Innholdsfortegnelse for February 4, 2019 i India Today

War is the continuation of politics by other means, Carl von Clausewitz once said. BJP president Amit Shah seemed to invoke the 19th century Prussian military strategist when he likened the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha election to the Third Battle of Panipat, which saw the catastrophic defeat of the Maratha army by the Afghans in 1761. Shah, who said this at the party’s national convention on January 12, would perhaps do well to remember the reasons why the Marathas were defeated. They lost critical allies and played to their weaknesses—a set-piece battle—rather than the nimble guerrilla warfare they excelled at. The BJP-led NDA faces a similar challenge ahead of the general election as our biannual India Today Group-Karvy Insights Mood of the Nation (MOTN) opinion poll reveals. The survey, the…

In December 2017, we heard from Jayant Singh, whose seven-year-old daughter died of dengue-related complications at a big corporate hospital in Gurugram. Once his allegations on how the hospital tried to buy his silence became public, the local administration, through an inquiry, found the hospital guilty of overbilling, leading to suspension of its blood bank and pharmacy licences. A year after filing an FIR, there is no charge sheet yet and the Medical Council of India refuses to agree with the state’s assessment as to what went wrong. After being stonewalled at every step in his effort to seek justice for his daughter, the grieving father has now moved the Supreme Court of India. As gut-wrenching as his fight for justice is, unfortunately, it is not unique or isolated. The…

It seems a mini-gathbandhan of sorts is at work to nurture Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Raebareli. District records show it is the only constituency in Uttar Pradesh to receive MPs’ local area development funds from seven parliamentarians, besides Sonia herself—Congress MPs Kapil Sibal and P.L. Punia, Rajya Sabha MP Rekha Ganesan, former Rajya Sabha MPs Satish Sharma and Pramod Tiwari, and the BJP’s Naresh Agarwal. But the surprise benefactor is Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, who had chosen Raebareli as his nodal district and spent Rs 2.5 crore from his MPLAD fund.…

FOR NARENDRA MODI, the choice for the voter in the upcoming general election is clear: Do you want a majboor (helpless) government or a majboot (strong) one? The prime minister spoke in the same vein in his speech at the annual Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Varanasi on January 22 even though only around 25,000 non-resident Indians—a miniscule percentage of the total electorate—are expected to vote. For Modi, the hour of reckoning is nigh and it is turning out to be a surprisingly tougher fight than his party had anticipated. Just a year-and-a-half ago, his re-election as prime minister was considered a given. Now, it is no more a certainty. Instead, Modi is aware that every vote, including that of NRIs (apart from the money they could donate for the party),…

NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES become public debating points only in the case of allegations of corruption or when there is a war. The 1989 Bofors scandal saw a united opposition fight a poll campaign that brought the Rajiv Gandhi government down in the general election. The September 1999 Lok Sabha election, barely two months after the Kargil war, got the NDA an uninterrupted five-year mandate to rule the country. In this last MOTN survey before the upcoming Lok Sabha election, the biggest national security issue is the allegation of corruption in the 2016 purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft at an estimated price of Rs 58,000 crore from France. Charges that businessman Anil Ambani benefitted from the deal are being repeated ad nauseam, with the opposition building a narrative of crony capitalism.…

THE AUSSIES HAD A tough time nabbing Cheteshwar Pujara’s wicket in the recently concluded Test series which India won, making history as the first team from the Indian subcontinent to win one in Australia. What’s even tougher, though, is dethroning Virat Kohli from pole position in INDIA TODAY’S Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey. India’s captain was not even the second best player of the series, but his leadership skills, combined with his consistent performances, is enough to guarantee that the International Cricket Council’s highest ranked batsman in Tests and One-Day Internationals (ODI) continues to be India’s most beloved sportsman. Former captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni hasn’t fallen off the charts despite retiring from Tests to play shorter formats only. With two match-winning innings to also clinch the one-day series down…

Life insurance is an integral part of financial planning that helps your family meet its goals after your death. The critical decision, though, is the amount of insurance cover one should have. “Calculating insurance cover should not be based only on how much premium you can afford but how much is needed to protect your family’s lifestyle when you are not around,” says Amar Pandit, founder of happynessfactory.in , a financial advisory firm. According to Manik Nangia, director and CEO, Max Life Insurance, “One way to calculate the adequacy of life cover is to assess the amount your dependants would need in the future to maintain their current standard of living and take care of future expenses.” Here are some of life’s milestones when you need to review your goals…

