or twilight. Light is so integral to visual communication and to visual art. That is why this title. Q. Your exhibition is being held in four cities—Delhi (Art Alive Gallery), Mumbai (Art Musings), Kolkata (CIMA), Bengaluru (Gallery Sumukha). How does it feel to be everywhere all at once? I wanted to show my exhibition to the four corners of India. I wanted people to see the amalgamation of my 32 years of work. Also, given the number of people who usually come…

*BJP’s allies are in power in Nagaland and Mizoram and also won the lone Lok Sabha seats from the two states Source: ECI…

BUMPY RIDE Growth may hover around 6% in the coming years, lower than projected earlier THE LONG WAIT The joblessness rate has risen, highlighting the urgent need to revive Indian manufacturing GOING SOUTH Industrial investment has suffered as corporates are sceptical about a demand revival amid global uncertainties NUMBER OF PROPOSALS PROPOSED INVESTMENT HOT PLATE Prices of essential goods are projected to remain high, hurting the common man INFLATION RATE IN OCT. 2022 (%) STILL LACKLUSTRE Capacity utilisation in factories has been lagging, impacting investment in new projects TRADE CONCERNS Merchandise exports fell sharply in October compared to a year ago, while imports rose TRADE BALANCE ($ billion) Sources: National Statistics Office, CRISIL, CMIE, CEIC, Bank of Baroda Research…

On December 7, vice-president and Rajya Sabha chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar, in his maiden speech in the House, launched a scathing attack on the Supreme Court for its 2015 judgment scrapping the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, 2014. Unanimously passed by both houses of Parliament, the NJAC had sought to overturn the collegium system of judicial appointments. Calling it an instance of “severe compromise of parliamentary sovereignty”, Dhankhar said that there was “no parallel to such a development in democratic history where a duly legitimised constitutional prescription has been judicially undone”. With this, Dhankhar became the latest to join the ongoing debate between the executive and the judiciary over the appointment of judges to the higher courts. The vice-president almost echoed Union law minister Kiren Rijiju, who has repeatedly questioned…

↘ The price of 24-karat gold almost doubled from Rs 28,067 per 10 grams in 2012—when curb-free imports ended—to Rs 59,000 in 2020, and is at Rs 54,000 now ↘ Import duty and taxes on gold in India are the highest despite its huge demand ↘ A kilo of gold smuggled instead of imported using white money saves a minimum of Rs 8 lakh ↘ Gold is the best currency for repayment of black money, to bring money stashed abroad using exaggerated invoices as also for money-laundering including for serious criminal offences ↘ Even after taking care of a free air ticket, hotel stay and risk money such as bribes or compensation for a jailed term and once in a while seizure, the net profit could be about 12 per…