Innholdsfortegnelse for April 15, 2024 i India Today

India’s growth story is one of paradoxes. While unemployment is tapering off and women’s participation in the labour market is seeing an uptick, concerns over the lack of quality and productive jobs loom large—so goes the verdict of the ‘India Employment Report 2024’, published jointly by the Institute for Human Development (IHD) and the International Labour Organization (ILO). ‘Informality’ emerges as the key feature of the Indian labour market, with 81 per cent of the workforce engaged in the unorganised sector and over 90 per cent being informally employed. With the share of the jobless youth in the total unemployed populace at a staggering 82.9 per cent, the report revives fears that India may be losing out on its demographic dividend. The report also zeroes in on another paradox: women’s…

In military terms, the Congress has earned the right to see Karnataka as a position of advantage—a high Deccan spur castle from which it can easily pick out any invading horde. Home to the stentorian party boss Mallikarjun Kharge and to the two redoubtable kshatrapas Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar, both as scrappy and canny as you want, you’d think they would go all guns blazing. Yes, the GOP’s set target is to win 20 out of the state’s 28 constituencies. But strangely, a touch of pusillanimity is what you see: candidates have not exactly been falling over each other in eagerness. So, the Congress has been forced to scale back on its initial plan to field a few heavies from Sidda’s cabinet to kayo the field. Instead, the party has…

Former state home minister Narottam Mishra now does duty as the convenor of the local BJP joining cell. It’s a job that keeps him incredibly busy these days. On March 29, Kamlesh Shah, a three-term Congress MLA from Amarwara, drove up to Chief Minister Mohan Yadav’s residence in Bhopal and joined the BJP along with other members of his family, including wife Madhvi Shah, the president of the Harrai nagar panchayat in Chhindwara district. The welcome party included the CM, state BJP president V.D. Sharma and Mishra himself, who uttered a line that he could probably say in his sleep by now: that Shah had been “inspired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership”. Three days later, Chhindwara mayor Vikram Ahake, the state’s youngest and first tribal mayor and a key…

On March 30, the Andhra Pradesh chief electoral officer Mukesh Kumar Meena put tough strictures on the Gram Sachivalayam and Ward Sachivalayam (GSWS) volunteers of the Jagan Reddy-led government. This follows the orders in February barring them from participating in any poll-related work. The GSWS volunteers are, as Jagan himself describes it, the government’s “brand ambassadors” in delivering the 38 welfare schemes it has launched that ‘touch the lives of every citizen in the state’. The state government, though, seems to have circumvented the EC orders with its March 31 guidelines to disburse state pensions only through the village and ward-level secretariats till the elections are over and a new government is in place. Over the past four years, the innovative GSWS village and ward secretariat system, set up to…

↘ LOCKHEED MARTIN F-35 LIGHTNING II (US) Development cost: $40 billion (₹3.28 lakh crore) Entered service in: 2015 Features: Multirole fighter that integrates advanced stealth qualities with agility. Cutting-edge sensors and avionics (Northrop Grumman AN/APG-81 AESA radar, BAE Systems AN/ASQ-239 Barracuda electronic warfare system, Lockheed Martin AN/AAQ-40 Electro-Optical Targeting System). Top speed of Mach 1.6 (1,930 kmph) Armament: Two Internal weapons bays capable of carrying air-to-surface and air-to-air weapons (JDAM and Paveway laser bombs, AMRAAM and beyond visual range JATM missiles etc.) ↘ ADVANCED MEDIUM COMBAT AIRCRAFT (AMCA, INDIA) Development cost: ₹15,000 crore for 5 prototypes To enter service  from: 2035 onwards FEATURES: The fifth gen, deep penetration stealth jet is designed for multi-role missions (air-to-air and air-to-ground strikes). The AMCA has diamond-shaped trapezoidal wings, the tail wing is an all-moving fuselage mounted…

The effortless grace with which Ganesh Haloi switched from masterly figurative studies dating back to the late 1960s to rendering mindscapes reflecting his communion with nature is vividly expressed in an eye-opening exhibition. Ganesh Haloi: Re-citations, Rhymes about Land, Water and Sky: Six Decades of Painting is organised jointly by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and the Birla Academy of Art and Culture and with Akar Prakar as outreach partner in Kolkata. With Roobina Karode as guest curator, the huge and brilliant exhibition is on till April 13 at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture. The exhibition is divided into two parts. The first floor of Birla Academy is devoted to Haloi’s paintings, which are coloured by recollections of his intensely felt kinship with nature in his boyhood…

