India Today November 29, 2021

If you are not a millennial or a member of Gen Z, the chances are that you must be confused about what cryptocurrency is. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation worldwide. One of the beneficiaries has been cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Transactions are verified and records maintained by a decentralised system using online ledgers and encrypted data. This is called blockchain technology, commonly used in many financial transactions. For decades, Indians chose to invest their savings in real estate and gold. The stock market boom of the past three decades added a third avenue. India’s market capitalisation, the total value of all stocks being traded, will nearly double from the present $3 trillion to $5 trillion by 2024, predicts a recent report by investment bankers, Goldman Sachs. Low interest rates from…

Two weeks before commencement of the winter session of Parliament, the Union government, on November 14, passed an ordinance to extend the tenures of the directors of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) up to five years. Both posts had a fixed tenure of two years, irrespective of the retirement age of 60. Apart from amending the Delhi Police Special Establishment (DPSE) Act and the Central Vigilance Act (CVC) to enable this, the Centre has also amended the Fundamental Rules of Central Civil Services, introduced in 2005, giving itself powers to extend the tenures of the defence secretary, home secretary, director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), and secretary of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) by up to two years. These officers too have a maximum tenure…

Former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s project of teaching the Congress a lesson—having quit his old party in circumstances he described as “humiliating”—seems to have derailed. The BJP seems to have lost interest in his newly floated Punjab Lok Congress (PLC), and word is that Union home minister Amit Shah recently declined to meet him. The BJP feels the titular maharaja of Patiala may have overstated his influence over the agitating farmers’ unions. The 18 MLAs and seven MPs who’ve thrown in their lot with the 79-year-old politician want Amarinder to be a mentor rather than leader in the state polls early next year. Amarinder has more worries: the application to register his party is still under process with the Election Commission. Rough weather ahead for the captain and his…

Three years ago, Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi had breezed into the Rajya Sabha with the support of the Trinamool Congress (TMC). It wasn’t a one-off gesture. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee has nominated new inductee and former Goa CM Luizinho Faleiro for a Rajya Sabha seat from West Bengal; another recent entrant, Sushmita Dev, was elected to the Upper House in September. With the TMC harbouring expansionist dreams, party leaders wonder how many more ‘outsiders’ will corner the state’s quota of 22 Rajya Sabha berths. —Sandeep Unnithan with Anilesh S. Mahajan, Kaushik Deka, Romita Datta, Amitabh Srivastava and Amarnath K. Menon…

The queues at the Bihar chief minister’s residence have been growing longer ever since Nitish Kumar resumed his weekly Janata Darbar in July—after a five-year hiatus. The range of complaints/petitions is diverse: from a girl seeking treatment for her cows to a resident who apparently wants his village to become a part of Uttar Pradesh. Nitish lends everyone a sympathetic ear—the kind of patience that becomes your second nature when you’ve had such a long run at managing a difficult state and diverse, differently challenging allies.…

At least one senior Congress Working Committee (CWC) member is unhappy with Salman Khurshid’s new book where the former Union minister equates Hindutva (not Hinduism) with ISIS. The leader rued how ‘highly educated individuals with little mass connect’ are a liability for the party and that “Politics is about respecting public sentiment”. What’s left unsaid is that respecting ‘public sentiment’ in the run-up to a polarising poll campaign for Uttar Pradesh means winking at the bigotry Khurshid flags in his book.…