Innholdsfortegnelse for January 8, 2024 i India Today

The year 2023 was not a happy one for the world. The global economic slowdown showed scant signs of leaving us, amid two major wars and the long shadow of Covid. Navigating India through this tumultuous phase was not a trifling job. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not one to focus solely on immediate exigency: in a crisis, he sees the opportunity to reach for far horizons. He put his government on steroids. For instance, he went for the “multiplier effect” of boosting India’s infrastructure in Budget 2023 with a Rs 10 lakh crore capital investment, a five-fold jump from what it was in 2013-14. That approach saw the Indian economy buck global trends and grow at an average rate of 6.2 per cent, retaining its status as the…

BIRAC has initiated several schemes, networks and platforms that have helped to bridge existing gaps in Biotech research and development and facilitates the development of novel, high-quality affordable products through cutting edge technologies. Carefully curated, BIRAC's schemes and programs cater to the entire gamut of innovations from ideation, proof of concept, validation, and commercialization by providing equity funding through three of its schemes i.e., SEED (Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development), LEAP (Launching Entrepreneurial Driven Affordable Products) and ACE (Accelerating Entrepreneurs). BIRAC funds a wide range of thematic areas including healthcare, agriculture, maternal and child health, nutrition, sanitation, waste to value, devices and diagnostics, bio-informatics, animal health, pharmaceuticals, energy, computing to name a few. Under the concept laboratory-to-market, BIRAC, proactively handholds start-ups by providing financial and technical support and mentorship through…

IT IS DIFFICULT TO THINK OF AN EXACT PARALLEL TO MANIPUR CHIEF MINISTER N. BIREN SINGH in independent India’s history. For nearly eight months the state has remained geographically divided along ethnic lines drawn in blood-red hues. There are few signs of either truth or reconciliation: one community is not allowed to live in or even commute to areas inhabited by another. Infractions on this unwritten law can exact a simple, extreme price: the transgressor’s life. Even amid the constant smell of cordite in zones where the two sides encountered each other, the smoke rising from places of worship, an anarchic cocktail of militants of sundry stripes and black-shirted vigilante squads, and a depressingly rising body count, a viral video of two women being paraded naked by a group of…

She’s the first parliamentarian to be expelled from Parliament in almost 20 years, but Mahua Moitra has no plans to skulk silently into the night. On December 8, the day the ethics committee verdict was pronounced in the Lok Sabha in the ‘cash-for-query’ case, she stood outside the House and gave a fiery five-minute speech, quoting revolutionary Bengali poet Sukanta Bhattacharya and other worthies and vowed to fight the ruling BJP for “the next 30 years”. With the members of the opposition INDIA alliance by her side, she raged on, accusing the saffron camp of “the most tenacious witch-hunt of one of the 78 women MPs”. In an interview preceding her expulsion, Mahua had said that when she believes in something, she “will not back down even if I am…

DISTANCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER, THEY SAY. For Bollywood’s ‘King’ Khan, his hiatus from the big screen lasted over four long years. Too long, you’d think, for a man in his mid-50s who’s invested in mining himself from a mirror paused in springtime. So when he did announce his return—with a chiselled physique, man bun swagger, gruff voice, the works—profuse love from fans was not entirely unanticipated. What nobody expected, though, was that this hungry fanhood would end up unleashing a full-blown box-office tsunami. Pathaan, coming after a sorry washout like Zero (2018) had lowered the standard of even a flop as defined in the Shah Rukh Khan dictionary, went on to become the highest-earning Hindi film of all time in India: a Rs 560 crore-plus colossus, to be…

WHILE EXPENDING BEADS OF SWEAT ON THE MAT FOR INDIA, THEY WERE INDIA’S FINEST. But outmanoeuvring a bahubali MP of the ruling party, who faces multiple charges of sexual harassment, was a bout rather more daunting and infinitely more exhausting than performing tackles on wrestling opponents. To their endless credit, their spine never gave way. On December 21, Sakshi Malik—India’s only woman Olympic medallist in wrestling—let a final call for justice ring out as she hung up her boots, tears flowing, at a presser in New Delhi. Seated beside her were her equally distraught peers and comrades-in-arms, Tokyo Olympic bronze medallist Bajr ang Punia and Asian Games gold medallist Vinesh Phogat. The next day, stopped from proceeding towards the Prime Minister’s residence, Bajrang left his Padma Shri on Kartavya Path—a…

DELHI CHIEF MINISTER ARVIND KEJRIWAL shot into national prominence in 2011 with his anti-corruption campaign. Championing a model of transparent governance, he rose from a political novice to an unprecedented success story, capturing power for two consecutive terms in the national capital. However, the narrative took an ironic turn over a decade later when Kejriwal became entangled in corruption charges related to the controversial rollout of a liquor policy. The once-common man CM, known for his bush shirt and muffler, also faced accusations of opulence, with claims of Rs 45 crore spent on renovating his official residence. Despite the euphoria following the electoral triumph in Punjab last year, 2023 brought a series of setbacks for Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). In March, his closest confidant and deputy CM Manish Sisodia…

ALUMNI OF THE old Janata school of politics have a knack for complex shoaling behaviour, coalescing into large units when it ensures better foraging success (and protection from predators), disassembling, then reforming wherever the waters are more conducive. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, as brilliant a student of that adaptive socialism as any other, put his name on the political calendar of 2023 with two landmark manoeuvres. Both throwbacks to the two hoary ideological gurus: Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. Which is to say, politics as an exalted idea of social justice and equity, and as a practice crafted around the grimier mechanics of Oppositional alliance-making—for best effect, built up to an ecstatic crescendo. Those who follow this playbook are always trying to recreate 1977. V.P. Singh did that…

