Innholdsfortegnelse for 19 May2025 i India Today

The old adage that every state has an army but Pakistan’s army has a state is becoming self-evident in the ongoing conflict. The dastardly killing of 26 innocent men on April 22 in Pahalgam by trained Pakistani terrorists outraged the nation. There have been civilian killings before in Kashmir, even on the basis of religion, but none so coldblooded as the methodical gunning down of men in front of their wives. India could not but retaliate. On May 7, it struck. Among its targets, all linked to terror outfits, were the headquarters of the Jaish-e-Mohammed in Bahawalpur and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Muridke—both in Punjab. It was the first time India had struck in the heart of mainland Pakistan since 1971. Ope ration Sindoor was marked by precise strategic calibration. No military…

Today, most AI (artificial intelligence) users turn to these apps to summarise documents, answer technical questions or draft content. In contrast, a select group treats AI as a cognitive partner—using it to model complex systems, plan strategic scenarios and integrate insights across finance, governance, climate and technology. This shift is far from cosmetic. Strategic users force AI models to engage at deeper levels: holding longer context windows, managing memory layers and performing multi-step reasoning across domains. As a result, these interactions are significantly heavier on computational resources—sometimes 5-10 times costlier than average usage—but they also stretch AI’s capabilities in ways that pure engineering improvements cannot. Such strategic AI usage could dramatically accelerate solutions to India’s most pressing challenges: modelling healthcare access gaps in rural areas, optimising urban infrastructure investments for…

Retribution, like justice, must not only be delivered but also seen to be delivered. The Indian Army learned this lesson the hard way in 2019, when it offered only limited photographic evidence of its air strikes on terror camps in Balakot in Pakistan, launched in response to the Pulwama attack. Pakistan denied any damage, and international scepticism about the operation’s success persisted. Six years later, on May 7, the Indian armed forces ensured there was no such ambiguity. In a bold response to the April 22 Pahalgam carnage, they struck nine terror installations across Pakistan and released vivid video and photographic proof of what the operation accomplished. Operation Sindoor, as the strike was branded, was as much a military retaliation as a symbolic gesture, evident in its name and logo—vermillion…

In ‘Stone Slabs for Shaista Mahal’, the opening story from Banu Mushtaq’s short story collection Heart Lamp (translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi), there’s a passage where the female narrator is struggling with how to introduce her husband to readers. “Mujahid is my home person. Oh. That sounds odd. A wife is usually the one who stays at home, so that makes her the home person. Perhaps then Mujahid is my office person. Che! I have made a mistake again. The office is not mine, after all. How else can I say this? If I use the term yajamana and call him owner, then I will have to be a servant, as if I am an animal or a dog.” Heart Lamp, for which Mushtaq and Bhasthi have been shortlisted…

Familial displeasure, death threats, a bounty on her head, Aryana Sayeed had to overcome a number of obstacles on her way to becoming one of Afghanistan’s beloved pop stars. “I had basically accepted death,” says the 39yearold musician and activist, who has made her Hindi debut with Rukhna Nahin, a song from the recent anthology film, My Melbourne. “I felt that if I gave up, I’d be killing the hopes of millions of Afghan women.” BY 2011, ARYANA HAD BUILT QUITE A FAN FOLLOWING AND WAS INVITED TO PERFORM A LIVE CONCERT IN KABUL. ITS SUCCESS LED TO A TV SHOW Sayeed was just eight when her family fled Afghanistan’s civil war to Switzerland, where she fell in love with pop divas like Madonna and Beyoncé (and our very own…

Q. Your recent project, Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins, marks your return to films after a four-year hiatus. It wasn’t deliberate; it’s just that I wasn’t getting the kind of roles I wanted to do. During this time, I attended workshops to learn new skills like clowning and pursued my passion for writing. In the past few years, I have put together a writer’s room to create the content I am passionate about. The plan is to act in some and produce others. Q. How was it being a part of an ensemble project that stars the likes of Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat? Jewel Thief is a rollercoaster ride, with one twist after another. It’s great popcorn entertainment. People believe such films are easier to make vis-à-vis serious…

'Business as usual’ is the happy place where India would have liked things to be. The proximity of a truculent Pakistan does not allow that, not after Pahalgam and certainly not after India’s response. But even amidst war clouds, New Delhi has kept its eyes on the ground—and feet moving. Hours before Operation Sindoor, India also announced a landmark economic step: a free trade agreement (FTA) has been successfully negotiated and signed with the UK, its first big accord in the chaos of the Trump era. For the UK, too, this is the biggest trade pact since exiting the European Union in 2020. India is the UK’s 12th largest trading partner, with goods and services transactions worth £43 billion (Rs 4.9 lakh crore) in 2024—£8.3 billion (Rs 94,570 crore) in…

These include the BrahMos missile with ranges between 450 and 800 kilometres, the Kh-35 ALCM with a range of 260 km, and the Israeli-developed Crystal Maze 2, a precision airto-surface ballistic missile with a strike range exceeding 250 km, effective even in GPS-denied environments and capable of targeting high-value assets such as long-range radars and air defence systems. The IAF also fields the Spice 2000 glide bomb, fitted with an add-on kit for 450/900 kg warheads. It has high accuracy and a range of approximately 60 km. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF), on the other hand, operates 387 fighters, among them the JF-17, J-10 CE and F-16, besides 57 attack helicopters, and relies on LY-80 SAMs and PL15 missiles with Chinese collaboration and artificial intelligence-driven electronic warfare capabilities. Pakistan, in…

Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, loves recounting the story of Biju, a content creator from Kannur, Kerala. Having lost his job as a bus driver during Covid, Biju decided to create shortform content on his YouTube channel KL BRO Biju Rithvik, giving glimpses of his daily life, in Malayalam, his mother tongue. Soon, his simple, unassuming style of presentation earned him a whole legion of admirers. “Fast forward a couple of years later, and Biju was our largest YouTuber, not just in India, but in all of Asia, and currently has 71 million subscribers,” says Mohan. “What struck me was what this incredibly humble person told me when I met him—‘YouTube has given me a community.’ That was what was most important to him—people commenting on his videos not…

“My general approach in life is ‘Let’s give it a shot’,” says Madhubanti Bagchi. That attitude has served the playback and pop singer well. It’s what led to her joining a wedding band while in engineering college in Kolkata; saying yes to an offer to sing for Bengali films—among her biggest hits is the Arijit Singh-duet ‘Egiye De’ from Shudhu Tomari Jonyo (2015)—and deciding to shift base to Mumbai in 2018 for “better opportunities”. Those risks are paying off. Today, Bagchi is a rising star of the Hindi film music industry. Over the past few months, she has been behind two huge Bollywood tracks, Sachin-Jigar’s ‘Aaj Ki Raat’ from Stree 2 (2024) and Amit Trivedi’s ‘Uyi Amma’ from Azad (2025), and impressed listeners with her contributions to the soundtracks of…

INDIA GAINS ↘ Exports like textiles, jewellery, machinery, sports goods, leather, footwear, ceramics and furniture will face zero tariffs in the UK ↘ Easier entry for contractual service suppliers, business visitors, intra-corporate transferees and independent professionals; the UK won’t tighten visa rules for IT, finance and education sectors ↘ Indian professionals will benefit from tax exemptions on UK social security contributions (up to 3 years), and reduced tax rates, potentially saving up to 20% of salaries UK GAINS ↘ Import duty on Scotch whisky and gin to be halved from 150% to 75% immediately, and reduced further to 40% over time ↘ Duties on premium British automobiles (currently over 100%) to drop to 10%, with a quota limit on volume ↘ The deal provides UK firms a foothold in one…

TOTAL COST ₹20,000 crore Phase 1 ₹8,867 crore COST-SHARING 61.5% Kerala 9.6% Centre Adani Vizhinjam Port Pvt. Ltd 28.9% CAPACITY 7.2 million TEUs* Total planned 1 million TEUs Phase 1 *TEU = 20-ft equivalent container units (roughly, 1 TEU = 1 container) OPERATIONAL SINCE DEC. ’24 265 ship arrivals 500,000 containers moved HANDS ON DECK 2,000 direct/indirect jobs 5,500 more jobs by 2028-2029…

IT WAS GETTING TO MID-APRIL AND A HELLISH SON ET LUMIÈRE had lit up Murshidabad. Arson, terror and grief swept over places like Dhuliyan, an old river port on the Ganges. But the map also had quiet corners of defiance: mixed Hindu Muslim villages that refused to be communal laboratories. In Maheshpur, Dighri, Paharghanti and Lalpur Singhpara, they kept joint vigil to protect temples and mosques. As a fire ravaged a Hindu shop, Muslim shopkeepers intervened to save it. Scattered yet powerful acts of solidarity marked the tenac ity of local harmony in the absence of provocation—that forms a major strand in the report of a 17-member fact-finding team on the violence in West Bengal. The other strand is its obverse: sinister signs of orchestration. “Certain findings made us question…

Romcoms are a rare breed in Indian streaming. Producer and creator Rangita Pritish Nandy is aware of the dearth of the feelgood, fun love story and hopes to fix it with The Royals, a Netflix series which follows the growing attraction between Bhumi Pednekar, playing a go-getter entrepreneur, and Ishaan Khatter as a reluctant crown prince. “We don’t live in a simple world anymore,” says Nandy, talking about why the genre is overlooked. “Everything on OTT is at a certain decibel level. To do the easy decibel space is tough.” Romcoms are perceived as smaller in the larger scheme of things, but Netflix dished out a royal treatment, allowing Nandy and her team “to dream”, be it in scale or setpieces (yes, there’s a ball!). Writer Neha Veena Sharma researched…

MAY 30 | Theatres Kingdom Vijay Deverakonda stars in this Telugu action film with a premise presumably set on the refugee crisis borne from the post-Independence Sinhala-Tamil conflict. Gowtam Tinnanuri, writer-director of the Telugu cricket-based hit Jersey, directs the film. Tamil hitmaker Anirudh Ravichander is the music director. MAY 16 | Theatres NARIVETTA An intriguing Malayalam political thriller starring Tovino Thomas, Narivetta follows cops squaring off against protesting tribals who find their homes threatened in a hill station. Thomas plays a cop who is sympathetic to the tribals, but is then blamed for the death of a protester. Written by Sahitya Akademi-winning writer Abin Joseph. MAY 30 | Jio Hotstar CRIMINAL JUSTICE SEASON 4 One of Indian OTT’s rare consistent successes is back with another instalment. Pankaj Tripathi returns as the…

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