Table of contents for 04 June 2018 in Open Magazine

THERE ARE NO saints in politics. That is the nature of the beast. A Union minister, attacked repeatedly for alleged corruption by the spokesperson of an opposition party, has now dug up a lot of dirt on his traducer. It seems the accuser himself was no paragon of virtue. He is said to have made money hand over fist as a key aide of a chief minister and used every stratagem available to launder it. When I last met the minister, not only did he offer a seemingly convincing defence against some of the charges levelled by the opposition party’s spokesperson, but had quite a few of his own to hurl in return. His point was that while he had a background in business, his accuser had been a mere…

I a today would career . He rather spanning died write , after half about over a century 30 Philip books Roth in and storytelling, at 85, in New York on May 22nd. Instinctively, I return to The Human Stain (2000), my favourite, and realise how it has become a master work of fiction as a pre-history of our colour-conscious, gender-militant, America Never age. ‘It was in the summer of 1998 that my neighbour Coleman Silk—who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classics professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more as the dean of faculty—confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four year old cleaning woman who worked down at…

#1 It’s to : You are - up you respon sible for your money and you should never forget this. So, keep a budget, review it regularly and make sure you include a plan for regular savings. By knowing what you earn and what you spend, you will know where you stand and where you’re heading. #2 Be realistic: Don’t spend more than you earn, and only borrow what you can realistically afford to repay. #3 Keep track: Keep records of all your financial transactions in one place – from bank statements to investment statements. Check your statements regularly, and talk to your financial institution if there are any inconsistencies, or if there is anything you don’t understand. #4 Protect assets: Make sure your you have got adequate insurance –…

1 Check what you have: Keep track of any existing insurance policies and check the insurance cover you have and its validity. 2 Get full cover: Think about all the different kinds of insurance available – from vehicle, house and contents cover to health insurance and life insurance – and decide which ones you need to protect your financial security. 3 Get expert advice: Talk to a qualified insurance adviser who can provide advice about your (and your family’s) insurance requirements. 4 Read the fine print: With any insurance policy, read the fine print and make sure you understand exactly what you are and are not covered for. Also find out exactly what it’s costing you.…

What are the most important skills an employer is looking for? The top answer, if you ask Google, has nothing to do with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Ranked No 1 is a ‘Positive Attitude’, followed by ‘Communication Skills’. Clearly, the proficiencies that drive the adult world are more fundamental. They are the ‘soft’ skills, if you wish. At workplaces—whether you are in sales or automation, a doctor or a teacher—it is your ability to grasp a situation, empathise, think, and get your mind across that is most highly valued. This is also why art and its practitioners are so crucial to our existence. The authors and artists, musicians and filmmakers, actors and sportsmen who appear on these pages guide us to think and speak. They influence us in ways…

All Work, No Play The Deols are an emotional family. Always were, and more than likely always will be. Bobby Deol has revealed to me that his brother Sunny is “neck deep” shooting his next directorial venture, a launch pad for his son Karan, titled Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas. Bobby said watching Sunny “completely immersed” in the film reminded him of the months leading up to his own debut in Barsaat some 23 years ago. “Bhaiyya had put his own career on hold to make sure my launch was shaping up the way he had planned. He was the producer of the film, but he was involved in everything. His friends used to tell him that he shouldn’t ignore his own work in the process, but he paid no…

THE LONGEST RUNNING play in the world is not a musical. In fact, it is a murder mystery called The Mousetrap which has been running in London’s St Martin’s Theatre since 1952. That’s 68 years! Based on Agatha Christie’s short-story Three Blind Mice, its original producer thought it would run for 14 months. Christie herself gave it eight months. That’s probably why she gave the rights as a birthday present to her grandson. That’s some silver spoon in the mouth. Generally, of course, it’s musicals which rule both New York’s Broadway and London’s West End. The hottest ticket in both places at present is Hamilton, an unlikely sung and rapped musical based on one of America’s ‘Founding Fathers’, Alexander Hamilton, with the twist that Black actors play the lead White…

Many decades ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, Noam Chomsky wrote an essay on the role of public intellectuals and why they must use their positions to speak truth to power and sift out the lies being peddled to distract people’s attention. Indian democracy offers such a privilege not only to intellectuals, but also to people who have made a name for themselves and are often in the public glare, directly or through their work. What is disturbing is that while it is important to uphold the truth, ‘feigned naivete’ tends to takes over. As Einstein had warned us, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.” That is why the individuals who…

“THE IDEA THAT ART IS SOME RAREFIED INTELLECTUAL MASCULINE ACTIVITY, THAT OLD ‘MALE GENIUS’ THING, IS JUST NONSENSE” SIRI HUSTVEDT author Siri Hustvedt is the author of a book of poems, three collections of essays, a book of nonfiction and six novels. She writes and lectures extensively on neuroscience, psychoanalysis and art. The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2010) is a personal investigation of the evolution of neurology and psychiatry as a patient suffering from lifelong migraines. She has delivered the annual Sigmund Freud lecture in Vienna and the keynote lecture on the work of Søren Kierkegaard for his 200th birthday. For some years Hustvedt volunteered as a writing instructor to psychiatric patients. Writing for her is a way of arriving—something happens that is difficult to…

ONE CANNOT GO on and on about justice delivery. There are many other things to write about. Therefore, this will be the last piece on this topic. A little bit on semantics first. The terms ‘pendency’, ‘arrears’ and ‘backlog’ are often used synonymously. However, if a distinction is to be drawn, ‘pendency’ means the total number of cases in the court system. Indeed, high levels of pendency can indicate faith in the judicial system. ‘Arrears’ are an excess of new cases over disposed cases. Arrears contribute to pendency. The word ‘backlog’ is sometimes used in the sense of pendency and sometimes in the sense of delays. Pendency is a stock. Arrears (new cases minus disposed cases) are flows and better indicators of change and incremental improvement. What does one do…

What has changed with the mutual fund re-categorisation? Does it help investors? The market regulator felt that the various names for funds used by different AMCs was making it difficult for investors to make a clear comparison between two funds. So, sometime in October 2017, SEBI came out with a circular which sought that all mutual funds must be ‘true-to-label’ with uniform characteristics within the same category. According to this rule, AMCs can only have one mutual fund offering under each category. As a result, schemes are being renamed, re-categorized or merged and terminated. From now on, investors will be able to select funds from five categories: equity, debt, hybrid, solution-oriented and others. This is a very good move for investors as no more will they face the challenge of…

THE RTI STORY is an authoritative chronicle of the evolution of what has come to be known as the ‘right to information movement’ in India. It traces the history of the grassroots peoples’ struggle, which articulated the demand for an effective right to an information regime, and the subsequent national campaign for a law codifying the right. The book deals with the pre-2005 journey of the right to information movement—upto the passage of the national RTI Act. Though legislations guaranteeing people the right to access information exists in more than 100 countries across the world, the Indian experience of the enactment of the RTI law has been unique. The RTI Story documents how the legislation in India was demanded, and fundamentally shaped, by the ordinary citizens of the country—living in…