Just a month and a half back, on February 23 and 24, over 4,000 Indians attended the annual St Anthony’s Feast in Katchatheevu Island, with an equal number of Sri Lankan devotees also present. For the feast of the guardian saint of fishermen, the Lankans provided food, drinking water and sanitary facilities. The sudden irruption of controversy over the island and its sovereignty, involving India’s top politicians on the eve of the general election, would have come as a surprise to them. Especially given the seemingly unambiguous 1974 maritime agreement between the two countries—signed by the then prime ministers of India and Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi and Sirima R.D. Bandaranaike. Meant to demarcate their maritime boundaries from the Palk Strait to Adam’s Bridge, it put Katchatheevu—a barren 1.9 sq. km…

INFORMAL ECONOMY Despite improvement in the past decade, a vast majority of workforce is still engaged in the unorganised sector and informal jobs JOB TYPE (%) SECTOR (%) GENDER INEQUITY Women are lagging far behind men in labour force participation rate (LFPR), pointing to gender inequality in Indian society 2022 LFPR* (%) *proportion of population currently employed or actively looking for a job JOBLESS YOUTH Joblessness remains considerably high among the country’s youth, highlighting the lack of quality jobs for the 12 million being added to the working-age population every year UNEMPLOYMENT RATE* (%) *proportion of the labour force that does not have employment and is seeking and/or is available for work…

Defectors have a sense of direction: their GPS is mostly set saffronward these days. So, when a stray migrant comes walking into the Congress camp, you’d expect it to be bowing in gratitude. But Prahlad Gunjal, a BJP import named the Congress candidate for Kota-Bundi, walked right into the grizzled octogenarian Shanti Dhariwal—his old rival and ex-cabinet minister who’d defeated him in the Kota North assembly seat. A no-holds-barred battle, Gunjal had raked up corruption charges on Dhariwal’s Rs 5,500 crore Kota beautification plan. Dhariwal still feels those poison wasp-stings. So, yoked together on one stage for a party programme on March 29, sparks flew. Dhariwal demanded an apology! And, incredibly, hurled the “communal” tag at Gunjal. Their supporters separated like curd from whey and hurled slogans at each other.…

It would take nine months and the arrest of Delhi chief minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal to bring together the top leaders of the Opposition parties on a single stage. On March 31, at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan, leaders representing the 27 parties that constitute the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (I.N.D.I.A.) assembled for a mega show of solidarity against the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arresting Kejriwal for his alleged involvement in the Delhi liquor policy case. They also protested the arrest of Hemant Soren, who resigned as Jharkhand chief minister on January 31 after the ED questioned him on an alleged land scam. But even as its leaders attended the rally, the Congress, the largest party in the Opposition, received a series of notices from the…

Charges and counter-charges thicken the air in West Bengal as the BJP and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) prepare for a faceoff in the Lok Sabha polls. The TMC’s biggest weapon against the NDA-ruled Centre is the non-payment of wages due under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) from December 2021. NREGA payments have been frozen under Section 27 of the NREG Act after 16 central teams visited Bengal and found evidence of alleged embezzlement, creation of ghost work, fake job cards (non-existent workers) and other malpractices. The state government denies the charges of irregularities. Now, ironically, crucial data cited in the website of the Union ministry of rural development appears to have strengthened the case of the Bengal government. Saket Gokhale, RTI activist and TMC MP…

We think the world is connected like never before now but, even a hundred years ago, there was an immense amount of sharing of ideas in a cultural convergence beyond borders. Actor Devika Rani, producer Himanshu Rai, director Franz Osten and cinematographer Josef Wirsching met in Munich, Germany, in the 1920s. Creativity sparked, and the result was the classic silent film, Light of Asia (1925), one of the first films entirely shot on location in India. Next came Karma (1933), which catapulted Devika to star status in the UK and also saw her romantic relationship with Rai strengthening. With opportunities in Europe limited by the climate of war at the time, Osten and Wirsching came to India to help Rai and Devika start a talkie film studio in Mumbai. Bombay…

