Innholdsfortegnelse for October 21, 2024 i India Today

At one glance, the two assembly election results on October 8 have the appearance of parity. But look closely, and a strong asymmetry reveals itself. What the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) takes away is in stark contrast to what has befallen its principal rival, the Congress. Morale and momentum have been granted back to the party that rules from New Delhi, and rudely broken for the one that wishes to get there. This is key because Haryana and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir were not just one-off matches. They are Round 1 in an ongoing national round robin league: the crucial battlegrounds of Maharashtra and Jharkhand come up within weeks. So the strategies deployed in Haryana and J&K, in terms of their success or lack of…

THE CONGRESS PARTY’S STUN-NING DEFEAT in Haryana, a state it was widely expected to win, and its below-par performance in Jammu and Kashmir, signify more than just a temporary stumble. These setbacks have again exposed the deeper structural flaws that plague the party. In Haryana, the Congress secured 37 seats in the 90-member assembly, losing an election supporters and even opponents presumed would be a straightforward win. In J&K, the party won only six of the 32 seats it contested and will be part of the government only because of the strong showing by its ally, the National Conference. These results puncture the narrative that the Congress is on a revival path after its much improved Lok Sabha election tally in May. They also underscore how sporadic victories, such as…

Acolossus cannot be captured in a portrait, for he carries the landscape with him. Ratan Naval Tata could not only see into the distance but also attain to the wingspan required to reach there. He was also one who dared to compose dreams on an epic scale but knew how to symphonise all the nuances to turn them into material reality. Yet he always cloaked his greatness with a rare humility and compassion. “I would like to be remembered as a person who was responsible for some change in the way we look at things,” he said in a rare interaction with the media in 2021. And then he added, “As the innovator of something that people thought was unviable and not possible.” Ratan Tata, 86, who died late evening…

The festive season in India is characterised by increased sales of everything—from clothes to food. But, the one item that gets a lot of traction is gold and jewellery, because of the tradition of buying the metal during festivals, especially Diwali. The past two months have witnessed an increase in demand after the reduction in import duty on gold announced in the Union Budget. Consumers are flocking to buy the yellow metal for personal and traditional reasons as well as to hedge their investment portfolios, given the global economic uncertainty caused by the ongoing conflicts. Jewellers have witnessed an increase in demand by customers. They offer multiple sales schemes that also draw customers in. On the bourses, some of the small and mid-size jewellers are taking this optimism by going…

BEGINNER Q1. Investments in a listed stock provides a. Better liquidity b. Guaranteed appreciation c. Capital safety d. All the above Q2. As financial dependents increase, risk appetite generally a. Increases b. Decreases c. Does not change d. There is no correlation Q3. Liquid assets include only a. Cash b. Cash and all debtors c. Cash and all debtors (except bad debt) d. All the above Q4. What is the primary objective of financial planning? a. To increase savings b. To profit from investing c. To reduce taxes d. To achieve financial goals INTERMEDIATE Q1. Risk appetite is higher when a. Life expectancy is low b. Life expectancy is high c. There is no correlation d. None of the above Q2. What is the primary concern of economics? a. Maximise…

Vikramaditya Motwane has a thing for loners. In Trapped, he captured the desperation of a man stuck in a highrise apartment. Bhavesh Joshi Superhero was about a vigilante who cuts himself off by hiding at an abandoned site. In his latest, Ctrl [streaming on Netflix], an influencer (Ananya Panday) unknowingly cedes control of her life to an app and has an isolated existence. Is Ctrl then the conclusion of a trilogy? “If anything, it’d be start of a ‘Ctrl Alt Del’ trilogy,” he says with a laugh. “We have a story for ‘Alt’. We haven’t come to ‘Del’ as yet.” Ctrl is what one would call a screen-life thriller, a genre wherein most of the narrative unfolds on laptop and mobile screens and using devices like CCTV cameras. “It is…

The Navratri Pujo celebrations are not going well for West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee. On October 5, her dandiya dance at a pujo pandal inauguration quickly became viral meme fodder. Social media was flooded with messages comparing her to fickle emperor Nero who ‘fiddled as Rome burned’, for the same day a minor girl had been raped and murdered in Joynagar in South 24 Parganas. Mamata was criticised for “prancing around while women faced violence in her state”. And this was no isolated case. The previous day, a sexual abuse case of a 16-year-old in Jatragachi in New Town, Kolkata, had come to light. Already under fire in the RG Kar Medical College rape-murder case, the perceived indifference has people all riled up despite her call for “capital punishment” in…

IN A STUNNING POLITICAL OUTCOME, Nayab Singh Saini, once dismissed as a lightweight protégé of former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, has emerged as Haryana’s unexpected victor. Leading the BJP to its best-ever assembly performance with 48 seats and a 39.94 per cent vote share, Saini has not only neutralised a decade of potential anti-incumbency but also etched his name among the select few chief ministers who have successfully defended their mandate in the state. Handpicked by Khattar—then an RSS pracharak—as a docile swayamsevak in the late ’80s, Saini had moved to the BJP along with him in 1994. Since then, his rise through the party ranks was steady but unremarkable. So much so that, when he was appointed as the BJP’s Haryana unit chief in October last year, hardly anyone…

There is a touch of pink to Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar these days. Whether in his jackets or on hoardings, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president can be seen exuding a softer hue. The shade is believed to be more appealing to women voters, whose interests his party says they have pandered to with the recent Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, which provides a monthly dole of Rs 1,500 to around 25 million women. The Mahayuti government may have announced the scheme but since Ajit handles the finance portfolio, his party claims the credit must go to him. He is also seen smiling and interacting with women, a break from his otherwise gruff persona. As Maharashtra heads towards an assembly election, to be announced any day, he has…

