Tabla de contenidos para 24 July 2017 en Open Magazine

editor@openmedianetwork.in LETTER OF THE WEEK There are no permanent friends or foes in politics, the environs of which let politicians change their hues like chameleons and shift allegiance from one political party to another. (‘Breaking Free’, July 17th, 2017). Nitish Kumar’s case is typical and distinctive because after enjoying power with the BJP in Bihar, he abruptly chose to sever that alliance and allied himself instead with its arch-enemy, the RJD. He was fortunate enough to retain his post as Chief Minister. But now, after finding that it was a bad proposition, he is manoeuvring to radically change his political strategy and return to his old political partner, the BJP, again to remain on top of Bihar politics and retain power in Patna too. His new plan is to steadily…

YOU HAVE RS 50,000 crore in losses and not a hope of ever being able to recover it, so what should you do? You could do nothing for starters, because while the amount does seem somewhat alarming, it is owed to the Government and does not therefore have to ever be repaid, something with plenty of precedence in the Indian PSU scheme of things. True, the Government has indicated it has had enough of running an airline for its employees, but we all know that good intention is some distance away from action. In any case ministers or governments change and each one comes with a new plan for the airline and thus time continues to remain a great friend of white elephants. In the interim, however, when the Government…

THE CONCEPT OF liberalism in various mutant forms like ‘left-liberal’ and ‘libtard’ seems to be under attack globally. Originating in America, an idea has taken hold that liberals are effete, elite, hypocritical, unpatriotic, and out of touch with ground-level realities. What is sometimes forgotten in India is that the arguments that led up to independence, the writing of the Constitution and the founding of the modern republic were rooted in liberal political traditions that had by the 1940s become largely indigenous. This is true for many of the intellectual forebears of both the BJP and the Congress, who are claimed (sometimes by both parties) in the pantheon of heroes. The perceived clash between liberals and nationalists, and between liberal values and the history of the Right, is partially illusory. India…

INDIRA: INDIA’S MOST POWERFUL PRIME MINISTER Sagarika Ghose Juggernaut 342 Pages | Rs 699 WITH AN ESTIMATED 150 biographies already surveying Indira Gandhi and her legacy, the first question we must ask of the latest addition to the list is if it inspires any fresh reflection. Or is it merely a readable rehash of dated material to ‘cash in’, perhaps, on a centennial year and a vast crowd of young readers unlikely to pick up denser, heavier volumes? Sagarika Ghose’s new ‘journalistic portrait’, with a brilliant Raghu Rai cover photograph and a significantly less brilliant subtitle, passes the test. And it passes, not so much because it brings to the fore groundbreaking new material (despite her interview with Priyanka Gandhi) as much as because it reveals the makings of a…

Frenemies Are Forever It’s true what they say: nothing is permanent in Bollywood. Not enduring friendships, nor enmities. It’s no secret that there was a falling out between Sushant Singh Rajput and his Kai Po Che director Abhishek Kapoor when the actor chose Shekhar Kapur’s Paani over Fitoor, which Abhishek had written with him in mind. It had to have been a tad embarrassing for Abhishek, who’d given Sushant his film debut. Just a few years after that saga unravelled, here we are today. Fitoor bombed, badly, and Paani is no longer being made. Abhishek is in need of a comeback, and Sushant badly needs a hit after Raabta. The two have decided to put their differences behind them and reunite on Kedarnath, a drama disguised as a love story,…

INDIRA GANDHI’S Emergency has been in the news lately. A good 42 years after she clamped down on the opposition and other critics, a new book and a fresh film have brought the focus back on that dark interlude in the life of the democratic republic. At a book launch in the capital, despite author Sagarika Ghose’s panegyric attempt to paint her as India’s ‘most powerful prime minister’—‘the only man in a Cabinet of women’ as someone had mischievously dubbed her in those gender-insensitive times—the distinguished panellists Arun Shourie and P Chidambaram faced a volley of questions about the 19-month-long eclipse of the basic rights of Indians. It was hard to wipe off that stain from her otherwise mixed record as prime minister, the highpoint of which was the creation…

IF THERE ISan Achilles Heel of India’s war machine, it is the snail-paced system of procuring weapons for the Army. Plans to equip the armed forces with cutting-edge defence systems—ranging from bigticket armaments such as fighter planes to relatively modest items such as specialised guns —often die a slow death in bureaucratic committees. Some changes may, however, be afoot. The Union Government has delegated financial authority to the Army to make emergency purchases if ammunition and other stocks fall below critical levels—that is, below what is needed to fight a war for 10 days. While this may not be enough—the constaint being the availability of funds from the Budget—it is better than the committee system where any purchase takes an excruciating length of time. In any case, the new spending…

Without Lalu Prasad Yadav as his father, Tejashwi Yadav had very little chance of becoming the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar at just 27 years of age. He is now being investigated for the appointment and has also been raided for corruption by the CBI, and for this too, some of the onus is borne by the deeds of his family. Tejashwi says the charges relate to a time when he was 14 years old and did not even have a moustache. He has trashed rumours of his resignation and portrayed the charges as political vendetta against him and his family. Nepotism, however, cuts both away. When you get all the bounties that come with being Lalu Prasad’s son, you must also bear the rest of what comes alongside. The…

