Table of contents for 20 February 2017 in Open Magazine

LETTER OF THE WEEK Critics of demonetisation have failed to look at the larger picture and the ways in which the decision will—and is—aiding India’s economy (‘Modi’s Moderniser’ by Swapan Dasgupta, February 13th, 2017). While the impact might not necessarily be proved by numbers in the short run, one has to keep in mind how going cashless and cracking down on illegal money helps the state in the long run. This is something that we often forget about in this country where the easiest thing to do is point fingers and play the blame game. Fortunately, unlike the media, the common man has been ready to accept the challenges of demonetisation. This is why despite currency shortages and empty ATMs, our economy and society have managed to bounce back. As…

ON FEBRUARY 8TH, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) held back on reducing policy rates. Markets and the Government would have liked interest rates to fall and the former reacted badly, with bond yields rising sharply in response to the decision. If the economic signals emanating from the RBI are important, so is the ‘political’ message: the six-member Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) unanimously agreed not to cut rates. There is plenty of evidence that prices have cooled in recent months. There are indications that this is likely to be the case in the months ahead. The RBI has also released the results of its December-ending quarter survey of inflation expectations of households, a closely watched index that shows what people at large expect of price levels. The index has seen…

FIFTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD Sampat Pal sits under a peepal tree in Sighuwa village, holding a jansabha (public meet). Clad in her trademark pink sari, the founder of the Gulabi Gang is addressing a small crowd of her old comrades who have gathered from nearby villages. “Do you remember how we took on the public works department of Fatehpur,” she asks the women. “What was the condition of that bus stop? It was so bad that people couldn’t use it, buses refused to halt. What did we do… dhaan ropayi di thhi na stop parr (didn’t we sow the paddy crop in the stop)? That caught the attention of the department and we got a shiny new bus stop, but we weren’t able to walk for three months because our legs were swollen…

THIS BOOK BEGINS with a transcript of two emails. That’s not a great start. When the book’s title suggests it holds a ‘love story’, the last thing one wants to read is a lovers’ email exchange. Luckily for us, it ends soon after introducing us to the two central characters, Reva and Suveer, who reconnected three years ago on Facebook. The mail exchange is to fix a date to commemorate Reva’s older sister, Aboli’s birthday. Suveer, who was in love with Aboli when she passed away, revisits memories of his first love with this annual meeting with Reva. For Reva, this ritual is more than just remembering her sister, but also her past, her childhood home. Nostalgia soaked pages follow, with childhood games and trees throwing their shadows on sleepy…

AFTER YEARS, I FOUND myself last week at my old tailor’s in Connaught Place. Exchange of pleasantries done, I was astonished at the decades-old measurements produced. Yes, yours truly had expanded at the waist. Advancing years and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle do exact a toll, don’t they? But the real surprise came when he inquired if I had any idea whether a well-known liaison man, who has for aeons represented one of the top corporate houses in the capital, was still plying his shadowy trade. Yes, he was. But why was he keen to get in touch? Paisa, he confessed. It seems over the years he had given him “very good business”, as he put it, sending him with samples of expensive cloth for suiting and shirting to the homes…

THE ANGLOPHONE LITERARY world seldom gets an occasion to work itself into a frenzy. While the romances and alliances, tiffs and spats between authors might sneak into the headlines occasionally, they are generators of chatter and not cause for celebration. But then once in a few years, the church bells ring, and the press is stopped as news comes our way that a new Sir Salman Rushdie book is in the offing. He is, after all, the multi-award winning author of 12 previous novels, which include Midnight’s Children that won the Booker Prize 1981, and the Best of the Booker Prize nearly three decades after it was written. While The Satanic Verses (1988), might have changed his life in ways he could have never wanted, his other works like The…

FOR MORE THAN six months now, the people of the United Kingdom, and the thousands of foreign nationals who live and work here, have been inhabiting limbo-land. To some, it’s more like purgatory. Is the final destination going to be heaven or hell? For some, it is the cause of immense anxiety, although most Brits are generally rather phlegmatic by disposition. What will be will be. Why waste too much time or emotional energy worrying about something you can’t do much about? The British had their moment of supreme political power and they exercised it—voting narrowly in a referendum last June to quit the European Union. Now we are living with the consequences. Or rather, we are just starting to learn what those consequences will be. And, however sanguine some…

