Table of contents for 10 December 2018 in Open Magazine

MODI AS PRIME FACTOR There is no doubt that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the prime factor in the four state Assembly elections (‘The Reckoning’, December 3rd, 2018). No wonder BJP’s election rallies cannot afford to have him missing. While he might have not fulfilled all his promises yet, Modi still has no strong challenger. It is not Rahul Gandhi’s time yet. He needs greater political shrewdness. Mahesh Kumar IN HONOUR OF A HERO Shakti Sinha’s essay brings to the foreground Sardar Patel, much less understood than his contemporaries, and the leader’s historical contribution (‘Triumph of the Pragmatist’, December 3rd, 2018). Honouring one of the strongest politicians of his time—aptly called ‘the Iron Man of India’—with a statue that also doubles up as a tourist destination is a classic example…

Man encroached upon the territory of God when a Chinese scientist said this week that he had been able to get two babies delivered with genes edited so that they would not contract HIV. And they would pass on this trait to their offspring. The scientific community has roundly condemned it and even the scientist’s university says it was unaware of what he had been up to. Even though the technology existed, ethics kept scientists from creating designer babies. But should these babies survive without complications, then this very success will grant their creation legitimacy. This, then, could be an epochal moment in human history.…

IT ALL STARTED in Karnataka. In 2007, the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal announced its ‘final verdict’, according to which Tamil Nadu would receive 419 billion cubic feet (or TMC) of water from the Cauvery, Karnataka 270 TMC, Kerala 30 TMC and Puducherry 7 TMC. In September 2012, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was also chairman of the Cauvery River Authority, ordered Karnataka to release 9,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu daily. Karnataka refused, forcing Tamil Nadu to file a petition in the Supreme Court asking it to direct Karnataka to release the water. The Supreme Court blasted the Karnataka government for failing to comply with the orders of the Cauvery River Authority, and so Karnataka started releasing water. This led to widespread protests and violence in Karnataka, where…

DONALD TRUMP HAS been upending and rewriting US foreign policy. Allies and adversaries alike are scrambling to discern, thwart and shield themselves from Trump’s policies. So is India. US-India ties have not soured but ebbed, marred by trade and economic friction, hand-wringing around waivers to exempt India from US sanctions and a fitful relationship between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. Is this scenario the new normal in US-India relations or can both countries, again, find ‘common ground’? In Open Embrace, Varghese K George, The Hindu’s US correspondent, aims to answer this question by interrogating the AP politics and political ascent of Trump and Modi. George asks whether the ‘ultra-nationalist’ conjuncture fuelling Modi’s and Trump’s rise will stymie US-India relations or if both leaders can ‘make a deal’ to prevent that…

THOSE WHO SEEK to know the history of Delhi in the 19th century must overcome what is a major obstacle for most Indians today—an unfamiliarity with Urdu. Since this was the language of the city in the 19th century, this lack of familiarity leads one to rely almost exclusively on sources authored by the British who ruled Delhi. It goes without saying that this leaves us with a very skewed perspective of the history of the city. Apart from the generally complex colonial relationship, there were points at which the Indian people and the colonial state faced each other in sharp conflict—such as the Revolt of 1857—and contradiction. Necessarily, one can expect accounts from opposing sides of the divide to tell different stories. Our understanding is bound to be woefully…

It might not be a cakewalk for the BJP in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, as a rejuvenated Congress and Hindi-belt political parties pose a challenge this time (‘Defenders of the Faith’, December 3rd, 2018). Historically, Rajasthan has been alternately ruled by India’s two national parties. Its Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, alleged to have turned Rajasthan into her fiefdom, may find it tough to sail through to victory. The soft-spoken MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, aiming to win for the fourth time, remains more popular than his rivals despite anti-incumbency. Raman Singh will likely make a clean sweep in Chhattisgarh, though the Congress challenge is strong. The marriage of convenience between the Congress and Telugu Desam Party in Telangana cannot be ignored by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. Impressed…

WE MIGHT AS well get it out of the way—that notorious episode in Bernardo Bertolucci’s filmography when Marlon Brando’s character in Last Tango in Paris reaches for a stick of butter as he rapes Maria Schneider’s character from behind. It is a scene that has moved out of the confines of the film to acquire a life of its own. It has been spoken of, discussed and joked about so much that one hears of it long before encountering the film itself. In the film, Brando’s Paul, grieving after his wife’s suicide, meets a young woman, Jeanne (played by Schneider), when they are looking for an apartment to rent. They begin a sexual relationship, with Paul setting its template: they are never to share personal details with each other, not…

AS WAR-CRIES GO, ‘growth or death’ doesn’t quite arouse the same passion as ‘liberty or death’, though corporate chiefs would testify that business dynamism is the call of the age, a must for survival, and success under its pressure is not just about achieving growth, but fast growth—which, of course, often depends on liberty. Market freedom, however, is not the be-all and end-all of it. Internal stuff like productivity—the use of less to get more—is no less vital to that cause. There are a variety of other factors too, all entangled in inexplicable ways and riddled with just as many ifs and buts. Business gurus, meanwhile, preside over such a proliferation of proposals on how to perk performance up that it’s no shame anymore to be left utterly befuddled. Might…

THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957) is one of the great films of the 20th century. One iconic scene from the film, where a knight plays a game of chess with the angel of death in an effort to prolong his life, is based on the knight’s belief that as long as the game continues, so will his life. There are few, if any, examples of a battle of wits between two supremely unequal antagonists. The end result of such an encounter, too, is intuitive. But such is human imagination that the quest to extend knowledge in understanding what has for long been held as unknowable never ceases. In Divine Games: Game Theory and the Undecidability of a Superior Being (The MIT Press; 224 pages; Rs 2,635), Steven Brams, a professor of…

BASED IN A DYSTOPIAN setting where a group of survivors of a nuclear holocaust are thrown together in an underground sanctuary, the new season of American Horror Story, ‘Apocalypse’, will be joined by 70s era scream queen Joan Collins from across the Atlantic. She is no stranger to the medium, having won a Golden Globe in 1982 for her portrayal of the scheming Alexis Colby in the US series Dynasty. She discusses the show, her career and MeToo. How did ‘Apocalypse’ come about? I had seen a few episodes of American Horror Story and found it very original and fascinating. In February, I went to a Vanity Fair party and Ryan Murphy, the creator of the show, was there. He said he wanted me to be in the show and…

THERE IS ONE facet of the never-ending Brexit crisis in the United Kingdom that both fascinates and intrigues, and which is hardly mentioned in weighty tomes on the subject: the level of popular panic. In India, we are accustomed to disruptions. There are disruptions from festivals, rallies, processions and bandhs; there are disruptions arising from shortages and power cuts; and there are disruptions caused by epidemics and nature. We take disruptions in our stride. We agonise over it for a few days, perhaps even point accusing fingers at some people, and then get on with life. In time, we even forget it happened. Brexit isn’t a disaster or a catastrophe. It is an outcome of a decision the British people took voluntarily in a free and fair referendum that witnessed…

A FRIEND WHO ALONG with her husband recently went to Europe for the first time on a shoestring budget got a taste of how low-cost airlines manage to turn a profit there. She was unaware of a Ryan Air rule that unless passengers do a web check-in three hours before a flight, they will have to fork out £55. Just this unexpected component for one flight worked out to about 5 per cent of their total tour cost. In the West, such ‘penalties’ to make up for low ticket prices are seen as a regular business model. In India, it is a different cup of tea. Recently, Indigo linked all web check-ins to paid seat selection and thus inverted the model. If Ryan Air charged for not checking in online,…

I SUSPECT THE EXPRESSION ‘Yellow Brick Road’ will remind most people today of various songs, rather than the Oz novels. The Seventh Schedule has three lists—Union, Concurrent and State. Entry 23 in the Union List says, ‘Highways declared by or under law made by Parliament to be national highways.’ Entry 13 in the State List states, ‘Communications, that is to say, roads, bridges, ferries, and other means of communication not specified in List I…’ At the Union Government level, there is a Ministry of Road Transport and Highways. But one should remember there are several kinds of roads: National Highways, State Highways, other Public Works Department (PWD) roads (like District Roads), rural roads (built by panchayats or under the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana or Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana or PMGSY),…

Rachel Kushner is the author of three acclaimed novels : Telex from Cuba (about the Cuban Revolution), The Flamethrowers (about the 70s art world in New York), and more recently, the Booker-shortlisted The Mars Room, set in a women’s prison in California. Kushner says that after her works of historical fiction, she wanted to write a contemporary novel, to place a mirror  on society and use what’s around to make a work of art. In person, she is slight and precise, and can speak with awe and authority on a wide range of subjects from motorcycles to the films of Antonioni. Her literary heroes are Proust, Duras and Bolaño, but in this book you sense the presence of Dostoevsky and Thoreau. Kushner is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and…

SOMEWHERE AT THE start of the book, author biographer Hindol Sengupta asks: ‘‘Gandhian’, ‘Nehruvian’, and even ‘Ambedkarite’ have become adjectives, but has anyone heard of Patelian?’ Why, he asks? Sengupta is not seeking real answers; else he would have examined the ‘thought quotient’ of each and done a comparative analysis of enduring and portable parts of their respective legacies. Rather, he asks this question rhetorically to suggest that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel’s story of nation-building, his contribution, his stature, his sagacity and his legacy have not found the place they deserve in tributes to the national movement. Why we do not have a Patelian following, Sengupta laments, is because Patel’s legacy has been ‘systematically allowed to fade away.’ First it was the sleight of Gandhi and Nehru, and then the neglect…

Gracious in Defeat There’s a reason Aamir Khan stands taller than most other superstars, and he demonstrated it earlier this week when he said he was taking ‘complete responsibility’ for the failure of his latest film, Thugs of Hindostan. The actor said he was aware that most of his fans and the audience at large had not enjoyed the film, and while he made it a point to add that the team had worked hard to make a movie they hoped would be loved, he acknowledged that they had clearly failed. “There are people who have liked the film, and we are thankful to them. But they are in a minority. Most people didn’t like our film,” he accepted. After bowing to a record Rs 50 crore opening day, Thugs…