February 3, 2020

India Today

News and current affairs magazine

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From The Editor-in-chief
Almost eight months ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to power with an emphatic win in the Lok Sabha election. He became the first prime minister since Indira Gandhi to register back-to-back majorities in two consecutive elections. As the Au
India Today3 min read
Predatory Player?
On his globe-trotting travels over the past few years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has frequently wooed foreign investors in the hope of bringing more foreign direct investment (FDI) into India. On January 15, when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced a
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Call Barred
On January 16, the Supreme Court rejected a plea by Indian telcos asking it to review its decision on October 24, 2019, to uphold the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) definition of ‘adjusted gross revenue’ (AGR). This definition is central to d
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Why Kashmir Needs The Internet
Among the more thoughtless recent comments made by a government functionary is NITI Aayog member V.K. Saraswat’s assertion on January 18 that the months-long internet suspension in Kashmir only affected the pornography-watching habits of the local po
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An Ode To Anti-imperialism
The relentless debate around Brexit in the UK is entangled with the never-ending narrative of the British empire. The sun never sets on the empire, so believe those in favour of Britain’s exit from the European Union. The powerful historical link bet
India Today2 min read
Picture This
Maharashtra’s three-party coalition has seen a diverse array of portraits on the walls of state ministers in Mumbai’s Mantralaya. As per protocol, portraits of the president and prime minister are mandatory, but not of ministers, which is just as wel
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Two-front War: A Convenient Fiction
It is almost de rigueur for a newly appointed military Chief of Staff to ritually make certain statements, for instance, about the supposed readiness of his armed service to fight a “two-front war”. General Manoj M. Naravane, however, displayed a dis
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Return Of The Rabble-rouser
If you thought Dilip Ghosh would pay the price for shooting off his mouth on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, think again. Ghosh, under whose watch the BJP notched a spectacular tally in the 2019 general election—18 of the state’s 42 seats and a 40 p
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‘Amit Shah Understands The Need To Be Aggressive In Bengal’
Q Having been labelled a ‘foul-mouthed’ politician, how credible will you be as the face of the BJP? Only the media and a few people (intellectuals and bhadrolok) think I am foul-mouthed. Ask those on the ground. “Go on, dada,” they say, “we are with
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Who’s the Real Boss?
Soon after assuming office as Maharashtra deputy chief minister on December 30, 2019, Ajit Pawar demanded that his allotted office in Mantralaya be changed. The cabin he had been assigned, #602, is considered ‘inauspicious’. Three former occupants—Ek
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Can Nadda Get The BJP Back To Its Winning Ways?
Jagat Prakash Nadda’s uncontested elevation on January 20 from ‘working’ president to national president of the BJP was on expected lines. To fill Amit Shah’s shoes won’t be easy and 59-year-old Nadda will invariably find himself being compared with
India Today9 min read
That Uneasy Feeling
For Narendra Modi, the contrast in perception about his leadership could not be as stark as it is now. Just seven months ago, the prime minister reigned supreme and was regarded as someone who could do no wrong. He had powered the Bharatiya Janata Pa
India Today2 min readMedical
The Fight Over Eggs
A proposal to introduce egg in the menu of children and lactating mothers registered with the 97,135 anganwadis in Madhya Pradesh has run into a controversy. While the Kamal Nath government says eggs will help fight malnutrition, the opposition BJP t
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A Common Cause
Barely eight months ago, a pall of gloom hung over the Opposition parties when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) swept the 2019 Lok Sabha election with 353 seats, including 303 for the BJP, its highest tally ever. Today, with new activis
India Today3 min read
Time For A Free Hand
For the past month or so, India has witnessed a growing swell of protests against the Narendra Modi government’s stand on the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, the National Population Register (NPR) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). Cutti
India Today3 min read
Firmly At The Top
The INDIA TODAY Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll in January 2020 adjudged Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath as the best-performing chief minister for the second time in a row. What makes the feat all the more striking is that Adityanath is the only BJP f
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Slide Effect
Does good politics translate into good economics? Not necessarily, at least in the Indian context. The team of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah might have seemed unstoppable in winning elections and delivering on audacious pol
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The Gold Standard
For the first time, Rohit Sharma, who was recently hailed as ICC ODI cricketer of 2019, finished second in INDIA TODAY’S Mood of the Nation (MOTN) poll, surpassing Mahendra Singh Dhoni who has been on a sabbatical since India’s semi-final exit in the
India Today3 min read
The BJP’s Social Network
There was a time when a government scheme could be launched simply by handing over a giant cheque to a grateful-looking recipient. Prime Minister Narendra Modi changed all that. In 2016, for example, when he launched the Ujjwala Yojana in eastern Utt
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Coming up Trumps
Sometime next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will welcome US President Donald Trump on his first state visit to India. Among the highlights of the Trump trip will be a sequel to the rapturous ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event organised in Houston, Texas, in
India Today3 min read
Can You Beat The Market?
An ‘index’ is a grouping of stocks, based on factors like the market cap of those stocks or the sector they are a part of, such as IT, pharmaceuticals or banking. An ‘index fund’ is a mutual fund that only invests in stocks listed in a specific index
India Today2 min read
Chart Toppers
The reign of King Khans—Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh—appears to be fading, being replaced by the Age of Akshay Kumar. From interviewing Prime Minister Narendra Modi before the 2019 Lok Sabha election to featuring in four releases in 2019—Kesari, Missi
India Today3 min read
Debt Is Not A Four-letter Word
Home loans come with some of the lowest interest rates on offer. They even allow for tax deduction benefits on repayment of the principal amount and interest due. As a result, if you have a home loan at the current interest rate of around 8 per cent
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How Much Is Enough?
A retirement corpus is a critical saving, for it decides whether you will lead a comfortable retired life or not. But how much is enough? Well, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this as the number differs for each individual on the basis of i
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Spaces, His Final Frontier
There are two sequential pages in the middle of Ranjit Sabikhi’s new book, A Sense of Space: The Crisis of Urban Design in India, that represent some of the main questions it raises. The pages describe one of the large projects that he, as part of th
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Holding Fort(h)
The walled city of Shahjahanabad (or Old Delhi) has the happy distinction of being one of the few urban spaces in India that has a relatively large amount of literature, both academic and popular, written about its history, architecture and urbanism.
India Today3 min readWorld
Bringing Out the CHINA
This latest work by Chinese-born British writer Jung Chang is described as the story of “Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China”, and so it is. The story of the three Soong sisters is imprinted on modern China’s history—given the role th
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Queen Of The Desert
When you pick up Chinese writer Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara, brilliantly translated by Mike Fu, keep these points in mind—do not judge this book by its cover; do not judge it by its back-cover blurb either; and definitely do not judge it by its fo
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The HINDUSTANI HOME THEATRE
In 1964, when Vinod Kapur invited Girija Devi to sing in his Bareilly house, he barely had any interest in music. She, too, hadn’t made it big yet. “She was no Begum Akhtar,” says Kapur. At four in the morning, however, when the vocalist asked Kapur
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The Other Fight For Freedom
Director Kabir Khan’s latest offering, The Forgotten Army, an Amazon Prime series, comes with the tagline ‘Azadi Ke Liye’. An alumnus of Jamia Millia Islamia University, Khan grew up on the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus. His father taught
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Role Model
Q. Didn’t the possibility of headlines like ‘Milind Soman’s RSS links exposed’ worry you? (Laughs) Back then, I didn’t see the things that people speak of today. No politics, nothing religious. In fact, I learnt a lot about how to be independent and

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