Dharmendra: Not Just A He-Man begins on a gushing note. So when author Rajiv Vijayakar declares that Dharmendra was ‘the absolute numero uno from 1969 to 1977’, it’s tempting to think his fan-like admiration for the star is going too far. After all, 1969 was the year when Rajesh Khanna burst into the limelight with Aradhana. But Vijayakar isn’t wrong, and he has evidence to prove it. With films like Aya Sawan Jhoom Ke, Jeevan Mrityu, Mera Gaon Mera Desh, Seeta Aur Geeta, Sholay, Chupke Chupke, Dharmendra did, in fact, deliver more hits than Rajesh Khanna, whose box office track record was spotty after 1971 despite the hysteria he created. A book like this was overdue. This ‘stud with innocent looks’ delivered not only hits at the box-office but also…

Artist Amol Patil plans to bring in a bit of Mumbai’s chawls to the upcoming India Art Fair, staking claim to the city he grew up in and on behalf of residents who have always been looked down upon and are now being pushed out. As part of a series of performance art pieces by various artists around the theme of language, Patil will lead a group of sweepers and others engaged in what are called “lower jobs”, who will blow soap bubbles into the air. Floating over the venue, the bubbles will confront the notion of untouchability as they pop against people attending the show, Patil says. For another performance, loudspeakers will play a recording of ‘TAKE/THE/ CITY’ by Niccolò Moscatelli, which questions the politics, survival, daily routine, lifestyle…

Q. You have a book in the works, Sebastian and Sons, on the makers of the mridangam. Can you tell us about it? This book traces the history of the mridangam-maker and the mridangam over the past 100 years. Though it will focus on the Thanjavur tradition of making and the community of Dalit Christians who worked with upper-caste mridangam players to innovate and gift us this magnificent instrument, the book will also look at various other communities and people who are master-makers. Q. What interested you first, the instrument or the history of the makers? The idea came to me when my first book, A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story, was going into its second edition. I realised that I had not touched upon instrument makers and was wondering…

Maharashtra’s excise minister, Chandrashekhar Bawankule, may finally be giving in to requests that flood his office: to allow the buying of liquor from bars instead of liquor shops. Reason? Bars outnumber liquor shops in the state and liquor is cheaper in bars as it doesn’t attract service tax. With the Lok Sabha election approaching and dance bars set to reopen, this could well turn out to be a populist move.…

NDA: BJP, All India N. Rangaswamy Congress, Apna Dal, Bodo People’s Front, DMDK, JD(U), LJP, Naga People’s Front, PMK, National People’s Party, RPI(A), SAD, Sikkim Democratic Front, Shiv Sena UPA: Congress, DMK, JD(S), National Conference, JMM, Kerala Congress (Mani), IUML, NCP, RJD, RLD, TDP Others: AAP, AGP, AIMIM, AIADMK, Forward Bloc, TMC, AIUDF, BJD, CPI, CPI(M), INLD, PDP, Kerala Congress (Joseph), MNS, NLP, RSP (RSP is with the Left alliance in West Bengal and with the UPA in Kerala), TRS, YSRC, Independents and SP-BSP-RLD alliance in Uttar Pradesh…

DAYS AFTER SHE displayed her ability to be the main rallying point for opposition parties wanting to defeat the Narendra Modi government in the upcoming Lok Sabha election, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee outperformed all her political rivals by emerging as the INDIA TODAY Mood of the Nation (MOTN) Poll’s Best Performing Chief Minister for the fourth time in a row. From February 2016, when Mamata stood at 8 per cent, way below Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar (then at 15 per cent each), she has dramatically climbed up to 14 per cent. At the number one slot, she is three percentage points clear of Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath and Kejriwal—who are tied at 11 per cent. Mamata’s popularity at 64 per cent in…

IN RECENT YEARS, Congress president Rahul Gandhi has usually spent the first week of a new year abroad. This year, on January 2, he was in Delhi, writing a letter to Imphal-based journalist Kishorchandra Wangkhem, currently languishing in jail after being booked under the National Security Act (NSA) for criticising the BJP and Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh. The Manipur government had clearly overreacted by invoking the NSA to punish the journalist, but Rahul did not get into the nittygritty of the case. For him, it was yet another opportunity to expose “the BJP government’s design to trample on the constitutional rights of the people”. This sense of urgency to make every opportunity count is the biggest difference between the Rahul Gandhi of 2014 and the man we are…

