/ News & Politics
India Today
January 27, 2020India 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
In the nationwide din of protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or the CAA, and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC), it’s easy to lose sight of the more pressing issues. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, to borrow Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign-winning slogan. The Indian economy is in the midst of a prolonged slowdown. It has been growing at just 5 per cent, marking six consecutive quarters of slow growth. Constraints on the economy are from both the supply and the demand side. Factories are not producing cars and real estate developers aren’t building houses because people aren’t buying. Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs), a traditional bellwether for the economy, aren’t moving fast enough—sales in the September 2019 quarter increased by just 2 per cent compared to 16 per…
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 SENIOR DEPUTY EDITORS: Uday Mahurkar, Manisha Saroop HYDERABAD: Amarnath K. Menon DEPUTY EDITOR: Shweta Punj SENIOR EDITORS: Kaushik Deka, Sasi Nair, Anilesh Mahajan MUMBAI: Suhani Singh; JAIPUR: Rohit Parihar SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Ashish Mukherjee MUMBAI: Kiran Dinkar Tare; PATNA: Amitabh Srivastava ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Shougat Dasgupta, Sonali Acharjee 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), Yasir Iqbal (Deputy Chief Photographer), Rajwant Singh Rawat (Principal Photographer), Chandra Deep Kumar (Senior Photographer); MUMBAI: Mandar Suresh Deodhar (Chief Photographer), Danesh Adil Jassawala…
feted cop lands in terror dragnet
On the afternoon of January 11, when a private car suspected of carrying a dreaded militant was flagged down at a security checkpoint in south Kashmir’s Kulgam on the Srinagar-Jammu highway, it netted three Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) operatives: Syed Naveed Mushtaq Shah, a wanted HM commander, militant Rafi Ahmad Rather and Irfan Shafi Mir, an overground worker of the outfit. But it was the fourth occupant who took the security establishment by surprise—J&K deputy superintendent of police (DySP) Davinder Singh. Singh was arrested for alleged terror links, along with the militants he was accompanying. The J&K police said he would be treated ‘like a militant’. Posted at the time of arrest with the anti-hijacking unit of the police force at Srinagar airport, Singh is a decorated counter-insurgency officer. In 2018, he…
the man with the moves
In the past month since the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) came into being, one of its most vocal opponents has been Prashant Kishor, the election strategist-turned-politician. Kishor’s rant against the CAA—in the form of a series of tweets—came immediately after his party, the JD(U), voted in its favour in Parliament. He offered to resign from the party, but JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar would have none of it. On January 13, Kumar acknowledged the need for a debate on the CAA in the state assembly. The statement came a day after Kishor publicly thanked the Congress leadership for their “formal and unequivocal rejection” of the CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). He also said, with an air of knowing authority, that the CAA/ NRC would…
india hits the streets
According to data put out by Delhi Police, 2019 was a record-breaking year of protests. And that’s not counting—December 15 being the cut-off date for this data set—the various anti-CAA protests that have rocked the capital from late December through January. The police in Bengaluru said 82 protests were held in the city in just one month from December 12, with city police commissioner Bhaskar Rao estimating that this number possibly matches the tally in Delhi in the same period. Records on demonstrations have only been kept since 2011, so it’s only possible to say with certainty that this has been the worst in the past eight years, but we should hope the government will see it for what it is. 12,652 Protests and dharnas organised in Delhi in 2019 (up…
taking delhi from the people
The government might have gone out of its way to justify the redevelopment of Delhi’s emblematic Central Vista precinct, but none of its explanations has made this sudden move seem less opaque. Those in opposition—a collective of a few hundred architects, urban planners, environmentalists, heritage conservationists and citizens—have continued to insist that this proposal be re-examined. The clamour has not abated. We do not know if the prime minister and his cabinet have been rightly advised. A proposal like this has ramifications, and it must not come into effect without consultative decision-making. A regard for processes and institutions sets us apart from dictatorships and monarchies. The entire Central Vista belongs to citizens. The space has symbolised democracy To implement its plan of bloating governmental office space, the Centre will have to usurp…