THE ARREST OF Dileep, one of Kerala’s most popular actors, over a plethora of charges, including gang rape, criminal conspiracy, blackmail, attempt to destroy evidence and an assortment of other alleged crimes, is a wake-up call for an Indian film industry known for its brazen misogyny, unaccounted-for wealth and cartelisation. It ought to send shockwaves all the way from Kodambakkam in Chennai to Patna and Hyderabad (the seats of the Tamil, Bhojpuri and Telugu film industries). It should also be studied closely in Mumbai, the Bollywood citadel where behind all the glamour, razzmatazz and dizzying heights of stardom and glory lie ugly truths plaguing one of the world’s top-ranking movie industries: the objectification of women, casting couches, criminal intimidation, assaults of all kind, and outright male chauvinism. While men in…

Warp and woof, quill and shuttle Countless cloth and colours, a thousand hanks and skeins with ten thousand names, ten thousand places. But there is one thread only —Bulleh Shah W HEN SMRITI Dixit first started experimenting with creating art on textiles in 1995, she chose the clothes that were used to dress the gods in her home. They were accessible and the golds and reds were attractive. But it was also an act of rebellion. The puja room was the one place in the house that was off limits and it was taboo to use the clothes of deities in personal clothing. But then, for an artist trained at the MSU, Baroda, and who worked in sculpture and paintings, working with textiles was itself an act of rebellion. “People…

OF LATE, several of my patients have sought advice about giving up wheat and wheat products. Usually it is those struggling to lose weight; sometimes it is those who have stomach-related complaints like bloating or diarrhoea. The internet is flooded with dramatic articles blaming wheat as the chief ill that plagues human health in modern times. It is important, therefore, to sift the wheat from the chaff. The human race exists today as a result of cultivation. Without it, it is likely that food would have become scarce. Wheat cultivation is thought to have started in the eastern Mediterranean and central Asian region, and reached India around 6,500 BCE. Just three plants—rice, maize and wheat—provide more than half the world’s energy. Wheat is the staple for one-third of the earth’s…

OH, TO BE in Mumbai now that the monsoon is here! Actually, you are not likely to hear too many Mumbaikars saying that because this is the season of stifling humidity, sudden downpours almost spiteful in their intensity, traffic jams so bad it’s quicker to walk, and potholes so large they are full of little cars. At the same time, the all-too-familiar threat of water-cuts, which looms over us if Mumbai lake reservoirs don’t get full, makes everyone more than willing to bear minor inconveniences like slipping into an open drain. The last place you will want to go in the monsoon is the beach. But so small is the city of open spaces that that’s where people do go if there’s a slight break in the weather. However, to…

I N HIS 1967 novel, The Mimic Men, VS Naipaul wrote, ‘The empires of our time were short-lived, but they have altered the world forever; their passing away is their least significant feature.’ This was a prescient observation. At that time, rapid decolonisation and the emergence of independent nation-states seemed the most salient and remarkable developments in world politics. The age of decolonisation was also accompanied by the rise of nationalist historiographies in the Third World—a body of work that regarded the demise of European empires as historically and morally desirable. Five decades on, though, historians are not only emphasising the lasting imprint left by the old empires, but also questioning the inevitability and desirability of a world of nation-states. This body of writing is strongly shaped by concerns about…

A FEW WEEKS AGO, the filmmaker Ashim Ahluwalia found himself in the dingy neighbourhood of a central Mumbai chawl. Seated beside him, and ringed in by a bevy of burly men known in the locality as ‘shooters’, was the protagonist of one of the city’s most mythic mobster folk tales. It was dark. The don, seated there, like always, was silent and impenetrable. About almost three years had gone by since the filmmaker, along with his lead actor Arjun Rampal, first began interacting with the don and his family about the possibility of collaborating on a film on the mobster’s life. Much of this time was spent convincing him to approve the project, and then, perhaps the most crucial aspect, trying to win his trust and candour. Ahluwalia was sitting…

“People love the hardworking-immigrantwho- makes-good narrative. It allows them to feel that they live in a benign, meritocratic world” AKHIL SHARMA novelist AN OBEDIENT FATHER (2000), Family Life (2014), A Life of Adventure and Delight (2017), the very titles of Akhil Sharma’s books hint at the kind of author he is—precise and fuss free. If the goal, as James Baldwin, told us in 1984, is to ‘write a sentence as clean as a bone’, then 45-year-old Sharma has achieved that, not merely in his titles but also in his content. This is no mean accomplishment. Baldwin explained: ‘The hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. It becomes more difficult because you have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of which you didn’t…

MAID IN INDIA: STORIES OF OPPORTUNITY AND INEQUALITY INSIDE OUR HOMES Tripti Lahiri Aleph 314 Pages | Rs 599 DIVIDING MY LIFE between India and Norway is akin to moving between luxury and want. India may have the world’s largest number of poor while Norway has one of the highest standards of living. But when it comes to the luxury of time, even the relatively poor Indians have more at their disposal than the country where everyone is theoretically a millionaire. Time famine is a leading source of ill health and relationship meltdowns in the West but an army of helpers, child minders, cooks, cleaners, gardeners, guards, sweepers and drivers ensure India’s urban dwellers enjoy a life free of tedium that Norwegians can only dream of. This human underclass— how…

IF THERE ARE two things that go together, it’s action movies and Charlize Theron. From the daring warrior in Mad Max: Fury Road to the cold and calculated Cipher in The Fate of the Furious, Theron will now be seen in her gritty role of an undercover M16 agent in Atomic Blonde. Set during the Cold War, Theron’s portrayal is raw and edgy. I catch up with her on the sets of Universal Studios: We’ve always seen action roles reserved for male actors, but now, actresses such as you are being offered these parts. Is Hollywood changing? Yes and no. It’s a complicated question because I’m aware that the first time I saw Sigourney Weaver in Alien, her character awoke me as a young girl. So, I feel that we…