THE DOUBLES IN BADMINTON IS LIKE WATCHING A SPORTING PAS DE DEUX, but not one with too much time for slow-moving elegance: this is the part of ballet that involves leaps, pirouettes, rapid exchanges at the net, fast smashes, unbelievable retrievals and spatial awareness between the partners. As a men’s doubles pair, Chirag Shetty and Satwiksairaj Rankireddy have all that, but what they also bring to the court is a distinct swagger. To describe themselves, though, they dipped into tennis. “I like Federer; he likes Nadal. Sometimes when we both come together, it’s Djokovic,” said Satwiksairaj, while speaking to INDIA TODAY before the Asian Games in September 2023. That expressed more than just honest admiration of their favourite stars. It spoke to how they work so telepathically as to almost…

I hugely enjoyed Patrick Olivelle’s beautifully written and utterly compelling new biography, Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King. I was intrigued by his speculations about Hellenistic and Seleucid influence at the Mauryan court, and the picture he painted of a cosmopolitan and multicultural Pataliputra. I was also intrigued by Olivelle’s ideas about how Ashoka’s own conception of dharma may have differed from that of the Buddha. Ashoka is a wonderful book and bodes promisingly for Ram Guha’s new series of biographies, Indian Lives. Empire building is usually envisaged as the concern of nation-states, but as Philip J. Stern convincingly shows in Empire, Incorporated, it was initially more often the entirely privatised business of Tudor and Elizabethan commercial corporations. With great clarity and remarkable archival reach, Stern convincingly argues that it…

Shakti: An Exploration of the Divine Feminine (DK India) is a lavishly illustrated book written by Nilima Chitgopekar. It navigates through six chapters, the different manifestations of the Eternal Goddess encompassing topics from the Introduction to the Goddess to the Evolution of Goddess Worship, Buddhist and Jain Goddesses, Tantra and the Goddess, and Divine Landscapes. It traces the evolution of the divine feminine concept and culminates in present-day perspectives. The clever mix of visuals from paintings, sculptures, photographs and illustrations vividly captures the essence of the Devi, who can be nurturing, all-powerful, even terrifying. The glossary is a gem, illustrating various aspects of Indic religions, metaphors, allegories, and important concepts. Another highlight is the inclusion of the lesser-known Devis, such as the dancing goddess Vajra Yogini. What makes the book…

HITS New Parliament Building In May, PM Modi opened India’s new parliament building, designed to accommodate the expansion in seats and other demands of the House for a full century and more. The construction, which began in January 2021, was completed in a record time of 28 months Criminal Laws Reforms In December, the Modi government repealed a raft of “outdated” British-era laws. The new laws—Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023—enhance penalties for crimes such as terrorism, lynching and offences jeopardising national security Economic Growth India, currently the world’s fifth-largest economy, is also one of the fastest growing in 2023. This sustained growth is the result of the Modi government’s emphasis on rapid expansion of digital infrastructure, manufacturing and infrastructure investment Women’s…

THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION, THEY SAY, and the pilgrim’s progress Rahul Gandhi marks often seems cut of that cloth. A second edition of the Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) is coming up—just around the bend where we turn into 2024. This time, it’s called the Bharat Nyay Yatra (BNY), the tweak in the name denoting a new thematic focus: “securing economic, social and political justice” for the people of India. Starting on January 14, just a week before the other show heats up in Ayodhya, it will be a bus yatra for the most part, interspersed with short stretches where he will hit the ground walking, as in BJY. The caravan trail and the footfalls will follow the sun, kicking up dust along a trail from Manipur in the east,…

FOR 17 DAYS IN NOVEMBER, ALL EYES IN INDIA REMAINED FIXED on TV screens. It was a nail-biting rescue operation that was grabbing all their attention. The government had deployed its full might—all the ultramodern machinery and technologies it could lay its hands on—to rescue 41 workers trapped inside a 4.5-km under-construction tunnel that had collapsed at Silkyara in Uttarakhand. In the end, however, it was a group of 12 “rat-hole miners” who—with the help of their manual tools—burrowed through tonnes of debris and completed the last stretch of a rescue tunnel, something even an American drilling machine had struggled to do for days. They gained instant celebrity status. And rat-hole-mining—the antiquated, now-illegal practice where narrow holes are dug manually to extract coal—caught everyone’s imagination. One small detail, however, got…

By choice and compulsion, most of my reading this year has been Northeast-related. Among the wonderful finds has been Arupjyoti Saikia’s The Quest for Modern Assam. This is the first book that gives the state’s recent history its due and it is more than 800 pages long. Assam matters for itself and for its links to the larger history of the country, says Saikia. It’s exciting to read an account that does not fall back on the usual formulation—how Assam has been side-lined post-Independence—but puts its subject centre-stage, drawing on a staggering amount of evidence from other scholarship, literature, the arts and journalism to create a highly lively and read able work. Robin S. Ngangom has published several books of poetry; My Invented Land, his latest, puts some of that…

The distinguished art historian B.N. Goswamy, sadly and recently deceased, has produced a delightful tribute to the feline tribe. Whatever the reader may feel about these small furry entities, this book will provide insights, revelations, wisdom and much gentle wit. A chapter of general observations is followed by one section each on stories, on colour reproductions of paintings, on poems and finally proverbs. The India-specific focus is what makes the collection unique. Despite copious anecdotes in Indian folk tales, the author tells us that cats have never been the subject of any traditional or historical texts. Mice and monkeys, elephants, snakes, cows, lions and many other creatures are featured prominently alongside humans in the vast pantheon of Indian culture, in paintings, sculptures and bas-reliefs. Most of these have extremely well-established…