↘ Located in the Palk Strait, Katchatheevu is no more than 1.6 km in length and slightly over 300 m wide at its broadest point ↘ It lies 14 nautical miles northeast of Rameswaram on the Tamil Nadu coast and 10.5 nautical miles from Delft Island in Sri Lanka ↘ During the British Raj, it became part of the Madras Presidency; in 1921, both India and Sri Lanka claimed Katchatheevu ↘ A survey marked Katchatheevu in Sri Lanka, but a British delegation from India challenged this, citing ownership of the island by the Ramnad zamindari in Tamil Nadu ↘ The matter was settled in the 1974 India-Sri Lanka Maritime Agreement, which drew a maritime boundary, with Katchatheevu in Sri Lankan waters ↘ However, Indian fishermen stray into Lankan waters regularly,…

Politics is a high-stress profession in these turbulent, uncertain times. So its frazzled practitioners have enough reason to seek divine benediction. The grapevine has it that an Opposition satrap in Maharashtra favours the voodoo powers of a Bengali tantrik and doesn’t think twice before even washing his feet. A leading figure in the government, who has much at stake, leans towards the Mother Goddess—again with a touch of tantrism. During the June 2022 split in the Shiv Sena, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and his band of fugitive rebels had famously sought blessings at Assam’s Kamakhya temple. Goddess Bagalamukhi had been the one to be invoked by a BJP politico in 2019, when the original saffron parivar split. Marathwada politicians apparently propitiate Lord Kuber, the giver of wealth, at a temple…

Alliance-making is tricky enough at the party level. But the upcoming Lok Sabha polls have left no room for informal adjustments even at home for a political family in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. Former MP Kankar Munjare has asked his wife, Balaghat Congress MLA Anubha Munjare, to ‘leave’ the house till polling day, failing which he’d leave. Kankar, who’s fighting as the BSP candidate, says they may be accused of a secret pact if they live under the same roof! Kankar had contested the 2023 state polls from neighbouring Paraswada for the Gondwana Gantantra Party while Anubha fought and won from Balaghat, but he did not make this de-Multi-polar mand then. political families aren’t uncommon—so the MLA-wife isn’t very amused.…

Western Maharashtra’s Sangli, commonly referred to as ‘Natya Pandhari’ or the Mecca of the Marathi theatre industry, has been witnessing a different kind of drama of late. It was in this erstwhile princely state that Vishnudas Bhave had staged the first modern Marathi play—the sangeet natak (musical drama) Sita Swayamwar—back in 1843. But today the Lok Sabha constituency, sprawled along the first southward arc of the Krishna river, is a proscenium for chancy events, hosting scenes and acts that may bend the Opposition’s rainbow coalition towards a messy denouement. The roots of the row lie in allies Congress and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) both staking claim to the constituency, foreclosing a smooth passage for the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi’s (MVA) seat-sharing talks here. It was perhaps fated to be…

With air power being regarded as the sword arm of offensive operations, as well as crucial in defence, in all modern military doctrines, developing more sophisticated fighter jets has been a continuing objective for top military powers. The term ‘fifth generation fighter aircraft’ (FGFA) is currently used to denote the few most technologically advanced fighter jets—a super elite category—that have been developed over the past 30 years. Such machines have multirole capability, advanced avionics and networked data fusion (enabling greater situation awareness on the battlefield). But the one quality that sets a fifth generation jet apart from other modern fighters is its ‘stealth’ capability—the quality of being unseen and undetected by enemy’s ground defence radars and aircraft. As can be imagined, making a FGFA is a complex task, and only…

In The Cobra’s Gaze, Stephen Alter returns with another slow-burning tour de force, drawing on journeys in the Indian subcontinent to revisit the human connection with nature. Offering cultural and historical context to our ongoing struggle to preserve wildlife, the Indian-born American author urges us to meet the gaze of creatures that are looking at us, perhaps for answers. Written in his characteristic style that melds natural history inquiry with a seeker’s travelogue, it spotlights a tribe of modern Indian naturalists and conservationists, placing their work in context with that of pioneering forebears like Sálim Ali, M. Krishnan, Billy Arjan Singh and Jim Corbett. Tellingly, the book starts at the beginning of remembered time in the subcontinent. At Bhimbetka, near Bhopal, where the 10,000-year-old cave art of early human settlers…