Ever since the British philosopher John Stuart Mill ruled out representative government as unsuitable for India, the country has held a peculiar fascination for political scientists. Almost exceptional in every respect—the size of its territory, its vast number of poor people and its deep social and ethnic divisions— India precluded the possibility of democracy. From 1861, when Mill delivered his judgment, down to the middle of the 20th century when Selig Harrison, another Mill-like observer, prophesied doom and disintegration, democracy and India have been considered antithetical. Instead of reducing interest, this negative delineation has spurred attention. India has been subjected to scholarly journeys resembling something of the kind attempted by Alexis de Tocqueville with America in the 18th century. Much like the new-fangled idea of democracy then, democracy in India,…

SINCE JANUARY was Thyroid Awareness month, let’s use this opportunity to dispel myths about the most common thyroid disorder, hypothyroidism, which results from an underactive thyroid. Three decades ago, when I was cutting my teeth in endocrinology, iodine deficiency-related hypothyroidism, thyroid enlargement, and mental retardation were some of the most serious public health problems in India. Fortunately, iodine deficiency has been virtually eradicated with the implementation of universal salt iodation. Presently the most common cause of hypothyroidism in India, as in the West, is autoimmunity. The thyroid gland is a classic example of an endocrine (ductless) gland. By secreting hormones into the blood, endocrine glands are able to deliver their impact on the body distant from their source of origin. The thyroid is a butterfly shaped gland, barely 5 cm…

WHEN THE CITY of Mumbai goes to the polls to elect the men and women who will represent them at the municipal ward level, as usual the educated middle-class will be absent. They are seen less in Parliament and Assembly polls, but when it comes to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections, it does not even register in them that this might be the most important vote that they will be casting. But with very good reason. All the choices, or at least those with any winning possibility, are usually from the same murky criminal communal corrupt pool and have been this way for decades. The municipal corporation should be important because it has a direct relation to one’s immediate quality of life, like the upkeep of roads or supply of…

WHEN I FIRST began corresponding with novelist Bharati Mukherjee in New York, it was spring of 2015 and a time of dreaming. ‘I am so honored by your interest in my work,’ Mukherjee had written graciously in her letter; this became a precursor to a few impossible plans. Author of acclaimed novels such as The Tiger’s Daughter (1971), Wife (1975), Jasmine (1989), Desirable Daughters (2002) and Miss New India (2011), Mukherjee had previously taught at McGill University, Skidmore College and CUNY before retiring from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2013, and was now spending her time in Manhattan, where she also taught a course in Columbia’s MFA program. Her husband Clark Blaise had just finished his book on inherited diseases, especially myotonic muscular dystrophy, a disease that was ravaging…

‘LOITERING WITH INTENT’ is a delicious phrase. It feels cocky and twinkly-eyed, defiant and ready to laugh. It is also the perfect name for this languid collection of travel stories from the past decade, which covers South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Ritu Menon is a great visitor of museums, relisher of ruins, avoider of crowds, drinker of wine and collector of people. The book moves forward at a slow, meandering pace with the impossibly long sentences of a traveller who is thoughtful and unhurried. This is the diary not just of a happy traveller, but of a happy life, a life well lived. Full of friends, good food and long conversations. Today, a collection of travel stories interspersed with black-and-white sketches feels like it has tip-toed in from…

The Kid Who Courts Controversy Contrary to what the tabloids have been suggesting, 2016 debutant and star-kid Harshvardhan Kapoor will have you know that Badlapur director Sriram Raghavan did not develop cold feet when it came to working with him. Kapoor and Raghavan were in talks to make a thriller, but the movie will not happen now. And it’s not because of the abysmal failure of the 26-year-old’s debut film that Raghavan decided to nix the project. According to Kapoor, Raghavan wanted to go into production “immediately”, but as the actor was neck deep completing Lootera director Vikramaditya Motwane’s vigilante film Bhavesh Joshi, he decided there was no way he could get into Raghavan’s film simultaneously. The actor, of course, is no stranger to controversy. His very vocal objection to…