India Today 12 December 2022

For a year, beginning in December, India will take its place in the centre stage of international affairs. It assumes the rotating presidency of the G20, one of the most influential groupings of world powers, with the bandwidth to steer and even alter the course of geopolitical interactions. It is a role that befits it—a kind of neutral referee, speaking from a position of authority, but also with a uniquely non-partisan voice that every nation can listen to. Coincidentally, India also assumes the presidency of the all-powerful UN Security Council in December for a month and will chair the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the world’s largest regional forum, till September 2023. Suddenly, it feels like India’s moment under the sun. The G20 is the prize seat at the high table.…

“PANCHAYATS IN JAT TALUK HAD PASSED RESOLUTION TO JOIN KARNATAKA. WE’RE SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING IT”BASAVARAJ BOMMAI Chief Minister, Karnataka“THE STATE GOVERNMENT IS DETERMINED TO GET JUSTICE FOR EVERY BROTHER IN THE BORDER AREAS”EKNATH SHINDEChief Minister, Maharashtra As disputes between states go, the row over Belagavi (formerly Belgaum) has a life of its own. Simmering for decades, it periodically froths over—like it did last December and the year before, with many iterations going back in time to India’s state reorganisation on linguistic grounds beginning in the mid-1950s. On all occasions, tensions had risen temporarily in the border district that belongs to Karnataka but which Maharashtra has, for decades, claimed as its territory—on the emotive grounds that it has a significant population of Marathi speakers. It has resurfaced this year too, amid an explosion…

Source: National Statistics Office, CEIC, CRISIL A host of global agencies as well as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have revised India’s growth estimates for the year 2022-23—and beyond. All of them underline the fact that the economy continues to be vulnerable to a slew of external shocks as well as high inflation and rising interest rates that will dampen demand on the domestic front. These call for an urgent need to boost demand through better job creation, while pumping up government spending on infrastructure projects, as the Centre moves closer to its annual budget presentation on February 1. Goldman Sachs Group Inc, for instance, sees India’s economic growth slowing next year, citing a hit to consumer demand from higher borrowing costs and fading benefits from the pandemic reopening. Lowering its…

The Madhya Pradesh leg of the Bharat Jodo Yatra has offered the local Congress a chance to prep up for the next assembly election. November 2023 is still a year away, but state Congress chief and former chief minister Kamal Nath wants to use the yatra’s momentum to the party’s advantage. In a 12-day itinerary, the yatra route maps out 17 assembly segments in six districts in the state’s Malwa and Nimar regions. Barring the tribal-dominated seats here, where the Congress is still strong, both are considered BJP strongholds. In 2018, the Congress had improved its tally here though, mopping up 34 of 66 seats in the Indore and Ujjain divisions (both in Malwa)—a crucial contributor to its victory. A good chance then to try and put some sheen back…

The aspirational middle-class voter has replaced the poor villager as the main target of political messaging in Gujarat. About 45 per cent of its voters are under 40; it’s also India’s second-most urbanised state, with 44.45 per cent of the population living in cities. Some 58 of its 182 seats are now urban—the BJP won 44 of them in 2017—and another 35-40 have graduated to semi-urban status. All this is showing in the political discourse: wooing the middle class is thus an imperative for both BJP and AAP (the Congress reverting to its old KHAM caste alliance means it has little contribution to the poll narrative). The mockery of ‘revdi culture’ notwithstanding, the sops this time are mainly reserved for the young and unemployed across categories. Nothing illustrates the tilt…

It’s unusual for universities to be considered playgrounds of the power elite, but one vice-chancellor in Uttar Pradesh had managed to do exactly that in the past decade and a half. Vinay Kumar Pathak, 53, the V-C of the Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj University in Kanpur, whose misdeeds are now under the scanner of the UP police, held the chair in different universities for almost 13 years. The man himself has gone AWOL but the FIR against him lists a number of charges, including bribery, corruption, illegal confinement and extortion. Apart from this, there is a pending investigation from back in 2018 on charges levelled by a University Grants Commission (UGC) member referring to “plagiarism and misrepresentation of facts” in his CV. One of the charges is that his profile claimed…