The joy of the new year celebrations is usually short-lived, especially for salaried individuals as the investment declaration sheet from the accounts department hits the inbox in the first week of January. But in a hurry to invest before the deadline, often basic investment parameters like risk, returns, time horizon and need are ignored and the easiest option availed of. However, before you grab the first tempting investment offer coming your way, do remember a few essentials. DON’T OVERDO THE TAX PLANNING Take a deep breath and reflect on whether you are being overly anxious about tax planning. “Tax saving investments aren’t considered a part of overall investing. Hence, people forget to take into account schemes they are already invested in for various goals which meet the Section 80 C…

Theatre director Anamika Haksar, 59, who has taught at institutes all over India, including her alma mater, the National School of Drama (NSD), always held a fascination for stories human bodies tell. “At one point, tired of doing theatre productions, I became very interested in contemporary practices related to the body and started studying acupressure,” she says. “Eventually, my colleagues and I ran an acupressure camp for women and children in Old Delhi for three months and, as I learnt the stories of these women and their ailments, ideas emerged. For instance, one lady talked about the terrible headaches she started getting after she moved from her spacious village home to a room in the city. It was so small that she would bang her head against the ceiling every…

Netflix finally has shows about the lives of teenagers that aren’t mentally unsettling (13 Reasons Why) or cringe-worthy (Riverdale). The site’s two new releases, Derry Girls and Sex Education, have much in common. The scripts are witty, the young cast is terrific, and both shows tackle the lives of teenagers with nuance, without resorting to preachy drama. Derry Girls follows the lives of five teenagers—four cheeky girls and one shy boy—growing up in 1990s Northern Ireland during the guerrilla war between Irish nationalists and British loyalists. The focus though is always on the group and how they get into mischief at their Catholic high school. The best part: it’s the women (girls, really) getting into trouble, shooting their mouths off, and generally creating havoc. The gang is led by Erin…

The crisis at Jet Airways, India’s second largest private airline, has worsened into a face-off between Naresh Goyal, the airline’s chairman, who owns a 51 per cent stake, and Etihad Airways, which owns 24 per cent. As the lenders, led by the State Bank of India (SBI), huddle to rescue Jet, which owes them Rs 8,000 crore, Goyal and Etihad’s demands have confounded them. Etihad, the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates, reportedly wants a complete exit of the Goyal family from Jet Airways. Etihad CEO Tony Douglas also expressed concern about the imminent risk of Jet Airways being grounded due to delayed payments to its lessors—GE Capital Aviation Services, SMBC Aviation Capital and Jackson Square—from whom the airline leases aircraft. “Further, the business is unable to fund continuing…

“ I would go away for the five days of Diwali. Somewhere in a jungle... no radio or newspapers and, during that time, there was no TV or internet anyway... The strength that this alone time gave me still helps me handle life and its various experiences. ” Speaking to ‘Humans of Bombay’, a popular Facebook page, PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI offered this profound-sounding tidbit about his life before he became a political phenomenon. Such periods of introspection, he said, gave him the self-confidence to be “undeterred by what others say about you”. How it must stick in political journalists’ collective craw, that the prime minister, unavailable to the press corps at large, is happy to give self-help tips on social media.…

India, in its latest submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has claimed that the rate of carbon sequestration in its forests and croplands jumped by 50 per cent between 2010 and 2014. With dismal stories of rampant deforestation being more common, the news of carbon being sequestered and its rate increasing seemed too good to be true. And, indeed, the UNFCCC has asked India to re-check its submission on forest carbon and forest cover and share more details regarding the sources. What gives? The government defines forests as simply an area with more than 10 per cent tree canopy cover, whether in its internal biennial State of Forest reports, or in its report to the UNFCCC. Their estimate of ‘forest cover’ includes horticultural plantations of…

The India Today Group-Karvy Insights Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll was conducted by Karvy Insights Limited. A total of 12,166 interviews were conducted (69 per cent rural and 31 per cent urban) across 97 parliamentary constituencies in 194 assembly constituencies in 19 states—Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. An additional 1,013 interviews were conducted in 20 parliamentary constituencies in Uttar Pradesh to analyse the most populous and pivotal state for predicting Lok Sabha 2019, taking the total sample size up to 13,179. Different starting points were selected in each of the assembly constituencies and a fixed number of interviews conducted in each, rigorously following the right-hand rule of household selection.…