In many ways, we are using data in our day-to-day lives knowingly or otherwise. A lot of our decision-making today is a result of analytical processes based on data that we have shared or consumed. When you are online, social media platforms such as Facebook suggest new friends for you or feeds that are of interest to you. YouTube prompts music and shorts for you based on your history and Google completes a search even before you fully type the word. Shopping and travel have become easy with data being the source of decision-making—you look up a travel site for a destination along with low-cost tickets and hotel bookings in one shot. Our mind has always looked for patterns to analyse and evaluate the data we use. For instance,…

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These days, Sachin Tanwar is used to his friends calling him a crorepati. As the most expensive player in the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) this season, which begins on October 18 in Hyderabad, the bid of Rs 2.15 crore—the second highest in PKL history—was a culmination of a dream for the Tamil Thalaivas player. “After playing for six years in the league, I had wanted to go to the auction. It was my mother’s dream ki meri sabse best boli lagni chahiye [I should have the best bid],” he says. Now in its eleventh season, PKL has become one of Star Sports’ most successful properties, which it created in collaboration with Mashal Sports a decade back. And in being so, PKL has changed the lives of talented players like Sachin.…

When Rima Das was making Village Rock-stars (2017), her National Award-winning second film, she had no idea that it would warrant a sequel seven years later. That thought crossed her mind only after she watched it on the big screen, witnessed the unanimous acclaim that it received from critics, and the unending curiosity that audiences had about the characters. The filmmaker remembers replaying the film’s final moment—where 10-year-old Dhunu (Bhanita Das) receives a guitar from her mother—in her head multiple times. “In the film, when Dhunu was playing the guitar for the first time, it wasn’t only a character. It was also happening in real life,” Das tells india today. “It felt like a beginning, rather than an ending.” A year later, during the production of her third film Bulbul Can…

Q. How much did you resonate with the character of Vidya? She is a totally different personality. Off screen, I am shy and reserved. Vidya is a patakha [firecracker]. Vicky aur Vidya…is an out-and-out comedy. I feel comedy is the toughest genre. You have to feed off the energy of the co-actor which is something you can only do on set. Q. There’s the Triptii who shined in independent films like Laila Majnu, Qala and Bulbul. Then there’s the one we saw in Animal. Who’s the real one? They are both real. As actors, it is important to keep challenging ourselves and do different kinds of roles. With Bulbul and Qala, I’d found my comfort zone. Whatever commercial films I got—my first Dharma film [Bad Newz] and Animal—were because of…

LATE IN THE EVENING OF OCTOBER 8, even as the euphoria over the surprise victory in Haryana was still sinking in, Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed a tradition he has set in place after every important election win—appearing at the BJP headquarters in the national capital to address jubilant party workers. After the party agonisingly fell short of the majority mark in the Lok Sabha election in June, the mood had turned sombre and introspective. But now, with the miraculous ‘hattrick of assembly wins’ in Haryana and the creditable performance in Jammu and Kashmir, the josh is back among BJP workers. Needless to say, the poll outcomes have rejuvenated the party cadre every-where. The news was especially heartwarming for them as Haryana was one of the states where the party’s…

OMAR ABDULLAH IS THE FIRST to admit that winning the Jammu and Kashmir assembly polls was maybe the easy part. As vice president of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (JKNC), he may have scripted electoral history with his party, along with INDIA bloc partner, the Congress, winning a comfortable majority. In doing so, they have thwarted the game plan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form a government on its own and anoint a BJP CM for the first time in J&K’s history. But Omar is fully aware that unlike his previous stint as chief minister between 2008 and 2014, when he headed a JKNC-Congress alliance, his second coming poses enormous challenges. As he puts it, “In my first innings, I was CM of the most empowered state.…

On the Mahayuti’s poll plank: We are banking on welfare schemes like the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana. If the state government has the same ideology as the Union government, it helps the state get more funds and push development projects. On the alliance’s CM nominee: Eknath Shinde is the CM and we two are the deputy CMs. We are facing the election together. The decision on the CM will be taken after the election. On his chief ministerial ambitions: I do not want to create new controversies by commenting on this. Our first target is to ensure that the Mahayuti gets the maximum number of seats. On the economic rationale for schemes like Ladki Bahin: Who is getting these benefits? Those with an annual income of under Rs 2.5…

You have made investments, and your expectation is that you will make money, that is, profit from it. Now, you don’t invest in a single instrument, you invest across several of them such as stocks, funds, bonds, fixed deposits (FDs) and so on. So, how will you know which one is doing well or better than the others, make an informed decision on which one is bringing you more profits? The return on investment, or RoI, can help you evaluate potential investment opportunities or show how actual investments perform as a percentage return on investment. RoI is a financial ratio expressed as a percentage, used as a metric to evaluate investments and rank them compared to other investment choices. You can use a basic RoI formula by using all relevant…

On September 17, the final of the Asian Champions Trophy stood goalless at the end of the third quarter. Defending champions India started favourites, having won all six matches, including a 30 rout of the other finalists, China. As the players caught their breath, skipper Harmanpreet Singh, who has earned the moniker of ‘Sarpanch’ as a dominant leader of the pack, spoke up: “I simply asked the team to ensure that we had enough made the most of ball possession and the few opportunities.” Nine minutes from the final hooter, the Sarpanch took charge. He made a darting run towards the Chinese goal line, skipping past two defenders before feeding Jugraj Singh, who scored. It added another triumph to India’s kitty, continuing their stellar run under coach Craig Fulton, which…