category_outlined / News & Politics
India Today
August 26, 2019India Today is the leading news magazine and most widely read publication in India. The magazine’s leadership is unquestioned, so much so that India Today is what Indian journalism is judged by, for its integrity and ability to bring unbiased and incisive perspective to arguably the most dynamic, yet perplexing, region in the world. Breaking news and shaping opinion, it is now a household name and the flagship brand of India’s leading multidimensional media group. Additionally, the weekly brings with it a range supplements like Women, Home, Aspire, Spice and Simply which focus on style, health, education, fashion, etc. and Indian cities.
IN THIS ISSUE
editor-in-chief
A few years after India’s decisive military victory over Pakistan in the 1971 war, D.K. Barooah, the president of the Congress party during the Emergency, coined the memorable epithet ‘India is Indira, Indira is India’. It was not without reason. Mrs Indira Gandhi straddled India’s political landscape like a colossus. History, it seems, is repeating itself nearly half a century later. The BJP’s second consecutive Lok Sabha win, with even greater numbers than in 2014, has decimated the opposition. The Congress party’s response has been to play another round of dynastic musical chairs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi towers over India’s political scene quite like the statue of Sardar Patel he inaugurated last year. The Karvy Insights-INDIA TODAY Mood of the Nation (MOTN) 2019 survey reflects this dramatically altered political reality. An…
india today
CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Aroon Purie VICE CHAIRPERSON: Kalli Purie GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Raj Chengappa GROUP CREATIVE EDITOR: Nilanjan Das; GROUP PHOTO EDITOR: Bandeep Singh MANAGING EDITORS: Kai Jabir Friese, Rajesh Jha CONSULTING EDITOR: Ajit Kumar Jha (Research) EXECUTIVE EDITORS: S. Sahaya Ranjit, Sandeep Unnithan MUMBAI: M.G. Arun DEPUTY EDITORS: Prachi Bhuchar, Uday Mahurkar, Manisha Saroop HYDERABAD: Amarnath K. Menon SENIOR EDITORS: Shweta Punj, Sasi Nair JAIPUR: Rohit Parihar SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Kaushik Deka, Ashish Mukherjee MUMBAI: Suhani Singh, Kiran Dinkar Tare; PATNA: Amitabh Srivastava ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Shougat Dasgupta, Chinki Sinha KOLKATA: Romita Sengupta; BHOPAL: Rahul Noronha; THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Jeemon Jacob ASSISTANT EDITOR: Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri PUNE: Aditi S. Pai PHOTO DEPARTMENT: Vikram Sharma (Deputy Photo Editor), Rajwant Singh Rawat, Yasir Iqbal (Principal Photographers), Chandra Deep Kumar (Senior Photographer); MUMBAI: Mandar Suresh Deodhar (Chief Photographer), Danesh Adil Jassawala (Photographer); KOLKATA: Subir Halder (Principal Photographer); CHENNAI: N.G. Jaison…
presenting india today insight
WHY THE RBI’S REPO RATE CUTS HAVE NOT (YET) LED TO CHEAPER LOANS by M.G. Arun In its June 2019 monetary policy review, the RBI had cut the repo rate by 25 basis points (0.25 per cent). Following the latest rate cut, the cumulative back-to-back reduction in the repo rate this year has been 110 basis points (1.1 per cent), with the rate currently at 5.4 per cent http://bit.ly/33nD5Vc Why the return of Sonia Gandhi wrecks Rahul’s plans by Kaushik Deka When Rahul had resigned, he had said that neither mother Sonia nor sister Priyanka would succeed him http://bit.ly/2KBCXc0 When Parliament meant business by Ajit Kumar Jha The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha passed a record 36 bills and was the most productive since 1952 http://bit.ly/2MdJXiJ The ultimate litmus test by Shwweta Punj How history judges…
kashmir’s info wars
No one with internet access—that is anyone in India who does not live in Kashmir—can be unaware of the eerie disconnect between what our government (and much of our media) is telling us is happening in Kashmir and what is being reported in the foreign press and in sections of the Indian media. On the one hand is an official story of peace and quiet, of a population accepting of its diminished Union territory status and perhaps cautiously optimistic about the future (if not exuberant like those in Jammu and Ladakh). In this version, normalcy is returning, albeit gradually, and there have been no demonstrations involving more than 20 people. On the other hand, reputable foreign media have reported the use of tear gas and pellet guns to disperse as many…
foreign investigations
Over the past couple of weeks, the Delhi High Court has weighed in on the treatment of foreign prisoners in Indian jails. A report by lawyer Ajay Verma, appointed as part of a public interest litigation to investigate the conditions in which foreigners are held, convinced the court that all prisoners’ access to their embassies needed to be ensured. Verma confined his study to Delhi, finding that even in the capital almost three quarters of prisoners didn’t receive consular access. The most recent nationwide statistics on foreign prisoners in India is from 2015. The foreign prisoners, mostly from Bangladesh, alleged that Indian prisoners find it easier to get bail even if the crime committed is the same. They also said they found court proceedings difficult to follow, mostly due to…
archaic modernity
Subramaniam critiques the easy and condescending misuse of scientific language by non-scientists committed to Hindu nationalism to create triumphant fictions of timeless Hindu supremacy The man in the Mumbai suburban train was carrying the latest iPhone XR but I was completely taken by his home screen. It was a deity I recognised from a childhood in Kerala—Ayyappan, the handsome Hindu god of growth. My uncles used to talk of making the pilgrimage to Sabarimala, where existed the most famous of Ayyapan’s temples. However, the confluence of religion and 4G technology in India did not strike me until I began reading Banu Subramaniam’s profound Holy Science. In it she systematically probes, prods and unravels the unsettling camaraderie between religion and science that marks modern Indian social and political discourse, revealing sometimes disturbing, always…