AKHILESH YADAV of the Samajwadi Party (SP) 10% N. CHANDRABABU NAIDU of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) 9% MAYAWATI of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) 9% ARVIND KEJRIWAL of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) 8% K. CHANDRASEKHAR RAO of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) 8% NAVEEN PATNAIK of the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) 7% SHARAD PAWAR of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) 4% TEJASHWI YADAV of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) 1% M.K. STALIN of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) 1% OTHERS 4% Don’t know/ Can’t say 18%…

WITH OPPOSITION parties joining hands, allies deserting the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the party losing three Hindi heartland states in the recent assembly polls, the 2019 general election presents the BJP with challenges very different from those in 2014. Anti-incumbency, the inability of the top leadership to rein in arrogant local leaders, upper caste anger during last year’s Dalit protests and disgruntled workers are definite reasons for worry for party president Amit Shah, credited with helping the BJP win elections in 13 states and form governments in another four since coming to power in 2014. The recent assembly poll defeats may have dented the aura of invincibility of the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah duo, but Shah has shrugged off the defeats, and would still rely on his own and the…

SALMAN KHAN HAD AN off year producing and starring in a film best remembered for one of the all-time ‘best worst’ dialogues—“Our business is our business, none of your business”—from Race 3. But when it comes to bhai, his business is still very much India’s business. For the first time in three years of INDIA TODAY’S Mood of the Nation (MOTN) survey, Salman’s popularity fell to single digits, but he was still ahead in the popularity race withAkshay Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan close behind. With Thugs of Hindostan, featuring Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, and Shah Rukh’s Zero failing at the box office, Akshay had the distinction of a having a great year with both Pad Man and Gold faring well, and his Kollywood debut 2.0 with…

If you have a home loan and the lending bank/ financial institution is charging a significantly higher interest rate than rates other banks are offering, then it’s time to opt out and a transfer the balance amount of your home loan to another lender. “Balance transfer of a home loan means transferring the unpaid principal amount of the loan to another lender,” says Rishi Mehra, CEO, Wishfin.com. “You get maximum benefit if it’s done in the initial years of the loan tenure as the unpaid amount is maximum at this time.” YOU SHOULD TRANSFER IF... Existing lender is charging a higher rate of interest. If your existing EMI exceeds your monthly budget because of a higher interest rate, switching to a lower rate can help you save on the total…

Writer-director Abhishek Chaubey’s offer to Bhumi Pednekar for the starring role in his film, Sonchiriya, came with a disclaimer: “There are 200 men in it and you are the only woman.” Those men included Manoj Bajpayee, Ranvir Shorey and Ashutosh Rana. But Pednekar was attracted to the strong female character Chaubey had created—like those inhisearlierfilms, Ishqiya, Dedh Ishqiya andUdtaPunjab. “She’s got balls,” says Pednekar about her character. “The actions she takes, even though she lives in a brutal, suppressed and lawless land, are very courageous.” Set in the Chambal made infamous in Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen(1994), based on the life ofPhoolanDevi, Sonchiriya, too, features dacoits and a social message—caste dynamics and the 1970s Emergency play a central role. The story, says Pednekar, has “quirk”. This has been one of the…

THE PASSAGE Based on a successful novel by Justin Cronin, this campy-but-promising (so far) vampire story reboot suggests nefarious US government types would unleash the bloodsuckers in their Mengele-like zeal to find a cure for everything. Hotstar Premium GIRLS HOSTEL The web continues to tap Indian girl power with some success in this engaging (and very brief) original series about four mismatched hostel-mates at St John’s Dental College. Girliyappa BLACK MONDAY The usually engaging Don Cheadle can’t save this pastiche of every Wall Street movie and TV series made since before Michael Douglas went grey. Indulge your “greed is good” nostalgia elsewhere instead. Hotstar Premium…

Yasmin Jahan Nupur Word and Hopes Yasmin Jahan Nupur’s six-hour performance will challenge the imagined boundaries that dictate human relationships. For this thought-provoking and interactive piece, the artist will engage with passers-by. Sajan Mani Art Will Never Die, But Cow? Sajan Mani will write his personal history on the walls and show video recordings of his father in an attempt to build a Dalit archive. Mithu Sen 100 Silent Ways Mithu Sen will question the idea of a staged conversation with a fictional ‘lecture’ presented in a garbled nonsense language. Sahej Rahal Bhramana 7 Sahej Rahal creates indeterminate patchwork beings that perform rituals of transient exit, navigating the real and the fictional on moving ground. During the art fair, Rahal will present the seventh leg of his episodic performance series.…